Royal London reveals 2.3m customers to share in £181 million ProfitShare payout as part of FY24 results announcement

Royal London has this morning announced its FY24 results. Royal London is the UK’s largest mutual life, pensions and investment company, popular with advisers and paraplanners and in the top 30 mutuals globally.

Following the release of these data, Barry O’Dwyer, Group Chief Executive Officer, commented:

“Royal London is customer-owned and is run for the benefit of customers, not shareholders. We share our profits with eligible customers and our ProfitShare scheme will distribute £181m to 2.3 million customers in April. This was underpinned by the business delivering an 11% increase in operating profit to £277m in 2024.

“Our customer focus means we continually enhance our offerings and digital services to help customers build their financial resilience, often partnering with independent financial advisers. We have recently launched an innovative new online application process for individual pensions business, making it substantially easier for advisers to work with us. Our customer-first approach also appeals to employers wanting to pick the best possible offering and, in 2024, nearly 1,000 employers chose to establish a Royal London Workplace Pension scheme, very often moving from a shareholder-owned competitor.

“2024 also saw Royal London enter the bulk purchase annuity market, giving trustees the option of choosing the only customer-owned provider in this market.”

Highlights

• ProfitShare³ of £181m (2023: £163m) to be shared in April 2025 with 2.3 million eligible customers who have pensions and life policies with Royal London.
• The Governed Range, our flagship fund offering, attracted net inflows of £3.2bn (2023: £3.2bn), with assets under management (AUM) reaching £72bn (2023: £61bn).
• Welcomed 966 (2023: 930) new Workplace Pension schemes and 240,000 new scheme members (2023: 240,000). Workplace Pensions new business sales were up by 19%, reflecting the increasing number of medium and large-sized employer scheme wins.
• Introduced a range of digital improvements to support customers to build their financial resilience, including a new contribution guidance tool and further enhancements to our pension consolidation service, helping to deliver a 39% increase in the number of Workplace Pension transfers.
• Continued to enhance our digital offering for financial advisers, launching a new online service that makes it easier for advisers to deal with us, including streamlined and intuitive ‘quote and apply’ functionality for new business.
• Paid 98.7% (2023: 99.0%) of protection claims, delivering £751m to over 65,000 customers and their families in the UK and Ireland.
• Announced our entry into the bulk purchase annuity market in September 2024 and completed three buy-in transactions with £187m of premiums.
• Made our first natural capital asset purchase, acquiring one of the UK’s largest prime farmland assets, while also investing into our UK Living strategy with the purchase of 500 apartments in the Thames Valley.
• Investment performance of actively managed funds remains good, with 60% (2023: 96%) outperforming their three-year benchmark⁴ on an AUM weighted basis and 81% of funds (2023: 89%) outperforming on an equally weighted basis.
• Our business in Ireland delivered a 29% growth in new business sales of Protection and Pensions products, up to £297m.
• Customer satisfaction, as measured by our Customer Value Statement (CVS⁵) score, up 3 percentage points over the year, and 11 percentage points since 2020, with an average of 43% of customers rating Royal London 9 or 10 out of 10 across each of seven key measures.
• Contributed £2.8m towards social impact initiatives, including Cancer Research UK, to help tackle cancer inequalities and Turn2us, a national charity working to address financial insecurity across the UK.
  

Financials

• Operating profit before tax⁶ increased by 11% to £277m (2023: £249m) supported by increased new business contribution across all our main product lines and a growing book of in-force business.
• Transfer to the fund for future appropriations (FFA)⁷ of £167m (2023: £382m) includes the impact of positive economic movements and is stated after the allocation of ProfitShare.
• Life and pensions new business sales⁸ were up 17% to £10,804m (2023: £9,253m) with growth across all products, including a 19% increase in Workplace Pensions due to a rise in both transfer volumes and the number of new schemes won.
• Gross inflows⁹ rose to £31.8bn (2023: £29.9bn). Net outflows⁹ of £1.0bn (2023: £4.2bn net inflows) were impacted by £4.3bn of external net outflows from Global Equities strategies following the departure of some members of the Global Equities team.
• Assets under management¹⁰ increased to a record £173bn (31 December 2023: £162bn).
• Capital position remains robust as the Investor View and Regulatory View¹¹ ratios reduced to 203% (31 December 2023: 218%) and 196% (31 December 2023: 206%) following changes to the level of equity hedging as we seek to manage the capital position within our capital management framework.