Life insurance holders to shoulder 2/3 of losses of PIGS debt

European insurers, which hold about 8 percent of southern euro-zone sovereign debt, may survive writedowns without raising capital by passing losses onto customers.

Life insurance policyholders will shoulder about two-thirds of the potential losses insurers face on their 235 billion euros ($335 billion) of Greek, Italian, Irish, Portuguese and Spanish debt, according to analysts at JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM)

“Policies are written against the general account of the insurers so basically they have all the flexibility they want to assign any losses on assets to policyholders,” said Guillaume Prache, managing director of the Brussels-based European Federation of Investors, which represents two million retail investors. Customers “are very badly informed on the exposure and the risk that represents.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-...ape-crisis-by-shifting-losses-to-clients.html

Now, you know who effectively the PIGS "bondholders" are...