Legal & General’s group protection new business fell more than 10% driving a 3.5% drop in its overall protection sales for the first six months of 2025.
The insurer’s retail protection sales ticked up by 2.7% but this was not enough to balance the group risk slide.
L&G reported protection new business annual premiums of £138m in the first half of the year, down 3.5% from £143m in the same period of 2024.
Group protection sales fell 10.3% to £61m from £68m while individual protection rose 2.7% to £77m from £75m in a “highly competitive market”.
The insurer said its retail market share of 18.5%, according to the Association of British Insurers (ABI) report for the first quarter of 2025, “remains strong” and that it had “increased our margin year on year by 0.9% to 2.2%”.
Gross written premiums up
In terms of all protection premium income, Legal & General reported a 4.5% rise to £1.6bn from £1.11bn a year earlier, with the group market seeing a significant increase.
Group protection gross premiums rose 11% to £388m from £349m which it said was a result of technology developments alongside strengthening of intermediary relationships.
It added there were more than 2,400 new SME employers using its online quote and buy self-service platform Onix.
Retail protection gross premiums rose 1.4% to £771m from £760m.
The insurer added that the sale of its US protection business and the development of the broader partnership with Meiji Yasuda was progressing to plan.
Post-tax profit up 42%
The retail division’s operating profit increased by 3% to £237m from £231m driven by the investment performance of its annuity portfolio.
The workplace defined contribution (DC) business grew as assets under administration passed £100bn, with net flows up 21% to £4.0bn and 5.6 million members.
Overall L&G’s profit after tax rose 42% across the period to £316m from £223m which CEO António Simões said had been from “an excellent six months”.
“We are growing and making the most of the synergies between our three businesses,” he said. “Institutional retirement operating profit is up double digits, and we have written over £5bn of new business at low capital strain.
“We have seen material progress in asset management, with positive annualised net new revenues driving a further increase in our average revenue margin, which is now close to our double-digit ambition.
“In retail, our customer base has grown to 12.4m, and workplace pension assets have surpassed £100bn.
“The outlook for our businesses is positive and we are firmly on track to achieve our financial targets.”
