Nippon Life Insurance Company (Nippon Life) is to acquire 100% of the shares of Resolution Life in an agreement valued at USD$8.2bn, subject to regulatory approval.
On completion of the transaction, MLC Life Insurance and Resolution Life’s Australasian subsidiary, Resolution Life Australasia, will merge to create one of Australia’s largest life insurance businesses, to be known as Acenda.
Serving around two million customers and partners, Acenda will focus on growth and remain open to new business.
This will include leveraging MLC Life Insurance’s Vivo health and wellness offering, alongside Resolution Life’s digital solutions and retirement product suite.
Nippon Life will also acquire the 20% share of MLC Life Insurance that National Australia Bank (NAB) has retained since 2016, when Nippon Life acquired the 80% stake in MLC Life Insurance.
As a part of the transaction, NAB has agreed to provide, for a period of three years post completion, an amount of contingent Tier 2 capital support to Acenda.
Hiroshi Shimizu, Nippon Life President, says the deal aligns with the company’s intentions to continue to grow in the Australian life insurance industry and emphasised the merger’s benefits for Australian consumers.
Peter Grey, Chair of MLC Life Insurance, says the substantial investment shows the continued commitment of Nippon Life to the Australian life insurance market.
The transaction is expected to be completed in the second half of the 2025 calendar year.
Resolution Life Australasia was established in 2020, following Resolution Life’s acquisition of AMP Life. MLC Life Insurance will begin adopting the Acenda brand immediately, and Resolution Life Australasia will transition to Acenda after the transaction’s completion.
Until completion, the two businesses will continue to operate separately.
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Wow. When AMP and National Mutual set out to destroy each other all those years ago, I never imagined the ultimate winner would be MLC! Gotta laugh…
Quell surprise !Something had to give because essentially because Resolution was sold a pup by AMP.
It all came tumbling down about a year ago when NML trustees, running all the old AMP and National Mutual retail superfunds, expressed their independence and declared they were not contractually bound to purchase their insurance from Resolution as the new owner of AMP. Resolution went to court and lost.
The other mistake made by Resolution was that they were not in the new business market. The money was only flowing out – nothing coming in without liability.
And perhaps the final straw only recently is that when Resolution lost an appeal in the Federal Court against AFCA's decision to instruct them to pay an ex-gratia amount equivalent to a TPD sum assured even when AFCA admitted that the existing exclusion did not require Resolution to pay the TPD claim. AFCA invented a new rule which stated that insurers needed, in some yet to be defined way, to offer re-views of Back exclusions exclusions
It's not clear as to whether Resolution lost money on the original AMP deal, but they are certainly taking their bat going home, back to the UK, where things might be a little more certain when it comes to activism from an ombudsman
And of course the new Nippon owned Entity will be in the new business market, with a capacity to reduce the liability of what must be a very large book by encouraging new business.
Could this really mean that LIF might be rescinded?Has Mr Howarth been talking to Nippon? You Canguarantee advisers will be the last to know
LOL, as usual I find that reading Old Risky's comments is more informative than the article – as good as the RI articles are. Keep up the great work Oldie and put in for a fee from RiskInfo for your glorious editorials!
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