An Edinburgh-based life, pensions and investments company, part of Lloyds Banking Group, that began in 1815 as Scotland's first mutual life office.
Scottish Widows helps people in the UK save for retirement and protect the people they love. Its products include workplace and personal pensions, annuities, life cover, critical illness and income protection cover, savings and investments. It also runs the Scottish Widows Platform, which financial advisers use to look after clients' money. In plain terms, a pension is money put aside during your working life so that you have an income later, and life cover pays out to your family if you die. Scottish Widows sits between ordinary people, employers and advisers who arrange these things, which is why its work touches so many different customers.
The company grew out of a meeting in Edinburgh in 1812 about creating "a general fund for securing provisions to widows, sisters and other female relatives". It opened in 1815 as the Scottish Widows' Fund and Life Assurance Society, Scotland's first mutual life office, so caring for dependants is built into its history. It did not publish a short mission statement on the pages we could read, so that history is the best guide to what it stands for.
Scottish Widows is headquartered in Edinburgh, where its historic building at 5 St Andrew Square is decorated with sculptures from 1832. A Scottish Financial Enterprise profile gives an address at Morrison Street in Edinburgh and describes about 3,500 people working across customer service, IT, marketing and distribution, risk, legal and compliance, and finance. Scottish Financial News reported that around 3,000 staff were in Edinburgh, while the regulated insurance company is registered at Lloyds Banking Group's London headquarters at 25 Gresham Street. It has been part of Lloyds Banking Group since 2000, and its parent today is the same group. Lloyds Banking Group is its owner, so colleagues work as part of a much larger UK banking group.
Many people know the company through its "Scottish Widow" character, a hooded figure who has appeared in its advertising since 1986. The jobs behind the brand are varied: the profile lists customer service advisers, technology specialists, marketers, risk and compliance experts, lawyers and finance teams. The company says it serves about 10 million customers, which is a big responsibility for the people who work there.
If you like numbers, people or problem solving, an insurer like this uses all three. Advice, administration, actuarial and customer-care work all happen in the UK offices. We did not find a headcount figure from the company itself that is up to date, so the numbers above are from published profiles and should be checked on Scottish Widows' own pages. One thing to note is that its structure has changed over time: in December 2015 it brought its long-term UK insurance business, previously spread across eight authorised companies, into one company, then renamed Scottish Widows Limited. The company says customers were not affected. The company also launched a rebrand in 2024, updating its look while keeping traditional elements, and it has taken on the Embark platform, now called the Scottish Widows Platform, which is used by more than 23,000 advisers and advice firms (as at 2024, Wikipedia).
Website: www.scottishwidows.co.uk
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