A historic name in the Scottish financial services industry has been officially resurrected as a player on the London Stock Exchange.
Phoenix Group has today officially changed its name to Standard Life plc, eight years after it acquired the life and pensions business of the venerable institution in 2018. The move underlines the progress that the Phoenix pensions and savings and retirement solutions businesses have made since the company began selling policies under the Standard Life brand.
Phoenix acquired the life and pensions of Standard Life book for £3.2 billion from Standard Life Aberdeen (now Aberdeen) in 2018 in a move that signalled a major change of direction for the company. It switched the focus of Phoenix from consolidating the closed pension books built by firms that had stopped taking on new business to a strategy of selling Standard Life branded policies.
Phoenix then acquired the Standard Life brand outright in February 2021 as Standard Life Aberdeen pursued a future in investment management. Announcing its change of name to Standard Life at corporate level today, Phoenix declared it has built leading positions in a number of markets since acquiring the brand, including workplace pensions, individual annuities, and pension risk transfer.
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Standard Life plc, which manages around £300 billion of assets on behalf of 12 million customers, set a new target today to help three million more customers take action towards a "better retirement" over the next decade.
Andy Briggs, chief executive of Standard Life plc, said: “For more than 200 years, Standard Life has stood beside its customers, helping them plan and prepare for their long-term financial futures. Today, as Standard Life plc, we are proud to manage £300bn in assets on behalf of 12 million customers.
“Our purpose is helping people secure a life of possibilities, and I am proud to announce our new target, which embodies our belief that everyone’s journey to and through retirement can be better. Over the next ten years, we will help three million more customers take action to achieve better retirement outcomes.”
Phoenix first announced plans to change its corporate identity in September, when it declared that Standard Life had become its “most trusted brand”. The move by the company, which employs around 2,000 people at its Standard Life operation in Edinburgh, had followed sustained speculation in the City of London.
While the company’s name has changed at parent group level, the individual brands within the group – including SunLife, Phoenix Life and ReAssure – will continue to operate as normal. A consumer brand campaign, “For the life we live”, featuring TV, radio, newspaper, digital and social advertising, has been launched communicate the name change.
Mr Briggs added: “The move to Standard Life plc supports our vision to be the UK’s leading retirement savings and income business, and demonstrates our commitment to helping customers achieve better outcomes and greater financial security in later life. We want Standard Life to be the business that people trust to guide their retirement journey."
Phoenix swooped for the life and pensions business of Standard Life following the £11bn merger of pensions giant Standard Life and Aberdeen Asset Management in 2017.
While the Standard Life brand has thrived since switching to Phoenix, the fortunes of former owner Standard Life Aberdeen have been more mixed. The company attracted derision for changing its name change to abrdn under former chief executive Stephen Bird in 2021. Mr Bird struggled to staunch net outflows from its major investment funds, and launched a major cost cutting drive that was expected to lead to hundreds of redundancies. However he oversaw the acquisition of interactive investor, a major "do-it-yourself" investment platform which is now a key plank of the Edinburgh-based business.
Mr Bird stepped down as chief executive in May 2024, when he was replaced by Jason Windsor, initially on an interim basis. Mr Windsor announced a change of the company’s name to Aberdeen in March 2024, declaring that scrapping the controversial “vowel-less” abrdn moniker would remove “distractions”. He is due to report the company’s annual results for 2025 to the City tomorrow.
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