Hansard Global plc (“Hansard” or “the Group”), the specialist long-term savings provider, issues its trading update for the first quarter of its financial year ended 30 June 2023 (Q1 FY 2023), being the period from 1 July 2022 to 30 September 2022.

SUMMARY

• New business for the quarter ended 30 September 2022 was £24.8m in PVNBP (“Present Value of New Business Premiums”) terms, in line with new business of £24.8m in the quarter ended 30 June 2022 and down from £31.4m in the quarter ended 30 September 2021;
• Assets under administration were £1.1 billion as at 30 September 2022, up £6.1m from that last reported as at 30 June 2022.

GRAHAM SHEWARD, GROUP CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, COMMENTED:

The overall environment has remained challenging for investment and long-term savings plans. However, we are making good progress developing new distribution opportunities.

In our largest region, Middle East and Africa, new business was up 2.8%. We are beginning to see some of the fruits of our investment in this region where we have recruited additional regional sales management. We are working closely with a number of new distribution partners on new customer segments and product initiatives.

New business in Latin America was up 17.6% as the improving trend in that region continued. Similar to the Middle East and Africa region, we are working on building business with new distribution partners to supplement our existing distribution.

The Rest of World region was down 59.6% due to a decline in single premium business and business acceptance restrictions arising out of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

The 55.6% reduction in Far East business reflects a fluctuating smaller base of new business which experienced a spike in the prior year comparative. We have recently relocated a regional sales manager to our branch in Malaysia to drive business growth in this region.

In order to counteract this challenging environment, we have been expanding our distribution relationships, adding additional regional sales managers to our team and developing new product propositions across our product range. 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.

Lastly, we were delighted to win four industry awards at the 2022 International Investment awards in October. These were in the areas of customer service and technology, where Hansard strives to differentiate itself. The awards won were for “Excellence in Fintech”, “Excellence in Client Service – Asia”, “Excellence in Client Service – Africa” and “Excellence in Client Service – Overall”.

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