{"id":118,"date":"2007-07-31T16:49:56","date_gmt":"2007-07-31T16:49:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.the-finance-zone.co.uk\/uncategorized\/lloyds-agrees-the-sale-of-abbey-life\/"},"modified":"2007-07-31T16:49:56","modified_gmt":"2007-07-31T16:49:56","slug":"lloyds-agrees-the-sale-of-abbey-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/2007\/07\/31\/lloyds-agrees-the-sale-of-abbey-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Lloyds agrees the sale of Abbey Life"},"content":{"rendered":"<table width=\"152\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\" border=\"0\" align=\"right\" class=\"MsoNormalTable\">\n<tr>\n<td style=\"padding: 0cm; width: 5px\"><\/td>\n<td style=\"padding: 0cm\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p style=\"line-height: normal\" class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt; font-family: \"Times New Roman\",\"serif\"\">As of 31 December 2006, Abbey Life managed \u00c2\u00a312bn of assets held in 1.2 million policies. <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: \"Times New Roman\",\"serif\"\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height: normal\" class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt; font-family: \"Times New Roman\",\"serif\"\">Regarding its half-year results, Lloyds said income had grown 9% reflecting &#8220;strong performance from all divisions&#8221;, while cost management had restricted cost growth to 6%. <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: \"Times New Roman\",\"serif\"\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height: normal\" class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt; font-family: \"Times New Roman\",\"serif\"\">Charges for bad debts rose 5% to \u00c2\u00a3837m, but in the UK retailing business they fell 1% to \u00c2\u00a3627m. Lloyds added that in the first half of 2007 it had seen fewer customer insolvencies, and said that the charge for UK retailing bad debts for 2007 should be &#8220;no higher&#8221; than that seen in 2006. <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: \"Times New Roman\",\"serif\"\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height: normal\" class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt; font-family: \"Times New Roman\",\"serif\"\">Lloyds also increased its interim dividend by 5%, its first increase for five years. The news helped to push the bank&#8217;s shares up 3.5% in morning trade to 553.5p. <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: \"Times New Roman\",\"serif\"\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height: normal\" class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt; font-family: \"Times New Roman\",\"serif\"\">&#8220;Of particular interest was the bad debts situation, which the company seems to continue to have under control,&#8221; said Richard Hunter of Hargreaves Lansdown Stockbrokers. <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: \"Times New Roman\",\"serif\"\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height: normal\" class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt; font-family: \"Times New Roman\",\"serif\"\">&#8220;The first dividend hike in five years &#8211; to a stock which for some time had already provided a whopping 6% yield &#8211; was well received as a sign of further management confidence in future prospects.&#8221; <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: \"Times New Roman\",\"serif\"\"><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As of 31 December 2006, Abbey Life managed \u00c2\u00a312bn of assets held in 1.2 million policies. Regarding its half-year results,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-banking","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}