Friends Life

A rich heritage

Friends Life Group Limited is a FTSE 100 listed company focused on providing financial security for over five million customers, with a heritage dating back over 200 years.
Friends Life was created in 2011 following the amalgamation of Friends Provident plc, the majority of the AXA UK Life insurance business and Bupa Health Assurance, as part of the Resolution Group’s UK Life Project. The businesses were brought together and rebranded to form Friends Life Group, providing pensions, investments and insurance and retirement income products, alongside a heritage business looking after legacy products and an International division.

Why we exist

Our customers are at the heart of everything we do. As we help them prepare for the future, we will continue to deliver returns to our investors and focus on growing the business to support sustainable cash generation. We achieve this by:

Focussing on managing legacy life and pension products, and capturing value in the fast growing retirement provision market;
Making customers’ money work harder to help them realise their financial goals;
Attracting and retaining best-in-class people, building distinctive capability and competitive advantage;
Generating growth in both cash today and cash tomorrow while maintaining our strong capital base.

Products that make a difference

Our products are built for our customers, so in May 2014 we focused on improving our critical illness cover for the conditions our customers claim on most. This includes heart attack, multiple sclerosis, benign brain tumour and claims for childcover benefit.
Our childcover benefit now provides cover up to the age of 21 (if the claimant’s child is not in full-time employment) and now includes cover for spina bifida. At the time of writing, we remain the only provider in the UK market to cover serious and debilitating child specific illnesses.

In the community

Friends Life offers you the chance to make a positive difference through social and environmental causes. You choose how to get involved: through volunteering, fundraising and payroll giving.
Every member of staff is encouraged to volunteer in their local community as part of the Friends Life Annual Team Challenge initiative. Challenges can be anything from painting a mural in a children’s playground to tidying up a garden for an elderly person. Each challenge is unique, requiring different skills and a different approach; you just need to find the one to suit your team!

Our values

Our CEO, Andy Briggs, aspires to make Friends Life ‘the best place you have ever worked’. We have developed the following CARE values to help all our employees focus on this aim:
Customer Understanding – Being insightful, thinking differently and listening to customers.
Accountability – Doing what we say, acting with integrity and delivering.
Respect – Valuing people, treating people fairly and doing the right thing.
Enterprise – Thinking commercially, being innovative and collaborating to win.

Developing careers

The Friends Life Actuarial Study Programme offers a flexible study package designed to help you take control of your own development and progress through the actuarial exams.
Our rotation scheme compliments this by ensuring that our Actuarial Students have the opportunity to experience different areas of actuarial work such as Financial Reporting, Modelling and Pricing.
These benefits as well as our student mentors, exam experts and in-house presentations ensure that our Actuarial Students perform well above the industry average in the Actuarial Exams.
Career opportunities continue after qualification and many of our Directors and our CEO, Andy Briggs are qualified Actuaries.

Valuing diversity

Friends Life is committed to building a diverse culture to make this a great place to work. Our Actuarial Student population is one of the most diverse in the industry, not just in terms of ethnicity and age, but also in respect of route into the profession. In particular, we value the life experience that parents and career changers can bring to Friends Life.

Locations and communities

Our Actuaries and Actuarial Students work across our Bristol, Dorking, Salisbury and London offices. Each location boasts excellent facilities. This includes on-site gym and sports hall at our Bristol and Dorking offices.
Our Actuarial Students form a unique community in Friends Life, working together, studying together, and socialising together.