Voya Financial selling its closed block variable annuity, fixed and fixed indexed annuity businesses

[Insurance Forums Staff]

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Voya Financial selling its closed block variable annuity, fixed and fixed indexed annuity businesses

Athene part of a consortium of investors involved, and will take over the significant majority of Voya’s individual fixed and fixed indexed annuity policies in force with approximately $19 billion of account value.

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[scagnt83]

This was very interesting to see. Hopefully, it means that Athene is here to stay and wants to expand their footprint.

ING/Voya has not promised much in their annuity block over the past 5 years. Id imagine its fairly profitable. And they have a very large base of advisers to market to, and a lot of selling agreements with B/Ds and other institutions.

Seems like a smart move for Athene.

But what is Voya now? Just focused on life/benefits/investments? Seems like a major pivot for Voya. Of course, the whole name change was a major pivot as well.

 

[walthamny]

Voya wants to be asset manager, they want the 401k/qualified money business. They could not do that with a FIA and VA business, it draws DOL and lawyers peek. They want to admin the 401k business but when the employee leaves they want the admin( which is VOA) to notify Voya and Voya can turn around and sell this lead to its own financial advisors. You could not do this with a FIA and VA business also on their books. But now assets will stay with Voya whether under the 401k or with their so called independent VOYA advisor. TIAA Cref and Fidelity do something similar. Their lawyers have been trying to work around privacy issues so I am sure they recommended getting rid of this block of business to appease some regulators. Smart move for VOYA, also they are selling near the peak of market in my opinion. If the stock market crashed and annuities become popular again or DOL fiduciary is shelved for good, they can always re-start this business.