Athene and Allianz Life, two of the industry's largest fixed indexed annuity writers, both launched new registered index-linked annuity products in 2026, the same quarter RILA sales rose 20% to $21.1 billion while FIA sales fell 4% to $26.8 billion (LIMRA, June 2026). The shelf is following the capital math: VM-22's new reserve treatment for non-variable annuities is making RILA the better return on required capital, and carrier product roadmaps are already responding.

The Q1 2026 Split, By the Numbers

LIMRA's final first-quarter tally put total U.S. annuity sales at $107.4 billion, up 1% year over year, a headline that looks flat until the product mix underneath it is broken out (LIMRA, June 2026). RILA sales reached $21.1 billion, up 20%, the 30th consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth for the category. Fixed indexed annuity sales fell to $26.8 billion, down 4%. Traditional variable annuities jumped 17% to $17.2 billion, and fixed-rate deferred annuities, the segment most exposed to competing bank CD and money-market yields, dropped 12% to $35.6 billion (LIMRA, June 2026).

Product (Q1 2026, final) Sales YoY Change Primary reserve basis
Total U.S. annuity sales $107.4B +1% Mixed
RILA $21.1B +20% VM-21 (stochastic since 2020)
Traditional VA $17.2B +17% VM-21 (stochastic since 2020)
Fixed indexed annuity (FIA) $26.8B -4% VM-22 (new, phasing in through 2029)
Fixed-rate deferred (FRD) $35.6B -12% VM-22 (new, phasing in through 2029)

“RILA products continue to resonate with clients and financial professionals,” said Keith Golembiewski, LIMRA's assistant vice president and head of annuity research. “The ability to offer significant protected growth with the potential for guaranteed income is a strong value proposition” (LIMRA, June 2026). Bryan Hodgens, LIMRA's senior vice president and head of research, tied the broader flatness in total sales to the macro backdrop: “While economic conditions remain uncertain, consumers continue to prioritize financial protection and guaranteed income solutions as they prepare for retirement” (LIMRA, June 2026). Every product growing this quarter, RILA and traditional VA, sits on the VM-21 reserve basis. Every product shrinking, FIA and fixed-rate deferred, sits on the VM-22 basis that only became live on January 1, 2026.

Two Reserve Regimes on One Shelf

RILA and FIA are not reserved the same way, and the gap between the two bases has not narrowed since the start of the year. RILA is SEC-registered and structured with index crediting tied to a separate account, so it falls under VM-21's variable annuity framework, which has run stochastic, CTE-based reserving since 2020. FIA and other non-variable products only moved onto a comparable stochastic basis this year, when VM-22 replaced the prescribed factors of the Commissioners Annuity Reserve Valuation Method with company-specific, CTE70 stochastic reserves calculated over a three-year transition window that runs to January 1, 2029 (NAIC Valuation Manual, 2026). The mechanics of that transition, including field testing showing VM-22 can produce reserves higher than the CARVM basis it replaces, are covered in VM-22 Goes Live: Annuity Reserves Enter the Stochastic Era. A second, related pressure on the RILA side of the ledger, AI-informed retirement tools teaching policyholders to time buffer utilization and surrenders in ways that no VM-21 experience table yet reflects, is covered in AI-Informed Policyholders Are Drifting from RILA Behavior Assumptions Faster Than VM-21 Can Track, and the hedging and pricing implications of the Q1 mix shift itself are covered in LIMRA Q1 2026: The RILA-FIA Product Shift and What It Means for Hedging and Pricing. What none of that coverage has tracked yet is what carriers are doing about the reserve gap on the distribution side, which is where the story moves next.

Carriers Are Already Moving Shelf Space

Milliman's VM-22/GOES readiness survey, fielded in summer 2025, found that roughly half of participating carriers planned to implement VM-22 on the earliest possible date, January 1, 2026, rather than waiting toward the 2029 deadline, and that the two most common reasons cited were operational readiness and an anticipated reduction in required reserves (Milliman, VM-22/GOES Readiness Survey, 2025). Milliman's own guidance to those early adopters was specific about the strategic angle: companies should evaluate which products on their current shelf “might benefit the most from an earlier transition,” naming annuities with guaranteed living benefit riders directly (Milliman, VM-22 Readiness: Key Areas for Consideration, 2026). That is, in effect, an instruction to rank the FIA book by how much capital relief VM-22 offers product by product, and it is hard to read the RILA launches landing mid-transition as anything other than carriers acting on exactly that ranking.

Athene, historically one of the largest FIA writers in the market, launched Athene Amplify 3.0 on May 4, 2026, adding 1% and 100% buffer options to its existing 10%, 20%, and 30% tiers and folding fee and no-fee segment structures into a single contract, a move the company framed around simplifying sales and servicing for financial professionals (Athene, May 2026). Allianz Life, the number-two RILA writer by sales behind Equitable, followed on March 10, 2026 with Index Advantage+ Select Income, a RILA built around flexible lifetime income benefits (Allianz Life, March 2026). Equitable itself, which has held the top RILA sales spot for 15 consecutive years and wrote more than $11 billion in RILA premium through the third quarter of 2025, about 22% of the entire category, is not standing still while two of the market's largest FIA carriers move onto its turf (LIMRA rankings via InsuranceNewsNet, Q3 2025). Three carriers with deep FIA distribution now have competing, recently refreshed RILA shelves, in a single 2026 sales cycle.

What the Shift Means for Independent Distribution

For independent agents and the IMOs that wholesale annuity paper to them, this is not an abstract reserve story. FIA has been the workhorse product of the independent agent channel for two decades, built around commission structures and a sales process that does not require securities licensing. RILA does require it, because the product is SEC-registered, which is a structural reason its fastest growth has concentrated in the broker-dealer and RIA channels rather than the traditional independent agent force. LIMRA has reported that RIA and fee-based advisors, who previously had limited shelf access to annuity products, now account for a growing share of RILA volume, alongside outsized gains at full-service national broker-dealers (LIMRA, 2026). If Athene and Allianz Life are pointing new product development at RILA because VM-22 makes their FIA back book relatively more capital-intensive to hold, independent agents who built a practice around FIA face a carrier roadmap that is quietly deprioritizing the instrument they are licensed to sell, in favor of a product line that requires credentials most of that channel does not hold. IMOs managing carrier relationships and commission grids should expect FIA product refresh cycles to slow relative to RILA over the next several annual planning cycles, not because consumer demand for FIA has disappeared, but because the carriers' own capital math now rewards the other shelf.

The Trajectory Through 2027 and the 2029 Deadline

LIMRA's own full-year outlook, published in January 2026 before the Q1 data confirmed the pattern, projected RILA sales would exceed $75 billion for 2026 while FIA sales were expected to merely hold near 2025 levels (LIMRA, January 2026). The Q1 print, FIA down 4% against a projection of flat, suggests FIA may struggle to clear even that modest bar if carrier product development budget keeps redirecting toward RILA through the rest of the year. That matters because VM-22's transition window does not close until January 1, 2029, and every quarter between now and then adds a proportionally larger share of new FIA business onto the VM-22 stochastic basis, whether or not a given carrier has actively chosen to reposition its shelf. A carrier that lets RILA outgrow FIA passively, simply by not competing as hard for FIA distribution while its wholesalers push the newer product, ends up in roughly the same reported capital position as one that actively repriced its wholesaling relationships toward RILA, but arrives there with a shrinking independent distribution franchise it did not set out to run down. For pricing and product actuaries setting 2027 new-business capital allocation targets, the Q1 2026 mix shift reads less as a single quarter's noise and more as the leading edge of a reallocation that VM-22's own transition timeline makes durable through the balance of the decade.

Why This Matters

VM-22 was built to make reserves reflect the economics of the product being sold, not to pick a winner between RILA and FIA. But its capital treatment is doing exactly that in the market's real-time product decisions, three years before every carrier is even required to run on the new basis. Actuaries advising on new-business capital allocation, wholesaling strategy, or IMO relationships should treat the Q1 2026 product mix as a signal of where carrier product development budget is already flowing, not merely a lagging read on consumer preference. Athene and Allianz Life, the carriers moving first and most visibly, are also the ones with the largest FIA back books and the most to gain from getting ahead of the 2029 deadline. Carriers and distribution partners that wait may find their shelf space decisions were effectively made for them by the reserve framework, rather than by their own product strategy.

Further Reading

Sources

  1. LIMRA, “U.S. Annuity Sales Top $107 Billion in First Quarter 2026,” LIMRA.com, June 2026
  2. LIMRA, “The 2026 Annuity Sales Outlook Remains Strong,” LIMRA.com, January 2026
  3. NAIC, PBR Data and Valuation Manual, Jan. 1, 2026 Edition, content.naic.org, 2026
  4. Milliman, “VM-22 Readiness: Key Areas for Consideration,” Milliman.com, 2026
  5. Milliman, “Milliman VM-22/GOES Readiness Survey,” Milliman.com, 2025
  6. Athene, “Athene Expands Registered Index-Linked Annuity (RILA) Lineup with Launch of Athene Amplify 3.0,” ir.athene.com, May 2026
  7. Allianz Life, “New Allianz Life Annuity Offers Added Flexibility in Income Benefits,” AllianzLife.com, March 2026
  8. InsuranceNewsNet, “RILA Sales Leader Equitable Holdings Races to Meet Lifetime Income Demand” (citing LIMRA rankings), InsuranceNewsNet.com, 2025