Leveraging integration capability

Our leading in-house integration capability is a key differentiator that helps us deliver value from our transactions and provides a flexible framework that can be tailored to meet the specific requirements of any deal. Over the last 20 years, we have evolved this approach through 15 transactions, each bringing its own set of challenges and opportunities.

Central to our integration track record within our closed book business is our proven single administration platform, Alpha, to which we have successfully migrated over 5 million policies to date. Alpha is currently supporting over 25 000 different product variants and has allowed us to decommission over 40 legacy policy administration systems, with significant benefits in terms of efficiency and productivity. Successfully transferring staff is another example of our ability to retain key talent acquired through our transactions. Since 2005, we have dealt with over 2 000 employee transfers. Throughout 2016 a key focus has been delivering the integration of Guardian Financial Services, the company we acquired in January.

The integration programme is on track to deliver a diversified set of cost, capital and asset management synergies. The acquisition included 900 000 policies, 316 members of staff and the transfer of GBP 12.5 billion of assets onto the Swiss Re balance sheet. The launch of Life Capital allows our integration capability to be leveraged even more broadly across the different businesses.