Legal & General (L&G) and Blackstone have formed a strategic partnership to enhance L&G’s annuities and asset management operations.
The collaboration aims to leverage both companies’ credit platforms, strengthening L&G’s competitive position in key markets.
The partnership will enable L&G’s annuities business to use Blackstone’s private credit origination platform, providing access to a diverse range of investment-grade assets, primarily from the US.
L&G plans to invest up to 10% of its anticipated new annuities business flows into this initiative, supplementing Blackstone’s management of $237bn in third-party insurance assets across various credit strategies.
L&G’s asset management division will also benefit by developing hybrid credit solutions that integrate Blackstone’s private credit expertise with L&G’s active fixed income capabilities. This initiative aims to accelerate L&G’s expansion into global wealth and wholesale channels.
The partnership combines L&G’s leading positions in pension risk transfer and asset management, which includes a $122.5bn annuities portfolio and $1.4trn in assets under management, with Blackstone’s substantial $465bn credit platform.
L&G Group CEO Antonio Simões said: “Today’s announcement marks another important step in delivering our strategy for focused, sustainable growth and enhanced shareholder returns.
“Complementing L&G’s own insurance, investment and asset origination capabilities, our partnership with Blackstone will further cement our market-leading position in pension risk transfer, and enable us to address growing demand for public-private hybrid investment products.
“L&G will benefit from a more diverse pipeline of assets for our annuity book, and growth in asset management as we develop more sophisticated investment solutions for clients around the world.”
Blackstone president and COO Jon Gray said: “Blackstone has been a pioneer in bringing the benefits of private markets investing to insurance companies, individuals and institutional investors.
“Together, our two firms’ unmatched scale and expertise should drive innovative solutions in the private credit market.”
