Legal & General (L&G) has completed a trio of buy-ins totalling £785m with pension schemes sponsored by the UK arm of mining company Anglo American.
The buy-ins – completed as a single transaction – covered the benefits of more than 5,100 pensioners and 2,500 deferred members, according to a press release from the insurer.
The three schemes are the Tarmac UK Pension Scheme, the Tarmac ‘B’ Pension Scheme and the Anglo UK Pension Scheme. The buy-ins are L&G’s first announced transaction of the year, although it said it had completed on deals worth a combined £1.2bn in 2025 so far.
L&G provided a price lock for the three pension schemes, based on their asset portfolios. The insurer said this helped ensure pricing certainty while the terms of the deal were finalised.
Ben Stone, risk transfer partner at Mercer, said bringing the three schemes to market in one deal “required significant planning and co-ordination across trustees and advisers”.
“We were pleased with the engagement from the wider market in this competitive process, and securing buy-ins for all three schemes is a great outcome for the membership who have benefited from being part of a combined approach compared to going to market alone,” Stone explained.
Christopher Stiles, partner at Gowling WLG, added: “Taking three related, but very different, schemes to the market on a combined basis brought significant opportunities to achieve a better outcome for scheme members, and everybody involved in the project rose to the challenge of delivering it.”
Keith Jackson and Tony Davies, who chair the pension schemes’ trustee boards, said the buy-ins reflected “many years of hard work” on a long-term de-risking strategy.
They added: “L&G was selected for a number of qualitative factors, including its long and successful track record in both the bulk and individual annuity business, financial strength and administration capabilities, with a deep-seated commitment to customer care.”
Mercer was lead transaction adviser, while Gowling WLG and Sackers provided legal advice to the trustees.
Andrew Kail, CEO for L&G’s Institutional Retirement business, said the transaction marked a “strong start to another busy year in the pension risk transfer market”.
“The outlook for this year remains exceptionally positive and with a busy market our pipeline remains as strong as ever across all sizes of transactions,” Kail said.
On top of the £1.2bn worth of transactions competed this year, L&G said it was “actively pricing” on new bulk annuity business worth a combined £17bn.
In June last year, L&G said it was targeting bulk annuity new business volumes of £65bn by the end of 2028.
