Acquisitions · Life insurance
Dai-ichi Life's Protective buys Great-West's US individual life and annuity block
- Buyer
- Dai-ichi Life Holdings (via Protective Life) (Tokyo)
- Target
- Great-West Life & Annuity (individual life and annuity business), Greenwood Village, Colorado
- Value
- About $1.2B (C$1.6B); about ¥130B per TDnet summary
- Status
- Agreed on January 24, 2019; completed in June 2019.
- Date
- 2019-01-24
Protective Life, the Birmingham, Alabama-based US arm of Dai-ichi Life Holdings, agreed to take over Great-West Life & Annuity's individual life insurance and annuity business for about $1.2 billion. The deal was structured as reinsurance. It was Protective's largest deal to date.
Why it matters
Protective has grown by buying blocks of existing policies from other insurers, and the deal added a large book of in-force business in one step. For Dai-ichi Life, it expanded the US earnings base it gained when it bought Protective.
How the deal works
According to the Japanese disclosure summary, Protective takes on a block of about 240,000 individual life insurance and annuity policies through reinsurance. The policies remain with Great-West, and Protective receives the premiums that policyholders pay as reinsurance premiums. Protective, based in Birmingham, Alabama, has been owned by Dai-ichi Life since 2015.
The seller
Great-West Life & Annuity is the Colorado-based US unit of a Canadian insurance group, which is why the price was also stated as C$1.6 billion. The sale was expected to close in June 2019 and was completed that month.
Sources
Kakehashi M&A News home
