Resolution Life Completes Acquisition of Voya Individual Life Blocks

Resolution Life Group Holdings LP said Monday that it has closed on the acquisition of a large block of individual life insurance and annuity business from Voya Financial Inc.

The deal also includes individual annuities, according to Voya.

The companies announced the deal in December. They originally had hoped to close on the deal by Sept. 30, 2020.

The Companies

Resolution Life is a life insurer based in Hamilton, Bermuda, that was founded in 2003.

It specializes in buying and managing blocks of in-force life insurance policies and annuity contracts. It says it has invested about $16 billion in buying about 30 life insurers. It administers 12.6 million policies and contracts and $354 billion in assets.

Voya is a New York-based company that was once an arm of ING Groep N.V., a large Dutch financial services companies. In 1977, Voya acquired Security Life of Denver, and ReliaStar and Aetna Financial Services in 2000. It now has $657 billion in assets under management.

Acquisition Blocks

The blocks of business that Resolution Life acquired from Voya include "substantially all" of Voya's in-force individual life business, including blocks of business written by Security Life of Denver Insurance Company, Midwestern United Life Insurance Company and other affiliates, and the reinsurance of Voya's remaining in-force individual life and annuity blocks, according to Resolution Life

The Deal

Voya said, in a notice filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in December 2019, that it expected to get $902 million in cash when it completed the deal, and a total of about $1.7 billion proceeds, after other types of consideration, such as a $225 million stake in Resolution Life.

About 350 Voya employees are moving over to Resolution Life, the company stated. It also is getting about $25 billion in assets and the systems used to manage the business.

The Voya Investment Management unit will be the investment manager for about $20 billion of the assets associated with the closed blocks.

Resolution Life expects to incorporate the business from Voya systems into its own within two years, Resolution Life said.

In details about the deal posted on its website, Resolution Life said that the Voya transaction will have no effect on the policyholders' and contract holders' products or service arrangements.

"Your current broker/agent relationship will remain the same," Resolution Life stated.

Sir Clive Cowdery, Resolution Life's executive chairman said in the closing announcements that Resolution Life provides a well-capitalized, stable environment for the policyholders and contract holders, and that it wants to make more deals.

"There is great opportunity for growth in the United States, and completion of this transaction gives us an excellent platform to build from," Cowdery said.

Rodney Martin Jr., Voya's chairman, said the deal has helped Voya simplify its portfolio of businesses, reduce market and interest rate risk, and free up capital.

"Looking ahead, we are now fully focused on leveraging Voya's core strengths in serving the workplace and institutional clients to achieve further organic growth across our retirement, investment management and employee benefits businesses," Martin said.

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