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By 
May 31, 2018 at 06:43 PM
A group of investors led by Cornell Capital LLC now controls Talcott Resolution — a group of companies that includes Hartford Life Insurance Company and Hartford Life and Annuity Insurance Company.
The Cornell Capital-led investor group has completed its previously announced acquisition of Talcott Resolution, Hartford Financial Services and the new owners announced today.
(Related: 3 Mysteries About the Would-Be Owner of a Big Annuity Business)
Hartford Life was one of the leaders in the U.S. annuity market in the 1990s and early 2000s. It suffered grave damage in 2008, as the Great Recession rolled in.
Talcott Resolution
Hartford Financial Services created Talcott Resolution to cope with the effects of the recession, low interest rates and new accounting rules on Hartford Life’s large block of variable annuity business.
Talcott Resolution operated the businesses in “runoff mode.” That means the managers collected premiums and other payments from the customers but made no efforts to sell new life insurance policies or annuities.
An outside company, Forethought Financial Group Inc., bought Hartford Financial Services’ life and annuity sales and underwriting operation in 2012. Global Atlantic Financial Group later acquired Forethought Financial.
Talcott Resolution now has about $90 billion in assets and about 700,000 contract holders, according to the new owners.
Peter Sannizzaro, the company’s president and chief operating officer, has been its chief financial officer since 2010.
Sannizzaro began his career as an auditor at Ernst & Young. He moved to Hartford Financial Services in 1991.
The Future
The new owners of Talcott Resolution are not talking about the possibility of selling new insurance policies or annuity contracts.
William Goddard, a lawyer representing the Cornell Capital-led investor group, told Connecticut insurance regulators in a letter submitted in March that the investor group expects to focus at first on separating the Talcott Resolution businesses from Hartford Financial Services.
“The applicants do not have any specific strategic growth initiatives identified, but in the longer term, they will assess opportunities to take advantage of the strong talent and operational systems of the company in the runoff space in the acquisition of other closed blocks of business,” Goddard wrote in the letter.
Hartford Financial Services is based in Hartford, Connecticut.
