Steve Treloar reveals how LV= will restore L&G home performance

Steve Treloar is looking towards building on combined expertise and added scale to restore the Legal & General home business to profitability.

The LV= GI chief executive was speaking after parent firm Allianz completed a £242m deal to acquire the business, which is now set to be combined with LV= GI.

Treloar accepted it had been a “challenging” couple of years for L&G’s home business, but he said events like the Beast from the East meant its struggles were not unique to other home insurers.

Complementary expertise

Looking forward though, he was optimistic about how the “complementary expertise” of the combined business would improve performance.

Treloar said: “We are looking at opportunities both in terms of better pricing and technical excellence, which are things Allianz have brought to our business over the last couple of years.

“At the same time we’ve invested in technology that can support us, and as always the benefit of having more skilled people to help us to compete in that market.”

He said historically the L&G home book had shown “robust” performance and that over the longer term had delivered strong returns.

And he said the acquisition would also benefit the LV= home book. Treloar has said the acquisition will double the LV= GI home book and make it the fourth largest home insurer in the UK.

“Scale brings opportunities,” he said. “The L&G distribution in home insurance is very complementary to what we have in LV=, so we are looking to very much benefit from that broader distribution which helps us to manage our risk profile and will bring scale benefits.”

Integration

Speaking on a joint call with Allianz UK chief executive Jon Dye in the wake of the German insurer also agreeing to buy up the remaining 30.1% share in LV= GI for £365m, the pair wouldn’t comment on what job losses might come about as a result of the deal.

But Treloar did say that the process of transferring books of business between LV= and Allianz over the last year had prepared it well for the integration process that is to come with L&G.

“Over the last three years LV= has been re-platforming its business, and we’ve invested over £100m over the last three years in building an IT platform,” he said.

“We’ve worked very closely with Allianz to move forward and understand how to bring business on and transfer in from other businesses.

“So we believe we’ve got a very well oiled machine when it comes to our technology platform that provides us with a great opportunity for the growth that we expect to come as a result of this acquisition.”