North American Life Insurance "2Q26 US Life Preview: Strong YTD life stock..."

Research evidence excerpt

North American Life Insurance "2Q26 US Life Preview: Strong YTD life stock..."

Global Research

8 July 2026ab

North American Life Insurance Equities

Americas2Q26 US Life Preview: Strong YTD life stock

performance raises the bar Insurance, Life

Michael Ward

Analyst

michael.ward@ubs.com

2Q26 picks and stock thoughts: +1-212-713 3518

Bullish on the undeserved underperformers: We expect EQH and CRBG narratives Brian Meredith

to remain dominated by their pending merger, thus we don't believe the Analyst

fundamentals will matter nearly as much as deal-related commentary/guidance. brian.meredith@ubs.com

We like EQH given the stock is actually down slightly YTD despite favorable +1-212-713 2492

capital markets tailwinds and merger accretion potential. For both EQH and Justin Tucker

CRBG we've had to raise our 2Q26E buyback estimate significantly (almost Associate Analyst

double) to solve for the share counts disclosed in the late-June proxy. If both justin.tucker@ubs.com

companies are able to take advantage of buyback windows until the deal is +1-212-713 2325

finalized, this could provide quantitative upside as we await deal closure towards

year-end.

VOYA has done well: We believe focus will be on activist investor involvement

pushing for a sale of stop loss and/or VOYA. Mgmt has been pretty consistent in

terms of denying a need to do M&A as it remediates the stop loss business and

grows core Retirement & Inv. Mgmt organically.

Overall, we lean cautious on group disability margins (see page 3) with relatively

limited wiggle-room given cyclicality & economic uncertainty (broad-based AI

replacement fear and corporate layoff trend) re: MET, UNM. We note MET has

more than rebounded from 1Q26 private-credit-fear-lows creating a somewhat