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Partners Life profit fell 33% in its Tokyo parent's record year, and the deck never says why
Source: Daiichi Life Group, Financial Results FY2025 conference call presentation
Partners Life earned its Japanese owner a third less in the year to March 2026, from ¥5.0 billion down to ¥3.4 billion, in the year the rest of the group set a profit record. Dai-ichi's results never explain the drop, and no analyst asked about it.
By Henry Smith · Insurers · 2026-05-18
What this means for you Partners Life earned its Tokyo parent a third less in the year to March 2026 even though its policy book grew, a mix that points at claims and the cost of new business rather than a shrinking insurer. Medical customers absorbed one price rise inside that year, and another one lands from April 2026. This is a shareholder profit measure, not a solvency measure, so it says nothing about the insurer's ability to pay claims.
Partners Life, one of New Zealand's larger life and health insurers, has been owned by the Japanese group Dai-ichi Life since 2022. Once a year Dai-ichi tells its shareholders what each business it owns earned. The latest report says Partners Life earned it a third less than the year before.
The figure is ¥3.4 billion for the year to March 2026, down 33% from ¥5.0 billion (Daiichi Life Group, 15 May 2026, retrieved 20 August 2026). It sits on slide 47 of a 64-page deck, the only public profit reading for that year we could find. Around it the group grew. Overseas insurance was up 11%, and group profit set a record for the third year running (same document).
No other insurer named in the report fell as far, and none got less explanation. There is no line for Partners Life on the slide that accounts for the change in group profit, no sentence about it in the commentary, and no question about it in the published summary of the 45-minute analyst call (Daiichi Life Group Q&A summary, 15 May 2026, retrieved 20 August 2026).
Adjusted profit is the figure Dai-ichi uses to show shareholders what each business earned. It takes the official accounts and strips out market swings and one-off items, and it sets the dividend (Daiichi Life Group, slide 49, retrieved 20 August 2026). A one-third fall in it is not a presentation quirk. The business made a third less money.
What did Tokyo actually publish?
Dai-ichi presented its annual results on 15 May 2026. Partners Life appears in them as PNZ, and its year runs from April 2025 to March 2026 (Daiichi Life Group, retrieved 20 August 2026). Every figure in this section comes from that document.
| Overseas business | Adjusted profit, year to March 2026 | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Protective, United States | ¥79.3 billion, up 38% | Daiichi Life Group, 15 May 2026 |
| TAL, Australia | ¥35.6 billion, down 5% | Daiichi Life Group, 15 May 2026 |
| Dai-ichi Life Vietnam | ¥10.0 billion, down 24% | Daiichi Life Group, 15 May 2026 |
| Partners Life, New Zealand | ¥3.4 billion, down 33% | Daiichi Life Group, 15 May 2026 |
| Smaller Asian units | ¥0.5 billion loss, after a ¥2.0 billion profit | Daiichi Life Group, 15 May 2026 |
All rows retrieved 20 August 2026. Across the whole group, adjusted profit rose from ¥439.5 billion to ¥551.5 billion (same document).
Partners Life's sales went the other way. New business premium, meaning the yearly premium from policies sold during the year, rose 23.0% (same document).
In-force premium, meaning the yearly premium from every policy on the books, rose 15.2%, from ¥55.7 billion to ¥64.2 billion (same document).
Both are counted in yen, so currency movements flatter them. Take that out and the rises are 14.5% and 7.3% (same document). The book grew. The profit fell.
Every other business in the group gets its own explanatory sentence in the results summary. Partners Life gets none. The forecast for the year ahead then folds New Zealand into an "Oceania" line and credits the whole ¥25.0 billion improvement in it to a recovery in claims at TAL in Australia (same document).
What do the numbers show?
Where does the missing ¥4.1 billion go?
One slide walks from last year's group profit to this year's, adding each business that helped and subtracting each one that hurt (Daiichi Life Group, slide 5, retrieved 20 August 2026). Its overseas insurance section shows a gain of ¥4.7 billion. The named units do not add up to that. Protective adds ¥21.9 billion, TAL takes off ¥1.8 billion and Vietnam ¥11.3 billion (same document). Something unlabelled removes another ¥4.1 billion.
The deck's own table by business supplies it. Partners Life fell ¥1.6 billion, and the smaller Asian units swung ¥2.5 billion from profit into loss (same document). That is the ¥4.1 billion. Protective was the only overseas insurer that grew.
Interest rates do not explain it either. Dai-ichi strips rate movements out of adjusted profit before reporting it: ¥0.9 billion one year, ¥0.2 billion the next (same document, slide 49). What is left is the ordinary business of selling policies and paying claims.
How does this compare with what Dai-ichi promised its shareholders?
Dai-ichi paid NZ$980 million for Partners Life's parent company in August 2022, about ¥83.0 billion at the exchange rate in the announcement. It told shareholders the business was expected to contribute "$NZ 67 million (approximately JPY 5.7 billion)" of group adjusted profit in the year ending March 2027 (Dai-ichi Life Holdings, 12 August 2022, retrieved 20 August 2026).
A year ago that target looked comfortable. Last year's ¥5.0 billion was 88% of it with two years to run (Daiichi Life Group, retrieved 20 August 2026). This year's ¥3.4 billion is 60% of it with one year left, so meeting the promise now needs profit to grow 68% in twelve months.
Measured against the ¥83.0 billion Dai-ichi paid, the return fell from 6.0% to 4.1%. The deck does none of this arithmetic, and its forecast for the year ahead attaches no number and no expectation to Partners Life at all.
| Measure | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Adjusted profit, FY2024 (year to March 2025) | ¥5.0 billion | Daiichi Life Group, 15 May 2026 |
| Adjusted profit, FY2025 (year to March 2026) | ¥3.4 billion, labelled (33%) | Daiichi Life Group, 15 May 2026 |
| Expected contribution, FY2026 (year to March 2027) | NZ$67 million, approximately ¥5.7 billion | Dai-ichi Life Holdings, 12 August 2022 |
Both documents retrieved 20 August 2026. The third bar is what the 2022 announcement expected, not a current forecast.
More policies, less profit: what causes that?
An insurer that is shrinking and earning less is an ordinary story. Partners Life is the opposite: more premium coming in, a third less profit going out. For every ¥100 of annual premium on its books, it produced ¥9.0 of adjusted profit last year and ¥5.3 this year, a 41% squeeze in twelve months (Daiichi Life Group, retrieved 20 August 2026).
Two explanations fit. The deck offers neither.
The first is claims. Partners Life told advisers it paid 16% more in health insurance claims in its 2024 financial year than in its 2023 one (RiskinfoNZ, 17 June 2025, retrieved 20 August 2026).
The second is growth itself. A new life or health policy costs the insurer money up front, in commission and in assessing the applicant, and only earns it back over the years that follow. Partners Life wrote 23% more new business (Daiichi Life Group, retrieved 20 August 2026).
The timing points at claims. The year Tokyo is reporting on sits between two price rises. Inside it, existing Private Medical Cover customers renewed at increases of around 20%, at policy anniversaries from 22 July 2025 (RiskinfoNZ, 17 June 2025, retrieved 20 August 2026). Profit still fell by a third.
Three weeks after that year ended, the next rise arrived: Partners Protection Plan Private Medical Cover up 16.6%, and Partners Life Journey Plan medical cover up 2.0%, from 22 April 2026 (RiskinfoNZ, 17 March 2026, retrieved 20 August 2026). Those increases sit on top of the usual step up in price that comes with being a year older. Neither rise is in this result. They are the response to it, and the year to March 2027 will show whether they were enough.
What does this mean for my policy?
If you hold Partners Life medical cover, the direction is set. Two increases were announced within nine months, and the parent's numbers show why: even after the first one, the New Zealand business earned a third less. The 16.6% increase reaches each policy on its renewal date from 22 April 2026 (RiskinfoNZ, 17 March 2026, retrieved 20 August 2026).
Keep the number in its lane, though. Adjusted profit is what the owner earns, not a measure of whether the insurer can pay your claim. That is solvency, the capital an insurer must hold against the claims it expects, and the Reserve Bank supervises it separately. A falling profit line is a pricing signal, not a safety signal.
If the increase has you thinking about switching, understand the trade first. Moving medical cover means being underwritten again: the new insurer asks about your health as it is today, and can exclude anything that has developed since you took out the old policy. Compare what each insurer actually covers, side by side, before you cancel anything.
What we could not check
The main document has rough edges. It carries a Japanese production note saying AI-generated content may contain errors ("AI生成コンテンツは誤りを含む可能性があります"), and Dai-ichi's investor library lists a correction dated 18 May 2026 to chart units and period labels (Daiichi Life Group presentation library, retrieved 20 August 2026).
One label matters here. The premium table is headed "As of Mar-25" and "As of Dec-25", but Partners Life's year ends in March, so the ¥64.2 billion may be a December 2025 reading. If so, that growth happened in nine months, which sharpens the contrast.
The deck's figures do not always add up exactly, because what it prints is rounded: it labels the Partners Life change as (33%) while the two figures it shows round to 32%. That does not change the size of the fall.
Everything here is in yen, on Dai-ichi's definition of adjusted profit, not audited New Zealand accounts. Partners Life's own accounts for the year to 31 March 2026 were not public when we wrote this; once filed, they are the New Zealand dollar record. The 2022 comparison keeps that announcement's exchange rate.
Partners Life's own announcement pages returned only titles to us, so both price rises and the 16% claims figure rest on RiskinfoNZ, a named trade publication reporting what Partners Life told advisers.
Finally, Dai-ichi gives no reason for the fall. Claims and the cost of growth are our inference. The silence is the finding, not evidence for either.
Sources
- Financial Results FY2025, conference call presentation, Daiichi Life Group, 15 May 2026
- FY2025 Financial Results Conference Call Q&A Summary, Daiichi Life Group, 15 May 2026
- Investor presentation library, including the 18 May 2026 correction note, Daiichi Life Group
- Acquisition of Partners Group Holdings Limited, a New Zealand Life Insurer, as a Wholly Owned Subsidiary, Dai-ichi Life Holdings, 12 August 2022
- Partners Life Announces Medical Premium Increase, RiskinfoNZ, 17 June 2025
- Private Medical Cover Premium Changes, Partners Life, RiskinfoNZ, 17 March 2026
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