Phoenix from the Ashes

1998: Phoenix - Danny Cannon

As a financial planner that has been advising clients since 1991, like you I have seen many companies rebrand, rename and relaunch. The financial services industry is well known for its ability to produce seemingly endless amounts of paperwork and the constant renaming rather adds to the recycling bin. There are a number of companies that have made quite a name for themselves acquiring various insurance and investment companies over time. One that often causes clients to ask "who?" is Phoenix, who have taken over a multitude of companies and therefore policies over the last decade or so. The team here have been working on a few data cleaning tasks within our database, I was asked who was who. So it was with some amusement that I came across this chart that notes the "timeline" in the history of the company.

So perhaps now the advantage of this timeline chart you will be able to identify your NPI, London Life, Pearl, Scottish Mutual, Scottish Provident, Resolution, Ignis, Axial Investment, Liberty, Henderson Investors, Alba Life, Britannic Assurance, Century Life, Abbey National, Sun Alliance, Royal Life, Royal & Sun Alliance, Allianz Cornhill and Phoenix policy (to name a few).

Phoenix have something like £68bn under management and over 6 million policyholders. It calls itself "the largest UK consolidator of closed Life Assurance Funds"... I think we would agree. Have a look at the very useful tool on their site to figure out which company within the corporation is currently responsible for your old policy. Well done to Phoenix for makingt his tool available on the web.