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Competition clouds the picture
Increasing competition and margin pressure in areas such as critical illness cover and the bulk annuity pensions buy-out provided a less than cheerful background to Legal & General’s announcement that it was ‘one step nearer’ a £1 billion cash return to shareholders. This has been planned since November, but is reckoned by analysts to be disappointingly low against the £1.5 billion for which the market had been hoping.
In the London market there has been renewed speculation about who will be the next to join the exodus to Bermuda, as more companies re-domicile in the offshore tax haven. Hardy Underwriting, however, accompanied impressive annual results with a statement that, for now at least, it was sticking with Lloyd’s and London.
Here, too, the company says the competitive environment, especially among its European and London market wholesale insurance and reinsurance counterparts, ‘is beginning to be quite fierce’. Hardy is not alone in considering Bermuda ‘probably the single most significant challenge to London’.
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