European insurers disclose an extraordinary amount of information. Solvency II has created one of the richest public datasets available on any group of institutional investors. Balance sheets, investment exposures, capital requirements and solvency positions can be compared across hundreds of companies. The apparent precision is deceptive. The same economic exposure
The tension is increasingly visible. Changes to Solvency II, the treatment of long-term equity investments, infrastructure and securitisation all form part of a broader debate about how insurers should invest. The political objective is clear enough: mobilise more long-term European savings towards productive investment. Translating that ambition into
Asset-management fees are usually discussed from the perspective of the fund investor. Insurance company accounts offer another, much less explored view. Managing a large general account generates several layers of cost: internal investment teams, affiliated managers, external mandates, investment funds, custody, transactions and specialist assets. Some insurers disclose parts
Private markets are still routinely described as an “alternative” allocation. For many large European insurers, the description is becoming increasingly misleading. Infrastructure debt, private corporate credit, private equity and other illiquid investments are now embedded in strategic portfolios assembled over many years. The shift began well before the current enthusiasm
One of the largest pools of assets reported by European insurers is also one of the easiest to misinterpret. Unit- and index-linked assets sit on insurance balance sheets, but the investment risk is principally borne by policyholders. That distinction matters when measuring insurers as institutional investors. A euro in
There is no such thing as a typical European insurance portfolio. Solvency II provides insurers across the European Economic Area with a common prudential framework. That makes their balance sheets unusually comparable. It does not make their investment behaviour uniform. France and Germany illustrate the problem. Their insurers operate under
The past five years offered European insurers several opportunities to retreat from equities. The pandemic was followed by inflation, the fastest monetary tightening in the euro’s history, war in Europe and repeated bouts of market volatility. At the same time, bonds became investable again, offering insurers a less capital-
European insurers are managing larger investment portfolios again. After several years in which rising rates, falling bond prices and volatile markets complicated any reading of balance-sheet growth, the direction has become clearer. But the headline number is less informative than it looks. Part of the increase reflects markets. Part
Insurance investment costs are disclosed. They are rarely comparable. SFCRs, annual reports and fund documentation contain fragments of information about the cost of managing insurers’ general accounts: internal expenses, external management fees, fund charges and transaction costs. Individually, these disclosures often appear anecdotal. Collected systematically, they could reveal something much
Few changes should have mattered more to European insurers than the return of interest rates. For much of the previous decade, insurers had to invest new premiums and maturing assets in a world where high-quality government bonds frequently offered negligible or negative yields. The search for income helped push