Tidjane Thiam, Prudential’s new chief executive, made clear the insurer’s growth ambitions in Asia yesterday as a strong sales recovery in the region during the third quarter helped to offset sliding sales in the UK.

Mr Thiam, who has said that the Pru might consider a listing in Hong Kong in the longer term, also highlighted the United States as a big potential area of expansion.

In his first presentation to the City since succeeding Mark Tucker this month, Mr Thiam said that the Pru wanted to sell more more life and pension policies to the “baby-boomer” generation in America and exploit the relative lack of competition. The Pru owns Jackson National Life in the US.

However, Mr Thiam, a former Aviva executive, was less ebullient about the UK. He said that he was watching the unfolding consolidation in Britain’s life sector that is being driven by Resolution, Clive Cowdery’s acquisitions vehicle, but suggested that the Pru was loath to get involved.

He said: “We are watching the consolidation. I am always cautious about these things ... for the time being, we are concentrating on capturing growth in Asia. We are becoming progressively more confident about Asia. The Asian economies have been performing better than other economies and are showing themselves to be big growth areas.”

Mr Thiam’s comments came as the Pru began the third-quarter reporting season for the UK insurance sector by announcing a fall in worldwide sales to £700 million, down 9 per cent against the same period last year. Sales for the first nine months were also down 9 per cent, at just over £2 billion.

The decline was led by the Pru’s UK division, whose sales declined by 22 per cent to £157 million in the third quarter and by 28 per cent over the nine- month period to £534 million.

In contrast, the Pru’s US division achieved a record 66 per cent rise in third-quarter sales, to £249 million, and the Asia division — set up by Mr Tucker — raised sales 4 per cent to £293 million in the period. For the first time, about 75 per cent of the Pru’s sales came from outside Britain, Mr Thiam said.

Revenues of the Pru’s UK division are notoriously lumpy, regularly being skewed by one-off bulk annuity deals to buy company pension funds. This time last year, the Pru struck a deal to take on £1 billion of the liabilities of Cable & Wireless’s scheme.

The Pru emphasised yesterday that it had chosen to limit itself to higher-margin individual annuity deals in Britain and had consciously reduced its presence in the pensions buyout market, which is very capital-intensive.

Mr Thiam said that Britain was “actually very important” to the Pru’s strategy, giving the group a strong credit rating and by one measure — the International Financial Reporting Standards — representing half of annual earnings. However, Mr Thiam is thought to be less attached to the British division than was Mr Tucker, who considered a sale in 2007 before rejecting the idea.

Despite yesterday’s trading update being better than expected, Pru shares fell heavily, sliding 59½p to 551p, a drop of 9.8 per cent that made the insurer the biggest faller in the FTSE 100.

Nevertheless, Trevor Moss, an analyst for MF Global, said that Prudential’s shares were a “must-have” in the insurance sector and that he expected further growth in Asia over the coming months.

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