We have made some changes to our website

On 15th December we started to introduce our new logo and colours across Phoenix Life. The new branding complements that of the wider Phoenix Group and will, in time, align all of our Life companies under a single brand.

The new logo has also started to appear on letters and other documentation that we send to our customers, though the roll-out of the new brand won’t be complete until the end of February 2012. Click here for more details.

Introduction of the 0.6% pension fund levy on Irish business.

In May 2011 the Irish Finance (No2) Act 2011 introduced a new, temporary levy on pension funds established in Ireland. The levy takes the form of a 0.6% tax on the value of pension funds. The levy was applied on the value of the funds at 30 June 2011 and will be applied on the same date in each of the following three years, 2012, 2013 and 2014.

Consideration has been given to the implications of this legislation on our customers and details of the impact are shown below:

Policies invested in Unit Linked Funds
We applied the first levy to our unit linked pension funds on 1 July 2011. The effect of applying the first levy is that, from 1 July 2011 onwards, fund prices are reduced by 0.6% compared to the prices that would have been published had the levy not existed. This overrides guarantees on cash funds where the bid price would otherwise be guaranteed not to fall.

Policies invested in With-Profits Funds (Traditional and Unitised)
We will make allowance for the levy when we calculate bonus rates and surrender values for the affected with-profits policies, and these will be generally be lower as a result.

You do not need to take any action as we will pay this levy directly to the Revenue Commissioners.