Legal and General (L&G)

Legal and General (L&G) was formed in 1836 and is headquartered in London, UK. Its products and services include life insurance, general insurance, pensions and investment management.

Legal and General partnered with specialist buy-to-let lender Landbay in July 2017 to launch a ‘quoting engine’ insurance service for landlords. It was slated as a ‘point-of-demand’ service delivered via insurance technology firm Kasko to enable real-time quoting and underwriting of building, contents, tenant and rent guarantee insurance.

In August 2017 Money Marketing report that L&G’s assets under management had increased 13 per cent to £951.1bn with external net inflows more than doubling to £21.7bn, compared to £9.6bn in H1 2016. The asset manager was gaining market share in retail markets ranking first for UK net sales in Q2, according to a Pridham report. Total inflows for the first six months were £1.7bn, compared to £700m for the same period last year. Index funds suffered net outflows overall totalling £4.3bn, largely from UK defined benefit clients switching to other products, but saw net inflows from retail clients.

In the same month, L&G reported in its half-year results that its individual annuity sales had climbed 118 per cent following a distribution deal signed with Aegon in 2016. L&G saw individual annuity business rise to £345m compared with £158m at the same time in 2016. L&G’s retirement arm had 550,000 individual annuity customers and managed over £21bn in assets. In March 2018, L&G reported a 78 per cent boost in individual annuity sales in 2017, the highest volume it had seen since 2014, the year before pension freedoms were introduced.

In December 2017, Legal and General sold off just over a million closed book policies to reinsurer Swiss Re. The £650m deal saw ReAssure, Swiss Re’s UK closed book consolidator, take control of 1.1 million policies which included with-profit, unit-linked and savings products.

By March 2018, Legal & General Home Finance was set to diversify beyond offering lifetime mortgages in 2018, according to managing director Steve Ellis. The L&G arm has only handled lifetime mortgages since the firm entered the market by buying Newlife Home Finance in 2015.