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Kuvare — a holding company that owns Guaranty Income Life, Lincoln Benefit Life and United Life — is trying to explain that it's a Blue Owl Capital investment services customer, not a Blue Owl subsidiary.
Blue Owl is a big private asset manager that spooked investors last week when it tightened the rules for pulling cash out of one of its funds.
Kuvare sold an asset management division to Blue Owl in 2024. Blue Owl bought $250 million in preferred shares from Kuvare, and Kuvare agreed to use Blue Owl as an asset manager, but Blue Owl has no ownership interest in Kuvare and no control over Kuvare, Kuvare said in a press release distributed through Business Wire.
Kuvare said it put out the press release because some media organizations have published articles based on the incorrect belief that Blue Owl owns Kuvare and might be pushing Kuvare to buy questionable assets.
"Blue Owl must obtain Kuvare's express consent to place Kuvare carrier assets in any Blue Owl-affiliated investment product," Kuvare said. "Blue Owl would not get to 'stick Kuvare' with any undesired assets from within Blue Owl's affiliated entities."
Blue Owl assets account for only 0.1% of Kuvare's total invested assets, and Kuvare has just $3.4 million in direct exposure to Blue Owl itself, Kuvare added.
What it means: For clients who have life insurance policies or annuities written by Kuvare's life insurance carriers, the Kuvare announcement means that those products are not tied to the fate of Blue Owl investment portfolios.
For all clients and advisors, investors' harsh reaction to the Blue Owl announcement and to media reports that other companies might have ties to Blue Owl are signs that investors may be less tolerant of risk than they thought.
This might be a good time for advisors to touch base with clients and see whether their views about market risk have changed.
Kuvare: Kuvare has about $50 billion in assets.
The company's owners include Access Holdings and Altamont Capital Partners.
Blue Owl: Blue Owl has $307 billion in assets under management. It attracted $56 billion in investor capital in the fourth quarter of 2025.
The Blue Owl fund affected by the rule change, the Blue Owl Capital Corp. II fund, holds just $1.6 billion of the company's assets under management.
But investors responded to news of the rule change by dumping shares of Blue Owl and other private asset managers, based partly on worries that the companies might be exposed to artificial intelligence activities, or activities that could be disrupted by AI.
The price of Blue Owl shares fell to $11.35 Wednesday, down 29% from the price recorded 30 days earlier. Some competitors' share prices have fallen 15% to 25% from where they were in late January.
Blue Owl has been selling some assets to fund cash distributions for the retail fund's investors. Blue Owl says demand for the assets it has sold has been strong. Media organizations looked at the Kuvare connection due to concerns that Blue Owl might be selling the assets to a subsidiary.
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