Legal & General Assurance Society and K3 Advisory have each revealed bulk annuities agreed last autumn with small schemes.
Legal & General today announced it agreed an £11m (€13m) buyout with the Cornish Mutual Assurance Company Limited Staff Pension Scheme in November, while K3 said that in September it completed a £12m full buy-in for a scheme of a global family-owned retail business.
The former deal covers the benefits of over 70 pension scheme members, and the latter those of 132 deferred and 134 pensioner members.
Cornish Mutual is a team of insurance professionals that aim to protect the rural farming community in the south-west of England. The scheme is an existing asset management client of Legal & General Group.
Tiziana Perrella, professional trustee at Dalriada Trustees, said deals such as that between Cornish Mutual and Legal & General showed that “great pricing is available within the bulk annuity market for schemes of all sizes, if appropriate preparation has been done in advance”.
At K3 Advisory, Adam Davis, managing director, said: “Using our no-nonsense approach to the broking of small schemes, we were able to attract multiple insurers to bid. This competitive tension led to good pricing being received and no contribution from the sponsoring employer was required.”
Gerard Francis, head of UK design and strategic risk at Schroders Solutions, said: “Even at this small size of transaction, we were able to implement a price lock for the scheme that gave assurance over pricing while the contract was being agreed.”
Brunel adds co-managers to sustainable equities portfolio
Brunel Pension Partnership, one of the eight local government pension scheme pools in the UK, has appointed Jupiter and Mirova as additional co-managers on its sustainable equities portfolio.
The portfolio was launched in 2020 with £1.2bn in assets under management, but has since grown to £2.5bn as more of Brunel’s clients have moved funds.
Brunel said it had therefore appointed further managers to take on a proportion of the larger AUM and to support broader risk management.
“Following the growth of the fund, we received considerable interest in the new mandates,” said David Jenkins, portfolio manager at Brunel. “We are delighted to add these two exceptional sustainable managers to the fund.”
The portfolio focuses on listed equities and aims to have managers pursuing companies that will provide a benefit to society.
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