* Plan to keep exposure to forex risks at minimum
* To buy longer JGBs despite growing issuance
* Some to continue selling unhedged bonds in H2
* No.1 Nippon Life bought Y1.4 trln of hedged bonds in H1
By Satomi Noguchi
TOKYO, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Japan's biggest life insurers, whose investments in local and global markets total $1.6 trillion, will stick to their policy of minimising exposure to currency volatility and focus on buying domestic debt.
After being punished by a surge in the yen to 13-year highs early this year, some of the top nine insurers told Reuters this month they will keep dumping unhedged foreign bonds in second half of the April-March year.
Given that the insurers, who had traditionally been huge buyers of foreign bonds, are expected to stay clear of currency risks in the coming months, analysts said the upward pressure on the yen against the dollar is likely to remain.
"Japanese life insurers are not likely to contribute to USD-JPY gains for the time being," said Tomoko Fujii, a currency strategist at Bank of America Securities-Merrill Lynch in Tokyo in a note to clients.
The dollar lost as much as 13 percent against the yen between April and September, and at 92.00 yen it is still hovering within reach of a 13-year low of 87.10 set in January this year.
Most of the top nine insures, whose investment roughly totals Brazil's gross domestic product, slashed their foreign bond holdings last fiscal year at the height of the global financial turmoil in favour of Japanese bonds. A rising yen erodes the value of foreign assets.
The insurers plan to focus on buying yen bonds in the October-March half despite concerns about increasing supply and ballooning Japanese public debt.
No. 5 insurer, Mitsui Life, said it aims to purchase "super-long" Japanese government bonds and will speed up buying if yields rise to levels seen in June and August.
The yield on 20-year JGB rose to 2.2 percent in June, its highest in eight months, while the 30-year debt yield hit 2.36 percent in August, a 10-month peak.
CUTTING FX EXPOSURE
Meiji Yasuda, the nation's third-largest life insurer, said it would shed a net 30 billion yen ($326 million) in unhedged foreign bonds in the October-March second half, after cutting 240 billion yen between April and September.
Ninth-largest insurer, Fukoku Life, said it plans to slash 60 billion yen of its unhedged foreign bond holdings.
Sumitomo Life, the No. 4 life insurer, said it has not decided whether to lower its hedging ratio for foreign bonds for the rest of this fiscal year after raising it to 100 percent last fiscal year.
"We are keeping our cautious stance on currency movements as there is a risk of future falls in the dollar," said Iwao Matsumoto, deputy general manager of the investment planning department at Sumitomo Life.
"We remain cautious about investment in unhedged foreign bonds."
No. 1 life insurer, Nippon Life, scooped up 1.4 trillion yen in hedged foreign bonds in the six months to September while No. 2 Dai-Ichi Life shifted some funds allocated to yen bonds into hedged foreign bonds.
Falling hedging costs, or the narrowing in the spread between Japanese and overseas short-term interest rates, were also a strong incentive for insurers to purchase foreign bonds aggressively in the first half.
In contrast, the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note rose as much as 240 basis points above the yield on the comparable Japanese government bond between April and September.
For a graphic of the widening bond spread and the falling cost of hedging click on: http://graphics.thomsonreuters.com/109/JP_LFEHDG1009.gif
Japanese life insurers bought a net 1.45 trillion yen in foreign bonds in the three months to July, government data shows, offsetting all their net foreign bond sales in the second half of the last fiscal year after Lehman Brothers collapsed.
U.S. bonds were not the only destination. Nippon Life increased its exposure to euro-, sterling-, and Australian dollar-denominated bonds in the fiscal first half. (Additional reporting by Shinichi Saoshiro, Kaori Kaneko, Masayuki Kitano, Aiko Hayashi, Daiki Iga, Takefumi Ito, Yoko Matsudaira, Akiko Ishiwata, Shinji Kitamura, Shiho Tanaka, Takaya Yamaguchi, Chikafumi Hodo, Michiko Iwasaki; Editing by Kazunori Takada)