Investment Philosophy

Important Notice

On 9 August 2021 Westpac announced it had agreed with TAL Dai-ichi Life Australia Pty Limited (“TAL”) to sell Westpac Life Insurance Services Limited ("WLISL") and enter an exclusive 20-year strategic alliance for the provision of life insurance products to Westpac’s Australian customers. The sale of WLISL to TAL was completed on 1 August 2022. Following the sale, WLISL changed its name to TAL Life Insurance Services Limited. You can find out more by reading the FAQs.

Who is TAL?

TAL is one of Australia’s leading life insurance specialists. For more than 150 years, TAL has been protecting people. Together with our partners, today TAL protects over 5 million customers¹. In 2023/2024, TAL paid $4.2 billion in claims to 50,128 Australians and their families.*

TAL is part of the Dai-ichi Life Group, one of the world’s largest insurance groups.

¹Based on customer covers in force across Group, Retail and Direct and there may be duplicate lives insured.

* Claims statistics based on total claims paid under TAL Life Limited and TAL Life Insurance Services Limited insurance products (including funeral insurance) between 1 April 2023 and 31 March 2024.

Through our expertise in risk management and strategic partnerships we deliver investment solutions that complement our market protection offering.

Periodically we review the investments we manage on your behalf to identify any opportunities that may help enhance investment returns, provide cost effective investment options and or respond to market changes for policyholders.

On the day to day management of your funds, we partner with external fund managers, which we’ve selected based on their track record of performance and competitive pricing.

While we predominantly work with partners who actively manage our investment portfolios, for investments in Australian and International Equities, we’ve recently adopted a passive investment strategy.

Our Investment Manager Partners

Investment Manager	Sector/Investment	Style
BlackRock	Australian and International Equities, Multi-Asset Index Fund	Passive
Janus Henderson	Cash and Fixed Interest	Active

What is Passive & Active Management?

Passive investment, also known as index investing, utilises an investment approach that invests to a representative benchmark such as the ASX200 with the aim of holding that investment over the longer term, without excessive buying and selling of securities. Benefits of passive investing include lower fees and greater simplicity for investors, with returns more closely aligned to the indexes used.

Active investment uses a human element, such as a single manager, co-managers or a team of managers, to actively manage a fund's portfolio. Active investment relies on analytical research, forecasts, and judgment and experience in making investment decisions on what securities to buy, hold and sell.

About our selected Investment Managers

BlackRock

BlackRock’s purpose is to help more and more people experience financial well-being. As a fiduciary to investors and a leading provider of financial technology, our clients turn to us for the solutions they need when planning for their most important goals. As of December 31, 2019, the firm managed approximately US$7.43 trillion in assets on behalf of investors worldwide.

Janus Henderson

Janus Henderson is a leading global asset manager with more than 340 investment professionals and expertise across all major asset classes. Our individual, intermediary and institutional clients span the globe and entrust us with more than $480 billion of their assets*. Our commitment to active management offers clients the opportunity to outperform passive strategies over the course of market cycles. Through times of both market calm and growing uncertainty, our managers apply their experience weighing risk versus reward potential – seeking to ensure clients are on the right side of change.

We believe that connections enable strong relationships with clients based on trust and insight as well as the flow of ideas among our investment teams and our engagement with companies, all of which allow us to make a positive difference. These connections are central to our values as a firm, to what active management stands for and to the outperformance we seek to deliver.

Janus Henderson was formed in 2017 from the merger of two complementary businesses that trace their roots back much further, through Janus Capital Group, founded in 1969, and Henderson Global Investors, founded in 1934. Today headquartered in London, Janus Henderson Investors is dual-listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX).

*As at 31 March 2022.