Life insurers' exposure to private credit and other alternative assets is small enough that the near-term risk to global financial stability is "relatively small", according to Toshiyuki Miyoshi, who chairs the International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS) Executive Committee. He also holds the post of Vice Minister for International Affairs at Japan's Financial Services Agency. His article ran in the September 15, 2026 issue of Eurofi Magazine, and the agency posted it on October 13.
Small today, with a growth caveat
Miyoshi writes that current exposures of the global insurance sector to alternative assets and asset-intensive reinsurance (AIR) "remain limited". He adds that rapid growth in these areas could increase risks over time. He describes the shift as driven by insurers moving beyond high-quality bonds and equities into private equity, real estate, infrastructure, hedge funds and private debt. The trend, he says, has continued even as interest rates have risen, helped by demand for insurance products with retirement-savings features.
He lists the attractions of private credit as higher yields, diversification, illiquidity risk premiums and better asset-liability matching. The listed risks are valuation uncertainty, illiquidity and complexity, plus hidden leverage, conflicts of interest, credit rating reliability, capital considerations and information gaps.
How stress could spread
Miyoshi names three potential transmission channels: forced asset sales by insurers in stress, including those needed to meet liquidity demands from policyholder behaviour; a rapid withdrawal of insurers from lending markets; and mass AIR recaptures, which could trigger market-wide rebalancing of insurers' portfolios. He says growing links between life insurers and other financial institutions through alternative asset markets create potential contagion risk. Leverage in those markets could amplify it, as could the concentration of AIR transactions backed by large alternative holdings in a small number of insurers in a few jurisdictions.
What the IAIS plans
The IAIS has monitored these trends since 2021. Over the past year it produced a thematic focus on private credit in its 2025 Global Monitoring Exercise and an issues paper on the drivers, risks and supervisory responses. It reports the exercise's findings regularly to the Financial Stability Board and is working with the International Monetary Fund and the FSB on cross-sector responses.
Miyoshi sets out three steps. This year the IAIS will strengthen its systemic risk analysis of structural shifts in life insurance, including private credit. It is developing application papers on alternative assets and AIR to give supervisors practical guidance. It will also review the Insurance Core Principles to close any gaps it identifies. The article gives no exposure figures and no dates for the application papers or the principles review. The FSA's notice describes the piece only as an overview of the structural changes, the associated risks and IAIS work.