Scottish Widows completes £4bn longevity swap with Swiss Re

Scottish Widows today completed a longevity swap with Swiss Re covering £1.3bn of pension liabilities.

The transaction transfers longevity risk on the covered book from Scottish Widows to Swiss Re, using a reinsurance structure similar to earlier UK pension plan longevity deals.

The swap follows the sale of a £6bn Scottish Widows buy-in portfolio to Rothesay in March 2024, which removed a large block of bulk annuity liabilities from Scottish Widows’ balance sheet.

Swiss Re has experience in UK longevity risk transfer, having provided reinsurance to Friends Life Limited, now part of Aviva Group, for its longevity insurance transaction with the Trustees of the Scottish & Newcastle Pension Plan.

--- Sources: https://www.swissre.com https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/5436417.pdf?abstractid=5436417&mirid=1 https://www.hymans.co.uk/media/mr1oxt5l/risk-transfer-report-2025.pdf