Aegon Sees Strong Annuity Buyout Demand

Executives at Aegon — the Dutch parent of Transamerica — say many holders of U.S. variable annuities with rich benefits guarantees would rather have a big cash payment.

The executives talked briefly about Transamerica’s U.S. variable annuity buyout program Wednesday, on a conference call the company held to go over earnings for the fourth quarter of 2021 with securities analysts.

Aegon has been focusing on reducing the level of both life insurance and annuity risk at its U.S. operations.

Like many other life insurers, Aegon has been trying to turn away from products that expose the company to a high level of risk related to fluctuations in interest rates and stock prices, in part because of new European and U.S. accounting rules that lead to those fluctuations causing big, immediate changes in net income and other indicators that investors watch.

Matt Rider, Aegon’s chief financial officer, said on the conference call that the company began offering lump-sum payments to holders of variable annuities with guaranteed minimum income benefit riders.

“At the end of the year, 16% of customers who received an offer had accepted it,” Rider said. “The program concluded at the end of January 2022, with a total of 18% of customers accepting the offer.”

Transamerica has also reduced the risk level of the variable annuity income guarantee riders still on its books, by expanding a hedging program to cover the interest rate and equity risks embedded in the guarantees of the entire variable annuity portfolio, Rider said.

He noted that Aegon already had a hedging program to reduce the level of risk associated with annuity guaranteed minimum withdrawal benefits.

Aegon streamed the conference call live on the web and has posted a recording on its website.

Life Insurance

Rider also talked about efforts to reduce the risk associated with big life insurance policies.

Rider said part of that effort involved buying back some life insurance policies from life settlement companies, or companies that buy the rights to collect life insurance policy death benefits from the insureds.

Aegon then arranged for an outside company, Wilton Re, to reinsure the policies that were bought back from the life settlement companies, and other high-benefit policies.

COVID-19

Rider said that, in addition to having concerns about the effects of ups and downs in interest rates and investment prices, Aegon also has concerns about the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on U.S. life insurance claims.