U.S. annuity issuers went into the second quarter of 2025 facing economic uncertainty, tough competition and a 2024 that featured terrific annuity sales.
The headwinds caused the issuers' earnings to move every which way.
Changes in 12 publicly traded issuers' individual annuity sales between the second quarter of 2024 and the latest quarter ranged from a 46% decrease up to a 19% increase.
At five issuers, sales dropped. Total individual sales at all 12 issuers combined fell 3.6%, year over year, to $45.6 billion.
At seven issuers, sales rose, and the median change for all 12 issuers was an increase of 2.5%.
See the accompanying gallery for a look at how the 12 issuers performed in the second quarter, ranked from the "worst" sales performance to best.
The entries also include earnings, earnings per share, revenue, assets and, where available, sales figures for fixed annuities, registered index-linked annuities and other types of annuities.
The data: We included results for U.S.-based and Bermuda-based insurers that sell stock to the public, are listed on the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq, and provided figures that they identified as retail or individual annuity sales figures in earnings releases, earnings supplements, earnings conference call slidedecks or other documents.
We also included Dai-ichi Life of Tokyo because it provided detailed annuity sales figures for its Birmingham, Alabama-based Protective Life subsidiary.
Aegon, the parent of Transamerica, plans to release its second-quarter earnings Aug. 21.
We left out some issuers, including Allianz, that did not break out sales in a way that was comparable to the approach taken by most other big publicly traded issuers.
We also left out the many big issuers that are policyholder-owned mutual insurers or are controlled by privately held investment firms.
"Best & Worst:" We framed this list as a "best and worst" list to conform to ThinkAdvisor ranking standards.
Of course, annuity issuers are complicated companies, and no one financial indicator can serve as a credible measure for ranking them.
Even determining whether the companies are all using a similar measure of "annuity sales" is difficult, and regulators view rapid sales growth at an insurer as a possible risk factor as well as a blessing.
We hope that readers will see the rankings as a scaffolding for starting to think about the issuers' results rather than as a definitive judgment.
Credit: Chris Nicholls/ThinkAdvisor
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