Big U.S. life insurers’ operating earnings continued to improve in 2018, but their overall net income fell sharply, according to data from Fitch Ratings.
Fitch put Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) earnings data from 15 large, publicly traded U.S. life insurers in the analysis.
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Those insurers reported a total of $25.4 billion in earnings from operations for 2018, up 15% from the insurers total operating earnings for 2017.
But the insurers’ total net income fell 18%, to $22 billion.
Net income, or bottom-line income, includes the impact of factors such as taxes, unusual charges and investment performance.