Sun Life Financial announced plans Wednesday to purchase the employee benefits business of Assurant, Inc. for $975 million. The company said in a statement that the acquisition will make Sun Life the sixth largest group benefits business in the U.S. Other major players in the market include Cigna, Aetna, MetLife, Unum Corp. and Prudential Financial.
The acquisition is projected to increase the value of Sun Life's portfolio of policies by 50 percent, upping it to an estimated $4 billion. The deal will also result in Sun Life providing insurance through 64,000 employers.
The company is touting the acquisition as adding valuable assets to its range of insurance products. In particular, it noted the addition of Assurant's dental business, the second-largest proprietary network in the country.
Recommended For You
"Our portfolio will include leading capabilities in the Group Life and Disability, Dental and Vision, Stop Loss and Voluntary categories," said Dan Fishbein, MD, President of Sun Life Financial U.S., in a statement. "We're bringing together some of the top talent and capabilities in the industry."
Fishbein told the Wall Street Journal that the acquisition was ideal because Assurant's growth benefited from current economic trends.
"It is capital light, it is a business that can be repriced every year, and it is a business that does grow with the economy and employment," he told the paper. "It is a bright spot in the world economy."
Insurance mergers and acquisitions have been speeding up in the past year, with major health insurance giants teaming up in ways that have some consumer advocates and employers worried about a lack of competition in some markets. Other recent notable deals include Anthem's $54 billion purchase of Cigna and Aetna's $37 billion acquisition of Humana.
Experts say that a spate of smaller mergers in the group insurance industry is being driven by companies seeking to achieve economies of scale in the services in which they are leaders, while backing away from products in which they don't dominate the market. Insurance companies, which typically invest much of their revenue in bonds, have been challenged by low interest rates in recent years.
© 2025 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
