Many doctors may remember attending “drug lunches” in the 1990’s run by the likes of Cannon Lincoln who became Lincoln National, and then Lincoln. These firms tended to sell a variety of fairly expensive basic financial products. Over the last 10 years Lincoln has made considerable efforts to market innovative products and improve investment performance.

Last week, on 15th June 2009, the North American parent company (worth around $178bn at the end of 2008) announced on that it has agreed to sell its UK presence, the Lincoln Financial Group (worth £4.19bn at the end of 2008) to Sun Life Financial of Canada for around £195m. If you still have any of these old policies, you can expect yet another rebranding, and if you have not reviewed these old policies for some time, I suggest that this is something that you make a priority.

Lincoln saw its unit-linked funds under management reduce by 23% in 2008 and also saw a significant fall in new business levels for insurance and investments.

Lincoln took over a number of businesses that focused on the medical market in the 1980s and 90s, which include Citibank Financial, Laurentian Life and Liberty. At the time, they had a direct sales force that were incredibly pushy – Lincoln re-invented their business model and focused on the IFA market which has been a very successful remodelling of their offering, moving to products that are truly worthy of consideration by IFAs.