Liberty Holdings' turnaround strategy seems to be coming to fruition as the insurer's management slowly returns the group to profitability, with half-year results showing gains in new business and margins, while it continues the process of overhauling its business by 2020. The group's results for the six months to end-June showed it was able to increase new business 57% and boost margins from 0.4% to 0.7%. Despite this, headline earnings fell 1% to R1.52bn.CEO David Munro said the company's description of its results as "a stabilisation" was accurate as "no- one should be fooled that 18% growth [for normalised operating earnings] off a very low base is a laudable thing, but I can tell you that 18% up is much better than 18% down, so we will take it". He pointed to struggling asset manager Stanlib and Liberty's individual-arrangement business on policies, such as life insurance for individuals, as the main drivers of the improvement. Stanlib was able to increase net cash ...
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