LIMRA's U.S. Group Annuity Risk Transfer Survey put combined single-premium PRT sales at $48.5 billion for 2025, down 6% from $51.8 billion and the first annual decline since 2020. Underneath the total, buy-in sales rose 372% to $17.5 billion.

That was not one mega-deal. It arrived as 17 separate transactions averaging roughly $1 billion each, with Q4 alone producing $12.7 billion of buy-in volume across seven contracts, nearly matching the entire prior year's buy-in total.

Key Takeaways

  • Buyouts fell 35% to $31.3 billion across 683 contracts while buy-ins rose 372% to $17.5 billion across 17, taking buy-ins past a third of total PRT premium for the first time.
  • A buy-in triggers no ASC 715 settlement, so a sponsor carrying accumulated actuarial losses avoids recognizing a pro rata share of them through the income statement, which a buyout of the same block would force.
  • The 2026 PBGC flat-rate premium is $111 per participant, up 258% since 2007, and it continues under a buy-in because participant count does not change.
  • The variable-rate premium of $52 per $1,000 of unfunded vested benefits falls toward zero for the covered segment, because the buy-in annuity is an admitted plan asset matching the liabilities it covers.
  • State guaranty association coverage runs $100,000 to $500,000 depending on state and may sit below PBGC coverage for some participants, on a structure where the plan, not the participant, holds the insurer's promise.

The Composition, Not the Total

The headline decline and the underlying shift are two different measurements, and only one of them describes what sponsors did.

Metric20252024Change
Total PRT sales$48.5B$51.8B-6%
Buyout sales$31.3B$48.1B-35%
Buyout contracts683785-13%
Buy-in sales$17.5B$3.7B+372%
Buy-in contracts1710+70%
Participants covered740,000+N/AN/A

Buy-in assets under management reached $16.1 billion at year-end 2025, up 120%, while buyout assets grew 10% to $326 billion, for a combined $342.1 billion across both structures, up 13%. Aggregate risk transfer capacity is still expanding; the composition of it moved.

The funded-status window is the precondition. The Milliman 100 aggregate funded ratio stood at 108.1% at year-end 2025 against 103.6% a year earlier, with a $98 billion surplus on $1,318 billion of assets against a $1,219 billion projected benefit obligation, after a 2025 asset return of 11.32% against typical assumed returns of 6.5% to 7%. WTW's Fortune 1000 aggregate showed 104% and Mercer's S&P 1500 index 110%. Nobody executes PRT from deep underfunding, and this is the deepest surplus in the series.

LIMRA's Keith Golembiewski described the appeal directly: buy-ins "offered flexibility and lower commitment, allowing sponsors to transfer asset and longevity risk while maintaining administrative control."

Two Ledgers the Structure Splits

The reason a sponsor chooses the structure that keeps the liability is that it separates two consequences a buyout bundles together.

The first is accounting. A buyout removes the obligation from the balance sheet and triggers settlement accounting under ASC 715, requiring recognition of a pro rata share of unrecognized actuarial gains and losses through the income statement in the settlement period. For a plan carrying material accumulated other comprehensive income from prior losses, that is a real charge for an economic risk transfer the sponsor may already have achieved. A buy-in is a plan asset rather than a replacement for the plan: the insurer's cash flows mirror the liabilities, participants are still paid by the plan, no settlement is triggered.

The second is the PBGC bill, and here the two structures split in opposite directions.

Component2007202020252026
Flat-rate per participant$31$83$106$111
Variable-rate (per $1,000 UVB)$9$46$52$52
Variable-rate cap per participantN/A$561$717$751

A buyout ends PBGC premiums for the transferred population because those participants leave the plan. A buy-in does not change headcount, so the $111 flat-rate premium continues; on a 10,000-participant plan that is a $1.11 million annual minimum before any variable-rate charge. What the buy-in does change is the other half. Because the annuity contract is an admitted plan asset precisely matching the covered liabilities, unfunded vested benefits for that segment fall to zero, and the $52 per $1,000 of UVB variable-rate charge on those participants falls with it.

That makes the choice a non-linear optimization rather than a preference. At 100% funded with no UVB the difference between the two structures is only the flat-rate premium, so a buyout dominates on cost. At 95% funded on a PBGC basis, a buy-in covering the most underfunded tranche captures variable-rate savings that a flat-rate premium continuing on unchanged headcount does not offset. The per-participant variable-rate cap, now $751, bounds the top of that saving and is itself still rising while the $52 rate is frozen.

Pricing has been moving with it. The Milliman Pension Buyout Index fell to 101.1% of accounting liability in Q1 2026, and 23 US carriers now compete for the business, more than double a decade ago. Only a subset of those can write the roughly $1 billion average buy-in that the 2025 data describes.

What Stays on the Plan's Books

The complication is that the structure sponsors chose for its optionality also keeps them exposed to the counterparty, on terms that are about to be repriced.

In a buyout the insurer becomes the sole obligor and participants have no further claim on the plan. In a buy-in the plan retains the liability and the insurer's obligation reaches participants through the plan, which is a layered credit structure rather than a transfer. The American Academy of Actuaries' Pension Committee has flagged that state guaranty association coverage of $100,000 to $500,000 depending on the state can fall below PBGC coverage for some participants, and concentration matters because a billion-dollar buy-in typically sits with one carrier.

Carrier ownership is moving underneath that. Three of the UK's eleven bulk annuity insurers announced acquisitions by international investors during 2025: Pension Insurance Corporation by Athora, Just Group by Brookfield, and Utmost's life and pensions division by JAB Insurance, all expected to close in the first half of 2026. Cross-border reinsurance arrangements back many PRT contracts, so capital and mortality decisions in one market reach the other.

The capital charge is the piece that will show up in price. The NAIC Longevity Risk (E/A) Subgroup is developing a C-2 RBC charge separating retained and ceded longevity exposure, targeted for year-end 2027, with a retained scenario stress and a ceded counterparty factor table. Carriers writing buy-in business will hold explicit capital against retained longevity in those blocks where today they hold none, and buy-in pricing carries that cost once it applies.

The funded-status window that made all of this possible is also narrower than the surplus suggests. A credit spread widening of 100 basis points would take roughly 3 to 5 points off funded ratios across the index, which is the whole distance between a sponsor executing a phased buy-in and a sponsor waiting.

Further Reading

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