Savers are the obvious victims of the past few years’ plunge in interest rates. But there are other casualties, including money market funds, which have no reason for existing if their yield is negative, and insurance companies, which price their policies on the assumption that they’ll earn good returns on their bond portfolios.
As bond yields plunge, the returns insurance companies can expect are also plunging, forcing them into huge write-offs and, soon, steep premium increases that will scare away customers. One big insurer just illustrated the spot in which the industry finds itself:
Lloyd’s of London Takes `Massive Hit’ From Low Investment Return
(Bloomberg) – Lloyd’s of London reported a 30 percent drop of full-year profit as the world’s largest insurance market was hurt by continued pressure on pricing and the lowest investment returns since at least 2001.
Earnings declined to 2.1 billion pounds ($3 billion) for 2015 as income from investments, primarily fixed income, sank 60 percent to 400 million pounds, according to the company’s annual report Wednesday. Weaker pricing in 2015 is expected to continue this year, it said.
“We’ve taken a double hit from reduced margins in underwriting and lower investment yield,” Chief Executive Officer Inga Beale said in an interview with Bloomberg Television Wednesday. “On the investment side we saw a dramatic reduction in 2015 that was a massive hit” to earnings.
Most of Lloyd’s 2015 earnings were generated when bond yields were a lot higher than they are today, so things will be much worse going forward. Here, for instance, is that now-famous chart of Japanese long-bond yields plunging from modestly positive to negative in the space of a few months.
For an insurance company — or a pension fund (more about them in another post) — the only recourse is to adjust to this new reality by raising premiums and taking huge writedowns, as Lloyds just did. In such a harsh environment, weak players will fail and strong ones will suffer, but few will make the kind of money that justifies the effort.
