“Given the market volatility experienced in public markets throughout the first quarter, we expect second quarter alternative returns to remain below our expectations.”

In context

“income by nearly 20% over the prior year quarter. This reflects the benefit of our proactive strategy to reposition the public fixed income portfolio. During the first quarter, we continued to reinvest at higher yields with the average new money yield on our core fixed income portfolio roughly 80 basis points higher than sales and maturities. The annualized yield was 4.61%, a 51 basis point improvement over the prior year quarter. The strong growth in our core fixed income portfolio was partially offset by lower alternative investment income, which was $6 million compared to $43 million in the prior year quarter. Private equity returns yielded 1.6% in the quarter, below our long-term expectation. It's worth noting that the private equity results are generally reported on a 1 quarter lag. Given the market volatility experienced in public markets throughout the first quarter, we expect second quarter alternative returns to remain below our expectations. Next, I want to spend a few minutes on our private credit portfolio, as we've slowed our deployment in this asset class given market conditions. We define private credit very broadly, as in everything that is not a public security. It includes commercial mortgage loans, investment-grade private placements, asset-backed finance and direct lending. Our direct lending exposure is about $1.2 billion, less than 1.5% of the General Insurance investment portfolio. It is a diversified portfolio of middle market loans with an average loan size of about $6 million. We hold all direct lending on our balance sheet, not through business development companies, and the software exposure is approximately $130 million or just 16 basis points of the General Insurance portfolio. We will continue to deploy f”