Allied Dunbar
 |
|
| Industry | Insurance |
|---|---|
| Fate | Acquired by BAT Industries |
| Successor | Zurich Financial Services |
| Founded | 1970 |
| Defunct | 1998 |
| Headquarters | Swindon, UK |
|
Key people
|
Sir Mark Weinberg (Chairman) |
Allied Dunbar was a large British life assurance group. In its early years it was known as Hambro Life Assurance and was listed on the and was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. However it was acquired by BAT Industries, merged with Eagle Star, and sold to Zurich Financial Services in 1998.
The company was founded by Sir Mark Weinberg, Lord Joffe and Sir Sydney Lipworth after Abbey Life was taken over, with seed finance from Hambros Bank, and set up its headquarters in Swindon town centre in 1970 under the name 'Hambro Life Assurance'. It was first listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1975. The company expanded its financial adviser operations during the late '70s and early '80s, acquiring the Allied Unit Trusts of which it was soon the major unitholder, to become 'Allied Hambro' in 1984. The company became 'Allied Dunbar' in 1985 after it purchased Dunbar & Co., a small private bank, following the acquisition by BAT Industries. The asset management department was hived off to form Threadneedle Investments, and it was bought out by Zurich Financial Services in 1998.
Its direct sales force became the Zurich Advice Network (ZAN) in 2001. In 2005 and following changes in industry regulation ZAN evolved into a stand-alone entity known as Openwork - a directly authorised multi-tiered financial distribution network.
Allied Dunbar's business, like its predecessor Abbey Life's, was unit-linked: the direct investment risk and reward due to market changes was very largely exclusive to the individual investors, rather than the company, its shareholders or other planholders. Despite its initial form as an Assurance Company, Allied Dunbar was always essentially a retail investment group.
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