Our offer for early distribution of the Estate of the Scottish Life Fund was accepted

Last year we asked affected planholders to vote on our offer to distribute the Estate of the Scottish Life Fund.  

The required majority of planholders voted in favour of our offer, and we subsequently received approval from the High Court to implement the changes.

This means that we’ve:

• distributed more of the Estate of the Scottish Life Fund to planholders and
• merged the Scottish Life Fund into the Royal London Open Fund.

What does distributing more of the Estate mean for affected planholders?

Our offer only impacts plans invested in Qualifying With Profits (also known as With Profits 1) on 31 December 2021. We call the underlying value of their Qualifying With Profits investment their Qualifying Plan Value.

Other investment types that planholders hold under the plan were unaffected by our offer.

• If their plans were claimed on 31 December 2021, then we would’ve made a percentage increase of 12.0% to their Qualifying Plan Values from the Estate. This percentage was uncertain and, if our offer had not been approved, could’ve been higher or lower if their plans were claimed further into the future.
• On 1 January 2022, we applied the certain Uplift of 29.9% to their Qualifying Plan Values from the Estate. This replaces the uncertain percentage that they would’ve received when their plans were claimed if our offer had not been approved.

What does moving to the Royal London Open Fund mean for affected planholders?

We’ll manage the affected plans in a similar way in the Royal London Open Fund.

We made our offer last year so as many planholders as possible can benefit from it. If we hadn’t made these changes now, we’d have to make similar changes eventually when there aren’t enough plans left in the Scottish Life Fund to manage it efficiently as a separate fund.

The Royal London Open Fund is open to new plans and we’ll be able to manage it efficiently for the foreseeable future.

What happens next?

We’ll write to the affected planholders between March and May 2022 to confirm the changes have been made and explain how it impacts their plan.