Sompo Canopius group CEO Stuart Davies is to step down with immediate effect, the firm announced this morning. Michael Watson, founder and currently non-executive chairman of Sompo Canopius, will become executive chairman. He will be supported by chief underwriting officer Mike Duffy and chief financial and operating officer Paul Cooper. Davies joined the global specialty […]

The government will tackle disproportionate tax charges that sometimes arise from life insurance policy part-surrenders and part-assignments. There are two ways in which a customer can withdraw money from an investment bond; they can either make a partial withdrawal from all policy segments or they can do a complete closure of individual policy segments. The […]

The rate of insurance premium tax will rise from 10 per cent to 12 per cent from next June, Chancellor Philip Hammon announced in the Autumn Statement. The rise will be the third hike since last November 2015 and means insurance premium tax will have doubled from six per cent to 12 per cent in just over […]

Insurer AIG is considering moving its head office out of London following the UK’s decision to leave the EU. Anthony Baldwin, chief executive of AIG Europe, told the ABIconference that the company was considering a move to mainland Europe within the next year. ‘We might take the decision to move out of London in the next […]

Charles Taylor has agreed to buy Allied Dunbar International Fund Managers Limited and closed book of international life assurance business from Zurich. The deal will grow Charles Taylor’s life insurance business in the Isle of Man and allow the group to enter the international fund administration services market. This is the fifth life insurance acquisition Charles […]

Major insurer AXA is partnering with Silicon Valley insurance startup Trov to launch an on-demand, mobile-first service aimed at millennials in Britain. California-based Trov lets people buy flexible insurance for single items through their smartphones. If, for example, you have got an expensive camera sitting in your cupboard that you only occasionally use, you can […]

  As darkness fell one cold November evening in 1817, the citizens of Newcastle upon Tyne witnessed what must have seemed like a miracle — the city’s main streets were some of the first in the UK to be illuminated by gas, with the finance, and indeed management, provided by a local insurer, the Newcastle […]

AEGIS London has hired two senior executives from MS Amlin and Endurance respectively as it said it looks to consolidate its position as a leading Lloyd’s syndicate. Hermien Smeets-Flier has joined AEGIS London as chief financial officer and Graeme Tennyson as director of Risk and Compliance. Both will report to CEO David Croom-Johnson. Smeets-Flier joins […]

The European Union’s capital rules for insurers should be copied into UK law after the country leaves the bloc to avoid “regulatory limbo,” with only some elements changed to work better for UK consumers, an industry group said on Thursday. The Association of British Insurers (ABI) lobby group said there was no appetite among members to completely […]

LV is the next big insurance name to flee the enhanced annuity market with immediate effect. With annuity rates plummeting as the lower-for-longer interest rate environment persists, the announcement follows the earlier news that the insurer was reviewing its annuity operations. “The writing was on the wall,” said Hargreaves Lansdown’s pensions guru Tom McPhail. Unfortunately […]