The Largest Insurance Companies in the World

The four largest insurers run very different books. One is a European asset-management powerhouse, one a Chinese conglomerate, one an American outlier, and one a state-controlled Chinese life insurer. Their general accounts move private markets.

Allianz is the world's largest insurer by total assets in AM Best's 2025 ranking, and a hybrid: a German insurance group that is also one of the largest asset managers on earth. Its subsidiaries PIMCO and Allianz Global Investors managed a record EUR 2.0 trillion of third-party money at the end of 2025, per Allianz, roughly double the $1.05 trillion of assets on Allianz's own balance sheet. The group posted a record operating profit of EUR 17.4 billion for 2025. Its own general account, the proprietary portfolio backing its insurance liabilities, is run by Allianz Investment Management and is a major private-markets investor in its own right. For a fund manager, Allianz is two clients in one: a general-account LP and a giant third-party allocator.

Ping An Insurance (Group) is China's largest insurer and a technology-and-finance conglomerate. Its ranking figure of $961 billion is net non-banking assets, excluding its banking arm, Ping An Bank; group total assets topped RMB 13 trillion in 2025. The pool that matters to fund managers is its insurance funds investment portfolio, which grew 13.2% to RMB 6.49 trillion, about $900 billion, by the end of 2025, per Ping An, at a 6.3% comprehensive investment yield. Ping An runs a balanced book across fixed income, equities, and alternatives, and directed RMB 530 billion of insurance funds into green investments. It is both a life and a property-casualty insurer, which widens the range of assets it can hold.

Berkshire Hathaway is the outlier at the top of the ranking. It writes property-casualty and reinsurance through GEICO, General Re, and Berkshire Hathaway Reinsurance, but it invests unlike any peer. Rather than hold mostly bonds against annuity liabilities, Berkshire invests its insurance float, $176.9 billion as of March 2026, in public equities and whole companies. It held $297.8 billion of equity securities at the end of 2025, with Apple its largest position, and sat on a record $397 billion of cash and Treasury bills in the first quarter of 2026, per Berkshire. Warren Buffett stepped down as chief executive at the end of 2025; Greg Abel took over in January 2026. In AM Best's January 2026 edition, Berkshire's $1.15 trillion of non-banking assets moved it past Allianz, ending Allianz's five-year run at the top. Berkshire is not a private-markets LP; it is the model everyone else is moving away from.

China Life is the largest life insurer in China and state-controlled, ranked fourth here by total assets. Its listed flagship held RMB 7.42 trillion, about $1.0 trillion, of investment assets at the end of 2025, against RMB 7.59 trillion of total assets, per China Life. The notable shift is equities: its allocation to stocks and funds rose from 12.18% at the end of 2024 to 16.89% a year later, and public-equity holdings passed RMB 1.2 trillion. China Life and New China Life seeded the Honghu Fund, a long-term stock-investment pilot that had raised more than RMB 100 billion by the end of 2025, part of a regulatory push to channel insurance money into Chinese equities. For managers, China Life is a scale allocator whose mandate is shaped as much by Beijing as by markets.

Below the top four, Europe's and America's insurers show where the industry is heading: asset-light on third-party management for some, and deep into private credit and Bermuda reinsurance for others.

AXA is France's largest insurer and, until recently, the owner of a large asset manager. In July 2025 it completed the sale of AXA Investment Managers to BNP Paribas for EUR 5.1 billion, EUR 5.4 billion including a related transfer, per AXA, folding AXA IM into a European manager with about EUR 1.5 trillion of assets. AXA kept a long-term partnership: BNP Paribas now manages AXA's assets, while AXA retains authority over product design and asset allocation. The move made AXA asset-light on third-party management while keeping a large general account weighted toward property-casualty, whose shorter liabilities call for a different mix than a life insurer's. For managers, AXA is a general-account LP whose mandates now route partly through its BNP partnership.

Prudential Financial, the Newark-based insurer listed as PRU and distinct from the UK's Prudential plc, is really two businesses: a life and retirement insurer and PGIM, one of the world's largest asset managers. PGIM managed $1.47 trillion at the end of 2025, up from $1.38 trillion a year earlier, per Prudential. Of that, about $547 billion is Prudential's own general account and $919 billion is third-party money, a clean illustration of why balance-sheet assets, $690 billion here, understate an insurer's reach. Prudential has also gone to Bermuda: Prismic Life Re, the reinsurer it sponsored with Warburg Pincus, agreed in early 2025 to reinsure about $7 billion of Japanese whole-life policies and now holds roughly $17 billion, with PGIM managing a large share of the assets.

MetLife is one of the largest US life insurers, and its general account is run by MetLife Investment Management. Under a strategy it calls New Frontier, MIM is scaling into third-party management: it closed the acquisition of PineBridge Investments in December 2025, taking combined assets to $734.7 billion, per MetLife. MetLife has also embraced the Bermuda-and-private-equity model. In July 2025 it launched Chariot Re, an independent Bermuda reinsurer co-sponsored with General Atlantic and backed by lead investor Chubb, which reinsured about $10 billion of MetLife's structured-settlement and pension-risk-transfer liabilities. MIM and General Atlantic manage Chariot's assets. For a fund manager, MetLife is both a general-account LP and a competitor building its own asset-management and reinsurance engines.

An insurer's general account is a liability-driven portfolio. Because most claims come due years or decades out, the core is investment-grade fixed income, sized and dated to match expected payouts. The search for yield has pushed the largest insurers steadily outward: first into privately placed, rated debt, then senior direct lending, asset-backed finance, infrastructure, and real estate. Life insurers, with the longest liabilities, allocate most; property-casualty insurers, with shorter and lumpier claims, hold more liquidity and equities.

Capital charges shape every decision. US insurers answer to NAIC risk-based capital and Europeans to Solvency II, both of which require more capital against riskier assets. Investment-grade private credit carries a far lower charge than private equity, so it has become the fastest-growing sleeve, while equity and opportunistic strategies stay smaller. In Goldman Sachs Asset Management's 2026 survey, insurers' largest intended increases were in investment-grade private placements and senior direct lending, not equity.

Scale makes insurers anchor LPs. The general accounts here run from several hundred billion to more than a trillion dollars, and a single insurer can seed a strategy or take an entire separately managed account. Increasingly they want structure, not blind-pool commitments: rated notes, separately managed accounts, and co-investment that fit capital and accounting rules. Many now own or hire asset managers, so a relationship can be a sub-advisory mandate rather than a fund ticket.

Decision-making is slow and committee-driven. A mandate runs through the general-account chief investment officer, asset-class heads, and, increasingly, an outsourced manager already running part of the book. Berkshire Hathaway remains the counter-example: it holds equities and whole companies against short-tail float and commits to almost no outside funds. For everyone else, the direction of travel is toward private credit held to match long liabilities.

Insurers are a distinct and demanding class of limited partner. Winning insurance capital usually means offering a capital-efficient structure, an investment-grade private placement, a rated note, or a separately managed account, rather than a standard commingled fund. The manager who can deliver rated, low-charge exposure with current income has an edge that a generic private-equity pitch does not.

Many of the largest insurers are also managers or partners. Apollo, KKR, Blackstone, Brookfield, and BlackRock run insurance balance sheets and manage other insurers' general accounts. Selling to an insurer can mean sub-advising a sleeve or co-building a reinsurance vehicle, not just taking a commitment. The line between LP and competitor is thin.

Access runs through the general-account desk, not the front door. The people who matter are the chief investment officer and the heads of private credit, real estate, and private equity, or the third-party manager already running the mandate. Reaching the right desk with a strategy that fits the insurer's capital rules is the practical challenge.

Altss maps insurance companies within its coverage of 30,000+ institutional investors, RIAs, and family offices. It tracks each insurer's investment teams, mandates, and publicly observable activity, with verified decision-makers refreshed on a sub-30-day cycle, in-platform. The data shortens the research, not the relationship: it shows who runs private credit or real assets at a given insurer and what that general account is backing, so outreach reaches the right desk.

Figures are drawn from each company's own reports and the following authoritative sources.