American Equity Investment Life Holding Co. an issuer of fixed index annuities, reported third-quarter net income available to common stockholders of $141.9 million, or $1.53 per share, compared with $661.3 million, or $7.17 per share, a year ago. The financial results “include substantial progress on the key goals of AEL 2.0 by closing a major reinsurance transaction with Brookfield that generates ongoing fee revenues for American Equity and committing significant amounts of the cash the company had on hand to key private asset classes,” the West Des Moines-based company said in an earnings release. American Equity deployed $375 million in private assets in the third quarter, bringing year-to-date commitments to $2.5 billion. Private assets are now at about 15% of total invested assets, as part of plans to ramp to 30-40% asset allocation over time. The majority of investment commitments made in the quarter represent the continued expansion of American Equity’s allocation to residential and commercial real estate assets, while the capital deployed in private assets was across middle-market corporate loans, agriculture loans and real estate debt. “Now we have in place the necessary building blocks of the American Equity strategy,” CEO Anant Bhalla said in the release. ”Over the next few years, we intend to further scale up the following three areas: allocation to private assets, total assets earning fees or investment spread, and third-party capital through reinsurance.” American Equity’s third-quarter annuity sales were $1.31 billion, an increase of 128% from last year’s third quarter. On a sequential basis, sales increased 11% from the second quarter of 2021.