Established in 2004, Just Retirement is a specialist UK financial services group focusing on high growth segments of the UK retirement income market.
It is a leading provider of individually underwritten annuities – with 31% of the market -and equity release lifetime mortgages.
The group’s intial public offering (IPO) will comprise of the sale of new ordinary shares, equivalent to approximately £300m, by the company and a partial sale of existing ordinary shares held by the group’s existing principal shareholder, Avallux S.à r.l., and members of the management team and certain other minority shareholders.
The company said it expects continued growth in its core markets and intends to allocate the proceeds from the issue of new ordinary shares to strengthen regulatory and economic capital ratios in Just Retirement Limited, the group’s life company, thereby supporting growth in new business, and for group solvency and liquidity and for general corporate purposes.
Just Retirement chief executive Rodney Cook (pictured) said:”We continue to see strong underlying growth in our core markets of individually
underwritten annuities and equity release lifetime mortgages as the growing population of retirees continues to be challenged by falling State provision, low savings rates and a desire to maintain their lifestyle in retirement.
“Our unrivalled proprietary intellectual property and sector leading service proposition have provided retirees with over £300m of additional retirement income, representing an average income enhancement of 20%
to 25% relative to standard writers, and helped them to have a more comfortable retirement by releasing over £1.5bn of equity from their homes.
“This IPO enables Just Retirement to capitalise on the expected continued strong growth in new business, strengthens our regulatory and economic capital ratios and better positions us to accommodate future regulatory changes.”
Just Retirement’s total annual annuity sales reached £1.34bn in 2012/2013, 12.5% up year on year.
The firm’s fourth quarter results for 2012/2013 said annual total group sales were also a record at £1.65bn, an increase of 12.9%.
It added lifetime mortgage sales had also increased 14.7% to just over £309m to the year ending 30 June this year.
