Athene Holding is preparing to go shopping for… something big to be named later.
The Hamilton, Bermuda-based life insurance arm of Apollo Global Management announced Thursday that it has hired Rebecca Tadikonda — MetLife's former head of strategic growth markets in Asia — to be its executive vice president, strategy and innovation.
Grant Kvalheim, president of Athene and CEO of Athene USA, said in a comment on Tadikonda's hiring that Athene has already disrupted the retirement services business.
"We felt it was time to hire a senior leader to focus on extending our expertise into new avenues," Kvalheim said.
Even when your clients think they have annuities written by some other company, Athene might be helping to provide the annuities. Tadikonda could help influence which insurance and annuity providers are working with Athene, and what kinds of assets support the insurance and annuity obligations.
Acquisition Ahead?
Athene ended the first quarter with $246 billion in assets and is known for making a series of giant annuity reinsurance deals on its own, and together with companies such as Venerable.
Marc Rowan, Apollo's co-founder and CEO, said in August that he would like to see Apollo and Athene improve returns by investing more money in big, high-quality assets that are secure but difficult to convert into cash quickly.
Tadikonda's Background
Tadikonda has been with MetLife since 2014.
Before that, she worked as a partner at Bain, as a senior marketing manager at Verisign and as a marketing director at DHL.
She has a bachelor's degree in economics from Dartmouth and a master's degree in business from Stanford.
Allianz Life
Allianz Life Insurance Co. of North America — a Golden Valley, Minnesota-based arm of Munich-based Allianz — has named Karim Akhavan-Hezavei to be its senior vice president and chief operating officer.
Akhavan-Hezavei, who is on track to take the new post in July, will oversee enterprise operations, information technology, information technology security and administrative functions at Allianz Life, which is a life and annuity giant.
Akhavan-Hezavei has been chief operating officer at Allianz Services, the parent company's business support services unit, in Munich. He also has worked for EY and Siemens.
