U.S. life insurance and annuity issuers are about to talk to securities analysts about their first-quarter results — after the wave of U.S. tariffs, or import taxes, announced this month changed everything.
Suddenly, everything that happened on or before March 31, when the first quarter ended, seems so outdated.
Stocks reacted to the actual, looming and canceled changes in import taxes by going through waves of tariff tantrum turmoil.
Non-U.S. investors backed away from U.S. investment markets and began to think of U.S. Treasury securities as relatively high-risk assets, not zero-risk pillars of the financial universe.
The administration of President Donald Trump cheered U.S. investors Wednesday by shifting away from talk about starting a trade war with China and removing Jerome Powell as Federal Reserve chair.
But some analysts wondered whether lingering investor concern about sudden U.S. policy changes could cause more turmoil.
Meanwhile, life and annuity issuers are trying to use bonds, private assets, stock index options and careful portfolio management to offer clients life insurance policies and annuity contracts that protect them against some or all of the market risk associated with periods like these.
Publicly traded banks and asset managers have already started to post their earnings and mostly talked about the turmoil without going into much detail.
Ameriprise Financial, an asset manager with roots in the insurance industry, is set to be the first major life and annuity issuer to post first-quarter earnings and talk about them with the analysts. The company plans to post its latest results early Thursday.
Other annuity issuers set to post results by the end of next week include Principal, CNO, Genworth, Reinsurance Group of America and Prudential.
Early indications are that annuity issuers probably generated strong product sales and decent operating earnings in the first quarter and will, understandably, want to focus on actual results.
See the accompanying gallery for a look at five hot questions about other matters that will be on analysts' minds.
Credit: Adobe Stock
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