£1 billion payout for Equitable Life policyholders

24 Feb 2015 02:35 PM

Over £1 billion has been paid out to Equitable Life policyholders through the Equitable Life Payments Scheme.

The Economic Secretary has yesterday confirmed that over £1 billion has been paid out to Equitable Life policyholders through the Equitable Life Payments Scheme.

The scheme was set up by the government in 2011 to make fair and transparent payments to policyholders who suffered financial losses as a result of government maladministration which occurred in the regulation of Equitable Life.

Since the last progress report in October 2014, the scheme has issued payments to a further 9,000 policy holders, meaning that over 896,000 eligible policyholders have now had tax-free payments.

The figures are broken down as follows:

• 412,445 payments to individual investors have been issued totalling £560.3 million
• 37,764 With-Profits Annuitants (WPAs) or their estates have been issued payments by the Scheme. These Initial and subsequent payments total £271.4 million
• 446,158 payments totalling £169.3 million have been issued to those who bought their policy through their company pension scheme

The scheme remains committed to tracing and paying as many eligible policyholders as possible and will consider all proportionate actions it can take to do this. Significant efforts have already been made, including extensive electronic tracing methods, writing to policyholders’ last known addresses, working with other government departments and liaising with group scheme trustees.

Economic Secretary to the Treasury, Andrea Leadsom said:

I am pleased to announce that this government has now paid out over £1 billion to Equitable Life policyholders.

While we’ve had to take many tough decisions on spending during this Parliament, we’ve been determined to do what we can to tackle the legacy of Equitable Life. And that’s why I’m proud to confirm we have helped almost 900,000 Equitable Life policyholders with over £1 billion worth of payments.

View the February 2015 progress report