Retirement Advantage is a specialist in the UK retirement income market, offering guaranteed annuities and innovative retirement solutions. Its flagship product, The Retirement Account, was developed in response to legislative changes and provided retirees with a unique blend of certainty and flexibility, combining guaranteed annuity income and drawdown options within a single, tax-efficient product.
Initial investment
2013
Sector
Financial Services
Initial transaction size
£120m
We identified Retirement Advantage as an undercapitalised platform with strong growth prospects in a bespoke and undersupplied sector of the UK annuities market.
The business offered attractive unit economics and embedded downside protection through a back book of annuities acquired at a discount. We believed that with an injection of capital, the company could achieve significant market share gain and in addition, there was scope for margin improvement through implementing various operational improvements.
Working closely with management, we fundamentally repositioned the business in response to market changes and in combination with the acquisition of Stonehaven, set about building a market-leading equity release mortgage platform. This platform originated loans both for Retirement Advantage and for third parties, creating a scalable source of fee income and growth.
During our ownership, Retirement Advantage achieved substantial cost efficiencies, improved investment performance and launched a new, market-leading retirement solution.
In 2018, the business was sold to Canada Life Group.