Fortitude Re has acquired substantially all the assets of Dayforward, a digitally native insurance technology company founded in 2020, through a newly formed entity that will be renamed Fortitude Life. Financial terms were not disclosed.
The new Fortitude Life should not be confused with Fortitude Life Insurance & Annuity Company, one of Fortitude Re's existing insurance subsidiaries. The new entity will operate as a separate subsidiary, with Dayforward's team continuing to lead the business.
Dayforward built a proprietary end-to-end platform to support annuity distribution partners, covering the full policy lifecycle from agent onboarding and application processing to policy issuance, commission payments and in-force servicing. The transaction includes the technology platform, distribution agreements, intellectual property, a licensed insurance agency and Dayforward's employees. It excludes Dayforward's insurance entities and the legacy policies and liabilities associated with them.
"We founded Dayforward to modernize how annuities are issued, administered and delivered to consumers," said Aaron Shapiro, Dayforward's CEO. "Joining Fortitude Re gives us the capital foundation and institutional expertise to scale that vision at a pace we could not have achieved on our own."
Willkie Farr & Gallagher advised Fortitude Re on the deal.
The acquisition exposes a tension in how Fortitude Re has grown. The Bermuda-based reinsurer was spun out of AIG, with Carlyle and T&D Insurance Group acquiring a majority stake in 2020. Since then, it has completed more than a dozen transactions and built up more than US$100 billion in reserves. Its largest single deal, the US$31 billion assumption of legacy variable annuities from Prudential Financial, closed in 2022, and a US$28 billion block of life and annuity reserves from Lincoln Financial Group closed in November 2023.
Block deals of that kind are episodic, and competition for them is intense. When Fitch revised Fortitude Re's rating outlook to positive in November 2024, it identified flow reinsurance as the more predictable source of future volume and said expanding those arrangements would be viewed favorably. Rather than waiting for cedants to bring blocks to market, Fortitude Re is building a channel that can generate business directly.
"Partnering with Dayforward strengthens our ability to originate and manage business in new ways while preserving the disciplined approach that has guided Fortitude Re's growth," said Alon Neches, Fortitude Re's CEO, adding that the platform's capabilities "perfectly complement our underwriting, ALM and investment expertise."
Fortitude Re already has administration capability. It acquired a life and annuity third-party administrator from AIG in 2022, alongside a US reinsurance platform. What Dayforward adds is the distribution-facing side: agent onboarding, commissions and a digital route to annuity sales that sits upstream of the reinsurance relationship. Fortitude Re said the deal broadens its capabilities across insurance technology, distribution and policy administration, while reinforcing its commitment to its institutional reinsurance clients.
The deal fits a broader pattern in private equity-backed life reinsurance, where passive block acquisition is giving way to more active strategies for sourcing liabilities. PE-backed reinsurers accounted for 43.3% of aggregate reserve credits on transactions that began in 2022, according to BCG research. As that group matures and competition for blocks intensifies, buying origination capability rather than waiting for business to arrive is becoming a more common response, as Sixth Street's recent move into European life reinsurance illustrates.
Fortitude Re has had an active 2026. In July, it announced a US$3.8 billion long-term care reinsurance agreement with Unum Group, its second LTC transaction with that cedant, and AM Best revised its outlook to stable from negative while affirming its A (Excellent) financial strength rating. Earlier in the year, it raised US$500 million through a funding agreement-backed note issuance, and it has launched a US$700 million Asia reinsurance sidecar with Carlyle.
Dayforward gives Fortitude Re something none of those transactions provide: a proprietary way to originate annuity business rather than acquire it.
