As a result, thinks Andrew Smithers, an economist, life companies have lost money every year since 1992.
If the life companies invest these premiums in ten-year government bonds, they would make less than 2%.
The gossip in Tokyo is that last year some life companies gambled and lost heavily on foreign securities.
The days when life companies reported predictable numbers as a result of their regulated insurance policies are long gone.
The non-life companies now seem destined to be folded into the bigger keiretsu groupings through their related life insurers.
The non-life companies are, on the whole, much smaller than the life insurers.
At home, meanwhile, the life companies are frantically diversifying away from life insurance and pensions into other financial services.
The main purchasers of long-term debt are final-salary pension schemes and life companies.
Instead, life companies bought risky assets, such as equity and property, intending to sell policies to firms in which they held stakes.
Life companies found themselves unable to pay policyholders out of new money.
As a result, they have avoided the worst mistakes of the life companies, who invested heavily, and disastrously, in property and the stockmarket.
As it happens, the finance ministry also regulates trust banks and life companies, and may not be keen to see them go bust.
Nevertheless, mergers between the two industries could be one way of helping to recapitalise the life companies without resorting to politically messy bankruptcies or bailouts.
That seems unlikely as long as life companies write loss-making policies.
TQPPs' assets is still restricted to trust banks and life companies.
Other particularly weak life companies are Hannoversche Leben, Victoria (owned by Munich Re, a big reinsurer) and the life arm of Gerling, one of Germany's weakest general insurers.
ECONOMIST: Many European life companies are still in dreadful shape
And the rise in the book value of their equity holdings adds to the proportion of risky assets held by life companies, adding also to the mismatch of duration.
That was splendid for the purchasers, but rather unwise of the life companies, which had no way of hedging their liabilities with fixed-interest assets with a similarly high yield.
But with the commercial mortgage-backed securities markets virtually shut down, the buyers could turn to their own balance sheets or to life companies and other institutional investors for support.
The giant Mizuho financial group, for instance, which brings together the house banks of three keiretsu (corporate groups), contains plenty of affiliated life insurers and non-life companies, whose fate is still uncertain.
Swiss life companies are also sickly.
ECONOMIST: Many European life companies are still in dreadful shape
Now, as I have mentioned before, UK investors - especially pensions funds and life companies who manage the savings of millions - are becoming much more engaged with the businesses they own and much less unthinking about the way they vote.
Data from life insurance companies suggests that in the fifth and sixth decades of life you are less likely to die over the coming year than at any other time in your life.
For institututional investors, longevity risk is typically defined as the risk that pension funds and life insurance companies may have to pay out more to beneficiaries than previously calculated due to rising life expectancies .
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First, and most important, life insurance companies now have to comply with new reporting requirements.
Of the Japanese institutions, a particularly noteworthy change is holdings by life insurance companies .
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Macdonalds' client base includes national and local house builders, life assurance companies, pension providers and charities.
Another example is that the Administration has proposed several provisions to increase taxes on life insurance companies.
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