Lloyds TSB, the UK’s fifth-largest bank, announced the sale of its insurance arm, Abbey Life, to Deutsche Bank for £977 million ($1.95 billion) and reported its first dividend increase in five years. Profit before tax rose 15 per cent to £2.01 billion from £1.75 billion last year and the group is raising the interim dividend by 5 per cent to 11.2p a share. Group chairman Sir Victor Blank said the dividend increase was due to the fact the board was "increasingly confident in earnings prospects for 2007 and beyond". Wealth Management, said Lloyds, continued to make good progress with its expansion plans. Over 240 advisors have now been trained on an improved wealth management offer comprising private banking, open architecture portfolio management, retirement planning, insurance and estate planning services. In the first half of 2007, total new assets under management increased by 15 per cent and wealth management banking deposits grew by 18 per cent. Including assets under management within UK Wealth Management and International Private Banking businesses, group-wide funds under management increased by one per cent to £122 billion. Abbey Life, part of the group's Scottish Widows business, has been closed to new business since 2000. At the end of December 2006 it had £12 billion in assets and 1.12 million policies. Chief executive Eric Daniels said: "We conducted a review of Abbey Life and came to the conclusion that a sale of the business is in the best interest of the group, as well as Abbey Life's policyholders and staff. We expect the proceeds of the sale, net of costs, to be distributed from Scottish Widows to Lloyds TSB Group in line with Lloyds TSB's objective to continue to improve its capital efficiency." Deutsche Bank beat competitors including Pearl Group, the company run by the entrepreneur Hugh Osmond, and the reinsurance giant Swiss Re to buy the business. The price is 104 per cent of Abbey Life’s embedded value, outstripping any previous value obtained from the sale of a closed life book. Sources said that Deutsche Bank is planning to build a collection of the so-called zombie funds to compete with established consolidators such as Mr Osmond and Resolution, the company in talks with Friends Provident to create an £8 billion group.