Interim Results 2020
The Group commenced the 2020 financial year from a solid base, with growth accelerating for most businesses in the second half of 2019.
While recognising that we would continue to face headwinds in some of our key markets in 2020 due to subdued economic growth, we remained confident in our ability to deliver solid growth in all key performance indicators. This was achieved in the first two months of 2020, with most businesses outperforming targets for the period by a healthy margin. However, the outbreak of the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, followed by the declaration of states of disaster and emergency in a number of countries where we operate, abruptly transformed the operating environment into one of the most challenging periods faced by the Group and our stakeholders.
As indicated in previous COVID-19 operational updates, we responded rapidly to the lockdowns and curfews implemented in most of our markets, with no significant disruption in back-office operations. General restrictions on face-to-face sales, however, had a severe impact on new life (covered) business sales and the value of new covered business written (VNB). The impacts on new business were particularly severe at the outset of the restrictions, but there has been a continued recovery as digital technology was rapidly adopted to allow for new business to be written. Investment market volatility rose to historic levels, with our key markets not yet recovering fully from the low points reached during the latter part of March. Global growth estimates were revised sharply down, with deep recessions anticipated across most of our footprint in 2020.
Despite these challenges we remain resilient as reflected in our underlying operational performance during the six months to 30 June 2020 and a healthy solvency position throughout the period. This resilience is founded on the quality of our client and other stakeholder relationships, a superior strategic positioning, highly skilled and motivated employees and a generally prudent approach to managing our business.