By David French
(Reuters) – Equitable Holdings will announce on Monday it aims to raise its stake in money manager AllianceBernstein Holding after striking a new reinsurance deal that will unlock more than $2 billion of cash, the insurer’s executives said.
The moves will help Equitable double down on higher growth businesses such as asset management.
Equitable will unveil later on Monday that about 75% of its in-force individual life business is being reinsured by Reinsurance Group of America. The block consists of active policies where policyholders pay premiums periodically.
The capital released by the reinsurance deal will be used to support Equitable’s tender offer to purchase up to 46 million units of AllianceBernstein, which could be worth as much as $1.8 billion. New York-based Equitable will offer $38.50 per unit, representing a 7.8% premium to Friday’s closing price.
If the tender offer is successful, the deal will help Equitable – which already controls about 62% of AllianceBernstein – boost its holding in the company to as much as 77.5%.
The RGA transaction will also help Equitable fund $500 million of incremental share repurchases on top of existing buyback programs.
“With this freed-up capital, we have the opportunity to really support our growth strategy, and where we’re really focusing on, which is retirement, wealth management and asset management,” Mark Pearson, CEO of Equitable, told Reuters.
Should Equitable’s tender offer be fully taken up by AllianceBernstein unitholders, Equitable would generate roughly 60% of its cash flow from asset management, compared to about 17% when it was spun out of French insurer AXA in 2018, Pearson added.
The RGA transaction is the latest in a series of deals that have been struck in recent years by insurers to reinsure or divest books of existing business to free up capital. This includes Equitable’s sale in 2020 of certain run-off and closed-block businesses to Heritage Life Insurance Company.
Moreover, the insurance and asset management industries have been increasingly converging, as financial services firms attempt to combine complementary capabilities to boost earnings.
Having an integrated insurance and money-manager model allows Equitable to benefit financially through the life of a product, from distribution fees earned when selling it at the beginning, to fees from managing the assets through time, according to Equitable’s finance chief Robin Raju.
(Reporting by David French in New York; Editing by Anirban Sen and Muralikumar Anantharaman)
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