British insurer Royal & SunAlliance (R&SA), the one-time owner of Australia’s Promina group, has announced a small but welcome profit for 2004. Its £1 million profit compares with a £146 million loss for 2003.

R&SA, which sold all its life insurance businesses last year and has shrunk to become mainly a UK-based general insurer, is still seeling off business units. CEO Andy Haste says its US auto insurance unit, Viking – which concentrates on higher-risk drivers – will be sold later this year.

That will leave R&SA with small operations in Canada and Scandinavia as its only international businesses. But it is still paying for its former US businesses, setting aside another £160 million in reserves to meet US liabilities. But even that’s an improvement: in 2003 it set aside £495 million.