Norwich Union inherited estate suffers huge loss
The Norwich Union inherited estate lost 33 per cent of its value, falling from 2.1 billion to £1.4 billion according to preliminary results released by Aviva. This huge fall in value was blamed on “substantial reductions in the value of equity and property investments.”Apart from the awful, but unsurprising, news on the value of the estate, Aviva had very little to add regarding Norwich Union reattribution. They restated their position that due the fall in value of the estate the original reattribution offer “no longer meets our criteria of being fair to both policyholders and shareholders”. They repeated that negotiations with the Policyholder Advocate to “create a restructured offer continue and we hope to be in a position to update policyholders in the next few months”.
Office of The Policyholder Advocate, Clare Spottiswoode, says she is still confident a restructured deal can be reached and is aiming to keep the main “planks” of deal reached in July. This would mean “policyholders will have their own individual choice about whether to take cash, or turn down the offer, keep all their rights and be secure in the knowledge that they will be in much the same position as they are now, against a wide range of economic circumstances.”
Perhaps the only thing policyholders can rely on is that the delays and uncertainty will continue and that their payout, if it eventually arrives, will be lower.
