The largest enhanced bulk annuity transaction to date was completed when Partnership secured a £22m medically underwritten buy-in with an unnamed scheme.

The trustees chose to remove the concentration of risk associated with their scheme's highest liability pensioner members, and the deal covers around 20 of these members.

The scheme's trustees chose Partnership's medically underwritten buy-in as the health information gathered from the provider's one-page medical questionnaire enabled them to offer a competitive buy-in quotation.

Hymans Robertson was the scheme's lead adviser during the process and the firm's partner and head of buy-out solutions James Mullins said: "This is by far the largest medically underwritten buy-in to date and given the competitive pricing and current client demand, I strongly expect the market for these transactions to grow rapidly over the next year and beyond.

"For trustees and sponsoring employers understandably concerned about their concentration of risk, an enhanced buy-in is a tailored and cost effective way of managing their scheme's liabilities. In this case, Partnership's competitive price allowed the pension scheme to remove this risk at a cost below their technical provisions reserves."
David Harvey, Partnership head of de-risking solutions, said: "The nature and size of this transaction demonstrates how medically underwritten buy-ins can play a significant part in the de-risking of any size of scheme, including those larger schemes looking to remove the risk of those with the highest liabilities."

Since December 2012 Partnership has written over £37m of medically underwritten bulk annuity business for defined benefit (DB) schemes.

First published 24.09.2013

monique_simpson@wilmington.co.uk