{"id":319675,"date":"2026-03-08T21:39:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T21:39:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/319675\/"},"modified":"2026-03-08T21:39:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T21:39:13","slug":"we-can-save-people-from-having-poor-retirements-heres-how","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/319675\/","title":{"rendered":"We can save people from having poor retirements. Here\u2019s how"},"content":{"rendered":"

Andy Briggs jokes that he speaks loudly because of his three older sisters.\u00a0In his flat nasal tones, he chortles that his voice \u201cgrew louder over time\u201d as he fought to be heard over the household clamour.<\/p>\n

This weekend, he\u2019s raising his voice for another reason: he wants the City to know about his decision to change the name of Phoenix, the FTSE 100 insurer he has run for six years, to Standard Life.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re a purpose-led, consumer-orientated retirement savings business,\u201d the 59-year-old says earnestly. \u201cIt better describes that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The move means that Standard Life is once again on the stock market nine years after its \u00a311 billion tie-up with rival Aberdeen Asset Management. Phoenix has taken the name after a series of complex transactions with the FTSE 250 fund manager (Aberdeen has abandoned its own rebranding to the vowel-depleted Abrdn<\/a>), which still has a 10 per cent stake in what is now Standard Life.<\/p>\n

Briggs does not have an office of his own in the insurer\u2019s London head office, as he prefers to sit in the open-plan space. So he usually uses a meeting room named Richmond. As he lowers his 6ft 5in frame into a chair, he explains that the room is aptly named because he spends his weekends on the golf course in the southwest London borough. <\/p>\n

\u201cMy handicap is four. It used to be three. I\u2019m working too hard,\u201d he proclaims.<\/p>\n

Briggs has had to put in the hours since arriving in March 2020. On his watch, Phoenix has changed from an acquisition machine \u2014 built by buying \u201czombie\u201d insurance firms closed to new business \u2014 to a company aiming to sell new products under the Standard Life brand.<\/p>\n

\"AndyAndy Briggs, at Standard Life\u2019s London office, has returned the company to the stock marketJOSHUA BRATT FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES<\/p>\n

The business is valued at \u00a37 billion on the stock market and manages \u00a3300 billion of assets for 12 million people. About 2,000 of the 5,000 staff are located in Edinburgh \u2014 where the old Standard Life used to be \u2014 with 700 of them in London.<\/p>\n

Some wonder why he did not act sooner in rechristening Phoenix as Standard Life<\/a>. Briggs insists it could not be rushed: \u201cChanging the name doesn\u2019t change the substance of the business. I wanted to get the substance in place first.\u201d<\/p>\n

Briggs says that he was always motivated by \u201cleadership\u201d. He arrived at Phoenix after missing out on the top job at FTSE 100 rival Aviva. \u201cI played team sports as a kid and was often captain and loved the leadership side. My mates used to tease me about it, but very early on, I had this sense that management was what I wanted to do,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n

\u201cI played a lot of rugby, I was in the England under-20s squad for volleyball \u2026 not many people played and if you were quite tall, you had a chance,\u201d he laughs. \u201cI was 6 foot 5 at 16. My mum used to measure me all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Briggs grew up in Chelmsford, Essex, with parents who had been through hard times. His father had left school at 14 to care for his sick mother. \u201cHe left with pretty much no education,\u201d recalls Briggs, who says his dad worked as a painter and decorator, painting the gates of Buckingham Palace and Wembley Stadium before attending night school to become a lecturer in interior design at a technical college. His mum stayed at home to look after their four children. When Briggs was in his teens, she took a job working on punch cards for computers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u201cThey made sure I had a good education \u2014 that I was in good state schools \u2014 and it gave me a work ethic, which I\u2019ve always been hugely grateful for,\u201d he says. \u201cI loved maths at school,\u201d he adds, so he studied the subject at Southampton University. <\/p>\n

Briggs joined Prudential as an actuary, with an eye on getting a management job. \u201cBasically, anyone running an insurance company at the time was an actuary, so you sort of thought, well, this is a good route into a good sector to work in but also a route into senior leadership positions.\u201d <\/p>\n

He worked as an actuary for only a year but stayed at the Pru for 19, building up skills in roles in consumer services, marketing and sales. \u201cI tried to get a real breadth early on in my career,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

He moved to Scottish Widows, part of Lloyds Banking Group, where he spent five years before becoming chief executive of his first stock market company in June 2011 when he joined Friends Life, which was sold to Aviva three and a half years later<\/a>. There he stayed until he quit in 2019, when Maurice Tulloch beat him to the chief executive role. <\/p>\n

So, as someone motivated by being a manager, how does Briggs describe his style? \u201cI like to talk to people, so I don\u2019t send that many emails. I\u2019m not a slave to email,\u201d he says. \u201cI do quite a lot of lists. I\u2019ll have a list of three or four things I want to mention to each of my direct reports next time I bump into them. That will be more my modus operandi than lots of emails.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since arriving at what is now Standard Life, he has battled to bring down its leverage levels by generating \u00a31.4 billion of cash profit \u2014 in essence, a measure of cashflow \u2014 each year.<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s share price endured its biggest drop for five years at the interim results in September, so Briggs will aim to reassure analysts when he presents the full-year figures next week. The City will also be looking for any update on whether he will buy the UK arm of Aegon, which is also said to be in the sights of Royal Bank of Canada, Barclays and Lloyds. \u201cWe\u2019re having a look,\u201d he confirms. \u201cWhenever any business comes to market in the UK, we always have a look.\u201d <\/p>\n

Briggs will also be asked about progress on bringing in external partners to help buy up corporate pensions through what are known as bulk purchase annuities.<\/p>\n

At its simplest, Briggs uses \u00a31.1 billion of the cash profit to pay the dividend and pay down debt and is using the extra \u00a3300 million to get the debt back to the levels of his company\u2019s rivals: \u201cInvestors have said to us, we\u2019d like to see your leverage come down in line with peers. Once we\u2019ve done that, from the end of this year, we\u2019ll have that available for either additional shareholder returns or investment into growth.\u201d<\/p>\n

But investors have been concerned by problems implementing IFRS 17, a set of accounting rules that started in 2023 about governing insurance contracts, which led to the chief executive having \u00a370,000 docked off his bonus last year<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Briggs credits his new finance director Nic Nicandrou, a former divisional head at Prudential, for a better relationship with the City. \u201cOur share price was up 45 per cent last year. I don\u2019t think it would have been up as much as that had we not brought Nic in,\u201d says Briggs.<\/p>\n

\"NicolaosNic NicandrouStandard Life<\/p>\n

The City agrees with this assessment. Abid Hussain, an insurance analyst at investment bank Panmure Liberum, says: \u201cThey\u2019ve had the fortune of hiring Nic Nicandrou, who is a heavy hitter and really settled the nerves of the market. If you look past the technicalities and accounting noise, there\u2019s actually a decent business, which is moving in the right direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

The name change to Standard Life is part of Briggs\u2019s determination to be a \u201cchampion\u201d for people saving for their retirement.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t see [yet]\u00a0that in 10, 20 years\u2019 time, people retiring are going to have a really poor income and poor standing of living \u2014 and that\u2019s why there needs to be a \u2018champion\u2019 to change that,\u201d he explains. \u201cSo when we say \u2018champion\u2019, it is because consumers are not going to get the retirement they would like and expect unless something changes,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Briggs rattles off statistics: only one in seven people is saving enough for a decent retirement and only 10 per cent of savers receive financial advice.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While auto-enrolment in workplace pensions got more people saving after it was introduced in 2012, Briggs is concerned that the 8 per cent paid in \u2014 5 per cent of an employee\u2019s wages and 3 per cent on top from their employer \u2014 gives workers a false sense of security. Canadians, he says, save 20 per cent of their salaries and Australians 12 per cent. <\/p>\n

\u201cMost ordinary folk don\u2019t understand this stuff very well,\u201d he says. \u201cThey will labour under the misapprehension that if they are doing the government minimum rate, they will be fine \u2014 and they won\u2019t be. That\u2019s the bit I worry about the most.\u201d<\/p>\n

The government\u2019s independent Pensions Commission is reviewing this and due to report next year. Briggs is clear: \u201cI find it impossible to believe that an independent commission can possibly conclude 8 per cent is enough.\u201d He advocates a rise to 12 per cent, in stages, which \u201cis getting into better territory\u201d. <\/p>\n

\"Andy\u201cIn 10, 20 years\u2019 time, people retiring are going to have a really poor income and poor standing of living,\u201d says BriggsJOSHUA BRATT FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES<\/p>\n

Getting to retirement should also take longer, he says, citing research showing that the retirement age should rise by eight years globally if the dependency ratio \u2014 the number of people working versus those who are retired \u2014 is to remain static. So, he advocates helping the over-50s to stay in work, particularly through flexible hours: \u201cIf the over-50s fall out of work, they are the group that are by far the least likely to get back into work.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for young people needing jobs, he says this will come if the economy grows more rapidly. \u201cThat will create jobs for the young folk and the over-50s,\u201d he argues.<\/p>\n

Fuelling economic growth was one of the issues tackled by Standard Life\u2019s chairman, Sir Nicholas Lyons, when he was lord mayor of the City three years ago. He created the first iteration of the Mansion House Accord to encourage pension funds to invest 10 per cent of their workplace schemes in private assets such as infrastructure projects by 2030.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Association of British Insurers, where Briggs is president, stepped up its fight last week to stop the government putting in a legislative backstop to mandate this level of investment, if it is not achieved voluntarily. Briggs is also clear that \u201cit\u2019s really critical we track the progress\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe politicians and the regulators, they do their bit of legislation or regulation and think, well that\u2019s it, done. It\u2019s only done when you see the outcome,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n

This is particularly true with new rules that allow individuals to receive \u201ctargeted\u201d support rather than pay for financial advice, which he hopes will solve the issue of only 10 per cent of people getting advice. \u201cUntil you get to a place where it\u2019s 50 per cent plus, we haven\u2019t succeeded,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

With all this talk of retirement, Briggs brings up his imminent big birthday. \u201cGood work is good for you. I\u2019m 60 this month and people often say to me, \u2018Why don\u2019t you retire?\u2019 But I love it \u2014 I just really enjoy what I do. The job\u2019s not done. I haven\u2019t made enough progress over the years in helping people save more.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"CotswoldBriggs\u2019s last holiday was a Christmas break in the CotswoldsAlamy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Andy Briggs jokes that he speaks loudly because of his three older sisters.\u00a0In his flat nasal tones, he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":319676,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[138,246,111,139,69,244,245],"class_list":["post-319675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-finance","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319675\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}