Rating Agencies
S&P, Fitch Offering Clearer Windows Into Insurer Rating Processes
Since Standard & Poor's unveiled its updated criteria for rating insurers in May of last year, nothing much has changed with rating agency models, and few ratings changed in response to S&P's ...
S&P: Reinsurers Downplay Climate Change at Their Own Risk
Reinsurers must not take climate change for granted or underestimate its impact. If they do, they risk dealing with higher levels of catastrophic risks that fall way outside of their financial ...
Assessing Reinsurers: It’s About Talent, Not Capital
The movement of third-party capital into the reinsurance space was a constant theme of a recent seminar during which A.M. Best SVP Matt Mosher predicted that reinsurers will ultimately evolve into ...
Are Hedge Funds Poised to Make Berkshire Hathaway-Type Re Deals?
The subject of hedge fund-backed reinsurers came up unexpectedly when Carrier Management recently asked A.M. Best's Matt Mosher, senior vice president of rating services, about loss reserve ...
Rating Agency Views of Hedge Fund Reinsurers Diverge
While A.M. Best has assigned ratings of A-minus or better to five hedge fund reinsurers, Standard & Poor's hasn't yet rated any of the five and remains "skeptical" of their strategies, ...
Upgrades and Negative Outlooks: What’s Wrong With This Picture?
As the days counted down to the Rendez-Vous de Septembre, Fitch Ratings announced a string of favorable rating actions on several global reinsurers in late August. Fitch's Aug. 20 statement about its ...
Demotech U.S. Company Classification System
Demotech's philosophy is to review and evaluate insurers based on their focus and execution of their business model rather than on financial size. This philosophy was the catalyst for the development ...
Regional, Specialty Insurer Analysis: Broader Focus Enhances Profitability
Insurers focusing their business on a single state or coverage line experienced decent levels of premium growth in recent years, but they also recorded higher combined ratios than diversified ...