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Nov 13 (Reuters) - Britain's Phoenix Group raised its full-year cash generation forecast on Monday after it completed the merger of two of its insurance brands - Standard Life and Phoenix Life - to bring together about 8 million policies.
Phoenix, which historically managed books of life insurance businesses that are closed to new customers, said the merger resulted in a one-off increase to a new full-year cash generation target of about 1.8 billion pounds ($2.20 billion).
Its earlier forecast was for between 1.3 billion pounds and 1.4 billion pounds.
Phoenix bought the Standard Life brand from asset manager abrdn in 2021 and has been looking to expand into bulk annuities - which insures company-defined benefits, or final salary and pension schemes - due to growing corporate demand against a backdrop of rising interest rates that have driven up yields.
The insurer also hiked its cash-generation target across 2023 to 2025 to 4.5 billion pounds, from 4.1 billion pounds previously. ($1 = 0.8171 pounds) (Reporting by Radhika Anilkumar and Eva Mathews in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D'Souza)