Thrivent to pay a record $542M in dividends to members

Minneapolis-based Thrivent will be sending a record $542 million in dividends to its eligible clients.

Thrivent, a Fortune 500 membership-based nonprofit financial services organization, does not have shareholders. But it can pay dividends and offer policy enhancements to members who own certain insurance and annuity products.

"Although never guaranteed, we've offered dividends to our clients for more than 100 consecutive years," said David Royal, chief investment and financial officer at Thrivent, in a news release.

The record payments are a 22% increase over the dividends and policy enhancements made the previous year. Over the past decade, Thrivent will have sent out more than $3 billion in payments and credits to members.

At the end of 2022, it had $162 billion in assets under management, 2.3 million clients and a surplus of $16.6 billion. Thrivent routinely draws high marks from the major credit rating agencies because of its solid financials.

Thrivent also uses its surplus to invest in operations and maintains the rest to ensure its financial strength and stability.

"We have grown Thrivent's surplus significantly over the past few years because of our disciplined financial management, and now we're able to deliver record-breaking total payouts to our clients in 2024," Royal added.

The number of policies eligible for the dividends or policy enhancements is also at a record level at 77%, Thrivent said.

Depending on the insurance or annuity products members own, they can take the dividend payment in the form of additional credited interest, reduced fees or reinvest the dividend to increase a death benefit, add cash value, reduce premiums or have it paid out in cash.

Dividends are generally paid on the anniversary date of policies and some policy enhancements may have already gone into effect.