A leading european insurer, Swiss Re, has announced it is to close its variable annuities and pensions business in an effort to scale back on its retirement-related activities.
There are 11 London employees, seven New York staff and four contractors that are part of the team, which is headed up by Richard Farr. Swiss Re have confirmed that all 18 permanent posts are at risk of redundancy and said that it was currently undertaking the appropriate consultations with the staff concerned.
Key structuring staff could possibly be transferred to its life & health division and other key people dealing with the likes of pricing, modelling and hedging capabilities might also be retained, within their asset management division.
Swiss Re stated that they are continually adjusting their core activities and ensuring they dedicate their capital to business types with the highest risk-adjusted ongoing earnings potential.
They added that in their view retirement-related activities are facing challenging market conditions, and that they expect this to persist into 2010/11. Therefore, profitability of these businesses will be reduced by certain factors, including the higher costs involved in hedging financial market risk.
It is probably fair to say that they were not a big player in the variable annuity market place, and certainly not in pension annuities generally.
If you have been checking out annuity quotes for the best annuity rates, they wouldn’t have come up.
