Authors: Joseph Anzalone James Walton

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March 2026

Private equity (PE) firms and other alternative asset managers have become increasingly engaged in the pension risk transfer (PRT) market over the past decade. Several US insurers are either partially owned by PE firms or have asset management relationships with them. In the US insurance industry more widely, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) identified 137 PE-owned insurance companies at year-end 2024, investing a total of $704 billion, or 7.8% of all US insurers' total invested assets.1

The involvement of insurers with these relationships is part of a wider trend of growth in US PRT, which has seen the number of participating insurers increase from eight in 2012 to more than 20 at the end of 2025. Pre-2012 transaction volumes for the market as a whole were typically less than $3B per annum, but in recent years have grown to frequently exceed $40B per annum.2 A greater number of participating insurers has increased competition in the PRT market and has expanded the market's capacity to absorb pension liabilities in the face of rising demand from pension plans seeking to de-risk.

In this article, we examine the involvement of PE firms (or, more generally, alternative asset managers) in the US insurance industry and address some of the risks observers cite, including the use of reinsurance to affiliates and the use of structured and private credit.

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Author Information

Sources

1"Private Equity-Owned U.S. Insurer Investments Increased at Year-End 2024," NAIC, Aug 2025. PDF file.

2"US Single Premium Buy-In Sales Soared 328% to $4.3 Billion in the Third Quarter 2025," LIMRA, no date. PDF file.

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