Legal and General (L&G) has agreed a £35m buyout for US-owned law firm Edwards Wildman Palmer LLP’s UK pension scheme.

The scheme has an existing relationship with the firm through its partnership with the L&G Investment Management (LGIM) fiduciary management team.

The law firm pension scheme had previously invested in LGIM’s buyout aware funds, which L&G said allowed the scheme to achieve price certainty and a “cost-effective, seamless asset transfer” on its buyout transaction.

This was also one of the first transactions which saw a scheme moved to a buyout by leveraging the combined solution across the fiduciary management and buyout teams.

Commenting on the announcement, L&G Retirement Institutional director, pension risk transfer, Julian Hobday, said: “This transaction is an example of our teams working seamlessly together to ensure that our customers can easily benefit from the full range of services we offer.

“Combining our buyout and fiduciary management propositions enabled us to leverage the breadth of L&G’s capabilities to achieve the trustees’ objectives and smoothly transition to buyout.

“We are glad that the trustees have decided to secure a buyout with us and we look forward to continuing to work with them”.

As of December 2018, the scheme had a surplus of £2.9m, while its liabilities stood at £25.6m.

Edwards Wildman Palmer LLP’s UK pension scheme chairman of the trustees, Philip Bush, added: “The trustees are pleased to have been able to provide our members with the long-term assurance the buyout with L&G provides.

“We have worked closely with the fiduciary management and buyout teams at L&G to develop our asset strategy to target buyout and their support allowed us to achieve our objective in a timely, efficient manner.

“We look forward to continuing to work with L&G as they take on responsibility for paying our members’ benefits.”

This year (2019) is expected to be a record year for bulk annuity deals, with Aon estimating that the total value of deals could reach £40bn.

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