London, April 27, 2026, 13:05 BST
Legal & General shares drew fresh attention from income investors on Monday after the FTSE 100 insurer went ex-dividend last week, leaving buyers to weigh an 8.6% yield against a stock price still sitting near 253p. Hargreaves Lansdown’s delayed quote showed the shares at 252.8p/252.9p, up 0.28%, and marked the stock as ex-dividend, meaning new buyers no longer qualify for the next payout.
The timing matters because the company’s 15.67p final dividend is now locked for shareholders on the register after Friday’s record date and is due to be paid on June 4. Legal & General’s dividend page shows a 2025 full-year dividend of 21.79p a share, up from 21.36p in 2024, while the board’s current guidance points to 2% annual dividend-per-share growth after 2024.
Retail investor commentary has made the cash maths unusually visible. A Motley Fool article published Monday said contributor Ben McPoland had put £1,125 into the “boring” FTSE 100 stock before it went ex-dividend; a separate Fool/Yahoo item on Friday calculated that 3,703 Legal & General shares could pay £822 a year; and an earlier Yahoo-hosted piece said weak share performance over five years had helped lift the forecast yield to about 8%. The Motley Fool
The company’s investment case is no longer just the dividend. Legal & General in March announced a £1.2 billion share buyback, which Chief Executive António Simões called the “largest in our history”, and said dividends plus buybacks would return more than £5 billion to shareholders over 2025-2027. Investegate
Its latest results gave investors some support for that plan, though not a clean sweep. Legal & General reported core operating profit of £1.623 billion, up 6%, core operating earnings per share up 9%, and a pro forma Solvency II coverage ratio of 210%; Solvency II is the regulatory capital measure insurers use to show how much financial buffer they hold.
Matt Britzman, senior equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, wrote that the full-year numbers had “a few moving parts” but “landed broadly in line” with expectations. He said the market reaction looked “a little harsh”, while adding that income remains central to the case and that the forward yield near 8.6% looks attractive, with buybacks adding another route for cash returns. Hargreaves Lansdown
The peer backdrop is busy. IG’s latest list of high-yielding FTSE 100 dividend stocks put Legal & General at the top with an 8.40% yield as of April 10, ahead of Standard Life at 7.88%, M&G at 7.05% and Aviva at 6.27%, a reminder that UK insurers and savings groups are competing hard for income-focused capital.
Standard Life, recently rebranded from Phoenix, sharpened that contest this month by agreeing to buy Aegon’s UK business for £2 billion, a deal it said would lift managed assets by half to £480 billion. Standard Life Chief Executive Andy Briggs told Reuters the transaction would make the group a “market leader” in UK savings and retirement markets, the same pool of long-term money Legal & General is trying to capture. Reuters
But the high yield is not free money. IG warned that yields above 7% can be a red flag because they may reflect a falling share price rather than a stronger business, while Britzman pointed to near-term risks from weaker economic conditions across global markets.
Legal & General’s own growth areas are still chunky and technical. Pension risk transfer, or bulk annuities where an insurer takes over responsibility for company pension promises, reached £11.8 billion of global volume in 2025, while the asset management arm reported £1.2 trillion of assets under management. Those businesses matter because they feed fees, capital generation and, ultimately, the dividend promise investors are now pricing.
The next scheduled markers are clear. Legal & General has set its annual general meeting for May 21, the final dividend payment for June 4 and half-year results for August 5, with the next ex-dividend date listed for August 20. For now, the stock is back in a familiar place: dull to some, watched closely by income buyers, and under pressure to prove that an 8%-plus yield is a reward, not a warning.
