Nippon Life Insurance, Japan\u2019s largest life insurer, said it is open to becoming a net buyer of government bonds next fiscal year as it finds current interest rates attractive.<\/p>\n
The insurer, which has held off on adding to its Japanese government bond holdings over the past two years after unrealized losses in its portfolio, is adjusting its stance.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur investment policies are certainly subject to change. If we determine that the probability of a risk scenario involving rising interest rates has decreased, we may judge that this is a good time to buy bonds,\u201d said Daisuke Ishida, Executive Officer of the firm\u2019s finance and investment planning department in an interview.<\/p>\n
He added that increasing the company\u2019s holdings of government bonds in the near future is \u201centirely possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSince we still hold a considerable amount of low-yield bonds, we want to firmly capture the current high yields through replacement. We will not halt replacement based solely on market outlook,\u201d said Ishida who expects the Bank of Japan to raise interest rates once or twice this fiscal year, with additional hikes next fiscal year, and forecasts a terminal rate in the upper 1% range.<\/p>\n
\u201cI understand that many investors are anticipating rising inflation starting in the second half of this fiscal year and therefore cannot buy right now due to timing concerns. However, if the likelihood that inflation will subsequently stabilize increases, I believe a phase will arrive when investors can buy without excessive concern,\u201d Ishida said.<\/p>\n
If there is an escalation in the Middle East conflict and interest rates rise sharply, \u201can increase in bond replacement\u201d would likely be considered, said Ishida.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nippon Life Insurance, Japan\u2019s largest life insurer, said it is open to becoming a net buyer of government…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":598560,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[114,85,8757,46,3191,270712],"class_list":["post-598559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-il","tag-insurance","tag-israel","tag-life-insurance","tag-nippon-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=598559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/598560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=598559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=598559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=598559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}