NEAM Insights

Introduction This is the second year GR–NEAM has performed a market analysis of publicly-traded, Bermuda domiciled insurers. Our goal is to highlight the peer group’s Financial and Stock Market Performance, Investment Performance, and Underwriting Performance. Additional analysis depicting firm-by-firm results and additional research will be forthcoming. Read More

Regulatory Development In November of 2012, the Treasury Market Practices Group (“TMPG”), an industry group sponsored by the New York Fed, announced “best practices” guidance for forward-settling agency mortgage backed securities (MBS). In keeping with the growing regulatory concern surrounding systemic risk, TMPG now recommends that parties post collateral, or margin, to mitigate counterparty risk owing to market value changes. The new regulation applies to the primary dealers (the twenty one trading counterparties of the New York Fed) and, by extension, to entities that trade with the primary dealers. The new guidance will apply to all trades with a contractual settlement greater than one business day (three business days for CMOs), with implementation targeted for January 1, 2014. Read More

Enterprise Value-at-Risk (VaR) remains relevant as a key metric in solvency assessment and insurer capital adequacy measurement by regulators in Solvency II regimes. More broadly, including the United States, as companies continue to develop their internal economic capital models, VaR is a reference statistic to adjudicate modeled outcomes. In addition, as a competitive assessment tool, VaR metrics can be insightful for benchmarking performance. In all instances, the need for a singular metric comparable across industry segments and geography will increase, as will the need for transparency and uniform methods of estimation. Read More

Despite the historically low interest rate environment, 2012 turned out to be another year with favorable statutory operating results for the U.S. Life insurance industry. Although operating under challenging and competitive markets, Life companies continued to search for investment opportunities to enhance their risk-adjusted return. Read More

Our focus in this General ReView is the U.S. property/casualty (P&C) industry. A companion piece will follow for the life insurance industry. In turn, for each industry segment we will provide additional General ReView issues to address industry subsegments, company variations, transactions summaries and prospective returns. Read More

The last General ReView summarized property-casualty (P&C) insurers’ 2011 asset allocation and fixed income credit quality, duration and book yields. This edition provides details that underlie fixed income yield and risk metrics. There are two areas of focus. The first pertains to credit quality. The second addresses yields and risk metrics of insurers’ fixed income purchases and sales. Read More

This General ReView has three sections. The first section presents a 10-year review of operating and investment results based upon statutory statement filings. The second section provides investment profiles based upon cusip level holdings data and GR–NEAM market analytics. The third section provides a summary. Read More