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October 17, 2019 at 01:43 PM
The company that acquired the Phoenix Companies Inc. in 2016 is pushing ahead with efforts to make itself a major player in the U.S. life and annuity markets.
Nassau Financial Group L.P. of Hartford, Connecticut, today announced that it has agreed to acquire Foresters Financial Holding Company Inc. of New York and Foresters Life Insurance and Annuity Company from The Independent Order of Foresters.
(Related: Phoenix Issues First New Annuity Since Nassau Re Deal)
The price of the deal was not immediately available.
The New York State Department of Financial Services is one of the entities with a say over the deal.
The Players
The buyer, Nassau Financial, is the Hartford, Connecticut-based company popularly known as Nassau Re.
The company was founded in 2015 with about $750 million in capital commitments from Golden Gate Capital, a private investment firm. Golden Cate Capital may be best known for being the current owner of the Red Lobster restaurant chain.
The top Nassau Financial executives, including Phillip Gass, the chief executive officer, previously were part of the HRG Group Inc. team that helped HRG acquire Fidelity & Guaranty Life.
Nassau Financial came to national attention, as Nassau Re, soon after its founding by agreeing to acquire the Phoenix Companies Inc. of Hartford. Phoenix was founded in 1851, and it had been one of the biggest annuity issuers in the United States. It ran into trouble starting in the early 2000s, after interest rates fell and business conditions changed.
Nassau Financial has absorbed a number of other life insurers, including American Pioneer Life Insurance Company, Guarantee Reserve Life Insurance Company, North American Company of Life and Health, and Pennsylvania Life Insurance Company, via the acquisitions of Constitution Life Insurance Company ad Pyramid Life Insurance Company from Universal American.
The company has been managing blocks of in-force policies for many of the companies it has acquired.
But it has rebranded the Phoenix life and annuity insurance company subsidiaries as Nassau companies, and it has been actively writing new life and annuities on the Nassau Life brand name.
Nassau Financial has operated the old Phoenix companies as active issuers since it acquired them.
In 2018, Nassau Life introduced a single-premium multi-year guarantee annuity contract.
Earlier this month, the company introduced a non-security indexed annuity.
The company is also actively selling, and paying agents commissions to sell, other products, such as term life insurance and whole life final expense insurance.
