Aegon narrows first half loss

Aegon, which moved its domicile to Bermuda last year, reported a first half loss, saying a positive operating result was offset by fair value losses in the US. 

The life and annuity insurer said it narrowed its loss for the first six months from €199 million to €65 million while its operating profit decreased 8% from €818 million to €750 million in the period.

The insurer said the decline in operating profit declined due to unfavourable mortality experience mainly related to US financial assets.

“In the first half of 2024 we made solid progress to deliver on our strategy to create leading providers of investment, protection, and retirement solutions," said Lard Friese, Aegon CEO. "This was evidenced by continued strong sales growth across all our US strategic assets, further growth in our UK Workplace platform and the business in Brazil, and strong third-party net deposits in our asset management business. 

"Consistent with our strategy to reduce capital employed by US Financial Assets, we saw our capital employed fall by $0.4 billion, and we are on track to reduce it to €2.2 billion by the end of 2027."

He added: "While unfavourable mortality experience in our US financial assets negatively impacted both IFRS results and operating capital generation in the first half, we remain on track to meet our €1.1 billion OCG guidance for 2024. 

"Going forward, we expect the assumption updates to reduce IFRS claims experience variances and lead to an increase in our operating result. 

"Capital ratios of our business units in the US and UK increased to 446% and 189% respectively, and our holding cash position at the half year remained above the operating range at €2.1 billion."

Friese said in the US, Aegon subsidiary Transamerica saw new individual life sales increased to $245 million, up 5% compared with the prior year period. Net deposits for mid-sized retirement plans increased to $1.2 billion. This business growth also translated into an increase of US Strategic Assets CSM by 12%.

Friese said Aegon UK's net deposits at the Workplace platform increased to £1.7 billion, due to the continued onboarding of new schemes and higher net deposits on existing schemes. The Adviser platform saw net outflows increase to £1.8 billion, reflecting a continued reduction of customer activity due to the macroeconomic environment in the UK, and consolidation and vertical integration in non-target adviser segments.

He said commercial results at its global asset manager totaled almost €8 billion, in contrast with the outflows experienced during the prior year period.

Mongeral Aegon Group in Brazil had life sales rise 9% to €64 million.

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