FISHERS International, the insurance and financial services group, has doubled pre tax profit from £436,000 to £879,000 in the six months ended June 30th 1996. The interim dividend is being raised from 0.12p to 0.16p.

The results include a three months contribution from the loss adjusting firm, Miller Knight, and from the claims handling business of Robert Bishop (Southern). It is difficult to exclude these to get an underlying trend, said chief executive Mr Kevin Kenny, because the operations were merged almost from the beginning, joint branches were closed and there were provisions for loss of rent.

These acquisitions, Fishers said, have pushed it into a broadly based insurance group. Their integration "has proceeded very well". However, the full impact of the benefits and the resultant cost savings will not be wholly reflected until next year.

The other loss adjusting businesses had "excellent" results. This was partly due to a significant increase in the number of claims handled early in the year as a result of the very cold weather in Britain at the end of 1995.

Homecare Insurance, its insurance subsidiary, "continued with its record of excellent growth". Gross premiums rose by 30 per cent to £9.3 million. This subsidiary now has over 470,000 policyholders and makes a substantial contribution to group results.

Overall, its claims handling and inspection businesses had a mixed start to the year. There was a strong performance from its British vehicle inspection business and a "solid result" from its Austrian counterpart but these results were tempered by a poor performance from the motor engineering division.