Font control

Increase or decrease website font size.

Share this page

PIC completes second buy-in of the Qantas Airways (UK) Pension Scheme for £40 million

  • Buy-in, Buyout

Pension Insurance Corporation plc (‘PIC’), a specialist insurer of defined benefit pension funds, has concluded a c.£40 million bulk purchase annuity with the Qantas Airways Limited (UK) Retirement Benefits Scheme (‘the Scheme’), the pension scheme of Qantas Airways Limited, as part of a long-term partnership.

This is the second buy-in completed by the Scheme with PIC and means that PIC now covers the pensions of every member of the Scheme, the first buy-in for £25 million having occurred in 2018. The second deal is a full buy-in with the remaining 62 current pensioners and 168 deferred members covered. PIC has completed more than 75 repeat transactions with existing Trustee clients, covering £15 billion of liabilities and the pensions of more than 90,000 scheme members.

PIC received legal advice from Rachel Pinto, Pensions Partner, at Herbert Smith Freehills. The Trustees were advised by Aon with legal advice from Eversheds Sutherland and Reed Smith LLP in relation to benefits.

Qantas Dreamliner Qantas Dreamliner

Bojan Jokovic, Chair of the Trustees, said: “We are delighted to have completed this second buy-in with PIC, which covers the remaining uninsured members within the Scheme. This is part of a long-term de-risking strategy led by Aon over the past five years which has allowed us to complete this transaction despite the current uncertainty in the markets. PIC was flexible in helping us achieve our aims and I want to thank them and the Scheme’s advisers for their hard work.”


Mitul Magudia, Head of Business Development at PIC, said: “PIC is really pleased to have had the opportunity to work with the Trustees and Qantas Airways Limited again to significantly de-risk this scheme, providing greater security to all their members for the long-term. This transaction emphasises how smaller schemes can access competitive insurer pricing with attractive terms if they prepare and approach the market in the right way. We have the flexibility and scale to offer solutions to well-prepared schemes of all sizes that approach the market using well-governed processes.”

Michael Walker in Aon’s Risk Settlement Group said: “The two Qantas Airways buy-in transactions demonstrate the strength of Aon’s ‘Journey to Settlement’ proposition. Careful planning was carried out ahead of the 2018 buy-in, developing a clear strategic path to follow in the years ahead. Subsequent comprehensive data and benefits preparation, as well as timely investment de-risking, ensured the Trustees and Company could rapidly lock into favourable annuity pricing when the opportunity arose.”

- ends -


Notes to Editors:

For further information please contact:

 

PIC                                        
Clive Booth    
+44 (0)7780 599247
[email protected]

 

Apella Advisors                                
Will Melling  
+44(0)7763 749563                   
[email protected]  

 

About PIC
The purpose of PIC is to pay the pensions of its current and future policyholders. PIC provides secure retirement incomes through comprehensive risk management and excellence in asset and liability management, as well as exceptional customer service. At year end 2022, PIC had insured 302,200 pension scheme members and had £41 billion in financial investments, accumulated through the provision of tailored pension insurance buyouts and buy-ins to the trustees and sponsors of UK defined benefit pension schemes. To date, PIC has made total pension payments of £10.6 billion to its policyholders. Clients include FTSE 100 companies, multinationals and the public sector. PIC is authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and Prudential Regulation Authority (FRN 454345). For further information please visit www.pensioncorporation.com

Our use of cookies

We use cookies that are necessary to make our site work, if you use the text size control on our website to improve your viewing experience, this will set a functional cookie to maintain the font size for each page until you leave our site.

For more detailed information about the cookies we use, see our Cookie Policy


Analytics cookies

We’d also like to set analytics cookies to help us improve it; we will only do so if you give us permission by selecting ‘Enable Analytics’, or by selecting ‘Manage Cookies’ and clicking the ‘Enable analytics cookies’ checkbox. 

: