Blackstone invests $134m in New Zealand's Partners Life

The US-based firm will take a large minority stake in the company and is expected to support a local IPO in an unspecified timeframe. Previous investors in the company have included domestic GPs Waterman Capital, Maui Capital and Rangatira.

"[Blackstone has] seen in our management team something that is rare because we represent to them a template for how life insurance could and should be run, not just in New Zealand but anywhere in the world," said Naomi Ballantyne, managing director at Partners Life. "It's all about our ability to do things differently than the way they've ever been done before - to disrupt, effectively, the life insurance market."

Founded in 2010, Partners offers flexible, customer-centric distribution channels for products in life insurance and income protection as well as cover for disability, trauma and business risk. As of September last year, the company claimed actual solvency capital of $141 million. According to financial ratings company A.M. Best, rapid growth has enabled Partners to establish itself as the country's second largest life insurer with about a 15% market share.

Blackstone's tactical opportunities platform focuses on global opportunities that are time-sensitive, complex and in dislocated markets where risk is considered fundamentally mispriced.

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• Topics
• Australasia
• Expansion
• Financials
• New Zealand
• The Blackstone Group
• Financial Services
• Growth capital