Venerable

Venerable Holdings is relatively new to the insurance and annuity business, having been established in 2018. Since then, Venerable has grown with its acquisition of the Voya Insurance and Annuity Company (VIAC), the company’s annuity business line. In 2019, VIAC changed its name to Venerable Insurance and Annuity Company.

Venerable’s annuity holdings grew further in 2020, when the company acquired $12 billion in variable annuity business from Equitable Financial Life Insurance Company. In 2021, Venerable completed a transaction with Canada-based Manulife Financial Corporation to reinsure approximately $22 billion of variable annuity business from Manulife’s U.S. subsidiary John Hancock.

Insurance and annuity companies like Venerable Holdings receive credit ratings, or financial strength ratings, from independent agencies. These scores give customers an idea of the annuity provider’s overall financial stability and the likelihood that the company will be able to meet its obligations.

Venerable Insurance and Annuity Company, the subsidiary of Venerable Holdings that provides annuities, received an A- financial strength rating from Kroll Bond Rating Agency (KBRA) in 2022. KBRA is a full-service credit rating agency and is recognized as a Credit Rating Provider by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

KBRA revised Venerable’s operational and financial profile, increasing its outlook from stable to positive, in its 2022 report.

Venerable Insurance and Annuity Company operates primarily as a reinsurance company for other annuity providers. As such, the company does not sell annuities directly to consumers. The types of annuities Venerable reinsures include fixed and variable annuities.

Fixed Annuities

When you purchase a fixed annuity, you pay an initial premium that grows at a fixed rate over time. When your fixed annuity matures, the premium plus the interest it has accumulated are converted into a stream of income payments you can receive for the rest of your life.

The Voya fixed annuities that Venerable now manages are part of the Voya Quest series. These products are fixed indexed annuities, meaning they earn interest two ways: a fixed rate and a rate tied to the growth of an equity market index. The Quest series products offer the choice of a five-, seven- or ten-year contract schedule.

Variable Annuities

Many of the annuities Venerable insures are variable annuities. These products are considered riskier than fixed annuities but provide the potential for greater returns.

When you purchase a variable annuity, the lump sum premium is then allocated to a portfolio of investment products such as mutual funds. The value of the annuity is then tied to the performance of the investment portfolio.

The growth of a variable annuity usually isn’t capped the way a fixed indexed annuity’s growth is, so variable annuities benefit more from strong market years. In weak years, however, the variable annuity may not see any increase in value, while a fixed or fixed indexed annuity will still earn interest from the fixed rate.

Venerable insures variable annuities from a variety of companies, including John Hancock, a subsidiary of Manulife Financial. In 2021, Venerable agreed to reinsure over 163,000 variable annuities that were sold by John Hancock before the company halted its annuity sales in 2012.

Customers whose annuities are managed by Venerable can access their annuity policy information online on MyVenerable, the company’s online customer portal. The first time a customer logs in, they’ll need to register their account. To do so, the customer must have their contract or account number as well as identification such as their Social Security number or Tax ID number.

Venerable also provides answers to frequently asked questions on their FAQ Page. For any questions not answered on the website, Venerable has a customer service email address, [email protected], that customers can contact.

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