British mutual Royal London published its interim 2024 results on 2nd August, which said that operating profit before tax increased by 13% to £144m (H1 2023: £127m), life and pensions new business sales were up 4% to £5,048m (H1 2023: £4,865m) and assets under management increased to £169bn (31st December 2023: £162bn).
But for those in the UK’s bulk purchase annuity market, something else was more interesting than the actual results.
“We continued to build our bulk annuity proposition in advance of our planned market entry later this year, focusing on leveraging our capabilities to deliver an attractive solution for trustees and their members. As previously announced, we transacted a full scheme buy-in policy with the Trustee of the Royal Liver UK Pension Scheme in November 2023 followed by a bulk annuity buy-in policy in January 2024 to insure a subset of members in the Royal London Group Pension Scheme. We successfully transacted a £30m full scheme buy-in contract in July, our first to an external pension scheme, which has validated our capabilities ahead of our planned market entry,” says Royal London’s announcement.
Royal London hinted at an entry into the market back in March when it announced its annual results for 2023, but at that time, there was no mention publicly of when it might do so.
A spokesperson declined to comment further.
