Phoenix Group

The company was founded in 1857 as The Pearl Loan Company and operated from the Royal Oak Public House opposite the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. It changed its name to The Pearl Assurance Company in 1914, when it moved to 252 High Holborn where it was based until moving its head office to Peterborough 1989. In 1990, it was acquired by the Australian insurance group, AMP, and in 2003, Pearl, NPI and London Life were demerged from AMP to become part of Henderson Group.

In 2005, the Pearl Group was bought from Henderson Group by Sun Capital Partners (a business in which Hugh Osmond is a leading partner) and TDR Capital. It acquired Resolution Life in 2008 (including its Phoenix Assurance operations). In 2009, the business was acquired by the Liberty Acquisition Holdings (International) Company (a vehicle controlled by billionaire Nicolas Berggruen), which subsequently renamed itself Pearl Group.

In 2010, Pearl Group rebadged as Phoenix Group Holdings. In March 2014, the business sold Ignis Asset Management to Standard Life Investments, the asset management arm of Standard Life.

In 2018, Phoenix Group agreed to acquire Standard Life Assurance from Standard Life Aberdeen for £2.9 billion. As part of the transaction Standard Life Aberdeen retained a stake in the combined group.

In July 2020, Phoenix completed the acquisition of fellow closed book specialist ReAssure Group from Swiss Re.

ReAssure was founded in 1963 as the Occidental Life Insurance Company. In 1972 it moved to the Royal Borough of Windsor and adopted a name change to Windsor Life Assurance Company Limited. Windsor Life relocated to Telford in 1987 and grew via acquisition over the following decades buying books including UK Life, New Zealand Life, Continental Life, Grosvenor Life, Gresham Life, Aetna Life, Crown Financial Management, the UK business of Lifetime (a subsidiary of Bank of Ireland), Combined Life, RFSG (UK) plc and GAN UK plc. In 2004, following its 2003 acquisition of Zurich Life, Swiss Re acquires all shares of Windsor Life parent company Life Assurance Holding Company, followed in 2005 by the purchase of Reassure UK and Virgin Money Life. In 2006 the GE Life group of companies is added to the portfolio of acquisitions and in 2008 Barclays Life Assurance Co. Ltd is acquired. In 2011 Windsor Life is rebranded to ReAssure followed in 2012 by the transfer of almost 300,000 policies from Alico UK to ReAssure. 2015 saw the acquisition of the pension and annuity business of HSBC Life (UK), followed in 2016 by the purchase of Guardian Financial Services. In 2017 ReAssure agreed a deal to purchase 1.1 million policies from Legal and General and in 2019 the sale of Old Mutual Wealth Life Assurance ‘Heritage’ policies to ReAssure is completed.