This did little to placate markets during the early hours of trading on Thursday, however, as shares in Old Mutual sloped down 4.5% to 218.9p per share.
Hemphill admitted that the firm’s path to becoming a standalone listed entity would require further “hard work” in 2017. But he reiterated that the group was on track to decouple its businesses by 2018.
The “difficult market conditions” and cost of vertical integration got the better of Old Mutual Wealth, resulting in a 15% reduction in operating profits from £307m in 2015 to £260m in 2016.
In total, changes to its Heritage fees cost the group £26m and the separation costs added up to £7m.
However, OMGI’s FUM rose 27% to £31.4bn over 2016.
Gross sales from the insurer’s wealth management arm were up 5% at £21.1bn and its fund management group posted 19% sales growth. This was driven in part by its Global Equity Absolute Return fund, which now has close to £6bn in AUM.
Net inflows into Old Mutual Global Investors dropped by 31% to £2.4bn year-on-year but the firm pointed out this was “strong” when considering total UK net retail sales for the entire industry amounted to £4.7bn.
Its discretionary asset management arm Quilter Cheviot also struggled to match the level of flows from the previous year, down 20% at £800m.
