Brighthouse Financial Inc

At Brighthouse Financial, our employees are one of our most valuable assets. Our ability to successfully execute our business strategy and deliver on our mission to help people achieve financial security starts with our culture and values, which are brought to life every day by our employees. At December 31, 2023, we had approximately 1,500 employees.

The Company’s Board of Directors and its Compensation and Human Capital Committee oversee our human capital matters, including pay equity; talent and leadership development; the Company’s efforts to attract, engage and retain talent; culture; and the development and execution of the Company’s strategy to advance its diversity, equity and inclusion (“DEI”) objectives. Such objectives include increasing representation of underrepresented populations across the Company, by seeking a diverse slate of candidates for open positions and through other efforts, strengthening our inclusive culture, promoting the development of an inclusive pipeline for supplier and vendor opportunities, supporting the communities we serve and working with educational institutions and other organizations to help create more opportunities for individuals from underrepresented groups.

Our Culture, Values and Ethics

Our culture is rooted in three core values — collaboration, adaptability and passion. We believe these values help us build an organization where talented people from all backgrounds can make meaningful contributions to our success while growing their careers. We are committed to continually enhancing our culture through a variety of programs, policies and initiatives. We place a high value on employee feedback, which we believe is critical to our efforts to continue to strengthen our culture. We collect employee feedback on an ongoing basis in multiple ways, including through periodic surveys, coaching and feedback discussions, exit surveys and interviews, employee network groups (discussed below), listening and learning sessions and leader-led office hours.

Our culture is also built on our deep commitment to ethics and integrity, and we recognize that the continued success of the Company is dependent upon the trust of our employees, distribution partners, customers and stockholders. We strive to adhere to the highest standards of business conduct at all times and put honesty, fairness and trustworthiness at the center of all that we do. To help maintain a safe and productive workplace, we establish and oversee programs to build awareness and train employees on important standards, policies and procedures, as required by applicable regulations, Company policy or best practices. As part of our commitment to ethics and integrity, we require all employees to review and certify compliance with our code of conduct for employees on an annual basis, as well as complete more extensive training on the code of conduct on a biennial basis. In addition, we help to ensure that employees are well informed of the Company’s reporting and escalation process, including options for anonymous whistleblower reporting, through regular communications.

Attracting, Engaging, Developing and Retaining Talent

We believe that our success depends, in large part, on our ability to attract and retain highly skilled employees. There is strong competition for talent in our industry, and current U.S. labor market dynamics may further increase the challenge of attracting and retaining employees. We continue to monitor the current U.S. labor environment and adapt, as needed, our activities, policies and practices to attract, engage, develop and retain employees and to ensure that Brighthouse Financial remains a great place to work. These efforts include, among other things, seeking to support our employees with competitive and equitable pay and benefits and to provide our employees with training and other learning and development opportunities. In addition, we continue to operate under a flexible, hybrid work model, which has enabled us to expand our recruiting strategy.

We offer all of our employees benefits programs that are designed to help meet their financial, physical and mental needs. All employees are eligible to participate in our 401(k) savings plan, to which we make matching and annual nondiscretionary contributions, and in our Employee Stock Purchase Plan, through which employees can purchase BHF stock at a discounted price. We offer competitive health care benefits options for medical, dental and vision coverage, as well as health care and dependent care flexible spending accounts. We offer all employees paid time off, holidays and volunteer and study time off to help promote healthier work-life balance and other well-being benefits, including paid parental and family leave for new parents. In addition, we conduct annual pay equity reviews to help ensure that individual compensation is determined exclusively based on performance, experience, job level and other neutral factors.

Our talent management and development strategies are built on continuous coaching and feedback, learning, training, collaboration and inclusivity. We provide employees with many opportunities and resources to learn and develop, including a curated set of courses designed to help employees achieve their personal and professional goals. In addition, we offer all employees access to optional monthly learning sessions designed to further enhance their understanding of our corporate strategy and culture, as well as to provide the opportunity to build and enhance skills. We also offer a mentorship program designed to provide professional development opportunities through engagement with leaders across the Company. As noted above, we collect employee feedback on an ongoing basis, which facilitates our efforts to understand and optimize our employees’ experiences at the Company and assists us in attracting, engaging, developing and retaining talent. To further help our employees remain engaged and well connected to the Company and each other, we hold a variety of events and issue a wide range of communications throughout the year, including town hall meetings, podcasts from our CEO, companywide discussions with members of our leadership team, intranet articles and a weekly newsletter highlighting events and news from around the Company.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

We are committed to providing an inclusive workplace where employees can trust that their unique backgrounds and perspectives will be recognized, respected and celebrated. We believe that by building such a workplace, we are better able to attract and retain talent and provide valuable products that meet the needs of our distribution partners and the financial professionals who sell our products, as well as their clients. We seek to attract and retain talent that reflects the diversity of our communities, and we remain focused on maintaining strong representation of underrepresented groups across the Company. Our varied approach to attracting and recruiting talent includes efforts to diversify candidate slates for open positions, diversify interview teams to reduce bias and build partnerships with diverse professional organizations and universities. In recognition of the importance of DEI to Brighthouse Financial, in 2021, the Compensation and Human Capital Committee began to incorporate into its assessment of our senior leaders’ individual performance, in connection with the approval of their short-term incentive awards, their efforts with respect to advancing the Company’s DEI strategy.

We employ a multifaceted approach to advancing DEI across the Company that includes various programs and initiatives. One such initiative is our DEI Council which is comprised of representatives from across Brighthouse Financial. The DEI Council creates and sponsors programs and development opportunities with the aim of further embedding DEI within the Company and continuously enhancing our Company’s culture. In 2022, we launched our Company’s employee network groups, which are open to all employees and provide a forum for employees across various dimensions of diversity to discuss relevant professional and personal topics, learn from one another, find support and allyship, expand their networks and deepen their level of compassion and understanding. In addition, to continue fostering our inclusive workplace, the Company requires all employees to complete annual DEI training. The Company also has developed a supplier diversity program designed to advance the building of an inclusive pipeline of talent for supplier and vendor opportunities.

The Company further seeks to deliver on its commitment to DEI through its own charitable organizations and through strategic partnerships with community organizations, educational institutions and industry peers. The Brighthouse Financial Foundation (the “Foundation”), a non-profit organization, was established in 2017 with the mission to improve the financial security, culture and opportunities afforded to communities in which the Company’s employees live and work by providing resources and support to other tax-exempt organizations which further that mission. In addition, through Brighthouse Scholar Connections, Inc., a non-profit organization established in 2022, scholarships are provided to expand educational opportunities for students who are members of historically underrepresented or disadvantaged populations due to race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status or other factors. Brighthouse Financial employees have the opportunity to serve as mentors for students who have been awarded scholarships by this organization.