Tower Australia lifts full-year profit by 45 per cent
Jim Minto
Tower Australia has posted a full-year profit figure for the year ended September 30, 2006, of NZ$48.7 million, which represents an increase of 45 per cent on the 2005 result.
Tower group managing director Jim Minto said: “We maintained focus this year on the same three key levers that we’ve been pulling now for three years. That’s looking to grow our sales above market rates, improving our retention rates and tightly managing costs.
“That together with the merger with Prefsure has seen this business acquire significant scale and become the third largest life insurer,” he added.
During the year, individual lump sum sales rose by 38 per cent and group sales also climbed by 14 per cent. Tower’s in-force life insurance premiums now stand at $612 million.
Overall, the Tower group reported a financial year-end profit after tax of NZ$63.5 million, up from NZ$40.9 million achieved in the previous 12 months. This represented an increase of 55 per cent.
In line with the strong group result, Tower New Zealand also grew its profit for 2006 from NZ$24.8 million in 2005 to NZ$33.8 million, a jump of 36 per cent.
Moving ahead, Minto said the company wanted to grow by at least 50 per cent stronger than the market.
“We want to grow our position through the adviser channels, a traditional strength of Tower, really strong service, and business to business partnering,” he explained.
In terms of its funds management arm, Tower was looking to achieve an improved streamlining of its operations.
“There’s real work to do around collapsing old legacy IT systems that support our investment business, getting rid of those costs and simplifying it. There’s a little bit of pain to do that but there is value at the end if we can deliver that properly,” Minto said.
Recommended for you
In this episode of Relative Return Unplugged, hosts Maja Garaca Djurdjevic and Keith Ford are joined by special guest Shane Oliver, chief economist at AMP, to break down what’s happening with the Trump trade and the broader global economy, and what it means for Australia.
In this episode, hosts Maja Garaca Djurdjevic and Keith Ford take a look at what’s making news in the investment world, from President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet nominations to Cbus fronting up to a Senate inquiry.
In this new episode of The Manager Mix, host Laura Dew speaks with Claire Smith, head of private assets sales at Schroders, to discuss semi-liquid global private equity.
In this episode of Relative Return, host Laura Dew speaks with Eric Braz, MFS portfolio manager on the global small and mid-cap fund, the MFS Global New Discovery Strategy, to discuss the power of small and mid-cap investing in today’s global markets.
