Bermudian-based Athene Holding Ltd, the financial services company, has announced a first close for Apollo/Athene Dedicated Investment Program II with approximately $2 billion in capital commitments.

The company said ADIP II is the second vintage of the innovative sidecar programme formed to augment Athene’s growth capacity through long-term, on-demand capital.

Funds from ADIP II will be invested directly alongside Athene into Athene Co-Invest Reinsurance Affiliate Holding 2 Ltd, a consolidated subsidiary of Athene, which is managed to the same risk, investment and capital standards as Athene.

ADIP II builds on the success of the franchise’s first vintage, ADIP I, which supported ACRA 1 beginning in 2019, as it scaled to become a leading reinsurance platform with more than $60 billion of assets and an “A+/A1” rating by S&P, Fitch and Moody’s.

The company said ADIP I serves as strong proof of concept for the strategy, leveraging both Athene’s ability to source attractive, persistent, spread-based liabilities and Apollo’s experience in delivering superior asset management across market cycles.

The strong investor demand for ADIP II is a testament to the strategy’s differentiation within investors’ portfolios, performance with downside protection, and significant alignment between Apollo, Athene and third-party investors.

With this first close, and including excess equity capital and untapped debt capacity, it is anticipated that Athene will have access to more than $7 billion of deployable capital to pursue attractive growth opportunities in the retirement services marketplace.

The significant opportunity across Athene’s diverse, multichannel organic and inorganic origination engine enables Athene to be nimble and pivot opportunistically across channels, focusing on the most attractive opportunities.

“The strategic partnership between Athene and Apollo only continues to get stronger, with full alignment achieved following the merger in early 2022 and significant profitable growth aspirations ahead,” said Athene chief executive Jim Belardi.

“We continue to believe that funding a significant amount of our growth with participation from private, long-term third-party capital is a win-win scenario for our business and our investors, and we are excited about the road ahead.”

Athene, through its subsidiaries, is a leading financial services company specialising in retirement services with total assets of $246 billion as of December 31, 2022 and operations in Bermuda, the United States and Canada.