The top four British life assurers that have benefited the most from pension transfers are Standard Life Aberdeen, Royal London, Prudential and Aviva, Broadstone has revealed.

According to information obtained by the Financial Times, these life assurers have gained billions of pounds of new business following the pension reforms.

As one of the few firms publishing details regarding its pension transfer activity, the Financial Times noted that in the first half of the year, Standard Life obtained around £900m to its drawdown products. The firm then completed its merger with Aberdeen Asset Management in August.

Also, in the same period, Aviva’s platform business took around £750m from pension transfers.

The other firms have not provided a clear breakdown of their transfer business.
As noted by Mercer, around £50bn has been released from defined benefit pension schemes as thousands of people have exchanged their guaranteed retirement income for a lump sum over the last two years.

Recent analysis from Equifax Touchstone published earlier this month found that flexible drawdown pension transfers increased by £114m in Q2 2017 to £954m, despite continued political and market.

Commenting on its position as a top beneficiary in the transfer market, Royal London director of policy Steve Webb told Pensions Age: “On this issue we are very clear that we want the right people to transfer and the wrong people not to. It’s clearly a very personal and individual-specific decision.

“We believe people should take impartial financial advice and should take heed to that advice when deciding whether or not to transfer. But we have certainly found that impartial advisers are regularly choosing Royal London products as the destination for these funds when a transfer goes ahead. We spend quite a lot of time supporting advisers, helping make sure they are up-to-speed on the latest regulatory changes so that the quality of advice is as good as possible.”

In addition, the Financial Conduct Authority is investigating whether independent financial advisers are giving suitable advice on transfers as the regulator’s recent findings showed that less than half of defined benefit transfer recommendations were found to be suitable.

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