LONDON, (17 December 2018) - Aon, the leading global professional services firm providing a broad range of risk, retirement and health solutions, has advised the Trustee of the Reuters Pension Fund and Thomson Reuters on a £625 million full pensioner buy-in for the Reuters Pension Fund with Canada Life.
The transaction, the largest so far by Canada Life, is the first in a framework of buy-in transactions for the scheme and covers the majority of pensioner liabilities in the £2.2 billion fund.  

Aon advised the scheme throughout the transaction which was completed by Aon’s market-leading Compass platform. This enabled the scheme to move quickly at a time when pricing was attractive and, given the significant economic benefit, allowed it to complete a larger transaction than originally envisaged. Sackers provided legal advice throughout the process, while Redington advised on the investment implications.

Greg Meekings, chair of trustees for the Reuters Pension Fund, said:
“This transaction has led to a major improvement to the security of our members' pensions by taking a significant amount of risk out of the scheme. We are grateful for the excellent advisory support provided by Aon, Sackers and Redington to work collaboratively and complete this transaction in such a short timescale. I would also like to acknowledge the positive sponsor support from Blackstone and Thomson Reuters."  

John Baines, head of Bulk Annuities at Aon, said:
“A decisive factor of this deal was the ability of the Trustee to manage a large buy-in alongside a major corporate transaction. In a very busy market, a key element of this was our use of Aon’s Compass platform which enabled us to capture attractive pricing in the market quickly and efficiently. We are also pleased to see Canada Life showing commitment to larger bulk annuity transactions - further increasing competition in the market."

Richard Priestley, Executive Director at Canada Life, said:
"This is Canada Life’s largest Bulk Buy-In transaction to date and follows a pleasing run of transactions over recent weeks. We worked closely with the team at Aon to effectively deliver a transaction with attractive pricing during our busiest period of the year. The magnitude of this deal reflects our strategy to specifically target transactions that meet our appetite for longevity risk.”

Media Contact
For further information please contact:
Colin Mayes                                          Tommy Cooper
Aon                                                       Kekst CNC
01372 733689                                         020 3755 1641
colin.mayes@aon.com                            aon@kekstcnc.com

Notes to Editors
About Aon
Aon plc (NYSE:AON) is a leading global professional services firm providing a broad range of risk, retirement and health solutions. Our 50,000 colleagues in 120 countries empower results for clients by using proprietary data and analytics to deliver insights that reduce volatility and improve performance.

Aon announced in May 2018 it will retire the business unit brands of Aon Benfield and Aon Risk Solutions, which follows the retirement of the Aon Hewitt business unit brand in 2017. This move was designed to increase the rate of innovation across the firm and make it easier for colleagues to work together to bring the best of Aon to clients. Aon has five specific global solution lines: Commercial Risk Solutions, Reinsurance Solutions, Retirement Solutions, Health Solutions and Data & Analytic Services.

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