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Bad News for the P/C Insurance Sector

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Though the insurance industry as a whole has fared somewhat well during the current financial crisis, a report out today says P/C insurers haven’t been so lucky.

A.M. Best has reported a surprising drop in net income of 87% for the U.S. P/C insurance sector during the first quarter of 2009.

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The report states that:

  • Net income for commercial lines dropped 52.9% to $1.6 billion in the first quarter, compared to the same quarter last year.
  • Net premiums written for commercial lines fell 7.
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    8% to $46 billion in the quarter.

  • Underwriting losses decreased from .
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    5 billion in the first quarter of last year to $500 million in the first quarter of this year.

  • Policyholder surplus dropped 14.6% to $197.6 billion, according to the report.

Best stated that though the outlook for the U.S. P/C industry remains somewhat bleak for the remainder of the year, the projection for the commercial lines segment (barring mortgage guarantee and financial guarantee insurers) should post an underwriting profit.

The report is available for $65 (for nonsubscribers) at bestweek.com.

A Revolution in Risk Modeling

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Let’s hear it for Jesper Andersen and Toby Segaran, two geniuses who saw an opportunity after AAA-rated companies began to fail in the midst of the economic collapse. Their solution?  Sounds obvious — a more effective corporate credit risk modeling system.

So the two entrepreneurs and analytics gurus put their heads together to form freerisk.org, which is:

a project with the goal of making freely available the data, algorithms and tools necessary to perform risk modeling. We believe that risk management is too important to society to be an arcane subject or competitive advantage.

And the risk management community screams “Hallelujah!”

Most of the numbers are crunched by a team of volunteer finance fanatics who rate companies using crowdsourcing. The site even offers an open application programming interface (API), which lets users design their own risk-crunching models.

Will this site serve to forever correct the corrupt and biased ratings of agencies such as AM Best, Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s?  Maybe not, but it’s a great alternative.