An analyst who gets it. Even before the near bankruptcy, bailout and subsequent sale of many non insurance assets, AIG was primarily a P&C insurer. And today they are even more concentrated in that arena. And many of the problems now facing the P&C sector were caused by the biggest player and market leader in that segment. AIG. Again, they should have been allowed to fail. When they were a larger and more diverse operation they had a huge rug to sweep all the garbage under resulting from their P&C operations. No longer. And Mr. Hancock is not an insurance guy. He’s a Wall Street bean counter. I don’t see where he has the experience to fix a broken P&C carrier and make it effective. I guess we’ll see.
Excellent comment, Dave. AIG takes writing the “crème of the crap” to an entirely new level for our business. Even if they were allowed to collapse, the industry would have been flooded with even more terrible risks that would have been spread out over a wider variety of markets. Not saying it wouldn’t have helped to boost short-term profitability and rate increases overall, but long-term, not sure it would have had a positive impact on P&C. Sometimes it’s just good for a company like that to take as much as they want and leave the rest of us to underwrite and insure the best risks we can. I don’t need my fingers in every pie to hit our budget forecasts. I need to be profitable period. I’d much rather have a positive underwriting bottom line than to artificially grow my top line while my fingers were crossed.
Supreme, you and Dave both are very insightful and tell it like it is. I am afraid I have been on AIG’s case since they got caught bid rigging many years ago. They weren’t satisfied doing that kind of thing and thought it was a good idea to get in on the sub prime mortgage mess that cost us $182 Billion.
Agree with you all. The Big Short tells it all. AIG, credit default swaps, and made-up out of whole cloth so-called “insurance” on bundled mortgages. AIG collected premiums for this “insurance”, and then laughed when suckers who had bought it tried to make “claims” – AIG basically told them, you messed up – you trusted us! Any investor dumb enough to have bought this “insurance” should have done their due diligence, and realized that no state DOI had set rates for it, there were no adjusters qualified to settle claims even if it had been true insurance and there was no regulation! AIG shouldn’t be allowed squat!
An analyst who gets it. Even before the near bankruptcy, bailout and subsequent sale of many non insurance assets, AIG was primarily a P&C insurer. And today they are even more concentrated in that arena. And many of the problems now facing the P&C sector were caused by the biggest player and market leader in that segment. AIG. Again, they should have been allowed to fail. When they were a larger and more diverse operation they had a huge rug to sweep all the garbage under resulting from their P&C operations. No longer. And Mr. Hancock is not an insurance guy. He’s a Wall Street bean counter. I don’t see where he has the experience to fix a broken P&C carrier and make it effective. I guess we’ll see.
Excellent comment, Dave. AIG takes writing the “crème of the crap” to an entirely new level for our business. Even if they were allowed to collapse, the industry would have been flooded with even more terrible risks that would have been spread out over a wider variety of markets. Not saying it wouldn’t have helped to boost short-term profitability and rate increases overall, but long-term, not sure it would have had a positive impact on P&C. Sometimes it’s just good for a company like that to take as much as they want and leave the rest of us to underwrite and insure the best risks we can. I don’t need my fingers in every pie to hit our budget forecasts. I need to be profitable period. I’d much rather have a positive underwriting bottom line than to artificially grow my top line while my fingers were crossed.
Supreme, you and Dave both are very insightful and tell it like it is. I am afraid I have been on AIG’s case since they got caught bid rigging many years ago. They weren’t satisfied doing that kind of thing and thought it was a good idea to get in on the sub prime mortgage mess that cost us $182 Billion.
Agree with you all. The Big Short tells it all. AIG, credit default swaps, and made-up out of whole cloth so-called “insurance” on bundled mortgages. AIG collected premiums for this “insurance”, and then laughed when suckers who had bought it tried to make “claims” – AIG basically told them, you messed up – you trusted us! Any investor dumb enough to have bought this “insurance” should have done their due diligence, and realized that no state DOI had set rates for it, there were no adjusters qualified to settle claims even if it had been true insurance and there was no regulation! AIG shouldn’t be allowed squat!