In its early years it was known as Hambro Life Assurance and was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.

[1] The company expanded its financial adviser operations during the late 1970s and early 1980s, acquiring the Allied Unit Trusts of which it was soon the major unitholder, to become 'Allied Hambro' in 1984.

[2] In 2005 and following changes in industry regulation ZAN evolved into a stand-alone entity known as Openwork—a directly authorised multi-tiered financial distribution network.

[3][4] Allied Dunbar's business, like its predecessor Abbey Life's, was unit-linked: the direct investment risk and reward due to market changes was very largely exclusive to the individual investors, rather than the company, its shareholders or other planholders.

Over the period May 2001 to April 2003, a portion of the nearly 300,000 Allied Dunbar customers who had been sold endowment mortgages made complaints.

[6] In its decision, the Financial Services Authority noted that:[7] ...complaint handlers had conducted poor-quality investigations and there was a failure to gather sufficient evidence to make a fair assessment of both the consumer's attitude to the risk and the suitability of the sale.Allied Dunbar stopped writing endowment mortgages in November 2001.