Jackson National Annuity Holders: Q3 2026 10-Q and Brooke Re

Who is who: Jackson, Brooke Life, Brooke Re, Hickory Re

The 10-Q lists the group in its notes. The contract you hold is issued by Jackson National Life Insurance Company (or its New York subsidiary, Jackson National Life Insurance Company of New York). Above it sits Brooke Life Insurance Company, “the direct parent of Jackson”, a Michigan life insurer, and above that Jackson Financial Inc., the publicly listed holding company that files with the SEC. Two captive reinsurers sit in the same family.

For readers who ask whether Jackson is owned by a private equity firm: no. The 10-K names Prudential plc as the former parent; the 10-Q reports that TPG Operating Group II, L.P. acquired “an approximate 6.5% equity stake for $500 million” in February 2026 (4,715,554 shares of common stock) and that TPG now provides Investment Grade Asset-Based Finance and Direct Lending capabilities under 10-year initial investment management agreements, while PPM America, a Jackson subsidiary, “will continue to manage the majority of Jackson's general account.” Our page on TPG's own filings and the Jackson stake covers TPG's side.

What Brooke Re does, in the company's own words

The 10-Q says that under the arrangement “Jackson executes the hedging on behalf of Brooke Re” and that “Results from that hedging are borne by Brooke Re, with intercompany settlement generally occurring over a three-year period.” It states that Brooke Re receives the fees relating to variable annuity guaranteed benefit riders, “approximately $2.8 billion annually”, while Jackson keeps the base annuity contract fees. Because Jackson and Brooke Re are both subsidiaries of the same holding company, “The reinsurance transaction eliminates upon consolidation at JFI.”

The filing is also direct about the pressure point: “As expected, rising equity markets and rising interest rates can increase the intercompany settlement and could impact liquidity at Brooke Re.” It lists the tools it would use, “intercompany lending arrangements, capital contributions, or the use of the pre-capitalized trust securities facility.” The stated purpose is capital: the structure “allows us to mitigate the impact of the cash surrender value floor on Jackson's total adjusted capital, statutory required capital, and risk-based capital ratio.” For regulatory reporting Brooke Re uses “U.S. GAAP with necessary modifications”, including a fixed long-term volatility assumption.

What this means for a contract holder is a structural point, not a warning. Your contract stays an obligation of Jackson National Life; the 10-Q describes ceded risk moving to a company in the same group. A captive measured on a modified basis is the reason the filing is careful to say its “regulatory reporting” differs from plain GAAP. Whether that is better or worse for a given policyholder is an opinion the filing does not offer, and neither do we.

How much is in each product

The MD&A's policy and contract liabilities table puts every product on one basis. The separate account (variable annuity assets held apart from the general account) is three quarters of the total.

The account value view, which is the figure on a contract statement, is in the next table. Variable annuities are about 87% of retail annuity account value (our arithmetic: 243,184 divided by 279,653). The filing's account value for fixed and fixed index annuities is shown “net of reinsurance”, so it excludes the block ceded to Athene.

The growth is in what the company sells now. In the third quarter of 2026 retail sales were $6,527 million against $5,362 million a year earlier, with RILA sales of $2,967 million (third quarter of 2025: $2,066 million), fixed index annuity sales of $627 million ($73 million) and variable annuity sales of $2,764 million ($2,852 million). If your contract is a RILA, our RILA prospectus census compares the buffer, cap and surrender charge terms across insurers, including Jackson's MarketLink Pro.

The guarantees: benefit base against account value

A living-benefit rider such as a GMWB for Life pays from a benefit base, a notional figure that can differ from the account value. The 10-Q gives both for each rider. Across all living-benefit contracts the two are close: the benefit base was $180,289 million, and the account value of contracts with a living benefit was about $180,474 million (our arithmetic: $243,184 million total less $62,710 million with no living benefit). The filing calls the book “seasoned” and “out-of-the-money”.

Two reading notes. First, for GMWB for Life the benefit base was $966 million, or 0.6%, above the account value (our arithmetic), a thin margin on a $172.8 billion block. Second, the market risk benefit (MRB) accounting nets the company's guarantee obligations against the fees it expects to collect: at September 30, 2026 MRB assets were $8,489 million and MRB liabilities $2,920 million, a net asset of $5,569 million against a net asset of $4,113 million at December 31, 2025. The weighted average attained age of variable annuity policyholders was 71 (70 at year-end 2025). The net amount at risk for variable annuities was $5,637 million (2.3% of variable annuity account value, our arithmetic) against $5,471 million.

Substantially all of the older GMIB benefits “are reinsured” with an unrelated party, and the filing says that the optional lifetime income rider on certain fixed index annuities is reinsured with Athene. The 10-Q does not describe any one rider on a named product such as Perspective II; it reports by rider type.

Hedging, and the result that Brooke Re carries

Jackson hedges the guarantees with derivatives. Its own description is that the hedges “are not expected to match” the movement in the MRB liabilities, so reported results swing from quarter to quarter.

For a policyholder the hedging line matters for one reason: it is the cost of keeping the guarantees funded. A single quarter of hedging gain or loss does not change what a contract owes; it moves the company's reported income and, through the three-year settlement, the cash that passes between Jackson and Brooke Re.

Money in and money out

The 10-Q's flow table counts what customers deposit and take out. On this measure variable annuities lost money in both periods shown, while RILAs and fixed index annuities gained.

Our arithmetic: retail outflows were about 3.0% of beginning-of-quarter account value in the third quarter of 2026 ($8,410 million on $284,420 million) and 3.1% in the third quarter of 2025 ($7,946 million on $257,952 million), so the ratio is steady while the dollar figure grows with the book. The company explains the variable annuity trend this way: “Elevated variable annuity surrenders and withdrawals were driven by mature policies from higher sales years coming out of their surrender charge period, along with higher surrenders as guaranteed benefits generally are less in the money during times of strong equity market performance.”

On exit terms, the filing says that “100% of our RILA policy and contract liabilities were subject to surrender charges of at least 5% or at market value in the event of discretionary withdrawal by customers,” and that more than half of general account reserves “are not surrenderable, included surrender charges greater than 5%, or included market value adjustments.” The company counts $43.3 billion of unencumbered, unrestricted cash, short-term investments and securities as its source of liquidity for sudden withdrawals.

What the general account holds

Our arithmetic: other asset-backed securities were 13.9% of the $57,610 million of debt securities at fair value; with commercial and residential mortgage-backed securities, structured securities were 18.1%. Mortgage loans, net of allowance, were $11,268 million, or 14.6% of total investments. The 10-Q reports $998 million of unfunded commitments to limited partnerships and LLCs and $1,695 million of unfunded commitments on fixed-rate mortgage loans and other debt securities. The filing does not define or total “private credit”, so we do not report a share; we report the lines it does give.

About $12.9 billion of the $77.3 billion of investments (16.8%, our arithmetic) sit in funds withheld accounts supporting reinsurance, which the filing describes this way for the Athene agreement: “Jackson retains physical possession and legal ownership of the investments supporting the reserve,” and the segregated assets “are not available to settle obligations to general creditors of Jackson.” Reinsurance recoverable on annuity benefits, mainly the fixed and fixed index annuities reinsured with Athene, fell to $11,461 million from $13,196 million. For how Athene's own filings describe that counterparty, see our page on Apollo, Athene and its fees.

Capital and ratings

On the regulatory ratio, the 10-Q says only that “As of September 30, 2026, our insurance companies were well in excess of the minimum required capital levels,” and that the ratio is “calculated on an annual basis”. The number comes in the 10-K: Jackson's RBC ratio was 567% at December 31, 2025, 572% at December 31, 2024 and 624% at December 31, 2023. The company attributes the 2025 fall to asset risk from RILA separate account growth and increased business risk. The filing also says that because of dividends and other distributions in the preceding 12 months, “future dividends from both Jackson and Brooke Life are generally expected to be classified as extraordinary,” which in Michigan need regulator approval. Free capital generation, a measure the filing defines against a 425% RBC ratio, was $856 million for the nine months.

The ratings are read from the filing's table in its column order; the Brooke Life line shows one rating with no agency label in the text we saved, which we assign to A.M. Best only by position. A rating is an agency's opinion, and the filing itself adds that “There can be no assurance that any particular rating will continue for any given period of time.”

What a reader can do with this

Start from your statement, not from the group chart. Find the contract's issuer (Jackson National Life or the New York company), the product, whether you have a living benefit such as a GMWB for Life, your account value and your benefit base, and the surrender charge schedule and any market value adjustment for the current year. Those are the numbers that map to the tables above. The 10-Q is a portfolio-level document; it does not give any one contract's terms.

Three facts on the page are worth checking against your own situation. If you hold a variable annuity with a guarantee, the rider's fee and benefit base are in your contract, and the filing shows that guarantees across the book are close to account value. If you hold a RILA, the loss buffer, cap and surrender schedule are in your prospectus. If you are asking how safe the backstop is, a state guaranty association covers an insurer only after a court orders liquidation, and the limits are by state in our guaranty limits table; nothing in the 10-Q suggests such a proceeding.

Moving out of a contract carries its own costs. Surrender charges apply during the schedule, withdrawals can be taxable with gains coming out first, and a 1035 exchange can move an annuity without current tax; see deferred annuity taxation and our 1035 exchange page. This is analysis of public documents, not investment, legal or tax advice.

FAQ

Sources, read on November 10, 2026: Jackson Financial Inc., Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2026 (accession 0001822993-26-000171, filed November 3, 2026), including Note 1, Note 4, Note 8, Note 12, Note 16, and the MD&A sections on key operating measures, policy and contract liabilities, investments, liquidity and financial strength ratings; Form 10-K for fiscal 2025 (accession 0001822993-26-000022, filed February 24, 2026) for the RBC ratios; Form 8-K Items 2.02 and 7.01 filed November 3, 2026 (accessions 0001822993-26-000170 and 0001104659-26-122015). Percentages and the sums marked “our arithmetic” are ours.