I enjoy hearing directly from clients, and I recently received a few questions about our financial results and how we manage in a changing and uncertain economic environment. When it comes to being good stewards of our resources, we are committed to delivering value to our clients through the ever-evolving economic conditions.
We take a long-term view in our organization’s investments, which we can do because we are not a stock-owned company that has to manage quarter to quarter. We also apply Statutory Accounting Principles, which prescribe a conservative approach to ensure we can fulfill promises to our clients for decades to come.
Statutory accounting generally takes expenses into account right away but only counts income and gains when money comes in the door. It’s a bit like a family prepaying a full year of expenses in January but only counting income when paychecks come in—and maybe a bonus in December!
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Our long-term approach, along with some of the technical and timing aspects of accounting, means our investments, income and overall results can take years to flow to measures like Gain from Operations and Net Income in our annual statement.
For example, private equity investments often take 5–10 years to realize returns, and in some years, like 2022 and 2023, we might decide to hold some investments longer due to market conditions. This can result in a lower amount of operating earnings in the near-term. However, our private equity investments have returned 17% annually over the past 7 years, exceeding our long-range targets and significantly contributing to our strong capital position.
In 2024, we will deliver a record high $542 million total payout to clients. 77% of Thrivent’s policies—over 2.1 million—will receive some form of dividend or policy enhancement. While this lowers the Net Income amount on our annual statement, we are proud to return this value to our clients.
Our assets under management and advisement stood at $179 billion as of the end of 2023 and our total adjusted surplus grew to the highest in our organization’s history at $17.3 billion. As a membership-owned fraternal organization, it’s our privilege to be good stewards in a variety of macroeconomic and market conditions to fulfill the promises we make to you and drive impact in the communities where you live and work.