Publicly traded life, health and annuity issuers are starting to roll out second quarter earnings in a month of haze.

Vaccines seem to have tamed COVID-19, but the delta  variant could let the pandemic out of the cage.

Rising inflation seems to have given the Federal Reserve Board room to push interest rates higher, but, right now, average rates on the investment-grade corporate bonds life insurers favor are just a little more than 1 percentage point higher than the comparable Treasury rates.

Ryan Krueger, a securities analyst at Keefe Bruyette & Woods, a Sifel company, says one major, clear-cut earnings driver could be mergers and acquisitions: He's listing Lincoln National Corp., Principal Financial Group Inc. and Prudential Financial Inc. as the companies most likely to sell or reinsure large blocks of business.

The shifting winds may make this earnings season one in which every company has a different story to tell, rather than one in which just about all companies do well or just about all do poorly.

Public Companies

Only a few U.S. life and health insurers are publicly traded — meaning that a large number of investors own shares of the insurers' stock.

Most insurers are owned by their policyholders, private investment funds, or privately held companies.

But the public companies' results give everyone in the industry hints about how all insurers might be doing.

The companies' earnings rarely have any direct effect on in-force products, but the results, and shareholders' reactions to the results, can influence what kinds of products insurers choose to sell.

Earnings Release Dates

Here's a list that gives each insurer's anticipated earnings release date, along with the stock symbol the company uses to identify itself to investors. (This list will be updated over the next few days, as more earnings release dates come in.)

Click on the stock symbol to see the company's SEC filing page.

July 16

  • UnitedHealth Group (UNH)

July 21

  • Anthem (ANTM)
  • Globe Life  (GL)

July 26

  • Ameriprise Financial (AMP)
  • TriNet Group (TNET)

July 27

  • Centene Corp. (CNC)
  • Principal Financial Group (PFG)

July 28

  • Aflac  Inc. (AFL)
  • CNO Financial Group (CNO)
  • Humana  (HUM)
  • Molina Healthcare (MOH)

July 29

Aug. 2

  • Horace Mann Educators Corp. (HMN)

Aug. 3

  • Castlight Health  (CSLT)
  • Fidelity National Financial (Fidelity & Guaranty) (FNF)
  • Genworth Financial (GNW)
  • KKR (KKR)
  • Prudential Financial (PRU)
  • Reinsurance Group of America (RGA)
  • Unum Group (UNM)

Aug. 4

  • CVS Health (Aetna). (CVS)
  • Equitable Holdings (EQH)
  • Lemonade (LMND)
  • Lincoln National Corp. (LNC)
  • Manulife Financial Corp. (MFC)
  • MetLife (MET)
  • Sun Life Financial (SLF)

Aug. 5

  • American International Group (AIG)
  • American Equity Investment Life Holding Co. (AEL)
  • Athene Holding Ltd. (ATH)
  • Brighthouse Financial (BHF)
  • Cigna Corp. (CI)
  • Triple S Management Corp. (GTS)
  • Voya Financial (VOYA)

Aug. 6

  • Primerica (PRI)

Aug. 11

Aug. 12

  • Oscar Health (OSCR)

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