British life insurer Prudential said the economic outlook for Asia and the US was good as it reported a double-digit rise in profit from new business in the first nine months of the year.
The company said new business profit rose 17% to £1.5 billion from a year earlier, after stripping out currency fluctuations, with double-digit gains in Asia, the US and the UK.
Prudential has been expanding in Asia, where middle income consumers and growing businesses in countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand have historically been largely uninsured.
"The US recovery is real and strong, Asia is resilient," chief executive Tidjane Thiam said. "We do not see a hard landing in China," he added.
Britain's ageing population will keep demand for insurance products high, Thiam said.
The UK saw the largest increase in new business profit as sales of so-called "bulk annuities", where firms outsource all or part of their pension scheme liabilities, compensated for a 47% slump in sales of individual annuities.
Surprise UK pension reforms announced in March scrapped a requirement for retirees to use their pension pots to buy an annuity, a financial instrument that pays out an income for life, from an insurer upon retirement.
The new rules are designed to give individual pensioners more investment choices, while employers have meanwhile moved into buying annuities in bulk to tidy up their balance sheets and remove the liability of owing a pension.
Prudential said it had completed six bulk annuity transactions in Britain in the year to date, contributing new business profit of £88m.
The company's new business profit in Asia rose 15%, while new business profit gained 16% in the US and 28% in Britain.
