Lloyds Banking Group is selling off its German life insurance business, Heidelberger Leben, for £257 million as part of an attempt to meet new regulatory demands.

The Bank of England’s requirements for Lloyds to increase its provision against loss by £8.6 billion has led the bank to a number of measures to recoup capital and reduce its exposure, including selling some of its high-risk loans to Goldman Sachs.

Whilst the sale of loans to Goldman Sachs will only make a small impact on Lloyd’s risk ratios, according to Lloyds the sale of Heidelberger Leben will increase its ‘common equity tier-one capital’ by about £400 million, although at the same time result in a 330 million euro loss.

The 300 person strong company owns about 600,000 life policies and 5.2 billion euros of investments.

Earlier in the year Lloyds raised £450 million with the sale of St James’ place.