AUB Group’s broking and agencies businesses performed well in the first half, while its New Zealand broking operations achieved a “strong turnaround”, MD Michael Emmett says.

Group underlying net profit after tax rose to $70.2 million in the July-December period from $46.7 million a year earlier, and underlying revenue grew to $635.7 million from $466 million.

AUB Group’s divisions all recorded increased first-half earnings. Australian Broking’s underlying revenue grew 10% to $274.8 million; BizCover gained 14.7% to $43.1 million; agencies 45.4% to $84.6 million; and New Zealand 37.3% to $40.8 million.

“I want to call out exceptional results in the New Zealand and agencies division and also acknowledge the continued strong performance in Australian Broking and BizCover,” Mr Emmett said on Tuesday in an earnings call.

He described agencies and New Zealand as “outperformers” in the first half.

On BizCover, Mr Emmett says the SME online insurance platform “is well established in Australia, delivering consistent revenue and client growth at a substantial margin”.

BizCover achieved a 17.3% rise in underlying pre-tax profit to $6.7 million and an earnings before interest and taxes margin of 39.7%, up 130 basis points.

Chubb is leveraging the BizCover platform on a white label basis for its direct proposition.

“We’re very pleased that Chubb has actually chosen to deploy our BizCover technology ... to support their direct propositions to their SME play,” Mr Emmett said. “We do see this as an opportunity [for] exploring or something we could explore with other insurance partners.

“The interesting thing with BizCover ... there are just so many ways in which that business can be deployed. So we’re almost spoilt for choice.”

AUB has raised its 2023-24 earnings guidance after the first-half result.

The new guidance is for underlying net profit after tax of $161-$171 million, compared with a previous $154-$164 million range.