When your policy moves to another insurer

If you took out life insurance or a pension years ago with a firm that has since disappeared from the high street, the policy has almost certainly not disappeared with it. It has been transferred to another insurer, often one that specialises in running policies sold by other companies. ReAssure is one of the best known of these firms: it looks after policies that were originally sold by other insurers, many of them through Independent Financial Advisers¹. The same thing happens across the market whenever a firm closes a brand, stops selling a product or sells a book of old policies to a specialist administrator.

The key point for a consumer is that a transfer of this kind is not a new sale. The policy you hold keeps the terms it was sold on, and the firm that takes it over steps into the shoes of the original insurer. What changes is the name on the letters, the address you write to and the service you get. What does not change is the cover, the premium basis and the guarantees, unless you agree to change them.

Transfers of insurance business between firms are recognised in UK legislation, which treats the reinsurance of a cedant's basic life assurance and general annuity business connected with an insurance business transfer scheme as a specific category of business². In plain terms, the law has a framework for moving whole books of life and pension policies from one insurer to another, and firms use it when they reorganise, close to new business or sell old policies on.

Why your policy has moved to ReAssure or another firm

Policies move for commercial reasons that have nothing to do with you. An insurer may decide to stop selling a type of product, close a brand, or sell a large block of old policies to a firm that specialises in administering them. The buyers are sometimes called closed book insurers, because they run existing policies rather than writing new ones. ReAssure sits in this category: its ReAssure Life Limited policies were originally sold through Independent Financial Advisers, and the firm now services them¹.

The legal mechanics are handled by the firms and the court, not by you. UK legislation covers the reinsurance of the whole or part of a cedant's basic life assurance and general annuity business where it is connected with an insurance business transfer scheme². That is the machinery behind the letter you receive telling you the insurer on your policy has changed. You do not need to sign anything new, and you do not lose the policy by doing nothing.

One thing worth checking when a policy moves is what the policy actually is, because names can mislead. In one complaint the Financial Ombudsman Service handled, a consumer named Lisa complained about the sale of her personal accident policy, saying she was led to believe she had taken out life insurance when in fact the cover was personal accident insurance⁶. A transfer is a good moment to reread the policy schedule and confirm what you hold, especially if the policy is decades old. If the cover is not what you thought, the protection insurance guide explains the main types, and the life insurance page explains how life cover works.

What stays the same on a transferred policy

The core promise of the policy travels with it. The sum insured, the premium basis, the term, any guarantees and any exclusions are terms of the contract, and the receiving insurer takes them on as they stand. A firm that runs a closed book cannot rewrite those terms to make the policy cheaper for itself, and any change to what you pay or what you receive has to come through the options written into the policy or through your agreement.

Some features are worth checking rather than assuming. If a policy was written in trust, the trust continues after the transfer. Writing life insurance in trust is normally free when the insurer offers it at the start of the policy, but moving an existing policy into trust later may involve costs through a financial adviser or solicitor⁷. The transfer itself does not disturb an existing trust, but the trustees should tell the new insurer who they are so the payout goes to the right place. The page on writing life insurance in trust explains how trusts work.

What often does change is the service around the policy: the online portal, the phone numbers, the address for premiums and the format of statements. If the policy has options such as increasing cover, waiver of premium or a guaranteed insurability option, those options remain, and the page on changing your cover explains how they work. If you are unsure whether something is a term of the policy or just a service the old insurer offered, ask the new firm to confirm in writing.

What ReAssure looks after: pensions, life cover and more

Firms like ReAssure typically run a mixed book: life insurance, pensions and savings policies sold over many decades by different original insurers. The legislation that governs these transfers covers basic life assurance and general annuity business, which is the regulatory category that includes most life policies and pension annuity contracts². So a single transfer can move life cover, pension policies and older savings products to the same new administrator.

For a consumer this means the firm now running your policy may handle several quite different things under one roof. A whole of life policy, a with-profits savings plan and a personal pension can all sit with the same closed book firm. Each keeps its own rules: a whole of life policy pays out whenever the death happens, a term policy only pays within its term, and a pension follows pension rules on when and how money can be taken.

ReAssure's own materials show how its relationships work in practice. Its pages link customers to Standard Life, which is part of the same group of companies as ReAssure, for certain services¹. So a letter about a pension may direct you to a different brand within the group. That is a servicing arrangement, not a change to your policy: the insurer legally responsible remains the one named in your documents.

Switching funds and moving money within the rules

Within a transferred policy, the options you have depend on the type of contract. Stakeholder pensions, for example, carry built-in protections: official guidance for Northern Ireland confirms that with a stakeholder pension you can switch to a different pension provider without penalty charges⁸. So if your transferred policy is a stakeholder pension, the closed book firm cannot charge you a penalty simply for moving the pot elsewhere.

For ISA money, the rules set out where subscriptions can be moved. Under the regulations governing ISA transfers, the current year's subscriptions and previous years' subscriptions in a stocks and shares account or an innovative finance account may be transferred to a stocks and shares account, an innovative finance account, a Lifetime ISA, or a cash account if the investor is 65 or over at the end of the year, in each case belonging to the same investor⁹. The practical point is that transfers must go to an account of the permitted types, and the receiving provider arranges the move rather than you withdrawing the money yourself.

Lifetime ISAs have their own transfer rules. The original policy statement confirmed that individuals can transfer their Lifetime ISA within 30 days between providers, and that people are free to have multiple accounts with different providers, opening and paying into one Lifetime ISA per tax year¹⁰. If a transferred policy includes ISA-linked savings, these rules govern where the money can go. For pure protection policies, there is usually no fund to switch: the value is the promise to pay, and the page on cash-in values explains which policies build one.

Managing your policy online and by phone

Closed book firms vary in how much they offer online, and older policies are not always visible in a modern app. Where ReAssure's group links to Standard Life, existing customers can log in to their online account and request a pension transfer into an existing Standard Life plan, new customers can request a transfer during their application, and the Standard Life mobile app is available on iOS and Android for these tasks¹². For policies held directly with the closed book firm, the online account and the phone service are usually the main channels.

If you cannot log in, the usual cause is that the policy predates the firm's current records system. In that case the firm will identify you from the policy number and personal details and post out what you need. Keep the most recent letter or statement: it carries the policy number and the current administrator's name, which is what any new firm or adviser will ask for.

When a task crosses brands within a group, check which firm you are dealing with before acting. ReAssure's own pages state that links to Standard Life take you to the website of a firm that is part of the same group of companies¹. A request made on the wrong brand's site may simply be redirected, but knowing which firm holds the policy avoids delays, especially for time-sensitive tasks such as a fund switch or a change of beneficiary.

Service and complaints: what the ombudsman figures show

Complaints data gives a sense of how often things go wrong across insurance and pensions. In 2024/25 the Financial Ombudsman Service received 45,606 new complaints about the insurance sector⁴, compared with 47,010 in 2023/24¹³. Counting insurance complaints across its whole caseload including firms outside the UK, the ombudsman's alternative dispute resolution activity report for 2024 to 2025 recorded 42,897 insurance complaints¹⁴.

Within those totals, the products relevant to transferred policies are small but visible. In Q3 2025/26 the ombudsman recorded 211 new complaints about term assurance, 44 about personal accident insurance, 81 about defined benefit transfers not to a SIPP, and 43 about advisory services for mixed investment portfolios¹⁵. In Q4 2025/26 it recorded 77 new complaints about lifetime mortgages and 4,000 about car and motorcycle insurance¹⁶. The numbers show that life cover complaints are a small fraction of the insurance total, which is dominated by general insurance.

History explains why the ombudsman watches this sector closely. Insurance complaints made up 70% of all new cases in 2011/12, and insurance complaints other than PPI rose by 31% that year¹⁸. In 2015/16 the ombudsman received 219,996 new complaints about insurance including PPI, and 56% of all new complaints were about the sale of payment protection insurance¹⁹. A decade earlier, in 2009/2010, insurance made up 42% of new cases and whole-of-life policies and savings endowments alone generated 4,199 new cases²⁰. PPI accounted for 2.3 million complaints to firms in 2014, and the ombudsman received 1.49 million PPI complaints between 2001 and January 2016²¹.

If you have a complaint about a transferred policy, complain to the firm that now runs it first, giving it the chance to respond. If you are not satisfied, the Financial Ombudsman Service can look at complaints about insurance and pensions, including complaints about how a transfer was handled or how a policy was sold by the original insurer. The page on PPI covers the mis-selling claims process for that product.

Moving your pension away from ReAssure

A pension transfer is where you move the money in your existing pension to a different scheme or provider, often so you can get a better deal³. Transfers can go from one personal pension to another, or from a personal or workplace pension to a self-invested personal pension (SIPP), a small self-administered scheme (SSAS) or a qualifying recognised overseas pension scheme (QROPS)²². The usual steps are set out in official guidance³:

1. Check your current scheme allows transfers out.
2. Make sure you will not lose any benefits.
3. Decide which scheme to transfer into.
4. Check if you need to pay for financial advice.
5. Ask your current provider for a transfer value.
6. Ask the new scheme to start the transfer.

The step people most often skip is the second one. A transfer usually cannot be undone, so always make sure you will be better off before committing³. Existing plans may have benefits, guarantees, charges or investment choices that a new plan does not offer, and Standard Life's own guidance makes the same point: there is no guarantee that your retirement income will be better after transferring your pension plans into one place¹². Common issues the ombudsman sees in transfer complaints include an adviser not disclosing higher charges, the loss of guarantees such as guaranteed annuity rates, market value adjustments on with-profits funds, unsuitable risk checks or investments, and the loss of workplace pension benefits²².

In one ombudsman case study, a consumer named David transferred to a personal pension on an adviser's recommendation²⁵. The outcome of such cases turns on whether the advice was suitable and whether the losses were real, which is why the checks before a transfer matter more than the paperwork after it.

Why a pension transfer can be checked or refused

Transfers attract scrutiny because they are a favourite route for scammers and because they are hard to reverse. A provider that slows a transfer down may be carrying out exactly these checks.

Checks also look at what you would give up. In a complaint the ombudsman considered, a consumer named Amir complained about advice to transfer his pensions; the ombudsman found that none of the guaranteed annuity rates on his original policies were competitive with the wider annuity market at the time of the advice, and did not uphold his complaint²⁷. Guaranteed annuity rates, protected tax-free cash and fixed pension ages can be worth more than a headline fund value, which is why firms ask questions before releasing money.

Where a defined benefit scheme's sponsoring employer becomes insolvent, the Pension Protection Fund assesses the scheme to see if it can pay members what they are owed²⁸. A DB pension scheme will only transfer into the Pension Protection Fund once it has assessed that the scheme cannot afford to buy benefits for its members from an insurance company that are equal to or more than what the PPF pays²⁹. Separately, the FSCS explains that compensation claims about defined benefit transfer advice can be refused where there is no evidence of the advice, no evidence of loss, a gain is shown, or the claim falls outside eligible dates²⁶. So even a legitimate transfer can be delayed by verification, and a refused compensation claim is not the same as a refused transfer.

Claiming on a policy after a death

When a policyholder dies, the claim is made with the firm that now runs the policy, whoever originally sold it. The practical first steps are to register the death and to notify the insurer. When you register the death, the registrar will explain the Tell Us Once service, which lets you report a death to most government organisations at the one time⁵.

Financial services rules then shape how the firm deals with you. Where a firm knows or becomes aware that a customer has died, it must take all reasonable steps to communicate instead with a personal representative of the consumer's estate or the beneficiaries of the estate³⁰. In practice this means the firm will need the death certificate and evidence of who is entitled, and it should stop writing to the deceased person. The page on claiming after a death explains the documents typically needed.

Money may be available before the estate is fully wound up. A Funeral Support Payment can help with funeral costs, but it is recovered from the estate of the person who died before inheritance is paid, taken directly from the estate and not from the applicant³¹. So it is an advance against the estate, not additional money. The FSCS also has continuity powers for funeral plan business: where a firm holding funeral plans fails, the FSCS may transfer the business to another firm or secure substitute contracts, using reasonable endeavours to find the most cost-effective arrangements³². The page on funeral costs from a life policy covers asking an insurer to release money early.

Buying an annuity: you do not have to use the same firm

When a pension reaches the point where it can be paid, the holder chooses what to do with the fund. Official guidance on stakeholder pensions confirms that you can use the fund you have built up to buy an annuity, which is a regular income payable for life, from a life insurance company⁸. Nothing in that arrangement ties you to the firm holding the pot: the annuity can be bought from a different life insurance company, and the closed book firm's role ends once the fund is transferred.

The rules around annuities have some edges worth knowing. Under the pension legislation, where a new annuity becomes payable on the cessation of a lifetime annuity and the contract allows decreases other than permitted decreases, the new annuity is not treated as a lifetime annuity for the purposes of the relevant rules, where the member became entitled to the original lifetime annuity before 6 April 2015 or where sums transferred from an insurance company in respect of such an annuity were applied towards it³³. For most people this simply means the type of annuity and when it was first set up affect how later changes are treated.

If a transferred policy includes a guaranteed annuity rate, that guarantee is part of the policy terms and survives the transfer. Such guarantees can be valuable, and the ombudsman looks at whether advisers took them into account when recommending transfers²⁷. Before buying any annuity, check whether the existing policy offers one, because once the fund has left, the guarantee usually leaves with it.

Where ReAssure cannot give advice, and where rules stop

Firms that run closed books generally service policies rather than advise on them. The rules reflect the limits of advice: where a firm has only given abridged advice, it must state that it has not given full pension transfer or conversion advice, and no firm can arrange a pension transfer or conversion within the scope of the relevant rules unless the client receives full advice³⁴.

Some protections that apply to other purchases do not apply to insurance. Section 65 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 does not apply to contracts of insurance, including contracts to pay an annuity on human life, or to contracts relating to the creation or transfer of an interest in land³⁵. So the unfair terms regime in that Part of the Act stops at the boundary of insurance, and insurance contracts are governed by their own regulatory framework instead.

Tax rules also have hard edges. HMRC guidance is explicit that a loss on a life insurance policy cannot be set against a gain on another policy, or against your other income: there is no relief for that loss and no entries should be made on your tax return³⁶. And some pension contracts carry no cancellation right at all: the rules exempt contracts effected by the trustees of an occupational pension scheme or the employer, trustees or operator of a stakeholder pension scheme in circumstances such as a pension buy-out contract or a purchase to insure members' benefits, unless it is the master, first or only policy³⁷. The page on tax on payouts explains what is taxable and what is not.

If the firm running your policy fails

If the insurer now holding your policy fails, the Financial Services Compensation Scheme is the backstop. The FSCS can take measures it considers appropriate where a firm is in default, including for funeral plan business transferring the defaulting firm's business to another firm or securing substitute contracts, using reasonable endeavours to seek the most cost-effective arrangements³². For life insurance, the FSCS protects covered contracts, and the page on life insurance and FSCS explains the protection levels for different types of policy.

For pensions, the protection depends on the type of scheme. If the employer sponsoring a defined benefit pension scheme becomes insolvent, the Pension Protection Fund assesses the scheme to see if it can pay members what they are owed²⁸. A DB scheme only transfers into the PPF once it has been assessed as unable to buy benefits for its members from an insurance company equal to or better than what the PPF pays²⁹. So a failed sponsor does not mean a failed pension: the assessment process exists to protect members.

For claims about advice rather than the policy itself, the FSCS can pay compensation, but not in every case. Common reasons why the FSCS cannot pay compensation include there being no evidence of the advice, no evidence of loss, a gain being shown, or the claim falling outside eligible dates²⁶. If a firm fails while a complaint is ongoing, the FSCS steps into the firm's shoes for eligible claims. Free, impartial help is available from MoneyHelper, and the Financial Ombudsman Service handles complaints about firms still trading.