Quilter has disposed of Quilter Life Assurance (QLA), four months after the sale was first announced.
The life business was bought by Reassure Group for around £445m ($589.9m, €525.9m), comprising £425m in cash and £20m in accrued interest payable up to the completion date.
The company passed to Reassure on 1 January 2020 through a “lock-box mechanism” sale – where the purchase price payable on completion is fixed.
The board of Quilter considered the surplus after costs and expenses to be £375m, which is “available for return to shareholders in full”, the firm said.
The sale of QLA was first rumoured in July 2019.
The life assurance business is predominantly closed book, made up of products sold over the last 30 years and the sale includes Old Mutual Wealth’s open protection products.
Equitable Life
Utmost Life and Pensions started 2020 with a bang, having completed the business transfer of The Equitable Life Assurance Society.
Equitable Life is the first and oldest mutual life assurance company in the UK and was established in 1762.
The move adds £6.2bn in assets under management and 300,000 customers to Utmost Life and Pensions (formerly Reliance Life).
It does not include Irish and German policies, however. They will remain with Equitable Life, which has become a subsidiary of Utmost.
The business transfer was agreed by Equitable Life policyholders in November 2019 and subsequently approved by the UK high court in December 2019.
Utmost said that Equitable Life with-profits policyholders will receive an immediate one-off uplift, which is expected to be between 65-75%, depending on final calculations.
Investment guarantees were removed, and the with-profits policies were converted to unit-linked ones.
