Listed Insurers - Solvency sweep on full year results announcements

Having already touched on Axa and St James's Place, I thought it handy to get a few of the others in one place with regards to Solvency detail at 2011 year end, more for my own benefit than anything! Appreciating that the Swiss lads below have  different yet Solvency II-complimentary regulation to worry about on this front.

Zurich
As ever, acres of disclosure (which you can serve yourself at here) but the salient points on Solvency are hard to identify, partly as a by-product of the volume of material, and also due to the Swiss Solvency Test (SST) transitional reporting. Couldn't be too confident of getting any real message other than the analyst presentation drawing out a rise in capital adequacy y-o-y on the Solvency I measure (and SST differences) in page 23, and pages 32-40 touching on a number of elements of economic capital. More text description on capitalisation on p25 of the Operating and Financial report.

Swiss Re
Corking set of results (helped of course by reserve releases!). Main Solvency II point is that they comment on page 15 that the delay in implementation is actually driving demand for Solvency I-style products (always a silver lining...)

Allianz
No detailed disclosure yet, just this, but the Solvency I measure has crept up to 179% y-o-y. Nothing of substance to say on Solvency II.

AEGON
Fair amount of disclosure in both the report and the slides, and Solvency I measure up around 195% at group level. More soberingly on the UK side, their Solvency I surplus was at approx 150% (p6 of report), with the other regions floating the number up.

Should be more to follow, though the meaty disclosure on capital adequacy will no doubt be saved for the Annual Report and Accounts rather than the results releases.

Swiss Re World Insurance in 2010 sigma study - no love for Solvency II

Swiss Re have pushed out their World Insurance trends research - expect to see it cited from pillar to post, as it is an exceptional body of work, with a whole host of uses (benchmarking, strategic planning and risk monetising as a minimum).

I have just kept an eye on the Solvency II aspects - references were as follows;

• Higher capital requirements for long-tail business and "overly stringent" capital requirements noted as a challenge which could undermine profitability
• "Onerous" capital requirements deriving from Solvency II could harm policyholders and economic growth
• Life companies will be "forced to shift assets into less risk asset classes"
• "Stricter solvency regulation (Solvency II) and higher capital requirements will be implemented by ratings agencies going forward"
• "Positive step" of Solvency II nullified somewhat by the tightening of "key parameters" since the credit crisis, leading to (potentially) higher capital requirements for "the most important life insurance products"

All in all, pretty negative as far as the predicted impact of Solvency II in its current form on the future of the insurance industry. Fair?