John Deane, chief executive of Royal London's intermediary division, said: "Since the acquisition of Scottish Provident under the Royal London umbrella, the Bright Grey and Scottish Provident propositions have gone from strength to strength. Our multi-brand approach is working well, as recent new business and financial results confirm. To enable us to fully capitalise on this competitive advantage, we have decided to bring the two brands under the control of a single management team.
"This management team will be led by Ross Ainslie, who previously worked at Scottish Provident and who has been one of the senior management group responsible for the success of Bright Grey since its launch.
"Under Ross's leadership I'm confident we can look forward to accelerating the growth of our protection businesses and the development of future brands and propositions for the protection market."
Ross Ainslie said:"Obviously I was delighted to be selected for this very important role.
"I will be establishing a senior team who will have responsibility for developing the strategies and plans to deliver even more success for the Scottish Provident and Bright Grey brands. Royal London is unique in the protection market place in having a multi-brand, multi-distribution strategy and we are convinced this offers us a considerable competitive advantage in growing our new business profitably.
"Advisers will continue to be able to use either Bright Grey or Scottish Provident, or ideally both, to meet the needs of their clients.
"We're hugely excited at the opportunities we now have and look forward to delivering even stronger and more attractive propositions to advisers and their clients during 2009 and beyond."
