Zurich Insurance to sell German back book to Viridium

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Zurich Insurance Group is selling its life insurance legacy back book portfolio in Germany to Viridium Holding, the companies announced on Friday.

Viridium, which specializes in managing such portfolios, said the deal involves around 724,000 policies and 21 billion euros ($22.12 billion) in assets under management.

“This is, perhaps, the most important step in our efforts to reduce the capital intensity of Zurich’s legacy life portfolios and to lower our exposure to interest rates,” said Zurich’s chief financial officer George Quinn.

Viridium was the buyer of the majority of Italian insurer Generali (BIT:GASI)’s German life insurance unit in 2019.

Viridium said that with the Zurich deal, its portfolio will grow to 4.5 million policies and 92 billion euros in assets under management.

($1 = 0.9493 euros)

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