The UK media was generally optimistic after the agreement with the EU over a Brexit transition timescale. The Association of British Insurers (ABI) said they were pleased to see the Bank of England take a pragmatic approach to regulation during the implementation period regarding passporting rights in the UK.

 This week, Lloyd’s announced an aggregated market loss of £2bn for 2017-the first loss for six years.

 This week, Prudential headlined with its intention to demerge the UK & Europe business (M&G Prudential) from Prudential plc (Asia and US), and to sell a £12bn annuity portfolio to Rothesay Life.

A popular feature of all Insurance Investment Exchange seminars is the opportunity to capture the views of participants through interactive voting, and the results revealed that the anticipation of a change in central bank policies is widely anticipated.

The real estate debt market has changed dramatically since the global financial crisis of 2007-08 and it is now an asset that should be firmly on insurers’ investment radar screens. This was the theme of the of the Insurance Investment Exchange roundtable on 22nd March 2018, held in conjunction with M&G Investments.

There is plenty of fine talk – increasingly coupled with ambitious policy objectives – around responsible investment, but hard data about the impact of different approaches on investment portfolios is still hard to come by.