Standard Life saw profit slump 35% in the first half of 2009, as pension sales weakened and asset values fell. Pre-tax operating profit came in at £348 million for the period, down from £534 million a year earlier. Net inflows from the group’s worldwide life and pensions operations stood at £662 million, compared with £1,842 [...]
Standard Life has reported a 20% fall in sales during the first quarter of 2009. Worldwide life and pensions sales declined to £3.6 billion, down from £4.5 billion in the same period in 2008, while in the UK new business sales fell 27% to £2.5 billion. However, the company said its first-quarter figures were better [...]
Aviva shares tumbled 7.5% to 253.5p after HSBC analyst Kailesh Mistry warned that dividends could be slashed in half this year. Concerns that tax changes to pensions in today’s Budget announcement also helped to fuel the shareholder exodus from Britain’s largest insurer. Reports in the Times newspaper suggested that the 20.5p drop in share price [...]
Standard Life has confirmed that it is restoring the value of its Pension Sterling Fund (PSF) with a £100 million injection of cash. The move will return customers to the positions they held before a recent valuation adjustment. Last month Standard Life reported that the £2.4 billion PSF had lost just under 5% of its [...]
Standard Life has placed limits on withdrawals from some of its property funds. Investors in up to six of the insurer’s commercial property funds have been told they will have to wait for six months to redeem their cash. Policyholders who are withdrawing their investments because they are retiring will not be affected, nor the [...]
Standard Life is proposing to reimburse some customers whose savings have lost value because they were invested in the insurer’s Sterling Fund. The £2.4 billion fund has had 5% of its value wiped out by the credit crisis, or around £1,237 per investor. The company is acknowledging that some people who put money in the [...]
Standard Life’s chief executive, Sandy Crombie, has received a knighthood in the New Year Honours. The accolade is for services to the insurance industry in Scotland and the 59-year-old Edinburgh-based boss is reported to be delighted and very proud. The award possibly reflects the fact that despite the credit crisis, Standard Life reported a 51% [...]
Standard Life has become the latest insurer to announce cuts in its final bonus payments on with-profits policies. Around two million customers could be affected by reductions of between 9% and 13%. In the case of a 25-year £50-a-month mortgage endowment policy, the maturity value will fall to £32,932 from £34,701 prior to the cut; [...]
Standard Life has been appointed by HSBC to provide a Group self-investment personal pension (SIPP) plan for employees who want to transfer maturing HSBC Share Reward Plans into a pension. The new Group SIPP complements HSBC’s existing defined benefit and defined contribution schemes and is available to all participants in UK HSBC share plans. The [...]
Standard Life is in the process of tracking down 200,000 individuals who can lay claim to part the £184 million in shares and cash that has remained unclaimed since the life and pensions provider was demutualised. Solicitors Georgeson has been appointed to help with the search and is raising interest by reporting that one person [...]
Standard Life has announced that it has added BlackRock’s UK Absolute Alpha fund to its insured product range. The fund, which is specially designed to give investors a positive absolute return in all market conditions, has been available from 5th August within the FundsNetwork Investment Bond. Managed by Mark Lyttleton and with £1,301.4 million in [...]
Standard Life has warned that 85% of its endowment policyholders are on red alert, meaning that they are facing a significant shortfall in policy maturity values. A further 8% are facing some degree of shortfall, albeit not significant, leaving only 7% of endowment policyholders likely to collect sufficient funds to pay off their mortgages. The [...]
Standard Life has paid over £1.3 million to settle a legal dispute with its former finance director, Alison Reed. Ms Reed left her post last year after working for the insurer for two years. According to the company’s annual report and accounts, she collected an agreed payment of £1,135,000, which included £97,500 towards her legal [...]
Standard Life surprised analysts by recording a 43% rise in operating profit in 2007. The insurer secured new business in high margin products while at the same time lowering costs. Underlying pre-tax profit rose 32%, to £714 million, despite investors withdrawing £249 million from policies that had not reached their maturity dates. In reporting the [...]
Standard Life is suggesting that Britons relying on equity released from their homes to provide a retirement income should check their calculations. Research undertaken by the insurer suggests that it might not provide the kind of retirement income many expect, with even large sums secured from downsizing delivering only a very small weekly return. For [...]
Standard Life has transferred £6.7 billion worth of the assets that back its annuities, to Canada Life International Reinsurance. The insurer has been keen to point out that this will make no difference to investors, who will remain customers of Standard Life. The transfer means that Standard Life no longer carries the risk that its [...]
Standard Life Investments has announced that it will no longer include airline stocks in its ethical funds. After surveying its investors, the fund manager found that 30% opted for a complete exclusion of airline stocks in ethical products. An option of investing only in airlines that are working to reduce their impact on the environment [...]
Insurer Standard Life has today announced a slowdown in top line revenues over the last quarter of 2007, despite the fact that the group reported an increase of 15% in its domestic pensions and life businesses over the course of last year, in light of difficult market conditions and growing competition. Over the last quarter, [...]
Standard Life has reported that at least 45% of its 63,000 mortgage endowment policyholders, whose policies mature during 2008, will not be facing a shortfall. In fact, the percentage could be higher because the company’s current projections do not take account of top-up payments under its “mortgage endowment promise”. The figure is a huge improvement [...]
JC Flowers & Co, the US private equity firm, is considering a takeover of Friends Provident, having acquired just under 3% of the company. Friends Provident, which is the UK’s fourth largest life insurer, is currently undertaking a strategic review instigated by the collapsed of its plans to merge with Resolution Life. The review will [...]
