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January 10, 2020 at 11:15 AM
Athene Holding Ltd. and Legal & General Retirement America say the world’s pension risk transfer market continues to look great.
Pension risk transfer arrangements give pension plan sponsors a way to shed part or all of their responsibility for pension benefits obligations. The sponsors transfer the risk to life insurers by using one big premium to buy a large group annuity.
(Related: Resolution Life Agrees to Pay $902 Million for Voya’s Individual Life Business)
Group annuity issuers can use the pension risk transfer to shed some or all of the risk they have assumed.
Athene — a company based in Pembroke, Bermuda, that does much of its business in the United States — says it handled about $6 billion in pension risk transfer deals in 2019. That total includes an $800 million reinsurance deal with an insurer in the United Kingdom.
Athene says that, since 2017, it has closed 16 pension risk transfer deals involving about $11 billion in deal value, and pension payment streams for about 168,000 people.
Legal & General Retirement America announced in December that it had completed about $1.1 billion in pension risk transfer deals in the United States in 2019.
