Royal London nine-month new business buoyed by pensions, protection

LONDON (Reuters) - Royal London, the UK's largest mutual life, pensions and investment company, said the value of its new business rose 35 percent in the year to September, buoyed by sales of pensions and protection products.

The group said pension sales were helped by new rules introduced this year and the expansion of the government's auto-enrollment of individuals into workplace programmes.

New life and pensions business over the period was 4.86 billion pounds, it said in a statement on Monday, with group pensions business up 11 percent and individual pensions up 52 percent.

Demand for drawdown products, which give retirees more flexibility over when to take savings out, saw a 67 percent rise in demand to 966 million pounds, it said.

Sales of protection products, meanwhile, jumped 51 percent to 362 million pounds.

"This is another strong set of results with all life and pensions businesses putting in excellent new business performance," Chief Executive Phil Loney said.

"Sales from our popular life assurance and pension range have more than doubled over the last four years and total group assets under management are up 120 percent over the same period."

After a volatile period in which many other fund managers had seen total assets under management fall, Royal London said its funds under management stood at 83.1 billion pounds, up 1 percent from December 2014.

Gross new business inflows were 2.5 billion pounds, it said, down from 2.9 billion a year earlier. Wholesale net inflows of 545 million pounds were mostly into its UK Equity and Fixed Income Credit funds.

(Reporting by Simon Jessop; editing by Jason Neely)