UK's Just Group annual profit slumps on weakness in key segments

Feb 27 (Reuters) - British retirement income specialist Just Group reported a 39% fall in its annual underlying operating profit on Friday, hurt by a sharp drop in new business margins and retirement income sales.

The results reflected the impact of an increasingly crowded bulk annuity market, where insurers take on the pension liabilities of corporate schemes, which intensified pricing competition particularly in the second half of the year.

The company had agreed to a 2.4-billion-pound ($3.23 billion) takeover deal by Canada's Brookfield Wealth Solutions in late July and expects the deal to close in the first half of 2026.

The group's underlying operating profit came in at 305 million pounds  for the year ended December 31, compared to 504 million pounds a year earlier.

($1 = 0.7426 pounds)

(Reporting by Sri Hari N S in Bengaluru; Editing by Mrigank Dhaniwala and Ronojoy Mazumdar)