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Legal & General Group Plc
Legal & General is a British financial services company that manages money, provides insurance, and pays out people's pensions.
Legal & General is one of Britain's biggest financial companies, and it makes money in a few different ways. It sells life insurance and pays out when people die, it runs "bulk annuities" where it takes over the pension promises of big companies and pays their retirees for decades, and it manages investments for people and institutions. That mix of insurance and money management is the core of the business.
The bulk annuity business is the engine that surprises most people. When a large company wants to get pension risk off its books, it hands Legal & General a big pile of money and the job of paying its former workers for life. Legal & General invests that money and keeps whatever is left after paying the pensions, which is a slow, steady, decades-long bet on its own investment skill. It is a quiet giant in this market, alongside rivals like Rothesay (private) and Pension Insurance Corporation (private). On the asset management side, Legal & General runs funds for pension schemes, insurers, and individuals through its investment arm, and it also sells retirement products like annuities to people cashing in their pension pots. It earns fees on the money it manages, so the more assets it gathers, the more it collects. Unlike a pure fund manager, it also carries the risk that its insurance payouts outrun its investment returns.
Legal & General is a dividend machine, popular with UK income investors because it pays out a large share of its profits each year. The catch is that its insurance liabilities are long-tailed and sensitive to interest rates and life expectancy, so a bad stretch in markets or a change in how long people live can hit its capital. It sits in a crowded field: Aviva and Phoenix Group compete for the same pensions and insurance business, and BlackRock and Legal & General-style asset managers fight for the same institutional money.
Saved answer · last researched 14 Nov 2026
BIG PICTURE
Legal & General slipped to second in the UK pension buyout market, holding 18%
- 28% Rothesay
- 18% Legal & General
- 16% Standard Life
- 11% Aviva
- 27% Others
Pension risk transfer is a core part of how Legal & General makes money: it takes over company pension schemes and pays their members. In the first half of 2026 it wrote £1.9bn of these deals, an 18% share of the UK market, after leading with 27% in 2025. Rothesay now sits on top with 28%. Source: Investment & Pensions Europe, data from 2026
Timeline
Six Lawyers Start a Life Insurer
In 1836, six lawyers opened a life insurance society in a coffee shop on Chancery Lane, London, and at first it only sold policies to people in the legal profession. The twist was where they put the money: into the UK's earliest railways and real estate, which showed that invested capital could do good for society and earn a return at the same time. That idea, that you can make money and make things better, still guides the company today.
L&G Crosses the Atlantic
In the 1940s the company made its first move into the United States by buying the pensions business of Metropolitan Life Insurance Company of New York. That gave it a foothold it would build on for decades, and around forty years later it set up Legal & General America.
L&G Goes Public and Gets an Umbrella
In the 1970s the company listed on the London Stock Exchange, which meant anyone could buy a piece of it. In the same decade it set up Legal & General Investments to manage money for pension funds and other clients, and it launched the umbrella logo that starred in its first TV advert.
A Founding Member of the FTSE 100
When the UK launched the FTSE 100 index of its biggest listed companies, L&G was there as a founding member, a sign of how far the business had come. The decade was also about spreading out: it grew its life insurance business in the US and entered Europe by buying a Dutch life insurer.
The Mortgage Club Opens
In 1995 the company launched its Mortgage Club to help people find good-value mortgages and homes. It was a simple idea, connecting buyers with lenders, and it grew into something enormous: three decades later the club would be involved in one in four UK mortgages.
Betting on Affordable Homes
As the UK housing crisis got worse, the company did something unusual for a financial firm: in 2018 it launched Legal & General Affordable Homes to invest in and run residential property itself. The aim was to provide affordable housing across the country, making money for investors while meeting a real social need.
Goodbye to General Insurance
The company agreed to sell its General Insurance division to Allianz, effective at the start of 2020. From then on it stopped selling general insurance altogether and focused on investment management, lifetime mortgages, pensions, annuities and life assurance.
A New Chief Executive Takes Over
In 2023 António Simões replaced Sir Nigel Wilson, who had run the company for a decade. He inherited a share price that lagged behind peers, and a bulk annuities business, the company's golden goose, that would eventually run out of deals to feed it.
One Asset Management Business
In 2024 the company merged its asset management arm LGIM with its alternative assets unit Legal & General Capital into a single Asset Management business. The new boss called the plan 'simpler and better-connected', built around three divisions, and put housebuilder Cala Homes up for sale.
Selling the US Insurance Arm
In early 2025 the company announced the sale of its US general insurance subsidiary to Meiji Yasuda for 2.3 billion dollars, and the two formed a long-term partnership to strengthen its hand in US pension risk transfer. With Cala also sold, the big disposals were done.
The Biggest Buyback in Its History
The 2025 results showed core operating profit up 6% and earnings per share up 9%, and the company announced a £1.2bn share buyback, the largest it had ever done, bringing planned returns to shareholders to £2.4bn over the next year. It described itself as a sharper, more focused business, still leading in pension risk transfer, with asset management at a turning point.