Aviva results saw its operating profit from general and health insurance in 2018 hit £704m ($921m), the exact same from a year ago.
Its life business saw a better number. The Aviva life business in 2018 saw grew 5% year-on-year from £2,852m to £2,999m with good results.
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The UK went from £1,800m operating profit in 2017 to £2,549m in 2018, with a strong 42% increase in profits. Asia, Aviva Investors and others grew 95% from its low base of £58m in 2017 to reach £113m.
However, this had to offset some losses in other regions. Europe saw a decrease of 8% in operating profits, slumping from £485m to £447m. Canada took a nosedive in 2018 with a 49% drop from £55m to £28m.
Operating expenses grew 7% to reach just over £4bn from £3,788m at the same point last year.
Maurice Tulloch, Chief Executive Officer, said: “I am excited to be taking over as CEO of Aviva. We have strong foundations but we are only scratching the surface of our full potential. There’s a huge opportunity here. At the heart of it, it’s all about insurance fundamentals, delivering excellent customer experience, tackling complexity and injecting a different pace of change into Aviva. And that will be just the start. I am determined to re-energise Aviva and deliver long term growth for our shareholders.”
Sir Adrian Montague, chairman, said: “Aviva made steady progress in 2018. We grew profits, had a record year for cash remittances and further increased our solvency cover ratio to 204%. As a result, the Board has increased the full year dividend by 9% to 30.0 pence per share.
“Our key profit measure, operating earnings per share, is up 7%. Just under half our earnings growth is due to higher profits from our major businesses, with the rest of the increase due to our ordinary share buy-back, debt reduction and a higher net contribution from longevity and assumption changes”
