Jackson Financial Inc

Distribution Channels

As of December 31, 2023, our retail annuities are distributed through:

•approximately 522 broker-dealer distribution partners and more than 120,000 appointed advisors across the three traditional broker-dealer channels including independent broker-dealers; banks and other financial institutions; and wirehouses and regional broker-dealers; and

•more than 1,380 registered investment advisors ("RIAs") have a Jackson RIA agreement and can access Jackson advisory solutions through an outsourced insurance desk ("OID"). Collectively these firms have more than 11,700 investment advisory representatives ("IARs") without a broker-dealer registration.

In addition, Jackson National Life Distributors, LLC ("JNLD") is registered as a broker-dealer with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), pursuant to the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the "Exchange Act"), and is registered as a broker-dealer in all applicable states.

Our strong presence in multiple distribution channels helps position us as a leading provider of retirement savings and income solutions. According to LIMRA LOMA U.S. Individual Annuity Sales Industry report, for the nine months ended September 30, 2023, we accounted for 12.1% of all sales in the U.S. variable annuity market and ranked #2 in variable annuity sales. The industry-leading size of our wholesaling force propels our sales in the traditional variable annuity market to be over triple that of our closest competitor per ISS Market Intelligence's YTD third quarter 2023 Competitor Sales, Staffing and Productivity Benchmarking report. We are increasingly focused on growing sales through our Independent RIAs, Platforms & Agents ("IPA") channel. We facilitate the sale of annuities by RIAs by offering them use of an insurance support desk that satisfies insurance-related licensing and regulatory requirements. We believe there is a significant long-term opportunity to grow annuity sales through RIAs, who managed approximately $7.16 trillion in investor assets at the end of 2022, according to a report by Cerulli Associates.

We sell our institutional products through investment banks or other intermediaries to institutional and corporate investors, plan sponsors and other eligible purchasers.

Part I |Item 1. Business |Distribution and Operations

Operating Platform

Our in-house policy administration platform gives us flexibility to administer multiple product types through a single platform. We have more than 2.8 million life and annuity policies and currently administer approximately 79% of our in-force policies on our in-house platform, eliminating the burdens, costs and inefficiencies that would be involved in maintaining multiple legacy administration systems. We also have scalable third-party administration agreements. Our ability to utilize both in-house and third-party administrative platforms gives us flexibility to convert and administer acquired business efficiently. We believe our operating platform provides a competitive advantage by allowing us to grow efficiently and provide superior customer service. In 2023, Jackson received the Highest Customer Service — Financial Industry award from Service Quality Measurement Group, Inc. ("SQM") for the 12th straight year. According to the Operations Managers’ Roundtable, we ranked 2 ndfor overall operational capabilities in 2022 and 2023 by our broker-dealer partners.

Underwriting and Product Design

Our key underwriting and product design practices include:

•In 2012, we developed and launched Elite Access, our investment-only variable annuity that does not include any guaranteed living benefits. Since that time, it has been the industry’s best-selling investment-only variable annuity.

•In 2021, we successfully launched our commission and advisory based suite of RILAs.

•All our variable annuities, including our flagship variable annuity, Perspective II, may be purchased without any guaranteed living benefits.

•For those products that include optional guaranteed benefits, we focus on living benefits that are easier to manage in terms of risk, such as GMWB and GMWB for Life.

•We no longer offer guaranteed living benefits that we believe offer us a lower risk-adjusted return, such as Guaranteed Minimum Income Benefits, or GMIBs; instead, we utilize third-party reinsurance to mitigate the risks that we face relating to those benefits.

•We have designed substantially all of our products such that the guarantee fee charged to the customer is calculated based on the benefit base, rather than the account value, which supports our hedging program by stabilizing the guarantee fees we earn.

•Less than 4% of our in-force variable annuity policies, based on account value as of December 31, 2023, were sold prior to the 2008 financial crisis, a period when many variable annuities sold by our competitors were uneconomically priced and offered difficult to manage guarantee features.

We set what we believe are appropriate mortality and policyholder behavior assumptions as part of our pricing and reserving practices. We monitor experience on a regular basis, and we incorporate new experience data and emerging trends to ensure our actuarial assumptions and models reflect the appropriate mix of all available information and expert judgment.

Our core dynamic hedging program seeks to offset changes in economic liability associated with variable annuity guaranteed benefits due to market movements, while our macro hedging program seeks to protect statutory capital under a range of stress scenarios. We also use third-party reinsurance to mitigate a portion of the risks we face, principally in certain of our in-force annuity and life insurance products with regard to longevity and mortality risks and with regard to the vast majority of our GMIB optional benefit features.

Historically, we have managed and diversified our overall mortality and longevity risks through acquisitions. Since 2012, we have acquired more than $15.0 billion in life and annuity reserves. Consistent with our financial goals, we may opportunistically explore acquisitions we believe provide attractive risk-adjusted returns.

Part I |Item 1. Business |Competition