SNL Financial is First to Publish Comprehensive Year-End Statutory Insurance Data

SNL data shows poor investment performance overshadowing decent operating profitability for insurance companies in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Charlottesville, Va. (PRWEB) March 9, 2009 -- SNL Financial (http://www.snl.com/), the leading provider of sector-focused financial information, is the first to publish complete data on 3,200 statutory insurance filing companies for year-end 2008. Preliminary P&C, Life and Managed Care data reveals the heavy toll of investment losses and declining sales on this year's results.

•    P&C companies (excluding mortgage insurers) reported underwriting profits of $4.1 billion, offset by $6.3 billion in after-tax realized losses.

•    Over 60% of life filers reported an RBC decline, but the unadjusted average drop was only 3%.

•    Material withdrawals and declining net investment income created separate accounts revenue of negative $199 billion.

•    Health care entities reported a 20% decline in underwriting income driven by increased medical claim costs and administrative expenses.

"In the current investment climate, liquidity is so important," said Jonathan Wright, SNL's Associate Director, Insurance. "The fact that we continue to see operating profits ex-investment losses for most industry segments can provide some level of comfort."

SNL's statutory data includes detailed financial data on each filer, reinsurance, investment and loss reserve schedules, data by state and line of business and hundreds of ratios, snapshots and analytics, available exclusively as part of SNL Unlimited service for Financial Institutions. SNL is the only information provider to offer clients a comprehensive insurance product, linking statutory data with public company data, mergers & acquisitions data, proprietary news, documents and more. To find out more about SNL Unlimited, contact sales (at) snl (dot) com or call 866.296.3743.

About SNL Financial

SNL collects, standardizes and disseminates all relevant corporate, financial, market and M&A data -- plus news and analysis -- for the Banking, Financial Services, Insurance, Real Estate, Energy and Media & Communications industries. For more information, visit www.SNL.com.

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SNL Contact

Monica Jenkins

Marketing/Press Relations Manager

434.951.6951

mjenkins (at) snl (dot) com

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