Want an explanation?
Brookfield are investing in Just, Brookfield are investing in Utmost and Utmost are the renamed Equitable Life. Utmost are what is known in offshore financial services as a “death insurance company”
A death company?
Utmost is split – a part of it is called “Utmost Wealth” . This part of its operations is actually Utmost International – which used to be Generali and now owns Quilter International which used to be Old Mutual and before that Skandia.
It is doing well , publishing its 2025 accounts in June
The list of indignities to policyholders with policies using these companies is well documented. The term “death insurance company” is from Angie Brooks and relates to the capacity of the capacity such companies have to kill off investment plans , turning them to saving scams
The UK part of Utmost is Utmost Life and Pensions
Like Utmost International , Utmost Life and Pensions is owned by the Utmost Group, which is owned by its founders, Paul Thompson and Ian Maiden.
This is not just the legacy of Equitable Life but a newly created buy-out facility for UK DB pension funds. Capital for this is managed by Oaktree Capital Holdings, LLC. Oaktree, in turn, is majority-owned by Brookfield Asset Management. Utmost is in ultimate ownership, a sister company to Just.
This is not the impression we are being given in the UK. Jonathan Stapleton has written about Utmost in this week’s Professional Pensions.
The picture that Utmost is painting is of a UK life company with sound foundations
“trusted sector experience”
The picture of Aylesbury reminds us of where Equitable were based and Utmost are based today.
Before we get too carried away with Utmost as the customer’s friend, let’s remember the awful reputation that Utmost needs to clear up internationally.
Secondly, let’s question the concentration of ownership of British life companies involved in buying into and eventually buying out British pensions. Apollo has done it this year with PIC, Brookfield has done it this year with Just and Utmost is the new kid on the block for small DB schemes.
Brookfield has of course a Bermuda subsidiary that takes care of the management of life companies. No doubt the PRA’s recent expressions of concern at the opacity of Bermuda as a centre for insurance and reinsurance backed by private capital extends to Utmost.
It is a very long way from Aylesbury to Canada, the USA and Bermuda where Utmost’s owners are based. The homely pictures of Aylesbury provided to Professional Pensions and talk of being built on “trusted sector experience“, Utmost is the inheritor of Equitable Life and the inheritor of death companies in the Isle of Man, let’s not be too keen to see it as an example of “trusted sector experience”
