Athene Brand Guidelines: Apollo’s 2009 Annuity Venture, West Des Moines & a 2022 Merger

A private-equity firm’s move into retirement savings.

Athene is young for a life and annuity company. It was founded in 2009, co-founded by the alternative asset manager Apollo Global Management, according to English Wikipedia’s article on Apollo and a 2023 Bloomberg report republished by WealthManagement.com. The company’s own site gives the same year: “Since its founding in 2009,” it says, Athene has grown through its retail, flow reinsurance, pension group annuity and funding agreement channels.

The idea came out of the years after the 2008 financial crisis. Bloomberg reported that Apollo helped found Athene as a platform to buy blocks of annuities from insurers, and Wikipedia’s Apollo article says the company was founded at a time when other insurers were leaving the fixed annuities business and Apollo was looking for more capital to invest. Wikipedia adds that other alternative asset firms then followed it into insurance.

Its American base came through a purchase. In December 2012, English Wikipedia’s article on the British insurer says, Aviva agreed to sell its US arm, Aviva USA, to Athene Holding as part of a plan to reduce the group’s capital requirements; Wikipedia adds that Athene later sold the life insurance part of that business on to Global Atlantic. Athene today gives its headquarters as West Des Moines, Iowa, and Bloomberg in 2023 quoted the Iowa insurance regulator noting that Athene and other annuity providers are based in the state.

Athene grew into a separately listed company. Wikipedia’s article on Apollo’s chief executive says he helped scale Athene into a standalone public company before Apollo brought it back in.

Annuities, reinsurance and a separate balance sheet.

Athene describes itself as “a leading retirement services company” focused on financial security for retirees. Its product pages are about annuities rather than life cover: fixed indexed annuities, registered index-linked annuities, fixed annuities, immediate annuities and structured settlement annuities, sold through financial professionals who work with banks, independent marketing organisations and broker-dealers, the company says. Contracts are issued by Athene Annuity and Life Company in West Des Moines and, in New York, by Athene Annuity & Life Assurance Company of New York.

Institutional business sits alongside. Athene’s site describes flow reinsurance, which it calls “insurance for insurance companies,” pension group annuities taken on from companies’ pension plans, and funding agreements with large institutional investors. The business model, in the company’s own words, is to “earn more on its assets than it pays on its liabilities,” a margin it calls spread; pension group annuities let companies transfer the liabilities of a defined benefit plan to an insurer, Athene explains. Two reinsurers in Hamilton, Bermuda, are named in its legal notes, and its investor site lists operations in the United States, Bermuda, Canada and Japan, where it runs a separate Athene Japan website.

In a release dated 24 March 2026, Athene said it ranked number one in LIMRA’s 2025 U.S. Retail Annuity Survey for the third year running; in 2023 Bloomberg described it as the largest annuities provider in the US.

The consumer copy is plain and forward-looking. The site’s product banner says that “at Athene, we’re always reaching higher so you can plan more confidently,” and its pages are organised around retirement goals such as growing savings and creating income. The site is split into separate areas for individuals, financial professionals, institutions and investors, with a newsroom, a corporate social responsibility section and careers pages that include internships and a programme for hiring military veterans.

How US life insurers present themselves.

American life insurers and annuity firms sell promises that run for decades, and their identities tend to say so. Many lean on steady colours, most often blues, greens and navies, set against white, with wordmarks drawn to look calm rather than playful. Symbols carry much of the meaning: shields, lighthouses, arrows, letterforms built into monograms, and in Pacific Life’s case a humpback whale, which the company has used since 1997.

The photography follows a pattern too. Consumer pages show families, couples planning retirement and people at work, while a second set of pages speaks to the financial professionals, brokers and advisers who sell most of these products. Websites are usually divided by audience, into individuals, employers, institutions and financial professionals, with sections on life cover, annuities, retirement plans and workplace benefits.

Much of the visual language is regulatory as well as decorative. Product pages carry long disclosure notes naming the issuing company and the states where a contract is offered, and many companies give a page to financial-strength ratings from agencies such as S&P Global Ratings and Moody’s, each quoted as of a stated date. Annual reports, statutory filings and investor presentations sit alongside the consumer site, and for listed groups they are often where the corporate identity is most fully set out.

The companies in this guide come from different structures: mutuals owned by their policyholders, demutualised and listed groups, spin-offs from larger insurers and businesses owned by investment firms. This guide sets out what can be checked about each one, from its founding and ownership to the symbols and lines it uses today, and gives the company’s own statements as its claims.

Back inside Apollo since January 2022.

The relationship with Apollo came full circle in January 2022, when Apollo fully acquired Athene in an all-stock transaction, English Wikipedia says; Bloomberg reported in 2023 that the insurer had completed its merger with Apollo in early 2022. Athene’s investor site now says it “maintains a separate capital structure and credit profile following its merger with Apollo in 2022,” and describes Apollo as a publicly traded holding company with two principal businesses: the asset manager Apollo Asset Management and the retirement services company Athene.

That ownership has drawn attention. Bloomberg reported in May 2023 that private-equity ownership of insurers faced heightened scrutiny and that regulators were weighing capital requirements on structured credit holdings, while Apollo argued that Athene takes a conservative approach to capital. Athene now runs a video series, Athene: In Context, which it says explains how its business works and addresses misconceptions around “private equity ownership.” The series is hosted by Athene’s chief operating officer and features people from across Apollo and Athene, the company says. Bloomberg noted in the same 2023 report that, by taking full ownership, Apollo had become the only alternative asset manager to absorb an entire insurance firm.

For a design guide, Athene shows how a company founded in 2009 presents a retail annuity brand in plain retirement language, alongside investor pages that explain its corporate structure. Compare Jackson, another US annuity firm, and Lincoln Financial. For this guide we use a laurel green, a sage and a harvest gold with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Athene’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.