Long-term savings provider Hansard Group revealed during its Q1 2023 financial results that it will be introducing a proposition in the Middle East next year.
Within its results, new business between July to September 2022 came in at £24.8m, down 21% from £31.4m ($36m, €36.4m) in Q1 2022.
The firm reported a 2.8% increase in new business in Middle East and Africa. It said that it is “beginning to see some of the fruits” of its investment in this region where it has recruited additional regional sales management.
Latin America saw the biggest increase with 17.6%. Hansard said it is “working on building business with new distribution partners to supplement our existing distribution” within region.
But the Rest of the World (59.6%) and Far East (55.6%) regions suffered significant declines in new business levels.
For the former, Hansard attributed the drop to a “decline in single premium business and business acceptance restrictions arising out of the Russia-Ukraine conflict”. For the latter, it said there has been a fluctuating smaller base of new business following a spike in the previous year. As a result, Hansard relocated a regional sales manager to Malaysia to try and drive business growth in the region,
Assets under administration were £1.1bn as of 30 September 2022, a £6.1m increase from 30 June 2022.
Middle East launch
Graham Sheward, group chief executive at Hansard, said the firm said it has been trying to counteract the “challenging” economic environment with additional distribution relationships, regional sales managers and product developments.
“The overall environment has remained challenging for investment and long-term savings plans, ” he added. “However, we are making good progress developing new distribution opportunities.
“We expect to launch a new proposition in the Middle East on our new administration system in 2023 to assist growing our business in that market.
“We also continue to make encouraging progress with various distribution opportunities for our Japanese proposition and remain optimistic for the significant potential in that jurisdiction.”
