NEW YORK (Bloomberg) — Athene Holding Ltd, the Bermudian-based annuity provider, is planning to float on the New York Stock Exchange.

The company, which has strong ties to private-equity firm Apollo Global Management, expanded substantially last year with the acquisition of Delta Lloyd Deutschland AG (DLD), a German life insurance firm with around 350,000 customers in the German market.

Athene filed on Monday for an initial public offering of shares.

Athene also brought on industry veterans including Bill Wheeler, formerly head of the Americas at MetLife Inc, and ex-Genworth Financial chief financial officer Marty Klein.

Apollo helped start the life insurer in 2009, and it has since expanded in retirement products, growing in the US and other markets. Athene contributed $139 million to the private-equity firm’s pretax earnings last year. Apollo also has an indirect subsidiary that helps buy and renovate single-family homes.

AP Alternative Assets LP, a publicly traded investment vehicle managed by Apollo, is Athene’s largest shareholder. Athene plans to sell Class A common stock in the offering and will apply to list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol ATH.

In a conference call with analysts on Tuesday, Jim Belardi, Athene’s chief executive officer, said Athene had been building its investment portfolio with bonds tied to home loans.

“Looking ahead, we continue to see opportunities in different segments of the residential mortgage-backed securities market,” Mr Belardi said.

“In the last six months, we’ve been opportunistically purchasing these assets at yields and risk-return profiles that are very attractive.”

Holdings of RMBS in the available-for-sale portfolio climbed to $8 billion as of December 31 from $6.22 billion a year earlier, the company said in a regulatory filing this week.

The securities account for about 16.5 per cent of the portfolio, up from 13.8 per cent at the end of 2014. The largest allocation is to corporate debt.