Equitable at KBW Insurance Conference: Strategic Updates and Financial Goals

On Thursday, 04 September 2025, Equitable Holdings Inc. (NYSE:EQH) participated in the KBW Insurance Conference 2025, outlining its strategic advancements and financial performance since its 2023 Investor Day. The conference call, led by CFO Robin Raju, highlighted both the company’s achievements and challenges, particularly focusing on cash flow growth, earnings per share (EPS) targets, and the impact of recent transactions.

Key Takeaways

• Equitable aims for $2 billion in cash flow by 2027, with significant growth in retirement and wealth management sectors.
• The RGA transaction has influenced capital allocation, leading to a $500 million share repurchase plan.
• Equitable is focusing on organic growth and potential acquisitions to enhance its wealth management business.
• AllianceBernstein remains a key partner, with a focus on expanding its private markets business.
• Financial disclosures are being streamlined to better reflect the company’s strategic focus.

Financial Results

• Cash Flow Growth: Target of $2 billion by 2027, with 2024 guidance between $1.6 billion and $1.7 billion.
• Payout Ratio: Currently at 68%, with a target range of 60% to 70%.
• Earnings Per Share (EPS) Growth: Targeting 12% to 15% growth; however, the first half of 2024 saw lower than expected growth due to $95 million in mortality volatility.
• LIFE Transaction Impact: Freed up $2.3 billion in capital, with allocations for share repurchases, debt reduction, and growth investments.

Operational Updates

• Equitable Advisors (Wealth Management): Achieved 12% organic growth, with assets under administration rising from $40 billion in 2018 to $110 billion. The group plans to double earnings to $200 million by 2027.
• RILA Market: Equitable maintains a leading position, with $7 billion in sales year-to-date and a focus on innovative product offerings.
• Group Retirement Business: Emerging opportunities in in-plan annuities and health savings accounts, with over $1 billion in inflows.

Future Outlook

• Cash Flow: On track to reach the $2 billion target by 2027.
• EPS Growth: Expected to be in the mid-range of the 12% to 15% target, with significant growth anticipated in 2026.
• Wealth Management: Potential for margin expansion to the high mid-teens or low 20s.
• Alternative Investments: Aiming for returns in the low end of the 8% to 12% range, with a decreasing liability profile over time.

Q&A Highlights

• Life Transaction: Discussion on capital deployment and plans for remaining funds.
• RILA Market: Strategies to maintain competitive advantages and pricing.
• Individual Annuity Business: Expectations for growth in the third quarter.
• AllianceBernstein: Progress in private markets and potential merger and acquisition opportunities.
• Bermuda Reinsurer: Rationale for ceded liabilities and future plans.

For a more detailed understanding, readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - KBW Insurance Conference 2025:

Unidentified speaker: The CFO. Also wanna recognize Eric Bass, head of strategy and investor relations and other members of the team I see in the back somewhere. I guess, Robin, to to start it off, in 2023, Equitable established five year financial targets through 2027. Can you update on the progress that you’ve made towards those targets so far? And any key considerations to think about going forward that may have differed at all from the original expectation?

Robin Raju, CFO, Equitable: Yeah. First, thanks for having us again here, Ryan. It’s great to be back. So in 2023 at our Investor Day, we really laid out a growth strategy for Equitable and what underpinned it was the markets that we operate in and growing retirement asset management and wealth and specifically The US retirement market which really benefits from tailwinds related to demographics You have 4,000,000 Americans that retire every year. You have 600,000,000,000 of assets in motion.

And we think Equitable’s differentiated operating and integrated model to having asset, wealth, and retirement together really enables us and puts us in a position to differentiate and win in that market and capture an outside portion of that growth. In addition, I think Equitable has done a good job in terms of execution. We’ve hit every number that we’ve laid out to the street since our IPO and we’ll continue to do that. There’s a strong culture of execution focus internally in the company. And so in 2023, the output of that growth strategy because that’s what we really laid out was three main financial targets.

We’re gonna grow cash flows to 2,000,000,000, we’re gonna have a payout ratio of 60 to 70% and we’re gonna grow earnings per share by 12 to 15%. So if I take each one of those on cash flows, this year we’re guiding to 1,600,000,000.0 to 1,700,000,000.0 of cash flows. We’re on track to achieve that. That’s about a 10% growth from prior year. And so that gives us clear line of sight to $2,000,000,000 by 2027.

The $2,000,000,000 is going to come from organic growth coming from our retirement businesses and then also release of legacy capital as well. Reminder, thing again that differentiates Equitable, 50 of those cash flows come from asset and wealth businesses. That should get a higher multiple for overall and improved evaluation over time. So having 50% of the cash flow come from asset and wealth that allows and gives us consistency in our payout ratio across the board. So we have a 60% to 70% target.

If you look through the first ten quarters since our twenty twenty three Investor Day, we’re at 68% at the higher end of that range. And in addition, keep in mind, we have a $500,000,000 additional share repurchase that we’re going to do related to the RGA transaction on top of that base in the second half of the year. And then the third target was a 12% to 15% earnings per share growth. So through the year end 2024 we achieved a 12% growth from our IPO. In the first half of the year this year earnings were lower than we expected primarily due to two things.

One is the mortality volatility that we had in the business. Now we’ve resolved that with the RGA transaction, but that mortality volatility was about 95,000,000 below our expectations in the first half of the year or $0.23 per share. If you take into account the RGA transaction was in place in January, our year to date earnings per share growth cumulative since the Investor Day would be around 11%. So still a little bit lower than the 12% to 15%. Now going forward, we do feel as though we have good levers for the growth to hit the 12% to 15% both in later after this year and then go forward.

That’s going to come from markets which are higher and led to record AUM levels, which mean higher fee based and spread based income. We have continuous efforts in expense efficiency within the business. The life transaction means that we won’t have exposure to that mortality at least for 75 of that exposure. And then in addition that $500,000,000 incremental share buyback should provide earnings per share growth. So we think from here we have good line of sight to that 12% to 15% CAGR and we feel comfortable across the board around all of our targets supporting the growth strategy for Equitable Holdings.

Thanks.

Unidentified speaker: I had a follow-up on the 12% to 15%. When you had announced the RGA Life transaction, I think you had said you thought that may push you up towards the higher end. Is that still your view? I mean there’s been a number of moving parts. Or should we just think about the 12% to 15% kind of overall target?

Robin Raju, CFO, Equitable: Yes. I think now I’d say it would be in the mid range of that 12 to 15%. So there are a few key components that changed from the announcement of that transaction. We assumed that we’d get a $1,800,000,000 full tender of Lions Bernstein stock. We had $760,000,000 so that means we have lower exposure to AllianceBernstein than originally planned.

Second, the life mortality that I mentioned. And then also our individual retirement business had lower market value adjustments. That was about over $20,000,000 lower year over year and that had a $10,000,000 We used to assume that there was a $10,000,000 incremental every quarter that we’re no longer assuming. So as a result, we think we’ll be in the midpoint of the range. Now keep in mind, we’re going to be on an outsized we’re going to have outside growth in 2026 compared to the low end of 2025 because of the first half of the year.

But we expect over the period we should be in the midpoint of the range.

Unidentified speaker: Got it. One more on the Life transaction. So it freed up $2,300,000,000 You mentioned the $800,000,000 to tender for a higher ownership of AB, you’ve committed $500,000,000 to incremental buybacks and you’ve recently announced a $500,000,000 tender for debt so that still leaves about $500,000,000 unaccounted for. How are you thinking about both the timing of deploying that $500,000,000

Robin Raju, CFO, Equitable: and the potential uses? Sure. So the LIFE transaction, the exact number is $2,000,000,000 that are freed up in capital And the $2,300,000,000 that we deploy assumes that we’re gonna draw down from some excess capital as well within that. So from the 2,300,000,000 overall that we intend to deploy, as you laid out, we did approximately $800,000,000 in increasing our share of AllianceBernstein. That’s strategic for us because that allows us to capture the full benefits of our flywheel model and enhancing the synergy value of AllianceBernstein.

We announced a $500,000,000 incremental share buyback that we’ll have in the second half of the year and the $500,000,000 tender that we most recently announced last week to help reduce our leverage ratios. So that leaves us roughly to $500,000,000 remaining. We’re gonna look at growth investments and share repurchases depending on what provides most value for shareholders. For growth investments we think about bolt on acquisitions within the wealth management space or investments into sidecars that advance aligns Bernstein’s business. And then share repurchases would always be something that we’ll look at as well.

So expect us to fully deploy the proceeds probably in the 2026. But we think across if you think about the Life transaction overall, it’s going to be our target is for it to be accretive for shareholders relative to previous expectations.

Unidentified speaker: On bolt on wealth M and A, are you interested in adding particular capabilities or would it be more opportunistic potentially looking to just add scale to the business that you have?

Robin Raju, CFO, Equitable: Yes. Let’s talk about the wealth business, Equitable Advisors specifically first. We’re very happy and thrilled with the growth that we saw in that business. So at IPO, that business was $40,000,000,000 in 2018 in AUA. It’s now $110,000,000,000 We’ve grown at a 12% organic growth rate the last twelve months.

That organic growth rate is better than most peers that we’d see in the market. So I consider that best in class in growth rate in the market. And now we also announced at our Investor Day in 2023 that we double earnings in that business from $100,000,000 to $200,000,000 by 2027. We’re already on target to achieve that $200,000,000 That’s two years ahead So we feel we’re very excited about the growth in that business.

The growth so far has really come from organic investments that we’ve made, specifically in training and upscaling our adviser force, really moving them more towards wealth planners which are two to three times more productive than our existing advisors. We also made an investment early this year in hiring the head of new business development at Ameriprise to expand our experienced hire recruiting. That’s worked out well year to date. We’ve added over 700,000,000 in experience higher recruiting, AUM. Now when looking at bolt on acquisitions, I think it would be some it would be advisers that have compared wealth management oriented, businesses with retirement products.

The reason being is that helps grow the wealth business, but also that expands our distribution of retirement and asset management products as well. So advisors that fit the both retirement and wealth space are sweet spots for us in Equitable Advisors. Now a lot of these valuations are expenses, so you’d have

Unidentified speaker: to be very disciplined. That’s why smaller bolt on valuations seem, somewhat more reasonable at times. But we’ll be very disciplined in ensuring that we add value for shareholders or costs whenever we use shareholder capital. And then you had mentioned potential sidecar investments with AB. Would that be more to help AB fund investments in other insurance company sidecars or would this be more of an equitable type sponsored sidecar?

Robin Raju, CFO, Equitable: Mainly growing AB’s insurance business. So similar to Ruby Re, AllianceBernstein made $100,000,000 investment through Equitable Equitable Supply and the Capital through ownership in AllianceBernstein. So they did $100,000,000 investment. They gained $1,000,000,000 in assets, in private credit assets with Ruby Re. Those were assets coincidentally that Equitable already funded through the seed capital program.

So proof point of the synergy value between Equitable and AB. Those are the type of sidecar investments that we think are attractive. Those investments typically have low mid teens IRRs. But if you add the fees from the investment management agreements as well, get to mid teen IRRs. So those are attractive investments for AllianceBernstein and growing in the insurance business.

The interesting part of those is usually once you’re with the partner and you have multiple strategies in place, you’ve now, operationalized your investment capability into their system. So a lot of times it leads to more upside going forward as well. So those are the reasons why we like sidecar investments to help grow AB’s insurance platform.

Unidentified speaker: And then financially for Equitable, are those held as like an alternative investment in the general account or is it more like a holding company investment?

Robin Raju, CFO, Equitable: Right now we’ve done it actually through AB’s balance sheet. Yeah. So we funded it through equity and then AB would put it on their balance sheet and hold it in.

Unidentified speaker: Got it. So I think you’re gonna make some financial disclosure changes, following the Life Transaction. Can you give us any kind of preview of the types of things that you that you had and how you’re gonna go about changing the disclosures?

Robin Raju, CFO, Equitable: Yeah. So the RJ transaction gave us an opportunity to relook of how we’re disclosing our financials to the street and we really wanna simplify our disclosures focused on asset retirement and wealth. So if you look currently in our businesses, we have six segments that we report, four of which are insurance. And we’re really focused on one broad retirement market. So, some of the changes that we’re gonna make, if you look post the transaction, both the protection and legacy business have less than five percent of earnings contribution for Equitable.

So that’s gonna move into corporate and other. So that’s one component that’ll move in that helps simplify those. There’s a small run off so those aren’t gonna be material for us going forward. The other change we’re gonna make, we’re gonna combine our group retirement and individual retirement into one broad retirement segment. The reason we’re doing that is we really operate across the full retirement spectrum.

Also within the businesses, they’re blurring lines between group and individual retirement. Take our K-twelve leadership position in the four zero three market. That’s reported in the group retirement business, but it’s actually an individual sale and the margins are more similar to that of the individual market, very different from the corporate four zero one market. Now in combining those we’re gonna still provide everybody separate account, general account, net flows, product sales. So we’ll provide all the underlying detail.

We’ll also include more information on spread assets and payout reserves so PECO can appropriately model net investment income as well. The other change we’re going to make is to our allocation process. So how we allocate net investment income specifically our spread business, so our FABN, FHLB business, which is currently allocated across all the segments, that’s now gonna be fully allocated to the retirement segment. The reason being is the capacity to grow those businesses is dependent on your general account assets. And our general account assets are primarily coming from the retirement business.

So we think it’s better alignment within that. Now we will provide information to The Street to appropriately model that for both sell side and buy side. So we’ll put out an eight ks about two weeks before earnings that will help recast financials for six quarters that enable you to model it so you all have time before we come out with earnings going forward. But we think this simplifies the story, focuses us on the growth drivers for equitable asset retirement and wealth and aligns better with the strategy for us going forward. Thanks.

Unidentified speaker: I wanted to shift to the individual annuity business and and Rilla in particular. You know, it is still much a more concentrated market than the fixed and fixed indexed annuity markets, but we have seen the amount of competitors you know, gradually increase over over time. How would you characterize the competitive environment right now in RILE as well as your ability to continue to earn targeted returns?

Robin Raju, CFO, Equitable: Well, it’s definitely more competitive since we were the only ones in the market back in 2010. So we created that market in 2010 really through our Equitable Advisors distribution. That’s the benefit again of owning a wealth management business is you can test new products with that distribution before we expand into third party distribution overall. The RILE market though is a growing part of the market. I mean it’s up 40% year over year in 2024.

It’s up 20% this year. So it’s at $65,000,000,000 It’s a huge piece of our business. We had $7,000,000,000 of sales year to date in the RILA business, so we continue to see growth in that aspect. But we do operate in broad retirement. So we have a RILA product.

We also have income products. We also have investment only VA products. And we also launched a fixed index annuity product exclusive to our Equitable Advisors distribution as well to take advantage of that, low cost of funds distribution outlet, overall. So we like the Ryland market. The reason why we like it, it’s a simple solution for clients.

Clients like the product. You’re nearing retirement. It offers you downside protection with upside potential. Clients need to stay invested in equities. So this product really serves a client need as they near retirement.

And we’re the innovator in that market. We created it. And we’re gonna continue to expand with the pie in that market. Now as competition comes in, you’re always gonna see new competitors come in with teaser rates. But it’s hard to displace people that have innovated and that have been in that market for a while.

So we own the shelf space in Equitable Advisors, obviously. We also have 10% to 15% of our sales come from privileged third party distributions where they may only have two to three players. So that’s 50% of that our sales are coming from what I’d say low cost of funds channels for us. So if you look at Equitable overall, we have the lowest cost of funds for RILE products. We operate on a top quartile expense ratio for our individual retirement business.

And we benefited from the investment capabilities of AllianceBernstein having that flywheel effect. So we think that gives us a competitive advantage to win in the RIOA market. As competitors have come in, you’ve seen the pie increase, which is good. Equitable has maintained number one position and we’ve continued to benefit from that pie. And we continue to price products at a 15% IRR.

Now, the return, the margins of the product are very different from when we were the only ones in there, much higher at that time. But we think the margins are still attractive at a 15% IRR even at this time.

Unidentified speaker: The the Rylan market in, obviously, Equitable as as the creator of the market was originally really focused on accumulation, but there have been more guaranteed income options that have been being added to the RILEB product over time. I guess what you know some I’ve gotten some questions about that just given what happened with the variable annuity industry. Is what gives you comfort that the guaranteed income options that are being added now are appropriately structured and priced?

Robin Raju, CFO, Equitable: Sure. So I can speak from Equitable’s perspective. Accumulation oriented RILEY products are still the dominance out there. We launched an SES income product. That’s about 10% of our RILA sales.

That’s really offering a withdrawal benefit feature for clients with the downside protection of the RILA. So it gives someone the RILA feature that they like but also an income option, as well. I think the income product market is quite interesting at this time because most competitors have left the market. So that means the margins are much better, with income oriented products right now. Now Equitable has a unique advantage.

We have tons of history in that space. We price the products conservatively. So we assume any utilization benefits are in the customers’ interest. We’re not assuming customers don’t maximize their benefit. We’re ALM matched overall and the product’s designed around a narrow range of outcomes.

So for us, we think that market is quite attractive. There are not a lot of players in it at this time. But I think it’s important you keep your discipline and you don’t get over your skis in that market as well. And if we see the market getting too hot, we’d pull back from it. We’re not here to chase guarantees.

We’re here to provide customers value propositions. And that’s our goal and that’s our mission.

Unidentified speaker: On the on the is the the product that you are rolling out to your advisers, that’s a MYGA product? Yes. Is that they’ve never sold that, I think, before for or at least not an Equitable MYGA. Like, is that something that you think will be material or be more of a a gradual build over time?

Robin Raju, CFO, Equitable: Well, we just started. I think the opportunity is there. We offer third party MYGAs and Equitable Advisors now because we haven’t historically been there. So, having an Equitable MYGAs product resonates a lot with our field. So we think that’s in addition to the toolkit for an advisor providing planning, for their clients as well.

So we hope there’s a big opportunity. We just started just like when we started with Ryla. It was very small to begin with and it took years to get big. So we hope, over time it will get bigger. In the individual annuity business,

Unidentified speaker: your earnings growth has been lagging the account value growth over the last, one to two years. Can you review the reasons that that has been happening? And also going forward, how should we think about the earnings growth or the ROA trends or how to just you’ve given some kind of guidance on your earnings expectations for the third quarter. I’m thinking more about the jump off point and how to think about the growth of that business going forward.

Robin Raju, CFO, Equitable: Yeah. So individual retirement is our largest segment. That’s our biggest business growth engine across the board. It had 8% organic growth, 7,000,000,000 of net flows over the trailing twelve month period as well. So that’s a business that’s going to drive much of Equitable going forward.

We disclosed to the market that in the third quarter we expect about $220,000,000 to $225,000,000 That’s higher than we have previously. We were lower, as Ryan indicated earlier this year, and probably for a few reasons. One, markets were lower. That impacts our fee based business. Our fee based business does have a higher ROA.

So the markets lower in the first half impacted the fees on that relative to last year. Second, in net investment income, we have two things happening there. One, we are seeing some spread compression as the older Ryland business, when there are a few competitors and we had big margins on the business rolls off. That’s competing against a new business that we write on, which is still good margins, 15% IRR, but lower than the previous margins when we owned the market to ourselves. That’s about 15% of our total RILE account value.

And so we expect that to continue to drag down NIM relative to assets in the short term and that should turn probably early to mid next year in terms of when you’d expect NIM to continue to grow back at the same rate as general account book value. The second component we had is market value adjustments. We were over $20,000,000 plus lower year over year in market value adjustments. Going forward, we assume zero benefit from market value adjustments as well. But that we expect will rebound across the board NIM with the growth in the general account overall.

So we think if you take those components, those are transitory, would say, in some sense. And we think that going forward, we’ll continue to see growth in that business benefiting again from the low cost of funds, the privileged distribution that we have and the capabilities in asset management at AllianceBernstein. So we’d expect growth with the $220,000,000 to $225,000,000 in the third quarter, continue to grow earnings from there. But the ROAs as we as we shift from fee based to spread based will move a little bit lower, but they’ll also be less sensitive to markets as well.

Unidentified speaker: Got it. And then just that that legacy RILA higher profitability piece, the 15%, you said that in the next few quarters that should be mostly runoff? Exactly. Moving more to the Group Retirement business, you’ve been working on some emerging growth opportunities there, in plan annuities, HSA. What time frame do you think those products will become a more meaningful contributor to Equitable?

Also just what can you maybe just talk a little about the outlook for both of those?

Robin Raju, CFO, Equitable: Yeah. So let me start with in plan annuities because we’re really optimistic about this growth going forward. So we have partnerships with AllianceBernstein. They were first in the market actually and innovated more than before regulation was there more than ten years ago. And then we had the partnership with BlackRock, LifePath, Paycheck.

We’ve achieved over $1,000,000,000 inflows in those products already. We think it’s a huge market opportunity. If you think of the overall retirement market, there’s no decumulation solution in the market today. It’s a huge need in society, and we’ve partnered with asset managers to address this need through implant annuities. If you look at the 04/2001 market, it’s an $8,000,000,000,000 market.

Target date funds are about 50% of that market, so about $4,000,000,000,000 When target date funds were first launched, they weren’t 50% of the market. It took time to leg in. So we think this will take time as well to leg in, but we think both from a plan standpoint, being comfortable with the performance, the track record of these in plan annuities, and second, the operational, integration with the plan administrators or the record keepers as well. As those all come together, we think there’s a lot more upside. And we think in plan annuities will be a core part of target date fund offerings in the future.

I think every target date fund out there will need to have an in plan annuity in the future. Now it’s not going to be in the near term, but it will be later on to address the decumulation need for clients. We’re also working on new solutions with in plan annuities. We’ve recently announced a partnership with JPMorgan. That’s more of a stable value orientation solution.

And we continue to talk to other asset managers as well. This year, we also announced flows related to a partnership with an HSA partner. That’s more of a spread based product, so different type, more institutional product, more spread oriented ROA versus the implant annuities probably have higher margins to them over time. That will have stable flows. That’s not as much of a growth potential as the implant annuities, but still will be sticky and good stable flows for us.

Probably the biggest piece that we don’t talk about and you’ll see it more is our spread based lending business, FABN and FHLB. We had about $9,000,000,000 outstanding in the year. That’s a bigger driver of overall earnings. But if I think of historical institutional businesses for us, and that will continue to be a growth level going forward. That’s now, remember, going to be allocated, as I mentioned earlier, to the Retirement segment.

And we’ll continue to disclose that balance. And so you can forecast the spreads and model that as well. So those are the three components that we see. Now having in plan annuity capabilities allow us to leverage that for other markets as well. If we think about our capabilities with AllianceBernstein, our underwriting capabilities, that gives us potential to expand in other parts of the retirement market that are bigger and institutional as well over opportunistic about that as they come.

Unidentified speaker: Actually, I guess just one follow-up. Are there other areas you’re considering that you can share now or that you could enter into the spread lending or other institutional space? Or is it more things that are in the future?

Robin Raju, CFO, Equitable: Well, we’re big into spread lending now. The FABNFA, we have $9,000,000,000 of exposure there. We’ll continue to grow in spread lending. That’s a very attractive business for us as we can really benefit from the flywheel and AllianceBernstein’s capability and the low cost liability of the insurance companies. We’ll look at the bigger institutional markets as well.

We have the capabilities with our underwriting and asset management skills, But we don’t have any plans right now to enter into those markets. Similar, we looked at the MICA market for some time and we started out with Equitable Advisors. We’ll certainly look at other parts in this institutional market. And if we see attractive entry points we have the capabilities to go into FAST. Not going be a huge investment for us considering we have the capability set up.

Unidentified speaker: Got it. Moving to AllianceBernstein, can you discuss their private markets business and you have

Robin Raju, CFO, Equitable: some goals there for 2027, the progress you’re making towards them? Yes. So we’re really excited about the private markets business at AllianceBernstein. It’s now $77,000,000,000 That’s up 20% year over year. Our target for 2027 is to reach 90,000,000,000 to $100,000,000,000 That means it’s about 20% of AB’s revenues by 2027.

So that’s a good mark for us. That’s being funded in part by Equitable’s commitment and seed capital to grow their private credit business. Equitable’s committed $20,000,000,000 of which we deployed $15,000,000,000 to date, and we expect to fully deploy to $20,000,000,000 by 2027. Of interest, some of the strategies that we have seeded and recruit teams, that’s been value for us. We seeded 1,400,000,000.0 in or allocated 1,400,000,000.0 to AB Carval’s resi mortgage capabilities.

We’ve also allocated over 2,000,000,000 to private structured assets like NAV loans, ABS, Specialty Finance. So we continue to see that opportunity to grow both for AllianceBernstein, but the yield also comes back into the retirement business and to grow retirement business. That’s the flywheel effect. Now the real value is AB is able to grow for every dollar Equitable is put in. AB has been able to grow 3 to 4 doll $4 of third party capital.

And that’s really valuable for EQH shareholders because they’re getting the full benefit of the value chain between owning retirement and asset management together.

Unidentified speaker: AB acquired Carvell a few years ago, to enhance the private market capabilities. Are there other m and a opportunities similar to that or that could be of interest to AB going forward?

Robin Raju, CFO, Equitable: Yes. Think I think of three areas within AB that we think about. One is private credit. Obviously, that’s probably our primary focus because there are a lot of synergies. Second is their private wealth business.

And third being sidecars, which we spoke about. So within private credit, AB’s had a tremendous history of team lift outs. That’s differentiated because they can attract teams. They know Equitable is gonna provide them funds. So we have teams with a track record, funds day one, and they can go out and raise third party money.

That’s that $3 to $4 that I mentioned earlier in terms of leverage we get from the capital we put in. Part of the CarVel acquisition, CarVel was attracted to come to be paired with an insurance business as well. So we think we’re differentiated in acquiring private credit. But we have much of the capabilities we need in private credit. And maybe there are things like infrastructure debt that we don’t have that we look at over time.

AB’s private wealth business is probably something that’s not spoken about as much as it should be. Their private wealth business is at scale. It’s focused on the ultra high net worth. So really 5,000,000 to 10,000,000 plus individuals. Our plans there, we think we can grow our advisor base by two to three times from here, specifically taking advantage of opportunities we see in some geographies and some segments in the private wealth space.

We’d also look at small bolt on type RAs within that business that fit, that can sell private credit orientation. So that continues to be a place that we think we can grow in AB’s private wealth channel. And then third, sidecar investments. We did the Ruby Re one. Think that was a win win for Ruby Re for AB benefiting from AB’s capabilities.

We’ll continue to look to expand AB’s insurance capabilities for future sidecar type investments, more so as we talked about from AB’s side, AB side of it so that they can participate in the insurance value chain. And those would probably be the three areas that we’d focus on, but primarily private credit would be our number one focus.

Unidentified speaker: Is there, I think you’ve been asked this before, but just are do you think there could be eventually be some synergies between Equitable’s advisory biz Equitable’s wealth management business and the the private wealth business at AB or the or the the segments you’re targeting just two different wealth? Exact the segments that we’re targeting are very different.

Robin Raju, CFO, Equitable: Equitable Advisors is more mass affluent, 3,000,000 below. AB is more private wealth. So they’re not material synergies between the two.

Unidentified speaker: Got it. You talked more earlier about the growth and success you’re having in the wealth business. Just one follow-up on that from a margin standpoint. Do have any like I think you’re around a 15% margin right now. Do you feel like that’s a good level for the business?

Or is your and and you’re focused on just growing earnings and and revenue or could you see margins expand over time?

Robin Raju, CFO, Equitable: Yeah. I think in the short term, we’re really focused on making the investments to grow earnings and revenue in that business. That includes experience hiring, like I spoke about earlier with the new hire that we brought in from Ameriprise. Experience hires is a great way to grow that business because it has a good IRR, short payback period. As I mentioned earlier, had 700,000,000 recruited year to date already.

So we’re seeing wins on that. But those are investments that we’re making in the business right now. The business isn’t it’s at $110,000,000,000 which is great from the $40,000,000,000 it was, but it’s still relatively small to other wealth managers out there. We do think there are opportunities to expand margins to the high mid teens or low 20s, but that’ll take over time, and that’s a lot of scale that’s needed in that. So in the short term, we’re really focused on investing in the business, growing the platform, increasing the number of advisers that we have, and then smaller bolt ons as, you know, we see fit and value accretive for shareholders.

Unidentified speaker: On the second quarter call, you gave a preliminary expectation for alternative investment returns in the third quarter. I guess as we’ve gone forward a little bit, do you have an updated view there?

Robin Raju, CFO, Equitable: Yeah. I think all its returns for the first half of the year were about 6% for Equitable. I think in the third quarter, it should be similar, maybe a small upside potential on it, but it should be similar to how I sit here today and see it. I think by year end we should be able to get to the low end of our 8% to 12% range. It’s really dependent on activity in the marketplace.

So we are seeing better performance in private equity. Real estate has been somewhat muted. Now we have seen more real estate transactions, so I think the market somewhat bottoms out based on the transactions that we’re seeing. So we’re hoping to see improvement in that space. The IPO market has opened as many of you have seen.

There are a lot more IPOs occurring and we see that as a good tailwind as well for the private equity portfolio overall. But if you take a step back, our returns since our IPO are about 10%, so in the mid range of our 8% to 12% range. We hope to get back into that range for the full year in 2026, but that depends on the transaction activity that we spoke about earlier. But going forward, our liability profile, much shorter duration with RILA. So alternatives don’t really have the same positioning as it did in our liability profile when it had a longer duration.

So as a result, for every unit, every marginal dollar is going be going more into private credit than would be alternative versus historical because of that liability profile. So all to about less than 3% of our general account today and expect it to decrease over time, But still, you know, reaching back to that 8% to 12% over the long term.

Unidentified speaker: And then it’s a much smaller business for you now, so you may not have anything. But I figured I’d I’d check at least on the life side of the business if you had anything to say on mortality or anything like that for the third quarter.

Robin Raju, CFO, Equitable: Thankfully, no. Hopefully no longer will we provide updates on it.

Unidentified speaker: Okay, great. And then you established an affiliated Bermuda reinsurer. Had last quarter you ceded $30,000,000,000 of liabilities there, of annuity liabilities. I think you had said there’s no real upfront change to your view of capital, but can you maybe just provide a little bit more insight into If there is no upfront benefit from that, what was the reason and rationale for doing it?

Robin Raju, CFO, Equitable: Sure. So we launched a a Bermuda, company, earlier this year. We completed our first in force transaction to it. As As Ryan mentioned, it was about $30,000,000,000 of liabilities. And the real focus for us is we like the Bermuda framework because it actually aligns pretty well with how we manage economically.

It’s the only framework we see outside of Solvency II in Europe that really looks at fair value reserving, and that aligns better with our hedge program. So the real benefit that we have because there’s no economic change in capital for us. The real benefit is really allowing matching with our hedging program. And that’s what the Bermuda framework allows you to do because you have fair value reserving so you don’t have volatility related to your hedging program on the statutory results. Bermuda for us though going forward, I think it provides us a lot of optionality in our toolkit.

Flow reinsurance would be something we look at for some of our internal products. We can look to other in force transactions if we thought it helped the consistency of cash flows. And then over the long term, we think there’s potential to do third party reinsurance as well in our Bermuda company. So that’s probably more of a post 2027 thing, but we think there are opportunities there. If you take a step back though, our capital management strategy since IPO has really been focused on economic management.

We wanna manage the book economically. Like if you think at IPO, we started with just a New York company, then we moved business from New York to Arizona, and now we moved to Bermuda. The key focus for us is always economic management. We wanna protect policyholders, and we wanna make sure we’re providing good returns for shareholders across the And now even post the RGA transaction, you can look across our businesses. We have a Bermuda entity that’s set up.

We have the consolidated RBC ratio is above 500%. All of our insurance subsidiaries post the RGA transaction are above their target levels. But this is a deliberate strategy to manage the business economically, not towards U. S. GAAP, not even towards U.

S. GAAP. We wanna manage economically to protect policyholders and drive good cash flows for shareholders as well.

Unidentified speaker: We have just a small amount of time left. Just wanna check if there’s any questions in the audience. The Bermuda, was it for the annuities?

Robin Raju, CFO, Equitable: It was for, group annuities. Dollars 30,000,000,000 of group annuities. Maybe

Unidentified speaker: I’ll actually just circle back to one thing you said. I don’t know if you have the number off the top of your head but I guess with that RGA transaction, assume the size of your alts portfolio will likely be smaller going forward because some of that was included in the transaction. Is that

Robin Raju, CFO, Equitable: Our alts portfolio was not transferred in the transaction. That’ll stay on the equitable balance sheet. But as a result, that’ll decrease over time because obviously the liability pro This presentation has now finished. Please check back shortly for the archive.

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