Attended the Property/Casualty Insurance Joint Industry Forum, last week in New York. I found these tidbits lying about.
Here’s a couple of interesting thoughts from the meeting:
- V.J. Dowling, managing partner, Dowling and Partners: Before financial crisis, p/c insurers traded below book value exactly one month – March 2000 – height of the dot-com boom. Since financial crisis, p/c insurers traded ABOVE book value exactly one month.
- Brian Sullivan, editor, Risk Information Inc.: Were Progressive’s Snapshot a standalone company, it would be the 20th largest auto insurer in the United States.
- Mike McGavick, CEO of XL, likened Solvency II to “an overbuilt airplane trying to take off. As it has trouble, they keep adding runway.” Instead, he said, regulators should “look at the airplane” and whether it needs rebuilding.
That Dowling point is interesting.
Isn’t it? He pointed to the bank bailouts. If I recall the reasoning properly, the bailouts drove down interest rates, which hurt investment income, which hurt p/c stocks.
Sounds a bit hand-wavy to me. If it’s rooted in profitability then a regression of the results against BV growth would demonstrate no change.
I’m not sure that’s the case.
meant to say regression of stock price change against BV growth (or some other measure of profitability)