A.M.P. SOCIETY

Greymouth Evening Star, 16 April 1927, Page 2

A.M.P. SOCIETY

ANNUAL MEETING.

SYDNEY, March 12

At the annual meeting of the Society, held this afternoon, the Chairman referred to the unparalleled progress of the Society during the year 1926. Further records had been created in every department of the Society’s business; and the cash surplus for division for the one year was the phenomenal amount of £2,862,097. Sir Harold Beauchamp, Vice-Chair-man of the New Zealand Board, in seconding the motion for the adoption of the report said: — > “I have listened with great satisfaction to the comprehensive statement of our Chairman on the affairs of the Society generally, and cannot help wondering how this record-breaking business can be obtained year after year from such a comparatively small population. To my mind, the most pleasing feature is the fact that nearly |0 per cent of it comes from those who are already holders of policies. That points to satisfaction with the result of their previous venture, and to a recognition of the need for providing more home protection to meet the altered conditions under which we now live.

“Turning more particularly to our New Zealand affairs, I am in the happy position of being able to say that the new Business figures for the Ordinary Department anti Industrial Department combined are easily a record for the Branch. In the Ordinary Department we completed £3,132,688 —£178,000 in excess of the previous year, but not quite up to the phenomenal figures of 1924. The Industrial Department increase, however, was so substantial as to enable us to show the record rseult 1 have just mentioned. The completion of £3.700,039 of new assurances from a population of between one and a quarter and one and a half million may, I think, be regarded as evidence of vigorous and sustained effort on the part of both indoor and outdoor staff, and I am glad to have this opportunity of acknowledging those efforts. “You will naturally be interested in the question of our Branch Investments, and on that point I am in a position to speak in most optimistic terms. We have had, of course, to show forbearance towards some of our mortgagors, especially those who have paid too much for their land, but that policy has been amply justified, and it must of necessity continue until land values have been deflated to a ‘production value’ a process which, of course, takes time, and necessarily presses hardly upon individuals. “The Local Board has carefully reviewed its mortgage securities, and the reserves we have found it necessary to make to meet possible losses, if realisation should become necessary are astonishingly small. Probably no other lending institution in the Dominion has such a favourable experience as ours.

“I have been asked by my colleagues of the New Zealand Board to assure this meeting' that, notwithstanding the small setbacks we experience—temporarily only, we are sure—inseparable from the development of new countries, all is well with New Zealand. We can see no cause for pessimism, but rather a firm belief in the ability of our countrymen to pull through to more prosperous times, and so be able to share to a greater .extent in the' manifold advantages of membership of the A.M.P. “I have much pleasure in supporting the adoption of the report.”