Insurer Prudential reports 60 pct growth in profits, CEO to step down

Prudential Plc, Britain's leading insurer, Tuesday announced a 60 percent increase in pre-tax profits to 2.61 billion pounds (4 billion U.S. dollars) in 2014, due to growth in Asian and U.S. markets as well as its investment returns.

The firm also announced Tidjane Thiam would step down this year from his role as CEO and from the board. He will join Credit Suisse as its CEO.

Prudential's Asian, U.S. and British markets reported long-term business profits of 1.05 billion pounds, 1.43 billion pounds and 752 million pounds, up from the previous year's figures of 1 billion pounds, 1.24 billion pounds and 706 million pounds respectively.

The company saw long-term investment returns of 3.19 billion pounds, up from the previous year's figure of 2.95 billion pounds. M&G, Prudential's assets management arm, reported 488 million pounds of profits.

"We continued to grow across our key metrics despite the challenges presented by historically low long-term interest rates in the United States and the UK, major currency discontinuities in some of our key Asian markets and unprecedented regulatory changes in the British life market," Thiam said in a statement.

"Looking ahead, the economic environment in the United States and Britain appears to show signs of improvement. Furthermore, we are optimistic about the outlook for the emerging economies of Asia, where the long-term fundamentals of our life insurance business remain compelling," he said.

The group will distribute diluted earnings per share (EPS) of 0.868 pounds to its shareholders. (1 pound = 1.51 dollars) Endit