OLDWICK, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Life insurers at the recent American Council of Life Insurers’ annual conference had no shortage of issues to ponder. This week’s BestWeek U.S./Canada features exclusive coverage of topics such as rules over unpaid property claims; the potential impact of Europe’s Solvency II and how to regulate contingent deferred annuities. Chief investment officers who made the case that Japanese-style deflation is unlikely to happen in America discussed how they navigate their companies through the low interest rate environment. Also featured are stories and audio interviews with industry leaders such as Thomas Rattmann, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Columbian Mutual Life Insurance Co.; Martha Leiper, senior vice president and chief investment officer at USAA; J. Scott Davison, executive vice president at OneAmerica Financial Partners; and Ken Mungan, principal at the Milliman consulting firm.
In BestWeek Europe, Europe’s non-life insurers will have a hard time enhancing profitability in the near future as they face the continuing strains of low investment returns and regulatory change. One issue A.M. Best examined was the state of the major markets in Europe — Germany, France, Italy and Spain — “with the main theme being that demand remains flat, results are not as stellar as they could be, and in what is still a soft market, rate increases have not been able to push through in some lines,” said Sam Dobbyn, senior financial analyst with A.M Best Europe — Rating Services Ltd.
Also in BestWeek U.S./Canada, a sharp upswing in catastrophic weather events this year has driven up loss claims across the industry’s property/casualty segment. That spike, coupled with a difficult economic climate, is weighing heavily on carrier rate strategy. Rick Means said he might feel more pressed to take action if he thought an internal variable issue was creating volatility in Shelter Insurance Co.’s book of homeowners business. Means, an executive vice president at the Columbia, Mo.-based regional property insurer, explained that the company’s underwriting rules are right where they need to be, and the noncatastrophe loss ratio is also in a good place. For now, Shelter’s growth mode on the property side consists of geographic areas where the company doesn’t already have pockets of storm exposure.
“The volatility that we’re dealing with is just these storms,” Means said in BestWeek. “What we have to ask ourselves is whether this is going to be the pattern going forward.”
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