News Japanese insurer Dai-ichi Life had acquired Partners Life at a price close to $1 billion surely should silence some of the critics.

Partners has been one of those companies which has polarised advisers, with some people being quite critical of its actions over the years. The simple fact Dai-ichi Life has agreed to buy the business, and pay a significant price demonstrates clearly that Partners Life is a damn good business and that well-run life insurance companies are valuable investments.

AMP shareholders must look at this with some disbelief and wonder what happened to its business. How come a company which was a leading life insurer was sold at lower valuations and then put into a wind down process.

Partners is the third life insurance company Ballantyne has been involved in establishing and most probably her last. Twelve years ago when Partners Life started the founders were clear that they were establishing a business that, at some point in the future, they would exit. 

While the talked about option was a sharemarket listing, that always looked like a long-shot, especially on the New Zealand bourse and in these current market conditions.

Dai-ichi Life is probably little know to most New Zealand advisers. However, those who what happens across the ditch in Australia will be aware the company bought TAL (the former Tower Life business) back in 2011. Interestingly, New Zealander Jim Minto was was the managing director at the time and now he is the chairman at Partners Life. He has also been a director of Dai-ichi Life Asia Pacific.

What will be reassuring to advisers is the cliche, it's business as usual. The management team are staying on and Dai-ichi has a reputation for buying businesses and letting them continue to run as they were.

As for the dud deal. Well, Fisher Funds $310 million takeover of Kiwi Wealth is a totally different proposition to the Partners deal. It's hard to see anything positive about this deal for the market.

Gone is one of the top five KiwiSaver providers.

Undoubtedly this will be a cost out exercise for the new owners and many good people will lose their jobs. A number of people in the industry who looked at KiwiWealth have said a cost-out will add $10 million to Fisher's profit in the first year alone.

Fisher Funds which was dumped as a default KiwiSaver provider buys its way back into the lucrative clique of fund managers. If this happens it raises some questions around the whole default process.

As for Kiwi Wealth members, we understand the large majority of these people came from Kiwibank (the bank and Kiwi Wealth are owned by Kiwi Group Holdings). The Kiiwbank proposition is all about being New Zealand owned.

As Kiwibank chief executive Steve Jurkovich said in this story, customers are attracted to the company because it is New Zealand owned and the profits stay onshore.

Yes Fisher Funds is majority owned by a charitable trust, Toi Foundation, but  34% (currently) is owned by TA Associates based in the US.

TA Associates is a private equity business that also owns Russell Investments and recently acquired Australian asset manager Yarra which last year bought Nikko's Australian business.

Don't be surprised if some New Zealand owned KiwiSaver providers see this as an opportunity to attract new members.