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LONDON, July 22 (Reuters) - Specialist pensions insurerRothesay Life said on Wednesday it was insuring 1.6 billionpounds ($2.5 billion) of the pension scheme of Britain's CivilAviation Authority (CAA), bringing its new business this year to3.4 billion pounds.
Rothesay Life is competing with specialist providers andlarger insurers such as Legal & General and Prudential in the growing bulk annuity market, in which insurerstake on the risk of defined benefit, or final salary, pensions.
Companies are often keen to offload these schemes from theirbalance sheets. But prolonged low interest rates have pushedmany schemes into deficit, making them expensive to insure.
British private sector pension scheme liabilities total 2trillion pounds, outstripping the country's GDP for the firsttime, consultants Hymans Robertson said last month.
The CAA deal was a buy-in, in which Rothesay insures part ofthe overall pension scheme, the firm said in a statement. Itgave no financial details of the deal.
Rothesay Life, whose backers include Blackstone andGoldman Sachs, has said it is preparing for a possiblestock market flotation. ($1 = 0.6431 pounds) (Reporting by Carolyn Cohn)
