Wesleyan Assurance Society was last night (Wednesday 9 July) named Life Insurer of the Year at the prestigious British Insurance Awards 2008.

Wesleyan fought off strong competition from bigger rivals Legal and General and Scottish Widows to win the coveted accolade. Craig Errington, Wesleyan’s Chief Executive accepted the award at a ceremony that took place at the Royal Albert Hall.

Mr Errington said, “This is a real achievement for Wesleyan and an honour. In recent years we’ve had a vision of where we want to be and that vision has now become a reality.

Since restructuring our Sales Force in 2005 to deliver dedicated financial services to selected professional groups we have gone from strength to strength. Our success is reflected in the significant increase in new business year-on-year, market-leading investment returns on our with profits funds and continued financial strength.

“We’re continually looking to build on our success and in 2007 we launched into a new market with the introduction of Wesleyan for Lawyers.

The initial launch in the West Midlands proved so successful that we have begun a phased roll-out across the country ahead of schedule. We’re also in the process of increasing our Sales Force by 50 per cent so that we can meet the growing demand from existing and potential customers.

“We remain one of the UK’s financially strongest life assurance companies. This financial strength is of great importance as it provides the capital we need to invest in strategic change for the benefit of our policyholders.

It also enables us to achieve competitive payouts for our with profit policyholders and maintain a flexible investment strategy.

Craig Errington, Wesleyan Chief Executive (centre), collects the award from comic actor Rob Brydon (left) and Mike Mathias, Director of Banking and Financial Services at TATA (right).

“Winning Life Insurer of the Year is an excellent reward for the hard work that we’ve put in over recent years but the most important thing to us is having the trust of our customers and their confidence that we have their interests at the root of all we do.”

Judy Gilley of the Wesleyan Medical Sickness Advisory Board and former Deputy Chair of the General Practitioners Committee said, “This is a well-deserved award for Wesleyan.

A good deal of strategic thought, strong leadership and hard work has gone into developing the Society in recent years. This has led to increased benefits and services for policyholders and I congratulate everyone at Wesleyan for their efforts.”

Wesleyan has also invested heavily in an extensive business transformation programme. This has included developing a leading edge customer point-of-sales system that will deliver an even greater level of service and insight to clients.

Work has also gone into developing the customer relationship centre, which operates from Wesleyan’s refurbished Head Office in central Birmingham.

Wesleyan offers specialist financial advice to hospital doctors, GPs, dentists, lawyers and teachers through its principal distribution brands Wesleyan Medical Sickness, Wesleyan for Lawyers and Wesleyan for Teachers.

For more information and interviews please contact:

Bernadette Bogan or Navdeep Bhatti 0121 200 9609
Wesleyan Press Office press@wesleyan.co.uk

Sophie Hull 0207 404 9660
Vanbrugh Communications

Notes to Editors:

Wesleyan Assurance Society, founded in 1841, is a mutual organisation. Its core values are Insight, Performance and Trust.

In 2007 Wesleyan Assurance Society won the ifs Financial Innovation Awards 2007 for Most Effective Customer Segmentation Strategy.

The Wesleyan Group has in excess of £4 billion of funds under management as at 31 December 2007.

Wesleyan’s pensions With Profits fund was ranked the top with profits performer for single premiums invested over five and ten years in the most recent Money Management Individual Pensions survey (March 2008). In addition the Wesleyan Pensions Managed Fund appeared in the top five performers for single premiums invested over 10 and 15 year periods in the Balanced Managed Fund category.

Wesleyan is one of the UK’s financially strongest mutuals, receiving a ten-out-of- ten rating for four consecutive years in the Cazalet Consulting survey of With Profits offices.

Wesleyan came first for realistic free asset ratio (a significant measure of financial strength for With Profit insurers) in the most recent Ernst & Young review of UK Life Insurance Companies.