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Jon Bayer, the chief operating officer of Brookfield Wealth Solutions' huge insurance business, thinks this could be a challenging time for some small and new annuity issuers.
Bayer has helped use the acquisitions of American Equity and American National to create the fifth biggest U.S. issuer of individual fixed annuities, according to LIMRA issuer sales survey data for the first three quarters of 2025.
The company's executives tend to be more careful about how they talk about the overall annuity market than another major annuity issuer builder, Marc Rowan, the chief executive of Apollo Global Management, which is a major manager of private credit and other private assets and the parent of Athene.
Rowan said in February, during a conference call the company held for securities analysts, that most of Athene's annuity-issuing competitors "do not have origination of appropriate assets."
Some observers rolled their eyes at the idea of the CEO of Apollo criticizing other companies' assets.
Brookfield Wealth Solutions is the parent, child, sibling or cousin of companies with big stakes or controlling stakes or their names on some of the best-known assets in the world, ranging from Westinghouse Electric Co., to many of the world's hydroelectric facilities, to Brookfield Place, a five-building office and shopping complex adjacent to the World Trade Center in New York. Another corporate relative, Oaktree, has about $225 billion in private assets under management in its own portfolio.
How does Bayer think about competitors' situation?
"It's true that many small or new carriers may lack access to high-quality, long-duration assets at scale," Bayer said in an email.
Meanwhile, "there is a lot of capital coming into the annuity space," he said. "Some of that capital is supported by private credit fundraising, where the goal may be earning fees on new assets under management."
In other cases, existing carriers with established distribution are teaming up with alternative asset managers through other types of arrangements.
"All of these trends are driving competition in the space," Bayer said. "This results in better rates for policyholders, albeit with carriers having a range of different capital-backers and objectives."
What it means: Bayer said Brookfield Wealth Solutions believes the best approach to complicated times is offering simple products and good service at competitive prices.
"There is a real fundamental need for retirement savings products in the U.S., as the population is getting older and the retirement savings gap is getting wider," Bayer said. "Sales and rates may continue to fluctuate, but at the end of the day, people need to park their money in safe places that will deliver the guaranteed returns and income they need to retire comfortably."
Insurers also need to find ways to serve both retirement savers who want to work with advisors and those who want to work directly through the insurers, Bayer said.
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