Insurance Crosses Muddy Farm Fields at United Kingdom's Royal London Mutual
LONDON //BestWire// - Royal London Society, the largest mutual insurer in the United Kingdom and the sixth-biggest in Europe in terms of gross written premiums, is among carriers worldwide seeking to find innovative ways to operate.
Jamie JenkinsIn the case of Royal London, that is on display in one effort outside the cubicles and carpeted offices that dominate in the insurance world: 21,000 acres of farmland. In fact, Jamie Jenkins, director of policy at Royal London, can discuss issues such as capitalization and investments you’d normally consider typical in the world of insurance and pivot to discussing the symbolism of potato crops, chickens and solar energy.
Royal London Asset Management first bought the land in March 2024 for £260 million ($347.7 million) in a partnership with the South Yorkshire Pension Authority, it said in a statement at the time. The idea was to reduce its environmental impact through innovation, technology and sustainable and regenerative farming practices.
The collection of land across Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire marked the company's inaugural agricultural investment. Its management company, Waldersey Farms, was acquired as part of the deal alongside tenanted relationships with other U.K. businesses and it retained management of the majority of the land, according to the release.
“At the point that we bought it, it was kind of struggling to move on as a business,” Jenkins said, attributing those difficulties to the owners’ lack of capital to make investments. “They've got this enormous piece of land, and we looked at it and we thought, actually, there's a wonderful opportunity here.”
At first glance, the land "will have some chickens and it'll have some potatoes and it'll have some other stuff going on and that might return you, you know, 1, 2, 3% a year. Nobody's going to get particularly excited about that," Jenkins said.
Jenkins said the land's management team "knows what they're doing" and with an investment the parcel holds the prospect of returns that are much larger. And Royal London gets to profit while doing the right thing, he said.
By all accounts, Royal London is a large company: it offers everything from asset management for institutional clients; to protection; and pensions and saving policies. The company said as of year-end 2025 protection new business rose 17% to £991 million, and its bulk-purchase annuity business completed 18 transactions with £1.3 billion of premiums.
Group wide, it writes about 8.5 million life and pension policies with the United Kingdom as its focus and about 485,000 in Ireland. Its investment management arm had £199 billion in assets under management as of 2025 and in 2026 it shared £199 million with 2.4 million eligible customers, according to financial reporting.
Royal London Mutual Insurance Society Ltd had gross premiums written of $8.1 billion last year placing it sixth among European insurers, according to Best's Rankings data. France dominated the top five with Société de Groupe d’Assurance Mutuelle Covéa taking No. 1 with GWP of $28.82 billion, along with second-place SGAM AG2R La Mondiale at $15.19 billion and No. 5 MAIF with $8.72 billion, according to Best's Rankings data.
Rounding out the top five were Germany’s HUK-Coburg Haftpflicht-Unterstützungs in third with $12.66 billion in GWP and fourth-place Alecta Tjänstepension Ömsesidigt of Sweden with $10.39 billion, according to the data.
In fact, mutuals accounted for 26.1% of the global insurance market share, according to the International Cooperative and Mutual Insurance Foundation. In Europe, they held a market share of 31.3%, below the 39.4% seen in North America but outpacing the 8.9% seen in Asia and Oceania, and dwarfing the 3.9% in Africa.
Mutuals worldwide had $10.8 trillion in total assets, with 1.2 million employees and 856 million policyholders, according to ICMIF.
Programs such as the farm purchase fit into the company’s three framing principles— improving financial resilience for Royal London and its customers, sustainability and helping to grow the mutual sector in the United Kingdom. Often, the environmental portion of environmental, social and governance investing takes center stage.
At Royal London, the notion of sustainability goes deeper than strictly environmental concerns, Jenkins said.
“It's beyond just climate, because it is about the transition to changes in people's lives and the way in which workers around the world are treated and supply chains are dealt with and all those kinds of things,” Jenkins said. “The way that executive pay works, right through to all of those kinds of issues that people have, feelings about, thoughts about, concerns about.”
As for growing the mutual sector, he said in the past mutuals accounted for a larger share of the United Kingdom's insurance market. Mutuals and cooperatives across sectors represent a solid “third way” that lies somewhere between government ownership and full privatization of things like utilities or financial services such as insurance, he said.
Sustainable investing has been a Royal London effort going back decades, he said. Even before we knew it as environmental, social and governance. The company looks to promote activism regardless of whether it's examining a fund it deems sustainable or not, according to Jenkins.
“You don't forget about all the principles that you apply elsewhere,” he said. “You still want to make sure the company has longevity, it's operating sensibly, it's got good governance, you know, all of those things still apply. It's applying ESG less as a sort of separate function, but more as part of the DNA.”
He points to the company’s Helping Hand program, which helps people think about health and fitness, as well as offering some mental and physical health services.
As for growing the larger mutual sector, Royal London has focused on raising awareness of the important role mutuals play and the benefits they bring. As the United Kingdom’s largest mutual, the company is also working to assist smaller counterparts in raising capital, he said.
Over the past 20 to 30 years, the United Kingdom’s mutual sector has shrunk to about 10% of the market today from as high as 30% or 40% in the past, he said. Most, like U.S. counterparts, demutualized over that time and adopted other corporate structures primarily to ease capital raising.
“We make money from customers, but then we give profits back to customers. So, the alignment is very clear,” Jenkins said. “The idea is that having a strong mutual sector kind of holds to account the rest of the industry to a certain standard, in terms of that alignment and how it's different, how it creates a greater challenge to be able to pay shareholders but still treat your customers in a very kind of focused way.”
(By Terrence Dopp, senior associate editor, Best’s Review: Terry.Dopp@ambest.com)