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			Prudential Retail Financial Services Prudential Retail Financial Services (PRFS) comprises three business units: Prudential Retail (with its 1,900 strong direct sales force), Life and Pensions and General Insurance. PRFS has six million UK customers to which it sells a comprehensive range of personal investment and insurance products. Currently PRFS has 7.1 million life policies in force and is one of Britain's biggest pension providers with 1.6 million personal pension contracts. It also sells banking products for Prudential Banking: mortgage sales exceeded £600 million in 1999. Sales of insurance and investment products rose by 16 per cent to £1.8 billion despite a 40 per cent reduction in the number of sales force consultants. This result reflects the success of our initiatives to increase efficiency and improve consultant productivity. Single premium sales were up 22 per cent at £1.7 billion, reflecting higher sales of with-profit savings products, fuelled by the low interest rate environment. Regular premium sales were down 24 per cent to £146 million, mainly due to lower sales of pension products. Underlying long-term business statutory profit rose nine per cent to £319 million and underlying general insurance profit increased 56 per cent to £61 million. Achieved new business profit on long-term business was up 20 per cent to £83 million. During 1999, we re-engineered the structure of PRFS to broaden its appeal to customers and to reduce its cost base in anticipation of an even more competitive financial services environment. Significant progress towards this goal has been made through a programme to remove some 5,000 jobs over three years, 3,000 of which have been accounted for over the last year. Our investment in new technology will support these efforts and will make the sales process more efficient by reducing the administrative burden. In addition the move towards remote working, with no branch infrastructure, has been made possible by introducing laptop computers as a tool for the sales force. This will lead to a greater focus on advising customers and increasing productivity. We are also harnessing technology to develop higher levels of interactivity with our customers. We have launched our new-look website to inform customers about our products and to enable customers to arrange visits by financial consultants. We are currently testing a system which will provide on-line advice in real-time with a consultant and general insurance customers can now obtain quotes and take out policies on the internet. Prudential Annuities Prudential Annuities is the market leader in the UK pensions annuity industry which is projected to grow strongly over the next few years. We now have over 700,000 customers and more than a 20 per cent share of new business in 1999. Total sales were £2.2 billion and funds under management now exceed £10 billion. In the individual pension annuity market, with-profit sales have shown strong growth and now represent more than 15 per cent of individual sales. Bulk annuity sales in 1999 represented more than half our total sales and were boosted by two big sales totalling £1.1 billion in July.