Admiral staff share £4.2m bonus

Mar 4 2008 by Abby Alford, South Wales Echo

STAFF at Cardiff-based insurers Admiral are celebrating another big windfall.

The company’s 2,200 staff – of which 1,200 are based in the capital – are to get another £3,000 worth of shares each after the company announced profits shot up by almost a quarter.

It made £182m before tax in the past year. The £3,000 per employee means Admiral has this year put aside a pot worth £4.2m for its staff.

Workers also got a £3,000 shares windfall this time last year when Admiral announced pre-tax profits of £141m.

However, the payments are still dwarfed by the £39,000 average payment staff received in 2004 when the company was floated on the Stock Exchange.

Admiral Group chief executive, Henry Engelhardt, said: “Last year was a good year for the Admiral Group.

“We continue to grow our UK business and invest in our overseas ventures.

“We had a bumper year in absolute terms and we made great strides towards the creation of an even better future.

“In the UK, our car insurance business grew substantially.”

Admiral’s turnover, made up of total premiums written, other income and investment income, rose 16 per cent to £824.9m.

Admiral said its total share dividend for 2007 has also risen by 22 per cent to 43.8p, a total of £115m.

The insurance price-comparison website Confused.com, which is owned by Admiral, gave 13 million quotes, up 43 per cent, and made a profit of £36.7m, up from £23m in 2006.

Henry Engelhardt said: “Confused has continued to perform very well.

“Confused’s market share has declined during 2007, but this has been in a growing market and its quote volumes have held up well.

“As we’ve previously said, we will spend money to defend this market-leading position but, realistically, 2008 will be a much tougher year within which to grow.”

Alastair Lyons, Group Chairman said that this year’s highlight for the company was getting into the FTSE 100 – the list of the biggest 100 UK companies in which people can trade shares.

“Our total dividends for the year at 43.8p per share mean that we will have distributed £115m to shareholders, up 22 per cent on 2006,” he said.

“A highlight of 2007 was admission in December to the FTSE 100, an achievement of which everyone at Admiral can justifiably be proud in slightly over three years since flotation.

“Over this period, taking dividends and share appreciation together we achieved a 335 per cent total return for shareholders.”

abby.alford@mediawales.co.uk