Legal & General (L&G) is plotting a swoop on the workplace pensions provider owned by NatWest Group, the FTSE-100 lender, as its chief executive seeks to grow its share of the UK retirement market.<\/p>\n
Sky News has learnt that L&G is among a handful of suitors which have expressed an interest in acquiring Cushon from NatWest.<\/p>\n
This weekend, City sources said there was “significant” competition to buy the business and L&G was not certain to be the eventual buyer.<\/p>\n
If a deal with L&G does transpire, Cushon would augment a master trust business which manages more than \u00a336.5bn in assets, making it the largest commercial entity of its kind in the UK.<\/p>\n
The L&G master trust unit serves 349 employers and 1.9 million members.<\/p>\n
Cushon manages assets worth \u00a33.7bn, according to the latest figures provided by NatWest, which bought a controlling stake in the business for \u00a3144m two years ago.<\/p>\n
The pensions business serves roughly 650,000 members across approximately 21,000 employers.<\/p>\n
NatWest owns an 85% stake in Cushon, with the remainder held by the subsidiary’s management.<\/p>\n
For NatWest, a sale would reflect chief Paul Thwaite’s determination to refocus the bank – which shed the last vestiges of taxpayer ownership earlier this year – on its core strategic priorities.<\/p>\n
These include a bank-wide simplification programme and more active balance sheet and risk management.<\/p>\n
Under Mr Thwaite, NatWest has considered a small number of larger-scale acquisitions, including that of Santander UK.<\/p>\n
That deal did not progress because of NatWest’s determination to pay a price that would be deemed attractive by its shareholders.<\/p>\n
Cushon offers workplace pension products as well as a range of workplace ISAs, including Junior ISAs, Lifetime ISAs and General Investment Accounts.<\/p>\n
NatWest’s acquisition of the business was aimed at diversifying its non-interest income by offering Cushon’s products to the bank’s commercial and business banking customers.<\/p>\n
For Antonio Simoes, the former HSBC and Santander executive who runs L&G, an acquisition of Cushon would bolster its offering in an important strategic area.<\/p>\n
The government announced major pensions reforms this year aimed at driving greater scale and reducing unnecessary bureaucratic expenses, with a view to defined contribution schemes managing at least \u00a325 billion in assets by 2030.<\/p>\n
A NatWest Group spokesperson declined to comment on the talks with L&G but had previously said in relation to an auction of Cushon: “We do not comment on speculation.<\/p>\n
“Our focus remains on delivering for our customers.”<\/p>\n
The identities of other bidders for Cushon were unclear on Saturday.<\/p>\n
L&G declined to comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Legal & General (L&G) is plotting a swoop on the workplace pensions provider owned by NatWest Group, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":206024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[45,49,48,133,131,132],"class_list":{"0":"post-206023","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-finance","12":"tag-personal-finance","13":"tag-personalfinance"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}