FOSUN’S FRANKFURTER LEBEN ACQUIRES ARAG LIFE SUBSIDIARY

Chinese investment group Fosun has acquired the life insurance subsidiary of Arag through its Frankfurter Leben company. The deal, which is believed to have cost less than €30m ($33.7m), means Frankfurter Leben will acquire 322,000 contracts and €2.8bn of invested funds. Fosun, together with German BHF Bank, of which Fosun is also a shareholder, took over the small Uelzener Leben in 2014 and turned it into a specialised run-off vehicle for life business. The Arag deal is the second for Frankfurter Leben. Last year, it acquired a book of business from Baloise, but that deal is still waiting for approval of Germany’s financial services watchdog BaFin. The Arag deal will also undergo scrutiny from BaFin, but could move faster through the bureaucracy as it is an outright sale of a company rather than a portfolio transfer. Family-owned Arag has been able to release capital and separate from a line of business it has long seen as problematic because of low interest rates. “There’s no reason to hang around with this,” Arag chief, Paul Otto Faßbender, said. “Life insurance is not going to play a role in the future of this company.”