Sun Life to buy rival's employee benefits business
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Sun Life Financial Inc. says it has agreed to purchase New York-based Assurant Inc.'s employee benefits business for $975 million.
Not all terms of the deal were disclosed, though Sun Life plans to leave Assurant's Kansas City, Missouri, benefits headquarters intact.
The proposed acquisition would make Sun Life Financial the sixth-largest group benefits business insurer in the United States, the Toronto-based company said Wednesday in a statement.
“The acquisition of the Assurant employee benefits business is directly on strategy, accelerating the growth of our U.S. group benefits business and expanding the scope of our benefits business in North America,” Dean Connor, president and CEO of Sun Life Financial, said in the statement.
Sun Life's purchase of Assurant's employee benefits operation will increase its existing group benefits unit by 50%, serving roughly 64,000 employers and projected to generate approximately $4 billion in annual revenue, according to the statement.
“This combination will enable us to offer one of the broadest arrays of employee benefits products in the market to our customers,” Dan Fishbein, president of Sun Life Financial U.S. in Wellesley, Massachusetts, said in the statement. “Our portfolio will include leading capabilities in the group life and disability, dental and vision, stop loss and voluntary categories. Our increased size will also support future investments as we continue to grow our U.S. business.”
The deal is expected close early in 2016, according to a spokeswoman for Sun Life.
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