Royal & SunAlliance in Australia pushed its profit for 2001 up to $151 million, a big improvement on the $55 million recorded last year. MD Mike Wilkins said yesterday that the general insurance operations provided gross premiums of $1.7 billion.

Life insurance, which is one of the R&SA assets on the block at present, fell to $511 million last year, compared with $588 million in 2000.

Mr Wilkins wasn’t talking yesterday about progress in the sale of the company’s non-general insurance assets. The decision to put the profitable operations up for sale is part of a global strategy to concentrate on general insurance. It’s in stark contrast to the theme general insurers were following a few years ago, where diversification into financial services was seen as crucial to survival.

Speaking in New York last week, R&SA’s global CEO, Bob Mendelsohn, said the company’s new focus is on “parts of the business that our people are particularly good at”. He said the present hard market is likely to remain for a relatively long time, and that underwriting discipline will be essential to long-term growth in the global general insurance market.