Financial services group Liberty Life has joined a number of companies in SA to flag significant losses in earning as the impacts of the coronavirus hit the economy.
The insurer released a trading update for the three months to end-March earlier in May, warning of Covid-19 factors that may have material impacts on key parts of its business. As a result, Liberty is anticipating profits to drop by more than 20% when it reports its six-month financials in June and full-year results to December 2020.
The insurer and asset manager, which was founded by Donald Gordon in 1957, had said the solvency capital requirement cover of Liberty Group, the group’s main long-term insurance licence, remained strong at 1.9 times as of the end of March. The group’s total assets under management were R668bn in March compared to R738bn at December 31 2019. It said the decrease was driven by “negative investment market returns during the quarter and transfers to other external managers in respect of the discontinuation of Kenyan and Ugandan segregated mandates in the Stanlib Africa operations.”generated an unprecedented health, economic and financial crisis, causing high levels of anxiety and uncertainty for our clients, advisers and staff”.