Closing comments

Mark Norbom

Thanks guys. OK. A few closing comments. You've met 29 of our leaders. They're committed, highly qualified and passionate about Prudential's success, as are the people they lead. You saw a thousand or so of them last night: the Vietnamese agents. These are the people that have led the growth of our business in the past, and these are the people who will take our growth forward in the future. They can and will deliver the next phase of profitable and sustainable growth for Prudential in Asia. We've also laid out our strategy, our vision for the business. One that's built upon concepts of market leadership, customer focus, innovation, led by the best people and generating the best returns. We have the strategies in place to deliver this vision. These strategies are supported by our track record of success, and our competitive strengths that you've seen over the past few days, and the many levers for growth that are in place and happening within the business, overseen by our top-notch team of leaders. These are the things that make Prudential in Asia bigger than the sum of its parts. These are the levers that give us the competitive advantage into the future.

Two days ago, I showed you the slide which captures the four key points that I'd like you to take away with you from this visit. We've had impressive top-line growth over the past ten years and as we've shown you, the growth opportunities for both our insurance and our funds management business continue to be significant. We have diligently managed our business over the last decade and our approach has paid dividends. We now have a number of enviable and difficult to replicate advantages that leave us uniquely positioned to seize the opportunity before us in Asia. We now have the scale and we have the leadership across the region, and while our competitors try to play catch-up, we will continue to forge ahead as a leader, not a follower. We'll continue to strengthen and reinforce our foundation to insure the sustainability of our above market performance. And finally, our sheer scale and expertise, and our focus on leveraging that scale and expertise will yield accelerated profitability again for strong top-line growth but even faster bottom-line growth. Have no doubts, we will achieve our goal of delivering profitable and sustainable growth for Prudential in Asia. The speakers and presentations you've seen since I first made these opening comments have demonstrated why we as a team are committed to this vision. We have seized the opportunity in the past, we are seizing the opportunity today, and we will seize the opportunity into the future. On behalf of everyone from Prudential Corporation Asia, I would like to thank all of you for spending time with us. It has been a pleasure, I wish you a safe journey back to the UK, and with that I'd like to pass it over to Jonathan, for a few closing remarks.

Jonathan Bloomer

Thanks, Mark. I hope you've seen today and on Tuesday that we've tried to give you a lot more information about this business, a lot more understanding about the business that's become significantly more complex than it was four years ago, when we were last here. But I hope we've also done something else. I think Ajay's little video earlier on did part of it, and I hope last night... I can't see how last night could have failed to do the other bit. Which is an understanding of the energy, enthusiasm and just sheer passion that goes behind this business. And last night, we could have done that in Taiwan, we could have done it in the Philippines, we could have done it in Malaysia, we could have done it in China, that would all had their own style, but that energy and passion would have come from it, wherever we would have done that in the region. We just happened to be here, to do it. So I hope we've given you both a sort of intellectual understanding of this business, but also some sense of the emotion that goes behind this business. I should put a caveat in this that Asia isn't our only business; we still have a growing and very profitable business in the US and a big opportunity in the UK. And I have a particular challenge to make sure that our shareholders understand that range of our business, and they understand where we're going to take the whole of the group, not just one part of it. But part of that is understanding the individual pieces and it's here. I'm just going back to Asia, I do think Mark and the team have given you a very good understanding, they've tried to get over very well the quality of this business, and that ultimately comes down to the people, and you've seen a lot of the senior people in the business. The sheer quality of this business, and also in a quantitative sense, how much further the business has progressed since 2000, since four years ago. In a lot of these businesses... you know, Shikha talked about India, it didn't exist, when we were here in 2000, really. And the other businesses, some of the other businesses here in Vietnam and so on, were embryonic, and now they're large scale and complex businesses of their own. Mark the other day talked about the competitive advantages we've got. And as he put it, if you think about the licences that we've got in the variety of territories we're in; if you think about the sort of local relationships we have, whether it's with regulators, whether it's with government, all of those exist in each of the territories we're in. You think about the people: the management team we've built, our ability to move the management team around, the agency force we' ve got; you think about the brand. Mina talked about the brand, if you think about the brand and the strength of the brand that we've built in the region. Our partners; think about the partners we have. In ICICI and CITIC we could not have better partners in both those marketplaces. And then finally, just think about this existing scale, of the business as a whole, when it comes to competitive advantage in this region. And then, as well as the quality of the business, the competitive advantage, Mark's last slide about the opportunity that we've got, the tremendous opportunity in this region for continued value creation; we've created a massive amount of value already; but the opportunity... in some ways, that's the base. The opportunity to go on and create even more value from there is tremendous, whether it's in the insurance business or in the mutual funds, fund management area. We really do have a tremendous opportunity which I'm confident, Mark and the team will seize. Amidst that, my thanks to all the presenters, given there are 29 of them I won't name them all but I'm very grateful to them, they've put a lot of work in to the background of this, this was not put together overnight, they've all put in a lot of effort, and done a tremendous job, so my thanks to all the presenters. My thanks also to our hosts, Ng Keng Hooi in Malaysia and Phong here in Viet Nam, for all of the work they've done and put in to making this work; to Mina and her team, who've done a lot of the background stuff, in making this work; and to Rebecca, who's put a lot of work in this, alongside other stuff while we've been doing things in the UK; and finally, to Mark, not only for hosting this visit as a whole, and putting on such a great visit, and I hope you will agree, a tremendous picture of this business, but also in what is really just over ten months, getting a real grip on this business. It's a large and complex business now, covering a lot of territory, and Mark has a great grip on it, so: tremendous and my thanks to Mark. And then finally I'll have my thanks to all of you, for sparing the time and making the commitment to come and let us tell the story. Because you do have to feel this story. I can tell it you, we can all tell it you in London, but it really doesn't come alive unless you come here. So, have a safe trip back home. Thank you.

Q: Could I just add a thanks on behalf of all the analysts? I think, first to thank Mark and his team and our host, and we've had some excellent presentations, I think everyone has been very impressed at the range of talent that's been on display. Secondly, thanks to Jonathan and particularly to Rebecca and Marina for arranging the trip. I think you got it spot-on when you said that last night will live in our memories for quite some time, and I myself enjoyed myself very much, and I'm sure everybody else has. Thank you!

[applause]

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