AMP: Declining profitability ahead

It is closing its life insurance business in Australia and New Zealand to new customers and selling it to Resolution Life.

AMP says it will return to shareholders the majority of the net cash proceeds of the $3.73 billion deal on settlement, "subject to unforeseen circumstances".

There are just under 80,000 New Zealand-based AMP shareholders, many of whom have held shares since AMP was transferred from a mutual to a listed company in 1998.

AMP said new chief executive Franscesco De Ferrari was committed to returning the money to them.