Life insurers underperform on Wed, outperform YTD

CNO Financial

22/06/2022 22:02

** Shares of companies in life insurance lagged the broader
market on Wednesday as the U.S. Treasury 10-year yields fell,
but insurance shares have outperformed the S&P 500 so far in
2022  US/ 
    ** Life insurance and annuity and retirement plan provider,
Lincoln National  LNC.N , finished down 1.9% and was biggest
percentage decliner among Wednesday's losers in the S&P 500
financial index  .SPSY , which itself finished down 0.3%
    ** "Lincoln has a large variable annuity business so it
benefits from rising interest rates," said Piper Sandler analyst
John Barnidge 
    ** Among other life insurance providers, Unum Group  UNM.N 
fell 2% on the day while Jackson Financial  JXN.N  finished off
2.1%, MetLife  MET.N  lost 1.2% and CNO Financial  CNO.N 
dropped 0.95%. Prudential Financial  PRU.N  fell 0.8%
    ** Other S&P 500 insurers declining on Wednesday included
American International  AIG.N , down 1.5%, and W R Berkley
 WRB.N , down 0.9%. 
    ** But for the year-to-date, the S&P 500 insurance industry
index  .SPXIN  has outperformed, down 5.6% while the S&P 500
health and life insurance index  .SPLRCLIFE  has fallen 8.8%
compared with a 21% drop for the S&P 500
    **  Life insurance, as well as property and casualty "to an
extent are viewed as safe havens," said Barnidge. "A recession
may impact new life insurance sales, but you're not going to
cancel a life insurance policy 12 years into 30 years of term" 

 (Reporting By Sinéad Carew)
 ((sinead.carew@thomsonreuters.com;))