Life, Health and Annuity Issuer Earnings Season Begins

COVID-19 lockdowns hung over the entire second quarter.

(Credit: NIH)

Executives from UnitedHealth Group will kick off life, health and annuity issuers’ second-quarter earnings release season tomorrow, by posting the company’s results, and then holding a conference call to discuss the results with securities analysts.

UnitedHealth— a giant health insurer that positions itself as a health care company and goes light on use of the word “insurance” — will face urgent questions from analysts who want to know how facing a full three months of work-at-home recommendations has affected sales, care management operations, pharmacy benefits management results, and health insurance claims.

(Related: Publicly Traded Life and Annuity Issuers Prepare to Talk About COVID-19 With Investors)

Principal Financial Group is currently scheduled to be the first life and annuity issuer to release earnings. It’s preparing to show how its quarter went July 28.

Insurers got through the first 10 weeks of the first quarter in a world where going to a hotel conference room to attend a conference, with a 1,000 people packed into a ballroom for a general session, was no big deal.

Insurance company executives emphasized during the conference calls for first-quarter results that they had seen only a small number of COVID-19-related claims, and that sales, revenue and earnings had been strong before the pandemic changed everything, in mid-March.

The new round of earnings releases and earnings calls will be about seeing whether anything’s changed.

Life and annuity issuers will get many questions about the effects of stock market volatility on variable life and annuity products, and about the effects of very low interest rates on their investment portfolios and benefits obligation totals.

The earnings season calendar affects only insurers that have chosen to sell stock to the public. Other life, health and annuity issuers send quarterly financial reports to their regulators but tend to take a more low-key approach to talking about their results.

The following list gives each company’s anticipated earnings release date and the “stock symbol” it uses to identify itself to investors. Click on the stock symbol to see the company’s SEC filing page.

July 15

July 22

July 23

July 27

July 28

July 29

July 30

Aug. 3

Aug. 4

Aug. 5

Aug. 6

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