Brighthouse Financial, Inc. (NASDAQ:BHF) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

David Rosenbaum: John, this is David. So maybe just a couple of overall comments to start and then I’ll talk about the pace. So as you know, we previously disclosed that outflows have historically been in the $1 billion per month range. But as you know, this number will be impacted by things like the normal timing of business coming out of surrender charge period. We do have lapse assumptions for our products associated with interest rates. And our actual lapses have been very close to those expectations under that dynamic formula. So when we think about this year, and given the blocks that are coming out of surrender coupled with where we are with higher sustained rates, we currently expect that outflows this year will be slightly higher than what we’ve seen historically, which is all consistent with our pricing assumptions.

So when you think about the pace that we saw throughout the quarter, really when we look back to the end of last year, at the very end, we saw outflows tick up a little bit, which is consistent with what I just mentioned, plus R&Ds, which happened at the end of the year. We saw that outflow — those higher outflows continue into the first quarter with a modest increase later in the quarter, which was associated with blocks coming out of surrender. And then in April, that outflow came back a little bit.

John Barnidge : And then just a quick question on CRE. I didn’t see it in the presentation. Can you talk about maybe occupancy levels in the office portfolio?

John Rosenthal : John, it’s John. They’re 86%.

Operator: And our next question coming from the line of Alex Scott with Goldman Sachs.

Alex Scott : First one I have for you is just if you could provide any update on the multiyear, multi-scenario framework that you mentioned? Been a while since we’ve gotten a look at what some of those projections look like. Any update on when that may become available? And if there’s any way for you to opine on how the base case has evolved, particularly given the mean reversion point adjustment?

Edward Spehar : Alex, it’s Ed. So I won’t be able to give you any preview of how those numbers might look when we come out with distributable earnings. I did say, I think on the last call, and I would just reiterate it here that with the adoption of LDTI and with the efforts we have underway to make sure we’re leveraging our actuarial transformation that we completed last year, the platform there for our projections that we were talking about midyear for distributable earnings this year versus in prior years, we had done it in March. So I would just say again that we’re still targeting midyear and really not getting any more specific than that.

Alex Scott : Got it. Understood. And then the second question I have is just on the statutory net income loss. I was hoping you could help us bridge sort of the gap between that and normalize that earnings and what some of that movement was. And then separately, I’d also just be interested like how does that impact the unassigned surplus of BLIC? And I ask because I think that, that can be gating item for ordinary dividend capacity as we look into 2024. So I was just interested if that is an issue at all.