Personal Group Holdings PLC (LON:PGH), which provides employee services such as staff discount schemes, is starting to see the benefit of recent investment in sales and marketing.
The group traded in line with expectations in 2019 and said it had made good progress on delivering the strategy implemented since the appointment of Deborah Frost as chief executive (CEO) in March.
The Insurance division remained strongly profitable in 2019 despite a slowdown in the number of new client business wins; the company is now seeing signs that its marketing and sales investment is addressing this trend.
The Let’s Connect (salary sacrifice) segment improved its year-on-year performance and the company expects this growth to continue following a positive reaction to the new proposition created for the National Health Service.
The company’s software-as-a-service business, which features its proprietary Hapi platform, saw a strong year-on-year increase in revenue, helped by the fact that the provision of products such as reloadable cards, e-vouchers and cinema tickets are now serviced largely in-house. An increase in paid-for Hapi subscriptions and the addition of consultancy income following the acquisition of Innecto have also helped to drive revenue growth, Personal Group said.
The relationship with accountancy software titan Sage continues to progress following the launch of Sage Employee Benefits on 2 September 2019 and a new extensive marketing campaign is planned by Sage for the first quarter of this year.
“We are starting to see the benefits of the investment that the company has made in sales and marketing and developing our strategy. We enter 2020 in a good position across all three business segments," said CEO, Deborah Frost.