Lighthouse Regulatory News (LGT)

Lighthouse Group plc

("Lighthouse" or the "Group")

Lighthouse announces the launch of the Lighthouse Life Trust, a new death-in-service offering for SMEs within its workplace solutions range

Lighthouse Group plc (AIM: LGT), the leading national financial adviser for Middle Britain, is pleased to announce that employers who have selected the Lighthouse Pensions Trust as their auto-enrolment solution will now also be able to insure their employees for death-in-service life assurance cover. The new Lighthouse Life Trust, with Bridge Trustees Limited as independent trustees and Zurich Assurance Limited as the scheme underwriter, will cover employees aged 16-65 inclusive for the same cost per benefit, at very competitive rates, regardless of age, gender, location or pre-existing medical conditions. The Life Trust is now live with employers able to participate from 1 July 2015.

On launching the Life Trust, Malcolm Streatfield, CEO of Lighthouse Group plc. said:

"The launch of the Lighthouse Life Trust is part of the Group's strategic workplace solutions development to provide smaller and medium-sized employers ("SMEs") with a straightforward "one-stop shop" for all work-related benefits. Fee tariffs for the Lighthouse Pensions Trust have also been streamlined, to make it even easier for SMEs to stage auto-enrolment compliant pension schemes. Lighthouse has experienced and highly trained advisers across the UK who will take SMEs all the way through the process at a fixed cost."

Iain Stewart Black, Head of Corporate Risk at Zurich Life, said:

"As a leading provider of group life benefits in the UK, we are delighted to support Lighthouse with this innovative solution. Most of the 1.3 million employers still to stage in the next three years will, at best, only have limited access to group life cover. The Lighthouse Life Trust will give employers, who use the associated Lighthouse Pensions Trust, straightforward access to valuable group life cover."

Ian Davies, CEO of Bridge Trustees Limited, said:

"Bridge Trustees, which is part of Eversheds, is pleased to be involved with Lighthouse once again and to act as Trustee to the new Lighthouse Life Trust as well as the Lighthouse Pensions Trust, both of which are multi-employer occupational schemes approved by HMRC and ideal for smaller employers with fewer than 50 employees".

Roger Sanders, Managing Director of Lighthouse Group Employee Benefits, said:

"The Lighthouse Life Trust is great news for employers who never thought they could afford to insure their staff or were put off by the complexity of the paper work and with having to deal with HMRC. All that is required is for the employer to have signed up for the Lighthouse Pensions Trust to deliver their auto-enrolment obligations and for a Deed of Participation to be signed. The Association of British Insurers ("ABI") statistics reveal that there are only 19.7 million individual life policies in force out of a total working age population of 38 million. Equally significantly, only 7.9 million (33%) of the 24 million employees in the private sector have death-in-service life cover. The Lighthouse Life Trust presents employers with a unique opportunity to plug the protection gap with an easily accessible and cost-effective benefit for employees and their families."

-Ends-

For further information, please contact:

Lighthouse Group plc.

Malcolm Streatfield, Chief Executive Tel: +44 (0) 20 7065 5640

malcolm.streatfield@lighthousegroup.plc.uk www.lighthousegroup.plc.uk 

Roger Sanders, MD, Lighthouse Group Employee Benefits/Workplace Solutions

roger.sanders@lighthousegroup.plc.uk Tel: +44 (0) 20 7065 5652

finnCap Limited

(Nominated Adviser and Broker to the Company) Tel: +44 (0) 20 7220 0500

Matt Goode/James Thompson

Media enquiries:

Abchurch Communications

Jamie Hooper/ Alex Shaw Tel: +44 (0) 20 7398 7719

jamie.hooper@abchurch-group.com www.abchurch-group.com 

About Lighthouse Group Plc.

As one of the UK's largest autonomous financial advice and wealth management Groups and winner of FT Business's Large IFA of the Year Award for three years in succession 2010-2012, Lighthouse provides a comprehensive range of services to businesses and individuals and is retained by most of the major trades unions to advise their combined memberships of over 5 million members.

Lighthouse has been listed on AIM since 2000 and presents an integrated financial services company for investors, coupled with significant scale in terms of distribution through financial advisers and wealth managers and its fully diversified business model.

Notes to Editors:

· Lighthouse Pensions Trust ("LPT") was launched in April 2014 and is an unbundled multi-employer occupational DC pension master trust, with Bridge Trustees Limited as the independent third party trustee and the BirthStar range of age-based target date funds ("TDFs") as the default investment funds. The BirthStar range was developed by Elston Consulting Ltd and is managed by AllianceBernstein, the award winning global asset manager with c$500 billion of funds under management worldwide which specialises in TDFs. Lighthouse created its master trust to provide additional capacity for SMEs looking for a simple auto-enrolment ("AE") solution from an expert in employee benefits.

· LPT was awarded 5-stars by Defaqto in December 2014 in the AE master trust category. Defaqto, an independent researcher of financial products providing a rating service for AE trust-based schemes, launched the AE Star Ratings last year to help financial advisers and small and medium-sized enterprises ("SMEs") navigate the AE wave. Star Ratings indicate Defaqto's opinion on where a product sits in the market in terms of the features and benefits it offers.

· Lighthouse Life Trust is also an unbundled multi-employer occupational master trust, approved by HMRC for the provision of group life assurance death-in-service benefits. Employers are eligible for inclusion in the Life Trust if they sign a Deed of Participation and have also signed a deed to participate in the Pensions Trust for automatic enrolment purposes. Employers may obtain life cover for their staff up to 12 months before their staging date or within 3 months after actually staging (6 months if postponing AE commencement). All employees have to be included for the same level of benefit (1, 2, 3 or 4 times basic annual pay or total earnings up to a maximum cover of £250,000 per person). There is no medical evidence required and an Actively At Work Declaration will apply at commencement. Employees from 16-65 are insured at the same unit rate, regardless of age or health or any other factors.

· Bridge Trustees Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Eversheds LLP, one of the leading law firms in the UK, is a professional independent trustee company responsible for a range of pension schemes and is a leading specialist in master trusts.

· Zurich provides a suite of general insurance and life insurance products to retail and corporate customers in the UK. The UK General Insurance division supplies personal, commercial and local authority insurance through a variety of distribution channels. Zurich's UK Life business offers a range of personal protection, pensions and investment policies available through financial intermediaries. UK Life also provides protection and pensions policies for the corporate market available through employee benefit consultants. Based at 21 locations, Zurich employs approximately 7,000 people in the UK. Corporate Responsibility is an integral part of how it does business and Zurich understands the need to set and maintain high standards of integrity towards its customers, employees, local communities, society and the environment. As a result of this work, Zurich participates annually in 'Business in the Community's' annual Corporate Responsibility Index. Zurich in the UK was also one of the first recipients of the Business in the Community 'CommunityMark'. Contact Nicola Cannings, Media Relations Manager, Zurich Insurance Group, tel: 01793 503816, email: nicola.cannings@uk.zurich.com

· The ABI's 2014 Survey of UK life insurance revealed that there were 12.65 million in- force whole of life policies and 7.05 million term assurance policies for a working age population of 38 million. ABI life companies paid out £8.4 million per day in protection claims. Only 7.9 million or 33% of the UK's 24 million private sector employees have group life insurance cover provided by their employers.

· The new CEO of TPR, Lesley Titcomb, in an interview with the FT on 30 May, said in talking about auto-enrolment and staging dates that "I don't think that we should necessarily assume that small and micro employers are going to behave worse than large or medium ones. My experience is that people wish to do the right thing; they just need to be shown clearly how to do it. Master Trusts and multi-employer pension schemes are absolutely key to the success of auto-enrolment."