ABSTRACT
Partnership agreements diffused rapidly across the UK life and pensions sector in the mid-to late 1990s (see Table 3.1 ). This was a period when a number of pressures on fi rms intensifi ed. As outlined in the previous chapter, the liberalisation of the regulatory regime in the late 1980s triggered dramatic changes in the structure and mode of operation of UK fi nancial services, reducing economic and technological barriers to entry and exposing fi nancial institutions to new and more intense forms of competition (see Anderton, 1995). The aggregate effects were sharply increased pressures on costs and changes in the structure of ownership; in particular, waves of merger activity to achieve economies of scale and to satisfy City analysts.
