Acquisitions pay off for leading insurers

Article Excerpt

SUN LIFE FINANCIAL $42.21 (Toronto symbol SLF; Shares outstanding: 612.7 million; Market cap: $25.0 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; Dividend yield: 3.8%; www.sunlife.ca) sells life insurance, savings, retirement and pension products to individuals and corporations. The company has $861.5 billion of assets under management and mainly operates in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. It’s also expanding in Asia. In the three months ended March 31, 2016, Sun Life’s earnings per share rose 13.1%, to $0.95 from $0.84. The company continues to diversify in the U.S. At the same time, it is focused on highly profitable niche markets with low capital requirements. Its latest move was last year’s purchase of the U.S. employee benefits unit of Assurant Inc. for $975 million U.S. It nearly doubles the size of Sun Life’s U.S. benefit business, to $4.0 billion worth of policies for over 64,000 employees of small, medium and large businesses. The company is now the sixth-largest U.S. benefits provider by revenue,…