All right. We are going to get started with the next session. It is great to have, I think we are referring to it as the new Equitable for now.
The new Equitable, yeah.
We have Marc Costantini, the CEO of Corebridge, and soon to be the CEO of the new Equitable. And then we have Robin Raju, the current CFO of Equitable, and will be the CFO of the combined company post-merger when it closes. Get started. Maybe just to start, just stepping back, why did Corebridge and Equitable ultimately decide to merge, and what is your new vision for the new company going forward, and the financial benefits that you expect to emerge from this merger?
Ryan, thank you. It is great to see you.
Yeah.
Thanks to everybody for attending, and it's great for Robin and I to be with all of you. Taking a step back, there's a significant amount of tailwind in our business, right? It's very cliché, but a number of people are retiring every year, reaching age 65. I think the worries of people have gone from worrying from dying too soon to living too long. When you look at the businesses that both Corebridge and Equitable had, they extremely complementary. It's a bit obvious, but when you look at doing transactions such as this one and the size of this one, you really have to strive for 1 + 1 = 3 .
When you look at the complementary nature of the businesses from the asset management business, the advisory business, and the former Equitable Advisors, and the Corebridge Advisors, the Group Retirement business, and the Institutional Markets business and what it could do for our balance sheet. Last but not least, the Individual Retirement business, and the extremely complementary nature of obviously Equitable being the market leader in the RILA space and Corebridge obviously having a top five position in the fixed annuity and fixed index annuity. Overarching all of that is world-class distribution, right? It's vital in our business to have world-class distribution in the form of retail wholesaling, in the form of direct through advisory, and worksite. It's very complementary.
You bring these two platforms together, and there's scale advantages, which I'm sure we'll talk about it, but the scale manifests itself in many different ways. It's going to be a company that'll have a market cap of north of $30 billion and over $25 billion of statutory capital tied to it. So it's great financials, which I'm sure Robin will add some comments here, but that's what brought these two great companies together.
Yeah. Before you get into financials, one good thing when these companies come together, and Marc talks about it a lot, is the impact we're going to have on clients.
The reach we are going to have on clients. Together, we are going to serve over 10 million+ clients, the combined company. That is compelling because more customers mean more opportunities to grow. Purely from a financial side, though, I couldn't think of a more compelling transaction when it comes down to it. We are going to be the number one U.S. insurer in terms of U.S.-based earnings and cash flow. I wouldn't want exposure to any other retirement market, and if that is the source of our earnings and cash flows, that is a great position to be with the tailwinds in the market that Marc spoke about. We are going to have $5 billion of operating earnings to combine business, $4 billion of cash flows, and we are going to deliver a 15% return on equity.
This is going to be a compelling transaction for shareholders, but we are really excited about what we are going to be doing for customers going forward.
I think it has been almost six months now since the merger was announced. Can you give a little color on what you have been able to accomplish so far as you prepare for the day one of the merger close, and also just what the reaction has been from employees and distributors and other business partners?
Yeah. I would say when we announced the transaction in late March, we were quite prescriptive, Mark Pearson , Robin, and myself, about what it would do to our balance sheets and all that. But first and foremost, we said as well, we have to get the organization going, right? We are sitting here today in early September, and we have announced the three most senior layers of the organization. That is 500 executives that have been appointed to the firm, and those executives basically are running their day-to-day kind of responsibilities, delivering on 2026 until year-end, when we are expecting to close, but as well planning for the future. In line with that, we have got this integration and transformation office we have put in place.
It's been staffed, and it's well on its way of orchestrating all of the integration activities that need to take place to hit the ground running on January 1, when we hope to close. What it's done as well is, we've secured, obviously a number of our approvals. FINRA's approved the transaction, our shareholders have approved the transaction. The antitrust process has taken place. Obviously, our shareholders approved the transaction last month or in July. We're working through the regulatory process now. There's four or five key states that oversee and govern the activity of both Equitable and Corebridge that we're actively engaged in, and there's a couple of international regulatory bodies tied to AllianceBernstein that we're dealing with.
But we are sitting here confident that we're marching towards the close at the end of the year, and then we'll hit the ground running very quickly in terms of bringing together a lot of the synergies that Robin speaks so well about, but as well the growth. This is a growth story, right? In our comments we just made at first question, this is all about growth. It's about serving more customers, it's about getting ahead of the retirement curve and really delivering solutions to the end consumer, as Robin said. In terms of distributors, we have had a number of discussions across both firms with distributors, and we haven't heard of any revenue dyssynergies, I guess, as people refer to them too. I think the large distributors are embracing this.
The largest distributors want to have longstanding, deep companies and manufacturers that know this business, have been there through various cycles and deliver on their promises. Obviously you're staring at a company that does all of that when we come together and have done so historically in each of our cases. The employees, it's a merger, so it creates 100% anxiety across both platforms. Our responsibility as management is to engage with the employees, to be transparent, to be quick, as I mentioned, to make decisions and treat everybody the way you'd like to be treated, whether you've got a go-forward role or whether you've got a different role, or whether you're leaving the organization. How the organization treats you says a lot more about who we are, and we're working very hard to make sure that's the case.
There's a lot of transparency as we're marching towards the merger.
Great. I want to dig into some of the targets. You got it to 10%+ accretion. The biggest component of that was $500 million of expense synergies. Can you talk more about the sequencing of, and the key components to drive that? How big of a technology upgrade does that expense save target contemplate as well?
Sure. We announced of the 10%+ accretion, we said about 6%-8% is going to come from the expense synergies that we have across both firms. I break it into four buckets. Headcount, obviously, you have duplication in roles, so there will only be one person in one seat. That is probably going to be where you get the front-loaded savings in any merger that we have. As Marc said, we have already announced the first three layers of the organization. So we already know that we are very highly confident in that number coming through based on where we are today, which is a great sign of our success and our confidence in achieving the overall $500 million. The other areas are going to be vendor consolidation. If you think about where you get benefits from scale, you get really pricing power with your vendors.
Now, we cannot do that yet. Some of that we have to wait, obviously, to January 1st. But we know, Marc and I know that together, both firms, and we know by the inbounds that we get from a lot of our vendors that we are going to have the ability to get at-scale pricing, which is going to drive bottom-line savings. The third category would be IT consolidation.
That is going to be a big piece of work that we do from now to year-end on picking what platforms that we are going to integrate. That is why it was so important that we get the leaders that are going to be accountable for that decisions up front. So now the people that are accountable for the different businesses, for the different corporate functions, they will have to make the decisions on what are the best systems and IT integration that we will do.
That will come through probably more so in 2028 than 2027, because that is going to take time and planning and process. But our head of IT, he has this phrase, he wants to integrate, transform, and innovate. You cannot do it all at once, but we have to sequence it properly to make sure that we can run faster going forward post this. Obviously, with any merger, you are going to have some real estate consolidation as well. So, that will be something that we pick up naturally, whether it is in New York or other areas. But that is going to be another piece that will come through later in 2028.
But where we sit here today, Marc and I and the board, we're highly confident in achieving that expense synergy number, and it's really down to the actions that we have already in place and putting us in a position where we can make decisions come 2027 and start running right away.
Great. The other component of the EPS accretion was a 2%-4% contribution from capital and tax synergies. What are those synergies more specifically resulting from, and then how quickly will they emerge? Is that going to be pretty quickly and free up capital that can be redeployed, or does it occur over time?
Sure. Well, both will occur over the two years. So within the 2%-4% accretion, that's part of the 10%+ accretion from the merger, there'll be a portion related to cash tax savings, and that's us leveraging the non-life DTAs on Corebridge's balance sheet to offset some of the non-life earnings that we have from AllianceBernstein and the wealth management business. So that's going to be real cash savings that we achieve post-close. Then we will have capital synergies, and we'll have some between the first two years, and I anticipate we'll have more later. Some capital synergies come from if we decide to consolidate legal entities. But we can get it even without consolidation through internal reinsurance in some areas. So, that again, will probably happen in 2028, where you get the cash tax savings immediately.
Post-2028, you've seen both companies, Corebridge and Equitable, we've had a good track record of capital optimization and making sure we can deliver value to shareholders and invest in growth. So anticipate that's just going to be part of our DNA as a management team to unlock capital value and allocate it to the best sources.
Then on revenue synergies, you haven't officially given us a quantification of the revenue synergies, and they weren't part of the accretion guidance, but you have talked about some of the areas that you think will provide synergies. I guess, can you review what those are and
Yeah
how meaningful you think they can be?
Yeah. It's interesting because we had a lot of discussions leading up to the announcement in March as to where we'd focus our guidance, and we agreed on expense synergies and some of these capital and tax that Robin just walked through because they're tangible and a lot of people in this room and others could put tangible value on it. Very quickly, when people grasped what Robin just said, we started getting peppered, Robin and I, with all the questions about growth. We did guide when we announced the merger that we were going to direct $90 billion- $100 billion of assets that are on Corebridge's balance sheet, both the general account and separate accounts, to AllianceBernstein along the same timelines that Robin just mentioned. That's net flows of $90 billion- $100 billion that AllianceBernstein would otherwise have received.
So right there, that's a 10% to 12% increase into their asset base and their margins and revenue. That does not include as well bringing all these great origination teams together, the ones at Corebridge, at Equitable, and AllianceBernstein under one platform. One of the things I think we need to step back and reflect on is that when you look at the production that Equitable has, and you add it to the production that Corebridge has across our retail market, and our institutional market, you're looking at an engine here that's going to generate over $60 billion a year of institutional and retail spread business. That creates a lot of origination capability, that creates a lot of access to investment that otherwise would not be available to each firm. Right? So that's a smattering of numbers.
You look at what we are going to do on the Group Retirement side, plus the advisory business, plus AB itself. You see a lot of revenue flow that way. The synergies as well is through the distribution. Equitable Advisors, I think Robin has said many times, does $2-ish billion or so of fixed annuities and fixed index annuities that now will have, let's say, a proprietary offering to do so. Equitable has a VUL product that was on our design table, so we could quickly introduce that product into our distribution at Corebridge. Then you have the advisors and the penetration of the 403(b) plans. If you listen to a lot of what we say, we need to cross-sell, up-sell those plans.
With the number of advisors a collective firm will have, we will be able to accelerate the growth of the penetration of service that these clients deserve. On the Institutional Markets side, the sheer side of the balance sheet that will be in the circa $500 billion of on-balance-sheet assets will give an appetite for a lot bigger, I would say, PRT business and a lot bigger appetite for the GIC FABN products. So we see a lot of growth opportunities on the revenue side. I would say the story that is not said enough, and you will hear Robin and I say a lot more next year when we march towards Investor Day, is that this is all about growth. It is all about serving more customers. It is all about growth. The expense synergies obviously fall into place for all the reasons that Robin said.
Great. Equitable recently announced the sale of its employee benefits business. Are there other divestitures that you would consider from here of the combined companies? I guess the one thing that comes to mind is the remaining life exposure that the legacy Equitable had. Or do you feel pretty set on the business mix at this point going forward?
Yeah. Look, this merger, it all comes back to scale. Scale matters in the businesses that we were in. Let me touch first the Equitable employee benefits transaction. We actually like the employee benefits market. We think it is a good market. We just weren't at scale, and we weren't profitable, so it is tough to compete when you have to allocate capital to these other businesses, trying to grow a business as a greenfield at scale. It was going to take too much time.
Yeah.
The Hartford, when they approached us, it was clear that they're a better owner of the business. They're in the small business market. They can leverage our platform to go in. I think it was a win-win, which is what you want in a transaction for both. But it doesn't mean that we didn't like the employee benefits market. It's just an at scale point. If you look broader post-merger, as Marc just mentioned, this is a growth story. We really want to allocate capital to fund growth to support Americans retire going forward. Sure, you may see some small cleanup reinsurance transactions. That's what I spoke about earlier. That's capital optimization. But when Marc and I get together, believe me, we don't talk about, "Oh, should we do reinsurance here?
Should we do reinsurance there?" I think both companies successfully use reinsurance to shift the balance sheet. We're at a place where it's not needed at this time, and it's really how do we fund the growth ambitions that we have for both companies by allocating capital appropriately.
All right, so we're shifting more to growth then. In the annuity business, volumes have doubled basically in the retail annuity market. But it has also attracted a lot more competition at the same time. I guess, can you talk about how you're viewing competitive conditions today in the retail annuity market, and how the new combined company is positioned-
Yeah
within that?
Yeah. We like our chances. I say that because we will have the broadest product portfolio. I would say, look at the manufacturing capabilities of the new Equitable and compare it to any other player in the industry, and look at the history of proven success in manufacturing those products profitably while serving customers better and delivering value to shareholders. I don't think anybody compares to this NewCo. Look at the distribution depth and breadth of the new firm. Pretty much every retail outlet that serves a retirement need and a retirement end consumer will be touched by our distribution. People talk about scale, and to me, scale is an ability to touch every customer you can manufacture a solution for profitably while delivering extreme value to that customer and serving the shareholder well. I don't think other companies compare to that.
Is there increased competition in some of this space? Yes, there is, but I've been tied to this business for the better part of 36 years. There's always been robust competition, right? And it's a matter of what's the, I would say, capital and thoughtful capital that's coming to the market for serving clients' needs, and that capital needs to have an ability to originate assets to back those liabilities, but needs to understand the liabilities they're writing as well.
And this firm has deep experience on both sides of that balance sheet. So we feel we're in it for the long run. And from the discussions we've had with distributors, I would say for many distributors, we're as important to them as they are important to us, which puts the relationship in a very good stead. Right? And that scale that we talk about, that matters, right?
Because not having the new Equitable on your shelf is not something that many distributors would find appealing, right? And that puts us in a very good spot. Now, I think you're implicitly referring to some of the newer entrants that are asset intensive or funded by alts and all that. And I think they pick their spots, they operate in distributions that maybe we have access to and they have access to, but they don't have the presence and the depth and the history behind their promises that we have. So, we welcome rational competition. We welcome rational competition, yes.
It's going to be difficult to compete with us, though. If you think we're going to have one of the lowest unit costs in the industry, we're going to have great asset capabilities from AllianceBernstein, Blackstone, BlackRock to get a good risk-adjusted yield, and we have world-class distribution. So, it's going to be really hard to be competitive on a disciplined way versus us. So we expect we're going to grow, but also deliver great returns given those attributes.
I guess somewhat related, but maybe, I don't know if this is a combined question or one for each of you at this point since the merger hasn't closed, but can you talk about the spread dynamics in, I guess, each company's retirement business at this point in time, and how to think about the near-term trajectory there?
Yeah, I can give you maybe the Corebridge perspective to your point about we're operating independently. I think if you've been listening and following Corebridge, it's been a story of a transition and a pivot in our Group Retirement business. The Group Retirement business has circa $130 billion of assets tied to it. $80 billion is in the retirement space, and $50 billion is in the out-of-plan business. We've been obviously cross-servicing and cross-penetrating our plans basically, and growing our advisory business that is in excess of $20 billion now of that $50 billion. And we have 1.5 million participants in plan that we're trying to penetrate and serve and cross-serve, and that's created 300,000 of these out-of-plan members that have the $50 billion of asset. And we are approaching it in terms of taking our business from a largely spread-based business to a fee-based business.
As you have seen in Q2, we basically cleared the 50/50 kind of approach there. So we are in a good position, and we're growing and cross-pollinating. I think the merger will even bring more attention and ability to penetrate those plans. As a standalone company, we felt there was a $30 billion opportunity there in terms of upside of cross-selling and upselling in our plans.
With the merger, I think that accelerates. So, to the spread comment, leading up to year-end and into Q1, we were defending that we had floating rate assets. And we were saying, "Hey, if there's contraction, if rates are going down, it's about $20 million-$25 million for every 25 basis points." The same thing happens when rates go up. So that's a tailwind to our spreads. I think we guided when we started the year to $2.55 billion of absolute spread income.
We are sitting here confident that we will achieve that. So I think our spread business is doing well. I think the block of business is behaving overall as we intended. I'm including our Individual Retirement business here as I talk about the spread business. So I think we're sitting here in a good position, and we feel confident obviously bringing Equitable with Corebridge. That will only accelerate some of the dynamics I just mentioned for our block.
Yeah. One of the areas I am excited about the merger too is innovation that is going to come out of both businesses. When you innovate, you can get outsized margins early. That is a little bit what happened with Equitable with our RILA product. We were first to the market. We were educating advisors on the needs to have equity exposure as you near in retirement. We were the only ones there. We had outsized margins. We were writing new business at 20%+ IRRs for many years. Everybody came to the market. Now the pie has gotten bigger, and we have continued to grow and maintained our market share, but margins have normalized. Now we are writing what I would call at-scale margins, 15% IRRs on that RILA product. From the pre-2020 business, we had big margins on it.
That business rose off, and now margins have stabilized. That is the spread compression that you saw. You also saw in the first two quarters now as we guided, margins have stabilized, spreads have stabilized in that business overall. Going forward, we expect spreads to continue to be stable and NIM, net interest margin, to grow as book value grows ex embedded derivatives. That is how we are confident with that as we have seen it the last few quarters. The RILA block, the pre-2020 is now less than 10% of the total block. It is not really significant at this point.
Got it. The variable component of spread. Any updated comments from either company on third quarter expectations for variable investment income at this point?
Sure. I could start. Alts continues to be a volatile category for sure, as you have seen over the last few years with interest rates and change in dynamics where public equity markets are. We underperformed our long-term target the last few years. In the third quarter, we are expecting 4%- 5% growth, so a rebound from the lower second quarter that we have. We should be at a 4%- 5% annualized growth rate for the third quarter. The drag in the portfolio is really coming from real estate equity at this time and some of the venture investments, where you are seeing some of the growth equity funds have more recovery with the delay in equity markets. We would expect if markets are normalized, that return should come back to longer-term targets over time.
You mean a 4%- 5% return. Is that correct?
Correct.
Yeah.
For Corebridge, I think coming in and out of Q2, we guided to very soft, I would say, VII results for the balance of the year. I would say that for Q3, we will exceed the guidance we mentioned, and we'll be more in the ZIP code that Robin just mentioned, north of 5% for the quarter for VII. I think that's a positive versus what we had guided. Now, what I would say as well, and I want to give perspective to the audience here. Both companies' alts exposure is way less than the industry average. Our view, and it's very much aligned with Equitable, is that the alts play a role in people's portfolio.
When I say people, I mean company's portfolio, because if you're issuing, let's say, a liability, a life liability, or a pension risk transfer that has liabilities that exceed 25, 30 years, there's no good spread assets available, right? Economically, alts are the right asset to defease that liability until you can move those assets to some good spread assets, right? It's each of us personally, if you have a 30-year outlook, do you invest in fixed income or do you invest in equities, right? It's the same economic equation, it's just that the accountant makes it flow through operating income, which creates that volatility.
But if you buy and hold and you get the capital appreciation and the actual return and investment income over the course of time, which is what we're both saying here, it's a great asset to defease that long-tail liability, which is why we buy it to start.
Shifting to the wealth business. Equitable's wealth management business has had very good momentum across financial metrics. Can you speak a bit about what's been driving that and the continued runway for revenue growth and margin expansion? Then, I guess as a related follow-up, Marc touched on this a little bit, but just how can that all be accelerated with the wealth platform that will be then kind of connected with Corebridge?
We're really excited about the wealth business at Equitable. It's doubled in earnings since our investor day, and it hit its target two years ahead of plan. Why is that? I think it comes down to the people and the advice that we provide. So one thing that's unique to Equitable, I think, than many other wealth managers there is we recruit new people to the business and we hire experienced hires.
That's important because it ensures that we maintain discipline. And what really separates us is the training. So we have holistic life planning training programs, and we help our advisors transition from, they start in the schools, and they become wealth planners over time. And that's the best way we've seen to increase productivity. The proof is you've seen the double-digit productivity that we've had every year since we broke that business out as a segment.
The way we've done it is really unique because we do have these two levels of recruiting and the training that we provide overall. And I think that is really the secret sauce of Equitable. It's that strong performance culture and people helping each other out and trying to touch more customers overall. If you look from a net flow perspective, we've had double-digit organic growth in that business. I would say it's like top quartile. I can't find anyone that has better organic growth in their wealth business than we do in Equitable Advisors. And that's a proof point of more customers touching us and the productivity that we have in that business overall. We also have another wealth management business, too, that we are excited about. It's the private wealth business at AllianceBernstein.
That's a real gem inside AllianceBernstein that not a lot of people speak about that really provides a unique solution orientation towards ultra high net worth as well. So both business together, we touch clients in the mass affluent, and we touch clients in the high net worth area, and that excites us going forward. And Marc, you should touch about it. You've met now, I think, some of the Equitable-
Yeah
advisors and some of the people. Your thoughts are on that.
Yeah. I would say that as a somewhat objective assessment, when we started having a dialogue with Equitable, I would say my view, and my strong view was that Equitable Advisors was a gem, and the private wealth business out of AllianceBernstein was a gem. I would say the last six months have only proven to make it my belief they are even stronger based on all the dynamics that Robin has said. I have met 30-odd plus people of the leadership there and some of the people on the ground in the branches, and it is amazing how they go after doing what is right for their customers first and packaging the right solutions for their financial needs and how the culture there is incredible.
Now, I would say we have 1,000 or so advisors at Corebridge, and we invited some of the leadership of Equitable Advisors to one of our main national meetings a few months ago. The similar culture kind of runs through the Corebridge advisors to the point where a very senior leader at Equitable Advisors that was there said, "If I close my eyes, I would think I was at an Equitable Advisors meeting," given the cultural assessment then as well. The challenge for both organizations is you got to bring those two together, and you are dealing with personalities that don't like to disrupt their book, right? We got to be thoughtful how we bring it together and make sure that one plus one equals three.
But obviously, the platform and the success that Equitable Advisors has had is incredibly attractive for our future and speaks volume about why we are bullish on the value proposition we will have going forward.
Then on the Institutional Markets business, both companies have been generating double-digit growth in balances. Equitable's more focused on spread lending. I think there's more PRT as part of the Corebridge portfolio along with other liabilities. Do you see the merger changing much on the growth rates of those businesses? Can you do more as a combined company, or should we just think about it as you can continue to grow in that double-digit type range?
Yeah, I think we're going to increase the growth rate across all of our businesses with the revenue synergies that we have. If you think, Marc mentioned it on the spread lending businesses, now you have a bigger balance sheet, you can do more, and you could be disciplined. From an Equitable perspective, one thing that was interesting is we did want to broaden out our liabilities. An institutional business is a great way to allocate capital in a disciplined manner. You saw me outside in looking at Corebridge in the second quarter, how they were disciplined in allocating capital between institutional and retail, depending on where cost of funds is. Now we can do it at a much bigger and broader scale.
Having an institutional business that's at scale, outside in looking at Corebridge's PRT business, that's a good business that we would've loved to get into. But again, we can't do it at scale. Now we're at the merger, we can do it at scale. Having these different businesses plays an important part in terms of capital allocation, and it really drives discipline that Equitable couldn't do by itself today, or it'd have taken years, 10 years, to develop our institutional business where Corebridge is at today. From my perspective, it really helps increase the growth rate, but also how it allows us to be very disciplined capital allocators as well.
I guess, Marc, on the individual life business, you've been pretty positive on that business and its potential from the get-go, since you came into Corebridge. I guess, what's driving the optimism there? What have you been doing to position that business to have better growth?
Yeah. I am bullish on the life business, and I am bullish on the life business at Corebridge and the new Equitable based on a couple of facts that I am going to mention here. First of all, if you look at it, and I looked at it objectively when I joined the firm last December, if you look at the last 12, 16 quarters, Corebridge's life business has printed mortality gains. Okay, so what does that mean? That means a few things. That means the business has been well underwritten, and the business is performing, and mortality is improving, right? Because that is versus expected. Then you look at what is the market segment we are serving versus other market segments. It is serving, I would say the mid-market and the emerging affluent market, right?
That slice, and we can talk about it, I am an actuary, about what is driving that mortality, and I am happy to do so if we had more time. But that bodes well for the life business. Then I went to the new business area and I said, "Hey, how are we processing business? How is our STP? Show me how the firms think of our operations." And we had very low grades. I am going, okay, we are writing a decent amount of business, we are printing mortality margins, and we are less than appealing operationally. If we make ourselves appealing operationally, and we make ourselves the easiest to do business, and we create connectivity with the distribution and the end advisor, then we can easily accelerate the growth without putting any margin at risk.
The margin of the business are attractive, and they naturally diversify your balance sheet because we are obviously writing a lot of longevity business on the annuity side. Now, the balance sheet of Corebridge is still net long mortality, meaning we have got more mortality risk than longevity risk. I like that. I like that a lot because if I went to the casino and red was living longer and black was dying sooner, I would put my money on red based on all the money that is going into biotech and developments. I think there will be a non-linear shift in the mortality curve, and I am happy to talk about that in detail as well. That is why I am bullish on mortality, but I am bullish on mortality written thoughtfully and at good margins, and I think that is what we have at Corebridge.
Is the main driver of better growth potential there the operational improvements?
Yes, it's the operational without changing the product margins, without necessarily putting yourself in a position where you're writing a business that you'll find unappealing down the road. That doesn't mean we won't have assumption updates based on policy over here on older blocks or other blocks. I'm just telling you that the business we're writing and the business that's printing mortality margins is attractive one.
Because at AllianceBernstein, it's already achieved the private markets AUM target ahead of schedule. The margins are within the target range. What are the key milestones maybe from here now that you've achieved those two things?
Yeah. At Investor Day, we announced that we wanted to grow AB's private credit business to $90 billion- $100 billion. Ryan, as you mentioned, we achieved that well in advance of our target. AB's done a good job of building new capabilities and leveraging the Equitable insurance capabilities to accelerate growth. We hired a private ABS team that came over that was able to produce good risk-adjusted returns to us. They've now also built out their CML platform that allowed us to move $12 billion in CML assets to them in July. That's a huge differentiator for AB that other traditional asset managers don't have.
They have an insurer to help build new capabilities, and then AB has unique distribution, private wealth we talked about, but also in Asia where they're local in the markets, and they have 25+ years of history, a strong brand, where they can now distribute these products to third parties. That's going to be accretive to margins over time. Right now, new business at AB generates about 45%- 50% incremental margin that we put on. That's a good tailwind for us as we want margins to grow over time as well. But AB, as we mentioned, has been a differentiator for Equitable with this flywheel effect. It's just going to now run faster with the Corebridge merger now, a $90 billion- $100 billion of assets, general account and separate account moving over. As Marc mentioned earlier, that would take 10 years to do.
Now we can make AllianceBernstein a trillion-dollar asset manager after this merger. That is going to put them and separate them in terms of their growth profile and where they want to invest going forward as well.
The only thing I would add to that great story to make it even better is that when you look at the combined firm, there will be $80 billion-$90 billion of origination a year demand. There is the new business flow, plus there is a $500 billion asset that rolls over. Some of that will need to be redeployed. You are looking at, in addition to all of what we are doing off balance sheet, just the on balance sheet origination need will be north of $80 billion. That arms AB and everything Robin said with a lot of opportunity.
Just one, the regulatory front, any particular key issues or debates you are focused on that could either impact the industry or Equitable Corebridge?
Well, may I start? A hot topic right now, I guess always on the regulatory side of it, and one thing I know Marc agrees with me, the one thing the combined companies want to do is advocate for a healthier industry. We need to do our part, write good business, print good margins, be disciplined allocators of capital, but we want to advocate for a good, healthy industry overall.
You have seen Equitable do that. We started with VM-21 under reversion to the mean. That took a long time, as you tell Ryan, to become effective, but that is now in place. We did structure capital charges, so you see that impacting below BBB and below CLO businesses, and that has changed. You have seen some companies indicate that is going to change their risk profile for those securities overall. Then also reinsurance. We are advocates of reinsurance.
Both companies leverage Bermuda because we believe it's an economic regime and a disciplined regime. Our local regulators should have disclosures and understand what assets are moving offshore and why they're moving offshore and have good visibility with that as well. I think where the NAIC and where the industry is moving to is transparency. I think transparency is important to build trust, and ultimately, if the whole industry wants to re-rate and have a higher rating going forward as in P/E multiple, we need to have more trust, more trust from clients and more trust from shareholders. I think a healthier industry and continuing to advocate for a healthier industry is important for all of us.
All right. Excellent. We're going to wrap it up there. Thank you to the new Equitable team.
Thank you, Ryan.
Thank you, Ryan.
Thanks a lot.