The company said on Tuesday new business profit rose 17 percent to 1.5 billion pounds from a year earlier, after stripping out currency fluctuations, with double-digit gains in Asia, the United States and the United Kingdom.

Prudential has been expanding in Asia, where middle income consumers and growing businesses in countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand have historically been largely uninsured.

"The U.S. recovery is real and strong, Asia is resilient," chief executive Tidjane Thiam told a media call. "We do not see a hard landing in China."

Prudential shares rose nearly 2 percent to a record 1,503 pence, before slipping back to 1,485 by 1016 GMT.

Britain's ageing population will keep demand for insurance products high, Thiam said.

Britain saw the largest increase in new business profit as sales of so-called "bulk annuities", where firms outsource all or part of their pension scheme liabilities, compensated for a 47 percent slump in sales of individual annuities.

Surprise UK pension reforms announced in March scrapped a requirement for retirees to use their pension pots to buy an annuity, a financial instrument that pays out an income for life, from an insurer upon retirement.

The new rules are designed to give individual pensioners more investment choices, while employers have meanwhile moved into buying annuities in bulk to tidy up their balance sheets and remove the liability of owing a pension.

Prudential said it had completed six bulk annuity transactions in Britain in the year to date, contributing new business profit of 88 million pounds.

The company's new business profit in Asia rose 15 percent, while new business profit gained 16 percent in the United States and 28 percent in Britain.

The company's stock has risen 10 percent this year, outperforming the FTSE 100 index <.FTSE> but underperforming other major insurers.

Valuations at a forward price/earnings ratio of 14 times are slightly higher than the company's peers, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Barrie Cornes, analyst at Panmure, reiterated his "buy" rating on the stock, however, saying the valuation remained "highly attractive".

(Reporting by Carolyn Cohn; editing by Sophie Sassard and David Clarke)

By Carolyn Cohn