Moody's Less Gloomy About Life Forecast

Moody’s Investors Service has upgraded its outlook for the U.S. life insurance industry to stable from negative.

The outlook signifies the direction Moody’s expects the industry’s financial strength will take over the next 12 to 18 months.

After a substantial number of downgrades in the previous 2 years, about one-third of the life insurers rated by Moody’s still have negative outlooks, analysts at the firm write in a new report.

But improvements in the economy and in the stock market have helped lift companies’ variable annuity portfolios as well as pension and asset-management fees, while reducing corporate defaults and bond downgrades and reversing investment losses, the analysts write.