A healthy-looking life insurer to buy now

This life insurer ticks all the right boxes to keep your portfolio looking healthy, says Paul Hill.

Legal & General (LSE: LGEN), rated OUTPERFORM by Barclays Capital

With UK interest rates set to remain at 0.5% for the foreseeable future, and the Bank of England splashing out another £75bn on quantitative easing (QE), we can forget worrying about deflation. In fact, government yield curves are currently implying negative real cash returns until early 2016. That's bad news for bondholders. I'd rather trust in stocks to protect my portfolio against inflation, particularly those with sound balance sheets and attractive dividend yields. UK life assurer and fund manager L&G is one such play.

Subscribe to MoneyWeek

Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE

Get 6 issues free
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/mw70aro6gl1676370748.jpg

Sign up to Money Morning

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Sign up

Paul gained a degree in electrical engineering and went on to qualify as a chartered management accountant. He has extensive corporate finance and investment experience and is a member of the Securities Institute.

Over the past 16 years Paul has held top-level financial management and M&A roles for blue-chip companies such as O2, GKN and Unilever. He is now director of his own capital investment and consultancy firm, PMH Capital Limited.

Paul is an expert at analysing companies in new, fast-growing markets, and is an extremely shrewd stock-picker.