CEO INsights: Featuring Anant Bhalla - CEO & President / American Equity

Thank you. I'm glad to be here.

Great, thank you. I think it's an amazing company, a company that Mr. Noble founded 25 years ago with a very clear focus and mission, and it's burned a few places in our industry where you can be employee first and that results in great outcomes for your customer first. It allows you to win in the marketplace. I'm thrilled about building the next chapter of American Equity, the next 25 years, anchored in retooling the company to dominate its core markets and invest in the community.

Well, the purpose of the company is really around, in these uncertain times, how we allow people to have protected accumulation of wealth and a paycheck for life that is backed by promise. Being an insurance company, to make a promise, no bank or asset manager can make a promise, but we make promises for those two things: how to protect your money and grow it, and then how to take it out over time to have a paycheck for life. We do that by being smart about investing. At a time when we're going to need to reinvest in our country, we can make investments that no other institution can make given the promises we make for a long time. So we invest with a long time horizon.

It has, in many ways. I think there will be phases of this. One phase was really around protecting your own, not just your employees but your business partners and your ways of working. It will result in embracing digital ways to engage and interact a lot more. At the end of the day, we're a B2B2C company. What do I mean by that? We serve policyholders but through an intermediary, through either a producer or an advisor, because those promises that we make are complicated. They need to be explained by someone who's a specialist. We now need to empower them to use Zoom or Skype or whatever digital means can be there to have more meaningful, deep, enriching conversations. That's one. I think the other part is that we're going to find ourselves dealing with five qualities to be successful in the next new normal as we define it. We'll need resolve, we'll need resilience, we'll need a return to some level of normalcy so that there's a peace of mind to get back to work and engage. It'll require reimagination how to do things, and reform. The old ways will not work.

It's going to be having a real open mind, a culture which we have of learning, a culture that wants to experiment, that allows a little bit of failure and is decisive about trying new things out and then learning. So specifically, when we talk about embracing digital to have a conversation about a customer's life journey, where they are and where is this need for protected accumulation of wealth and a paycheck for life coming to that, that is a part of where we'll have to reimagine things. The other thing is that work from home is actually working quite efficiently now, but when the malls open up and the restaurants are open and folks want to get around, the productivity levels will come back down. So the need for what you need today will even change as you have a slow return to work.

What I'm personally most excited about is actually moving to Des Moines and getting my kids in the school and closing on this house we're about to buy and get that all set up. But personal side aside, from a leadership point of view, I really look forward to spending one-on-one time with my teammates, getting to know our company better, and helping our company figure out how to have those crucial life journey discussions with producers and clients, because we make a big difference in people's lives. And that's what galvanizes me to come to work. We are a company with a purpose, and that purpose comes across in the way employees come to work for these two things we provide. But in addition to providing these two things, which is protected accumulation and then paycheck for life, our way of providing back is by investing. We have $53 billion of assets on our balance sheet. That means $53 billion invested so that others' businesses can grow or people can have a mortgage, whether it's a restaurant or a residence. It's investing in renewable energy over time or transportation over time. So it's about keeping the economy going, making more promises, and getting more assets and then investing further. So that's what galvanizes me. You can do that in a manner that has purpose. I'm looking forward to getting back to digital, new ways to do that, and more face-to-face interaction to do that.

Sure. I'm in Charlotte, North Carolina, my home office, which I happen to share with my five-year-old piano. So I get booted out every day at 1:33 in the afternoon, and I do Zoom meetings sometimes where people hear music, which is frankly a lot better than what they hear coming out of me.

Really, this is mine. I look forward to more conversations like this in the community. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.