Japan life insurers build foreign assets, talent

Portfolio management is proving particularly difficult for Japan's huge life insurance firms right now. They must maintain sufficient duration in their portfolio and avoid asset-liability mismatches while at the same time seeking to obtain higher yields. This is a problem common to many life insurers globally – but most do not have to cope with negative yields on their domestic government bonds. Those in Japan also face the nigh-impossible task of trying to predict how the yen wil…