Charles Thomson, the chief executive of Equitable Life, has ruled out a sale of its £7.6 billion of remaining assets until at least the beginning of next year in a potential blow to thousands of the collapsed insurer’s long-suffering policyholders.

Observers of Europe’s oldest mutual insurer had hoped that Equitable would move swiftly to offload the remainder of its with-profits policies, after striking a ground-breaking deal earlier this month to transfer £1.8 billion of its assets to Prudential.

Completing the transfer to the Pru offers a better deal for 62,000 Equitable Life policyholders and removes risk from the mutual, whose members number 310,000. It also sweeps away the last remaining obstacle to a full sale of the remaining business.

However, Mr Thomson told The Times that trying to negotiate a sale of any more Equitable funds before the Pru deal completed would divert management time, possibly throw up legal hurdles and could jeopardise the entire sale.

As he unveiled a £215 million improvement in Equitable’s financial solvency to £844 million, Mr Thomson tacitly acknowledged that the insurer had previously been in talks with potential buyers of its with-profits rump — the vast bulk of the remaining Equitable estate.

It is understood that those buyers include Resolution and Pearl, the closed life fund specialists, and Swiss Re, the reinsurance specialist.

But Mr Thomson emphasised that any prospective deals were “sequential”. “By the end of this year, early next year, we should be able to consider whether selling more is better in the interests of policyholders than managing the funds in run-off,” he said.

Last year, Equitable transferred most of its nonprofits annuities business to Canada Life, completing a £4.2 billion assets transfer earlier this year.

The insurer said that its with-profits pension policy values had increased by about 5 per cent last year and promised to pay an interim bonus of up to 5 per cent.

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