アンダーソン・毛利・友常法律事務所

Finance and Financial Institutions

Reinsurance

Anderson Mori & Tomotsune is widely recognized as one of the leading legal advisers in the Japanese reinsurance market, representing some of the largest and most prominent domestic and overseas insurers in their reinsurance transactions. Clients look to the deep and broad expertise and experience of our reinsurance team for structuring some of the most complex multi-jurisdictional reinsurance transactions that have shaped the Japanese reinsurance market. In recent years, for example, for purposes of segregating market risks from mortality risks, some cedants of life insurance policies, such as annuity contracts with fixed-index annuity components, have leaned toward innovative, multi-layered reinsurance. These involve asset-intensive reinsurers for the first layer and market-risk oriented reinsurers for the second layer, where the latter is sometimes tied to market or bespoke indices or index-linked securities. Another trend in recent years is the ceding of closed existing insurance blocks, including legacy blocks, especially in the prolonged low interest rate environment in Japan, which has reduced the profitability of existing blocks, while also tying up the capital of cedants in the form of legally-mandated capital and liability reserves. Through reinsurance to offload their in-force annuity life businesses, our clients have been able to take advantage of potential arbitrage arising from higher interest rates in other markets, mitigate investment risks associated with the low interest rate environment in Japan and generally enhance their capital efficiency. We advise on all aspects of reinsurance, including the transactional, regulatory and dispute sides of matters. We are also familiar with all dimensions of the reinsurance process, including the bidding process, negotiations, operational logistics, collateral and security arrangements, and documentation. In multi-layered transactions, clients often depend on our in-depth knowledge to harmonize different-tiered documents, which may be governed by the laws of different jurisdictions, while ensuring their standalone operability.