AEGON UK chief executive Adrian Grace said he has sorted out the "mess" the life and pensions company was in as it posted a 150% rise in third quarter underlying pre-tax profit to £20 million, but he refused to rule out further job cuts.
Since joining, initially as business development director in 2009 before a series of promotions took him to the top job, Mr Grace has overseen a massive overhaul of the business, which has its roots in the Scottish Equitable Life Assurance Society formed in 1831.
Over the period, staff numbers have been slashed from 4500 to 2500, of whom 1900 work in its Edinburgh headquarters.
It has also focused its activities on the workplace savings and "at retirement" markets and dropped the Scottish Equitable monicker.
Mr Grace, who replaced Otto Thoresen as chief executive two years ago, said: "It is not often that you take a 170 year-old brand, you find it in a bit of a mess and you turn it around like this."
Aegon UK's surge in profits for the three months to September 30, was, he noted, down to cost cutting.
"It has been a really tough two to three years and we came out of it and we now see the fruit of our labours," he said.
"We are now a far leaner, meaner organisation."
The earnings boost came despite a £4m hit from "adverse persistency", as financial advisers switched client business to benefit from commission payments before the practice is banned next year.
"We just took the decision there were elements of business we are not prepared to write any more," Mr Grace said. "We are not prepared to sacrifice the long term for the short term."
Year-on-year, life and pension sales for the quarter were down 7% at £163m.
Going into 2013, the company's focus will be on boosting income, Mr Grace said.
"You cannot cut your way to long-term success," he said. "You have to build a business and you have to grow it."
But he refused to rule out future job cuts.
"Any company that tells you they are happy with the efficiency of their business is not telling you the truth. Every company wants to grow the top line and shrink the costs," he said. "Now, do we have any plans at this moment in time to shrink the plans further? No, we don't. But we will always seek efficiencies."
Aegon is regarded by many of those working for its rivals as having a traditional business model that could struggle when the retail distribution review banning commission payments and upping qualification standards is implemented in the new year.
But Mr Grace struck a bullish tone while admitting the firm had started at a disadvantage.
"Three years ago we were significantly behind the market. I described it as being in a 400 metre race but we were starting 100 metres behind everyone else."
He added: "As we come up to the last ten metres we are certainly in the running and vying for a decent position."
Aegon UK was under threat from a sale or wind-down by its Dutch parent two years ago.
Asked if the profit increase means it is now safe, Mr Grace said: "It is safe when we are performing. The UK business went through a period in the mid-2000s when it didn't perform.
"If we grow the business and if we keep the top line moving along, that is good news for the shareholder and they are going to want to keep investing in us.
"If those trends are reversed they are going to ask, 'Am I getting value for money?'"
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article