By the My Annuity Store research team. Last updated May 23, 2026. Based on 11 years of LIMRA U.S. Individual Annuity Sales data covering 220 carrier-year records.
How Athene dethroned Allianz in the U.S. FIA market
In 2015, Athene Annuity ranked #6 in fixed indexed annuity sales. Allianz Life ranked #1. Eleven years later the order has flipped, and that flip is the single most important thing to know about today's indexed annuity market.
The headline numbers look modest. U.S. industry FIA sales grew from $54.5 billion in 2015 to $127.9 billion in 2025, a 135% increase over 11 years. Look one level down and the picture changes. Athene's annual FIA sales went from $2.4 billion to $15.0 billion, a roughly six-fold increase in the same window that the market only doubled. Allianz held its $8.7B to $10.2B range for five years, then dropped to $5.0B in the pandemic-disrupted 2020 cycle and has been #2 every year since.
What happened in between is a story about who owns these companies. A New York private equity firm called Apollo Global Management spent the better part of a decade rebuilding Athene's balance sheet around alternative credit, private loans, asset-backed securities, middle-market debt, and used the resulting yield advantage to win FIA business one independent distribution channel at a time. The strategy worked. By 2025, three of the top five FIA carriers were affiliated with private equity or alternative asset managers, and the legacy mutual insurer that pioneered most of the product innovation in the category was watching its lead disappear.
This piece walks through the LIMRA data carrier by carrier, identifies the players, and ends with five things to know if you are buying an FIA today.
Key findings (2015 to 2025)
Total industry FIA sales vs. Top 20 carriers (2015 to 2025)
This chart shows total U.S. fixed indexed annuity sales each year alongside the combined sales of the Top 20 carriers. The gap between the bars represents the long tail of smaller carriers, regional mutuals, and recent entrants.
The dip in 2020, when the pandemic dragged industry FIA sales down to $55.5 billion, the lowest year in the dataset. And the surge in 2024, when industry sales jumped 32% in a single year as the Fed's rate-hiking cycle made FIA crediting rates competitive against bonds and CDs for the first time in over a decade.
The gap between the navy Total Industry bars and the blue Top 20 Total bars represents hundreds of smaller carriers. That gap has held steady at roughly 15% of total industry sales for the entire decade, meaning the Top 20 are about 85% of the market and that concentration has been remarkably stable even as the cast of characters at the top has changed dramatically.
How an Iowa insurance company took over the FIA market
Athene Annuity & Life is operationally headquartered in West Des Moines, Iowa. That is notable only because it is not the kind of place where you would expect to find a balance sheet rewriting the rules of the U.S. retirement income business. But Athene was set up specifically as a vehicle to do exactly that.
The company was founded in 2009 by Jim Belardi, a former AIG executive, with backing from Apollo Global Management. The thesis was simple in concept and complex in execution. Traditional life insurers had been forced by regulation and convention into portfolios of investment-grade corporate bonds that, by 2009, were yielding very little. Apollo specialized in higher-yielding alternative credit. If you could build a life insurer whose general account looked more like Apollo's investment book than a traditional mutual insurer's, you could pay policyholders meaningfully better rates while still earning a healthy spread. Apollo CEO Marc Rowan has continued to make this argument publicly as the strategy has scaled.
The first decade was foundation-building. Athene acquired the U.S. annuity business of Aviva USA in 2013, picking up a substantial in-force annuity book and the distribution relationships that came with it. Athene went public in 2016. By 2019 it was the second-largest FIA carrier in the country, behind only Allianz. In January 2022, Apollo and Athene completed a full merger, with Athene becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of Apollo, and the integration of the balance sheet accelerated. From 2020 onward, Athene has held #1 every single year.
The breakout year for the broader industry was 2024. Sales hit $126.9 billion, a 32% jump from 2023's $95.9 billion. Three-quarters of the Top 20 FIA carriers reported double-digit growth that year. The product fit a moment: rising rates, market volatility, an aging baby-boomer cohort looking for principal protection with upside. But the carriers best positioned to capture that demand were the ones with the widest independent distribution and the most competitive crediting. Apollo-backed Athene had both.
Carrier sales trends over time
Select a preset view or toggle individual carriers in the legend. The Top 5 view shows the structural separation between the leaders and the rest of the field. The PE-Backed view isolates the private-equity-affiliated carriers and shows how their growth accelerated in unison from 2022 onward.
Start with the Top 5 (2025) preset. Two carriers, Athene and Allianz, pull noticeably away from the pack. The gap between those two lines and #3 through #5 is the visual signature of a market that rewards scale at the very top.
Now switch to the PE-Backed Carriers preset. Watch what happens between 2019 and 2022. Athene, Corebridge (then still reported as AIG Companies), Fidelity & Guaranty Life, Global Atlantic, and Delaware Life all accelerate in parallel. That is not coincidence. It is five PE-affiliated insurers responding to the same favorable rate environment with similar balance sheet structures. The mutual carriers in other presets don't show the same lift because they couldn't deploy that kind of capital fast enough.
If you toggle individual carriers on and off in the legend you can see the rank flip in 2020 in stark visual terms. Athene's line crosses Allianz's and never goes back.
The Athene to Allianz rivalry
For the first five years of this dataset (2015 to 2019), Allianz Life of North America was the undisputed FIA leader, posting $8.7B to $10.2B annually. The company had been the dominant force in the indexed annuity space for over a decade. Within the industry, "FIA" and "Allianz" were nearly synonymous. The flagship Allianz 222 contract was the best-selling FIA in America and held that title for years.
Allianz also pioneered most of the product innovation the rest of the category eventually copied. It was the first carrier to build volatility-controlled custom indices for FIAs, beating any major competitor to market by roughly half a decade.
That product head start funded the distribution muscle that kept Allianz at #1 for years. Athene, watching from #6 in 2015, took notes; most of the index design and rider innovation the PE-backed carriers ship today has a recognizable Allianz lineage.
Athene, meanwhile, climbed methodically through the 2010s. From #6 in 2015 ($2.4B) to #2 in 2016 ($4.5B), the major break being the 2013 Aviva USA acquisition. The company stayed in the top three through 2019 but couldn't crack #1.
The turning point was 2020. Despite the pandemic dragging total industry sales to $55.5 billion (the lowest year in the dataset), Athene overtook Allianz for the first time at $5.8 billion vs. $5.0 billion.
The mechanism wasn't subtle. Face-to-face distribution shut down for most of 2020, but Apollo's balance sheet kept generating spread income that Athene could pass through as competitive crediting rates. Allianz, more dependent on wirehouse and broker-dealer channels, had a harder time getting in front of clients.
Athene cemented the lead in 2021 at $7.7 billion. By 2025, Athene posted $15.0 billion to Allianz's $11.7 billion, a $3.3 billion gap that reflects the structural advantage of PE-backed capital deployment.
Allianz has not been below #2 in any year of this dataset. The 2015-2019 dominance funded a product development pipeline competitors are still catching up to. Athene's newest contract, the Aviator 5, ships features (index lock, joint-or-single income election at activation) that Allianz brought to market years earlier. Both models work. Different buyers find different things appealing about each.
The cast: who is actually running these companies
The industry jargon version of this story is about alternative credit, general account composition, and private-equity-affiliated insurers. The human version is about a handful of people and the bets they made.
Athene / Apollo
West Des Moines, Iowa · founded 2009Marc Rowan, Apollo's co-founder and CEO, has been one of the loudest voices in financial services arguing that traditional fixed-income investing doesn't work for long-duration liability holders like life insurers. His thesis: investment-grade corporate bonds yield too little to fund competitive annuity rates, and the solution is to build insurance balance sheets that can hold private credit at scale.
Athene is the proof of concept. Jim Belardi, Athene's founding CEO, ran it independently from 2009 through the 2022 Apollo-Athene merger and remains CEO under Apollo ownership.
Allianz Life of North America
Minneapolis, Minnesota · U.S. subsidiary of Allianz SEA Minneapolis-based U.S. subsidiary of Allianz SE, the global German insurance group with roughly 157,000 employees across 70 countries. The U.S. company is operationally and financially distinct from its European parent. When you buy an Allianz Life annuity, your contract is with the U.S. subsidiary, and its claims-paying obligations are backed by U.S.-domiciled reserves.
The flagship product remains the Allianz 222, now supplemented by the Benefit Control+ and 222+ contracts that introduced new crediting strategies and additional index choices in 2025.
Corebridge Financial
Houston, Texas · spun off from AIG in 2022The spun-off life insurance and retirement business of AIG. AIG was a perennial top-five FIA carrier through 2020, ranking as high as #2 in some years. In 2022, AIG separated the business, renamed it Corebridge Financial, and took it public on the NYSE. Brookfield Reinsurance later acquired a majority stake.
If you have an AIG-issued FIA from before 2022, it is now serviced by Corebridge, but your contract terms are unchanged. The carrier has continued to grow under the new name, reaching #3 in 2025 at $10.0 billion.
American Equity Investment Life
West Des Moines, Iowa · acquired by Brookfield 2024For most of this dataset, American Equity was the legacy independent specialist in the FIA category. Based in West Des Moines, Iowa, the company was built specifically around indexed annuity distribution through independent marketing organizations. American Equity stayed in the top six every single year from 2015 through 2024.
The company was acquired by Brookfield Reinsurance in 2024 in a $4.3 billion transaction and now operates as part of the Brookfield Wealth Solutions platform. That move means three of the 2025 top five FIA carriers (Athene under Apollo, Corebridge with Brookfield majority, and American Equity also under Brookfield) are now affiliated with alternative-asset managers.
PE-backed carriers reshape the top five
The FIA market is increasingly led by carriers backed by private equity or alternative asset managers. In 2025, three of the top five carriers (Athene, Corebridge, and American Equity) are PE- or alt-asset-affiliated. Allianz and Sammons Financial Companies, which includes Midland National and North American Company, are the two large non-PE leaders in the current rankings. Fidelity & Guaranty Life sits just outside the top five at #6.
The mechanism is straightforward. PE-affiliated insurers build general accounts around alternative credit instruments, private loans, asset-backed securities, middle-market direct lending, that generate meaningfully higher yields than the investment-grade corporate bond portfolios that dominate traditional insurer general accounts. That spread is passed through, in part, to policyholders as higher S&P 500 cap rates, higher participation rates on uncapped strategies, and more competitive income rider roll-up rates. Independent agents notice. So do the IMOs that aggregate those agents.
The dual-product dominance is the part that is genuinely unusual. Athene is also the #1 carrier in MYGA sales for 2025. Holding the top spot in both fixed index and multi-year guaranteed annuities in the same year, with the same balance sheet model, has only happened with this carrier in this dataset.
This shift has not gone unnoticed by trade press or regulators. Kerry Pechter at Retirement Income Journal documented the structural advantages of PE-affiliated annuity issuers as early as December 2021, and the National Association of Insurance Commissioners has maintained an active regulatory workstream on PE-owned insurers since June 2022, when it adopted 13 regulatory considerations targeting affiliated reinsurance, complex assets, and capital adequacy at PE-controlled life insurers.
Annual Top 20 FIA rankings
The interactive table below contains every Top 20 FIA carrier ranking from 2015 through 2025, with annual sales in millions, market share percentage, a relative-size bar, and the year-over-year rank change. Use the year selector to step through the dataset and the search box to filter to a specific carrier.
| Rank | Carrier | Sales ($M) | Mkt Share | Relative Size | vs Prior Yr |
|---|
Reading the 2025 rankings
The 2025 rankings confirm a top-five structure that has been forming since 2020. Athene at $15.0 billion. Allianz at $11.7 billion. Corebridge at $10.0 billion. Sammons Financial Companies at roughly $9.5 billion on a consolidated basis. American Equity rounding out the top five at $7.2 billion. There is meaningful separation between this top five and the rest of the field.
Nationwide at $6.1 billion stands out as the clearest non-PE story just outside the top five, a traditional mutual that has held its share through strong broker-dealer distribution and a competitive income rider lineup. MassMutual Ascend (formerly Great American Life), Pacific Life, and Security Benefit each hold defensible mid-tier positions built on specific product niches rather than raw rate competition.
The bottom half of the Top 20 is where the competition is most fluid. Carriers ranked 11 through 20 typically hold their positions by margins of $200 million to $500 million in annual sales, which means a single new product launch or a major distribution partnership can move a carrier three or four places in a year.
Rank movement heatmap
The heatmap shows each carrier's Top 20 ranking position by year. Darker cells indicate higher rank. Blank cells indicate the carrier was not in the Top 20 that year. Reading the heatmap horizontally shows persistence; reading it vertically shows year-by-year competitive structure.
The darkest cells, top-three finishes, cluster around three names across the full decade: Allianz, Athene, and AIG/Corebridge. That trio held the top three positions, in varying order, every year from 2015 through 2020. What changed after 2021 is not the identity of the leaders but the margin between them and everyone else.
Look at the right edge of the heatmap (2024 to 2025) and you'll see fewer dark blue cells outside the top four than at any point in the decade. The market has gotten more concentrated at the very top, not less.
Carriers that exited the Top 20
The FIA Top 20 has churned more than the headline rankings suggest. Several carriers that were once meaningful FIA players have disappeared from the rankings entirely or been absorbed into larger groups.
-
→AIG Companies → Corebridge FinancialAIG was a perennial top-five FIA carrier through 2020 (#3 at $4.5B). Rebranded as Corebridge Financial in 2022 and went public. Now #3 at $10.0B under the new name.
-
Peak
#3Great American LifeRanked #3 in 2015 with $3.7B and stayed in the top ten through 2021. Acquired by MassMutual in 2021 in a $3.5B deal and now operates as MassMutual Ascend. -
Peak
#7Ranked #7 in 2019 with $3.7B. After going public in 2021, Jackson pivoted toward variable annuities and RILAs and exited the FIA Top 20 by 2022. -
Peak
#7Brighthouse FinancialRanked #7 in 2017 with $2.5B after being spun out from MetLife. Pivoted aggressively to RILAs and exited the FIA Top 20 by 2018. -
Peak
#12Voya FinancialRanked #12 in 2015 and #14 in 2017. Sold its individual annuity business to Venerable Holdings in 2018 and has been absent from FIA rankings since. -
Peak
#13Forethought AnnuityRanked #13 in 2015 with $1.5B. Acquired by Global Atlantic in 2016 and absorbed into the parent book.
What this means if you are shopping for an FIA today
This data is interesting as industry analysis. But if you are a pre-retiree or retiree actually considering an FIA right now, here are five things to take away from it.
- Sales volume is not a product recommendation. The right FIA is the one whose surrender period, crediting strategy, and income rider actually fit your situation, not the one with the biggest market share.
- An A rating alone is incomplete. All five 2025 top-five carriers carry A or A+ from AM Best; the meaningful differences are in what backs the balance sheet (alternative credit at PE-backed carriers, investment-grade bonds at Allianz).
- Don't compare carriers on headline cap rates alone. Ask your agent to model both contracts against actual historical index returns over a 5-to-10-year window.
- Verify who services your policy today. Forethought is now Global Atlantic, AIG is now Corebridge, Great American is now MassMutual Ascend, American Equity is now Brookfield - your contract terms don't change but the service experience does.
- The top five is settled; the bottom 15 is fluid. A newer PE-backed carrier isn't automatically a bad one, but a short track record warrants extra due diligence on financial strength and reserve structure.
Methodology and sources
All sales figures and carrier rankings in this report come from LIMRA U.S. Individual Annuity Sales releases for years 2015 through 2025. LIMRA collects sales data directly from participating carriers under non-disclosure terms and represents approximately 92% of total U.S. annuity sales activity. The dataset covers 11 years and 220 carrier-year records, every Top 20 ranking across the period. Industry totals represent all FIA sales reported to LIMRA, including carriers outside the Top 20. Market share percentages are computed against each year's industry total.
A handful of carriers in this dataset have changed names or corporate parents during the 11-year window. AIG's U.S. life business was rebranded as Corebridge Financial in 2022. Athene acquired the U.S. annuity business of Aviva USA in 2013. Forethought Annuity was absorbed into Global Atlantic in 2016. American Equity was acquired by Brookfield Reinsurance in 2024. In each of these cases, when the underlying balance sheet, distribution footprint, and product lineup carried through to the renamed entity, we treat the new name as a continuation of the old one rather than counting it as a new carrier entering the rankings.
LIMRA periodically revises prior-year totals as late-reporting carriers update their submissions. The figures in this report reflect the most recent published version of each year's total, with a data-pull date of May 23, 2026. Future revisions may shift individual numbers by 1 to 3% but will not change the overall trajectory or the rank order of the top carriers. Full dataset available on request. Email research@myannuitystore.com.
Source notes
This report is built on 11 years of LIMRA U.S. Individual Annuity Sales releases supplemented by primary-source corporate filings, trade-press analysis, and regulatory documentation. The sources cited below are the primary references used for the narrative claims throughout this piece.
- Laura Benitez, "Rowan Says People Lost Their Minds Over Private Credit Fears," WealthManagement.com, November 25, 2025. Apollo CEO Marc Rowan on the suitability of private credit for life insurer general accounts.
- Kerry Pechter, "A Revolt Against PE-Led Annuity Issuers," Retirement Income Journal, December 9, 2021. Early documentation of the PE-affiliated carrier dominance thesis the broader trade press has since reinforced.
- National Association of Insurance Commissioners, "Insurance Topics: Private Equity," NAIC. Ongoing regulatory framework, including the 13 regulatory considerations applicable to PE-owned insurers adopted by the NAIC's Financial Stability Task Force in June 2022.
- Apollo Global Management, "Apollo History," corporate timeline. Primary source for Athene's 2009 founding, the 2022 merger with Apollo, and Apollo's broader transition into insurance and retirement services.
- Apollo Global Management, "Apollo Global Management Informs Investors of Closing of Athene's Acquisition of Aviva USA," October 2013. Primary source for the foundational deal that scaled Athene's in-force annuity book.
- Apollo Global Management, "Apollo Completes Merger with Athene and Finalizes Key Governance Enhancements," January 3, 2022. Primary source for the merger that fully aligned Apollo and Athene.
- American International Group, Inc., "AIG Announces Closing of Corebridge Financial, Inc. Initial Public Offering," September 19, 2022. Primary source for the AIG to Corebridge transition.
- Brookfield Asset Management, "Brookfield Reinsurance to Acquire AEL in $4.3 Billion Transaction." Primary source for the 2024 acquisition that moved American Equity into the alternative-asset-manager-affiliated cohort.
- MassMutual, "MassMutual to Acquire Great American Life Insurance Company," January 27, 2021. Primary source for the $3.5 billion deal that removed Great American from independent FIA rankings.
- LIMRA U.S. Individual Annuity Sales releases, 2015 to 2025. LIMRA. Source for all carrier-level sales figures, market share calculations, and rank movement data in this report.
About this research
My Annuity Store is an independent multi-carrier annuity store licensed in 47 states. We have placed more than $1 billion in annuity premium and work with 90+ top annuity companies. We do not accept paid placement, sponsored rankings, or carrier-funded research. Sales figures published in this report are unaffiliated with our placement decisions and we do not receive compensation from LIMRA or any of the named carriers in exchange for inclusion in this analysis.
Jason Caudill, founder of My Annuity Store, has worked in the life and annuity industry since 2005. He holds an MBA and previously served in a Fortune 500 executive role at Raymond James prior to founding My Annuity Store in 2020. Research methodology questions can be directed to jason@myannuitystore.com or 855-583-1104.
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External sources cited in this report
- LIMRA, primary source for all sales data and carrier rankings in this report.
- NAIC Annuities Topic Page, regulatory guidance and consumer resources.
- Insurance Information Institute, Annuity Types.
- Apollo Global Management, parent of Athene.
- Brookfield Reinsurance, majority owner of Corebridge Financial and acquirer of American Equity.
- KKR, owner of Global Atlantic.
- AM Best, insurance company ratings agency cited throughout.
My Annuity Store is an independent annuity store licensed in 47 states. We work with 90+ top annuity companies and have placed more than $1 billion in annuity premium since 2020. This report is published for informational purposes. It is not personalized financial, tax, or legal advice, and rankings or company mentions are not endorsements of any specific annuity contract. Annuity guarantees are subject to the claims-paying ability of the issuing insurance company.
