Commentary
#384 | Global Atlantic Axes In-Force Rates
Ask anyone who is fundamentally skeptical about Indexed UL why they feel that way and, invariably, they’ll bring up the issue of non-guaranteed elements. It’s a valid point. Indexed UL product performance ultimately hinges on non-guaranteed elements. But that’s also…
# 383 | Mid-Year Insurer Financials Observations
To say that 2023 has been a turbulent year in the financial markets would be an understatement – but that turbulence seems to have left life insurers largely unphased. Life insurance looks very much like a safe harbor in a…
#381 | End Game: Brookfield and American National
Quick Take In quick succession, Brookfield has executed four key elements of what appears to be the end game strategy for American National. First, reinsuring the entire fixed and indexed annuity block to an affiliated offshore reinsurer. Second, stripping out…
#364 | Reinsurance and the Remaking of Life Insurance
Full Article At the core of reinsurance is the simple concept of risk transfer. Traditionally, reinsurance risk transfer has pertained to “natural” risk – mortality, morbidity, longevity and disability, among others. These sorts of reinsurance transactions are typically structured so…
#363 | The Long Reach of Guaranteed UL
Full Article There are a few fantastic scenes in The Lord of the Rings movies that, even after reading the books several times, I think capture the moment in film even better than Tolkein does in writing. Near the top…
#362 | Accordia and the End of an Era
Full Article Yesterday, Global Atlantic announced that “after carefully evaluating our greatest opportunities to provide the most compelling products and value…we have made the strategic decision to sharpen our focus…as a result, effective July 1, 2023, Global Atlantic will be…
#361 | Cap Price Pressure
Quick Take When AG 49 was adopted in 2015, it established the supremacy of a single crediting methodology - an S&P 500 annual point-to-point with a 0% Floor, 100% participation rate and non-guaranteed Cap. This Benchmark Index Account is what…
#358 | The Asset Side
Quick Take Now that the liquidity crisis in banking seems to have ebbed, a new potential crisis is emerging - credit. There is a real and growing prospect of significant losses in certain asset classes that have enjoyed more than…
#357 | The Multi-Verse of 7702 Rates
This article was written by Steve Cox, FSA, MAAA, who is the Head of Life Insurance at Life Innovators. Earlier this year, I wrote an article talking about the impact of rising interest rates on Section 7702. The main takeaway…
#355 | A Financial Strength Gut Check
Quick Take Life insurer financial strength is arguably made up of three primary components - operations, assets and liabilities. The first two are well-handled by traditional resources such as financial strength ratings, but implicit in those ratings is the assumption…
