Royal & SunAlliance

Although R&SA finally divested itself of its life insurance operations in 2004, life insurance nevertheless contributed 14% of the £6.0bn that the group generated in net premium income

Royal & SunAlliance’s (R&SA) non-life gross premium income dropped by 32.2% from £9.9bn in 2003 to £6.7bn in 2004. This was largely the result of the restructuring of the group’s international portfolio of life and non-life businesses over the previous two years. The broad idea behind the restructuring was for the group to get out of life insurance altogether and to dispose of certain non-life subsidiaries or to exit certain lines of non-life business. The massive restructuring of the business was prompted by a series of net losses (mainly the result of a series of non-life underwriting losses) over the last five years which reached £889.0mn in 2001 and £871.0mn in 2002.