Who awarded these excessive bonuses ?

I think it can only have been Roy Ranson

Why ?

Vanity , perhaps ? I am clever enough to be able to lead the pack.

Perhaps, but I'd put it down to allowing a sales based culture to rule. So their key test was
"Are we selling lots of business"
rather than
"Are we selling lots of business at a profit"

In a mutual, "profit" can have a different meaning, but whilst getting a load of "loss" making business is, or should be easy, writing volumes on self sustaining terms would have be more difficult.

They had a lot going for them, well-off potential clients, an experienced and knowledgeable sales team, a reputation for value, integrity and lower expenses compared to income than their rivals. Why they felt obliged to resort to smoke and mirrors on their finances still remains something of a mystery. Perhaps they just couldn't bring themselves to admit that they didn't get everything right. To my mind the crunch was the end of 1990 where to be consistent with the "it's just like unit linked" premise of WPWM, they needed to do nasty things like slash bonuses and impose MVAs to keep the assets and nominal fund values in line.