Life insurance companies hold about $650 billion in commercial mortgages in the United States, yet little is known about their role as suppliers of real estate credit. Using regulatory data covering the universe of mortgage loans held by U.S. life insurers, we show that insurers complete this market, dominating long-maturity, low-leverage lending. We then show that aggregate macroeconomic shocks, specifically interest rates, transmit differently through insurers than through banks. When rates rise, banks cut lending and raise loan rates, while insurers expand lending and reduce loan spreads, without loosening collateral standards. Insurers' expansion is concentrated in shorter-maturity loans, a segment otherwise dominated by banks. We find that two reinforcing mechanisms explain insurers' response. Rising rates generate inflows into guaranteed-return products and narrow the duration gap embedded in insurers' long-dated liabilities, lowering the shadow cost of holding shorter-duration mortgage assets. At the same time, bank retrenchment shifts part of the residual borrower demand toward insurers. We isolate credit supply by exploiting cross-sectional variation in insurers' liability and asset durations, local exposure to bank retrenchment, and granular time-varying fixed effects. Our findings imply that bank-centered analyses may misstate the contraction in real estate credit when rates rise, and that monetary tightening reallocates credit not only across intermediaries, but also across maturities and borrowers.

This paper uses confidential portfolio holdings data to show that corporate quantitative easing (QE) operates primarily through a liquidity demand channel. By acting as a standing buyer, the central bank enhances bond liquidity, raising demand from liquidity-sensitive investors. The impact on prices crucially depends on investor heterogeneity. Mutual funds rebalance toward eligible bonds, while banks and foreign investors are net sellers. As a result, mutual funds amplify the transmission of QE to bond prices. QE mainly compresses the CDS-bond basis with limited effect on default premia. Even during balance sheet unwinding, the implicit liquidity backstop persists, muting quantitative tightening effects.

Banks' deposit market power is customer-specific: depositors who hold stocks, bonds, or investment fund shares (market-priced savings, MPS) have stronger outside options and therefore more elastic deposit demand. Using Danish administrative data linking the universe of deposit accounts to each depositor's complete investment portfolio, we show that banks price this elasticity: MPS holders receive a 6.6 bps larger deposit-rate increase per 100 bps policy-rate increase than comparable non-holders at the same bank in the same year. The premium opens when depositors acquire MPS and fades when they sell these assets. Inheritances following unexpected parental deaths provide exogenous variation: heirs who inherit stocks or bonds see pass-through rise 3 to 6 pp relative to heirs inheriting cash or real estate. Higher pass-through only partially offsets MPS holders' greater elasticity: per 100 bps of tightening, they reduce deposits 2.4 pp more, and the resulting funding pressure leads high-MPS banks to cut lending.