Regulators “failed” Equitable’s policyholders

In 2000, one of the UK’s most respected insurers closed to new business. During the following eight years investigations and reviews have tried to uncover the events that led to Equitable Life’s near-collapse but it is only now, in a new report, that the role of the regulators becomes clear

Since the near-collapse of Equitable Life, once the insurer of choice for some of the most sophisticated customers, there have been numerous reports commissioned to explain the events that caused it to close to new business at the end of December 2000. Between the Penrose Report, the Baird Report and even a European Parliament inquiry a picture has emerged of a catalogue of errors by management and actuaries and the role that the fatal court case played in bringing down the oldest mutual insurer in the UK by landing it with a liability bill that it could not meet.