Report calls for Equitable compensation and apology

By Clara Ferreira-Marques

LONDON (Reuters) - The government should apologise to more than a million policyholders in Equitable Life and offer them compensation, a long-awaited report by the parliamentary ombudsman said on Thursday, almost a decade after the insurer's near-demise.

The country's oldest mutual insurer, with 1.5 million policyholders at its peak, almost collapsed in 2000 after being forced to honour unsustainable guarantees stretching back 30 years. It eventually closed to new business in one of the most dramatic financial scandals.

Thursday's report by parliamentary ombudsman Ann Abraham, who has been probing the case for four years, will not guarantee a payout for all policyholders and further delays are expected but it should hearten those who have campaigned for years for government compensation.

"(Those) responsible for undertaking financial regulation should act in a way that is compatible with the duties and powers which parliament has conferred on them," she said.

"Those responsible for the prudential regulation of Equitable Life failed to do so throughout the period covered in my report," Abraham said on Thursday.

Abraham, who leads independent inquiries into a range of public bodies, upheld a complaint blaming Equitable's troubles on regulatory and government failures.

She said bodies overseeing the insurer were "passive, reactive and complacent", allowing one person to be both chief executive and appointed actuary for more than six years -- neutralising the appointed actuary's "whistle-blower" role.

They also failed to question or resolve issues around the affordability and sustainability of the bonuses to policyholders it was declaring and did nothing to solve the issue of information left out of Equitable's regulatory returns.