Author: Aaron Woolner

Prudential Financial has closed a pension risk transfer (PRT) deal with Shell USA, which sees $4.9bn worth of pension obligations transfer to the insurer. The deal covers roughly 21,500 of the oil and gas firm’s US pensioners and Prudential subsidiary The Prudential Insurance Company of America will start administering payments on 15 May 2024. In a press release announcing the move, Prudential said following the signing of the deal the firm had now completed seven of the ten largest PRT deals struck in the US. Deals by Prudential include the 2022 $16bn PRT with IBM and the firm has been…

US defence shipbuilding firm Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) has offloaded $411m of pension liabilities to an unknown insurer via a group annuity contract. The largest military shipbuilder in the US announced the move via a statutory 10k filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission at the start of February. Details on the filing said that HII had transferred the payment of roughly 10,000 retirees and their beneficiaries via the deal. The deal was agreed on 3 November 2023. This the latest pension derisking by HII. In November 2022 the firm bought a number of group annuity contracts which saw about…

Just Group has completed a £400m ($502m) full scheme buy-in with the pension scheme of an unnamed UK tech firm covering all scheme members. The transaction will see about 2,500 pensioners and dependents and 1,500 deferred members of the scheme move to Just Group. According to a press release by Just Group, the buy-in was the culmination of a ten-year de-risking plan by the scheme’s sponsor. An unspecified premium was paid to secure the transfer. Mercer acted as lead risk transfer adviser as well as insurer financial strength adviser, scheme actuary and investment adviser. The trustees’ legal adviser was Eversheds…

The Rexam Pension Plan has agreed a £1.4bn ($1.8bn) buy-in deal with Rothesay which covers the benefits of over 14,000 scheme members. The pension fund’s sponsor is packaging firm Ball Corporation and the single premium insurance policy it has bought covers the residual risks for 9,790 pensioners and 4,330 deferred members. Rothesay said that Ball did not pay an additional contribution to offload the scheme in a deal which was agreed in August 2023. Aon was lead broker on the transactions. WTW provided actuarial advice and project management to the pension fund. Eversheds Sutherland provided legal advice to Rothesay and…

The UK subsidiary of US tech firm Unisys has signed a £300m ($380m) bulk purchase annuity (BPA) with Standard Life. The transaction was signed in November and sees Standard Life take on the benefits of 2,400 scheme members from the iPSL Section of the Unisys Payment Services Limited Pension Scheme and the Unisys Public Sector Pension Scheme. Mercer was lead transaction adviser to the pension schemes with Gowling WLG providing legal advice. This is the latest de-risking move by the tech firm which in November offloaded $250m of US pension liabilities to F&G Annuities & Life. Unisys has previously bought…

Aviva has completed a £140m ($170m) bulk purchase annuity (BPA) deal with the trustee of the Guilbert UK Retirement Benefits Plan which is sponsored by the UK arm of stationery firm Office Depot. Aviva provided a full scheme buy-in for Office Depot UK Pension Sponsor Limited, which sees the insurer take on the investment and longevity risk for 1,500 members. The tender process was led by PwC which also provided transaction advice to both the trustee and the sponsoring company. Travers Smith gave legal advice and Mercer provided administration, scheme actuary, and investment advice to the trustee. This is Aviva’s…

A Bermuda-based subsidiary of Resolution Life has completed a £2bn ($2.5bn) reinsurance treaty with a UK life firm covering a tranche of individual in-payment annuity liabilities. Resolution Life said its Bermudian reinsurance platform Resolution Re completed the transaction with an unnamed major UK-regulated insurer at the end of 2023. Resolution will reinsure the market and longevity risks of about 90,000 policyholders following the deal. Law firm CMS advised Resolution. This is Resolution’s second funded reinsurance transaction in the UK since the firm entered the market last year with a pensions risk transfer (PRT) deal. In October 2023, Resolution Life announced…

The US pension risk transfer (PRT) market saw a record-breaking first half of 2023 with deals worth $22.5bn recorded, according to data from Legal & General Retirement America (LGRA), but full year numbers are likely to be lower than the all-time high recorded in 2022.   Despite a number of deals taking place in the third quarter, including a plan termination by aerospace firm AAR Corp, and partial buy-outs by Owens Corning and ATI Inc, there were none on the scale of the record breaking $16bn PRT conducted by IBM during the same period 12 months earlier.  LGRA’s November PRT Monitor…

Dutch insurance and asset management firm NN Group has signed €13bn ($14.2bn) worth of longevity risk transfer deals with Prudential Financial and Swiss Re. The Rotterdam business said in a 19 December press release the transaction was struck by its subsidiary NN Life. The deal transfers the longevity risk contained in 300,000 policies in NN Group’s portfolio of companies, which includes insurer Delta Lloyd. The reinsurance agreements will come into force on 31 December 2023 and will stay in place until the portfolio has run off. NN Life will continue to administer and guarantee the policies. The transactions with Prudential…

A report published by Legal & General at the end of the first half of 2023 predicted the UK’s pension risk transfer (PRT) market was on course for one of its busiest years on record and activity has continued at a hectic pace since.   On one day in November two transactions worth a combined $11bn were announced: a $6bn transfer from pharmacy chain Boots’ pension fund to Legal & General, and a $5bn bulk annuity deal between retailer Co-op and Rothesay Life.   The background to the high level of activity in the UK’s PRT market is the series of 14…