Our core purpose, the reason we exist, is to provide prosperity and peace of mind for our customers. Our ambition is to be the world’s most trusted savings, investment and insurance provider. To achieve this ambition, we need to be a clear leader in helping our customers grow their wealth and protect their assets and their health.

Our objectives for this are:

• Offering a superior range of long-term savings, investment and protection products in markets that offer significant opportunities for growth
• Providing a broad range of competitive motor, property, health and related insurance services to individuals and small- to medium-sized enterprises in chosen markets

To achieve the above goal, we have identified our key strategic priorities. These are set out below:

• Understanding and meeting the evolving needs of our customers
• Working closely with business partners to deliver efficient and effective distribution channels
• Attracting, motivating and retaining talented people who are committed to our values and ambitions
• Using brands to widen leadership positions
• Using scale to deliver benefits, including cost-competitiveness
• Building profitable businesses in selected areas where we have, or can, achieve market leading positions
• Delivering growth organically and through carefully selected acquisitions designed to increase shareholder value

The Strategy table provides greater detail on how we are implementing these strategic priorities. We have set out the measures and targets that we use to assess our success in achieving our strategic priorities, some of our achievements in 2006 and what we plan to do next year.