Good morning, everyone, welcome to Legal & General's half-year results for 2023. It's terrific to be here with you and share a set of results we are proud of as a team. We remain on track to achieve our five-year ambitions. H1 operating profits from divisions were GBP 1.14 billion, with group operating profits and Solvency II operating surplus of GBP 0.95 billion. Our Solvency II coverage ratio of 230% is near record levels. Our interim dividend is 5.71p, up 5%. I'd like to thank all of my colleagues for their immense contribution and commitment to Legal & General. The usual disclaimers apply. Please silence mobile phones. We will follow our usual format. I will provide some opening remarks, Jeff, the numbers, and I will round up at the end, leaving time for questions.
You are familiar with our 5-year ambitions, GBP 8 billion-GBP 9 billion of cumulative capital generation by 2024. We expect GBP 6.7 billion at the year-end. To grow earnings per share faster than dividend per share. IFRS 17 earnings will grow faster than dividends. To generate a net surplus exceeding dividends over the period, GBP 0.6 billion positive so far, while growing the dividend between 3 to 6% per annum, 5% this year and next year. We are benefiting from our strategy of driving investment-led growth in the UK and increasingly internationally. This approach, which we call Inclusive Capitalism, has become core to Legal & General Group. Following support from our regulators and the government, the broader policy environment in the UK is making deployment of capital easier. We are positive about our future.
The broader economic environment in the U.K. is an important context for our business. U.K. has been challenged since the GFC, where historically, we went toe-to-toe with the U.S. on productivity, we have fallen behind. Real wages have also stagnated. The Nasdaq and S&P have shown. We work with local government, with agencies and universities, and crowd in specialist third-party capital. Key partners include the University of Oxford and The University of Manchester, local authorities from Sheffield to Newcastle to Bristol, and strategic co-investors, pension funds like NatWest and PGGM, and specialists like Bruntwood, Octopus, NTR, and Experian. Our U.S. JV with Ancora, who are specialists in science and tech assets, is another example. H1 demonstrated the power of our diversified and synergistic business. The changing macroeconomic context has generated some headwinds. There are also tailwinds, too.
For example, LGRI, our PRT business. With an acceleration of schemes coming to market and at greater scale, we wrote GBP 5 billion in the H1 of the year. There's GBP 2 billion in the U.K. and nearly $1 billion in the U.S. since H1, all at good margins and with low strain. LGC deploys shareholder capital to underserved and growth areas of the economy. Together with its traded portfolio, the goal is to achieve operating profit of GBP 600 to 700 million by 2025. We delivered almost GBP 300 million in H1. LGIM and other asset managers had a difficult 2022. Profits for LGIM stabilized with GBP 142 million in H1, compared to GBP 140 million in H2 of 2022.
We see significant opportunities in the retail, retirement, and insurance markets, and the opportunity to harness technology, including AI, to improve customer experience. In H1, insurance profits are up and non-insurance profits are down. IFRS 17 improves the diversity of our profits, we can see the CSM, our store of deferred profits, growing strongly. We expect to release around 7% of the CSM into operating profit. That's at least GBP 900 million this year. The CSM can be added to equity to show the value of the insurance business. This GBP 14.5 billion excludes additional sources of value, including new business franchise value, investment income from annuities, and earnings from our non-insurance businesses, notably LGIM and LGC. We continue to be self-sustaining in annuities. We estimate that we can write GBP 12 billion annuities and remain self-sustaining.
Risk margin reforms would reduce the strain of doing so by circa GBP 130 million. Since 2016, across each of our divisions, we are very optimistic about future prospects. LGRI is in prime position on PRT. LGC is showing strong performance in key investments. We're making good progress internationally with our Ancora partnership in the US. Our European businesses are performing well, and we have exciting opportunities that are opening up for us in Asia. In LGIM, we continue to expand our high-value product offering across geographies. 40% of our assets are now international. Retail is now a single business unit and across insurance and retirement, enabling us to harness complementary expertise across the business. Lifetime mortgages are down. However, UK annuity sales are up 27%, and annual premiums in the US protection are up 40%.
Our dividend intention to the end of 2024 is to deliver 5% growth per annum, a full year 2024 dividend yield of 9.3%. The board will continue to assess the merits of different deployments of our capital. That's organic, M & A, and buybacks, with a focus on shareholder returns. I'll now hand over to Jeff.
Thank you, Nigel. Good morning, everyone. Great to see you here. A day we thought would never come for some, our first IFRS 17 results. On a more serious note, thank you to all the teams for their really hard work in getting us to this point, and we know it hasn't been easy at all. Legal & General delivered a resilient set of financial results in the H1 of 2023. Operating profit was GBP 0.95 billion, driven by the predictable and ongoing releases of contractual service margin and risk adjustment from our growing insurance businesses. There was further growth in LGC, and LGIM delivered in line with the H2 of last year, reflecting the higher rates environment.
We continue to show good growth in our stock of deferred profits on the balance sheet, up 3% to GBP 13.8 billion, driven by profitable new business written so far this year, creating just over GBP 600 million of associated CSM and risk adjustment. Our balance sheet remains strong and a Solvency II coverage ratio of 230%, with surplus generation of GBP 0.95 billion. We continue to generate capital to fund our progressive dividend and ongoing investment in the business. Focusing on the IFRS 17 dynamics of the insurance business. CSM is the key driver of our stock of deferred profits. IFRS 17 recognizes the value created by new business in the CSM, which will then be released as a steady stream of profits in the future.
In the H1, we generated GBP 0.6 billion of value from new business sales. Interest added a further GBP 0.2 billion. This grew the CSM 5% over 6 months to GBP 12.8 billion, after which we released GBP 0.5 billion into profit. Routine assumption updates and further new business should also add to the stock of CSM over the rest of the year, translating to a growing profit stream. Moving now to the divisions and LGRI. LGRI delivered operating profit of GBP 471 million, up 19%. This strong performance was driven by two things. Firstly, growing releases from the CSM, reflecting both prior year routine longevity updates and profitable business written in 2022. Secondly, by the performance of our geographically diversified asset portfolio, which included back book asset optimization.
Our annuity asset portfolios continue to perform well. We have received 100% of our scheduled DI cash flows year to date, reflecting the high quality of our counterparty exposure. There were no material property or credit write-downs, and the investment variance was largely due to interest rate impacts, reflecting the fact we have not yet fully moved to a neutral position under the new accounting basis. You will see from our disclosures that the Solvency II interest rate sensitivity has reduced as we have started to reduce rates exposure. LGRI won GBP 5 billion of global PRT across 20 transactions. These volumes were written at attractive margins with low capital strain levels, reflecting good asset and reinsurance origination. We have made great progress towards our ambition of writing 8 to 10, maintaining our disciplined approach to generating value.
Given investor interest in property investments, we provide here further information on our direct property exposure with the annuity portfolio. The GBP 5.1 billion of property is comprised of GBP 2 billion of residual value notes and GBP 3 billion of rental income notes. The residual value notes are based on a conservative estimate of the vacant possession value at the end of the lease term and represent our actual direct property exposure. We are not concerned with short-term mark-to-market valuations, as the majority of our property assets have a 20-year term to maturity. Our property exposure is wholly owned, recently built, and has no debt. Our priority is the cash flow associated with the GBP 3 billion of rental income notes.
Cash flows are secured against inflation-linked long-term leases with high quality counterparties, such as Amazon and Comcast, and are paid out at 100% over 2022 and in the H1 of 2023. Our exposure is relatively diversified by sector, with office space representing 39% of the total. Almost 90% of this office space is leased to UK government departments, with an average unexpired term of around 22 years on the lease. Moving on to retail. Whilst insurance operating profit is up 4%, driven by resilient ongoing releases in the UK and US, total operating profit is down, given the lower contribution from Fintech, as valuation uplifts from the H1 of 2022 did not repeat. CSM released in the H1 was 4.6% of the closing CSM, which had grown to GBP 4.7 billion.
In the U.S., we're beginning to see improved claims experience. However, like the broader industry, mortality experience remained elevated through the H1, we utilized the $40 million provision set up at the year-end. The experience variance shown here primarily reflects adverse experience in the U.K. on the minority of business where we are not fully reinsured, also GBP 8 million of onerous contract unwind in respect to legacy policies. Insurance gross written premiums were up 5% to GBP 1.7 billion, reflecting robust new business volumes across all products, with U.S. volumes continuing to benefit from our use of technology to improve the end-to-end sales process.
Solvency II new business value is slightly down on last year, with growth in U.S. protection and individual annuities offset by lower margins in U.K. protection, reflecting the impact of higher interest rates and lower volumes in what continues to be a competitive market. We continue to focus on leveraging technology and our scale efficiencies across all our retail businesses to deliver great customer outcomes and business growth. Moving on to LGC. Operating profit was up 13% to GBP 296 million, driven by growing profits from our alternative asset portfolio. Our alternative finance business, led by Pemberton, continues to perform strongly, and in our specialist commercial real estate portfolio, our targeted investments in infrastructure and science and technology-focused assets proved more resilient than the general commercial property market. Our diversified multi-tenure housing portfolio performed well against a more challenged market backdrop.
Our largest housing business, Cala, has delivered flat housing revenues year-over-year, an excellent relative performance. Profit before tax of GBP 104 million reflects investment and other variances of GBP 192 million, driven by the unrealized mark-to-market impact of higher interest rates on our portfolio. We remain on track to grow our alternative asset portfolio to GBP 5 billion and to increase third-party capital to over GBP 25 billion by 2025. Investment Management division. Operating profit was down to GBP 142 million, primarily reflecting the impact of higher interest rates on our AUM and revenues. Total AUM reduced by 10% to GBP 1.2 trillion, leading to revenues reducing by 11% to GBP 440 million.
We managed a disciplined approach to cost management while continuing to invest selectively to drive efficiency and growth. Despite inflationary pressures, costs were flat on an FX-adjusted basis. External net outflows were GBP 12.3 billion, primarily driven by overlay assets associated with UK DB Solutions, where we supported clients to achieve more efficient hedging strategies, given the improvement in funding positions as a result of the higher interest rate environment. Excluding these DB solutions, LGIM reported net inflows of GBP 7.4 billion across higher margin areas, such as multi-asset, ETFs, and real assets, generating net new revenues of GBP 8.4 million. International AUM now stands at 39% of LGIM's total. Moving on to capital. Our solvency ratio remains very strong. This provides us with a large buffer and capacity to invest.
As you heard from Nigel, we have investment opportunities across our business, which we expect to generate attractive returns and grow own funds... as this surplus emerges in the future. You can see from the left-hand chart, the increase in our solvency ratio since rates started to rise, has been driven by a reduction in capital requirement rather than an increase in own funds. Underlining the fact that rise in interest rates do not create extra excess funds. Equally, they don't create extra liquidity. Any capital allocation, including buybacks, needs to consider both liquidity and capital. Looking at the most material movements during the period, strong operational surplus generation exceeded the largest dividend payment of the year. The operating variance largely reflects timing differences that are expected to reverse out by the year-end, such as the execution of external and intragroup reinsurance.
In closing, we have delivered a resilient set of financial results, demonstrating the predictable and growing earnings releases from the growing stock of deferred profits in our insurance businesses, as well as continued strong contribution from LGC as it matures. Our capital position remains strong. Our diversified business model continues to deliver solid capital generation to fund our progressive dividend and ongoing investment in attractive business opportunities. We are continuing to invest in the real economy, creating value for shareholders, and making a positive and lasting impact on society. Thank you.
Thank you, Jeff. To summarize then, Legal & General's strategy and execution is consistent and compelling. Our businesses are performing well under strong leadership, showing resilience in changing economy and with clear opportunities to grow. We have developed a unique strength in asset origination, which enables us to be capital light and self-sustaining. As a result, we are well-placed to seize the near-term opportunity in PRT. We are at the forefront of efforts to drive investment-led growth in the UK and elsewhere. We are able to invest to develop the capabilities we need to make advances in new markets. The dividend for our shareholders is secure and growing. In summary, L&G is in great shape for the future. My colleagues and I are now happy to take questions. Could you each state your name and the organization that you work for? We'll start with...
We'll work up this side, then come back down this side, so, just try and be efficient.
Thank you. Andy Sinclair from Bank of America. 3 from me as usual, please. First, fairly standard question from me, Legal & General Capital, can you tell us how much was the cash generation in H1 compared to operating profit? Ideally giving us an idea of how much from disposals, how much underlying, et cetera. The second was just on the solvency movements that you mentioned for the reinsurance timing to unwind in H2, how much of the variances was that? Then percentage points as well will be helpful. Third was just on the CSM.
I think maybe a little bit of surprise that the CSM was, was only flat year to date, e-excluding the internal transaction, just, especially given a pretty good H1 for new business. Just what sort of level of growth do you think we should see from the, the CSM over the medium term? Thanks.
Jeff, I think all three of those are yours.
I was gonna say, a fair collection for me there. Thanks. Yeah. I will stand up. The LGC cash, yes, we always prepare this for you, Andy, ready. It's, you've said, you know, it could be below our profit, some years above our profit, depending on disposals and activity. It's about just over 70% of our profit this year, with actually fairly limited disposals within that. It's quite a good underlying run rate of cash. Obviously, we have been well over 100% of off profits in previous years. The variances, yeah, most of the number that, that's there, we would anticipate to unwind. They were mostly timing differences.
As we explained when we put the previous number out, you're looking at depending between own funds, SCR, it's about up to about GBP 500 million of that, so it's quite a lot within there. You know, there's, for example, we always sort out... We always say this every year. We always sort out the term, U.S. term reinsurance in the H2. That's coming through. We take it out below the line so that we get a stable OSG coming through, for example. There's some other intra, intra-group, and there's also some of the PRT business that lands late in the period. We haven't yet reinsured those, so we know that we're going to do that, and that will rewind as well, unwind, I mean. CSM growth, yeah, it's interesting.
Yeah, it was, what, 1.3%, including the, the pension scheme in over the H1. We said U.K. retail was a bit more challenged, and obviously, reasonably short duration, so it runs off. It has to add, add a bit more in there, but annuities did well. I think in terms of a good underlying, I mean, last year, we showed the half-year to half-year. I think it's best to have a whole year. That was 7% growth across the whole business for CSM. Last year, I think we had U.K. PRT over the, over 2022, grew at about 9%. That was including some longevity assumption changes. Even without that, we had 5% growth over the period for the PRT business. You know, we're expecting that sort of range underlying.
We're going to be growing the business, plus assumption changes, but whether how much you want to factor in longevity assumption changes, et cetera, you know, I said that we'd expect some benefit from that in the H2 again, this period.
Okay. Andrew ?
Sandra Queenie of Autonomous. A couple of questions. Could you actually enumerate what your excess capital is? I mean, everyone else says that their target or threshold rate is, say, 180, 190. Could you do the same for us? Secondly, I noticed you've increased your amount of BPA business that you can write to be self-sustainable to, I think, 8 to 12 from about 8 to 10. Is this an indication as to your ambitions? Have you now cast aside the idea of perhaps investing the excess capital to write GBP 20 billion a year?
Well, Jeff, why don't you take the first one? I'll do a little bit of introduction to the second one. You can fully answer it, Andrew.
Sure.
Oh, okay. Yeah, sure.
Yeah, excess capital, I mean, you know, we don't like to set a number. We're clearly showing we've got buffers there. There's a large amount. Part of that is because it depends where we got there. I, I, you know, I put on the slide that interest rates in themselves don't create what you would call excess capital. As we go higher on rates, we expect them to go down quicker at a bigger amount, so we change our stress test. How we talk about it with the board in formulating our views on how much have we got for new business opportunities versus buybacks or anything else is, you know, what is the downside stress? We start from where we are.
We say, "What do we want to look like over a planning period?" Assuming PRT volumes with some upside, assuming other investments in the business, and then taking a downside stress on that and still not being stressed as a business, if you like. That's how we do it. That changes depending on where you've got to where you are, which is why we don't think it makes sense to set an absolute threshold. It's safe to say we don't need 230% all the time, but over a period, we're anticipating writing, you know, significant PRT, even if it's 8 to 12, as we'll cover now in the, in the next part, you know. There's other investments, and we'll continue to do that. We'll continue to give more clarity as well on capital allocation policy, I think, over the next coming periods.
What is the excess capital you talk to the board about?
Well, I'm not gonna tell you that number. That was the conversation we had with the board.
I think, I think the challenge, the challenge that, that we're trying to, to look through is actually we're trying to highlight here is the PRT model that we have is much more capital light than any of you have in your models. We've tried to articulate that so you, you can model it a bit better than, than, than the past. We've given you the quantification of the benefits we're getting from risk margin, which we'll get this year. Clearly, there may well be further benefits next year from the asset allocation that we're allowed to deploy. We can write the 8 to 10 or even 12 very comfortably and keep remaining within self-sustainability.
We then take the credit for the reduction in the risk, the risk margin, it gives us further headroom to write more PRT business. The challenge for us is the excess capital that we have sits in, from a discretionary point of view, pointing more towards LGC and LGIM. Actually, the way a lot of the historic thinking, because the strain's been higher historically, has been about just the PRT business. PRT market looks as though it's gonna be GBP 50-60 billion. We'll probably get, you know, around 20% of that. That's very comfortable from a sustaining point of view. PRT isn't the strain or the drain that you think it is, or many of you think it is, on the business.
It's actually, what can we do in LGC and what we can we do in LGIM to accelerate the growth of those, those, those businesses? Maybe, Andrew, you can give a bit more color on the way we're thinking through, you know, the opportunities that presented us, to us. One of the big point that I just want to make is that a lot of a lot of our business is about the 50,000,000 schemes who have GBP 5 billion of assets, not the odd one that has much more assets than that. Every time we've had a very big deal, we've ended up breaking it down into smaller deals, historically.
Sure.
Thanks, Nigel. Good morning, everybody. Very happy with half on performance that you've seen on PRT. I mean, to your point, in particular about the future, pipeline looks very healthy this year going into next year. That pipeline next year does have some singular, very large schemes that we're evaluating. As Nigel says, we don't yet know how those are gonna transact, if they'll transact to indeed, if we're gonna be successful. We're looking and evaluating those. As has been already said from the stage, what's really important to us is preserving margin and doing it in a capital efficient way, and that's not just, is it efficient with the LGRI. As Nigel said, it's about evaluating that capital efficiency right across the group. Is it the right place to deploy our capital in writing those schemes? If it is, we'll look to transact.
We're working very closely with clients. We have a great PRT business. We're one of the really trusted brands in the space that the large companies want to transact with. As Nigel says, there are 60 schemes out there with assets over GBP 5 billion, we're working that pipeline incredibly hard to understand if and when they want to transact and the schemes that we can offer. Of course, it has to be on commercial terms that are attractive to us as a group.
Okay. Can you just Yeah, keep passing it back, and we'll come round.
Thank you. I'm William Hawkins from KBW. Nigel, I'm picking up on the answer you just gave Andrew. If you're thinking more about capital allocation and the other businesses like LGC and LGIM, on LGIM, how is your thinking on the outlook for that business evolving? Cause you clearly already, relative to peers, have an awful lot of scale, but in line with peers, there's still great challenges on the fee margin, the cost income ratio, regulation, and everything else. You know, how are you thinking about the outlook for that business? Maybe more numerically, how are we thinking about flows? Cause, again, big drag from LDI, maybe that was to be expected, but I don't know how much further those outflows have to run, and you're kind of either side of zero on the active and index funds.
you know, what's the outlook there? secondly, something more nerdy, sorry, but the, the reinsurance contribution to the CSMs, please, can you help me understand that? there's a big reinsurance part of LGRI, which I get conceptually. That's rising, which I think I get conceptually, but how, how much further is that gonna rise as you may be making more use of it for the, the jumbo deals? on the retail side, there seems to be a If I've understood, there's a positive impact of reinsurance on your CSM, which I don't quite understand, and it does seem to be fading. it's a small number, but I'd just like to understand why reinsurance is positive to the CSM rather than negative, please.
Yeah, I'll, I'll have a go at the first one, Jeff. You can take the second two. Bernie, if you want to make a contribution towards that, you're welcome to. Probably not, was the answer from Bernie on that one. On LGIM, we're at a point of inflection really, in that the DB business is transferring, slash the DB and LDI business is transferring to PRT. We get a high proportion of that transfer, and that in floor terms is often negative, cause we're unwinding some of the derivative overlays. It's naturally a negative outflow, but actually it's a positive profit benefit and revenue benefit for the overall Group, Group position. That's part of the answer.
The other part of the answer is that we, for a number of years now, we've been building up our credibility and presence in thematic ETFs, in the real assets, including clean energy. We have a couple of very exciting new funds that we're working on, that we're in the midst of fundraising. Fundraising is going pretty well on those funds for LGIM on a global basis. We have our multi-asset business as well, which again, for the first time, we've been selling it outside at scale, outside of the UK at scale. That two-edged thing, one is that we're sorting through the LDI, DB transfer to PRT. That's gonna happen for the next 10 years, and so that's just a common theme. The other one is the same, is...
To get into the ETF business, we made a very small acquisition. We're absolutely thrilled with that acquisition. acquisition is performing in line with our plans, and for most acquisitions, they tend not to perform in line with plans, so we're pretty happy with that. We look at, even with, within LGIM, at both, organic opportunities, but also, you know, what I'd describe on, as bolt-on M&A opportunities. I've waffled on for long enough, Jeff, to give you time-
Yeah
to think through those.
Yeah, yeah.
Particularly the third question.
Yeah, LGRI, easiest way to think about the reinsurance is, if it's higher than our best estimate longevity assumptions, it's a cost. It's not gonna give any benefit, that reduces the BAL and therefore reduces CSM, et cetera. Whereas if it's the other way around, that comes through as an asset. What you're talking about, I think, on the LGRI is the funded reinsurance, which is where you see the increase. We said we did GBP 800 million or so in the H1. We gave the, the numbers on that, and we continue to look at that as we need it. It was GBP 800 out of GBP 5 billion of premium. We'll see what we need, depends how, how much scale business comes with. We continue to work closely with a number of partners to have it available.
If suddenly there's a GBP 5 billion deal, we might want to do a bit more in one go. You know, we've talked, are there gonna be tens, et cetera? Who knows? We'll use it on an ongoing basis, where the pricing makes sense. On the retail protection, which is really what you're seeing there, this is mostly UK retail protection. It's the same thing as happens on the annuity business. It just so happens that reinsurers in the UK, because everyone historically has reinsured 90 to 100% of their business, reinsurers in the UK have pretty aggressive assumptions compared to what we would have as a best estimate. They've got way better data. They've done all the work on it, because they've had volumes and volumes of this for years.
We haven't gone that far in our mortality improvement and base tables for mortality. Actually, reinsuring appears as an asset, so that's what you see coming through overall on a net basis.
Good morning. Steven Howard from HSBC. You mentioned earlier about the risk margin reforms and asset allocation changes. Does this mean that potentially, you know, going forwards, the PRT business can be sort of sustainable, about GBP 20 billion per annum of new PRT every year? What would be the impediments to achieving that GBP 20 billion per annum? Secondly, on your CSM roll forward, you talk about assumption changes, and other companies, UK life companies, talk about them being regular, recurring assumption changes, longevity releases. Can you give us a normalized level of these assumption changes that we can put into our CSM roll forwards going forwards? That would be very helpful.
Then finally, on the level of EPS growth normalized going forwards, considering that you say it will grow faster than the DPS of 5%, what sort of normalized level of EPS should we assume going forwards, similar to the CSM growth or higher? Thank you.
I'll take the first one. Jeff, you can take the second and third. That's... Where are the stars? Just, just repeat the first part of the question again.
GBP 20 billion.
Okay, GBP 20 billion. Sorry, the If you do the maths, it comes out at about GBP 14 to 16 billion without any changes to the asset allocation. That will just save you a bit of homework doing the maths for that, for that. Clearly, it depends on what the strain looks like in 2023 to 2024 and beyond. You know, if we, if we do further asset synergies, then maybe we could do a bit higher than that. That gives us a very solid platform. Not saying we'll get to 14 to 16 billion of strain, and international strain tends to be higher than domestic strain, so it also depends on the mix effect going forward.
We were trying to keep you in the circa GBP 12 billion range, because that's a nudge up from the 8 to 10 that we've talked about in the past. Jeff?
Yeah, on longevity, I mean, it doesn't quite come out in sorry, cause it's, it is quite lumpy. We've got a very large book, and, you know, when you start making changes, you saw last year it was reasonably sizable. We'd held some back for a period of time, but I think on average, we've done sort of GBP 200 million, if you average it out. Cause there's some where it's been very little, others where it's been GBP 500 million. You know, we still think there's a reasonable amount of prudence in there. We're experiencing poor mortality. It was very bad experience, you know, January, February in the U.K. as a whole. Struggles with the NHS, that clearly impacts the older lives.
We're looking to project all the different conflicting evidence on this to work out what can we take from the data that's got lots of COVID noise in it. We do think there's, there's still more to come on, on longevity, which is what we said, certainly for this year. Yeah, EPS, DPS, we did say if we wrote GBP 10 billion on the, on the, on the annuity business, that would lead to growth of 6 to 8% overall. As you say, we'd, we'd certainly anticipate growing the business, that the growth of what's coming out of the CSM should be reasonably stable. Actually, the releases do increase over time, depending on how much you write.
If it was just stable portfolio, a bit like OSG more runs off towards the end, but obviously as you write a new business, that slows it, so it stays about, the same sort of level, in the short term. We expect to have... As growing CSM releases more clearly, we want to drive the similar growth in LGIM and LGC, and so we'd be looking to be slightly above that, that DPS, as we've said.
We're gonna start working our way through this side.
Hi, good morning, Thomas Bateman from Berenberg. Just going back to the view of excess capital, I assume the scenario is kind of lower rates now, credit spreads a little bit negative for solvency. Any other color on, you know, what that view of excess capital is? You mentioned liquidity. How should we interpret the, the group's liquidity position? Second question, you've given really positive commentary on the annuity portfolio, you know, now no downgrades, 100% in cash flows, et cetera. Where are you seeing any pressure, if any, across that portfolio? I assume there's a little bit of pressure here and there. Finally, just on the risk adjustment, I think for LGRI, it was down year-on-year, quite strongly.
I don't quite understand why that is, so if you give a bit of color, that'd be helpful.
Yeah. I'll, I'll do the second one if you do the first and the third, third one, Jeff. Jeff, do you wanna go first for the first and the third?
No, no, it's fine. Do the annuity.
Yeah, yeah. Well, I'll let you go first.
The excess capital liquidity. I mean, we, we've discussed the excess capital. It's, you're right, it's a big stress of down rates along the curve. We would, you know, layer on, as our risk people like to do, you know, equities down, property down, all happening at the same time, whilst all things go wrong in credit at the same time. Never happens, and it looks diversified, but we obviously have to allow for that. That gives you a significant down stress. As I say, it's not just doing it today, it's doing it over a five-year business plan and all the investment choices we're making across that and the optionality that we want. That's what we present to the board, ensure that we are sustainable within that. You know, so that's the way we look at it.
We look at LGIM, LGC investment, M & A opt- optionality and write an extra PRT across that and what we intend to do. Liquidity, it was more a comment that similar to, to capital, rates movements don't create liquidity, and they don't create capital. There's nothing more to it than that. The group has a very strong liquidity position. You can see that we're sitting on as much cash as ever, so, I mean, there's nothing more to it than that.
Yeah. I mean, a few years ago, we used to talk about the dividends, and do we have a sustainable dividend position, and therefore, we, we developed this sort of theory around sustainability of the, the annuity business to. That has sort of dropped off the agenda now. We've now become even more efficient at writing PRT business, particularly in the UK, and we've got more work to do on that in the US because we, we don't quite have the, the equivalent asset origination capabilities.
We don't reinsure in the U.S.
We don't reinsure in the U.S. as well. There's, there is a mix effect that we're working our way through with Andrew and the team. In terms of, you know, we've had more discussions with our board on returning capital via buybacks, you know, this year than in any previous years. And it's a good and very healthy debate. You know, part of it is really understanding the ambition that LGC and LGIM have for their businesses. In a sense, we've done all the work on the PRT business.
There's some international stuff which Andrew's coming forward with, you know, trying to figure out how much will we need for America, Canada, and the Netherlands, all of which are markets that are opening up to us right now, and what sort of the level of returns are acceptable for us in those areas. It is, how much do we want to spend on growing LGIM and LGC, which is the, in effect, the swing factor around, you know, should we or should we start a buyback program?
The annuity portfolio, no pressure at all. We had more upgrades than downgrades. The whole portfolio performs really well. That's not us being complacent. We scour all-
every different asset class. We do rolling reviews of all the different asset classes, whether it's-
Yeah, we.
student accommodation, et cetera.
Yeah, we had nothing went to sub-investment grade in the first six months of this year, which is, you know, quite extraordinary given everything that was going on. As Jeff said, we had more upgrades than downgrades, but we're not being complacent. The watchlist that we have, which we monitor at every capital committee, and sometimes we have two capital committees in a week, is relatively modest compared to, you know, what we've seen in previous times. It's, as Jeff highlighted, we don't really have any sectors that we're overly concerned about. You know, sometimes you get individual sectors that are part of the portfolio which you're worried about. We don't have that right now.
The last question was easy. It's just rates, it's just discounting. The same amount of money will come out over time, but it's just worth less today.
Marissa van Denant from Barclays. 2 questions on sustainability and then one on ex-UK bulk annuity growth, please. On sustainability of earnings, you surprised positively relative to expectations on LGRI and on LGC. How should we think about the sustainability of the number going forward? On new business, what do you see as the biggest risk to the new business strain, and then also sustaining the margin? On bulk annuity growth outside of the UK, how fast do you see those opportunities evolving, and can they compete with the UK on margin, or is the illiquid asset generation prohibitive?
I think if Andrew gives an overall flavor of the way we're thinking through, you know, the PRT business internationally, I think that'll be very helpful. Laurie might talk about the sustainability of LGC and what are our plans for not just the UK, but internationally as well.
On, on the international side, I think the great thing about the business, four large DB centers across the globe, UK, US, Netherlands, and Canada. We're in all those markets, which I think is a really positive thing for us as a business. Two of those markets we're in as reinsurers, which is the Netherlands and Canada. US market, expecting that marketplace to do about $40 billion of business this year, so very healthy pipeline of trades. Nigel's already referenced this. Where we participate in that market is not where we participate in the UK. You know, our balance sheet scale, our brand, et cetera, means we, we tend to operate in a different segment of the market. Not notwithstanding that, we did our largest ever transaction in, in the, in the, just after the end of the H1.
We've given you guidance, I think, about the size and scale of the ambition we've got for the international business over the next few years, and you've, you've seen that. We're well on track to deliver that. Mindful the whole time about the margins and the strain that we see in that market has already been referenced. That's not, that's always as high as we see in the UK, and therefore, we're very selective about how we guide our US business to go after options in that market, and then, then watching that market very closely. We're, we're on track to deliver against plan and very happy. In the Canadian and Netherlands markets that we go via reinsurance from our Bermuda operation, Canada, we have a partnership which is, is, is working for us, but is, is a highly competitive market.
You know, Canada is a highly competitive market, and margins this year have been low, and therefore, the trades that we've seen, you know, we, we haven't been successful, and they're not operating at margins that we're, that we're looking for. Whilst we're active in the market and we're quoting, you know, we're being very disciplined about the returns that we're seeking on our capital there. The Netherlands is a really exciting opportunity, which is only just opening up. Legislation there has been enacted by, by the government, and we're now starting to see PRT schemes come to market. We are actively pricing on a number of schemes in that market . Initial observations are positive, but until we close those out and report them to you, they're not done. It's all still subject to DNB regulatory approval as well. We're excited. We're working hard.
Market looks active, but nothing positive to support, to report to you just yet.
Thank you. In terms of LGC, we're very much on track to meet the targets that we set out in the capital markets day, and again, has been talked about today, so both in terms of the operating profit and the third-party capital. Nigel alluded to some of the work we're doing with LGIM in bringing third-party capital into some of our businesses so that not only generates both fee income from LGIM but also supports the growth of some of our underlying operating profits. Hopefully, we'll have more to tell you on that in the year-end results. Have already launched a clean power energy fund with LGIM that supports our underlying operating business, NTR. Increasingly, we're seeing that our model can work overseas.
We've very much built our business in the U.K., equally, we're, we are now seeing opportunities overseas, particularly in the, the renewable and climate transition space. Much of the, the businesses that we're investing in today are now starting to operate outside the U.K., particularly in the, the climate transition space. I think, I think the model that we put together, I suppose six or seven years ago now, in really looking at areas that are underserved by long-term capital, the model really is, is really starting to come together. I think we feel very confident that we can continue to build on the profits that you've seen today.
Yeah, there's other things like the Kensa situation, where, you know, we, we got into the ground source heating business a few years ago. Octopus have joined us in, in that, in helping to scale it up. You know, bring... They're the example of a, a specialist who has capability in the energy sector, who we can partner with, a bit like we've done it with Bruntwood in the SciTech space, which at the moment, you know, happening both in the UK and indeed internationally.
Thank you, good morning, everyone. This is Aashish Musaddi from Morgan Stanley. I've got 3 questions. First of all, I mean, thanks for giving the additional color on the direct property assets. Is it possible to get some color about the rental yield you're getting, and what is the total return assumption you have in your models for, for the planned period? That's the first one. The second one is, with respect to, like, giving extra capital return back to investors-
I mean, clearly you have a big solvency ratio, 230%, so longer term, this trajectory looks very good. How do we think about the near term? How is board thinking about it, given there is a leadership change happening in the company? I'm mainly thinking about, say, 6-12 month view on this. Any color from the board on that would be helpful. The sec- and the third one would be, in IFRS, there was a big investment variance of about GBP 600 million, and then similarly, in Solvency II, it was about GBP 600 million. You clearly... You mentioned on Solvency II, it's largely the in- internal reinsurance which will come back. Is IFRS investment variance similar, or is it anything different? Any color on that would be helpful. Thank you.
Yeah, the, the direct property is really in two different parts. I'll, I'll talk a little bit about the LGRI part of it, and Laura, if you talk about the Legal & General Capital type of it. I mean, it, it, for LGRI, we're trying to cash flow match, and we're trying to create a, a, a spread in, in, in effect. So how you think about what the return on capital is very different from what we're trying to do in, in Laura's business. We're trying to create, as Jeff highlighted, with the, with the office sector, we've got the, the government as a, as a counterparty, looking to increase the rents over a specific period of time to match the cash flow with a spread on, on top of that.
That's been hugely successful for us on a, on, on, on, on any measure. If you come back and do the, the, the LGC's, part of, of it, Laura, can you just highlight?
In terms of the real estate exposure we have in LGC, probably falls into two buckets. Firstly, the residential, which we talked a little bit about Cala and how well that's performed. The other big part of our residential portfolio is really concentrated around the affordable housing sector, which is performing particularly well at the moment. In terms of any sort of commercial real estate, we very much think about almost the future of real estate where we invest. We've invested in digital infrastructure, so data centers, and also our biggest other exposure is around SciTech. Creating real estate for science and technology, usually in partnership with university and local authorities. Well, at the moment, focused in the north of England and in Oxford, and has also been alluded to. We are...
We've started that model in the US, and are, I suppose, very surprised, on the upside in terms of how well that model is working. There aren't other players that are really wanting to partner for the long term, to create the real estate that will be needed, in the future.
In big picture terms, it's low teens or mid-teens return on capital, which is kind of where we are with Cala and the other parts of the business right now. On capital returns, yes, we're having a good discussion at the board about that, but we've got nothing to report at the moment to the forum here. Jeff, do you want to take the question on.
Yeah. Yeah, they weren't quite. They weren't. You're mixing up variances and IV. The investment variance on Solvency II was GBP 18 million or something. A lot of the rates, we'd already moved some of the hedges and see we've reduced some of the sensitivity. Some of the rates benefit was then offset by smaller negatives, and inflation moved significantly at the start of the year. For example, property, very small negative spreads, et cetera. There was just very small things offsetting some of the rates benefit there, which is why I ended up a small number. On the IFRS, we're moving to neutralize that much more, as I said. We hadn't quite got there, which is why you still see sort of some rates impact coming through on the annuity portfolio.
We started taking the action during the H1. We're designating assets under IFRS 9, which I can bore you with later, if you like. You know, we're leaving capacity to do more of that as we write some new business. We'll put new assets, which will again neutralize more of what we're doing. We extend the portfolio, which helps Solvency II, at the same time, take more of those assets and put them on amortized costs, which then neutralizes us for rates. We'll be looking to do that.
Who's got... Oh, you've got it. Sorry.
Good morning, everyone.
Guess who's got the mic there? It was very tricky.
Good morning, everyone. Mandeep Jagpal, RBC Capital Markets. Two questions from me, please. First one is on new business capital strain. I think, I'm not sure if I heard this correctly, but Nigel said it's going to go from 2.2 to 1.4%.
Just the math on the-
Yeah
page 2.
What was the...
By the time you take the GBP 40 million off.
That GBP 40 million, what are the between the various components of Solvency II reform, what was driving that GBP 40 million reduction, and kind of what do you assume for longevity reinsurance within that? The second question is just on the PRT outlook. In his Mansion House speech, the Chancellor spoke about DB consolidation on a number of fronts, and launched a call for evidence as to whether the PPF should extend its role to include acting as a public consolidator for UK DB schemes, even for sponsors which are not insolvent. What are your thoughts on this idea, and could it impact new demand in the future?
Yeah, I'm going to let Andrew answer those questions. Do you want me to answer the first one?
The first one is the risk margin.
Yeah.
The, the impact on strain, the move is just in the nurse. It's just, it's just the risk margin impact. That's, that's one piece. On the PPF, lots of consultation, you, you've seen all the debates. I mean, in many ways, that, that. What's behind that scheme is the pooling model that allows you to bring schemes together and invest. That's exactly what the industry does. That's, that's what we do. In many ways, we're of course, we're supportive of the pooling model, but actually we think, you know, the, the optionality available to, to the sponsors that we're talking to is better served through-
... you know, than, than working with, with the insurance industry and the PPF. The PPF has its role, but I think in terms of a scheme that's got a long way to go. The chancellor talked a lot about in his speech, about options, more probably DC than DB. You know, we are, we are continuing to work closely with regulators, talking to government about options for the future, and getting the best deal for pensioners in pension schemes. From our perspective, whilst we're supportive of, of examining options, we still feel that, you know, the, the, the PRT route is a very secure route for pensioners. Particularly, you know, companies like L&G and the brand we have, and the 35 years in the industry gives us a huge track record to deliver a really great outcome.
We've seen examples like British Steel this year, where that umbrella arrangement, the partnership, allows us to take a scheme through its life cycle and deliver an outstanding outcome to thousands of pensioners. Of course, that's what we're looking to do for a number of schemes. We're very proud of the role we play in the industry. PPF's got its role, but we're also very supportive of what we're doing, too.
Hi, Andrew Baker, Citi. Thanks for taking my questions. 3, please. First, just on the operating profit for LGRI and retail, were you able to give the asset optimization split that was in that? How do you think about the sustainability of that, of that in particular? Second, Cala. Flat year on year, probably I get the sense better than maybe you were guiding to at the beginning of the year. How are you thinking about the rest of the year for Cala? Then 3rd, just on the annuity AUM roll forward, looked like there was about a 50% jump in payments to pensioners, whether that was year on year or even over the H2 last year. Anything in particular driving that, and see how it looked there going forward?
The way you're looking at me is, you're questioning my numbers there.
I was looking at 3 different people and trying to figure out who's the best one to answer it. None, none of them were making any eye contact with me whatsoever.
I think we'll, we'll have to go through those numbers with you offline, I'd say, on the third one.
Yeah, we'll go through that one offline.
That's right.
Operating profit, do you want to say anything?
Yeah, sure. Yeah, the asset optimization, it was a few tens of millions GBP higher than the previous year, which was part of the sort of outperformance across the annuity portfolio. It split pretty much in proportion to the assets. Probably a little bit more goes to the PRT business, cause the nature of what we're doing there, and we give the split of assets there, so it's pretty much in proportion to that. Yeah, we don't... We think it's sustainable. We have a good few years to do that, and we think it's a great way for adding extra value for shareholders. We put the assets against the back book.
Don't give away any of the margin in new business, but obviously we're conscious of hitting up against any proportions of DI in the book and doing it over time and making sure it's sustainable. Yeah, that would be there as a feature for a good few years to come.
Yeah, I think that's one of the exciting things about the reform, is getting access to a different pool of assets that we can do more asset optimization on a go-forward basis. You want to talk about Cala?
In terms of Cala, you're right, revenue is flat year-over-year. Anything a little bit higher than it was at this time last year. That's made up of average sales prices, which are slightly higher than they were last year, and the sales rate, which is just slightly lower. I guess we are very pleased with how Cala's performed, both compared with other competitors, but also given the macro changes that have been seen over that year. Given that, I think we feel fairly confident that we will meet our plan. I think it probably is worth just noting some of the sustainability measures that Cala has put into place.
This year we bought a very small timber frame making factory, which will allow us to make all of the houses using timber frames, so reducing the embodied carbon of the housing. From next year, we are aiming that no gas will be going to any sites. Given, I think, the trends that we've seen recently, I think this year we've seen a record number of consumers fit solar and heat pumps. I think we're certainly catering to what consumers want.
Yeah, we do that across the group. You know, if you go and visit one of our newest Inspired Villages, it's all about ground source heating and air source heating, and very carbon-friendly outcomes.
Hi there. Thanks. Farooq from J.P. Morgan. I'm surprised you didn't see a bigger jump in your retail annuity sales, given the value for money you've got there. I'm wondering how you're going to play in that market going forward. That's question one. Question two, back to Laura, I'm afraid. I mean, you know, we were told, you know, 10%-12% return on alternative assets by 2025. You seem to be sort of getting there almost every year already. Is that just because yields are higher? Should we just think about, you know, the risk-free yield as a base upon which you're naturally earning a risk premium, so we should just assume that you'll get this level of return going forward? My last question was just on, on LGEN, on costs.
You've talked a little bit about the revenue and the flow outlook, but what about costs? You... I know you've been investing and, you know, is there a point at which we'll see the cost income ratio drop, and when is that? Thank you.
Benny, you're gonna go first and say why 29%'s a disappointment?
Yeah, I'm really disappointed with 29%. Yeah, no. Yeah, great to see you all. Yeah, there's a couple of points there. We're very active in our pricing, which means as interest rates go up, we reprice more quickly. As they come down, we reprice more quickly. Actually, during the H1, given the time lags involved, they were kind of, in general, coming down post the mini budget. We're- we hope to see that trend reverse a little bit. The other thing that we're a little bit different to the market is we have got some really good partnerships with some external companies who've got guaranteed annuity rate business.
With the big jump in interest rates, the actual size of the of the pots that are needed to fulfill those guaranteed annuity rates has, has actually reduced. We've got a bit of an offset. Yeah, 29%, we're really happy with, and we're looking to, to do more of that going forward. We're feeling really positive about the retail annuity market and the both the volumes and the margins that we can get in that market.
... in terms of the 10 to 12%, which we, as you say, we have now started to achieve. We've achieved an over 10% return on operating profit on our assets over the last 2 years, and that we've, we've really set out that number thinking through how our earlier stage investments are starting to perform and mature and therefore get more sustainable returns between the 10 to 12%. Yes, I acknowledge interest rates have changed since we set out that target. Really, the math is really around sort of putting in early-stage investments that are maturing and getting to those sort of longer term, sustainable rates of return.
Yep, LGIM costs. Yeah, I mean, you saw we took action. We, we had to react to where the market was and what it was doing to revenue, so we took some action end of last year, start of this year, around workforce, et cetera, and controls around cost. Richard's been extremely diligent on project spend and prioritization within that. We have some very large things we want to execute. Data improvement is essential. You can't use AI if you haven't got data, as I keep telling everybody. Just generally being able to use that for automation, et cetera, as well as doing the large work that we're doing with State Street, which is ongoing.
At the same time, we've been investing on distribution in Korea and Switzerland, et cetera, and we think those are the right things to do. We are being, the word we like, measured in those, and we are being conscious that what has happened to AUM, we have to continue to have a focus on expense. We'll do that for the rest of the year, absolutely. We'll take a view in the plan towards the end of the year and where we think markets are going to go, but, you know, unless the yield curve drops dramatically, we're gonna have to keep that focus on expenses. We don't want the cost income ratio continuing to increase.
Reasha, 2 questions, please. In LGRI, within the investment margin, what was the release of the prudence, and how sustainable is that? Second question on Cala, can you provide some color on the NAV of Cala, and are there any scenarios where you would look at other options for Cala, i.e., reducing your stake or changing how that works?
Jeffrey. Yeah, Jeff, do you wanna go first?
Yeah, sure. The investment margin, you mean on the CSM, the actual unwind. That, that includes. It's mostly the unwind of the assets back in that. You know, with most, we've designated quite a bit to amortized costs, so those unwind at the same rate, and the rest of it is just the yield less the 41 bips we talked about in the previous sessions on IFRS 17. That is just the yield across the book. The yield looks very like the one that we talk about for Solvency II, so it tells you the yield. You can add the matching adjustment to the fundamentals, but that's the total yield. Knock off 41 instead of 50 something, and you get your answer. You can see what the yield are in that.
That's just the assets, just unwinding, so that's very sustainable. There was that element of back book optimization within that numbers uplift, and we get a higher number because we have surplus assets, and obviously, return expectations have gone up on those in a higher yield environment, so that's why you get some extra coming through on that. There's three areas that, that you can just about get to with the, with the modeling around that.
Yep. Yeah, Laura, you can-
Yeah, on the net, net asset value of Cala, it is a significant part of our residential portfolio, which is about GBP 2.2 billion of NAV. In terms of what we are doing with it, we've grown Cala significantly in terms of revenue, and profit since we took it on, in 2013, I think. Our aim very much is to continue to build it, increase the return on capital employed, really embed the sustainability measures to make sure that we are really one of the top 10 house builders, both in terms of revenue and sustainability, and we are always open to sort of the strategy and, and, what we do with that, whether we, you know, co-invest, take it... You know, merge with another house builder.
We're continually thinking of what the best option is for that, and we'll do the right thing from a sort of investment perspective, at any given time.
Hi, Sabir Desai from Panmure Gordon. Two questions, if I can. Firstly, on Solvency II margins, just wondering why the Solvency II new business margins are lower if the new business strain, and the IFRS 17 profitability has improved. I would have thought the, the Solvency II and IFRS 17 move in, in the same direction. That's the first question. The second question is on PRT competitors. Who are you competing against in the international market, and are there any plans to enter any new markets beyond the Netherlands?
If Andrew, could you take the second? Jeff, do you want to take the first?
Yeah, I mean, there's, there's not much in it, really. It's 8% against, 8.7 or 9. I can't remember what it was. Pretty. It's, it's the same as ever. The answer I always get, it's, it is just the business mix within that, you know, and just relative. There's, there's nothing really that's gone on between them. They do broadly move in the same way, the IFRS 17, as you say, but not exactly, because there are different features within them. There's the cost of capital, and one's got different expenses and et cetera. There's. They're broadly the same. Yeah, nothing has gone on within that. I think the, the 8% is roughly where we'd expect to be and in line with historic numbers as well.
Just on competitors, I mean, there are 19 active writers in the US, so it is a very broad-based competition. If you bring that down to planned terminations, where the US market, on balance, doesn't always like writing deferred lives, that can bring it down to 7. Who are they? They're the usual companies you see in the market, MetLife, Prudential, Apollo, et cetera. Nothing, nothing unusual about that. In terms of new markets, no active plans to move into new markets. We have Japan on a sort of a watching brief. Kerrigan's in the audience is our sort of Asia president. You know, PRT is actually currently illegal in Japan, which makes it a bit of a barrier to entry. But we actively look at that market in terms of, in terms of potential.
Certainly, we've still got a long way to go to mature, you know, the Canadian and Dutch markets, so those, those are taking the attention for now.
Thanks. Nasi Bamit from UBS. First question on the OSG. How much asset optimization or management actions do you have in the 9.7? I notice in the H2, you're expecting around about GBP 800 million, and I thought management actions were more weighted toward the H2. So, what's driving that reduction versus the H1? Secondly, on new business CSM, that fell versus 1H 2022, even though you've written more PRT, slightly more PRT. Is that just mix driven and higher rates? Finally, can you split the earnings split for Legal & General Capital between Cala Group, Pemberton Asset Management, or your key businesses? What percentage wise, what percentage is being contributed by these businesses? Thanks.
Yeah, if you do the first two, I'll do the third one.
Sure, yeah. OSG management actions, I mean, we said... As we've said, you know, there's, there's certain ones in there that are in the H1, certain in the H2. Things like the internal reinsurance of the, the U.S. term business, and so we, we take that out and do it. We probably have probably relatively equally weighted in terms of management actions. Asset optimization doesn't really figure heavily in the OSG number. Yeah, we, you know, we were forecasting surplus generation broadly in line with last year. Possibly up a bit, down a bit, 1% or 2%, you know, but we think it'll be broadly in line. There's nothing much going in there. Partly when Tim can be bothered to execute some of them, of course, as well.
You know, there's, there's nothing major in there that's really shaping it, I would say. Then the second was the new business CSM. Yeah, yeah, there was. No, I think it probably best that we talk to you on which number you're looking at, because there's a whole lot of complication between which premium you've got for the funded reinsurance or not, and whether you're allowing for that, and also whether you've got the pension scheme contribution of CSM in there or not. Broadly, I think actually it was higher for the PRT business than it was in 2022, depending on how you do the calculation, it was 9.5 or 10.something, depending on how you looked at the calculation. Retail annuities were good, US was good.
We did say that, UK protection was, was a tougher market. You could see that was down in the Solvency II, new business value. The same happened, for the CSM on that. But otherwise, there was no big variation period on period. We can talk you through the PRT one if you like, because there's. Just need to make sure we pick up the right numbers.
Yeah, on the breakdown of LGC, we, we tried to do a lot of that when we did the capital markets event last year, and at some point we'll just give an update on the capital markets and how we're tracking against the plan of that. So far, we've never broken all the constituent parts and tried to get them. Otherwise, it would be a, an, a horrendously long report to go through all the different assets that Laura and the team have in their business. I think this is the last question.
Yep.
If anybody hasn't asked a question or wants to ask another question, could they please put their hands up? I'm assuming not.
Thanks.
You've got the privilege of the last question.
I feel very privileged. Dom Imani, BNP Paribas Exane. Just two questions left, if that's all right, and they're probably sort of follow-ups, really. The first is just to clarify this, the comment you made, Jeff, about liquidity. I get that the cash position is great. Just trying to understand whether there are any circumstances under liquidity would ever be a constraint, really. In my, in my understanding, because of the simple corporate structure, it's quite easy to move cash up and down. I wouldn't have thought that liquidity would ever really be a material constraint, but I'd be interested in your comments on that. The second is just on the new business strain.
Jeff, sorry, Nigel, when you said our, our models have too much strain in them, I wonder if you were thinking of, of my model, 'cause I've got 3% strain in mine. Is, is 2 the new 3, or is 1.5 the new 3? And, and I guess-
Many, many of the models were at four, actually.
Oh, right.
so you were one of the-
Call me the bold.
Just to try and get over that, there is.
Yeah
a difference, and we were seeing that lots of people had different variations of the model, and we wanted to kind of treat everyone the same, and therefore, give this disclosure by this route as opposed to any other route. That's the second one. The first one, Jeff?
You're right, liquidity is not a problem for us. There's a couple of different forms of liquidity. There's the cash movement through the business, which we can easily move up from the insurance business. We tend to move up what we need, as we've said, you know, and what needs to sit in treasury. So we have no issues with that, and it's thrown off from the various businesses, and we move that up. So liquidity, not an issue there at all. The other form of liquidity is more around the annuity business and derivatives, which is the main thing we stress test for. We obviously saw after the mini budget, we withstood that very well.
We had plenty of headroom still on that, even with the rates movement. We can withstand, you know, big, big up rate shocks, which is the big thing that we hold liquidity for within the annuity business separately. That's very different to the cash passing through and cash we, that I was talking about, which is not an issue at all.
Thank you. Thank you everyone for their, their questions and their support for Legal & General. I probably won't see many of you again, or some of you not again. This will be my last set of results, and I'd just like to thank you for all the support you've given me over the last 14 years. Thank you. Bye.