{"id":48042,"date":"2025-08-06T14:07:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T14:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/48042\/"},"modified":"2025-08-06T14:07:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T14:07:10","slug":"legal-general-eyes-42bn-of-pension-risk-transfer-deals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/48042\/","title":{"rendered":"Legal & General eyes \u00a342bn of pension risk transfer deals"},"content":{"rendered":"

Legal & General\u2019s chief executive is eyeing up \u00a342 billion worth of pension risk transfer deals and said he was \u201cnot concerned\u201d by the threat posed by big new competitors to the sector, including Apollo Global Management and Brookfield.<\/p>\n

Ant\u00f3nio Sim\u00f5es said: \u201cThere\u2019s been a lot of chatter about competition, but I am not concerned. It\u2019s healthy. We are the market leader.\u201d He added that L&G was continuing to be disciplined on pricing.<\/p>\n

Sim\u00f5es was reporting consensus-beating core operating profits of \u00a3859 million for the six months to June, up 6 per cent, and expressed confidence in meeting targets for the full year.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Business live: FTSE 100 extends record run<\/a><\/p>\n

One of L&G\u2019s most profitable specialisms has been the taking over of the assets and liabilities of legacy pension funds, deals known as pension risk transfer or PRT, and landed \u00a33.4 billion worth of deals in the half, up from \u00a31.5 billion last time.<\/p>\n

\"Antonio<\/p>\n

Ant\u00f3nio Sim\u00f5es<\/p>\n

LEGAL &AMP; GENERAL<\/p>\n

Sim\u00f5es said that in the UK alone, L&G was actively pricing on or could see \u00a342 billion worth of potential deals being done in the next 12 months, including nine of more than \u00a31 billion each.<\/p>\n

He was unperturbed by the arrival of the private equity group Apollo Global Management, whose European insurance business Athora last month agreed a \u00a35.7 billion deal to buy one of the UK\u2019s most active PRT players, Pension Insurance Corp<\/a>. Canada\u2019s giant Brookfield has also entered the PRT market, last week making a \u00a32.4 billion agreed cash offer for Just Group<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Employers are keen to offload legacy defined benefit pension schemes, which have long since been closed to their existing employees and are seen by most as a costly distraction. L&G this year struck PRT deals with Deutsche Bank, Inchcape Motors, Sanofi and Honda UK.<\/p>\n

While Rachel Reeves is introducing measures to try to encourage employers to \u201crun on\u201d their DB schemes<\/a> in the hope they will push into more productive assets, the insurance industry is confident of huge amounts of PRT business in the next five years.<\/p>\n

\u2022 L&G to hand \u00a35bn back to shareholders after selling US life business<\/a><\/p>\n

Phoenix Group\u2019s Standard Life division today announced its biggest PRT deal to date, a \u00a31.9 billion buy-in of the part of the DB scheme sponsored by the insurance broking giant Marsh McLennan, taking on pension promises to 6,500 people.<\/p>\n

Sim\u00f5es, a former Santander banker<\/a> who took the top job at L&G in January 2024<\/a>, said momentum in the business was building after signing an alliance with the Japanese insurer Meiji Yasuda in February and a deal with Blackstone last month to push deeper into private assets.<\/p>\n

L&G was on track to return \u00a35 billion to shareholders<\/a> over three years through buybacks and dividends, he said. The interim dividend was set at 6.12p, up 2 per cent, as expected. Many investors hold L&G as an income stock, attracted by the yield of around 8.4 per cent.<\/p>\n

Shares in L&G were marked down as some analysts expressed disappointment about the solvency ratio, a key measure of capital strength, which dropped to 217 per cent from 223 per cent. Sim\u00f5es said he was very comfortable with the number. In afternoon trading the shares were down 6\u00bcp, or 2.4 per cent, at 255\u00bcp.<\/p>\n

L&G is one of Britain\u2019s biggest pensions and savings groups and includes an asset management arm responsible for \u00a31.1 trillion of assets. Total assets under management dropped by 1 per cent in the period because of falling bond prices and a weaker dollar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Legal & General\u2019s chief executive is eyeing up \u00a342 billion worth of pension risk transfer deals and said…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48043,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[84,4176,4174,4175,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-48042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-finance","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48042\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}