ING Australia, the joint venture between ING group and ANZ, has booked a net profit after tax of $327 million for calendar 2004, up 52 per cent on 2003’s result which was itself up 50 per cent on its establishment year of 2002.
The funds manager and life insurer’s total assets under management grew 14 per cent to $33 billion at the end of 2004, with OneAnswer receiving net inflow of $986 million and the corporate super platforms ballooning $386 million.
Retail fund inflows increased 9 per cent to $5 billion, with the ANZ adviser channel contributing $2.7 billion of this, up 27 per cent on the previous year.
The multimanager OptiMix platform grew 28 per cent to $5 billion.
Chief executive Paul Bedbrook said changes last September to the JV agreement between ANZ and ING had cleared the way for rationalisation of legal entities and products to cut costs.
He was confident the company’s life insurance would absorb the loss of transitional tax relief from July 1. Total risk premiums rose 7 per cent over the year to $108 million.
