Sun Life Plots Hiring Push to Strengthen Asset Division

by Paula Sambo of Bloomberg News, 11/24/25

Sun Life Financial Inc.’s newly unified asset-management division plans to hire about 20 senior executives as it looks to turn a collection of investment managers into a more coordinated global powerhouse.

Tom Murphy, who becomes president of Sun Life Asset Management on Jan. 1, said he will add senior roles at his group’s level to enhance collaboration across Sun Life Financial’s asset managers, insurance and wealth businesses. The positions will help those operations to originate capital, design products and deepen ties with large institutions.

“We’re not looking to create an army,” Murphy said in an interview. “Our objective is to find the best talent to help us achieve our ambition. We’re trying to help them connect dots and to collaborate better.”

The build-out comes after Sun Life in October grouped all of its asset-management businesses — including MFS Investment Management, SLC Management and its stake in India’s Aditya Birla Sun Life Asset Management, as well as the pension risk-transfer unit — under a single structure that generated more than C$1.4 billion ($1 billion) in earnings last year and oversees about C$1.5 trillion in assets.

As part of the first wave of appointments, Toronto-based Sun Life named Karim Gilani as global head of strategic solutions and partnerships on Thursday, reporting to Murphy. Gilani previously ran Sun Life’s Greater China, Singapore and international high-net-worth operations and earlier served as Asia’s chief risk officer and chief financial officer. He will be joined by Stephanie Harris, who becomes associate vice president in the strategic group. Both appointments take effect Jan. 1.

Their team will lead Sun Life’s efforts to form new partnerships with insurers, reinsurers, banks, sovereign funds and global wealth managers. Their mandate includes tapping new sources of permanent capital, including so-called insurance sidecar structures, where insurers put certain assets and liabilities into separate vehicles with dedicated asset managers, Murphy said.

Murphy, currently Sun Life’s chief risk officer, was appointed last month to lead the new asset-management division. He said all investment managers — including real estate specialist BentallGreenOak, private-credit manager Crescent Capital and infrastructure investor InfraRed — will keep their own brands, investment philosophies and governance, but sees opportunity in having them co-create products and share origination.

For example, Sun Life Global Investments in Canada already combines MFS public strategies with SLC’s private assets, and SLC’s deal origination feeds Sun Life’s Canadian pension risk-transfer business by improving pricing for plan sponsors, he said.

Major areas for growth are US retail alternatives and across Asia, where Sun Life sees rising demand for non-traditional assets but relatively low penetration so far, according to Murphy. In Hong Kong and Singapore, Sun Life wants to push more alternatives into high-net-worth channels. The firm also plans to add an alternatives capability to Aditya Birla — one of India’s largest managers — using SLC’s global platform.

Pockets of Opportunity

On the investing side, Murphy said Sun Life will remain anchored in public fixed income to match long-dated insurance promises, but will add alternatives “around the edges,” particularly in private credit, where Crescent’s 30-year track record and “relative conservatism” are a selling point when some newer lenders are being tested by rising defaults.

He sees “pockets of opportunity” in real estate in Asia, US multifamily housing and real estate debt in North America and Europe, even as traditional office markets struggle.

Murphy flagged geopolitics as one of the biggest risks the firm watches, particularly given elevated equity valuations. On the credit side, Sun Life has kept more than 90% of its general account investment grade and is resisting pressure to loosen terms in hotter lending markets, he said.

“You have to understand how to manage risk as well as return if you want to build a business that has a long-term future, which is exactly what we want to build,” he said.

After a decade of acquisitions that added Crescent, BentallGreenOak, InfraRed and more to the fold, Murphy said the focus now is on execution.

“We now have essentially all of the pieces of the jigsaw that we need to be successful on a global basis,” he said, adding that any future M&A is unlikely to include transformational transactions.

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Bloomberg News provided this article. For more articles like this please visit bloomberg.com.

Sun Life Plots Hiring Push to Strengthen Asset Division

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