Prudential plc

Good afternoon to you in Hong Kong. Good morning elsewhere in the world. It's Patrick Bow speaking. Thank you for joining us today. In the interest of ruthless efficiency and operating rhythm, we're going to start at exactly 4.30 Hong Kong time. Thank you very much. I'll pass over to Charlie, our operator for today.

Thank you. Good morning and welcome to the Prudential Half-Year Results 2022 live Q&A. My name is Charlie and I'll be coordinating the call today. If you'd like to ask a question at the end of the presentation, you can do so by pressing star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Alternatively, if you wish to ask a written question via the webcast during the presentation, you can type your questions using the questions tab above the slides. I will now hand over to our host, Anil Wadwani, Chief Executive Officer to begin. Anil, please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and thank you, Patrick. Good morning, good afternoon, everyone, and a very, very warm welcome to the half-yearly results for 2023. I'm Anil Badwani. I have taken over the role as Prudential PLC CEO over the last six months, and I'm delighted to be sharing both the first half results as well as the update on our new strategy. Right at the outset, we are very pleased with the exceptionally strong performance that we have been able to communicate and deliver in the first half of this year. Our new business profit touched $1.5 billion, registering growth year-on-year of 39%. And if you were to remove the impacts of interest rates, our growth was even stronger at 52%. Importantly, our margins were resilient, and our margins came in at 49% on an overall basis, which was more or less flattish to the same time last year. And if, again, you remove the impact of interest rates, our margins improved by 4 percentage points. This was largely driven on account of the strong sales growth. Our sales were in excess of $3 billion. Again, a very strong growth of 42% year on year. This was underpinned by a strong performance by agency. Agency volumes doubled. And again, this was on the back of the last set of COVID restrictions going away. We have a very strong bank assurance channel that complemented our agency very well and delivered sales in excess of a billion dollars for the first half of this year. Hong Kong led our performance. But we also witnessed growth in new business profit in 10 out of our 13 Asian markets and all our African markets delivered sales growth. So indeed, very excited and very pleased with the set of results that we have announced today. We at the same time launched our new strategy and our new strategy is a promise to accelerate value creation for all our stakeholders, our customers, our people, our shareholders, and importantly, our community. The strength of our strategy lies in its simplicity. And we believe that the focus that we are driving on both operational and financial discipline will be key to driving sustainable value creation between now and 2027. We are also using our newly launched purpose to give us the inspiration and the guiding force as we write the next chapter of growth at Prudential. We have shared two financial targets. Firstly, 15 to 20% new business profit growth, CAGR, on a CAGR basis between now and 2027. And second, accelerating our free surplus generation to double digit during the same time period. And both are going to be driven by the three strategic pillars of customer, technology-driven distribution, and scaling of our health business. And they are going to be enabled by three enablers, our open architecture technology platform, our people, and our wealth and investment capabilities. So we are very excited about the future that we are just about to create. And as I said, it's a pleasure to be hosting you this morning, this afternoon. Before we launch into the Q&A, I would like to introduce our group executive team. Starting on my right, Ben Balma, our chief financial officer. Next to Ben is Dennis Tan. Dennis looks after Singapore, Vietnam, and Thailand. Next to Dennis is Catherine Chia, our chief human resources officer. And at the far end is Avnish Kalra, our chief risk officer. On my left is Lillian Nung. Lillian is responsible for Greater China Markets and has additional responsibility for customer and distribution. Next to Lillian is Somaz Alten. Somaz has a wide range of responsibilities from managing Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, our African markets, India, as well as has responsibilities for health and technology. And on the far end is Bill, who's our newly appointed CEO for eSpring. And together, we look forward to engaging with you in the question and answers. So back to you, Patrick.