Some people may not know about Pearl's recent history. In 1991 they were bought by Australian financial services provider AMP. Pearl up to that date had some sizeable cash reserves saved by the fact that they were not too generous when paying bonuses. AMP took advantage of this fund and used it to acquire other companies such as NPI and a stake in Virgin Money. In 2001, there was the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre in New York, which caused global markets to tumble. The management at Pearl had used up the reserves in their fund, and were short for cash because of the stock market problems. At one point, their parent AMP had to bail them out with many cash injections. It was also at this point that bonuses were slashed. In 2002 all the Pearl agents were made redundant along with their administrative support staff. At the same time Pearl stopped taking on new business, with the exception of increasing premiums to certain products or joining a group pension scheme. Today, Pearl exists mainly as a brand, administering the 1.5 million policies that are left. They are now owned by a parent company, Pearl Group, which has also acquired Phoenix, who own a number of closed-business life assurance providers. The point of this message is not only did the customers lose out, but a huge number of dedicated and professional staff at Pearl were left without a job.