Pass the Equitable parcel: Some financial scandals never quite end, says ALEX BRUMMER

Some financial scandals never quite end. One is the collapse of Equitable Life, which happened 25 years ago this month but is still casting a long shadow.

This week’s announcement that Utmost Life and Pensions is being sold to JAB Insurance is the latest chapter. For former Equitable Life policyholders, it means yet more upheaval.

Their savings were transferred to Utmost only five years ago, in a deal involving around £6.2billion of assets belonging to roughly 300,000 savers.

At the time, Utmost promised to be a stable home. Now it is selling the business to focus on its ‘wealth solutions’ strategy.

Equitable’s victims are being passed from owner to owner like a game of pass the parcel. JAB Insurance forms part of the empire of the Reimann family, one of Europe’s wealthiest dynasties, based mainly in Germany and Switzerland.

In 2019, the family publicly acknowledged the Nazi affiliations of earlier generations and issued an apology alongside a pledge to donate €10million to charity.

Victims: The collapse of life insurance company Equitable Life happened 25 years ago this month but is still casting a long shadow

Today, their privately held investment vehicle, JAB Holding Company, is based in Luxembourg.

In Britain it is best known for owning Pret A Manger, alongside global brands such as Dr Pepper and Krispy Kreme. But pensions are not sandwiches or soft drinks: they demand trust, patience and permanence.

In its heyday, Equitable Life was the world’s oldest mutual insurer. By the time it closed to new business in 2000, policyholders had entrusted it with more than £30billion of retirement savings.

Its downfall stemmed from guarantees it could not afford to honour once interest rates fell, compounded by hubris at the top and weak regulation.

Many policyholders never received full compensation; some died before seeing any redress at all.

The buying and selling of ‘closed books’ of life and pension policies has become a lucrative City trade. The theory is that specialist owners will run them more efficiently. Perhaps.

But there are no guarantees – and nothing to stop today’s buyer becoming tomorrow’s seller, just as Utmost has done.

That is the opposite of what pension savers want. They want to know their money is in the hands of a committed, responsible steward, not passed endlessly from pillar to post.

JAB’s diversification strategy may make sense for its owners. The question is whether it will finally bring stability to those still living with the consequences of Equitable’s collapse.

I was only just recovering from Kate Winslet’s lavatorial comments on Desert Island Discs on Sunday when Stuart Rose popped up on LBC to say that Labour’s claims to be pro-business were ‘going down the urinal’.

I can do without scatological references at Christmas – or any other time – but the former Marks and Spencer chairman has a point. Labour is hammering business and failing to deliver growth.

The Conservatives, whose own economic record was hardly stellar, may not recover quickly enough to win the next election.

As Rose says, voters could find themselves choosing between the glum prospect of Labour and Reform, a party whose economic policies face a credibility test.

Business leaders are being forced to take Reform seriously, whether they like it or not. Even the highly respected industrialist John Neill, founder of Unipart and one of the most outspoken critics of Brexit in the business world, has said as much on these pages.

Neill yearns for a Thatcher-like figure to ride to the rescue. That may be wishful thinking, though few foresaw what Maggie would become in her early days.

Either way, the Tories desperately need to get their act together.

Christmas is peak season for fraudsters. All that extra shopping and parcel-sending offers rich pickings.

You don’t have to be gullible: just busy and slightly frazzled – my state of mind when targeted by a scammer impersonating the Royal Mail on WhatsApp.

He invited me to download a third-party app to process a refund for a delayed parcel I had sent to my sister-in-law by guaranteed next-day delivery that was very late. Fortunately, I smelt a rat and reported him instead.

’Tis the season to be wary!