Founded in 1762, The Equitable Assurance Society (Equitable Life) is a life insurance company in the United Kingdom which is now all but closed down. It is credited with having pioneered age based premiums based on mortality rate and creating the framework for practicing insurance scientifically. All life insurance schemes of today base themselves on this framework created by Equitable Life.

Equitable Life Insurance, in the 1990’s had over 1.50 million policy holders and £26 million worth funds under management making it one of the UK’s top life insurers. However poor provisioning in respect of its guaranteed fixed return schemes led to the company incurring heavy losses. This pushed the company to the verge of bankruptcy and dishonouring its payment commitments to policy holders. Failing to find a buyer to bail it out of trouble, Equitable Life closed to new business in December 2000.
The collapse of Equitable Life Insurance shocked the whole life insurance industry. Following the incident, the government tightened the monitoring of life insurers to make sure that a repeat of this would not happen.
Following the formation of the new coalition government in early 2010 the Equitable Life Payments Scheme Bill was announced. The bill seeks to give compensation to nearly a million policyholders of Equitable Life.
The new government has also announced that the final report from Sir John Chadwick on Equitable Life will be available by July, 2010. Harried policyholders and their survivors meanwhile, hope to see the end of their long wait to get their insurance money.

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