Jardine Lloyd Thompson revenue up nearly 5% in 2015

Jardine Lloyd Thompson Group P.L.C. reported revenue of £1.16 billion ($1.61 billion) for 2015, up 4.6% from 2014, the London-based brokerage announced Tuesday.

JLT said that its pretax profit for 2015 was £155.0 million ($215.0 million), down 3.0% compared with 2014.

The brokerage said the dip in profit had been expected and was affected by the company’s £20.5 million ($28.4 million) investment in its U.S. specialty business, JLT Specialty Insurances Services Inc., as well as challenges in its U.K. employee benefits business caused by a slowdown in project work and new business prompted by uncertainty over government changes to occupational pension legislation.

JLT said that its risk and insurance business, which makes up about 75% of the brokerage’s revenue, posted revenue of £866.6 million ($1.20 billion), a 6.0% increase compared with 2014.

JLT Re saw revenue increase by 5% to £174 million ($241.4 million) in 2015.

Mark Drummond Brady, deputy CEO of JLT, said the revenue growth in the risk and insurance and reinsurance arms of the business was fueled in part by revenues from high-growth economies in Latin America, Asia and the Middle East, among others.

JLT has long invested in such areas, he said, and that was bearing fruit as buyers in countries such as Brazil start to buy more treaty reinsurance, for example, he said.

China is another area where the emergence of new insurance companies has meant an increase in reinsurance buying, which has benefitted JLT, said James Twining, group commercial director at JLT.