It had a stellar balance sheet loaded with prudent investments backing up its commercial insurance liabilities.
FORBES: Fixing Too Big To Fail Using Balance Sheet Sequestration
The regulation boosted reserves that insurance companies are required to hold against future liabilities under life insurance obligations.
But more than that, Hopkins's father was the author of A Handbook of Average and A Manual of Marine Insurance, both standard reference books for negotiating, averaging, and adjusting the liabilities to insurance underwriters of cargo losses and shipwrecks, so Hopkins grew up in a world wet with marine accidents and was especially attentive to them.
It is possible for British companies to offload their pension liabilities to an insurance company.
And, as usual, they ignore the unfunded liabilities of social insurance programs, even though these benefits are officially recognized as "mandatory spending" when the time comes to pay them out.
In the case of the 32 small states of the Commonwealth and 12 other states with a population of 1.5m or fewer (four other beneficiaries are slightly larger), such planning can now include insurance for all outstanding financial liabilities for three years after the event.
Forcing bond insurers to hold exposure to credit derivatives while ceding good liabilities like municipal bond insurance would swamp their already over-leveraged capital bases, but save municipal bond investors, taxpayers and local governments from further losses, Spitzer said.
Insurance companies often have long term liabilities that they wish to hedge, which require low risk and predictable cash flows and fixed income securities such as government bonds that offer a predictable stream of payments by way of interest and principal payments.
FORBES: Fed's Twisting Is No Fun For Insurance Companies Like MetLife, AIG, Hartford
And the commission has set aside the idea of a joint euro-zone deposit-insurance scheme because of German objections to pooling liabilities.
Ten years ago regulators got worried that life insurance companies had too little set aside to cover future liabilities that might follow a rush of death claims.
If exchanges' liabilities aren't capped, effectively they would need insurance against the risk of massive losses.
Tiny Ireland, with its oversize banks, has just augmented its insurance scheme by giving a blanket government guarantee to bank deposits and liabilities.
Swiss Re's Mr Knoepfel sees insurance companies rushing to get into the business of helping clients assess carbon liabilities and assets.
In fact, although the agency is technically insolvent (ie, its liabilities exceed its assets), it probably has enough liquidity from insurance premiums, assets acquired when taking pension schemes over and investment income from its own portfolio to meet its obligations for many years to come.
Given how competitive insurance rates are, insurance companies depend heavily on these investment returns and many find it difficult to meet its liabilities and remain profitable otherwise.
FORBES: MetLife Eyes $50 Per Share If Investment Returns Pick Up
And since insurance companies and pension funds buy long-dated bonds to match their long-dated liabilities, everyone has been scrambling to acquire what appears to be a fast-vanishing asset hence the soaring prices and plunging yields.
It was initially intended as a cost-savings tool by which large corporations could get coverage for operations and liabilities that would have resulted in higher premiums had they sought coverage from traditional insurance companies.
FORBES: Why Companies Are Opting For Captive Insurance Arrangements
It has proposed sensible reforms to America's private-pension insurance system, including tying premiums to risk and a more accurate method of measuring pension assets and liabilities.
ECONOMIST: America's pension insurer sinks deeper into deficit
应用推荐