May 29th, 2019, 11:52 am
First, just because the asset manager is owned by a company also in the insurance business does not necessarily imply that you will be focused on investing in behalf of the insurance company. As a couple of random example, PIMCO and PGIM both have several hundred billions of dollars under management from entirely unaffiliated sources. That being said, life insurance companies tend to be buy and hold (sometimes buy and hope) investors, paying a lot of attention to book yield and as little attention as they can get away with to mark-to-market gains and (especially) losses. They tend to have very long dated liabilities and often struggle to find matching assets they like. They are often credit ratings sensitive and typically subject to seemingly arbitrary regulations, so occasionally appearing to represent “dumb money”. I didn’t say “dumb people”...