Over-50s holiday and insurance giant Saga increased pre-tax profits by 8.5% to £109.9 million in the first half of its financial year as it showed no sign of any Brexit impact.

The Folkestone-based company remains confident despite recording flat trading profits of £117.6 million and a 1% decline in cruise passengers.

It comes after a survey it carried out among its customers showed less than 1% said they would reconsider their holiday plans as a result of the referendum result.

Chief executive Lance Batchelor said: “The longer-term impact of the Brexit negotiations will emerge over time, but we will monitor them closely and remain confident in our ability to adapt to and thrive amidst the new challenges and opportunities.”

Its number of ship passenger days was down 21.1% to 135,000, mainly as a result of two months of maintenance work carried out on its Saga Sapphire cruise ship.

Income from insurance policies grew 11.7% to just over £3 million, helping net debt to fall to 2.2 times its earnings before interest, taxes and other charges, down from 2.4 times a year earlier.

The firm grew its database by 2.7% to 11.3 million, with 2.7 million active customers, up 3.8%.

Shareholders will be paid an interim dividend of 2.7p a share, up 22.7%.

Mr Batchelor said: “I am pleased that the business has made significant progress with our key strategic initiatives whilst delivering another robust financial performance.

“The strength of our core businesses and our operating model has again led to strong cash generation, enabling us to further reduce our debt ratio and giving us the confidence to increase our interim dividend by 23% to 2.7p.

“Saga already has significant brand awareness and customer loyalty but we have been working hard to enhance our understanding of the relationship with our customers.

“This has produced some fascinating insights and opportunities and we are underway with the work that will enable us to capitalise on our findings.

“The robust operational performance in the first half means that we are on track to meet our targets for the full year.”

However, not everyone was impressed with the figures.

Market analyst Joshua Raymond at XTB.com said: “This is a somewhat unspectacular set of results.

“The anaemic growth trading profit means the firm must keep a tight grip on costs, whilst they remain confident travel insurance will continue to see demand, despite the drop in value of the pound making holidays abroad for UK consumers more expensive.”