Life insurance stock weakness after Mark Walter headlines overdone, Evercore says

Apollo Global Management

18/08/2026 11:32

** Share price weakness in traditional annuity players and some larger alternative asset manager backed annuity players CRBG.N, EQH.N, BHF.O, LNC.N on Monday is an overreaction, Evercore analyst Thomas Gallagher says
** Evercore says a WSJ story on Monday morning related to federal probe into billionaire Mark Walter seemed to create heightened level of investor concern for life insurance sector and alt asset manager backed insurers
** Walter's Delaware Life Insurance and Clear Spring Life are under investigation by federal regulators on whether certain private credit investments categorized as unaffiliated investments were actually affiliated in nature
** Brokerage views events to be largely idiosyncratic to Delaware Life and its related companies rather than a wide-spread issue for rest of industry
** Some sponsor-backed insurers such as Delaware Life generally take higher asset risks vs traditional life insurers and having some of those portfolios de-risked probably a positive for rest of sector - Evercore 
** Deeper dive review into investment portfolios of publicly-traded lifecos and larger alternative backed insurers doesn’t suggest similar practices, leading us to conclude the regulatory probe won’t widen much beyond what’s already been disclosed, Gallagher says

 (Reporting by Arasu Kannagi Basil in Bengaluru)
 ((ArasuKannagi.Basil@thomsonreuters.com;))