Archives: Articles

IssueM Articles

The Dimming of Brighthouse—Or a New Dawn?

Posted on February 3, 2025 by Kerry Pechter -

Last week the Financial Times reported: “Brighthouse Financial is seeking to sell itself, with some of the most prominent private capital managers expected to make bids for the US provider of life insurance and annuities.”

Though the report was not confirmed by Brighthouse management, the FT story moved the market.

Stock investors seized on the rumor of an acquisition, driving up the price of Brighthouse shares by 20% to $62, its highest level since 2018. Brighthouse was created in 2017 when MetLife spun off its retail annuities business as a separate company. The CEO since then has been MetLife veteran Eric Steigerwalt.

Brighthouse Financial, which has a current market value of ~$3.66 billion, consists of Brighthouse Life, Brighthouse Life of NY, New England Life, and a brokerage firm, Brighthouse Securities.

Veteran life insurance/annuity professionals were not so thrilled. Rather, many were dismayed by the possibility that Brighthouse might join the stream of U.S. annuity issuers that have been pulled into holding companies controlled by Apollo, KKR, Blackstone and other “alternative asset managers” that specialize in private credit origination.

The asset managers’ capital infusions gave new life to several life/annuity companies that were weakened by the low yields of investment grade bonds during the 2010s. The asset managers’ hoped to manage insurers’ existing general account assets and raise new revenue through annuity sales.

The annuity issuers were put in service of what RIJ has called the “Bermuda Triangle” strategy. It’s a business strategy whereby a global asset manager sources annuity liabilities in the U.S., uses offshore reinsurance to reduce capital requirements, and uses increasing portions of the reserves to finance high-risk, customized, illiquid, potentially high-return loans.

Brighthouse Life’s ~$112 billion in general account assets (i.e., policyholder and annuity contract owners’ money) should make it attractive to one of the half-dozen largest asset managers. Brighthouse also brought in $7.8 billion worth of annuity revenue in the first nine months of 2024, largely through the sale of registered index-linked annuities (RILAs), an SEC-regulated, broker-distributed type of variable annuity.

On the other hand, Brighthouse is burdened by blocks of legacy VAs with what, it turned out, were over-generous, under-priced guarantees. Contract owners were promised that they would never run out of income if they followed the contracts’ spending caps. MetLife and other big life/annuity companies sold more than a trillion worth of these products in the early years of this century before the stock market crash of 2008 and the Fed’s zero-interest-rate policy exposed the danger of trying to insure long-range equity returns.

Those VA/GLWBs, as they are often called, were once seen as a way for life insurers to capture a big chunk of Boomer savings. But they became an albatross instead. MetLife created Brighthouse in 2017 largely to get money-losing VA/GLWB blocks off its balance sheet, where they were depressing its share price.

“The VA book was a core part of what MetLife rolled into Brighthouse,” a former investment banker familiar with MetLife’s VA hedging program on the condition of anonymity. “At the time, Brighthouse crowed that the RILA business would be a natural offset for the VA risk. They would sell RILAs to grow their way out of legacy VAs.

“But Brighthouse couldn’t outrun its past. RILAs couldn’t make enough money to outrun the back-book. The [January 10] AM Best report indicated they’ve run out of the marginal benefit of the RILA book.”

On January 10, 2025, an AM Best release explained:

The operating performance has been dragged by the performance of the variable annuity (VA) and growth in registered index-linked annuity (RILA) lines of business, along with associated hedging programs. The losses in the VA and RILA lines of business were driven by strong equity markets and the structure of the hedging program.

At the start of third-quarter 2024, Brighthouse began to hedge new sales of its RILA products separately from legacy VA, after previously hedging them together. The run-off block the company inherited when it spun off from MetLife, Inc. has also contributed negatively to earnings. The company has experienced a statutory net loss of ($2.6) billion at year-end 2023, and a net loss of ($1.3) billion through third-quarter 2024.

Yet AM Best said in the same release that it was affirming Brighthouse’s overall A (excellent ) strength rating).

Troubling signals were coming out of Brighthouse a year ago. Yahoo! Finance reported in February 2024:

“Eric Steigerwalt, President and Chief Executive Officer of Brighthouse Financial Inc., sold 25,000 shares of the company on February 26, 2024, according to a recent SEC filing. The transaction was executed at an average price of $46.96 per share, resulting in a total value of $1,174,000… The recent sale by Eric Steigerwalt follows a pattern observed over the past year, where there have been no insider buys and five insider sells for Brighthouse Financial Inc.”

For old-school life/annuity professionals, it’s been painful to see so many once-venerable life insurers change hands since 2009. An annuity distribution professional and product developer who 10 years ago lamented this trend in a presentation to his peers told me in an email last week:

“What I missed, in retrospect was that this problem would get so much bigger in 10 years, that mainstream big life companies like MetLife would sell, that almost every legacy insurance company would do reinsurance with four or five offshore private equity-owned reinsurers, and that these transactions might leave the jar empty for the policyholder,” he said in an email to RIJ last week.

It’s difficult to predict what an asset manager might do with Brighthouse, aside from taking over the management of its general account. On the liability side, there’s a potential conflict. Brighthouse sells RILAs, which are securities that are distributed by advisers at brokerage firms. But the asset managers who now control much of the annuity industry prefer to sell fixed indexed annuities (FIAs), which are insurance products sold by insurance agents.

Those two businesses converge and overlap to some degree. For instance, the performance of RILAs and FIAs are both tied through options to the performance of equity or balanced indexes. Many advisers and agents are licensed to sell securities and insurance products.

Selling RILAs is different from selling FIAs. So far, the private equity/private credit firms have preferred to buy FIA issuers. They’ve stayed away from the big RILA issuers—former VA/GLWB issuers Equitable, Prudential, Nationwide, Lincoln—who are too big to gobble up and diversified enough to have survived the turbulence of the past 15 years. Whether they still have legacy VA/GLWB problems, and whether those problems are contained, I don’t know.

Hindsight is easy. But many life/annuity companies, after converting from mutual companies to stock companies 25 years ago, may have entered the big bad world of equities without a complete understanding of the risks. As “risk-buyers” (i.e., guarantee-sellers), they may also have come to the risk-selling” world of investments with a built-in disadvantage.

The 2008 stock market crash, in a sense, revealed their inexperience in that world. It’s possible that annuity businesses, by themselves, aren’t profitable enough to put up the kinds of quarterly numbers that investors crave.

As sources of new AUM, however, they appeal to asset managers. If an asset manager buys Brighthouse, I bet they’ll take it private.

Cannex puts 401(k) annuities to the test

Posted on February 2, 2025 by Kerry Pechter -

Lots of new 401(k) annuity products are being pitched to plan sponsors and their advisors these days. There are in-plan and out-of-plan annuities, deferred and immediate annuities, as well as variable, fixed, and fixed indexed annuities. It’s hard to make sense of their differences.

Cannex, the annuity data and analysis firm, recently made the selection process a bit more rational. It compared and contrasted five different ways that 401(k) participants might convert their savings to income in retirement.

The research was sponsored by ALEXIncome, a fintech startup that RIJ first wrote about in March 2024. Led by CEO Ramsey Smith and partner and head-of-product Graham Clark, ALEXIncome aims to create a platform from which asset managers, life insurers and other plan service providers can launch new products into that space.

Five income options

The Cannex study hypothesized a plan participant, 40 years old in 2023 and with plan savings of $100,000 in a target date fund (TDF). This imaginary participant intends to add $10,000 (increased by 3% each year) to the TDF each year for the next 25 years, and to retire at age 65.

The study then imagines five different paths—each representing one of the most common methods for drawing down 401(k) in retirement—that the participant might take:

An annuitization strategy where, at age 65, the participant would take the fixed income portion of the TDF (50% of the total TDF value) and buy a single premium immediate annuity (SPIA) with it.
An annuitization strategy in which a participant in a hybrid TDF would, from age 40 to age 65, contribute to a fixed-rate deferred annuity sleeve inside the TDF at age 40 instead of contributing to bond funds. At age 65, the new retiree would convert the deferred annuity to a SPIA.
A systematic withdrawal strategy, where the participant would determine an amount equal to 4% of the final balance of the TDF and spend that amount (adjusting it upward each year by 2%) starting at age 65.
A strategy where participants would stop contributing to the bond funds in their TDFs at age 50. Instead, they would contribute to a deferred fixed indexed annuity contract with a guaranteed lifetime withdrawal benefit rider. At age 65, the retired participant would start taking withdrawals according to the terms of the rider.
A strategy where the participant, starting at age 50, pays a fee of 1% per year of the value of the TDF to wrap a guaranteed lifetime withdrawal benefit rider around it. The rider establishes a benefit base that guarantees the participant a minimum monthly income starting at age 65 without requiring the participant to annuitize the contract.

These strategies were put through 1,000 randomized Monte Carlo simulations of future market conditions to see which one delivered the most income (including income from both the annuity and from the participant’s investments) to the participant in retirement. All else being equal, the ALEXIncome came out ahead on several metrics.

Proof-of-concept analysis

Graham Clark

“This was a proof-of-concept analysis,” said Clark, noting that ALEXIncome sponsored the study but didn’t control the results. “It stacked the proto-type of ALEXIncome’s hybrid-TDF against four established, well-known alternative income solutions.

“The question was,” Clark said, “‘Can we deliver the same level of income, or higher levels, when compared to existing alternatives?’ The simple answer is yes. In creating a hybrid defined benefit/defined contribution model within a 401(k), ALEXIncome performs favorably relative to each of the other prevailing options.”

Most people don’t use SPIAs in retirement—SPIAs have always had much lower annual sales than deferred annuities, and owners of deferred annuities rarely annuitize them—because keeping their life savings liquid and readily available is so important to them.

But many academic studies have shown that one way to generate more retirement income from a limited amount of resources is to divide one’s savings between the purchase of an illiquid fixed income annuity and a portfolio of mutual funds.

The 4% rule, by comparison, gives retirees more control over their money but it leaves a retiree’s risk of running low on money in old age fairly high. Living benefits, such as guaranteed lifetime withdrawal benefits, provide both guaranteed income and liquidity, but tend to produce less annual income from the same amount of savings as SPIAs.

Both Smith and Clark have Wall Street experience with FIAs. They have found that the costs of the index strategies and the derivatives associated with building FIAs tend to reduce their performance, as does the 1% fee associated with guaranteed lifetime income benefit riders on both FIAs and variable annuities.

Ramsey Smith

“People ask, ‘What makes you different?’” Smith told RIJ. “We’re more interested in creating a benchmark than in differentiation. We want to find a standard that launches the industry in the direction it should take, and that solves a problem for people, rather than to try to come up with a different bell and whistle.”

Smith is urging annuity issuers to jump on the 401(k) opportunity. “Insurance companies should all be thinking carefully about this,” he said. “They need to understand that this is a Once-in-a-Generation opportunity to establish themselves in the 401(k) space. I don’t see any other [distribution] channel that presents as clear a path to re-establishing a footprint in the greenest of green fields or the bluest of blue sky opportunities.”

Clark thinks 401(k)s could eventually become the largest annuity distribution channels, but only if the life insurers collaborate on it. “If you had full penetration of the 401(k) market, with 15–20% of total account values in annuities, that would equal the size of the retail annuity market today,” he told RIJ. “But you’ll need everyone’s capacity to do it.”

Private Credit AUM to Double by 2028: Moody’s

Posted on February 1, 2025 by Editorial Staff -

A new report from Moody’s Investors Services on the global market for private credit assets describes the anticipated hockey-stick growth of that market, the use of such assets by insurance companies, and the potential dangers such assets might pose to the global financial system.

The world’s private credit assets under management (AUM) is on track to roughly double in the next few years, from just over $1.5 trillion in 2023 to about $3 trillion by 2028, “with 70% of this growth from the US, as appetite for private capital grows unabated,” according Moody’s Ratings Outlook, January 21, 2025: Private Credit.

Partnerships between alternative asset managers (AAMs) and insurance companies will drive part of the rising creation and consumption of private assets, respectively. The Moody’s report showed that, as of the end of the third quarter of 2024, private credit and insurance assets accounted for 52% the AUM of the four largest AAMs (Apollo, Blackstone, Carlyle and KKR).

“US insurers have recently increased their exposure to alternative investments, including private credit, which marks a shift from their typical approach of favoring more traditional, long-term investments. Partnerships between asset managers and insurers have accelerated this trend,” the report said.

AAMs “that own or have partnerships with insurance companies are investing insurance company general account assets into ABF investments. The insurance industry has shown a willingness to sacrifice liquidity and accept the greater complexity that may come with ABF to pocket better returns for equivalent investment grade risk.”

According to the ratings agency’s report:

The AAMs have poured capital into the insurance sector, acquiring minority or controlling stakes in insurance companies. These evolving partnerships have allowed US life insurers to leverage the managers’ direct access to asset originator platforms, lowering costs and improving yield generation for the insurance company. The partnerships also allow insurers to gain proficiency in complex asset classes, including private credit, real estate and asset-based finance, without having to invest significant capital.

Relative to public credit markets, private credit markets offer illiquidity premiums, portfolio diversification and stronger covenant protections. Private credit investments are not traded on secondary markets… this shields them from the daily swings in the publicly traded fixed-income sectors.

Synergies between insurance companies and alternative managers will grow, but it will be essential to monitor risks, especially credit and asset-liability mismatch (ALM) risks, Moody’s analysts said. Among the potential risks posed by private credit:

“Ongoing competition for assets will help market liquidity, it will also add to risk-taking, leverage and weakness in documentation… Lower-than-promised returns or an eventual downturn could challenge the expanding role of partnerships between banks and private credit, which are mostly untested.
Private credit lenders have still been introducing additional leverage to the economy, with much less transparency Leverage is increasingly “stacked”—it is not necessarily clear how to distinguish asset-level leverage, fund-level leverage (tacit leverage) and the creation of tranche-structured leverage in ABS transactions. An equity position in an investment may be funded with debt from banks.

Moody’s also expects the market for private credit to expand to include retail investors. “While still less than 20% of total private debt AUM, retail private debt AUM is growing faster than institutional AUM. Some managers are bringing evergreen funds to market. Others are rolling out first-ever private-credit exchange traded funds (ETFs),” the report said.

Where PRT Meets DC: The Agilis/Alight Plan

Posted on February 1, 2025 by Kerry Pechter -

Taking a page from the pension risk transfer (PRT) business, Agilis, an actuarial/risk management firm, and Alight, the jumbo-plan 401(k) recordkeeper, have rolled out what appears to be a new way to market annuities to participants in defined contribution plans.

Their product is called PensionBuilder (not to be confused with Principal Financial’s Pension Builder 401(k) annuity). Agilis and Alight launched their PensionBuilder in November 2024 after, they say, establishing the right to use the name. The firms are currently pitching the concept to 401(k) teams at Fortune 500 plan sponsors. [At deadline, RIJ could not confirm the status of the Pension Builder brand name with Principal.]

Here’s how PensionBuilder works: If a plan sponsor is amenable, a PensionBuilder team would periodically advertise a fixed-payment single premium income annuity (SPIA) to its participants—but only to those, current or retired, who are older than age 59½. If enough of those participants agree in principle to buy an annuity, PensionBuilder will ask life insurers to price a group income annuity for the entire cohort.

PensionBuilder would thus act like the pension committee at a corporation that decides to replace its defined benefit plan with a group annuity underwritten by a life insurer. That’s a “pension risk transfer.” Agilis and Alight are, in effect, mapping the PRT concept onto defined contribution plans. No one has done that before.

(If Agilis and Alight are less than familiar to you, here’s why. Agilis, based in Waltham, Mass., was created in August 2022 through a buyout by managers at River and Mercantile Group. It has about $1 billion in discretionary assets under management (AUM) and about $5.8 billion in non-discretionary AUM, according to a public filing. Alight is the third biggest plan recordkeeper, with more than $1.2 trillion, but is less well-known than Fidelity, Empower, or Vanguard because 62% of its plans are non-401(k) and because its 175 or so 401(k) plans are mainly “jumbo” plans.

Here’s the marketing and distribution approach that PensionBuilder borrows from the PRT business:

Older plan participants—current participants age 59½ or older who are still working and retirees still participating in the plan—will receive periodic PensionBuilder SPIA offers online.
If enough participants—representing $100 million in combined premiums, say—show a strong interest in buying the SPIA annuity, Agilis and Alight will ask several life insurance companies to bid for the business.
The bids will, if all goes as planned, represent an “institutional price” that would (all else being equal) provide more monthly income in retirement than any participant would receive by purchasing a retail annuity. At the individual level, each SPIA would be priced according to the participant’s age and gender.
The SPIA prices will be offered during specific windows of 60 days. This limitation is intended to stimulate participants to take action and overcome their natural tendency to procrastinate on large financial decisions.
The premium for each individual SPIA must be no less than $60,000 but no more than 80% of the total 401(k) balance.

PensionBuilder offers only SPIAs, which are easy to understand. They typically involve the irrevocable exchange of a lump sum for a fixed monthly income for life. But deferred annuities with guaranteed lifetime withdrawal benefit riders—which guarantee somewhat less income for life than SPIAs but allow flexible withdrawals—have always sold better.

Agilis and Alight say that this approach might have more appeal to both plan sponsors and participants than competing annuity solutions. With PensionBuilder, the annuity purchase happens outside the plan, in an IRA. That allows annuity pricing to be gender-specific, which compensates men for their shorter life expectancies. Plan sponsors don’t incur legal liability for choosing the best annuity provider, nor do they incur expenses.

“A company may offer employees discounts on auto insurance, for instance. In the meetings we’ve had, that’s how we describe it,” Bill Mischell, managing director of Agilis Partners, told RIJ in an interview. “We’re saying to the plan sponsor, ‘We don’t charge you anything.’ To the participant, we say, ‘You don’t have to do any of the work.’” Mischell was formerly a senior partner at Mercer.

Bill Mischell

PensionBuilder will rely on each plan sponsor’s recordkeeper to agree to furnish Agilis with enough data on individual participants so that it and the life insurers can accurately and individually price the annuity. “We don’t need the plan sponsor to do much,” Mischell said.

To communicate with participants, “We’ll set up portals,” he said. “A participant would log into the portal and see annuity estimates. They don’t have to click on a link or call an 800 number.” Agilis provides a modeling tool to help participants calculate how much income they want, need or can afford. Participants indicate their ages and marital status, “Then we give them an estimated payout rate. They have 60 days to decide whether they’re interested. We’re targeting a ‘Yes’ group with $100 million.”

After that, Mischell said, “We produce an Excel spreadsheet with, we hope, thousands of participants on it, and then we go into something that resembles a PRT deal.” He added, “The insurer says, tell us the premium and we’ll tell you the benefit. We pick the insurer that offers the best combination of price and safety. In all likelihood, we’ll be splitting the placement between two or three insurers. For example, one insurer might take people 72 and younger, and another will take those over 72,” depending on how the liabilities correspond to the maturities of the insurer’s assets.

PensionBuilder’s success will depend on reaching enough participants, and getting preliminary agreements from enough of them, to achieve the economies of scale large enough to produce annuity price discounts that are attractive enough to overcome individuals’ reservations about annuities.

Such “institutional pricing” of annuities isn’t easy to obtain. The Hueler Income Solutions annuity distribution platform tries to achieve advantageous annuity pricing for retirees from 401(k) plans by calling on life/annuity companies to bid against each other for individual contracts. PensionBuilder will ask insurers to bid on group contracts.

Since Agilis and Alight are not asset managers or life insurers, they have no compelling reason to promote an income solution that involves target date funds or embeds any particular kind of annuity in a target date fund. On the other hand, because PensionBuilder doesn’t require participants to start making gradual contributions to deferred annuities long before they retire, it doesn’t have as long a period to make participants comfortable with the annuity concept before asking them to make a full commitment.

What Agilis and Alight bring to the table is the relationships they’ve established in the PRT business. “We’ve worked with the PRT departments of between 10 and 20 insurers in the PRT industry, and almost all of them have expressed interest in working with PensionBuilder,” Mischell said.

“They see that while the DB market has assets of $3.5 trillion, the DC market is $11 trillion. If we’re targeting deals of $100 million or more, that gives the insurers a lot more investment opportunity. In the individual market, there’s a high acquisition cost, the contracts just trickle in one at a time, and [pricing is complicated by the fact that] the market is constantly moving.”

For clients, Agilis and Alight have specific types of companies in mind. “Our primary target is a company that has never had a DB plan or froze its DB plan 10 or 20 years ago,” Mischell told RIJ. “We’re also looking at companies that have recently done PRTs. In year one, 2025, we will work with one retirement plan at a time. In 2026, we plan to work with groups of two or three plans—the more the better—that have the same recordkeeper.”

A Flood of ‘Flow Reinsurance’

Posted on February 1, 2025 by Kerry Pechter -

“Flow reinsurance,” a type of reinsurance that’s increasingly used by U.S. annuity issuers to manage their capital requirements, reminds me of mortgage lenders’ “originate-to-distribute” model that helped lead to the Great Recession of 2008.

That may sound like a rash assertion, but those who take an interest in the Bermuda Triangle strategy might want to consider it.

The originate-to-distribute model of the early 2000s involved the ongoing, immediate sale of new mortgages from the banks that originated them to “shadow banks.” Flow reinsurance involves the ongoing, immediate transfer of risks from a life insurer to a reinsurer as soon as new annuities are issued.

Flow reinsurance has been around for at least 15 years, but it’s increasing. “By our count… at least 12 of the 19 top writers of fixed and indexed annuities as measured by 2023 direct premiums and considerations will have flow reinsurance capabilities covering at least a portion of their new business production,” according to a December 12, 2024, report from S&P Market Intelligence.

“We expect more arrangements of the kind to come online in 2025 as incumbent annuity writers seek to enhance their competitive position and fledgling players continue to grow their market share,” wrote an S&P analyst.

Given the companies that are using it, and how they use it, flow insurance appears to be a refinement of the Bermuda Triangle strategy. I could be wrong, but it looks like an accelerant of that strategy—enabling U.S. life insurers to skip the step that would otherwise might require them to capitalize new annuity sales before reinsuring them. It may be related to the use of sidecars, which are being set up by Bermuda reinsurers to provide “just-in-time” capital for U.S. annuity issuers.

Benefits of flow reinsurance

Like traditional block insurance, flow insurance transfers risk from an insurer to a reinsurer. Both can be used to conserve capital. According to a release from Gallagher Re, which advises insurers on and arranges various kinds of reinsurance deals, “As a capital management tool, [flow reinsurance] reduces required surplus and new business strain, thereby maintaining balance sheet capacity for sales growth.”

Gallagher mentions the acceleration aspect: “The up-front allowances commonly provided by reinsurers may exceed the direct writer’s acquisition costs, leading to improved profitability. The combination of accelerated earnings and a reduced capital base substantially enhances a carrier’s return on investment,” the release said.

Illustration of Flow Insurance, from Gallagher Re • In the first line, the carrier is retaining all the business expected to be sold at current pricing levels. • The second line illustrates the type of improvements that could be achieved by reinsuring 50% of new business sales. We have assumed that 80% of the reinsurer’s ceding commission is used to improve product competitiveness, and the remaining portion is used to mitigate strain. • The last line indicates the potential for increased sales resulting from improvements in product competitiveness. [Note: A carrier’s independent results are dependent on the product design, investment guidelines, target capital, ceding commission structure and other company specifics.]

Many flow reinsurance treaties today are “quota share reinsurance.” According to Google A.I., “Quota share flow reinsurance refers to a type of reinsurance agreement where an insurer cedes a fixed percentage of their insurance policies to a reinsurer….” The primary insurer is “essentially ‘flowing’ a portion of their risk to the reinsurer, with both parties sharing premiums and losses proportionally based on that agreed percentage.”

Use of flow reinsurance is now common among many of the largest annuity issuers. S&P named Sammons Enterprises (Midland Life), Allianz, American Equity Investment Life, F&G Annuities & Life, Aspida, Corebridge and other annuity issuers as having set up flow reinsurance agreements, often with their own affiliated reinsurers and often offshore.

Flow reinsurance characterizes much of the reinsurance that forms a key leg of the “Bermuda Triangle strategy.” This often involves the separation of annuity sales, risk management, and asset management to different companies within the same holding company, with the reinsurer based in Bermuda or the Cayman Islands.

The current practice of flow reinsurance can be traced back to the same affiliated companies that pioneered the Bermuda Triangle strategy as we know it today: Apollo Global Management and Athene. Athene Holding and Athene Life Re of Bermuda commenced operations in June of 2009, “entering into two flow reinsurance agreements with a highly rated U.S. life insurance company,” according to Athene Life Re’s website.

Other companies followed suit. To name only a handful: In 2019, Somerset Re, also domiciled in Bermuda, entered into a flow reinsurance deal with Prudential. In 2022, Fortitude Re, Bermuda’s largest multi-line reinsurer, signed a flow reinsurance transaction between its subsidiary Fortitude International Reinsurance Limited and a leading Japanese life insurer. In 2024, Resolution Life announced that its Bermudian reinsurance platform, Resolution Re, entered into a flow reinsurance agreement with a Japanese insurer.

Flow reinsurance is often associated with the relatively new concept of “asset-intensive reinsurance.” It involves transferring the financial risks of the assets backing annuity liabilities (but not the actual investment assets, which in a “modified coinsurance” arrangement the original insurer may continue to hold in trust for the reinsurer) to a reinsurer, who may also be the manager of the assets.

“Asset-intensive, or funded reinsurance, is another trend we are seeing more and more,” according to the European Insurance and Occupational Pension Authority. “It extends beyond traditional underwriting risk to also cover market risk. These contracts frequently involve outsourcing the management of the underlying assets to a reinsurer, which introduces substantial counterparty risk that is usually mitigated through collateralization.”

Similarity with originate-to-distribute lending

These strategies can increase the sales capacities of annuity issuers just as they increased the sales capacities of mortgage lenders 15 to 20 years ago—by reducing the reserve or capital requirements that traditionally go with the acquisition of new risks through lending. Higher sales generate higher fee revenue. But both practices arguably create moral hazard and add to “systemic risk” by removing traditional brakes on overproduction.

That makes flow reinsurance reminiscent of originate-to-distribute mortgage lending. The two, of course, are not identical. Annuity issuers commonly receive money in chunks of $100,000 or more from members of the public, while mortgage lenders lend money to members of the public. So, what’s the similarity?

Once annuity issuers gather premiums, their asset managers may then reach for yield by lending to low-credit, high-cash-flow borrowers, such as companies involved in aircraft leasing, cellphone towers, or music licensing and distribution. Those “leveraged loans” are analogous to subprime mortgages. Life insurers live or die between the risk they buy when making guarantees to annuity owners and the risk they buy when investing general account assets.

Since flow reinsurance also reduces the demand for fresh capital that new annuity sales traditionally requires (the definition of today’s “capital light,” Bermuda Triangle insurance business model), it could also leave reinsurers or insurers (in cases where they still bear the responsibility for fulfilling financial guarantees to contract owners) without enough surplus to endure a wave of defaults on leveraged loans during some future financial crisis.

The risks of private credit lending are real, and can grow in proportion to the growth in private credit assets. “There is nothing structurally wrong with private credit as an asset class. Its returns should be competitive with other asset classes of comparable risk, on average, over time,” wrote financial scholar Larry Siegel, research director of the CFA Institute, in 2024.

“There’s the rub—on average, over time,” Siegel said. “The glory days of any new asset class tend to be early in its evolution. Once a lot of money has poured into the asset class, valuations become stretched, opportunities become exhausted and expected returns decrease. That is what has happened with private credit.”

Honorable Mention

Posted on February 1, 2025 by Editorial Staff -

Merit Life reincarnated as Knighthead Life

Cayman-based Knighthead Insurance Group has acquired Merit Life Insurance Co. and rebranded it as a Knighthead Life. Headquartered in Charlotte, NC, Knighthead Life will be led by Edward Massaro, who remains CEO and chief investment officer of Knighthead Insurance.

Knighthead Insurance Group includes Knighthead International, Knighthead Re, and Knighthead Life. Knighthead Life is the brand name of Knighthead US Holdings, Inc. and its subsidiaries, Merit Life Insurance Co. and Knighthead American Life Insurance Company.

The acquisition of Merit Life followed Knighthead’s infusion of capital into the distressed annuity issuer last year, which coincided with Knighthead Insurance Group raising $550 million in new capital. Knighthead called the acquisition “key to the group’s strategy of being an annuity market leader across its international, U.S. and reinsurance lines of business.”

Knighthead Insurance was founded in 2014 with the incorporation of Knighthead Annuity & Life Assurance Company, a Class D Cayman insurer and reinsurer. Now managing about $5.5 billion of annuity reserves, it was created to sell “fixed annuities to international clients and reinsurance of similar liabilities to U.S. cedents” (i.e., U.S. annuity issuers wishing to reinsure annuity business). It is affiliated with New York hedge fund Knighthead Capital, founded in 2008 by Ara Cohen and Thomas Wagner.

With its combination of alternative asset management experience, affiliated reinsurance operations in the Cayman Islands or Bermuda, and U.S. retail annuity sales, Knighthead appears to have adopted what RIJ calls the “Bermuda Triangle” strategy.

This three-way strategy is designed to use U.S. fixed deferred annuity sales as a feeder of cash to global asset managers to fund private credit deals, while reducing the capital requirements of new annuity sales through offshore reinsurance (sometimes called “asset-intensive reinsurance” because it involves the reinsurance of financial risk rather than biometric risk).

Knighthead Insurance markets a multi-year guaranteed fixed annuity (MYGA) and a fixed indexed annuity (FIA). The MYGA offers 3-, 5-, 7- and 10-year contract terms. The FIA offers 3-, 5-, and 7-year contract terms. Performance is linked to the S&P 500, MSCI-EAFE, MSCI-EM Indices or to a fixed account.

Merit Life and 777 Re

Merit Life has changed hands before. In 2020, Brickell Insurance Holdings, purchased it from OneMain Holdings, a lender to “nonprime consumers.” Brickell was also the holding company for 777 Re, whose risky investment practices (including purchases of European soccer clubs) eventually got it into trouble.

In late 2023, the Bermuda Monetary Authority (BMA) expressed “significant concerns with [777 Re’s] corporate governance, risk management and decision-making functions, along with an inability to secure adequate capital and liquidity support from its parent company.” In October 2024, BMA cancelled 777 Re’s registration in Bermuda.

In April 2024, when 777 Re was in trouble, AM Best downgraded Merit Life’s Financial Strength Rating to B++ (Good) from A− (Excellent) and the Long-Term Issuer Credit Rating to BBB+ (Good) from A− (Excellent). In May 2024, Knighthead Capital was reported to have bought it.

After a capital infusion from Knighthead in November 2024, AM Best upgraded Merit Life’s Financial Strength Rating to A− (Excellent) from B++ (Good) and the Long-Term Issuer Credit Rating to A− (Excellent) from BBB+ (Good). Then, last month, it was announced that Knighthead Insurance Group had bought Merit Life.

Edward Massaro came to Knighthead Annuity after serving as chief operating officer and head of business Development at Knighthead Capital, which was founded in 2008 by Ara Cohen and Thomas Wagner.

Wagner had been involved in the distressed and high-yield asset business for many years. Earlier, he was a managing director at Goldman Sachs, where he was responsible for running the distressed and high-yield credit trading desks.

Cohen is co-manager of Knighthead’s $9 billion portfolio, including a long/short Evergreen Hedge Fund, a number of closed-end vehicles including a specialized travel fund, a dedicated real estate lending business, and an insurance asset management business.

Morgan Stanley to distribute five Allianz Life index annuities

Under a new partnership between the two firms, Morgan Stanley’s 16,000 financial advisers and brokers will begin offering five Allianz Life annuity contracts—four variable index annuities and one fixed index annuity (FIA)—to Morgan Stanley clients.

The four variable annuities, or registered index-linked annuities (RILAs), are:

Allianz Index Advantage+ Variable Annuity
Allianz Index Advantage+ New York Variable Annuity
Allianz Index Advantage+ Income Variable Annuity
Allianz Index Advantage Income ADV Variable Annuity

The RILAs all offer several index as crediting options as well as “Performance Lock,” which lets clients “lock in” their gains before the end of the contract’s term.

The FIA – Essential Income 7 – offers guaranteed lifetime income with an optional rider, “Increasing Income.”

In 2023, Allianz Life distributed more than $13.73 billion in benefits to owners of its fixed index annuities, registered index-linked annuities, and fixed index universal life insurance contracts. An Allianz Life subsidiary, Allianz Investment Management LLC (AllianzIM), a registered investment advisor, produces a suite of exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Allianz Life and AllianzIM are U.S. subsidiaries of Allianz SE of Germany.

BlackRock’s LifePath Paycheck reaches $16 billion in AUM

BlackRock has announced that its LifePath Paycheck product, a hybrid target date fund (TDF) that includes a mix of investments and an optional rider that lets plan participants lock-in guaranteed lifetime income, now has some $16 billion under management.

LifePath Paycheck launched in April 2024, and is now offered to more than 200,000 participants in the 401(k) plans of six employers: Avangrid, Adventist HealthCare Retirement Plans, Tennessee Valley Retirement System (TVARS) and BlackRock itself.

Overall, BlackRock’s LifePath TDFs have nearly $500 billion under management, according to a BlackRock spokesperson.

Fidelity Investments and Bank of America have enabled access to the solution on their recordkeeper platforms, and other recordkeepers, including Voya Financial, are also planning to support their clients’ implementation of the LifePath Paycheck solution, BlackRock said in a release.

Data Connection

Posted on January 30, 2025 by No Author -

Annuity issuers enjoy third-straight year of record sales: LIMRA

Posted on January 30, 2025 by Editorial Staff -

Total U.S. individual annuity sales rose 12% year-over-year in 2024, to a record $432.4 billion, according to preliminary results from LIMRA’s U.S. Individual Annuity Sales Survey of 83% of the U.S. annuity market. It was the third year of record-high annuity sales.

Lower interest rates in the second half of the year undermined demand for fixed-rate deferred and income annuities in the fourth quarter 2024. As a result, quarterly annuity sales fell 13% from the fourth quarter of 2023, to $100.4 billion.

“Since the pandemic, we have seen a significant rise in consumer interest in investment protection and guaranteed retirement income solutions,” said Bryan Hodgens, senior vice president and head of LIMRA research, in a release.

“Fixed-rate deferred annuities drove the record demand for annuities in 2023. As interest rates began to fall in 2024, we saw a shift to products—such as registered indexed-linked and fixed indexed annuities — with greater investment growth potential. We expect this shift to continue in 2025.”

Fixed-rate deferred
Total fixed-rate deferred annuity (FRD) sales fell 50% in the fourth quarter of 2024 from the same period in 2023, to $29.4 billion. For all of 2024, FRD sales totaled $153.4 billion, down 7% from 2023.

“If interest rates continue to drop this year as expected, it will undoubtedly diminish demand for FRDs in 2025. Yet with a significant amount in FRD contracts coming out of surrender over the next couple of years, LIMRA believes many conservative investors will reinvest their assets in these products,” Hodgens commented. “We are forecasting FRD sales to fall as much as 25% in 2025 but remain more than double the FRD sales prior to 2022.”

Fixed indexed annuities

Fixed indexed annuity (FIA) sales set a new sales record in 2024. FIA sales were $30.4 billion in the fourth quarter, a 22% increase from prior year’s results. In 2024, FIA sales totaled $125.5 billion, up 31% from the prior year. This marks the third consecutive year of record FIA sales.

“Investor demand for protection-based solutions remains high and is driving the growth and competition in the FIA market,” said Hodgens. “Although lower interest rates likely will reduce some demand in 2025, LIMRA predicts innovative index design and competitive participation rates will keep FIA sales above $100 billion in 2025.”

Income annuities

Income annuity product sales struggled in the fourth quarter due to the drop in interest rates, however year-end results remained at record levels. Single premium immediate annuity (SPIA) sales were $3.1 billion in the fourth quarter, down 14% from the prior year’s results. For the year, SPIA sales increased 2% to $13.6 billion, setting a new annual sales record.

Deferred income annuity (DIA) sales were $1.1 billion in the fourth quarter, down 17% from sales in the fourth quarter 2023. Still, DIA sales ended 2024 up 17% to $4.9 billion.

Registered index-linked annuities

Registered index-linked annuity (RILA) sales were $17.3 billion in the fourth quarter, up 33% year over year. RILA sales reached $65.2 billion in 2024, 37% higher than prior year. This is the 11^th consecutive record-setting year for RILA sales.

“LIMRA sees a lot of opportunity in the RILA market as investors want to capitalize on the strong equity market gains while mitigating potential downside risk,” noted Hodgens. “Carriers are offering attractive buffers, floors and participation rates. Product designs will sustain momentum for RILA sales in 2025. LIMRA projects RILA sales will remain at or slightly above the sales in 2024.”

Traditional variable annuities

In 2024, traditional variable annuity (VA) sales grew for the first time in three years. Fourth quarter traditional VA sales grew 38% year-over-year to $17 billion and total 2024 sales jumped 19% to $61.2 billion.

“Double-digit growth in the equity market, product innovation and increased interest from registered investment advisors propelled sales to top $60 billion in 2024,” said Hodgens. “If market conditions remain stable, LIMRA is projecting VA sales remain above $60 billion in 2025.”

Preliminary fourth quarter 2024 annuity industry estimates are based on monthly reporting. A summary of the results can be found in LIMRA’s Fact Tank.

The top 20 rankings of total, variable and fixed annuity writers for 2024 will be available in mid-March, following the last of the earnings calls for the participating carriers.

Honorable Mention

Posted on January 3, 2025 by Editorial Staff -

Nestimate publishes ‘Retirement Income Landscape’ chart

Here’s what the company, whose software helps plan sponsors, advisors, and consultants choose the right annuities for their defined contribution plans, recently distributed:

Fixed indexed annuity surrender rates have ‘steadily increased,’ Milliman research shows

New research from Milliman, the global consulting and actuarial firm, shows that average surrender rates of fixed indexed annuity have been steadily increasing each quarter since 2022, with rates at the end of 2023 nearly double the average between 2019 and 2021.

These and other findings “validate previous observations of decreased surrender rates in fixed indexed annuity contracts when used for income generation. The studies also highlight how contract size is a key differentiator in surrender rates, especially in non-GLWB contracts at the end of the surrender charge period.”

The findings came from Millman’s two 2024 Fixed Indexed Annuity Industry Experience Studies, which cover surrender behavior and partial withdrawals, including income utilization for guaranteed lifetime withdrawal benefit (GLWB) riders.

“Our most recent studies, which contain data through the first quarter of 2024, provide insight into behavior for FIA policies that experienced a positive change in interest rate since issue,” said Ben Johnson, Milliman actuarial data scientist, Life and Annuity Predictive Analytics. “Contracts that experienced increases in interest rates since issue saw elevated surrender rates, especially when credited rates were significantly lower than prevailing market rates.”

Key findings:

Recent data shows that contracts with credited rates much lower than market rates can have surrender rates over three times as high as those with credited rates relatively close to the market rate.
Surrender rates increased for contracts in their surrender charge period compared to pre-2022 levels, especially for contracts with a living benefit.
Observations since 2022 suggest surrender rates are more than 1.5 times higher for contracts without living benefits – and more than twice as high as contracts with living benefits – compared to pre-2022 levels.
As GLWBs become more valuable (in-the-money), average surrender rates tend to decrease, particularly at the end of the surrender charge period where deep in-the-money surrender rates are about 11% and out-of-the-money surrender rates are about 22%.
Once GLWB income has commenced, surrender rate patterns are significantly muted and below 5% on average for all durations.

Milliman’s Fixed Indexed Annuity Experience Studies introduce an advanced behavioral model that is integrated into Milliman’s Recon platform. This model, with a 99.8% actual-to-expected accuracy ratio, further empowers annuity writers to conduct their own experience studies, delve into industry data, and develop tailored models.

Allianz sets up Bermuda reinsurer

Global insurer Allianz, parent of Allianz Life in the U.S., has established a new independent strategic reinsurance platform called Sconset Re Ltd., which will be capitalized through equity investments from high-quality institutional partners.

Located in Bermuda, Sconset Re “will specialize in assuming fixed indexed annuity product risk and its asset management, and will aim to deliver more efficient returns across the subject business,” a press release said.

Initially, the new platform will reinsure a $4 billion block of annuity liabilities and will enter into a forward flow agreement for $5-10 billion of new business. PIMCO, an investment management firm, will manage most of the investment portfolio.

Both Voya and Antares have been named as two of the institutional partners of Sconset Re, with each set to manage a portion of the sidecar’s asset portfolio.

Deutsche Bank acted as the sole financial advisor to insurer Allianz on the transaction, and also acted as the sole arranger of a debt financing facility to Sconset Re.

“This transaction is representative of the opportunity that Allianz sees with its life and asset management business in the U.S,” says Deutsche Bank.

Empower to distribute Allianz Life’s in-plan annuity solution

Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America’s in-plan annuity solution will be available through the nation’s second-largest retirement plan provider, Empower, the insurer said in a release.

“Allianz Lifetime Income+” will be the first fixed indexed annuity on Empower’s platform. As the only in-plan annuity on Empower’s platform designed as an individual contract, Allianz Lifetime Income+ offers portability options without any changes to fees, features, or benefits.

Allianz Lifetime Income+^® will soon be available to the more than 80,000 retirement plans and more than 18 million customers that use Empower for retirement plans, advice, wealth management and investments in the United States, the release said.

State Street and Verizon sued over pension risk transfer deal

State Street Global Advisors faces a federal class action lawsuit alleging that it violated its fiduciary duty in advising a client, Verizon Communications, to exchange two pension plans for group annuities provided by Prudential Insurance Company of America (PICA).

The suit was filed on behalf of 56,000 retirees from two Verizon defined benefit plans with about $5.7 billion in plan assets on December 30, 2024 in U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York.

The defendants are State Street and Verizon Communications Inc. and its pension departments. RGA Reinsurance Company was involved in the pension risk transfer (PRT) deal but wasn’t named as a defendant.

The large-plan PRT business is booming and highly competitive among large life/annuity companies. Last month, LIMRA’s U.S. Group Annuity Risk Transfer Sales Survey reported that total U.S. single-premium PRT premium was $14.2 billion in the third quarter, up 36% from prior year’s results. Year-to-date (YTD), total single-premium PRT premium increased 21% to $39.9 billion. PRT premium includes (“buy-out” and “buy-in” deals).

“Single-premium buy-out premium totaled $13.1 billion in the third quarter, up 62% from prior year’s results. There were 203 contracts finalized in the third quarter, level with prior year. YTD buy-out premium jumped 26% to $36.5 billion. Through September 2024, there were 530 buy-out contracts, 10% growth over prior year. This marks a record-high number of buy-out contracts sold,” a LIMRA release said.

The class action complaint alleges that State Street and Verizon violated their fiduciary duty under U.S. labor law to act solely in the interests of plan participants when they agreed to exchange the pensions for PICA annuities.

According to the complaint, State Street and Verizon chose an annuity provider on the basis of their own financial interests rather than the financial safety of participants or retirees.

“Instead of going through a rigorous, independent and thorough selection process

that took into consideration the requisite analysis that an ordinary and prudent ERISA fiduciary is required to undertake, Verizon and State Street chose to purchase substandard annuities for Verizon retirees from PICA and RGA, which are both heavily dependent upon transactions with affiliates that are not transparent and expose plan participants to unreasonable amounts of risk and uncertainty.

“These affiliates are domiciled in ‘regulation light’ jurisdictions where wholly owned captive reinsurers and affiliates are permitted to count debt instruments as assets and are not required to file publicly available financial statements in accordance with Statutory Accounting Principles (SAP), the requisite accounting standard under which all U.S. life insurance companies operate. Without clarity around the assets, liabilities, structure and claims paying ability of these wholly owned captive reinsurance companies and affiliates, State Street and Verizon could not possibly have met their obligations as prudent fiduciaries under ERISA.”

The plaintiffs are represented by Edward Stone Law in New York and Kantor & Kantor LLP in Northridge, CA.

Under the pension deal, announced last March, Prudential and RGA each irrevocably guarantee and assume 50% of the benefit obligation to the retirees, except in certain jurisdictions where Prudential will irrevocably guarantee and assume 100% of the benefit obligation.

At the time, transaction marked the second major pension risk transfer agreement between Prudential and Verizon. In 2012, Prudential completed an approximately $7.5 billion transfer that covered approximately 41,000 of Verizon’s retirees.

Under the terms of the agreement, PICA is responsible for administrative services. This includes providing protected retirement income payments to this transaction’s population of retirees and their beneficiaries on behalf of Prudential and, where applicable, on behalf of RGA, beginning July 1, 2024.

Since 2012, Prudential has completed pension risk transfer deals or “pension buyouts” with General Motors, HP Inc. (2021), IBM (2022 and 2024), Shell USA (2024) and Sound Retirement Trust (2024).

Eldridge reorganizes, is criticized for loans from Security Benefit

Eldridge Industries announced plans to launch Eldridge, an asset management and insurance holding company with approximately $74 billion in assets under management. Eldridge will be wholly owned by Eldridge Industries and consist of two divisions: Eldridge Capital Management and Eldridge Wealth Solutions.

Eldridge Capital Management will focus on four investment strategies – corporate credit, GP solutions, real estate credit, and sports, media, and entertainment – and will conduct business under the Eldridge brand. Eldridge Wealth Solutions, an insurance and retirement solutions platform, will be comprised of Eldridge’s wholly owned insurance companies, Security Benefit and Everly Life.

Related story: “Security Benefit had more collateral loans to affiliated borrowers than all other US insurers combined, according to the most recent data. It also has piled into structured credit and lower-rated bonds to a greater extent than others,” Bloomberg reported.

“That’s prompted scrutiny from ratings firms, regulators and creditors, some of whom have balked at investing. ‘These types of assets could become illiquid very fast, especially in a crisis environment like the one we had back in ‘09,’ said John Han, a credit analyst at F/m Investments, which passed on a recent Security Benefit bond offering.

Eldridge will be managed by a newly formed Executive Committee, chaired by Todd Boehly, Chairman and CEO and controlling shareholder of Eldridge Industries. Mr. Boehly, in his capacity as Chairman of Eldridge’s Executive Committee, will be involved with strategic oversight and partnerships of both Eldridge Capital Management and Eldridge Wealth Solutions.

Eldridge will have offices in New York, Greenwich, Beverly Hills, Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta, Overland Park, Des Moines, Topeka, London, and Abu Dhabi. The transaction is expected to close in January 2025.

DOL names new members of ERISA Advisory Council

Posted on January 3, 2025 by Editorial Staff -

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has appointed five new members and leaders for the 2025 Advisory Council on Employee Welfare and Pension Benefit Plans, also known as the ERISA Advisory Council or EAC.

The 15-member council provides advice on policies and regulations affecting employee benefit plans governed by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974.

By law, members serve for staggered three-year terms representing nine fields. Three members represent employee organizations, three represent employers and three represent the general public. The accounting, actuarial counseling, corporate trust, insurance, investment counseling and investment management fields are each represented by one member.

Assistant Secretary for Employee Benefits Security (EBSA) Lisa M. Gomez announced appointments in these fields:

Actuarial Counseling:Christian Benjaminson is a vice president and principal consulting actuary at Cheiron Inc. primarily advising multiemployer plans in the trucking, manufacturing, construction, communications and grocery industries. Benjaminson has more than 25 years of experience as an actuarial consultant and a Society of Actuaries’ Fellow, and an enrolled actuary and member of the American Academy of Actuaries.
Employee Organizations:Wendell Young is the President of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1776 Keystone State as well as Vice President of the UFCW International Union. Young serves as a trustee overseeing health and pension benefit trust funds for the union’s 35,000 members. He also serves on the Strategic Initiative Steering Committee for the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans.
Employers:Jay Dorsch is the chair of the Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation practice of Cozen O’Connor, a law firm representing clients in all aspects of employee benefits and executive compensation matters and related fiduciary and tax concerns. Dorsch represents clients before the IRS, the Department of Labor and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.
General Public:Elizabeth Hopkins is a senior partner at Kantor & Kantor LLP and head of the law firm’s pension practice. Hopkins joined the firm in 2018 after a long career at the DOL Department of Labor where, for 15 years, she served as head of the ERISA appellate and amicus program. In that role, she oversaw nationwide litigation designed to advance the interests of workers and their families with regard to their employee benefits.
Investment Counseling:Craig Wright is a founding partner at Strategic Financial and has 15 years of experience as a financial advisor. Wright received a master’s degree in business administration from Southwest Baptist University. He is a Certified Financial Planner and has holds a Chartered Financial Consultant designation.

Continuing as Council Chair for 2025 will be current member Mayoung Nham, a principal with the law firm of Slevin & Hart PC with 15 years’ experience in employee benefits law.

Current EAC member Anusha Rasalingam will serve as the council’s Vice Chair in 2025. A partner at Friedman and Anspach, Rasalingam has 20 years of experience in employee benefits law. She advises on healthcare and retirement benefits issues for single and multiemployer plans, and counsels on compliance with multiple areas of ERISA.

Outgoing members are Tonya Manning, U.S. Defined Benefit Consulting and Administration Practice Leader and Chief Actuary at Gallagher; Shaun C. O’Brien, Policy Director at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; Holly Verdeyen, partner and U.S. Defined Contribution Leader at Mercer; Jeffrey Lewis, partner at Keller Rohrback LLP; Beth Halberstadt, senior partner and U.S. Defined Contribution Investment Solutions Leader at Aon Investments USA Inc.

Higher interest rates drive record number of pension transfers: LIMRA

Posted on January 3, 2025 by Editorial Staff -

Total U.S. single-premium pension risk transfer (PRT) premium was $14.2 billion in the third quarter, up 36% from prior year’s results, according to LIMRA’s U.S. Group Annuity Risk Transfer Sales Survey.

In the first nine months of 2024, total single-premium PRT premium increased 21% to $39.9 billion.

“The growth can be attributed to larger deal activity,” said Keith Golembiewski, assistant vice president, head of LIMRA Annuity Research, in a press release. “Carriers reported the largest number of contracts ever sold in the first nine months of the year.

“Higher interest rates are driving companies to de-risk their pension liabilities to annuity providers. LIMRA expects this trend to continue through the rest of the year,” he added.

A group annuity risk transfer product, or pension buy-out, allows an employer to exit the define benefit pension plan business. The buy-out involves exchanging all or part of the employer’s pension assets and liabilities for a group annuity underwritten by a life insurer.

According to LIMRA:

Single-premium buy-out premium totaled $13.1 billion in the third quarter, up 62% from prior year’s results.
203 contracts were finalized in the third quarter, level with prior year
YTD buy-out premium jumped 26% to $36.5 billion
Through September 2024, there were 530 buy-out contracts, up 10% year-over-year.
A record-high number of buy-out contracts were sold
Single premium buy-out assets reached $288.8 billion through the third quarter, up 13% from 2023.
Single premium assets totaled $298 billion, up 15% year-over-year.

Buy-ins

A pension buy-in is an insurance policy that helps cover a portion of a pension plan’s liabilities. The policy guarantees enough funds to meet future obligations. It is held as an asset of the plan, alongside the plan’s other investments. Plans may use buy-ins as part of their risk management or long-term self-sufficiency strategies. According to LIMRA:

In the third quarter, single-premium buy-in premium was $1.02 billion, down 56% from third quarter 2023.
Four contracts were sold in the third quarter, matching the results in third-quarter 2023.
YTD, buy-in premium totaled $3.3 billion, down 15% year over year.
Through the first three quarters of 2024, nine buy-in contracts sold, one more sold than prior year (a 13% increase).
Single premium buy-in assets were $9.1 billion YTD, 11% higher than the same period in 2023.

This survey represents 100% of the U.S. Pension Risk Transfer market. Breakouts of pension buy-out sales by quarter and pension buy-in sales by quarter since 2019 are available in the LIMRA Fact Tank.

MetLife and General Atlantic create ‘Chariot Re’ sidecar

Posted on January 3, 2025 by Editorial Staff -

MetLife, Inc., is partnering with the investment firm General Atlantic to launch Bermuda-based Chariot Reinsurance, Ltd., a registered Class E Bermuda-based life and annuity reinsurance company.

The deal will give MetLife access to “on-demand” capital, analysts said.

The new company will initially serve as a “sidecar for the company, but seems well-positioned to become market-facing in future,” according to a report at Artemis.com. As RIJ reported last month, “sidecars” are vehicles that allow global investors indirect access to the anticipated growth of annuity sales in the U.S.

“We expect MET to reinsure additional blocks to Chariot in the future, and perhaps establish flow-reinsurance agreements with it as well, although the timing of such transactions is unclear,” S&P Global Ratings said about the deal.

Regarding the sidecar’s benefits to MetLife, S&P analysts wrote, “The addition of Chariot Re as a sidecar will primarily benefit MET’s spread based businesses, such as PRT and structured settlements, mainly by providing access to on-demand third-party equity capital for growth and capital relief, without the need to issue new shares outright.”

The new reinsurance venture is expected to launch in 2025. MetLife expects Chariot Re to reinsure around $10 billion in MetLife liabilities, including structured settlement annuity contracts and group annuity contracts associated with pension risk transfers. MetLife will still be responsible for all “policyholder commitments” and “customer-related functions.”

Chariot Re is expected to be led by Cynthia Smith, a 30-year veteran of the company, who will serve as CEO having most recently led MetLife’s Group Benefits Regional Business.

“With the demand for life and retirement solutions anticipated to grow around the globe, MetLife views a strategic partnership with Chariot Re as a powerful avenue to further serve those expanding needs,” MetLife CEO and president Michel Khalaf said in a statement.

“Chariot Re will operate as the latest third-party capital-supported life and annuity reinsurance sidecar structure for MetLife,” Artemis.com reported. “MetLife Investment Management and General Atlantic are set to exclusively provide asset management services to Chariot Re. This venture will give MetLife the benefits of a third-party capitalized reinsurance sidecar, while moving policies over to a dedicated reinsurance venture that it can then seek to grow with additional origination.

Chariot Re is expected to have an initial equity investment of over $1 billion, with MetLife and General Atlantic will each initially owning approximately 15% of the equity in the reinsurance company, which will have initial capital of over $1 billion. Property and casualty insurance specialist Chubb expected to be an initial third-party investor.

“It seems Chariot Re could also become market-facing in future, as MetLife is already providing reinsurance capital to cedents for life and annuity type deals, as well as pension and longevity risk transfers, so Chariot Re may become a better direct conduit for those types of arrangements for the company,” Artemis said.

“At the same time, this is allowing MetLife to lean on third-party institutional investor type capital backing, while in addition benefiting from the investment opportunity itself, and tapping the investment expertise of General Atlantic as well.”

MetLife expands investment arm

MetLife Investment Management (MIM), the institutional asset management business of MetLife, Inc., has agreed to acquire PineBridge Investments, a global asset manager with approximately $100 billion in assets under management, from the Pacific Century Group.

The transaction, expected to close in 2025, involves $800 million in cash at closing, $200 million subject to achievement of certain 2025 financial metrics, and $200 million subject to a multi-year earnout.

PineBridge was founded in 1996 as the advisory and asset management business of AIG. It was acquired in 2010 by Pacific Century Group. The firm’s private equity funds group business and its joint venture in China were excluded from the transaction.

“The acquisition of PineBridge Investments furthers our ambition to accelerate growth in asset management,” said MetLife President and CEO Michel Khalaf. With the acquisition, MIM’s total AUM will increase to more than$700 billion, a MetLife release said.

More than half the client assets acquired in the transaction are held by non-U.S. investors and about one-third are held in Asia. The deal includes Pinebridge’s collateralized loan obligation platform, a multi-asset business, a global suite of equity strategies, direct lending and European real estate businesses.

MetLife reinsures longevity risk transfer deal

Also, MetLife will serve as the reinsurer for a £450 million (US$569 million) longevity risk transfer from the Merchant Navy Ratings Pension Fund (MNRPF) to a MNRPF captive in Guernsey, managed by WTW [Willis Towers Watson] Guernsey.
The arrangement is intended to reduce the fund’s exposure to longevity risks and protects benefits for MNRPF members. Structured as an insurance contract, the deal integrates the captive into MNRPF’s investment portfolio.
Shelly Beard, managing director at WTW, said in a release, “Longevity swaps are an option for smaller tranches of liabilities. We worked with the trustee to achieve a competitive reinsurer selection process and attractive economics relative to the fund’s reserves.”

Nut Case: Prudential and Brighthouse’s Bets on Pistachios

Posted on January 3, 2025 by Kerry Pechter -

The endless rows of pistachio trees in California’s flat, arid Central Valley yield millions of bags of pricey green snack-nuts every year. A decade of celebrity-driven advertising has propelled pistachios into a global sales sensation—enough to attract major loans from institutional investors.

Like farming itself, lending to farmers can be risky. Last summer, agribusinesses owned by the Farid Assemi family defaulted on some $700 million in loans from Prudential Insurance Company of America and its affiliate, PGIM Real Estate Finance, plus some $50 million from Brighthouse Life Insurance and perhaps $200 million from others.

This past fall, those institutions, in separate actions, asked a federal judge in Fresno to appoint receivers to take possession of the loan collateral. The assets backing the debt included tens of thousands of acres of thirsty nut-bearing trees that, if not watered or pruned, could go to waste.

Farid Assemi

Why would those institutions lend that much money to one agribusiness and one somewhat faddish snack? The Assemis, originally from Tehran, are no ordinary farm family. They control about 10% of the pistachio-growing acreage in California, are major home builders, started a medical and pharmacy school, and donate to charities and politicians in the Fresno region.

Pistachios are no ordinary crop. They’ve exploded in production and consumption over the past decade. That success is due in no small part to Beverly Hills billionaires Stewart and Lynda Resnick. Their Wonderful Company has spent fortunes on a blizzard of tongue-in-cheek ads, including Super Bowl ads, in which Stephen Colbert, Dennis Rodman and other celebrities raved about the health benefits of pistachios.

The Resnicks and the Assemis were, until not long ago, close partners. If that partnership, or its collapse, was linked to Prudential’s or Brighthouse’s decisions to lend (or stop lending) to the Assemis, the two life annuity companies aren’t saying. RIJ wanted to know if the loans were examples of the “leveraged loans” or “private credit” deals that alternative asset managers increasingly “originate” for life/annuity companies. If so, the court filings in Fresno offer a glimpse into one of those ventures.

Money can grow on trees

In the Prudential lawsuit, filed last September 16, Prudential and PGIM REF (Prudential Global Investment Management Real Estate Finance) said that the Assemi family businesses have defaulted on some $705 million in debt and interest on loans dating back to 2017. The creditors asked for a court-appointed receiver to make sure the collateral—including some 50,000 acres (about 78 square miles, and more than 10% of all pistachio-bearing acreage in 2023) of perishable, water-hungry nut trees—isn’t ruined by heat, drought or neglect.

Brighthouse sued the Assemis’ farms in October 2024, claiming that they were owed $48.6 million for loans made by MetLife in 2017 and Brighthouse (formerly part of MetLife) in 2021. The loans were secured by almond and pistachio orchards. The court appointed receivers for that collateral in November and December 2024.

[Prudential and Brighthouse Financial were the 10^th and 15^th largest writers of annuities in the U.S. in the first nine months of 2024, with sales of $11.3 billion and $7.8 billion, respectively, according to LIMRA. They were the third and fourth leading sellers of registered index-linked annuities, with sales of $6.2 billion and $5.8 billion, respectively.]

U.S. Bank’s lawsuit, filed last September 17, claimed that the Assemi family, and its Touchstone pistachio processing plant venture, defaulted on a $41.25 million equipment and a $30.5 million line of credit, and that Touchstone owes U.S. Bank (which acquired the loans in its purchase of MUFG Union Bank in 2023) and a group of nut growers about $196 million. These loans were secured by a pistachio processing plant in the Central Valley town of Terra Bella, California.

Altogether, the three financial institutions appear to have combined exposures of $1 billion or more to the agribusinesses of Farid Assemi and his extended family, collateralized by 50,000 acres (~78 square miles) of pistachio or almond trees and equipment for a nut processing plant that never came to fruition. Court-appointed receivers are now burdened with keeping the trees healthy.

The lawsuits don’t explain why Prudential, PGIM REF, and U.S. Bank invested so heavily in the pistachio orchards. One obvious explanation: Pistachios are the nuts du jour. If you’ve been to a supermarket lately, you may have noticed the bags of shelled or unshelled pistachios piled in the produce section. They cost about $8 a pound, depending on how they’re processed and packaged.

No ordinary snack nut

Pistachio haven’t always been so popular, and California hasn’t always been its main source. In the early 1980s, Iran was the world’s top pistachio producer. In the U.S., pistachios were mainly a baking ingredient, typically found in a grocery’s bakery aisle. In 1986, however, the U.S. slapped a big tariff on Iranian pistachios. In 1989, Stewart and Lynda Resnick of Beverly Hills, billionaire owners of the Wonderful Company, ventured into the pistachio business.

The Resnicks, outstanding in their field

In 2007, the Wonderful Company inaugurated its quirky ‘Get Crackin’ TV ad campaign. Featuring celebrities like Steven Colbert and Dennis Rodman, the ads promoted pistachios as a highly nutritious. snack on TV shows like Survivor, America’s Got Talent and Good Morning America. (In 2013, their first Super Bowl ad featured Psy, the ‘Gangnam Style’ Korean pop star.)

The Wonderful Company “can take credit for moving pistachios out of the bakery aisle and into the produce aisle, where they are now positioned as a snack. They have definitely boosted demand,” said Jeff Conrad, president of AgIS Capital, a Boston-based private equity firm that specializes in agriculture. The U.S. is now the largest producer, consumer and exporter of pistachios in the world.

The U.S. accounted for 63% of global production of the nut in 2023-24. Our annual consumption of pistachios has soared to 225,000 metric tons from jU.S.t 41,500 metric tons in 2005. The U.S. shipped an additional 390,000 metric tons of pistachios abroad in 2023-24—about 70% of all pistachio exports.

PGIM REF is no stranger to agriculture loans, according to its website. The group has been “serving institutional investors seeking portfolio diversification into the farmland asset class since 1989” and has $10.4 billion in assets under management and administration. It focuses on row crops and “permanent plantings” such as pistachio and almond trees.

Pistachio trees are the kind of long-term investment an insurer can love. Seedlings take five to eight years to bear fruit and as much a 25 years to fully mature. A mature tree produces as much as 50 pounds of dry, hulled nuts for decades. Pistachios are biennial plants, bearing heavy crops every other year but little in between.

As an investment, agriculture has several attractions, according to Jamie Shen, managing director and head of agriculture at PGIM Real Estate. In interviews, she has listed the fact “We have a growing population and shrinking supply of arable land,” she said. PGIM, she added, looks for land that it can put solar panels on and for crops—including tree nuts—that can be mechanically harvested and processed.

“Historically, if you look at farmland as an investment, it’s pretty attractive,” Conrad told RIJ. “It has attractive long term returns on equity financing. It’s been a good inflation hedge. And it has a low-to-negative correlation with traditional investments.”

Family feud

There’s a dramatic twist to this story: the Assemi family and the Resnicks were once partners at the apex of the pistachio business.

The patriarch of the Assemi clan, Farid, the eldest son of a prosperous Iranian agricultural family, arrived in California from Tehran in 1974. His family’s fortune, based on wells, farm equipment, and land holdings in Iran, according to the Fresno Bee reports, bankrolled him in the Central Valley.

The Assemi Group, based in Fresno, became a leader in land acquisition, land development, home building, farming, medical education, and aviation in the Central Valley. By 1997, it created or acquired many individual farms with colorful names like Maricopa Orchards, Sageberry Farms, and Panoche Pistachios, across tens of thousands of acres.

The Resnicks, meanwhile, were building Wonderful’s future pistachio empire. In 1989, they formed Paramount Farms to cultivate pistachios and almonds. In 1994, a Paramount subsidiary quietly acquired a 48% controlling interest in the Kern Water Bank, a publicly-financed set of water recharge basins across 32 acres in the southern San Joaquin Valley, with a capacity of 1.5 million acre-feet of water.

The Resnicks also controlled a strategic lending source. As the Wall Street Journal reported in 2016 and 2018, the Resnicks, whose charitable foundation would become a major donor to art, health, and education institutions in Los Angeles and beyond, also loaned foundation money to businesses affiliated with the Resnicks.

The Resnicks created another advantage: “super trees.” In the late 2000s, according to press reports, the Resnicks began collecting data on the yields of pistachio trees in their orchards. They cloned the most productive ones, which yielded 25% more than normal.

The Resnicks and the Assemis went into business in the early 2000s. The Assemis were engaged as key suppliers to the Resnicks’ nut processing operation. Over the next decade, the Resnicks would loan tens of millions of dollars—$45 million from their charity, according to the Wall Street Journal—and a supply of super-trees in return for years of steady supplies of nuts for processing, distribution and sale worldwide.

The relationship grew tenuous and then troubled in the late 2010s. Kevin Assemi, Farid’s son, decided to try to establish—in a venture with the code-name, Project X, according to U.S. Bank’s court filings—the Assemis’ own pistachio processing plant in Terra Bella, California. That meant head-to-head competition, not friendly cooperation, with the Resnicks.

Unable to come to terms for the delivery of their 2019 crop, the Assemis withheld it from the Resnicks and sued them for $30 million. The Resnicks counter-sued for $170 million, charging that the Assemis owed them a decade’s worth of pistachios. Although a jury would eventually deem both suits baseless, in January 2024 jurors affirmed secondary claims and awarded $38.7 million to the Assemis and $11.3 million to the Resnicks.

That settlement didn’t rescue the Assemis, however. Unable to find new lenders or buyers for their properties, and weakened by Farid Assemi’s health problems and the departure of several key employees, they defaulted on their outstanding loans in mid-2024.

‘Private credit’ or not

It’s unclear exactly how the two life/annuity giants became involved in this evidently emotional, high-stakes dispute between former friends. The U.S. Bank lawsuit against the Assemis hints at relationships and maneuvers of unanticipated complexity:

In the spring of 2022, Touchstone’s management came to [U.S. Bank] seeking permission to enter a complicated arrangement under which Touchstone would finance the expansion of an existing [pistachio processing] plant owned by a third party (Dry Ranch), and purchase the facility upon completion. The Assemis referred to this as “Project X.”

Part of the plan was a daisy-chain of loans whereby Prudential Insurance, which was Maricopa’s main real-estate lender, would loan Maricopa $50 million secured by Maricopa’s orchards. Maricopa would in turn loan that money to Touchstone, which would use it to help make a construction loan to Dry Ranch for Project X. Once the building shell was constructed, Touchstone would deliver some of the equipment it had purchased for… Project X. Touchstone would ultimately purchase the plant upon completion.

More research is needed to show why Brighthouse and Prudential together loaned so much to the Assemis. That the two institutions took positions in the pistachio business is no mystery; private capital firms, lured by the prospect of high long-term profits, have poured millions into almond and pistachio groves in Arizona and California in recent years.

The risks of lending tens or hundreds of millions to one family seem patent in hindsight, but the potential returns must have outweighed the potential risks at the outset. The Assemis may have looked bankable at the start of 2020, but the pistachio crop in 2022 was one of the worst in years, interest rates went up, and Covid hit supply chains and increased labor costs.

In late September, Prudential Insurance extended $32 million to the receiver in their lawsuit to oversee the harvest of a multi-million crop of pistachios and almonds.

Merely taking possession of the collateral backing their loans may not satisfy either Brighthouse or Prudential. “Traditional lenders don’t lend money with hopes of getting the asset,” said Jeff Conrad at AgIS Capital. “They don’t have the infrastructure set up to manage companies. The regulators don’t like to see it on the balance sheet.”

Traditional life/annuity companies like Prudential and Brighthouse were once known for buying corporate bonds in the public bond markets, and that’s still their bread-and-butter asset. But over the past 10 years, they’ve watched private equity-led life/annuity companies use their skills in leveraged loan origination (aka private credit) to enhance profits and grow annuity market share. If the two insurers’ loans to the Assemis fall into the private credit category, then their legal actions offer the public a glimpse into the potential risks of such deals.

The California pistachio industry is expected to grow steadily. According to a report commissioned by the American Pistachio Growers, California produced 1.36 billion pounds of pistachios on 453,750 bearing acres in 2023, but is expected to produce 2.08 billion pounds on 811,000 acres in 2031.

Data Connection

Posted on January 3, 2025 by No Author -

What RIJ Learned In 2024, and Expects in 2025

Posted on January 3, 2025 by Kerry Pechter -

After an 18-month break, RIJ resumed publication in February 2024 with two goals: To inform readers about early-stage efforts to distribute annuities through 401(k) plans and, equally, to track the relatively mature “Bermuda Triangle strategy” with which private equity firms have disrupted the life/annuity business.

There was a lot to learn. The 401(k)/annuity trend is complicated because so many different products and proposals are in play. The Bermuda Triangle strategy is mysterious because the magic happens offshore or in private. There will be more to learn and write about in 2025.

Progress toward the incorporation of annuities into 401(k)s is likely to remain tortoise-slow in 2025, even if the fractured Congress passes a SECURE 3.0 bill. It’s been that way for at least 15 years.

As for the Bermuda Triangle strategy, tighter regulation might slow it down this year but won’t stop it. The payoff from high-yield investing and “funded” reinsurance are too great.

A few aspects of 401(k) annuities that I learned about in 2024:

First, the addition of annuities to (or alongside) 401(k) plans has real urgency for mutual fund families that don’t have their own 401(k) plan businesses, and for some life/annuity companies. Fair enough. But annuities are less urgent for 401(k) plan sponsors, plan advisors, or participants.

The SECURE Acts didn’t change that. Second, the Acts didn’t discriminate between the types of annuities that plans can adopt. There are big differences between annuity types. That steepens the learning curve for plan sponsors.

With respect to regulations, annuities aren’t a natural fit for 401(k)s. While the law requires investments in 401(k) accounts to be liquid in certain ways, annuities deliver more bang for the buck (through tax-deferral, mortality credits, and uninterrupted accumulation) when the underlying assets are illiquid.

Then there’s the under-appreciated education factor. To make meaningful use of the annuities in their plans, plan participants will need to learn more about retirement income planning. It’s not clear who will teach them, what the curriculum should be, or who will pay for it. No off-the-shelf playbook exists for that.

So far, no one has said much about integrating Social Security and 401(k) annuities. There’s a foreseeable conflict between payroll tax hikes, which Social Security reform may soon require, and automatic-escalation of 401(k) contributions, without which demand for 401(k) annuities might never reach critical-mass.

What I learned about the Bermuda Triangle in 2024:

Over the past 10 years, private equity giants like Apollo, KKR, Blackstone and others have remade the life/annuity business in their own image—changing it from a slow-moving, spread-based, capital-intensive business to a nimble, fee-based, “capital light” business. That’s a sea change.

A traditional life insurer bought “biometric” risks (dying too soon or living too long) from individuals through the sale of life insurance and annuities. It held that risk for long periods, using the law of large numbers, risk pooling, surplus capital buffers, hedging strategies, asset/liability matching, and purchases of low-risk corporate bonds to neutralize it. It tried to earn more on its investments than it owed to policyholders and contract owners.

That model is going the way of the Oldsmobile and VHS. Today, asset managers (private equity or private credit specialists) buy or partner with life/annuity companies in order to capture revenue, mainly through the sale of fixed deferred annuities, that will enlarge their assets-under-management and earn them more fees.

To reduce the amount of capital necessary to support the guarantees associated with the sale of those fixed deferred annuities, the life/annuity company sends the risk (but not necessarily the assets) to a reinsurer it owns in Bermuda or the Cayman Islands—which third-party institutional investors can help capitalize. That’s my working definition of the “Bermuda Triangle;” it’s open to many possible variations.

If you work for or own stock in a private equity-led life/annuity company, this is a more efficient, more profitable mousetrap than traditional insurance, with more capacity for growth. If you’re a Baby Boomer more focused on the safe growth of your savings than worried about how long you’ll live, it is—or can be, depending on whose fixed deferred annuities you buy—a pretty good deal as well.

If you’re one of the official watchdogs paid to worry about the stability of the global financial system, you may not be as pleased. They remember the 2008 financial crisis, when banks originated mortgages and distributed them to firms that bundled and securitized them and sold them to investors.

Since the banks didn’t retain the risk, they emphasized loan volume over loan quality—with tragic results. The Bermuda Triangle strategy reminds some federal and international insurance regulators of the events leading up to the mortgage crisis.

But federal and international bodies don’t regulate life/annuity companies in the U.S. That’s done by the state insurance commissioners who comprise the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) and the leadership of the Bermuda Monetary Authority (BMA). To the extent that they benefit from the Bermuda Triangle trend, they have little incentive to spoil the party.

Does danger lurk in the Bermuda Triangle? Last month, the Utah insurance regulator order Sentinel Security Life of Utah was ordered to stop selling annuities; it is part of a triangular strategy involving Advantage Capital Partners of Utah and several reinsurers. PHL Variable, an insurer owned by Nassau, an insurer owned by Golden Gate Capital, was put in rehabilitation by Connecticut regulators. No large Bermuda Triangle practitioners have failed.

In 2025, both the NAIC and the BMA are expected to roll out new guidelines or regulations that might be strong enough to placate critics of the Bermuda Triangle strategy without slowing down the strategy’s growth, its profitability or its benefits for jurisdictions where the companies are headquartered. We’ll follow the money.

Retirement income is Kevin Crain’s comfort zone

Posted on January 3, 2025 by Editorial Staff -

Kevin Crain, who emerged from semi-retirement last June to become executive director at the Institutional Retirement Income Council (IRIC), has the right curriculum vitae for his new role.

Kevin Crain

Crain’s 40-year career in financial services included tours at McKinsey, Bankers Trust, Chase Manhattan Bank, Fidelity, and Putnam Investments. At his last employer, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, his Retirement Research team provided research to support building the Bank’s in-plan retirement income option for its Defined Contribution (DC) clients.

“I’ve already seen one retirement income solution out of the gate,” Crain told RIJ. He succeeds Michelle Richter-Gordon in the role.

Of the half-dozen or so retirement industry trade groups, the non-profit IRIC is perhaps the smallest. But it’s the one most focused on promoting the placement of retirement income options inside DC plans. That is, within the investment menus, rather than as post-retirement rollover options. The group has just released a list of five key trends in that specialty area to watch for in 2025. (See box below.)

As a 501(c)3 charitable organization, IRIC’s goal is to educate, not to lobby. Lobbying falls within the province of the big 501(c)6 retirement trade groups: The American Council of Life Insurers, American Retirement Association, Alliance for Lifetime, and Defined Contribution Institutional Investors Association. Another active group is the Retirement Income Consortium, run by Broadridge.

“We’re institutionally-oriented, so we ask, ‘How can we help DC plan sponsors, consultants and advisors become more comfortable with retirement income?’” Crain told RIJ in an interview. IRIC is sponsored by retirement services providers, including recordkeepers, investment firms, insurers and technology integration entities.

Sponsors currently listed on the IRIC website include Allianz Life of North America, AllianceBernstein, Empower, Lincoln Financial, Pacific Life, TIAA/Nuveen, and SS&C.

Besides Crain, IRIC is led by a board. IRIC’s current board members include John Pickett of CAPTRUST, Martin Schmidt of MAS Advisors, Martha J. Tejera of Tejera and Associates, Michael Kreps of Groom Law Group, actuary Mark Shemtob, and Laura Schumann of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA).

“No single retirement services industry association or council owns the DC income space,” Crain said. “I am of the view that “it takes a village” of collaborative partnerships of industry associations and service providers to help simplify and de-mystify in-plan retirement income options and not make it more complex.” Most of IRIC’s sponsors also belong to the retirement industry associations noted above.

Crain, who is also a senior advisor at McKinsey, the Milken Institute and the Global Coalition on Aging, doesn’t underestimate the complexity of integrating retirement income options within DC plans. Although the SECURE Acts provided significant support for retirement income options, there are still administrative complexities to be addressed.

As noted, IRIC’s mission is to make plan sponsors, consultants and advisors comfortable with in-plan retirement income options, including annuities. Hybrid Target Date/Managed Account funds are one example. With that option, deferred annuities are typically embedded in a target date fund or a managed account, into which participants can select to invest in the annuity. There are early discussions in Washington about the future of these options to be classified as QDIA investments.

When those participants reach a certain age, they begin earmarking part of their payroll deferrals to the embedded annuity. But the decision isn’t irrevocable. Like many defined benefit plan participants, DC participants will need to actively choose at retirement whether to liquidate the annuity portions of their savings or turn them into lifetime income streams.

Out-of-plan annuities, by contrast, are often single-premium immediate annuities that participants can buy with part of their plan savings when they retire. But, in practice, even out-of-plan annuities have in-plan components.

“‘In-plan’ is not as clean a distinction as people like to think,” Crain told RIJ. “IRIC works with its sponsors to clarify the types of retirement income options. There are solutions, like Fidelity’s annuity supermarket, that appear to be ‘out-of-plan.’ But, for the participant, the preparation for that solution starts inside the plan. So I think the leading proposition [for DC retirement income solutions] will be an array of in-plan and out-of-plan solutions.”

IRIC’s primary audience for education starts with the financial advisors and consultants who will help plan sponsors evaluate, select, and monitor ongoing retirement income options; Crain is aware that the audience needs to include other institutional stakeholders. Plan recordkeepers, for instance, need processes and risk mitigation with middleware technology firms to let them safely share confidential data about participants with insurers, he said.

“Recordkeepers get queasy when you talk about moving data around,” Crain told RIJ. “Even when the institutional ecosystem increases plan adoption, we still have to win over the participants. There’s still a whole layer of participant education that is in the initial stages of development. Who will provide it? Will it be integrated with broader financial wellness programs? Will the recordkeepers subsidize that?”

In the coming year, Crain and his board of directors hope to expand IRIC’s visibility with both social media and traditional media, expand its sponsors group, publish thought leadership articles, and use in-person and virtual forums to educate the institutional entities.

“IRIC has been the independent arbiter of ‘in-plan’ retirement income options. Now we’re looking to take the conversation up a few levels, to broader concepts,” he said. “We’re also going to extend our visibility on social media. We’ll work more with sponsors and do more events.”

Post-Election Overhang

Posted on December 2, 2024 by Kerry Pechter -

How will Donald Trump’s defeat of Kamala Harris last month affect the retirement security of Americans? We may not know the answer until we hear about it on Truth Social or X, neither of which I follow.

Prior to his victory, the president-elect promised to make Social Security benefits exempt from federal income tax, as they were before the 1983 tax reform, when the genial old Gipper was in the White House.

Re-exempting benefits would deprive the Social Security trust fund of about $50.7 billion in tax revenue, the agency estimates. That money would stay in the pockets of the 50% or so Social Security recipients who currently pay federal income tax their benefits. So a tax cut on benefits would help wealthier retirees most.

There’s no telling which promises Trump will pursue to fulfillment. During the campaign, he promised to eliminate all future presidential elections. He uses policy suspense as a form of entertainment. Like my own father during my boyhood, the president-elect likes to say, “We’ll have to see what happens.”

Trump saves a lot of bureaucratic shoe leather by tossing out policy ideas. Members of the media chase after every conceptual stick or tennis ball that he throws out, and retrieve it soaked in expert analysis and saliva. A federal agency could take months to do similar research. A.I. will eventually do that job in seconds.

Our next president has nominated a surprisingly pro-labor ex-congresswoman from Oregon to be his Secretary of Labor. Given her background, Lori Chavez-DeRemer might decide to pick up where the Biden administration left off by pushing for a strong “fiduciary rule.”

That wouldn’t make much political sense, however. Her department have to double down on the very “bureaucratic overreach” that Trump-appointed (or consistently business-friendly) judges in the Texas federal judiciary have repeatedly rejected.

The next Securities and Exchange Commission chair will surely be kinder to advisers than Gary Gensler has been. If it hasn’t done so yet, the SEC will probably drop the Jeffrey Cutter case in Massachusetts, where an RIA was faulted for neglecting his fiduciary duty by not disclosing conflicts of interest when recommending commission-paying annuities.

Social Security is the keystone of my retirement income, so I’m nervously watching its painfully slow progress toward a long-term policy fix. By 2034, politicians and lobbyists will have to decide how to amend the program. Trump’s successor in 2029—perhaps J.D. Vance, perhaps a Democrat—will be in a position to steer the debate.

There’s a danger that Social Security’s future might hinge on well-financed falsehoods and attack-ads. (The prospect of “Social Security Advantage” plans haunts my dreams.) In a future column, I’ll explain why I think the OASI program’s public “social insurance” model, old and bruised as it may be, does more good for more Americans than the private investment approach would.

Bermuda Shorts

Posted on December 2, 2024 by Editorial Staff -

Corebridge loses $1.2 billion on Fortitude Re derivative

Corebridge Financial Inc. posted a net loss of $1.18 billion, attributable to common shareholders for the third quarter, compared to a net income of $2.10 billion for the same period a year earlier, the former AIG unit reported.

The change was due to higher realized losses driven by the Fortitude Re “funds/withheld” embedded derivative, according to the company’s earnings announcement. This also impacted Corebridge in the fourth-quarter of 2023, when it reported a $1.3 billion loss. The company had swung back to profitability for the first two quarters of the year before reporting its third-quarter loss.

The company also saw a pre-tax loss of $1.59 billion compared to pre-tax income of $2.46 billion for the same period a year earlier. The company conducted its annual actuarial assumption review during the quarter, which decreased pre-tax income by $79 million in the current year compared to a $22 million increase in the prior year.

Premiums and deposits increased 5% year-over-year to $9.6 billion in the third quarter. Excluding transactional activity—such as pension risk transfer, guaranteed investment contracts and group retirement plan acquisitions—premiums and deposits grew 20% over the same period, primarily driven by an increase in fixed annuity deposits, the company said.

The increases came because the company capitalized on market dynamics and its “broad product suite and distribution network,” Corebridge Financial President and Chief Executive Officer Kevin Hogan said in a statement. “Last month we initiated the largest product launch in our company’s history, expanding on what is already one of the broadest annuity platforms in the industry with our first registered index-linked annuity, or RILA.”

Brighthouse turns to reinsurance for capital support

Brighthouse Financial Inc. is working on “multiple reinsurance transactions and is considering revising how it hedges annuities to boost its risk-based capital (RBC) ratio,” president and CEO Eric Steigerwalt said, according to a report from AM Best.

“We are working on multiple reinsurance opportunities, both in-force and flow reinsurance,” Steigerwalt said. “We have been working on one particular agreement with a third-party to reinsure a legacy block of fixed and pay-out annuities. We’re in the final stages and expect to enter into this reinsurance before the end of the year.”

So far, one reinsurance transaction had received approval, Steigerwalt said, without disclosing specifics. The transaction would result in an RBC ratio within Brighthouse’s target range of 400% to 450%, he said—up from the 365% to 385%, which is below the target.

Brighthouse, formerly MetLife’s individual annuity business, posted net income available to shareholders of $150 million in the third quarter, compared with net income of $453 million in the same period a year earlier.

Brighthouse’s “risk-based capital ratio was pressured in the second quarter by variable annuity sales,” according to AM Best. The company reported a net income of $9 million in the second quarter, compared with a net loss of $200 million a year earlier, according to an earnings statement.

In 3Q2024, Brighthouse posted annuity sales of $2.53 billion, down slightly from $2.6 billion a year earlier. Life insurance sales increased to $30 million in the quarter from $25 million in 2023.

Chief Financial Officer Ed Spehar said the company might split its Shield products and variable annuities into two categories, new business and in-force blocks, in order to hedge each one on a standalone basis. The goal is to see better protection in an “extreme bear market scenario,” Spehar said in the relese.

“For the legacy block, we are developing a new hedge strategy and expect this work to continue into 2025,” he said. “Normalized statutory results reflect the continuation of a negative impact from new business strain which we anticipate will be lessened in future quarters as a result of hedging all of our Shield new business on a standalone basis.”

Rated entities of Brighthouse Financial Inc. have current Best’s Financial Strength Ratings of A (Excellent). Shares of Brighthouse Financial (NASDAQ: BHF) traded at $50.92 on the afternoon of Nov. 8, down 0.33% from the previous close.

Kuvare-owned life insurer enhances FIA

Guaranty Income Life Insurance Company (GILICO), a Kuvare company, has launched new crediting options for its WealthChoice Fixed Indexed Annuity (FIA), available starting November 18th.

There are two crediting strategies with rates guaranteed through the surrender charge period by GILICO:

- S&P 500® Dynamic Intraday TCA Index Cap targets a 15% volatility level and combines the S&P 500 with cash, adjusting dynamically throughout the day to manage market fluctuations. This strategy provides more stability compared to traditional equity indexes, while also offering the potential for higher crediting rates, making it attractive for clients seeking risk-managed performance in uncertain markets.
- Barclays Global Quality Index focuses on global diversification with a high-quality selection of stocks across a wide range of sectors. This index aims to balance risk and return by focusing on quality companies that are well positioned for long-term growth.
There are also two S&P 500® Price Return Index crediting strategies:
Performance Trigger that offers transparent returns.
Bailout option that provides clients with penalty-free access to funds under certain conditions, strengthening financial peace of mind.

Kuvare offers life insurance, annuities, reinsurance, advisory, and asset management solutions. Founded in 2015 and headquartered in the Chicago area, Kuvare manages $42 billion in assets. Its companies include Lincoln Benefit Life, Guaranty Income Life, United Life, and other Kuvare companies.

RGA sidecar raises $480 million in capital

Reinsurance Group of America, Incorporated (NYSE: RGA) announced that Ruby Reinsurance Company (Ruby Re), its Missouri-domiciled third-party life reinsurance company, has successfully closed a second round of funding, raising a total of $480 million in capital.

The second round includes capital commitments from AllianceBernstein L.P. , EnTrust Global, and Enstar Group, among others, with AB appointing a member to the Ruby Re board of directors. Combined with the initial investments from Golub Capital, Hudson Structured Capital Management Ltd. (doing its reinsurance business as HSCM Bermuda), and Sammons Financial Group, Ruby Re’s total capital raised of $480 million is near the upper limit of the $400 million-$500 million target range for the vehicle.

“Ruby Re’s successful second capital raise, closing at the top of our targeted range, marks a major milestone for this innovative insurance sidecar platform. With significant committed capital now in place, Ruby Re is primed to scale its asset-intensive capabilities and capacity,” said Leslie Barbi, Executive Vice President, Chief Investment Officer, RGA, in a November 13 release. “The continued backing and support from our investment partners validates our strategy and our strong track record in asset-intensive reinsurance.”

“Our investment in Ruby Re affirms AB’s continued strategic focus on the insurance market and in growing our investment management business. We are thrilled to partner with RGA on this differentiated platform and to participate in the asset-intensive reinsurance market,” said Onur Erzan, Head of Global Client Group and Head of Bernstein Private Wealth.

Jefferies acted as financial advisor and Oliver Wyman provided actuarial support. Latham & Watkins LLP acted as legal advisors to RGA and Ruby Re. Additional terms are not being disclosed at this time.

Data Connection

Posted on December 1, 2024 by No Author -

‘Reinsurance Sidecars’: A Capital Idea

Posted on December 1, 2024 by Kerry Pechter -

The word sidecar evokes mental images of passenger-carrying attachments to motorcycles or of the sweet cocktail made from cognac, Grand Marnier, and lemon juice that was popular in London and Paris during the 1920s.

In the complex global reinsurance game, sidecar has a different meaning. It refers to off-balance-sheet special purpose vehicles (SPVs) that reinsurers set up, often in Bermuda or the Cayman Islands, to raise capital from, or share risk with, outside investors.

Property/casualty insurers have used sidecars for years to pay for the tsunamis of claims that hurricanes, wildfires and earthquakes can suddenly spawn. Starting in 2019, reinsurers affiliated with major life/annuity companies began creating them to share the cost and risk of selling fixed deferred annuities.

Athene Holding, parent of Athene Life & Annuity, set up the first big life/annuity sidecar in Bermuda in 2019. The vehicle was called ACRA (Athene Co-Invest Reinsurance Affiliate). It has raised billions of dollars from third-party investors for Athene to use as deal capital or capital relief and for Athene’s affiliate, Apollo Global Investors, to manage. A small herd of others (see chart below) fast-followed.

Sidecars are a logical next step for the private equity/alternative asset managers that have steadily grown their footprint in the annuity business over the past decade. They are latest twist to the Bermuda Triangle strategy that RIJ has documented since 2020.

That strategy involves a private equity company with expertise in originating high-yield loans to risky borrowers; a life insurer that taps into the trillions in Boomer retirement savings by issuing fixed deferred annuities, and an (usually affiliated) reinsurer domiciled in Bermuda, with its flexible regulations and interface with international money. A sidecar makes the triangle a foursome.

Here’s roughly how the story has unfolded:

After the Great Financial Crisis, private equity companies, led by Apollo, infused ailing life/annuity companies with capital, buying their underfinanced blocks of annuities or showing them how to add high-yield private credit to their general asset mix.
The private equity firms then began acquiring, starting, or reviving dormant life insurers to issue fixed indexed annuities and (since 2022’s interest-rate rise made them so attractive) fixed rate deferred annuities.
The private equity-led insurers set up their own affiliated reinsurers in Bermuda to move liabilities off their own balance sheets and reduce required capital. “Modified co-insurance” and “funds withheld reinsurance” allowed them to maintain control of the assets backing the liabilities.
The reinsurers set up sidecar/SPVs to raise “just-in-time” capital to increase their annuity sales capacity, reduce their own capital burdens, or seize opportunities to buy pension funds or blocks of annuity business.
Sidecars enabled hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds, and limited partnerships of private equity firms, and other asset managers to add stable, non-correlated, tailored diversifiers to their portfolios—for a few years or much longer.

Look for sidecars to proliferate. Traditional life insurers like MassMutual and Prudential have set up their own reinsurers or sidecars. In early 2023, upstart Kuvare Holdings set up Kindley Re, a sidecar that gave it access to $400 million in fresh capital. In December 2023, the traditional reinsurer RGA set up the Ruby Re sidecar, and expressed its “expectation that a number of life insurers will explore the use of sidecars in the coming years.”

Sidecars defined

“‘Sidecar’ reinsurers are typically formed by a sponsoring insurance group with the support of third-party investors, the latter of which may provide capital in exchange for a portion of the sidecar’s excess returns [i.e. profits],” according to ALIRT Insurance Research. “Third-party investors may also enter into agreements to manage a portion of the assets that support the sidecar’s assumed policy reserves.”

In the property/casualty realm, FINRA has described reinsurance sidecars as “special purpose vehicles that issue debt or equity and invest the proceeds in low-risk securities, which serve as collateral.” Investors in the sidecar earn a variable yield from the securities, as well as a reinsurance premium. But the original insurance writer can tap that collateral—all of it, if necessary—to meet a catastrophic wave of claims or surrenders.

“Like traditional reinsurers, the sidecar reinsurer assumes a portion”—a “quota share”—of the ceding company’s underwriting risk (including losses and expenses) in exchange for a like-percentage premium (hence the term ‘sidecar’),” according to a report published by International Risk Management Institute.

“Sidecars are usually set up by an affiliated insurer or reinsurer and capitalized by equity and debt financing. The capital is invested and used to pay claims. Funds are also returned to the affiliated company to pay debt interest and shareholder dividends.”

Sidecars are related to but differ from traditional reinsurers and also from captive insurers, although there may be some overlap in how the three balance sheet management tools are used. Since a reinsurer can set up a sidecar, or a primary insurer can “sponsor” a “reinsurance sidecar,” the terminology can be confusing. MassMutual’s Martello Re reinsurer is not, it has been said, a sidecar.

Source: Milliman.

Drivers of sidecars

Athene’s asset management arm, Apollo Global Management, was the first big private equity firm to start buying U.S. life/annuity companies insurers, and the first to set up a sidecar. After ACRA in 2019, which attracted a reported $6 billion in outside capital, Athene created the “Athene Dedicated Investment Program” (ADIP) in 2022. ACRA II and ADIP II soon followed.

Competing annuity issuers (and their asset manager-owners) quickly joined in. So far they include Global Atlantic (KKR), Security Benefit (Eldridge), MassMutual (Barings, Centerbridge) American Equity Investment Life/(Brookfield Asset Management), and Kuvare Holdings (Blue Owl).

Their goals are similar to Athene’s. “ACRA I provided Athene with access to on-demand capital to support its growth strategies and capital deployment opportunities,” according to Athene’s latest 10-K. “Similar to ACRA I, ACRA II was funded in December 2022… These strategic capital solutions allow Athene the flexibility to simultaneously deploy capital across multiple accretive avenues, while maintaining a strong financial position.”

The sponsoring insurer can use the capital that others invest in the sidecars for either offensive or defensive purposes. For instance, it can serve as a second line of defense if and when a life/annuity company suffers losses on its own investments that threaten its ability to pay annuity contract benefits or surrenders.

A sidecar can also serve as an offensive weapon; as “on demand” capital, as noted above by Athene, or “just-in-time” capital, as described by AM Best, to be tapped when an opportunity to underwrite new risks or to buy an attractive block of existing business. Accessing capital on a “just-in-time” basis allows the insurer to practice the “capital-light” business strategy that private equity-led life/annuity companies aspire to. [An insurance company is more profitable, but weaker and more leveraged, when its owners tie up less of their own capital in the business.]

ACRA and ADIP have paid off for Athene Holding. “Third-capital enables Athene to grow in a highly capital-efficient manner and supported 35% of Athene’s gross new business” in the second quarter of 2024, according to a report in the Bermuda-focused insurance magazine at Artemis.com.

“At the mid-point of 2024, ADIP program invested assets reported by Apollo stood at more than $69.25 billion, with some $9.26bn of inflows via the ADIP sidecar program just in the first-half of this year. Apollo also reported a gross IRR of 24% for ADIP I investments, as of the middle of this year.”

Sidecar passengers

On the other side of the deal are the third-party investors in the sidecars. These institutional investors want exposure to the life/annuity industry (and, through it, to the profits associated with managing the vast pool of retirement savings in the U.S.) but don’t want to buy shares in a life/annuity insurer.

Investors in these sidecars are said to be hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds, the limited partnerships of other private equity funds, and asset managers who might invest in the sidecar and take part in managing the sidecars’ overall investments or a portion of them.

For those entities, “Life/annuity sidecars should be considered as another investment opportunity, like investing in a public life insurer’s stock or buying an ILS [insurance-linked security; a type of high-yield debt],” Milliman’s Prannoy Chaudhury told RIJ recently.

A sidecar’s ability to offer customized investment opportunities is part of their appeal to third-party investors. “The sidecar is ring-fenced from a broader set of activities that, for example, a large insurer may enter into. A sidecar usually has a tailored set of activities with oversight from a board that consists of representatives from investors,” Chaudhury said. Well-defined time periods, as well as well-defined risks, can be targeted for entry and exit from a deal. Or participation may be open-ended.

Third-party investors also use sidecars to diversify the risks of their own portfolios. Exposure to the U.S. life/annuity industry can give them a source of uncorrelated risk that reduces portfolio volatility when the stock and bond markets are shaky. “Diversification is a key aspect” of sidecars for those investors, Chaudhury said.

“But not only diversification from other investments, such as corporate bonds,” he added. “A sidecar can be tailored to focus on a type of liability and/or married with an asset strategy, which in total an investor might want exposure to.”

Reinsurance sidecars give birth, in a sense, to new platforms for private equity/private credit dealmaking—replications of the strategy that motivated the Apollos and KKRs to get into insurance in the first place. Even if the big asset managers are committed to the life/annuity business for the long-term, “the sidecars to which they retrocede a small share of the business typically follow a traditional private equity model, in which the limited partners commit to a three- to seven-year investment horizon,” according to a March 2024 report by Michael Porcelli of AM Best.

These life/annuity sidecars are best for investors with an appetite for the risks associated with investment-like annuities (deferred fixed indexed and fixed rate annuities) that private equity-led life insurers prefer to sell—as opposed to the “biometric risks” associated with annuities that guarantee “income for life.”

To use a fancy term, the investors are engaging in “asset-intensive” reinsurance. They’re taking the financial risk that the sponsoring life insurers’ assets will fail to generate enough income to pay all the benefits promised on deferred fixed annuities as they come due. They’re not buying the risk that the insurers’ liabilities will spike—as they could if the insurers’ actuaries underestimate the lifespans of owners of annuities that guarantee “income for life.”

The road ahead

Life/annuity industry analysts think the sidecar phenomenon is just getting started.

“There is little expectation of a near-term slowdown” in this trend, AM Best analysts wrote last March, “as owners maintain a large amount of committed capital to provide to these operating entities once further deals are identified and executed.”

Milliman’s Chaudhury wrote, “As the spate of transactions underpinned by strategic shifts continue in the L&A [life and annuity] space, combined with the growing interest from various third-party investors and asset managers looking to enter or enhance their exposure to the L&A space, the topic of sidecars is expected to be a key consideration as part of the U.S. L&A landscape and will likely widen its influence as a topic across the global L&A insurance industry.”

“Although U.S. life sidecars are in an early stage of development, they are growing fast and they are transforming,” analysts at S&P Global predicted in 2023. “With the evolving competitive landscape of the U.S. life insurance sector, we expect more and more companies to assess if a sidecar fits with their core strategy. As such, we expect this growing side of the industry to garner a lot of attention in the next few years.”

Five income options

Proof-of-concept analysis

Benefits of flow reinsurance

Similarity with originate-to-distribute lending

Merit Life reincarnated as Knighthead Life

Merit Life and 777 Re

Morgan Stanley to distribute five Allianz Life index annuities

BlackRock’s LifePath Paycheck reaches $16 billion in AUM

Fixed indexed annuities

Income annuities

Registered index-linked annuities

Traditional variable annuities

Nestimate publishes ‘Retirement Income Landscape’ chart

Fixed indexed annuity surrender rates have ‘steadily increased,’ Milliman research shows

Allianz sets up Bermuda reinsurer

Empower to distribute Allianz Life’s in-plan annuity solution

State Street and Verizon sued over pension risk transfer deal

Eldridge reorganizes, is criticized for loans from Security Benefit

MetLife expands investment arm

MetLife reinsures longevity risk transfer deal

Money can grow on trees

No ordinary snack nut

Family feud

‘Private credit’ or not

Corebridge loses $1.2 billion on Fortitude Re derivative

Brighthouse turns to reinsurance for capital support

Kuvare-owned life insurer enhances FIA

RGA sidecar raises $480 million in capital

Sidecars defined

Drivers of sidecars

Sidecar passengers

The road ahead

Data Connection

Lists*