The growth rate for new business, measured on a present value of new business premium (PVNBP) basis, was also up 88% for the first six months of Hansard’s full financial year, which runs to 30 June 2016, over the comparable six months of 2014.
“We have established an encouraging trend of three quarters of growth as regional initiatives and new distribution relationships start to deliver results,” the company said in a statement.
“The initial success of our strategic roll-out in the Middle East has started to be replicated in other regions this quarter, where we are experiencing strong initial growth,” it said.
During the latest period Hansard said Polonsky, who is currently president and a non-executive director of Hansard, had invested the sterling equivalent of £8.3m ($11.9m, €10.9m) as a lump sum top-up to a Hansard savings product on arm’s-length terms and this had had a significant impact on its results.
Excluding this investment, the new business growth rates are slightly less spectacular but still strong. New business premiums were up 82.7% in the final three months of 2015 over the same period of 2014 and 63.6% over the previous six month period.
Ahead of forecast
“Following the good Q1 sales figures Hansard has reported a very significant increase in sales in Q2 that was materially ahead of our £20.4m forecast,” said Panmure Gordon analyst Barrie Cornes.
“The new business margin is slowly returning to positive territory which is clearly positive albeit that we think that it will take some time to return to mid-single digits,” he said.
In terms of the products, Hansard said growth has come largely from the single premium business, where sales were up 245% in the three months to December over the same period of 2014 and up 124.5% for the six months to 31 December 2015.
Geographical performance was led by the Middle East and Africa region, which posted a 240% growth rate in the latest quarter over the same period of 2014. The growth rate in Asia was 105.9%.
In the category labelled Rest of the World, there was 113% increase in business on the prior year quarter with markets such as the Caribbean and Europe (non-EU) having performed well.
However, in Latin America business shrank by 43%.
“Latin America was the only region where increased sales were not seen. However, we expect to see some recovery later in the year following the recent recruitment of a new sales executive for that region,” the company said.
“A further three account executives have been added to the team in the past quarter to further drive growth in Latin America and Asia,” it added.
Hansard announced a raft of senior appointments in the second half of last year as part of its expansion plans in Asia and Latin America, including former Standard Life director Michael Wrigley who became head of sales for Southeast Asia.
The volatility on global stock markets has also had an impact on Hansard’s assets under management. Assets under administration dropped to £856.2m at the end of December 2015 from £923.7m at the end of 2014.
Gordon Marr, group chief executive said of the overall results: “It is very pleasing to see the roll-out of our strategy delivering strong results. We have a growing, well-diversified business and continue to work hard to deliver on the opportunities that we have identified.
