Resolution Life

Resolution Life

Cowdery founded Resolution Life in 2003 to acquire and administer closed books of life insurance business. The model extracts value not by selling new policies but by aggregating existing ones: the firm manages roughly $380bn in assets across approximately 3.8 million policies. That scale makes it one of the largest consolidators of in-force life insurance globally, operating from London. The firm deploys capital through outright portfolio acquisitions and reinsurance transactions, concentrating on large, stable blocks of life and annuity liabilities. Investment management is outsourced to external partners with specialized mandates; Blackstone manages portions of the real estate and private credit allocations. The asset base spans government and corporate bonds, private credit, commercial real estate, and other fixed-income instruments — spread across multiple geographies and product lines to diversify actuarial risk. Confirmed holdings include a global real estate portfolio managed by Blackstone, though specific underlying properties are not publicly itemized. Resolution Life has deployed approximately $20.3bn of equity since inception, as of year-end 2025, and employed roughly 600 people. The group maintains industry memberships including the American Council of Life Insurers, LOMA, and LIMRA. In 2025, Nippon Life Insurance Company — a long-term strategic partner since 2019 — acquired 100% of the firm, transitioning it into a wholly owned subsidiary while retaining Cowdery as CEO. The firm also operates the Resolution Foundation and Resolution Trust as separate philanthropic entities. The structural advantage is a permanent-capital liability book paired with patient, institutionally backed equity. Unlike a traditional asset manager that must raise successive funds, or a primary insurer that must originate new policies annually, Resolution Life acquires long-dated obligations and holds them to maturity, earning a spread between the guaranteed crediting rates owed to policyholders and the total return generated by the underlying asset portfolio — a posture that prizes predictable, contractually defined cash flows over market-timing gains.