Renowned Asian insurance giant, AIA Group Ltd. has reported a profit of $1.31 billion for December-May, a significant increase of $1.06 billion as compared to year back. Asian market can be considered as a battleground for insurance companies such as AIA and its rivals Prudential and China's Ping An.

The American International Group Inc. has spun off the Asian life Insurance unit, which owns a third part of company. During the last year, it had succeeded to raise more than $20 billion in a Hong Kong offering and helped the shareholders to repay the US government.

"It was a strong set of numbers from all fronts”, commented Jennifer Law, an analyst at Daiwa Securities in Hong Kong. "Margins are improving, which is particularly encouraging because it comes at a time when they are trying to grow their business”.

In a statement, followed by the release the Chief Executive Officer of AIA, Mark Tucker, said that the growth in new business was driven both by a sales increase and a margin increase and marked it as powerful indicator of our focus on profitability.

In addition, the appreciation of Asian currencies have also played a key role to support AIA’s investment returns, recorded to gain a hike of 22% to $2.4 billion in the first half of the year.