Losses in its commercial property/casualty insurance results helped push American International Group Inc. to a net loss of $1.84 billion in the fourth quarter of 2015 from a net gain of $655 million a year earlier, the New York-based insurer said last week.
“Commercial insurance reported a pretax operating loss of $2.1 billion compared to pretax operating income of $1.2 billion in the prior-year quarter, primarily driven by the previously announced $3.0 billion charge for adverse prior-year loss reserve development in property/casualty and lower net investment income in property/casualty and institutional markets,” AIG said in a statement.
Net written commercial premiums declined 1.9%, to $4.60 billion, for the quarter.
Catastrophe-related losses also jumped to $213 million in the fourth quarter from $35 million during the 2014 period.
For the entire year, AIG reported net income of $2.20 billion, down 70.8% from 2014.
Net written commercial premiums dropped 2.8%, to $20.44 million, and the combined ratio deteriorated to 115.0% from 100.2%.
Breaking American International Group Inc. into separate property/casualty, life and mortgage insurance units might be good for shareholders, but not necessarily for risk managers.