Prudential plc

Hello everyone and welcome to Prudential's full year 2023 results Q&A event. If you would like to ask a question on the call today, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad or press star 2 if you would like to withdraw your question. I will now hand the floor over to Patrick to begin. Please go ahead.

Thank you Sebastian and welcome to everyone. We're going to just have a short address by Anil to start and then we'll go straight into questions and answers. Sebastian will explain to those on the call how to log their questions, but I'll pass over to Anil to kick off.

Thank you, Patrick. Good morning, good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Very warm welcome to the 2023 full year results for Prudential. I'm Anil Vidvani. I'm the CEO for Prudential, and it's indeed my honor and pleasure to be welcoming you today. um earlier today we announced our results we are delighted with the strength of a performance i thought the results were excellent both on operational grounds as well as the financial performance that we delivered uh in 2023 our sales came in at 5.9 billion dollars for the full year up by 37%. Our new business profits came in at $3.1 billion, up 45%. 17 out of the 22 markets were able to register new business profit growth, 12 of them on a double-digit basis. The margins held up. In fact, they improved by four percentage points, ex-economics. And our IFRS earnings came in at $2.9 billion, up 8% year-on-year. So clearly, a very strong set of results. Hong Kong led the results, a strong rebound, post the borders opening up. And the pleasing aspect of the Hong Kong growth was that we were able to gain market share, both in domestic as well as in mainland Chinese visitor segment. And again, one of the other pleasing aspects of the Hong Kong results were that we gained market share in agency, which is the lifeblood of our company. In China, it was a year of transition. We pivoted to driving a different product mix in China. And as you're well aware, we took proactive steps way back in April 2023, much in advance of the regulatory guidance. And in many ways, the regulatory guidance of quarter three ratified some of the steps that we took in terms of repricing our 3.5% guaranteed product. Our agency grew by 25%. And on account of the steps that we took to reposition our bank assurance product mix as we transition to 2024, we feel optimistic about the growth prospects in China. And I'm sure we will talk about that as we go along. In ASEAN, again, strong performances by Malaysia, delighted with the sales and the new business profit growth. Indonesia, four quarters, four consecutive quarters of new business profit growth, early signs of the transformation work that we are leading in Indonesia. And Singapore, clearly we have a quality, quality franchise there, multi-distribution channel, and it underscored the strong rebound that we witnessed in Singapore in the second half of last year. So overall, as I said, very pleased with the results that we delivered in 2023. I believe that these are excellent results. We have seen sales growth in the first two months of 2024. March and April of 2024 will have base effects given the fact that we saw a resurgence in March 2023 and April 2023 on account of the border opening. We are in early days of the execution of our strategy, and we are already seeing some measurable progress against our strategy execution. And a combination of these factors lead us to believe that we are increasingly getting confident in terms of delivering our two financial objectives, which is 15 to 20 percent growth on new business profit to 2027 and the acceleration of cash on the value that we generate. We're also increasingly confident of our strategic objectives and are effectively deploying capital to drive organic profitable growth, but at the same time, looking a sharp eye out on extending and expanding our distribution footprint through partnerships. I also wanted to, at this juncture, thank our people, thank our agents, and thank our partners. Without their dedication and commitment, these results simply would not have been possible. So thank you very much again for joining us. I would like to now start by introducing our management team. On my right, Ben Balmer, our Chief Financial Officer. Next to Ben, Dennis Tan. Dennis Tan manages a cluster of our ASEAN markets and is also responsible for wealth. Next to Dennis, Catherine Chia. Catherine is responsible for human resources. And at the far right is Avnish Kara, our chief risk officer. On my left, Lillian Ng. Lillian runs Greater China, in and along customer as well as distribution for the company. Next to Lillian, Somaz Altan. Somaz runs, again, a cluster of markets in Southeast Asia, in ASEAN, alongside India, Africa. as well as is responsible for health and technology over and above his geographic responsibility. And on the far left, Bill, who we appointed as the incoming CEO of eSpring in the middle of last year. So on that note, back to you Patrick.