Today, Partners Group Holdings Limited who is the company / owner of Partners Life, announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire Fidelity Life, subject to regulatory approvals.
They have said in the announcement that the proposed acquisition would bring together two organisations that share a strong commitment to helping New Zealanders by providing a range of life and health insurance solutions to meet their diverse needs. Furthermore that the focus is on continuing to improve customer outcomes while maintaining the strong adviser relationships that sit at the heart of our business.
That might sound “good” but it does mean that should this proceed then Kiwi’s lose another long-standing company and end up with less choice and less competition.
Fidelity Life was established over 50-years ago in 1973 and remains locally owned with some major shareholders being the NZ Super Fund and Ngai Tahu Holdings along with other private individuals and corporate entities.
Partners Life was not established until 2011 , then in 2020 it purchased BNZ Life and later in 2022 was purchased by the large Japanese Daiichi Life Group later that same year.
Insurance costs can be significant and so we should not celebrate this acquisition from what is essentially another overseas company.
The Approval Process
The approval process is expected to take 6-12 months.
During this time Partners Life and Fidelity Life must continue to operate independently as separate businesses. Therefore all customers should continue to interact with their existing insurer and adviser as they do today and at this stage that also means no changes to products, service or claims processes.
These types of acquisitions need to go through an approval process and require regulatory approvals from relevant authorities such as the Reserve Bank and because of the underlying ownership this will need approval from the Overseas Investment Office too.
Here at Kiwi Edition we would think that they would not have taken this as far as they have unless they were confident of getting this approval; however there is a sentiment around that we are losing too many of our Kiwi businesses to overseas ownership and so maybe this will be rejected.
What Should You Do With Your Insurance?
As we mentioned, if the purchase goes ahead, then it’s quite likely that Partners Life and Fidelity Life will merge many of their products over time to gain some efficiencies from the acquisition. Which products they choose to continue with, we’re not sure yet. But generally speaking, they will look at what is easy to sell, but most importantly, profitable to the company.
If you have your insurance with either Partners Life or Fidelity Life, it would do no harm to have an insurance advisor review this for you. That does not mean that you should change policies, but it’s definitely worth checking what you have and what other options there might be available.
