IGG Reports £2.6 Billion in Bulk Annuity Transactions for 2025

Independent Governance Group (IGG), a leading provider of professional pensions trusteeship, governance and communications services, today announces that it completed over £2.6 billion of bulk annuity transactions in 2025.

The announcement comes after a record year for the risk transfer market, with 370 buy-ins completing and £38bn of premium transacted. IGG played a central role in helping schemes navigate this increasingly competitive, time critical and insurer selective environment.

IGG assisted on 28 transactions across 9 different insurers. Transactions ranged from £1.7m to £900m, comprising of full scheme and partial buy-ins. Over the course of the year, IGG completed 12 buy-outs.

While the buyout market continues to thrive, recent research from IGG shines light the changing dynamics of endgame, with improved funding conditions opening up a broader range of options.

While buyout is still the most appropriate option for a large number of schemes, it is no longer the default. Almost two-thirds of responding schemes (64%) have yet to decide how they would approach generating surplus once they reach their long-term funding objective. While maintaining a surplus is becoming a more realistic prospect, relatively few have translated that into a clear policy framework – only 17% have a clear plan for sharing future surplus, while 14% have a partial or unclear plan and 69% have no plan at all.

Hatty Goodwin, Head of Risk Transfer at IGG, said:

“As an increased surplus drives complexity at endgame, our best-in-class teams are working more closely than ever to help sponsors navigate this new era for schemes. Buyout remains a critical and popular option, and the market continues to strengthen. However, stronger financial circumstances open a broader range of doors for schemes both within risk transfer but also to run on with a managed surplus.

“Deciding whether to go to buyout is a critical decision and our ability to not only engage at the start of that discussion, but also see it through to completion if required, is why our firm continues to go from strength to strength in this market.”

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