NEW YORK (Bloomberg)—American International Group Inc. will hold its first earnings call with analysts since May 2009, as CEO Robert Benmosche seeks to raise money from private investors to repay a government bailout.

The insurer will hold a call on Feb. 25 after reporting fourth-quarter results a day earlier, New York-based AIG said in a statement Wednesday. Mr. Benmosche, 66, has released recorded messages and letters discussing earnings since he became CEO in 2009, avoiding direct questions from analysts and investors.

“Before, he was hamstrung,” said Ernest Patrikis, AIG's ex-general counsel, who left the insurer in 2006 and is now a partner at White & Case L.L.P. “You don't want to do a conference call with analysts and say, ‘I can't speak to that, I can't address that question.' It's worse than no call.”

AIG may face questions about underwriting at its Chartis property/casualty unit after saying today that the insurer would take a $4.1 billion fourth-quarter charge as claims costs exceeded the company's forecasts. The company also will have an opportunity to discuss its $296 billion fixed-income portfolio, including about $49 billion in municipal bonds, $152 billion of corporate debt and about $31 billion in residential mortgage-backed securities as of Sept. 30.

“The investment community remains interested in AIG,” Mr. Benmosche said in a Nov. 5 letter to employees. “The reason we have not conducted quarterly conference calls with analysts to date was because, for quite some time, we simply did not know how many shares AIG would have outstanding. But with the recent announcement of our roadmap for repaying all of our obligations, we now know that share number.”

‘A lot of questions’

The U.S. Treasury Department has about 1.66 billion shares, or 92% of the total, after converting its $49 billion preferred stake last month. AIG needs private investors to buy Treasury’s stock as Mr. Benmosche seeks independence from the government.

Mr. Benmosche’s predecessors including Edward Liddy, Robert Willumstad, Martin Sullivan and Maurice R. Greenberg held investor calls, as do leaders of competitors including Travelers Cos. Inc. and MetLife Inc. Mark Herr, a spokesman for AIG, declined to say which executives would participate on Feb. 25.

“There were a lot of questions that they wouldn’t or couldn’t answer” until the company laid out its plan to repay the bailout, Mr. Patrikis said. “They had someone looking over their shoulder. Life wasn’t normal at AIG.”

Paula Reynolds, then the insurer’s restructuring chief, said at the company’s last earnings call, in May 2009, that “there are a number of options of how you attack your liabilities” when asked whether the company would ask bondholders to take a “haircut.”

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