Nippon Life eyeing foreign bond, alternative asset managers

TOKYO: Japan’s Nippon Life Insurance Co, which recently struck a deal to buy about a quarter of a United States investment firm TCW Group, is scouting for opportunities to buy boutique managers of bonds and alternative assets, said its president.

“Asset management is a business that can generate synergy with life insurance and it needs to be operated globally. We have been looking widely for potential partners,” said Yoshinobu Tsutsui.

The bulking up of asset management overseas by Japan’s largest private-sector life insurer comes as the nation’s insurers are increasingly shifting money away from Japanese government bonds (JGBs), their main investment, into riskier but higheryielding ones such as foreign corporate bonds to diversify their returns.

Insurers in Japan have been hurt by diminishing investment returns after the Bank of Japan launched aggressive monetary easing in April 2013.

Last month, Nippon Life announced a deal to acquire 24.75 per cent of TCW from private equity firm Carlyle Group LP. Nippon Life has about 74 trillion yen (RM2.65 trillion) in assets. Tsutsui said potential targets were likely to be asset management companies with bond investment expertise, as the insurer’s portfolio had been traditionally made up of fixed-income products.

He also said the company was looking for specialists in alternative investments, whose real estate and other portfolios offer diversification from conventional bond and stock investments.

“As we have to diversify investment assets globally, alternative is a very important field,” he said.

“The United States has a very big and deep market for asset management. There are huge companies, but there are also small but unique boutiques. We would like to keep looking there,” he said.

Tsutsui said while his company would curb fresh investment in JGBs further, the United States interest rate rises posed a challenge to its effort to increase foreign bond holdings.

Sources with the direct knowledge have said Nippon Life was in talks to buy a majority stake in the Japanese unit of US-based MassMutual Financial Group in an attempt to boost its bancassurance sales.