A.M.P. SOCIETY.

Wairarapa Age, 20 April 1927, Page 7

A.M.P. SOCIETY.

: AUDREY B'-’

SIR H. BEAUCHAMP

j SYDNEY, Mhrch 12 • At the annual meeting of the A.M.P . Society, held this afternoon, the chairj man referred to the unparalleled proj gross of the society during the year I 1926. Further records had been created in every department of the socijwy'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 of the adoption of the report, said, in part:— “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 badness can be obtained year after y?ar from such a comparatively small population. To my mind, the most pleasing feature is the fact that nearly 40 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 rfow live. 11 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 and 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, was so substantial as to enable us to show the record result I have just mentioned. The completion of £3,709,039 of new assurances from a population of be: tween 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. ‘/The satisfaction we naturally feel in detailing these figures is all the keener when we remember that conditions throughout New Zealand were not uniformly favourable. Some of our districts suffered considerably by the depression in the prices of our exports, and I am afraid that we must expect a rather lower range of values in the immediate future, although our wool sales held ■ recently have shown a sound and firm position. “For the year ended November 30, 1926, there was a decline in the value of our exports of no less than £10,302,860, compared with the corresponding period of the previous year.”... “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 havp 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 h ‘production value/ a process which, of course, takes time, and necessarily presses hardly upon individuals. “The Local Board has carefylly reviewed its mortgage securities, and the reserves we have found it necessary tb • 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 r ours{’ ’