If hitting each of the company’s two improvement targets on their own would be heroic, hitting both simultaneously within three years would be astonishing.
One way to think about the ambitious build-out of start-up (re)insurer Convex is an interesting test of the franchise values of specialty (re)insurers.
Earlier this week, The Insurance Insider reported that reinsurance market sentiment has “hit its highest level in years, with mounting confidence that gathering pricing momentum can be sustained beyond 2019”.
One commonly held view in this market is that P&C company valuations are largely driven by the pricing cycle, and that positive and accelerating pricing should be considered a universal positive for the group.
I think it’s fair to say it hasn’t been a great decade (or two) for AIG. Though it is still talked about with something approaching reverence as a career maker for many senior folks in the industry, the last twenty years or so could fill several text books with case studies on different aspects of corporate failure.
In every discipline in finance, an income producing asset is thought to be worth the net present value of its expected future cash flows. Outside of periods of manias and bubbles where the greater fool theory predominates, this is about as uncontroversial and as canonical as you can get.
Yesterday, my colleagues Mark Geoghegan and Bernard Goyder outlined the current state of play in the InsurTech space. It’s an excellent read, and I encourage you to make time if you haven’t yet read it.
One tempting way to think about the sensational letter sent to Argo’s investors by activist investor Voce Capital is to dismiss it as an amusing but inconsequential sideshow from an external investor that doesn’t get the uniqueness of our market.
I can’t help but think that when it comes to the Next Big Thing in technology, in (re)insurance the old aphorism that “a fool and his money are easily parted” holds true.
Throughout AmTrust and Maiden’s histories, both rating agencies and regulators have constantly turned a blind eye, looked for ways to kick the can down the road, or passed the buck.
Here is an opinion that is likely to be popular with many readers but I think is nonetheless true. Many insurance companies in the US are not buying enough catastrophe reinsurance for the risks they are taking.
Reasonable people can disagree about analytical issues. But my personal view is that AM Best’s trigger-shy approach is starting to look dangerously like a habit.
Around two years ago, I was a co-author of a report that argued AIG should have been broken up and sold in pieces, written with my friend and former colleague Josh Stirling during our time at Bernstein.
Three auditors previously responsible for auditing the financial reporting of AmTrust Financial have been suspended by the Securities and Exchange Committee (SEC).
JLT is witnessing upwards pricing movement in the aviation insurance market as the sector moves into its busiest time of the year during the final quarter renewal season.
The loss from Hurricane Florence and the August Californian wildfires equates to 2.2 percent of shareholders' common equity at the end of the second quarter.
Parsons will oversee Chubb’s sales and distribution strategies across the entire US, as well as implement best sales practice and measuring key sales initiatives.
In most financial markets, intermediation has seen a secular trend of margin compression, driven largely by technology reducing both search and transaction costs. But not so in insurance brokerage.
The big three brokers beat Wall Street estimates for the period, while results at AJ Gallagher and Brown & Brown were in line with consensus expectations.
Catastrophe losses inevitably dominated the headlines in 2017. This is just the nature of the specialty P&C (re)insurance universe. Yet, the underlying results also continue to paint a bleak picture.
One of the lessons of financial markets over the past two decades is that if you pay someone enough, they can provide you with fancy mathematics to justify almost anything.
The market as it is today is often taken as some sort of unchangeable truth, particularly since it has existed in a similar form for most of the living memory of those participating in it.
This week Axa announced a $15.3bn agreement to purchase Bermudian (re)insurer XL at close to 2x tangible book value, with the merged entity set to become the largest commercial lines insurer in the world.
On Monday Axa surprised markets with a $15.3bn deal to purchase Bermudian (re)insurer XL, with the $57.60 a share offer representing a 33 percent premium to the target's closing share price on 2 March.
This week Axa announced a $15.3bn agreement to purchase Bermudian (re)insurer XL at close to 2x tangible book value, with the merged entity set to become the largest commercial lines insurer in the world.
One test of a good business is whether it can survive a period of bad management. This maxim was put more colourfully by Berkshire Hathaway chairman and CEO Warren Buffett when he famously said a truly great business could be run by a ham sandwich.
In our Insider Briefing on Friday (9 February) editor-in-chief Adam McNestrie questioned the rationale for a minority investment in Swiss Re by SoftBank. I would argue it's not that clear cut.
Fourth quarter expense ratios at early reporters have shown some year-on-year improvement, although the US tax reforms had a negative impact at some firms.
As another earnings year draws to a close, we take a look at some of the big issues concerning top underwriting executives, as outlined on their Q4 calls with analysts.
