Aviva posted equity release sales that tumbled 54% to £114m in the first half of the year, “due to lower levels of market activity”.

The financial services group added its later life business turned in a profit of £37m, down 12% on a year ago, in a stock market statement.

It added that its equity release operation had to “maintain pricing discipline to ensure a sufficient investment return to support our annuity businesses”.

Retirement unit revenue – which holds the group’s later life as well as individual and company annuities business — fell 6% to £3bn, “as strong growth in individual annuities was offset by lower equity release sales” and a slight reduction in company annuities volumes.

Last year the equity release market suffered a poor 2023, with just 26,119 agreed new plans, down 47% from 2022, according to the Equity Release Council, which still operated against a backdrop of the Bank of England lifting interest rates 14 times between 0.1% in December 2021 to 5.25% last August.

Aviva said its securitised mortgage loans and equity release portfolio stands at £9.8bn and is mostly internally securitised with an average loan-to-value of 27.9%.

The business says it is the UK’s largest provider of individual annuities, manages the country’s largest book of equity release mortgages and is one of the largest providers of bulk company annuities.

Overall, the group reported an operating profit ahead of expectations at £875m for the first half of 2024, up 14% on the same period a year earlier.

Its results were driven by general insurance premiums, which jumped 15% to £6bn across the whole of the group.

Group chief executive Amanda Blanc said: “We are the only UK insurer which can look after customers’ entire insurance, wealth and retirement needs, and this is paying off.

“We have 270,000 more customers this year and 4.9 million UK customers have more than one policy with us.”

The firm also operates across Canada and Ireland.