Silly season is upon us. Last week's results from the UK's biggest insurers, Royal & Sunalliance (R&SA) and CGNU, set the ever vigilant broker rumour mill into overdrive.
Our sources around the bars of the London and UK markets came up with a novel idea.
R&SA's life book is up for sale for a cool £2bn. And Norwich Union, which has just posted good results for its general insurance arm after years of neglect and false starts, is cutting back its general insurance business, which could be worth around £2bn.
So the perfect deal – why don't the two companies just swap their businesses?
Insurance Times's intrepid news team spent two days chasing the story and received some interesting feedback from industry observers and analysts, who were split 50/50 over the idea.
So if and when Norwich Union becomes purely life and R&SA becomes the largest general insurer in the UK – you know where you heard it first.
