纽约，10月12日 - 私募股权投资者在曾经枯燥的保险行业里享受了一段非常好的时光。收购巨头们效仿阿波罗全球管理公司和KKR的做法，纷纷成立或收购保险公司，积累了价值约6960亿美元的战争基金，并将其投入到奇特的信贷投资中。不过，这一黄金时代可能正在结束。随着竞争加剧导致回报下降，一些新进入者将被迫退出。
NEW YORK, Oct 12 - Private-equity swashbucklers have enjoyed some very good years in the once-boring insurance industry. Buyout barons aping the likes of Apollo Global Management and KKR rushed to set up or buy insurers, building a war chest worth roughly $696 billion which they plunged into oddball credit investments. The golden era may be ending, though. As competition shrinks returns, some newcomers will be forced out.
利用保险费作为“小金库”来融资投资赌注并非全新概念。沃伦·巴菲特早在几十年前就围绕这一技巧打造了他的伯克希尔哈撒韦帝国。然而，近期这波浪潮的特点在于利用人寿保险公司来推动非银行贷款。当现任阿波罗首席执行官马克·罗文在2009年帮助成立雅典保险时，它只是少数几家被收购公司所拥有的机构之一，这些机构大多专注于从金融危机和近乎零利率导致低迷的行业中收购已关闭的业务组合。到2024年，沃顿商学院的学者们统计出美国有139家私募股权拥有的保险公司。
Using insurance premiums as a kitty to finance investment bets is not exactly new. Warren Buffett built his Berkshire Hathaway empire around this trick decades ago. What defined the more recent wave, though, was tapping life insurers to fuel non-bank lending. When now-Apollo boss Marc Rowan helped set up Athene in 2009, it was one of a handful of institutions owned by buyout shops, most of which focused on buying closed books of business from an industry laid low by the financial crisis and rock-bottom interest rates. By 2024, academics at the Wharton School counted 139 private equity-owned insurers in the United States.
这一繁荣的很大一部分出现在2020年之后，正值该行业关键指标——投资利差——触及低点。简单来说，投资利差是指保险公司向投保人承诺的现金回报与其通过购买资产所获得的收益之间的差额。在金融危机之后，传统人寿保险公司在这一方程式上处于不利地位。在繁荣时期签发的保单承诺了丰厚的回报，但能够提供足够收益的资产却因利率持续下跌而变得稀缺。根据新英格兰资产管理公司的研究，2019年只有49%的美国人寿保险公司实现了正的投资利差。
Much of that boom came after 2020, near a nadir for the industry’s key metric: investment spread. Simply put, this is the difference between the payout an insurer promises its policyholders in return for their cash and the yield it reaps on the assets it buys with the proceeds. In the wake of the financial crisis, traditional life insurers got caught on the wrong side of this equation. Policies written during flush times promised heady payouts, but assets that paid a sufficient yield were scarce as interest rates careened lower. According to New England Asset Management research only 49% of US life insurance companies generated positive spread in 2019.
进入收购大亨时代，他们将年金等产品的收益投入到诸如晦涩资产支持证券化等新颖且收益更高的投资中。惠顿研究人员指出，私募股权所有的保险公司将每笔新投资的约40%投入到结构性证券中，而独立公司则低于20%。
Enter the buyout barons, which channeled the proceeds of products like annuities into novel and higher-yielding investments such as esoteric asset-backed securitizations Private equity-owned insurers plunge about 40% of each new investment dollar into structured securities, per the Wharton researchers, compared with under 20% for independent firms.
这种冲击引发了人们对过度风险承担的广泛担忧。全美保险监督官协会（National Association of Insurance Commissioners）——该机构负责监督美国地方监管机构的标准——曾警告过“循环所有权”的风险，即被收购公司所有的保险公司将资金投入到由同一机构管理的投资中，正如《金融时报》所报道的那样。民主党参议员伊丽莎白·沃伦和谢罗德·布朗在国会中也拉响了警报。
The onslaught has caused plenty of angst about excessive risk-taking. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners, the body that oversees standards for local US watchdogs, has warned about the risks of “circular ownership” as insurers owned by buyout firms pour cash into investments managed by the same institutions, the Financial Times reported Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown have raised red flags in Congress.
然而，更为激进的策略也带来了财务回报。NEAM估计，到2024年，私募股权所有的集团平均净息差达到约1.6%，而传统年金销售商则低于1%。规模最小的年金专注型新进入者获得了最大的收益。回顾2019年，息差随着保险公司规模的增加而增加；但到2024年，这一趋势已经逆转。
Yet more aggressive tactics have brought financial rewards. By 2024, private equity-owned groups earned an average net spread of roughly 1.6%, versus less than 1% for traditional annuity peddlers, NEAM reckons The smallest annuity-focused newcomers saw the biggest gains. Back in 2019, spread increased with the size of the insurer. By 2024, the picture had reversed.
随着行业争夺新客户，根据定价和分析平台Cannex的数据，3年期固定年金的利率从2021年左右的1%飙升至2023年底的5%。但与此同时，美国国债收益率也在快速上升，而企业借款人和发行被切片打包的资产支持贷款的机构则需要在基准利率之上支付高昂的溢价。这使得保险公司仍能维持可观的投资息差。美国年金的销售额从2020年的2190亿美元激增至2025年的4640亿美元，而罗文的Athene成为最大的销售商。
与此同时，前十大被收购公司所有的机构掌握了美国半数人寿保险公司在关联公司中的投资，因为这些大亨们将他们的业务紧密联系在一起。
As the industry chased new customers, rates on 3-year fixed annuities soared from around 1% in 2021 to 5% by the end of 2023, judging by data from pricing and analytics platform Cannex. But yields on US government bonds were also rapidly rising, while corporate borrowers and issuers of sliced-and-diced asset-backed loans paid a hefty amount on top of benchmark rates. This allowed insurers to keep earning a decent investment spread. Sales of US annuities shot up from $219 billion in 2020 to $464 billion in 2025, while Rowan’s Athene became the biggest seller Meanwhile, the top 10 buyout-owned shops for half of US life insurers’ investments in affiliated companies, as barons tied their operations together.
这种良性循环如今正在失速。行业数据分析机构Beacon Annuity Solutions指出，传统固定年金在2023年后销售增长停滞。截至2026年，行业前20强之外的中位数销售商在这些产品上的销售额已下降25%。即便是前五大玩家也出现了10%的下降。然而，竞争的激增使得支付率仍然保持高位，即便美国联邦储备局在2024年底开始降息，美国国债收益率也曾短暂回落。
This virtuous cycle is now sputtering. Industry data-cruncher Beacon Annuity Solutions notes that traditional fixed annuities saw sales growth flatline after 2023. So far in 2026, the median peddler outside the industry’s top 20 has seen sales of these products collapse by 25%. Even the five largest players are down 10%. Yet the rush of competition kept payout rates high, even after the US Federal Reserve started lowering interest rates at the end of 2024 and yields on US government bonds eased for a while.
结果是，保险公司面临挤压。虽然支付成本仍然居高不下，但企业和资产支持贷款的收益率却紧随官方利率波动。与此同时，这些借款人为信用所支付的溢价也在收窄。在美国银行追踪的资产支持证券中，数据中心义务相较于基准的利差已从三年前的236个基点降至如今的174个基点。被切分的两年期信用卡债务组合利差从之前的57个基点收紧至29个基点。
The result was that insurers faced a squeeze. While payouts stayed expensive, the yield on corporate and asset-backed loans tracked official interest rates. At the same time, the premium those borrowers were paying for credit also narrowed Among asset-backed securities tracked by Bank of America, the spread over benchmarks earned by data center obligations has declined from 236 basis points three years ago to 174 basis points now . Sliced-up, two-year bundles of credit-card debt tightened to 29 basis points, from 57 previously.
阿波罗报告显示，其所谓的退休服务业务板块的净投资利差已从2023年的峰值1.9%降至2025年的1.6%。传统且多元化的保险公司大都会人寿（MetLife）在剔除变动收入后的投资利差，已从约1.4%降至略低于1%。这给人寿保险公司所有者的回报带来压力。根据S&P全球市场情报（S&P Global Market Intelligence）收集的法定申报数据判断，美国行业的平均股本税前经营回报率在2023年达到近13%的峰值。而截至今年，这一数值仅略高于8%。
Apollo’s reported net investment spread for its so-called Retirement Services complex fell from a peak of 1.9% in 2023 to 1.6% in 2025. Traditional, diversified insurer MetLife’s investment spread excluding variable income slipped from about 1.4% to just under 1%. This pressures returns for life insurance companies’ owners. The pre-tax operating return on average equity for the US industry peaked in 2023 at nearly 13%, judging by statutory filing data collected by S&P Global Market Intelligence. So far this year, it is just over 8%.
一些大型资产管理公司正摩拳擦掌、跃跃欲试。多位行业高管认为，这种更加严峻的市场环境将迫使市场进行一次“洗牌”，从而缓解竞争压力。像 Athene 这样的大型企业拥有更高效的运营机制，并且能够从金融机构那里筹集到小型竞争对手无法获得的资金；而其他小型企业则可能被迫停止制定新的业务政策。年金收益率相对于国债收益率的溢价不断缩小的趋势，或许已经表明这一过程正在发生——不过，这部分也是因为近期政府基准利率的急剧上升，导致相关计算公式发生了变化。
Some big asset managers are licking their lips. Multiple industry executives expect this rougher ride to force a shake-out that will in turn cool competition. Modern giants like Athene enjoy much more efficient operations and the ability to drum up money from institutions in a way that smaller rivals can’t. Others could be forced to cease writing new policies. The shrinking premium for annuity rates over yields on Treasury bonds may indicate that this process is already happening - though that’s partly due to a recent sharp run-up in government benchmark rates that may scramble the calculus.
其他市场参与者也可能被迫合并。如果资产收益率持续低迷，而监管机构对那些允许保险公司提高杠杆率的手段越来越持怀疑态度，那么它们唯一的出路就是通过与竞争对手合作来压缩运营成本。今年早些时候，由黑石集团（Blackstone）支持的 Corebridge Financial 与 Equitable Holdings 宣布了两家公司合并的消息，称此举将节省 5 亿美元的成本并推动技术现代化。
Other players may be forced to merge. If asset yields remain tight, and regulators are increasingly skeptical of workarounds that let insurers effectively increase their leverage, then the only remaining option is to squeeze operating costs by teaming up with a rival. Blackstone-backed Corebridge Financial and Equitable Holdings announced a $22 billion tie-up earlier this year by touting $500 million in expense savings and technology modernization.
虽然这个合并案的吸引力可能并不强，但话说回来，淘金热的结束往往远不如开始时那么令人兴奋……关注 Jonathan Guilford 的更多报道吧！
It might not be the most exciting pitch, but then again, the end of a gold rush tends to be much less thrilling than the start. Follow Jonathan Guilford on