The story
The company was founded in 1857 as The Pearl Loan Company and operated from the Royal Oak public house opposite the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. It changed its name to The Pearl Assurance Company in 1914, when it moved to 252 High Holborn where it was based until moving its head office to Lynch Wood Park in Peterborough in 1989.
In 1990, it was acquired by the Australian insurance group, AMP, and in 2003, Pearl, NPI and London Life Association were demerged from AMP to become part of Henderson Group.
In 2005, the Pearl Group was bought from Henderson Group by Sun Capital Partners (a business in which Hugh Osmond is a leading partner) and TDR Capital. It acquired Resolution Life (including its Phoenix Assurance operations) in 2008. In 2009, the business was acquired by the Liberty Acquisition Holdings (International) Company (a vehicle controlled by billionaire Nicolas Berggruen), which subsequently renamed itself Pearl Group.
In 2010, Pearl Group rebranded as Phoenix Group Holdings. In March 2014, the business sold Ignis Asset Management to Standard Life Investments, the asset management arm of Standard Life.
In 2018, Phoenix Group agreed to acquire Standard Life Assurance from Standard Life Aberdeen for £2.9 billion. As part of the transaction Standard Life Aberdeen retained a stake in the combined group.
In 2020, Phoenix completed the acquisition of fellow closed book specialist ReAssure Group from Swiss Re.
In 2021, it was announced that Phoenix had acquired the rights to the Standard Life brand and had undertaken additional steps to simplify the relationship with Standard Life Aberdeen that had developed since the acquisition of the Standard Life business three years previously. The same year in July, Phoenix Group announced the acquisition of part of McKesson's European operations.
In 2025, the company announced that it would change its name from Phoenix Group Holdings plc to Standard Life plc in March 2026, thereby adopting the name of its most recognisable brand: the change took place on 2 March 2026.
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In April 2026, Standard Life agreed to acquire the UK business of Aegon and its 3.7 million customers in a deal worth £2 billion. Standard Life will pay £750 million in cash as well as issuing shares to give Aegon 15.3% ownership of the group.
From Wikipedia’s article on Standard Life plc, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4