Good morning and welcome to Legal & General's full-year results presentation for 2020. This is, again, a virtual presentation. I hope you and your families remain well. You will have a chance this morning to put your questions to Jeff and me on the call after the presentation. Usual disclaimers apply. As we have repeatedly said, Legal & General is strongly positioned for the post-COVID recovery. Our decade-long inclusive capitalism approach to leveling up and building back better aligns us with government policy and the drivers for recovery. Our global leadership in ESG investing also places us at the forefront of delivering the government's 10-point climate plan for renewables, climate-friendly housing, and zero-carbon infrastructure. We are robust, resilient, and relevant.
With a robust balance sheet, resilient sales and profits, and with highly relevant growth drivers and business strategy, I would like to thank all my colleagues for the tremendous efforts they made in 2020. Operating profit from divisions was GBP 2.4 billion, broadly in line with 2019, and three of our five divisions, LGRI, LGRR, and LGIM, had higher operating earnings than in the prior year. Our Solvency II coverage ratio at the year-end was 177%, and Solvency II operational surplus generation was up 4% at GBP 1.5 billion. Our Solvency II ratio has strengthened further since then and was estimated at 192% as of the 5th of March. We also delivered a strong return on equity of 17.3%.
Having held the interim dividend flat in what we said would be a pause year, it should come as no surprise that we're recommending the same full-year dividend of GBP 0.1757 per share as for 2019. This summary of divisional operating profit shows very clearly where the impact of COVID was felt across our businesses. The largest impact, GBP 186 million, was to L& G Insurance. The GBP 186 million includes GBP 76 million of 2020 COVID experience and GBP 110 million of COVID potential future claims reserve. L&G Capital had a GBP 100 million hit from COVID as a result of effectively several months of construction site closures. The biggest impact was on CALA Homes, which accounts for GBP 84 million out of the GBP 100 million. There are offsetting gains in PRT and retail retirement solutions and no specific COVID impact on LGIM . The overall impact to operating profit from divisions was GBP 201 million.
New business sales in 2020 remain strong despite the background of the pandemic. Here are last year's new business numbers with the previous five years for context. Taken together, these sales figures demonstrate our continued leadership in our chosen markets, and we are off to a good and positive start to 2021. New business volume is half the story. On the right of this slide, you can also see new business value, which is the other half of that story. We have not included LGC here, as I will cover that separately. U.K. and U.S. pension risk transfer both increased in 2020, delivering GBP 876 million of combined NBVA on a Solvency II basis. LGIM delivered positive net new revenues. U.K. retail and group protection both significantly increased NBVA to GBP 123 million and GBP 37 million, respectively.
U.S. retail protection was flat at GBP 94 million, and LGRR's individual annuities were slightly higher at GBP 63 million. Lifetime mortgage profits were impacted by lower activity in the housing sector and fell, as shown. Our strategy has, for many years, been built on six structural growth drivers. The pandemic has only heightened the relevance of these. We are leaders in 10 markets which are responsive to these long-term trends. We have a significant share in growing markets like those driven by aging demographics, like the U.K. DC pensions, where we have a 24% market share of a market estimated to grow to GBP 725 billion by 2025. What you do not see on this slide are shrinking markets where we are a major player or markets where we cannot realistically grow our presence. Getting to this position has been an important driver behind our decade-long program of rationalization and disposals.
We do, though, have appetite to leverage our expertise and capability in retirement solutions in selected international markets. As part of our growth ambitions for Asia, I am delighted to announce that Kerrigan will be moving to Asia to become our President of Asia. Addressing climate change is a key growth driver for us. Climate is not only the most pressing issue of our lifetimes, but also the biggest investment opportunity. ESG has been embedded in our strategy for many years, and we have ambitious targets across the E, the S, and the G, where the S is a major point of differentiation for Legal & General.
These targets apply to our own balance sheet as principal investor, for example, to urban regeneration, the provision of affordable and social housing, and also to life science infrastructure, but also to LGIM, where we invest GBP 1.3 trillion as an agent on behalf of our clients. Inclusive capitalism and our ESG approach, which we have practiced for a decade or more, is now rapidly becoming the mainstream. We have a head start, but we have significant further ambitions across each component. Our ambitions are bold, but they are the cumulative effect of many years' work in this space. Public policy and public attitudes are increasingly aligned to our inclusive capitalism agenda, both around economic recovery focused on Levelling Up and Build Back Better, and around Climate. It would be right to describe us primarily as a retirement solutions provider.
In the U.K., we operate in accumulation and decumulation in corporate, in institutional, and in individual retail markets, and in PRT, we are the only global player. We have deep embedded knowledge in all aspects of financing retirement in the U.K., and we are applying that globally. The U.S. is obviously an even greater opportunity. Global DB and DC pensions amount to $24 trillion and $23 trillion, respectively. The aging demographic makes the financing of retirement a growth business for individuals. That includes growth in DC pensions, annuities, and decumulation. It will increasingly also include the role of property in the retirement balance sheet, including lifetime mortgages and rightsizing to later living accommodation. The extent of the synergies between our business divisions helps drive market share and improve our profitability, enabling us to generate a return on equity averaging around 20% over the last five years.
This is a unique strength, delivering structural and capital synergies underpinned by a highly collaborative culture. By bringing relevant businesses even closer together, we can increase our operational synergies. Hence our decision to transfer workplace savings from LGIM to our retail retirement division. We are also maintaining focus in our decision to sell LGIM's personal investing backbook to Fidelity International. We have described 2020 as a COVID-related pause year. You can see that from our 10-year trend in operating profit, EPS, and DPS. Last year was, however, not a pause year in terms of ROE or book value per share. We have demonstrated the solidity of our business in good times and in difficult times. Legal & General Capital is central to our success, creating and sourcing assets, and is also where we have a touchpoint with external third-party capital.
Laura Mason will become the new CEO of LGC, replacing Kerrigan later this year. Here you see some of the LGC businesses in specialist commercial property, including science infrastructure through Bruntwood, data centers with Kao , clean energy regeneration through NTR, and electric vehicle charging points through Pod Point, as well as the range of house-building businesses across different ten years, the growth equity business under ADV, and the alternative credit business with Pemberton. Our equity positions range from 100% for CALA Homes to 22% for Pod Point. All our growth businesses all have access to external funding. As we said at the capital markets day, our ambition is to increase third-party capital significantly to demonstrate the value and also realize the value of our investments. The businesses in which we have invested through LGC have performed well. We've provided two examples on the next two slides.
Pemberton, in which we have a 40% holding, invests primarily in European mid-market debt. Since 2015, it has grown every year to more than EUR 9 billion. CALA Homes is, I suspect, the most familiar name in the LGC portfolio, a significant U.K. build-to-sell house builder at the foundation of our housing platform, which now extends, as I said earlier, across all 10 years. We took a 46.5% shareholding in 2013 and became a 100% shareholder five years later in 2018. Between 2013 and 2019, CALA's revenues increased more than fourfold, from just under GBP 250 million to slightly over GBP 1 billion. EBIT in the same period grew from GBP 22 million to GBP 111 million.
COVID last year forced a temporary closure of construction sites and a pause in sales for several months last spring, a GBP 407 million and GBP 84 million impact to revenues and EBIT, respectively, and a reconfiguration of sites for socially distanced safe working. In H2, however, sales rebounded strongly. Sales are now running well ahead of our previous best year, 2019. Forward orders are so far 55% this year compared to 39% last year. Our five-year ambitions should be familiar from our capital markets event last year. From 2020- 2024, we're aiming to generate GBP 8 billion-GBP 9 billion of cash and the same amount of capital, with both to significantly exceed dividends, which we expect to be GBP 5.6 billion-GBP 5.9 billion in aggregate over the period. Cash and capital generation of GBP 1.5 billion each both exceeded dividends by GBP 500 million, and net surplus generation exceeded dividends by GBP 0.2 billion.
In summary, we have performed well in an unprecedented environment and are strongly positioned for the future. I'll now hand over to our Group CFO, Jeff Davies.