For the first half of 2022 Guardian Hold­ings Ltd pro­duced com­mend­able re­sults of which prof­it at­trib­ut­able to eq­ui­ty share­hold­ers was $436 mil­lion, rep­re­sent­ing a 70 per cent in­crease over the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od last year of $256 mil­lion.

Earn­ings per share in­creased to $1.88 ver­sus the com­par­a­tive pe­ri­od of $1.10, ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny’s sec­ond quar­ter re­sults to June 30, 2022.

Patrick Hyl­ton, the com­pa­ny’s chair­man, not­ed that per­for­mance was dri­ven from its life, health and pen­sions seg­ment whilst af­ter tax prof­it from prop­er­ty and ca­su­al­ty and the bro­ker­age op­er­a­tions were rel­a­tive­ly flat.

Net in­come from in­sur­ance ac­tiv­i­ties grew to $681 mil­lion, a 63 per cent in­crease from the $417 mil­lion in pri­or year main­ly at­trib­ut­able to favourable re­serve move­ments on ac­count of cap­i­tal­is­ing on in­vest­ment and ex­pense man­age­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties, Hyl­ton said.

“The world has seen a per­fect storm of macro­eco­nom­ic and geopo­lit­i­cal events, which has led to very high lev­els of volatil­i­ty across fi­nan­cial mar­kets, and which has al­so im­pact­ed our port­fo­lios,” he al­so not­ed.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, net in­come from in­vest­ing ac­tiv­i­ties fell from $770 mil­lion to $570 mil­lion, a re­duc­tion of 26 per cent.

Hyl­ton said this de­crease was prin­ci­pal­ly due to net fair val­ue loss­es of $116 mil­lion in the cur­rent pe­ri­od, com­pared to net fair val­ue gains in the pri­or pe­ri­od of $111 mil­lion, re­sult­ing in an un­favourable move­ment of $227 mil­lion.

The un­favourable fair val­ue move­ment on the group’s lo­cal and glob­al in­vest­ments was par­tial­ly off­set by an in­crease in in­vest­ment in­come of $77 mil­lion, aris­ing out of in­creased in­vest­ment port­fo­lio and in­come earned.

Op­er­at­ing ex­pens­es were $742 mil­lion, a three per cent de­crease over the $769 mil­lion re­port­ed in the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od last year.

“As pre­vi­ous­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed, the group is close­ly mon­i­tor­ing ex­pens­es as it con­tin­ues to in­cur costs as­so­ci­at­ed with the im­ple­men­ta­tion of IFRS 17 (In­sur­ance Con­tracts) as well as with the group-wide trans­for­ma­tion ini­tia­tives.

“As the year pro­gress­es, we ex­pect our past in­vest­ment in up­grades to our op­er­a­tions and our op­er­at­ing struc­ture to con­tin­ue to reap sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fits. Your board re­mains op­ti­mistic and ex­cit­ed about the group’s fi­nan­cial per­for­mance for the year and our fu­ture,” Hyl­ton added.