Axa will be saying farewell to Serbia shortly, after the insurer announced today that it had agreed to sell its operations in the country. The Paris-headquartered company said in a statement that it had entered an agreement to sell both its life and savings and its property and casualty operations in Serbia to Vienna Insurance […]

John Lawson, head of retirement solutions policy at Aviva, said while no decision has been made on whether the provider will buy annuities it is eyeing the possibility of insuring DB schemes who may want to purchase second hand policies.  Mr Lawson predicted defined benefit schemes would be the major investors in secondary annuities. He […]

A substantial number of catastrophes and comparatively sparse reinsurance cover drove the US primary P&C market to its worst first quarter underwriting result since 2011. In a report released this week (6 July) AM Best said the industry’s combined ratio deteriorated by 1.6 percentage points year-on-year to 97.4 percent in the first quarter of 2016. […]

US insurer Arthur J Gallagher & Co has today purchased an 85 per cent interest in a Swedish speciality insurance broker Brim. The value of the deal was not disclosed by the companies. “For many years, we have had a successful correspondent trading relationship with Brim, during which time we developed strong working relationships with […]

Aviva has promised to hand out half its earnings as dividends, in a show of strength for the restructured insurer despite the slump in its shares following the Brexit vote. The FTSE 100 group, which bought Friends Life last year to expand in pensions and bolster its balance sheet, told investors it will pay out 50pc of its operating […]

Shares in the insurance and price comparison group Esure jumped by almost 15pc after a report the firm was attracting takeover interest, forcing it to deny that it had heard from a suitor. Esure, which hired Deutsche Bank to run a strategic review of its Go Compare price comparison site earlier this month, said it continued […]

Lloyd’s has identified that 4 percent of its global gross written premium (GWP) is likely to be affected by the UK’s withdrawal from the EU single market. In documents outlining Lloyd’s proposed plan following a UK exit from the European Union, the Corporation said that approximately £800mn ($1.1bn) of GWP would be affected. This comprises […]

Legal & General has announced £4bn of retirement new business sales in the first half of 2016, as lifetime mortgages sales overtake annuity sales. Legal & General Group stated its retirement division had experienced strong new business sales in the first half of 2016, with minimal disruption caused by uncertainties over the outcome of the […]

Just Retirement has bought a £95m chunk of FTSE 250 company Galliford Try’s defined benefit pension scheme. The pension provider referred to the transaction as “the latest in a series of steps the pension scheme trustees have taken to reduce risk in their investment portfolio”. The £95m portion represents 43 per cent of the scheme’s […]

Legal & General (L&G) has outstripped its total bulk annuity sales from last year in just the first six months of 2016 after acquiring a £3 billion back-book from Aegon. Following the transaction in May, L&G has today reported bulk annuity business of £3.6 billion in the first half of 2016, compared with £2.4 billion […]