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May 14, 2021 at 12:25 PM
What You Need to Know
- Brighthouse’s net results include big derivatives value swings.
- Overall individual annuity sales were up.
- The company sees non-variable indexed annuities as core.
Executives from Brighthouse Financial Inc. talked a little bit about their annuity priorities during a recent conference call with securities analysts.
Myles Lambert, the Charlotte, North Carolina-based company’s chief distribution and marketing officer, said the company sees its Shield, Flex and SmartCare products as core.
The Shield contracts are registered index-linked annuity contracts.
The Flex contracts are variable annuity contracts, and the SmartCare are life insurance products that include access to long-term care benefits.
Conor Murphy, the chief operating officer, said Brighthouse also sees non-variable indexed annuities as being core.
For the rest of this year, “our expectations are that we will grow sales in our core products,” Lambert said. “We do expect a decline in fixed deferred rate annuities. But at this juncture, we feel like the growth in our core product sales should be able to offset the decline that we should see with fix rate deferred annuities.”
Brighthouse Financial (BHF)
Brighthouse Financial is reporting a $583 million net loss for the first quarter on $938 million in revenue, compared with $5 billion in net income on $9 billion in revenue after mark-to-market adjustments for the first quarter of 2020.
The Charlotte, North Carolina-based life insurer a drop in the value of the derivatives used to hedge its products deducted $1.5 billion from net results in the first quarter. Derivatives produced a $6.9 billion gain for the company in the year-earlier quarter.
Pretax adjusted earnings increased to $490 million, from $253 million.
Sales of individual annuities increased to $2.1 billion in the latest quarter, from $2 billion in the year-earlier quarter.
