Pensions Insurance Corporation (PIC) has insured £200m of liabilities in home improvement retailer Kingfisher’s defined benefit (DB) scheme.
Kingfisher Pension Scheme has about £4bn of liabilities, of which £450m, or around 10%, have been insured following this deal.
The buy-in follows a similar agreement that the trustees struck with Legal & General two years ago, which was worth £230m.
PIC’s head of business development, Mitul Magudia, said insuring pension schemes in phases has become the dominant trend within bulk annuities over the past couple of years.
“With pension schemes moving increasingly into fixed income assets that better match their liabilities, we would expect this trend to continue.
“This is the route that the Kingfisher trustees have taken and we are very pleased to have been able to help them continue their de-risking programme,” he added.
Other de-risking deals that PIC has worked on include insuring £140m of liabilities across five schemes for advertising giant WPP. It also completed a £100m buy-in with Pirelli concerning three of its pension funds in December last year.
