Equitable's Nick Lane: The Nature of Advice Has to Change

Nick Lane thinks that financial services products are just part of what your clients want.

Lane is president of Equitable — the New York-based descendant of the same company that insured the life of Theodore Roosevelt. He said in a recent email interview that people are hungry for ideas about what to do now.

“We exist to help Americans finance their hopes and dreams,” Lane said.

Lane has been leading efforts to prepare Equitable advisors to help clients with the big questions since 2019 when he took over what was then known as AXA Equitable Life.

Before he got into financial services, he played on national championship lacrosse teams while earning a bachelor’s degree in political science and economics from Princeton University, then served as an officer in the Marine Corps from 1995 through 1999.

After he left the Marine Corps, he got a master’s degree in business from Harvard, and spent four years as a consultant at McKinsey & Co. before, in 2005, moving over to AXA as a senior vice president.

Equitable Life was founded in 1859. AXA, a Paris-based financial services giant acquired control of it in 1992. When Lane came aboard, AXA US managed Equitable Life and other AXA insurance operations in the United States. Lane rose quickly through the ranks. From 2016 through 2019, he was president of AXA’s life insurance company in Japan, AXA Life Japan.

Equitable Holdings began to separate from AXA in 2018 through an initial public offering because of a widening gap between capital standards in the United States and Europe, changing regulations and investors’ skepticism about companies that offer both life and annuities and property and casualty insurance. Equitable Holdings removed AXA from its name in 2020.

Today Equitable Holdings manages more than $800 billion in assets. It has major retirement, wealth management and asset management operations, with a large ownership stake in AllianceBernstein.

The Equitable arm holds the storied life insurance business that insured Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt, as well as Theodore.

The wealth management business has been growing rapidly, and Equitable Advisors is one of the 10 biggest independent broker-dealers, with more than $76 billion in assets under administration.

Lane took over as head of the insurance business in 2019.

Since early 2020, the insurance business has operated through a pandemic comparable to the catastrophic 1918 influenza pandemic without showing much more than modest pressure on earnings.

Equitable helped create the registered index-linked annuity market before anyone had agreed to call the products RILAs. It ranked first in individual U.S. variable annuity sales in 2022 and first in individual U.S. RILA sales, according to LIMRA issuer survey data.

Lane answered questions about Equitable’s strategy, product trends and what clients need now. The interview has been condensed and edited.

THINKADVISOR: How have Equitable and its parent changed since the IPO?

NICK LANE: Over the past five years, we’ve been able to build credibility as an independent company.

We’ve reinvigorated our iconic brand, which is right for our times — over 80% of advisors across the country know who we are. Now we’re continuing to elevate our business model to better serve advisors and their clients.

We have a track record of innovating new products, building on our history of pioneering the buffered annuity and our leadership in the variable life and annuity market.

Now that we’ve experienced the Great Interest Rate Spike, how has that affected Equitable’s performance?

The rise in interest rates over the past year shows the importance of managing a strong balance sheet.

We use a fair-value economic model, meaning that we don’t make assumptions about interest rates and instead use what is actually observed in the market.

As a result, interest rate volatility has a limited impact, and our risk-based capital ratios stay consistently in our target ranges.

Equitable Holdings has an ownership stake in AllianceBernstein. Many companies are now following its lead and combining life insurance and annuities with asset management services. Why did Equitable Holdings adopt that strategy?

We’re in the business of managing assets with liabilities. A comprehensive set of businesses is a key part of our business model.

Origination is critical in terms of being able to access and invest in high-quality assets.

Our partnership with AllianceBernstein goes back to 1985. We think it allows us to bring different combinations of insurance products and asset management solutions to the market, as well as continue to seed new investment offerings for which there’s both advisor and consumer demand.

What do you think will happen to the mix of life and annuity products over the next few years?