THE A.M.P. SOCIETY

Evening Star, Issue 20150, 15 April 1929, Page 11

THE A.M.P. SOCIETY

The annual meeting; of the Australian Mutual Provident Society was held in Sydney on Friday afternoon. Sir Alfred W. Meeks, chairman of directors 1 , in the course of his speech, said that the cash surplus for 1928 was over £3,000,0UU. The new business record had been accomplished, despite untoward conditions which prevailed throughout the greater part of Australia during the year in the shape of drought, business depression, and industrial troubles, all of which militated to a greater or less extent against the success of the society’s outdoor representatives. in several of the States, nevertheless, particularly satisfactory increases were shown, but perhaps tjie most notable contribution to the improvement in the returns reached the society from the Dominion of Mew Zealand. The reasons for this were not far to seek. They lay in the general prosperity and contentment of the Aew Zeahnyl people, assisted by the broadminded encouragement which the dominion Government extended to life assurance through the medium of the taxation Acts.

At the close of 1.023, Sir Alfred Meeks said, the society completed eighty years of its history. The story of its "birth, of its establishment by honourable and eapa’iio administration on a sound aiid permanent basis, and of its development as the outcome ol a far-seeing and progressive policy into the greatest mutual life assurance institution in the Empire was more than a twice-told tale. The iulant of 1349 with a small room for an office over a grocer’s shop in George street, near Tinnier street, Sydney; with the unpaid secretary and a staff of but one office boy, whose time was mostly taken up in amusing himself by means of a catapult, with a target consisting of a gilded coll’ee pot projecting over the front of the building, indicating the business carried on below by the society’s landlord; with a register at the end of the first year of forty-two poll cies and funds of less than £lO0 —now owned sixty-five offices over the length and breadth of Australia and New Zealand, as well as a handsome building in London; employed a permanent indoor staff of 929 and outdoor staff ol 17U, as well as agency stall’ numbering over 1.100; had on its registers in iho two departments about 940.00(1 policies, assuring with bonuses over £240,000,OUH; collected an annual income of nearly £11.000.000. and assets of nearly £74.000.000. Since its establishment it bad collected in premiums oyer £122,090,000, and in interest from its investments riearlv £(14,000,000; had paid over £91,000,000 to _its members ur their representatives in claims, surrenders. and annuities, and had distributed about £45,000,000 in cash bonuses.