Aegon further reduces annuity holdings with £3bn book sale

The firm, which employs 2,000 staff at its Edinburgh Park headquarters and another 400 throughout the UK, has sold a £3bn annuity book to Legal & General.

The sale comes hot-on-the-heels of last month’s deal to sell a £6bn portfolio to Rothesay Life and now leaves it with annuity liabilities of only £1bn, with a further £275m of capital freed up under the Solvency II regime.

Adrian Grace, chief executive of Aegon UK, said: “Having not been an active player in the annuity market since 2010, it made perfect sense to sell a non-core element of the business and allow us to further accelerate the growth of our platform and protection businesses.”

Signalling support for the UK business’s ambitions in the platform market, where it has recently doubled assets under management to £20bn with an acquisition from Blackrock, the Dutch insurer’s chief executive Alex Wynaendts said: “Achieving the divestment of our UK annuity portfolio is an important step in the strategic repositioning of our business in the UK.

“The divestment enables us to fully focus on growing our platform business.”