A £1.7bn insurance transaction covering the UBS section of the UBS (UK) Group Pension Plan has been completed, with more than 7,000 members included. The plan’s trustee and Legal & General (L&G) say the deal transfers the scheme’s covered pension risks to the insurer through a buy-in, rather than paying members a cash settlement.
What the transaction covers
The contract relates to the plan’s UBS section. A buy-in is an insurance policy held by a pension scheme: the insurer receives a premium and, under the policy terms, makes payments to the scheme intended to match some or all of the pension benefits it has insured. The scheme remains responsible for paying its members. That differs from a buyout, in which an insurer takes on responsibility for paying members directly and the scheme can ultimately be wound up once the relevant steps are complete.
The distinction matters because completion of a buy-in does not mean that members have been handed £1.7bn, that their pensions have been cashed in, or that the entire plan has necessarily been bought out. The figure describes the size of the insurance transaction, not an individual payment. The announcement does not publish the contract’s detailed terms, member-by-member benefit calculations, or a timetable for any change in how pensions are administered.
Hedge moved as part of the deal
A notable feature is the novation to L&G of an existing longevity hedge with Zurich. A longevity hedge is designed to reduce a scheme’s exposure to the risk that pensioners live longer, and therefore receive payments for longer, than assumptions used in its planning. Novation transfers the relevant contractual relationship from one counterparty to another; the announcement presents this transfer as part of the wider buy-in. It does not set out the hedge’s value or say that longevity risk has disappeared altogether.
The transaction follows a £900m buy-in for the plan’s Credit Suisse section in 2024. L&G says benefits for both sections are now secured with it. The two transactions are separate steps, rather than one combined contract: the newly completed £1.7bn policy concerns the UBS section, while the earlier deal covered the Credit Suisse section.
Risk transfer and member security
Pension schemes use insurance transactions to reduce exposure to risks such as investment returns, interest-rate movements and increases in the cost of providing benefits. By exchanging assets and a premium for an insurer’s contractual payments, trustees seek greater certainty over the liabilities covered by the policy. The extent of that protection depends on the policy terms and the scheme’s remaining assets, liabilities and governance; a buy-in is not a statement that every possible risk has been removed.
The parties describe the transaction as a way to strengthen member security and complete the de-risking of the two sections. That is their stated rationale, not a promise of a particular outcome for each individual. Members’ entitlements continue to depend on the scheme rules and their own benefit records. The available announcement gives no indication that members need to take action or that their normal payment arrangements are changing.
A large deal in a busy market
The parties call it the largest UK pension risk-transfer deal announced so far in 2026. L&G also says it has written £5.7bn of pension risk-transfer business globally year to date and has a £73bn portfolio of pension risk-transfer annuities. Those figures provide market context, but they refer to L&G’s broader business and are not measures of the UBS plan’s assets or of the value of benefits for any one member.
For trustees, a transaction of this scale illustrates how a scheme may combine insurance with existing risk-management arrangements, including a longevity hedge. For members, the practical point is narrower: the trustee has completed an insurer contract for the UBS section, covering more than 7,000 people, while the scheme remains the route through which insured benefits are paid. The contract is a significant financing and risk-management step, not a direct cash award or confirmation that all pension risks have ended.
