Hello friends, January is almost over, time flies. It has been another interesting week during which we are following earnings annoucements, life insurance deals and insurtech investment trends. Here are the three things we learned this week:
- Earning season continues and there were two interesting reports. W.R. Berkley announces the lowest combined ratio in 13 years along with an increase in underwriting income of 44.2%. Meanwhile Everest Re Group provides guidance that CATs and the pandemic will lower their net income by half a billion from 2019 to 2020 almost the same amount as the reserve they are taking for 2020 COVID losses.
- The trend of life insurance deals continues with Allstate selling it’s life insurance operation to Blackstone to raise capital to focus on P&C. This goes along with the last big deal they made to acquire National General a P&C carrier. Mass Mutual has agreed to purchase Great American’s Life unit which will provide them a substantial book of annuities business to add to their existing product portfolio and scale up.
- Willis issued their Q4 quarterly Insurtech Report highlighting record insurtech investment for 2020 thanks in large part a number of IPOs raising $3.38B the largest amount in the past 5 years as the public market appetite was strong. The report further examines the L&H space and notes that COVID has validated technology innovation and that insurtechs need to survive the current uncertainty.
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