The Japanese insurance big-hitter wants to go shopping for foreign acquisitions and is eyeing businesses in the US.

Nippon Life Insurance Co is on the hunt for takeover targets in developed and emerging markets, including asset managers in the US, as the Asian firm aims to spread its sources of income, according to Reuters.

Nippon Life's growing interest in overseas insurers and asset management comes as Japanese life insurers face diminishing returns from Japanese government bond investment and weak prospects in their mainstay death benefit insurance sales, the report said.

The firm has a global investment portfolio of around $499 billion, making it one of the largest such players in Asia.

Japan is currently embarking on a massive quantitative easing programme to pull the country out of a multi-decade period of stagnation, but the money-printing is pushing down bond yields – although hopefully also boosting Japanese equities.

"We don't limit [acquisition targets] to particular geographic areas," Nippon Life's president, Yoshinobu Tsutsui, was quoted as saying in an interview. "We will have geographic diversity," he said.

Japan's largest private-sector life insurer also aims to expand its small global asset management business through acquisitions, potentially small, boutique-type asset managers in the US specialising in particular asset classes, the report said.

"There are many unique asset management companies in the United States, small but unique. We are thinking about these firms," Tsutsui was quoted saying. "I don't think we have a shot at huge ones."