LONDON (Reuters) - British insurer Legal & General (L:LGEN) said on Wednesday it was entering the European pension risk transfer market with a 200 million euro (144.2 million pounds) deal for Dutch insurer ASR Nederland.
Legal & General Re, in cooperation with Hannover Re (DE:HNRGn) is taking on the risk of a portion of ASR's defined benefit, or final salary, pension scheme in a so-called bulk annuity transaction.
British insurers have turned to the bulk annuity market as pension reform has dented appetite for individual annuities, which give a fixed income for life.
"The potential market for pension risk transfer in the U.S., UK, and Europe is huge, and will play out over many decades," Kerrigan Procter, managing director at Legal & General Retirement, said in a statement.
L&G wrote its first U.S. bulk annuity deal in October, with the U.S. subsidiary of Royal Philips.
($1 = 0.9150 euros)