Author: Aaron Woolner
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…
Chemring pension fund has signed a £65m ($81m) buy-in deal to transfer all the scheme’s liabilities to Pension Insurance Corporation (PIC). The UK firm, which provides tech services to the aerospace sector, has transferred a total of 485 current pensioners and 328 deferred members to the insurer. The latest deal means that PIC is providing pensions to a total of 339,000 people and it’s now managing just shy of £45bn-worth of assets. Barnett Waddingham was the lead transaction adviser and scheme actuary, and Burges Salmon provided legal advice to the fund. News of the Chemring transaction came a few days…
The UK arm of aerospace and defence firm Thales has offloaded its pension scheme to Rothesay Life in a £2.7bn ($.34bn) deal with the insurer. The transaction was announced on December 1 and covers the whole of the Thales UK pension scheme. It means Rothesay takes responsibility for the benefits of over 16,000 fund members; 10,512 pensioners and dependents as well as 5,915 deferred members. The deal included an undisclosed cash payment by Thales and involved the transfer of over £750m of illiquid assets held within the pension scheme to Rothesay. Lead transaction advisers were PWC and A&O’ Rothesay received legal…
Unisys has bought a $250m group annuity contract from F&G Annuities & Life which will transfer a substantial portion of the tech firm’s US pension liabilities to the insurer. Two F&G subsidiaries – Fidelity & Guaranty Life Insurance Company, and Fidelity & Guaranty Life Insurance Company of New York – will take responsibility for pension benefits for approximately 3,900 retirees and beneficiaries. As part of the deal, Unisys expects to make a one-time, non-cash, pre-tax settlement charge of approximately $244m. The annuity purchase will be made by the pension trust meaning there will be no impact on Unisys cash position.…
UK retailer Co-op has insured the final tranche of its pension scheme liabilities in a £4bn ($5bn) deal with insurer Rothesay. The deal involves transferring almost 50,000 scheme members, made up of 17,655 pensioners and dependents and 31,896 deferred members and is the fourth deal between the two parties following three buy-in transactions in 2020. The pension scheme’s sponsor is the Co-operative Group and, in a press release, Rothesay said that no additional contribution from the employer was required as the fund was in surplus and illiquid assets in its investment portfolio were used to pay the buy-in premium. The…
UK pharmacy chain Boots has agreed a £4.8bn pension fund buy-in deal with Legal & General which covers all 53,000 retirees and deferred members of the scheme. According to a press release by the insurer, the transaction is the largest single deal by premium size in the UK, the most members taken on by Legal & General in a single deal. Boots’ decision to offload its pension scheme is part of a more than two decade-long pension de-risking process by the retailer. Its 2001 switch of its asset allocation from equities to bonds made it the first pension fund to deploy…