Insurers Corebridge and Equitable Plan $22 Billion Merger

Insurers Corebridge and Equitable have launched a merger valuing the combined company at $22 billion.

The deal, announced Thursday (March 26), creates a retirement, life, wealth and investment company with $1.5 trillion in assets under management.

“The combined company will benefit from a strong ​competitive position and accelerated growth across retirement, life and institutional markets, as ⁠well as asset and wealth management,” Equitable CEO Mark Pearson said in a news release.

According to the announcement, the deal brings together Corebridge and Equitable as well as AllianceBernstein, an asset manager that is a subsidiary of Equitable. The combined entity will operate under Equitable’s name and will be led by Corebridge CEO Marc ​Costantini, with Pearson serving as executive chair.

In other insurance news, PYMNTS wrote earlier this month about the ways the industry is employing artificial intelligence (AI) agents. These agents, that report said, can do things like parsing broker submissions, or flagging anomalies or missing information before a human underwriter makes a final decision.

The report cited a recent Boston Consulting Group article arguing that agentic AI marks a new era in core insurance modernization, going beyond chatbots and analytics dashboards toward systems that coordinate processes across policy administration, billing and claims platforms.

Rather than replacing infrastructure, “AI agents can operate across silos, stitching together fragmented workflows while modernization programs continue in parallel,” PYMNTS wrote.

At the same time, AI can present a threat to the industry, Kevin Ostrander, chief revenue officer at digital insurance platform One Inc., told PYMNTS recently.

AI’s ability to synthesize voices, fabricate identities is bringing about new vulnerabilities across financial services and especially insurance payments.

These payment systems face particular exposure because they deal with both premium payments and claims disbursements. Fraud attempts could involve automated scripts testing card numbers, bots trying to break into payment systems or criminals attempting to gain access to policyholder accounts.

“AI is causing a great challenge around traditional identity checks by mimicking human behavior at unprecedented scale,” Ostrander said during a “What’s Next in Payments” interview with PYMNTS. “We’re seeing fraudsters that are using AI to create synthetic identities that pass basic verification processes.”

While fabricated faces and cloned voices attract attention, Ostrander said the most disturbing development is the advent of automated behavior designed to mimic legitimate customers. AI systems can replicate browsing habits, transaction patterns and conversational responses that resemble regular customer activity, making the signs of fraud less apparent.

“Fake faces and fake voices are alarming, but the fake normal behavior is the most concerning and rapidly growing threat,” he said.

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