Legal & General has announced the appointment of Chris Knight as managing director, Legal & General Retirement, retail customer division (LGRR).
He has been with Legal & General since 2009, latterly as CFO of Legal & General Retirement. He is a qualified actuary and has extensive experience in the UK and global insurance and pensions markets. He replaced Bernie Hickman, who became CEO of Legal & General Insurance, at the end of last year.
He will start his new role on 1 March 2017.
Sales of individual annuities and lifetime mortgages reached £1bn in the retail customer division in 2016, as lifetime mortgage sales trebled, and individual annuity sales were up 15% on 2015. The division now manages almost £20bn in assets for its 500,000 individual annuity customers.
Knight is tasked with growing the division, as more retirees decide to access their housing wealth to provide income, and as auto-enrolment drives growth in defined contribution pensions and retirement pot size. He will also target annuity back book deals, and look to internationalise the business, with the US market as the key focus.
He said: “I am very excited to be taking on the challenge of further developing our retail retirement business. Legal & General Home Finance has the potential to become a major force in the UK mortgage market, expanding the range of our borrowing-in-retirement propositions. In the era of pension freedoms, individual annuities are growing strongly again and there are further front-book and back-book opportunities in the UK.”
Kerrigan Procter, managing director of Legal & General Retirement, added: “Legal & General Retirement has made strong progress again in 2016. We more than doubled total retirement sales in 2016, and have successfully implemented a transformed capital and financial business model for the division that ensures we can sustain this progress in a Solvency II world.
“As Legal & General Retirement CFO, Chris played a leading part in this success and I look forward to working with him in his new role of managing director of Legal & General Retirement, retail customer division.”