Street Talk

Bank of America puts local life insurer on the block

Sarah Thompson, Kanika Sood and Emma Rapaport

Jun 26, 2025 – 3.44pm

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It’s just 10 days since Japanese life insurance giant TAL Dai-ichi Life snapped up a pre-bid stake in Challenger, the annuities and funds management business capitalised at $5.6 billion on the ASX.

Now Street Talk’s got the goods on another local life insurer looking for a new owner – albeit at the smaller end of town. Privately owned NEOS Protect is understood to have mandated Bank of America’s financial services bankers to run a two-stage auction, collecting first-round offers last week.

Sarah Thompson has co-edited Street Talk since 2009, specialising in private equity, investment banking, M&A and equity capital markets stories. Prior to that, she spent 10 years in London as a markets and M&A reporter at Bloomberg and Dow Jones.

Kanika Sood is a journalist based in Sydney who writes for the Street Talk column.

Emma Rapaport is a co-editor of the Street Talk column. Prior to that, she was a markets reporter at The Australian Financial Review.