Good afternoon, everybody. We're here with the CEO of CoreBridge and the future CEO of Equitable, Mark Constantini, and as well as Chris Filiaggi, the interim CFO of CoreBridge. Mark and Chris, thank you guys both for joining us. It's a privilege to have you guys here. So it's a lot of exciting stuff going on. If we can start, Mark, on the subject of the merger, right? CoreBridge merging with Equitable will create a full-scale retirement platform with a variety of complementary annuity products, broader distribution, as well as the capabilities from the Alliance Bernstein. As we think about the merger, can you maybe help us think about the progress thus far and where do you see the growth opportunities for annuities, group retirements, institutional, and a variety of other things?
Thanks, Bob. It's great to be here, and great to be here with Chris, obviously, as well, and thanks for hosting us. It's very nice of you. So, you know, how is it going so far? What I would say is that we announced a transaction at the end of March, so call it, you know, two months ago, give or take. And at the time when we announced it, we made, you know, I would say strong commitments, both firms obviously coming together, that first of all, from a leadership perspective, we would announce the first three layers of the organization by, you know, and the Q2 summer months type of thing. You may have seen that we announced the first layer, the layer of the executive team that will work alongside me in leading this company on a go-forth basis. So that's been done. And we're going through now what we call wave two of the process. And that's in flight right now. And we would expect over the coming weeks that that wave would be communicated as well. I would say as we go down these waves, there'll be more internal communications versus let's say you know my leadership team which was you know made more you know communicated in a more public fashion but so that's one of then in concert with that we we committed to you know get going on the integration planning and i emphasize planning given we operate very much as a separate you know companies until the transaction comes to a close but we have an integration and transformation office that was set up we We have individuals from both companies that are leading those efforts and working alongside, you know, the people running the businesses, you know, on a daily basis. And we're working towards, you know, all of the integration plans that would take place once we close, you know, later this year, at the end of the year. And tied to that, obviously, we've done all of our proxies been filed. You know, all our regulatory filings have been done, both, you know, domestically and, you know, internationally, tied to, you mentioned Alliance Emergency, and I think a number of them touched that, you know, our FINRA processes in flight. So we have, we continue to be, I would say, you know, very opportunistic and optimistic, I should say, that, you know, we will close this transaction by the end of the year. So in terms of synergies, you know, I'll say just a couple of comments before maybe letting you ask a few more questions. But, you know, I would say one of the attractive aspects of this transaction is it's not just an expense synergy kind of transaction as we bring together these two great firms. We did guide and we did share guidance about the expense synergies. And we did say it was going to be creative day one, given the structure and the economics. and there was going to be double-digit accretion going into 2029 on the run rate basis. But there's a lot of revenue synergies that are coming with this transaction. We communicated 90-plus billion of assets coming to Alliance Bernstein from the Corbridge side of the balance sheet. So that's – and there's more to come there on the revenue side, on the growth side. So it is definitely a growth story, and I'd start to survey more Americans as they try to help them retire with confidence and dignity, basically.
Got it. So it's really like a layer-by-layer, brick-by-brick type of process that is ongoing but on time. That's very helpful. So if we think about what you just said about synergy, right? If we think about product side, obviously both companies have very comprehensive annuity suites. Can you maybe help us think about what the product mix will like going forward You're also having an investor day this year. So we'd be curious if you can give us a preview in terms of how you think about the low-hanging fruit opportunities on the revenue side and what are the milestones you're looking at as well.
Yeah, no, I appreciate you highlighting these revenue synergies because, you know, we haven't spoken details about them, and I'll still keep my comments at a high level pending that investor day that's going to happen in, you know, the second quarter of next year more than likely. So I would say in addition to the $90 billion of assets, and maybe we can double-click on the $90-plus billion, which will make Alliance Bernstein a trillion-dollar platform, which otherwise would take them a number of years to get there given the nature of their activity. And the $90 billion would come from both the on-balance sheet activity from Corbridge, let's say the $250-plus billion of assets we have on our general account, and some of the what I call separate account or off-balance sheet assets we manage to, you know some of our funding vehicles versus whether it's a traditional verbal annuity or group annuity contract or obviously other types of separate account products so so it's a combination of those assets that will migrate to alliance bernstein you know in time but in time being you know in the more the same timeline i would say as we would exercise against our expense synergies so that's value add for sure but over and above that you know one of the benefits of this transaction and you know for those of you that heard me uh heard me speak before like i believe very very strongly in world-class distribution and i believe strongly in what attracted me to corbridge uh you know in the first place is our world-class you know wholesale distribution you know our very strong i would say work site distribution on the group retirement side and obviously our you know our very strong distribution on institutional market side we have a retail wealth management distribution that's about you know we round it to about a thousand individuals or so. I say all this because Equitable obviously has a very prominent and large and scale wealth management operation that has, let's say, 45, 4,600 individuals. So we're going to combine the two. And I say that because they sell a lot of proprietary products through that channel, right? So their wireless sales, for example, or a large share of their wireless sales, which have better economics come from that channel. They sell fixed annuities and fixed index annuities which were our leading you know Corbridge is a leading manufacturer in the industry and we don't have access to that channel and we will now you know after the merger so and they do two to three billion of fixed annuities and fixed index annuities which will be obviously available to the Corbridge uh you know and balance sheet so that's another synergy we manufacture and actively sell an index universal life product that as well is a product that's popular on their uh on their platform there on their wealth management side so that's one that we'll be able to cross-sell. They have a VUL product, Variable and Universal Life product, and that product was on our design table, so we'll be able to obviously port that product to our distribution system on the Corbridge side. So those are just some of the, you know, kind of ideas. Now, there's another revenue growth, I would say synergy and opportunity, which is with our partnership with Nippon Life, you know, and that Corbridge Nippon owns, let's say I'll round up to 27% of Corbridge, and they will own over 15% of the go-forward, you know, new Equitable. And I say there's a revenue growth and a synergy because one of the attractive, I would say, activity of Equitable is through Alliance Bernstein is their, you know, their global footprint. And they're a very active player in that region, and they've got a great brand and distribution, and there will be opportunity to partner, you know, with Nippon, potentially as, you know, obviously, you know, they look at, you know, the new co. and as well for us to manufacture spread products for the local Japanese economy, which is reflating and has the need for similar products that we obviously manufacture here in our home country.
So there's quite a bit to look forward to for the investor day. So maybe, Chris, one for you, right? Obviously, we talked about expense synergy, and then one of the main drivers you're guiding to is the $500 million of expense synergy. Can you maybe provide some pacing in terms of the timing and when we're going to get there? How much is expected on year one versus, let's say, go forward year two, year three, post-close?
Yeah, sure. Happy to shed some light on that. So maybe I want to start by reiterating that we think the $500 million expense energy target is achievable. As we've done some of the pre-integration work, as Mark alluded to, I think that's reaffirmed our commitment and ability to make sure we can achieve the $500 million. When I think about how that's going to earn in, I would expect to earn in about 30% by the end of year one, 75% by the end of year two, and the rest of it should trickle in shortly thereafter. When I look across the broader areas of potential opportunities, I think we see a lot of different areas and opportunities to harmonize and synergize the expenses. So first, if I look at the back office functions, there's room to consolidate back office functions. There's ability to rationalize vendor contracts and how we negotiate with vendors and face off with them. When we look at the IT landscape and we look across the systems, there are meaningful opportunities to consolidate and simplify the IT stack. And then lastly, I would point to an area like real estate where there's an ability to simplify the real estate footprint for both companies.
Got it. No, that's very helpful. Thank you. So maybe here's another one, the way we think about it. If you look at the broader insurance market, it's been the marriage between insurance and asset manager has really evolved over the last, call it, 10, 15 years. In this post-merger environment, you would have three very strong brands, Alliance Bernstein, BlackRock, and Blackstone. Can you maybe help us think about how you envision these partnerships evolve going forward?
Yeah, that's a very good question, Bob. So, you know, maybe some context. At Corbridge, we have these strategic partnerships with BlackRock and Blackstone. So they're obviously very alive and vibrant. To give context, you know, last year in 2025, we originated 55 billion of assets at Corbridge, which speaks to, obviously, the gross flows that we get on our retirement business. but as well, you know, as assets turn over, right? So, and we could not have originated all of that, you know, by ourselves. So a third of it was originated by our own, obviously, internal capabilities. A third was from BlackRock, and a third was from Blackstone, right? So, and if you look at the combined UCO, and if you, let's say, whether you do so, you know, practically when we close or you do so implicitly here, if you take our internal origination and you add that to Alliance Bernstein, which will be obviously the affiliate manager of the firm, I would say in total, when you look across the platform, I can easily see upwards of 80-plus billion that needs to be originated, right? So I think a large part of that origination obviously will come from Alliance Bernstein and our current origination capability, as I mentioned. But BlackRock and Blackstone will continue to be vibrant partners, right? And I think there's a lot of a silver lining there because they are world-class and what they do as well we need to originate you know obviously from different sources and they bring you know obviously differentiated capabilities and complementary capabilities to you know what's you know currently in place alliance bernstein and what we can only originate ourselves right so and it has a layer as well when you think about the origination like they originate then it comes to our general account you know kind of oversight and lisa longino is the chief investment officer of core bridge and will be the chief investment officer of you know the the new co uh you know she has our own team and we have our own risk appetite whatever so there's another layer of underwriting before it hits you know our balance sheet and then we'll have like three world-class originators to to help us serve americans better right and that's you know the you know what we're here to do so we think there's a there's a big plus and silver
lining to this as i said so so one of the uh the effect of the industry's evolution of this asset manager and life insurance is really the increasingly importance of VII as part of earnings. So maybe this one's to you, Chris, is that the industry seems to be posting below-target VII returns for some time, right, on and off. Can you maybe talk about how CoreBridge is navigating these industry-wide headwinds and then what is your long-term thinking and outlook when it comes to VII and then the structure of this going forward?
Yeah, happy to share some thoughts there. So for purposes of Q2, I think a lot of the conditions that we saw in the first quarter were seeing repeat themselves in Q2. We see ongoing market volatility. We see uncertainty geopolitical environments. And we see disruptions in the software and private credit space. And all that contributes to near-term headwinds for the company. For purposes of Q2, my expectation is that our alternative returns are lower than what they were in 1Q. When I look at BII in total, I expect it to be roughly consistent with where we were for the first quarter. When we think about the full-year results and what we should expect for the full-year, we do expect on a full-year basis we come in somewhere in the 1% to 2% range. Now, that is, of course, below our long-term expectations, But when we look at alternative assets in general, over the long term, they've generally returned over 10%. And we still continue to believe that they're an appropriate asset class and a good fit for our ALM matching. They're very well suited for long-dated liabilities like PRT and some of the other long-dated liabilities. Thank you for that.
The other part of investment portfolio, right, is really private credit. And then when we think about private credit headlines, obviously that has been an issue that's often discussed, right? But if we think about the portfolio you have, and then can you maybe help us think about the risk that you see within private credit? And then maybe also importantly, just a broader risk management framework, because it feels like every two years, the industry is facing some type of asset concerns. But, yeah, maybe just help us with both things here.
Yeah, I think where I would start, when we think about private credit, there are fundamentally more private companies than public companies, and there is a need for private companies to have debt financing. This is an area where insurers, including Corbridge, have had a long, successful track record lending to private companies. I don't foresee that changing. When we talk about private credit, what we're really talking about is what we would consider a middle market lending book. That's a $3.3 billion book on a $250 billion asset portfolio. So it's a very small piece of the overall pie. When we think about software in that middle market lending book, that's about less than $300 million of that $3.3 billion book. So, again, a very small piece. All of those software assets continue to perform. Middle market lending is also an area where we have very attractive risk-adjusted returns, and we feel very well compensated for the risk that we take. And to the extent that losses do emerge in middle market lending, we expect that to play out over time, and we expect those to be yield adjustments, not fundamentally credit events. When I zoom out and I think about the entirety of our portfolio, we do routinely, rigorously stress test the entirety of our investment portfolio. To the extent there were short-term headwinds from an RBC credit perspective, if we expect that to recover in a reasonably short period of time.
Thank you. So, Mark, if we think about it from a business perspective in the segments, right, individual retirement, you talked about the opportunities post-merger, but both fixed annuity, right-of-market have become more competitive over time. And if you're thinking about the competitive landscape, are you seeing irrational behaviors from your competitors? How do you see the competitive landscape? I'm just curious your thoughts on that.
Yeah, thank you, Bob. So, okay, maybe some context. So in 2025, I would say that both Equitable and Corbridge, if you add it together, you know, originated on the individual side, the individual retirement side. We have an institutional market business, which I'll mention in a second here. But, you know, 45-ish billion flows, right? So that's a significant amount of flow. If you think about it, the market itself overall is called $450 billion to $500 billion or so, has significant tailwinds in terms of the demographic realities of the graying of America and the need for saving for retirement and some sort of guaranteed aspect of that, and as well, the decumulation or lifetime income that people need in retirement. So I say all that because having the three products, and the three products have three different client applications, right? And what, you know, we often forget in these settings, and, you know, the insurance industry in general, I think, needs to focus more on this communicating. This is, hey, we are here to help Americans retire with confidence and dignity, and each American has a different need and, you know, I would say risk appetite and personal financial situation that requires different types of savings vehicles to get there, right? So from the fixed annuity, which has obviously a guaranteed kind of feature to it, to the Ryla, which has more equity upside and acceptance of some downside, there's one of these products that fits their needs. So first and foremost, it's like let's get enough and world-class distribution on all aspects to get in front of the consumer through the advisor where he or she would advise the end consumer about the right products and accumulation for their products. And we feel the competitive nature of how we want to approach that is by differentiating the fact that we are one-stop shopping. So if you like, you know, dealing with the new equitable as we come together, you could buy all of the services that is needed for your client. Whereas, you know, when we think about it, if you're a financial advisor, how many stories can you learn, right? And how many new business processes, how many wholesalers, how many service folks can you learn? So the more you can do all of your business to one firm that you, you know, come to respect and that obviously hold to their promises they're making, the better you'll be. So the competitive pressures are real and the competitive pressures, you know, typically, you know, seep into the industry and the simpler designs, right? And I think what we pride ourselves in is our ability to originate great assets, as we talked about before, but as well, you know, design and innovate in the solutions to the end consumer so that, you know, price doesn't become always, you know, the reason why people choose XYZ. Then there's the distribution, the service, the promise, as I said, right? But, yes, there is always going to be competitors. But I would say, you know, through the years, and I've been doing this for over 35 years, it's always been a competitive environment. It's a matter of what does the flavor of ice cream look like, you know, in the current format, right? And so and I think our response to this and my response to this is if you look through various cycles, you know, you'll see that Corbridge and Equitable have always been in the top echelon of our markets because we matter to the distributors as much as obviously they matter to us. And a lot of our products are bespoke, you know, into these different distribution channels. Then the other thing I would say is then we, and what I think investors should look at, is are we sound allocators of our capital to the highest return for our shareholders while serving the end consumer as best we can, right? And then this is where other distribution venues like institutional markets comes into play, where we'll do more FABN or GIC-like products, or we'll go into the PRT market, as Chris was saying, or we'll go into other markets where we feel the clearing price and the cost of the liabilities as such that our origination, you know, that we're getting, you know, gets the right risk return tradeoffs, you know. So I know it's a long answer to your question, but in all of those markets somewhat, you know, have their own competitive, you know, kind of energies or forces at play, and we feel that service distribution, managing complexity and delivering simplicity, you know, and, you know, being easy to do business with will be a differentiator that, you know, will ultimately lead to companies like such as our own not to have to compete on price always, you know.
Size on scale does matter.
Yeah, size and scale matters, yeah.
Especially since they come up with a new flavor of ice cream all the time. Chris, maybe on that similar line of thinking, right, maybe partially because of competition, spread compression has been an ongoing problem with the industry. It could be partially because of that. Curious as how you think about managing the issue. The company reduces short-term sensitivity to rates by, call it, 70%, 75% since 2024. But as the combined entity, what are the actions you think that's worth taking
or what are some of the things you're really paying attention to? Yeah, so I think that's a great question. When we think about spread compression, people generally think of what's happening on the competitive landscape. And what we've generally seen is that when there's spread compression from competition, that tends to be low single-digit basis points. You know, for us, the issue has historically been the floating rate assets. We've reduced our floating rate assets by 75% over the last two years. At this point, the 25 basis point change in SOFR is going to result in somewhere in a $20 to $25 million impact to earnings. We believe that's very manageable. When we think about base spread income for individual retirement, where we expect that to land, we still expect that to be within our guidance from earlier in the year. We still believe spreads will bottom out towards the bottom of 2026. When we look ahead to the combined company and NUCO, we see a lot more diversified sources of earnings across spread income, fee income, asset management, and underwriting. So we see a lot of benefit and upside to the combined company in diversifying some of those sources of earnings.
That's very helpful. Maybe shifting a little bit to the group retirement business, right? Like fee business now is becoming a more critical piece of the overall company. for Corbridge, but as you think about the post-merger environment, curious how you're really thinking about the fee business and how that fits into the future of the merged entity, the new equitable, so to speak, right? And also just curious how you think about flow and then how you think about the growth opportunities there as well.
Yeah. Yes. So I would say maybe some color on Corbridge and us entering into this transaction. So we, in our group retirement business, which is the main source of our fees for us, we sold our variable annuity business last year at quite attractive clearing price, and we've returned the capital to our shareholders, as you well know. So the main driver of fee income for us is in that wealth management kind of activity in our group retirement business, and we were going through and are going through this pivot where we're taking traditional record-keeping and investment and spread assets and moving it as we're penetrating that participant and the family household to, you know, fee kind of businesses. And that's creating, I would say, a transition in the economics and the profile of that business. And, you know, we are into it and have another, you know, 18, 24 months before, you know, we see kind of that turning on. That's by itself as Corbridge, right? And when you look at one of the attractive components of us coming together with Equitable, and there are many, But one of them is, you know, from the corporate perspective, this complements and augments the diversity, diversification of our balance sheet because, you know, the Alliance Bernstein kind of revenue and earnings profile, which we talked about earlier, that we could cross sell into our general account and our balance sheet assets in terms of sourcing and origination. But as well, this wealth management, you know, business that Equitable has and is very good, Equitable Advisors, obviously, you know, top-notch advisor. And if you combine those individuals and, you know, they can accelerate that transformation of our group retirement business, let alone bringing together the two-group retirement platform and accessing, you know, more participants that way. So that's how kind of where we see the upside on the fee. And, you know, I strongly believe that having, you know, some balance and diversification in the revenue profile, the earnings profile, the capital base, the risk profile of the firm, both in, you know, spread businesses, fee businesses, and some of the, what I would call biometric insurance risk is, you know, is very appealing for investors.
Yeah, it sounds like there's a lot of more things to come, right? More things to come. More things to come, yeah. Maybe also on the institutional market, pension risk transfer has been lumpy, episodic, which is fairly normal. And then we're also expecting some level of activities picking up in the second half of this year. Can you maybe talk about pension risk opportunities, pension risk transfer opportunities, 2026 and beyond?
Yeah, thank you. So our pension risk transfer business, which is part of our institutional markets business at Corbridge, has been a vibrant growth area for us. And we're very active domestically here in the U.S. And we're active in the U.K. and some of the funded reinsurance type pension closeouts there. And I would say both markets, and given the rate where interest rates are, both planned fundings are pretty attractive. So there's still a propensity for fiduciaries to look at closing out their obligations here to engaging in transactions as a pension risk transfer. And we feel that, you know, there's, again, $40, $50-ish billion markets in both sources, as I said, and we are active participants there. And as you mentioned, Bob, you know, if you see our behavior in this market, we are selective. We go after a certain type of case, a certain profile of pensioners. and it ties to what I was saying earlier about the differentiating capabilities and history and knowledge we bring so that we don't compete purely on the payouts and the simpler liabilities. And we feel it's a way to deploy our capital thoughtfully against the other places where we can get the right risk return profile. And I would expect, and we've guided both Chris and I to our audiences, that we expect to have a similar year this year to what we've had in the past, which is a $4 to $5 billion type of overall profile to that business. And we have, obviously, an FABN and GIC on the side, on the institutional market side. So we see some activity build up in the second half of the year, and it will remain to be seen how it materializes for us. But that's kind of how we see the market right now.
Maybe also the other one, if we look at life insurance, even though this is the life insurance sector, I would say not everybody wants life insurance business. So if you think about the long-term role of life insurance within the combined company, can you maybe give us some thoughts into where does that fit going forward?
So our life business has attractive economics, and it's a business that I've said before in my six months here and observing the business and economics and the distribution and the outlets and the target client that we could easily be double the size, and I would welcome that. Because there's a natural hedge there between the mortality and the longevity. We wrote and we write, you know, but more so than that, there's a need, right? You know, there's a need for providing thoughtful life insurance at different stages of someone's life. And I think our distributors, you know, want to sell more of the Corbridge life insurance products. And with Equitable, obviously, we'll have the Verbal Universal Life, as I said. But more than anything else, to me, it's an investment in infrastructure and connectivity and the ease of doing business, which is without changing the product structure and economics, we can drive volume by being easier to do business with and by being faster to do business with and by improving our service value proposition, which is where we're putting some of our investment dollars now. So we are, you know, quote, unquote, you know, bullish on the life business, you know, at CoalBridge, particularly in the segments we're in.
That's helpful. obviously this is not going to be a financial conference without talking about AI if we think about you noted that the deployment of AI powered digital agents will help servicing representatives, navigating complex group retirement plans, information, things of that nature can you maybe talk about your longer term vision of how this AI phase will look like for the merged company, how you wish that combined entity will kind of evolve in terms of capability along with the technology itself.
So again, I'll speak for Corbridge more directly, but I think some of my comments apply across the merged company. We are behind in AI and digital and investment, and the company has gone through this separation from AI. Obviously, that's complete, that's behind us, but obviously the focus and attention of my colleagues across the company were by successfully separating from you know, from AIG, which has been done, right? But, you know, it took a two, three year, and it took the attention span, and you had to stand up a lot of functions and infrastructure to be, obviously, a self-standing public company, which successfully done, obviously delivered on the guidance that was set out to all of the investors and quite proud of, you know, obviously what the company represents now and the number of customers and how we serve them. But tied to that, there's been less investment and focus on modernizing infrastructure, on digitizing, on AI deployment. And we said that this year alone, we're going to spend another $50 to $70 million on improving digitization technology and thoughtful investment in AI. So here's a few silver linings. I said all that. Last year, the firm did upwards of $35 to $40 billion of top line. And obviously, we delivered it. So imagine what we could do if we're thoughtful here. So and the other silver lining, which is, I think, going to be obvious to the audience is that it doesn't take a lot to catch up given the pace at which progress and, you know, advances are taking place. And sometimes being a fast follower and deploying certain things, you know, puts you in a better light and a better focus and more efficiency. The last thing I'll say is that there's a fixed cost to all of this deployment and investment. And if you look at the combined co, obviously operating leverage will be, you know, immense, right? And we're going to spread that cost over a much larger, you know, expense platform. And the other benefit I would say that sometimes gets lost in some of our comments is that 100% of this operating leverage is in one country and one market. And I say that because some companies have various activities across the world, and that's great, by the way. I'm not here criticizing that. However, as they deploy some of this, you know, there's tailoring for each market. But in our case, obviously, as we build and develop stuff, it's through one distribution channel, one market and whatever. And I think we got a lot of benefits of scale there to be had to that fixed cost. And we're going to deploy it thoughtfully to grow distribution, grow the ease of doing business, to obviously have advisors see us as, you know, the one-stop shop to help identify more customers where the products and services we manufacturer are good for them and to make the experience as we onboard pleasurable and as we deliver our promises at the back end as well and the all of the infrastructure in the middle you know we will rely on third-party providers that you know will drive the efficiency and you know need to implement ai for them to deliver you know top-notch service which is what people like
ourselves and others will expect of them thank you for that one thing you brought up is really one-stop shop distribution, right? Equitable and Corbridge, I would make the argument is a brand of equals, right? Both are very recognizable. But from that perspective, the decision was to pick the equitable brand, right? So as you think about the managing and potential distribution relationship or changes in distribution going forward, can you maybe help us think about that balance? Like, how are you planning to do that? and what is really the core purchase presence in the middle market and how that helps you as well from a distribution perspective.
Yeah, yes, thank you. So I mentioned the integration and transformation office. This is one of the items that is, you know, very high on their list to, you know, how as we come together towards year end and we go to market as, you know, a merged company in the future, you know, what products to what distribution and under what brand and how quickly, and, you know, simplest things like, you know, websites, email addresses, you know, how a distributor, to which, you know, platform do you clear, where does the liability end up, those are all being worked on now. And thoughtfully, and I would say putting ourselves in the shoes of the end consumer plus the distributor first and how would, you know, those individuals and those firms like to interface with us, balance with, obviously, the expense energies that Chris was mentioning that, you know, are real, and attainable that, you know, we feel strongly will create the operating leverage I just discussed in my prior remarks. So I say all that because in some respects, we might move very fast. In some respects, we've got to be thoughtful in how we do this. But I would say that the selection of Equitable as the GoFord brand was not an easy decision for us at Corbridge, you know, for obvious reasons. There was a lot of emotional attachment to this five-year-old brand, and I think it's something to the employees and it was very meaningful to our distributors and you know our customers but it is a five-year-old brand and we're merging with our 167 year old you know brand household name as well and with our line spurnstein obviously a you know world-class asset manager so you know it's only logical to pick to pick that brand but you know it's logical with your head it's emotional with your heart and and but that's the brand ultimately Now, the one thing I will say is that there will be a new release of the brand that will try to bring together, I would say, connotations of each firm into the new equitable so that everybody can embrace the GoFord company and feel part of the family GoFord, which is employees, communities, obviously distributors, and then consumers.
More to look forward to.
More to look forward to, yeah.
Well, we're at time, so we really appreciate you spending the time with us. Thank you very much. Thanks a lot, Bob.