The company that has quietly become the top U.S. individual annuity seller is getting a new CEO.
Jim Belardi, who has been the chairman, CEO and chief investment officer at Athene Holding since May 2009, plans to pass the CEO title on to Grant Kvalheim on July 1.
Kvalheim has been the president and CEO of Athene USA for 10 years. Earlier in his career, he was co-president of Barclays Investment Bank. While he was there, he helped Barclays become a leader in the markets for securitized and non-securitized credit products.
Belardi will continue to be Athene's executive chairman and chief investment officer.
One focus will be encouraging employers' defined contribution retirement plans to add annuitization options, Athene said.
What it means: Athene thinks that someone leading a big annuity issuer needs to know a lot about credit products.
Athene: Athene came to life in 2009, as the 2007-2009 Great Financial Crisis was still rolling over the financial services industry and the economy was just starting to stabilize.
The company grew rapidly by offering large reinsurance deals that life and annuity issuers could use to solve problems at a time when traditional issuers had many problems.
Today, Athene is a subsidiary of Apollo Global Management, a giant asset manager.
Athene ranked first in terms of 2024 U.S. individual annuity sales in 2024, with about $36 billion in total individual annuity sales, according to LIMRA.
Jim Belardi: Before Belardi became a co-founder and CEO of Athene, he was president of SunAmerica Life Insurance Company and chief investment officer of AIG Retirement Services.
Grant Kvalheim: Kvalheim has a bachelor's degree in economics from Claremont McKenna College and a master's degree in business from the University of Chicago.
He started out in financial services in 1979 as an executive at J.P. Morgan.
He then spent nine years as co-head of debt origination at Merrill Lynch, as the United States was recovering from the effects of major tax law changes and the impact of a wave of savings and loan failures. He went on to serve for six years as global head of credit products and investment banking at Barclays. When he left Barclays, in 2007, he was its co-president.
He came aboard at Athene as the company's chief financial officer in 2011.
He served on the LIMRA board from 2018 through 2020 and on the board of United Way of Central Iowa from 2018 through 2023.
Other changes: Athene also named Mike Downing and Sean Brennan to be co-presidents of Athene USA.
Downing has been Athene USA's chief operating officer and will continue to be the COO.
Brennan, who has been Athene's executive vice president of pension group annuities and new markets, will be the company's chief commercial officer.
Grant Kvalheim. Credit: Athene
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