Is It Finally "Go Time"?; Takeaways from CRBG / EQH Management Meetings

Research evidence excerpt

Is It Finally "Go Time"?; Takeaways from CRBG / EQH Management Meetings

USA | Life Insurance EquityJulyResearch12, 2026

Is It Finally "Go Time"?; Takeaways from CRBG /

EQH Management Meetings

We reiterate our Buy ratings on CRBG and EQH post hosting management

meetings recently. Per management, investor feedback following a fairly

aggressive marketing schedule has been positive, with some espousing their

view that "it's go time". We argue CRBG / EQH will be the best positioned annuity

writer for our Return of Retail thesis. As management continues to articulate

the numerous benefits from this combination, we expect valuation upside.

Shifting competitive moats: Athene went public roughly 10 years ago. At the time, elements of

the Bull case included certain competitive advantages or moats in the retail annuities business.

Examples included its Bermuda domicile, privileged access to a private asset origination platform

(i.e., APO) and lack of exposure to liabilities with elevated tail risk (e.g., VA with GLBs, SGUL and

LTC), among others. Today, most annuity writers we cover also have the first two, and reinsurance

solutions are readily available to address the third. Going forward, we feel likely sustainable

competitive advantages in annuities will relate to scale, controlled distribution and in-house asset

management (AM), all of which we argue are key components of the CRBG / EQH merger.

Scale benefits: Scale should allow annuity writers to offer more competitive products, generate

more attractive returns or both. Using SG&A / annuity account values to measure scale, we estimate

that CRBG / EQH could have an expense ratio that is roughly half that of certain peers (e.g., ~14 bps