Hundreds of billions of dollars of assets originated by private capital groups have piled up in a sleepier corner of the financial system: life insurance and annuity companies, which guarantee retirement savings for millions of people.
This trend developed after the 2008 financial crisis, as lending was squeezed out of the banking system into private equity companies. Blackstone, the world’s largest alternative asset manager, has struck a series of asset management deals with insurers, while rivals KKR and Apollo Global Management have acquired insurers outright and invested policyholders’ premiums into loans that they originate.
As Wall Street’s most aggressive investors have come to control hundreds of billions of dollars of retirement savings, regulators, policyholders and even some industry executives have warned that the sector is pushing into riskier and more opaque assets.