Athene Q2 annuity sales remain strong despite 19% drop

As Q2 2025 came to a close, Athene Holding remained strong in annuity sales, but saw pension deals virtually evaporate.

And though Athene is a leader in annuity sales, those sales declined 19% from Q2 2024 to $7.26 billion.

In June, Athene announced Grant Kvalheim’s ascension from president to CEO. Athene co-founder and longtime CEO Jim Belardi was named executive chairman and remains chief investment officer.

Kvalheim ran his first conference call with Wall Street analysts on Tuesday morning. Athene, a subsidiary of Apollo Global Management, is uniquely positioned for its “next phase of growth,” Kvalheim said.

“Athene does not have legacy liabilities, does not have legacy systems, does not have multiple layers of management, and does not operate in business lines with high cost overhead,” the new CEO said. “We've acknowledged we have good competitors, and the market is big enough for more to be successful. But what we've built is very difficult to replicate and it makes us an incredibly tough competitor.”

A RILA bump

Athene remains No. 1 atop the annuity sales landscape, but sales declined 19% from the year-ago quarter to $7.26 billion.

Multi-year guaranteed annuity volumes “decreased sequentially following our deliberate decision to moderate sales in the quarter given competitive dynamics in this product category,” Kvalheim explained. “MYGA products comprised approximately 40% of the total compared to approximately 60%” in Q2 2024.

The average weighted life of Athene’s MYGA products is less than five years, he noted, while its fixed-indexed annuity average is about 12 years.

“While spreads are strong across all of our products, the point is we get to earn spread for two to three times longer on a fixed-indexed annuity sale versus a MYGA sale,” Kvalheim said.

Athene’s distribution work delivered fruit during the second quarter for its FIAs and registered indexed-linked annuities. The company launched FIA products at Stifel, Nicholas and Morgan Stanley and expanded its FIA product suite at JP Morgan.

Likewise, Athene added its RILA product to four additional platforms, including J.P. Morgan. RILA sales were up about 13% in the quarter, Kvalheim said. For the year, through July, Athene wrote $2 billion of volume each at Wells Fargo, LPL Financial and J.P. Morgan, he said.

“Our expanding distribution footprint is supporting continued growth, and we are driving increasing share with our key partners, illustrating our penetration and product leadership on these platforms,” he added.

Big opportunities

Athene noted that it is No. 2 in market share of pension group annuities since entering the market in 2017. But the company reported just $1 million in this category for the quarter, a decline from $577 million in Q2 2024.

The company's pension risk transfer business all but dried up due to ongoing litigation, the Wall Street Journal reported in March. Several large-company PRT deals with Athene are tied up in lawsuits filed by plan participants. Athene is not named as a defendant in any of them.

Meanwhile, the company is more than replacing any lost income through other avenues. Specifically, Athene is focused on stable value and structured settlements, he told analysts.

Also, the defined contribution retirement market. Apollo CEO Marc Rowan spoke last week about the massive potential for a new retirement plan income benefit crafted around annuities. Kvalheim picked up on the theme on Tuesday.

“I think that's a market that brings together the best of Apollo and Athene,” he said. “Think about DC plans. They need better assets, and they need a guaranteed income solution, and we're marketing that together.

“The challenge is it's very hard to forecast the take up in that space, but we think we have a great product that produces automatic lifetime income without giving up anything in terms of the flexibility of the participant or the accumulation benefits.”

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InsuranceNewsNet Senior Editor John Hilton has covered business and other beats in more than 20 years of daily journalism. John may be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @INNJohnH.