Over the past few weeks, there has been a fair bit of press over two acquisitions of VA with Living Benefit blocks. Hartford has confirmed that it is selling its operating unit Talcott Resolution to an investor syndicate anchored by Global Atlantic. Talcott holds mostly VAs with Living Benefits and a reasonably large Private Placement Life Insurance block. It also has the reinsured shells of businesses that it has previously sold, most notably Hartford’s Individual Life business that has gone to Prudential. Recall that Hartford was an early innovator in the VALB space and, for a time, one of its dominant players before Hartford got its clock cleaned in the crisis and had to take TARP.