UK- The UK’s Financial Services Authority has fined certain life insurance companies within the Royal & SunAlliance group £1.35m (e2.11m) for missing deadlines and failing to introduce recommendations made by the Personal Investment Authority in its pensions review.

In the assessment of Royal & SunAlliance’s progress with its pensions review in July and August 2000, the FSA found limited evidence of effective senior management control and monitoring of the review by the PIA, a regulatory predecessor to the FSA.

“R&SA failed in its identification of customers who might have been due redress, it failed to complete review work on time and its management failed to monitor the process effectively”, stated Carol Sergeant, managing director for regulatory processes and risk at the FSA.

The FSA said Royal & SunAlliance group failed to identify up to 13,500 consumers for review, a move that may have led to policy holders losing out to redress of over £32m. The Royal & SunAlliance Group companies had already been fined £225,000 for failings in their conduct of the pensions review, following a visit in by the FSA in 1997.

Since the discoveries, R&SA has initiated a remedial programme including the appointment of independent third parties. Duncan Boyle, Royal & SunAlliance’s UK Chief Executive said: “we took urgent action including allocating substantial additional resources to ensure the issues raised were resolved.”

The pensions review was set up by the Personal Investment Authority (PIA), one of the FSA’s predecessor regulators. Since the review’s establishment, the authority has taken disciplinary actions against 349 firms, resulting in fines totalling almost £11m.

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