FILED
BY EQUITABLE HOLDINGS, INC.
COMMISSION
FILE NO.: 001-38469
PURSUANT
TO RULE 425 UNDER THE SECURITIES ACT OF 1933, AS AMENDED
AND
DEEMED FILED PURSUANT TO RULE 14a–12 UNDER THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE OF 1934, AS AMENDED
SUBJECT
COMPANY: EQUITABLE HOLDINGS, INC. AND COREBRIDGE FINANCIAL, INC.
The following is a transcript of the presentation made by Mark Constantini
and Robin Raju at the KBW Insurance Conference 2026 on September 9, 2026.
| FINAL TRANSCRIPT |
2026-09-09 |
| Corebridge Financial. Inc (CRBG US Equity) |
|
KBW Insurance Conference
Company Participants
| · | Marc Costantini, Chief Executive Officer |
| · | Robin Raju, Chief Financial Officer |
Other Participants
| · | Ryan Krueger, Analyst, KBW |
Presentation
Ryan Krueger
All right.
We are going to get started with the next session.
So it's great to have I think we're referring to it as the new Equitable
for now.
We have Marc Constantini, the CEO of Corebridge and soon to be the
CEO of the new Equitable, and then we have Robin Raju, the current CFO of Equitable and will be the CFO of the combined company post merger
when it closes.
Questions And Answers
Q - Ryan Krueger
So get started. Maybe just to start just ping back, why did Corebridge
and Equitable ultimately decide to merge and what's your new vision for the new company going forward in the financial benefits that you
expect to emerge from this merger?
A - Marc Costantini
Yes. Ryan, thank you.
It's great to see you, and thanks to everybody for attending, and
it's great for Robin and I to be with all of you.
So I mean taking a step back, there's a significant amount of tailwind
in our business, right? That's very cash able.
A number of people are retiring every year reaching age 65 and I
think the worries that people have gone from working from dying too soon to living too long. And then when you look at the businesses
that both Corebridge and Equitable had, they're extremely complementary. And it's a bit obvious, but when you look at doing transactions
such as this one and the size of this one, you really have to strive for one plus one equals three.
And when you look at the complementary nature of the businesses
from the asset management business, the advisory business and the former Aqua Advisors and the corporate advisers, the group
retirement business and the institutional markets business and what it could do for our balance sheet. And last but not least, the
individual retirement business and an extremely complementary nature of obviously Equitable
being the market leader in the wireless space and Corebridge obviously
having a top five position in the fixed annuity and fixed index annuity.
And overarching all of that is world-class distribution, right?
And it's vital in our business to have world-class distribution in
the form of retail wholesaling in the form of direct to advisory and worksite.
So it's very complementary. And you bring those two platforms together
and there are scale advantages which I'm sure we'll talk about it, but the scale manifests itself in many different ways.
But -- it's going to be a company that will have a market cap of
north of $30 billion and over $25 billion of statutory capital tied to it. And -- so it's great financials which I'm sure Robin will add
some comments here, but that's what branded these two great companies together.
A - Robin Raju
Yes. And before you get into finance, is one good thing when these
companies come together, and Marc talks about a lot is the impact we're going to have on clients and the reach we're going to have on
clients. Together, we're going to serve over 10 million plus clients the combined company.
So that's compelling because more customers mean more opportunities
to grow. Purely from a financial side, I couldn't think of a more compelling transaction when it comes down to it.
We're going to be the number one U.S. insurer in terms of U.S.-based
earnings and cash flow.
I wouldn't want exposure to any other retirement market. And if that's
the source of our earnings and cash flows, that's a great position to be with the tailwinds in the market that Marc spoke about.
We're going to have $5 billion of operating earnings to combined
business, $4 billion of cash flows, and we're going to deliver 15% return on equity.
So this is going to be a compelling transaction for shareholders,
but we're really excited about what we're going to be doing for customers going forward.
Q - Ryan Krueger
I think it's been almost six months now since the merger was announced.
Can you give a little color on what you've been able to accomplish
so far as you prepare for the day one of the merger close? And also just what the reaction has been from employees and distributors and
other business partners.
A - Marc Costantini
Yes.
So I would say when we announced the transaction in late March, we
were quite prescriptive. Mark Pearson, Robin and myself, about what it would do to our balance
sheets and all that.
But first and foremost, we said as well we have to get the organization
going, right? So we're sitting here today in early September, and we've announced the three most senior layers of the organization.
That's 500 executives that have been appointed to the firm. And those
executives
basically are running their day-to-day kind of responsibilities delivering
on '26 until year-end when we are expecting to close, but as well planning for the future.
So in line with that, we've got this integration and transformation
office we put in place.
It's been staffed and it's well on its way of orchestrating all of
the integration activities that need to take place to hit the ground running on Jan one when we hope to close.
What it's done as well is we've secured obviously a number of our
approvals.
So the -- if FINRA approved the transaction, our shareholders have
approved the transaction. The antitrust process has taken place.
Obviously our shareholders approved the transaction last month or
in July. And so we're working through the regulatory process now and there's four or five key states that oversee and govern the activity
of both Equitable and CoreBridge that we're actively engaged in, and there's a couple of international regulatory bodies, type Alliance
Bernstein that we're dealing with, but we are sitting here confident that we're marching towards the close at the end of the year, and
then we'll hit the ground running very quickly in terms of bringing together a lot of synergies that Robin speaks so well about, but as
well the growth. This is a growth story, right? In our comments, we just made a first question. This is all about growth.
It's about serving more customers.
It's about getting ahead of the retirement curve and really delivering
solutions that end consumer, as Robin said.
And in terms of distributors, we have had a number of discussions
across both firms with distributors. And we haven't heard of any revenue dissynergies, I guess as people refer to them too.
I think the large distributors are embracing this. The largest distributors
want to have long-standing, deep companies and manufacturers that know this business have been there through various cycles and deliver
on their promises. And obviously you're staring at a company that does all of that when we come together and have done so historically
in each of our cases.
So the employees I mean it's a merger.
So it creates a 100% anxiety across both platforms, right? And our
responsibility as management is to engage with the employees to be transparent, to be quick, as I mentioned, to make decisions and be
-- and treat everybody the way you'd like to be treated, whether you've got a go-forward role or whether you've got a different role or
whether you're leaving an organization, how in the organization treats you says a lot more about who we are.
And we're working very hard to make sure that's the case, and there's
a lot of transparency as we're marching towards the merger.
So.
Q - Ryan Krueger
Great.
I want to dig into some of the targets.
So you got it to 10% plus accretion, a component of that -- the biggest
component of that was $500 million of expense synergies.
Can you talk more about the sequencing of and the key components
to drive that? And then how -- I guess how big of a technology upgrade, does that expense save target contemplate as well?
A - Robin Raju
Sure.
So we announced of the 10% plus accretion.
We said about 6% to 8% is going to come from the expense synergies
that we have across both firms.
I break it into four buckets. Headcount, obviously you have duplication
enrolled, so there'll only be one person in one seat.
That's probably going to be where you get the front-loaded savings
in any merger that we have. And as Marc said, we've already announced the first three layers of the organization.
So we already know that we're very highly confident in that number
coming through based on where we are today, which is a great sign of our success and our confidence in achieving the overall $500 million.
The other areas are going to be vendor consolidation.
If you think about where you get benefits from scale, you get really
pricing power with your vendors.
Now we can't do that yet.
Some of that we have to wait, obviously to January 1.
But let's -- but we know Marc and I know that together, both firms,
and we know by the inbounds that we get from a lot of our vendors that we're going to have the ability to get at scale pricing which is
going to drive bottom line savings.
The third category would be IT consolidation. That's going to be
a big piece of work that we do from now to year-end, picking what platforms that we're going to integrate. That's why it was so important
that we get the leaders that are going to be accountable for that decisions upfront.
So now the people that are accountable for the different businesses,
for the different corporate functions, they will have to make the decisions on what are the best systems and IT integration that we'll
do. And that will come through probably more so in 2028 than 2027 because that's going to take time in planning and process, but our Head
of IT, he is -- he has his phrase, he wants to integrate, transform and innovate.
You can't do all at once, but we have to sequence it properly to
make sure that we can run faster going forward post this.
And then obviously with any merger, you're going to have some real
estate consolidation as well.
So that will be something that we pick up naturally, whether it's
in New York or other areas, but that's going to be another piece that will come through later in 2020.
But where we sit here today Marc and I and very highly confident
in achieving that
expense synergy number. And it's really down to the actions that
we have already in place and putting us in a position where we can make decisions come 2027 and start running right away.
Q - Ryan Krueger
Great.
So the other component of the EPS accretion was a 2% to 4% contribution
from capital and tax synergies.
What are those synergies more specifically resulting from? And then
how quickly will they emerge? Is that going to be pretty quickly and free up capital that can be redeployed or does it occur over time?
A - Robin Raju
Sure.
Well both will occur over the two years.
So within the 2% to 4% accretion, that's part of the 10% plus accretion
from the merger. There'll be a portion related to cash tax savings, and that's us leveraging the non-life DTAs on Corebridge's balance
sheet to offset some of the non-life earnings that we have from AllianceBernstein and the Wealth Management business.
So that's going to be real cash savings that we achieve post close.
Then we will have capital synergies, and we'll have some between
the first two years, and I anticipate we'll have more later.
Some capital synergies come from if we decide to consolidate legal
entities, but we can get it even without consolidation through internal reinsurance in some areas.
So that again will probably happen in 2028, where you get the cash
tax savings immediately.
And then post 2028, I mean you've seen both companies, Corebridge
and Equitable.
We've had a good track record of capital optimization and making
sure we can deliver value for shareholders and invest in growth. And so anticipate that's just going to be part of our DNA as a management
team to unlock capital value and allocate it to the best sources.
Q - Ryan Krueger
Then on revenue synergies, you haven't officially given us a quantification
of the revenue synergies, and they weren't part of the accretion guidance, but you have talked about some of the areas that you think
will provide synergies.
I guess can you review what those are? And how meaningful you think
they can be?
A - Marc Costantini
Yes. And it's interesting because we had a lot of discussions
leading up to the announcement in March as to where would focus kind of our guidance. And we agreed on expense synergies and some of
these capital and tax that Robin just went through because they're tangible and a lot of people in this room and others could put
tangible value on it. And very quickly, when people grasp what Robin just said, we started getting peppered Robert and I want all
the questions about growth.
And we did guide when we said -- we announced the merger that we
were going to direct like $90 billion to $100 billion of assets that are on Corebridge's balance sheet, both the general account and separate
accounts to AllianceBernstein and along the same timelines that Robin just mentioned.
And that net flows of $90 billion to $100 billion that AllianceBernstein
would otherwise have received, right? So that right there, that's a 10% to 12% increase into their asset base and their margins and revenue.
That does not include as well bringing all these great origination teams together, the ones at Corebridge Acrow and AllianceBernstein
under one plateau.
And what I -- one of the things that I think we need to step back
and reflect on is that when you look at the production that Equitable has and you add it to the production that Corebridge has across
our retail market, and our institutional market, you're looking at an engine here that's going to generate over $60 billion a year of
institutional and retail spread business.
And that creates a lot of origination capability that creates a
lot of access to investment that otherwise would not be available to each firm, right? So that's a smattering numbers. And then you
look at what we're going to do on the Group Retirement side, plus the advisory business, plus just AB itself, you see a lot of
revenue flow that way.
And the synergies as well as through the distribution, Equitable
advisers, I think Robin has said many times, does like 2-ish billion or so of fixed annuities and fixed and sensor annuities that now
will have, let's say a proprietary offering to do so.
Equitable has a VUL product that was on our design table so we could
quickly introduce that product into our distribution at Corebridge. And then you have the advisers and the penetration of the (inaudible)
plants.
If you listen to a lot of what we say we need to cross-sell upsell
those plans. And with the number of advisers that collective firm will have will be able to accelerate the growth of
the penetration and service that these clients deserve. And on the
institutional market size, the sure side of the balance sheet that will be in the circa of $500 million of on-balance sheet assets will
give an appetite for a lot bigger, I would say PRT business and a lot bigger appetite for the GIC FABN product.
So we see a lot of growth opportunities on the revenue side. And
I would say the story that's not said enough, and you'll hear Robin and I say a lot more next year when we --march towards Investor Day
is that this is all about growth.
It's all about serving more customers, it's all about growth and
the expense synergies obviously fall into place for all the reasons that Robin said.
Q - Ryan Krueger
Great.
So Equitable recently announced the sale of its employee benefits
business. Are there other divestitures that you would consider from here of the combined companies.
I guess the one thing that comes to mind is kind of the remaining
life exposure that the legacy Equitable had? Or do you feel pretty set on the business mix at this point going forward?
A - Robin Raju
Yes.
So look, this merger, it all comes back to scale. And scale matters
in the businesses that we were in.
Let me touch first the Equitable employee benefits transaction.
We actually like the employee benefits market.
We think it's a good market.
We just weren't at scale and we weren't profitable.
So it's tough to compete. When you have to allocate capital to these
other businesses, trying to grow a business as a greenfield, that scale, it was going to take too much time. And so the Hartford when
they approached us, it was clear that they're a better owner of the business.
They're in the small business market. They can leverage our platform
to go in.
So I think it was a win-win which is what you want in a transaction
for both.
But -- it doesn't mean that we didn't like the employee benefits
market.
It's just an at scale point.
If you look broader post-merger like, as Marc just mentioned, this
is a growth story. We really want to allocate capital to fund growth to support Americans retire going forward.
Sure, you may see some mall cleanup reinsurance transactions. That's
what I spoke about , that's like capital optimization.
But -- when Marc and I get together, believe me, we don't talk about,
oh, should we do reinsurance there? Should we do reinsurance there? That's -- I think both companies successfully use reinsurance to shift
the balance sheet. And we're at a place where it's not needed at this time and it's really how do we fund the growth ambitions that we
have for both companies by allocating capital appropriately.
Q - Ryan Krueger
All right.
So we're shifting more to growth then.
In the annuity business, so volumes have doubled basically in the
retail annuity market, but it has also attracted a lot more competition at the same time.
I guess can you talk about how you're viewing competitive conditions
today in the retail annuity market and how the new combined company is positioned within that?
A - Marc Costantini
Yes.
We like our chances.
I say that because we will have the broadest product portfolio.
I would say look at the manufacturing capabilities of the new
Equitable and compared to any other player in the industry and look at the history of proven success in manufacturing those products
profitably while serving customers better and delivering value to our shareholders.
I don't think anybody compares to this newco, look at the distribution,
depth and breadth of the new firm.
Pretty much every retail outlet that serves a retirement need and
a retirement and consumer will be touched by our distribution. People talk about scale. And to me, scale is an ability to touch every
customer you can manufacture a solution for profitably while delivering extreme value to that customer and serving the shareholder well.
I don't think other companies compare to that.
So is there increased competition in some of the space? Yes. There
is.
But I mean I've been tied to this business for the better part of
36 years. There's always been robust competition, right? And it's a matter of what's the -- I would say capital and thoughtful capital
that's coming to the market for serving clients' needs and that capital needs to have an ability to originate assets to bank those liabilities,
but needs to understand the liabilities, they're writing as well.
And this firm has deep experience on both sides of that balance sheet.
So we feel -- we're in it for the long run. And from the discussions
we've had with distributors, I would say for many diets, we're as important to them as they are important to us which puts the relationship
in a very good stead right? And that scale that we talk about that matters, right, because not having the new Equitable on your
shelf is not something that many distributors would find appealing,
right? And that puts us in a very good spot.
Now I think you're implicitly referring to some of the newer entrants
that are asset-intensive or funded by halts and all that. And I think they picked the response, they operate in distributions that may
be we have access to and they have access to, but they don't have the presence and the depth and the history behind their promises that
we have.
So we won't come rational competition.
We welcome rational competition.
A - Robin Raju
It's going to be difficult to compete with us, though.
If you think we're going to have one of the lowest unit costs in
the industry.
We're going to have great asset capabilities from AllianceBernstein,
Blackstone, BlackRock to get a good risk-adjusted yield and we have world-class distribution.
So it's going to be really hard to be competitive on a disciplined
way versus us.
So we expect we're going to grow, but also deliver great returns
given those attributes.
Q - Ryan Krueger
I guess related -- somewhat related but -- and maybe I don't know
if this is a combined question or one for each of you at this point since the merger hasn't closed.
But -- can you talk about the spread dynamics in, I guess, each company's
retirement business at this point in time and how to think about the near-term trajectory there?
A - Marc Costantini
Yes. I can give you maybe the Corebridge perspective to your point
about that we're operating independently.
So I think if you've been listening and following Corebridge,
it's been a story of a transition in a pivot in our Group Retirement business, right? The Group Retirement business has circa $130
billion of assets tied to it, $80 billion is in the retirement space and $50 billion is in the out-of-plan business.
We've been obviously cross-servicing and cross-penetrating our plans
basically and growing our advisory business that is in excess of $20 billion now of that $50 billion and we have 1.5 million participants
in plan that we're trying to penetrate and serve and cross-serve and that's created like 300,000 of these out-of-plan members that have
the $50 billion of assets. And we are approaching it in terms of taking our business from a largely spread-based business, the fee-based
business.
And as you have seen in Q2, we basically clipped the 50-50 kind of
approach there.
So we are in a good position, and we're growing and cross-pollinating.
I think the merger will even bring more attention and ability
to penetrate those plans, as a stand-alone company, we felt there was a $30 billion opportunity there in terms of upside of
cross-selling and upselling in our plans with the merger, I think that accelerates.
So to the spread comment, we leading up to year-end and into Q1,
we were defending that we had floating rate assets. And we were saying, hey, if there's contraction, if rates are going down, it's about
$20 million, $25 million for every 25 basis points.
Well the same thing happens when rates go up.
So that's a tailwind to our spreads.
I think we guided when we started the year to $2.55 billion of absolute
spread income, we are sitting here confident that we will achieve that.
So I think our spread business is doing well.
I think the block of business is behaving overall as we intended.
I'm including our individual retirement business here as I talk about
the spread business.
So I think we're sitting here in a good position, and we feel confident,
obviously bringing equitable with Corebridge that will only accelerate some of the dynamics I just mentioned for our block.
A - Robin Raju
One of the areas I'm excited about the merger, to is innovation that's
going to come out of both businesses. And when you innovate, you can get outsized margins early. And that's a little bit what happened
with Equitable with our Rilaproduct.
We were first to the market, we were educating advisers on the needs
to have equity exposure, engineering retirement.
But we're the only ones there.
And so we had outsized margins.
We're writing new business at 20% plus IRRs for many years. And then
everybody came to the market.
Now the pie has gotten bigger, and we've continued to grow and maintained
our market share, but margins have normalized. And so now we're writing what I would call at scale margins, 15% IRRs on that Rila product.
But from the pre-2020 business, we had big margins on it, that business
rolls off and now margins have stabilized. And so that's the spread compression that you saw. And you also saw in the first two quarters
now as we guided margins have stabilized, spreads have stabilized in that business overall.
So going forward, we expect spreads to continue to be stable and
NIM net interest margin to grow as book value grows ex embedded derivatives. And that's how we are confident with that as we've seen it
in the last few quarters. And the Rila block, the pre-2020 is now less than 10% of the total block.
So it's not really significant at this point.
Q - Ryan Krueger
Got it. And then the variable component of spread. Any updated comments
from either company on third quarter expectations for variable investment income at this point?
A - Robin Raju
Sure.
I could start. Alt continues to be a volatile category for sure,
as you've seen over the last few years with interest rates and change in dynamics where public equity markets are we underperformed our
long-term target, the last few years.
In the third quarter, we're expecting 4% to 5% growth, so a rebound
from the lower second quarter that we have.
So we should be at a 4% to 5% annualized growth rate for the third
quarter.
The drag in the portfolio is really coming from real estate equity
at this time in some debenture investments where you're seeing some of the growth equity funds have more recovery with the delay in equity
markets. And then we'd expect if markets are normalized, that return should come back to longer-term targets over time.
Q - Ryan Krueger
I mean 4% to 5% return, is that correct?
A - Robin Raju
Correct.
A - Marc Costantini
So for Corebridge, I think coming in and out of Q2, we guided to
very soft, I would say VII results for the balance of the year, I would say that for Q3, we will exceed the guidance we mentioned and
will be more in the ZIP Code that Robin just mentioned, north of 5% for the quarter for VII.
So I think that's positive versus what we had guided.
Now what I would say as well and I want to give perspective to the
audience here. Both companies alts exposure is way less than the industry average. And our view, and it's very much aligned with Equable
is that the alts play a role in people's portfolio.
And when I say people, a big company's portfolio, because if you're
issuing, let's say a liability, a life liability or a pension risk transfer that has liabilities exceed 25, 30 years, there's no good
spread assets available, right? And economically, all through the right asset to defease that liability until you can move those assets
to some good spread assets, right?
So and it's -- each of us personally, if you have a 30-year outlook,
you invest in fixed income or you invest in equities, right? So it's the same economic equation, it's just that the accounting makes
it flow through operating income which creates that volatility.
But if you're buying a hole and you get the capital appreciation
and the actual return and investment income over the course of time which is what we're both saying here, it's a great asset to defease
that long-tail liability which is why we buy it to start.
Q - Ryan Krueger
Shifting to the wealth business.
So Equitable's wealth management business has had very good momentum
across financial metrics.
Can you speak a bit about what's been driving that and the continued
runway for revenue growth and margin expansion? And then, I guess as a related follow-up, Marc touched on this a little bit, but just
how can that all be accelerated with the wealth platform that will be then kind of connected with Corebridge?
A - Robin Raju
We're really excited about the wealth business at Equitable.
It's doubled in earnings since our Investor Day. And our target two
years both low plan. Why is that? I think it comes down to the people and the advice that we provide.
So one thing that's unique to Equitable, I think than many other
wealth managers there is we recruit new people to the business and we hire experienced hires. That's important because it ensures that
we maintain discipline. And what really separates us is the training.
So we have holistic life planning training programs and we help our
advisers transition from they start into schools and they become wealth planners over time. And that's the best way we see to increase
productivity.
The proof is you've seen the double-digit productivity that we've
had every year since we brought that business out as a segment. And the way we've done it is really unique because we do have these two
levels of recruiting and the training that we provide overall.
And I think that is really the secret sauce of Equitable.
It's that strong performance culture and people helping each other
out and trying to touch more customers overall.
If you look from a net flow perspective, we've had double-digit organic
growth in that business.
I would say it's like top quartile.
I can't find anyone that has better organic growth in their wealth
business than we do in Equitable advisers.
And that's a proof point of more customers touching us and the productivity
that we have in that business overall.
We also have another wealth management business too that we are excited
about is the private wealth business at AllianceBernstein. That's a real gem inside AllianceBernstein,
that not a lot of people speak about that really provides a unique
solution orientation towards ultra high net worth as well.
So both businesses together, we touch clients in the mass affluent,
and we touch clients in the high net worth area, and that excites us going forward. And Marc, you should touch about it. You've met now
I think some of the Equitable advisers and some of the people, your thoughts are on that.
A - Marc Costantini
Yes. No. I would say that as somewhat objective assessment, when
we started having a dialogue with Equitable I would say my view and my strong view was that agro Advisors was a gem, and the private wealth
business that AllianceBernstein was a gem.
And -- and I would say the last six months, I've only proven to make
it my believe they're even stronger based on all the dynamics that Robin has said. And I have met 30-odd plus people of the leadership
there and some of the people on the ground and the branches. And it's amazing how they go after doing what's right for the customers first
and packaging the right solutions for their financial needs.
And how the culture there is incredible.
Now I would say we have 1,000 or so advisers at Corebridge. And we
invited some of the leadership of Equatadvisers to one of our main national meetings a few months ago. And the similar culture kind of
runs through the corporate advisers to the point where a very senior leader at Equitable advisers that was there and said, hi, if I close
my eyes, I think I was at an Equitable advisers meeting given the cultural assessment and as well the challenge for both organizations
is you got to bring those two together and you're dealing with personalities that don't like to disrupt their book, right?
So we got to be thoughtful how we bring it together and make sure
that one plus one equals three.
But obviously the platform and the success that Equitable advisers
has had is an incredibly attractive for our future and speaks volume about why we're bullish on the value proposition we'll have going
forward.
Q - Ryan Krueger
And then on the Institutional markets business.
So both companies have been generating double-digit growth in balances,
Equitable is more focused on spread lending, and I think there's more PRT as part of the Corebridge portfolio, along with other liabilities.
Do you see the merger changing much on the growth rates of those of those businesses? Can you do more as a combined company? Or should
we just think about it as you can continue to grow in that double-digit type range?
A - Robin Raju
Yes.
I think we're going to increase the growth rate across all of our
businesses with the revenue synergies that we have -- if you think Marc mentioned it on the spread lending business is now you have a
bigger balance sheet, you can do more, and you could be
disciplined. From an equitable perspective, one thing that was interesting
is we did want to broaden out our liabilities.
And in institutional business is a great way to allocate capital
in a disciplined manner. And you saw me outside in looking at Corebridge in the second quarter, how they were disciplined in allocating
capital between institutional and retail depending on where cost of funds is, now we can do it at a much bigger and broader scale.
So having an institutional business that's at scale outside and looking
at Corebridge's PRT business, that's a good business that we would have loved to get into.
But again we can't do it at scale.
Now we're at the merger, we can do it at scale.
So having these different businesses plays an important part in terms
of capital allocation.
And it really drives discipline that Equitable couldn't do by itself
today or would have taken years, 10 years to develop our institutional business where Corebridge is at today.
So from my perspective, like it really helps increase the growth
rate, but also how allows us to be very disciplined capital allocators as well.
Q - Ryan Krueger
I guess Marc, on the Individual Life business, you've been pretty
positive on that business and its potential since from the get-go since you came into a Corebridge.
I guess what's driving the optimism there? And then what have you
been doing to position that business to have better growth?
A - Marc Costantini
Yes. Yes.
So I am bullish on the Life business. And I'm bullish on the light
business at Corebridge and the new Equitable based on a couple of facts that I'm going to mention here.
First of all, -- if you look at and I looked at it objectively, when
I joined the firm last December, if you look at the last 12, 16 quarters, the Corporages life business has printed mortality gains.
Okay. So what does that mean? Okay. That means a few things. That
means the business has been well underwritten and the business is performing and mortality is improving, right, because that's versus
expected, right?
And then you look at what's the market segment we're serving versus
other market segments. And it's serving, I would say the mid-market and the emerging affluent market, right?
So -- and that slice. And you can -- we can talk about it.
I mean actually about what's driving that mortality, and I'm happy
to do so if we had more time.
But that bodes well for the life business. Then I look at -- I went
to the new business area, and I said, hi, how are we processing business?
How is our STP, show me how the firms think of our operations? And
we had very low grades I'm going, okay. We're writing a decent amount of business.
We're printing mortality margins, and we are less than appealing
operationally.
If we make ourselves appealing operationally and we make ourselves
the easiest to do business and we create connectivity with the distribution and the end adviser, then we can easily accelerate the growth
without putting any margin at risk. And the margin of the business are attractive and they naturally diversify your balance sheet because
we're obviously writing a lot of longevity business on the annuity side.
Now the balance sheet of Core Bridge is still net long mortality,
meaning we've got more mortality risk and longevity risk.
I like that.
I like that a lot because if you -- if I went to a casino and red
was living longer and black was dying sooner.
I put my money on red based on all the money that's going into biotech
and developments.
I think there will be a nonship in the mortality curve, and I'm happy
to talk about that in detail as well.
So that's why I'm bullish.
I'm mortality bullish on mortality written thoughtfully and at good
margins. And I think that's what we have at coverage.
Q - Ryan Krueger
So is the main driver of better growth potential there, the operational
improvement?
A - Marc Costantini
The operational without changing the product margins without necessarily
doing putting yourself in a position where you're writing a business that you'll find an appealing down the road.
So that doesn't mean we won't have an assumption updates based on
policy or were on older blocks or other blocks.
I'm just telling you that the business we're writing in the business
that's printing mortality margins as an attractive one.
Q - Ryan Krueger
At AllianceBernstein, it's already achieved the private markets AUM
target ahead of schedule. The margins are within the target range. Like what are the key milestones maybe from here now that you've achieved
those two things?
A - Robin Raju
Yes.
So at Investor Day we announced that we wanted to grow AB's private
credit business to $90 billion to $100 billion. Ryan, as you mentioned, we achieved that well in advance of our target. AB has done a
good job of building new capabilities and leveraging the Equitable insurance capabilities to accelerate growth.
So we hired a private ABS team that came over, now was able to produce
good risk-adjusted returns to us.
They've now also built out their CML platform. That allowed us to
move $12 billion in CML assets to them in July. That's a huge differentiator for AB that other traditional asset managers don't have.
They have an insurer to help build new capabilities. And then AB has unique distribution, private wealth we talked about, but also in
Asia, where there are local in the markets, and they have 25-plus years of history, a strong brand, where they can now distribute these
products to third parties.
That's going to be accretive to margins over time. Right now new
business at AB generates about 45% to 50% incremental margin that we put on.
So that's a good tailwind for us as we want margins to grow over
time as well.
But AB, as we mentioned, has been a differentiator for Equitable
with this flywheel effect.
It's just going to now run faster with the Corebridge merger (inaudible).
A - Marc Costantini
$80 billion to $90 billion of origination a year; demand, right?
There's the new business flow plus there's a $500 billion asset that rolls over, right? And some of that will need to be redeployed.
So you're looking at in addition to all of what we're doing off balance
sheet, just the on-balance sheet origination need will be north of $80 billion.
So that arms AB and everything Robin said with a lot of opportunity.
Q - Ryan Krueger
And just one on the regulatory front. Any particular key issues or
debates you're focused on that could either impact the industry or equal Corebridge?
A - Marc Costantini
Well may as a hot topic right now I guess always on the regulatory
side of it. And one thing I know Marc agrees with me like the one thing the combined companies want to do is advocate for a healthier
industry. Like we need to do our part, right, good business, print good margins, be disciplined allocators of capital.
But we want to advocate for a good healthy industry overall. And
you've seen Equitable do that.
We started with VM-21 under reversion to mean. That took a long time
as I tell Ryan to become effective, but that's now in place. we did structure capital charges.
So you see that impacting below BBB and below CLO businesses, and
that has changed. You've seen some companies indicate that's going to change their risk profile for those securities overall.
And then also reinsurance.
We're advocates of reinsurance.
Both companies leverage Bermuda because we believe it's an economic
regime and a disciplined regime.
But our local regulators should have disclosures and understand what
assets are moving offshore and why they're moving offshore and have good visibility with that as well. And I think where the NAIC and
where the industry move into is transparency. And I think transparency is important to build trust. And ultimately, if the whole industry
wants to rerate and have a higher rating going forward as a PE multiple, we need to have more trust more trust from clients and more trust
from shareholders.
And I think a healthier industry and continuing to advocate for a
healthy industry is important for all of us.
Q - Ryan Krueger
All right. Excellent.
We're going to wrap it up there. Thank you to the new Equitable team.
A - Marc Costantini
Thank you, Ryan.
A - Robin Raju
Thanks a lot.
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