LV= continues protection growth

LV= has revealed its protection new business increased 16% over the first six months of the year compared with the same period of 2010.

The provider saw new business grow to £13.4m (on an APE basis) from £11.5m in the first half of last year.

This continued the trend seen last year that showed its protection business grew 34% overall.

It also revealed it is planning to follow other major players in the protection sector with a marketing campaign intended to raise brand and protection insurance awareness.

Overall LV= reported life sales up 9% to £69.3m on an APE basis (from £63.5m in 2010) including an increase of 11% on retirement business to £53.5m from £48.3m.

Protection also saw the largest product area increase, followed by annuities (up 14% to £24.3m), pensions (10%, £25.2m) and equity release (2%, £4m).

Richard Rowney, managing director of Life at LV=, told COVER he was pleased with the continued growth across the whole life operation and revealed some details of the marketing campaign.

"We're very happy with the numbers," he said.

"We've not disclosed the profit because we don't audit at the half year but the underlying profitability is really strong as well, which is encouraging.

"And we're looking at doing something in the second half of the year that helps increase our overall brand profile but also tries to stimulate the protection market.

"It's being finalised at the moment but we've got some plans from September on to try and do something interesting in that space," he added.

Rowney also explained there were unlikely to be any additions to the current product suite but he expected further innovation within those products.

Mark Jones, head of protection at LV=, was also very happy with the results and to have continued the momentum of continued growth.

"Our market share has gone up in each product area," he said.

"Income protection (IP) is strong, its what we're well known for, and the critical illness (CI) product is in a much better position than a year ago.

"But its good to be getting momentum on other product lines so we're not seen as a single product provider any longer," he added.

Jones added that the provider had invested in its customer services section over the last year to ensure it could support the anticipated growth in clients.