The recent Bain Capital 9.9% stake in one of our Philadelphia area neighbors, Lincoln Financial, got us thinking: this isn’t just one-off deal between a private equity firm and insurance company—it looks like a much larger long-term trend. So as insurance companies increasingly become places where private equity firms acquire stakes, now feels like a good time to recount some of the landmark PE/insurer deals over the past few years.
These deals, ranging from $1.8 billion to $11 billion, reflect a clear trend: PE firms are targeting insurers with large reserve pools—especially those in annuities and reinsurance—to deploy capital into high-yield, illiquid assets like private credit. Life insurance policies often come as a package deal with insurers’ annuity books of business, but PE firms often see it as the ugly step-brother. Policy premiums, which are paid in chunks, and sometimes less predictably, aren’t as ideal for their asset-heavy investment strategies[2].
So, what does this mean for shareholders and policyowners? The upside case includes competitive pressure on pricing as firms vie for policyholders, as expressed by McKinsey, but it is fair to wonder if this will come at a price. That price, put simply, is shorter-term profits over long-term security as reserve pools graduate from stable bonds to higher-yielding, riskier assets which are more exposed to market fluctuations[3]. In addition to that, in a worst-case scenario case, life insurance policyholders’ best interests could increasingly take the backseat, putting the promise of death benefit payouts in question, especially in the case of a severe market event.
We would love to hear your thoughts on if you believe this to be a sustainable and mutually beneficial trend for parties involved in these deals.
(1) Each underscored heading is a link to new coverage of the deal(s) involved.
© 2026 Stephen C. Baker LLC|Sitemap|Disclaimer
