Quarterly buyouts and buy-ins approach £1bn

Lane Clark & Peacock (LCP) figures, seen exclusively by PW, reveal the insurer wrote nearly £400m worth of business, including the £53m Alitalia deal announced in July.

The largest transactions were an unannounced £300m-plus deal by Pension Corporation and a June £220m pensioner buy-in by Legal & General (L&G) for 11,000 members of a scheme with an unnamed FTSE 250 sponsor.

The only other deal announced in the period was Lucida’s £100m Merchant Navy Officers Pension Fund top-up of its initial £500m buy-in last September.

L&G did £300m of business, 33% of the total, followed by Lucida with 11% and Aviva and MetLife with 7% each.

Pension Corporation partner Jay Shah said the company’s additional £350m of deals are to be disclosed shortly – at least one is expected in the next fortnight – adding one of them was a full scheme buyout and the rest buy-ins.

L&G annuities managing director Simon Gadd said the company completed 26 small deals in the second quarter, adding: “We’ve seen demand slow a bit for the larger deals but a lot of smaller ones are still going through.”