Insurance AUM Journal: private credit sector mix mirrors leveraged loans in Fed sample

An Insurance AUM Journal column reports that technology and business services took 33% of private credit issuance in the Fed's 2025 sample, compared with 27% in leveraged loans. Healthcare added 13%, putting those three sectors at 46% of sampled private credit issuance.

Those shares measure issuance composition in the study sample, not funded deployments, and the table note the column reproduces says the “other” category is a residual. What an insurer holds is a funded balance with a stated coupon and maturity; the table shows the mix of loans issued during the period.

The column cites the Fed's May 2026 Financial Stability Report for roughly $1.4 trillion of private credit loans in the second half of 2025, about 10% of U.S. nonfinancial corporate debt.

The column asks which industries borrowed the money and how that changed over time, rather than which managers raised the most, how much dry powder sits unspent, or how fast assets under management grew. It makes the point that a loan does not become economically diversified merely because it was privately originated. The Fed study behind the figures, “Private Credit and Leveraged Loan Markets: Similarities, Differences, and Substitution,” was published Aug. 11, 2026 by five Federal Reserve researchers.

A 33%-versus-27% split in technology and business services is a difference of degree. The column's own characterization is that the two markets look similar by industry. That suggests the choice between a private credit commitment and more syndicated loan exposure turns less on industry diversification than on lender position in the capital structure, covenant terms and spread. On the column's own evidence, insurers could ask managers for the industry mix of funded balances rather than of issuance, so the overlap with the public book is measured against the same denominator.