Jackson Financial Inc

We use a number of operating measures, discussed below, which management believes provide useful information about our businesses and the operational factors underlying our financial performance.

Sales

Sales of annuities and institutional products include all money deposited by customers into new and existing contracts. We believe sales statistics are useful to gaining an understanding of, among other things, the attractiveness of our products, how we can best meet our customers’ needs, evolving industry product trends and the performance of our business from period to period.

For the year ended December 31, 2023, total sales decreased significantly compared to the year ended December 31, 2022. Lower retail sales were primarily due to decreased sales of our variable annuities with lifetime living benefits, partially offset by RILA sales. Sales of fixed index and fixed annuities increased in 2023 due to the higher interest rate environment, which enabled more favorable pricing actions. In addition, sales of our institutional products were lower compared to the year ended December 31, 2022, reflecting our opportunistic approach to this business, depending on both the risk-adjusted return on investment opportunities available and the prevailing cost of funding required by purchasers.

Account value ("AV") generally equals the account value of our variable annuities, RILA, fixed index annuities, fixed annuities, interest sensitive life, and institutional products. It reflects the total amount of customer invested assets that have accumulated within a respective product and equals cumulative customer contributions, which includes gross deposits or premiums, plus accrued credited interest plus or minus the impact of market movements, as applicable, less withdrawals and various fees. We believe account value is a useful metric in providing an understanding of, among other things, the sources of potential fee and spread income generation, potential benefit obligations and risk management priorities.

Net Flows

Net flows represent the net change in customer account balances during a period, reflecting gross premiums received and surrenders, withdrawals and benefits payments. Net flows exclude investment performance, interest credited to customer accounts, transfers between fixed and variable benefits for variable annuities and policy charges. We believe net flows is a useful metric in providing an understanding of, among other things, sales, ongoing premiums and deposits, the changes in account value from period to period, sources of potential fee and spread income and policyholder behavior.

Net flows, net of reinsurance, decreased for the year ended December 31, 2023, compared to the year ended December 31, 2022, driven by the decreased variable annuity sales coupled with increased variable annuity surrenders and withdrawals, partially offset by increased RILA sales. Variable annuity net flows were more than offset by an increase in AUM, as defined below, due to market performance in 2023.

Benefit Base

Benefit base refers to a notional amount that represents the value of a customer’s guaranteed benefit and, therefore, may be a different value from the invested assets in a customer’s account value. The benefit base may be used to calculate the fees for a customer’s guaranteed benefits within an annuity contract. The guaranteed death benefit and guaranteed living benefit within the same contract may not have the same benefit base. We believe benefit base is a useful metric for our variable annuity policies in providing an understanding of, among other things, fee income generation, potential optional guarantee benefit obligations and risk management priorities. The following table shows variable annuity account value and benefit base as of December 31, 2023 and 2022:

Assets Under Management

AUM, or assets under management, refers to investment assets that are managed by one of our subsidiaries and includes: (i) assets managed by PPM, including our investment portfolio (but excluding assets held in funds withheld accounts for reinsurance transactions) and third-party assets (including our former parent and its affiliates) and (ii) the separate account assets of our Retail Annuities segment managed and administered by one of our subsidiaries, Jackson National Asset Management LLC ("JNAM"). Total AUM reflects exclusions between segments to avoid double counting. We believe AUM is a useful metric for understanding, among other things, the sources of our earnings, net investment income and performance of our invested assets, customer directed investments and risk management priorities.

Total AUM increased for the year ended December 31, 2023, compared to the year ended December 31, 2022, driven primarily by an increase in separate account balances managed by JNAM due to positive equity market returns during the year.