The giant accounting rule shift coming in 2023 could help life insurers that have focused on selling term life insurance, employee benefit products and some other products, according to Ryan Krueger.
Krueger, a life insurance analyst at Stifel Financial Corp.'s Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, lists the possible winners and losers in a 2022 outlook report.
The Financial Accounting Standards Board set the shift in motion by adopting the Long-Duration Targeted Improvements rules for life insurers. The rules, which are supposed to take effect in 2023, require affected insurers to reflect estimated changes in the value of long-term benefits obligations in current U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles financial statements.
"At a high level, the GAAP balance sheet will become far more market/rate sensitive, actuarial assumptions will be updated annually for all products, and the pattern of GAAP profit emergence will change for some products," Krueger writes.
The LDTI rules will have no direct effect on the financial statements that life insurers file with state insurance regulators, he notes.
Krueger predicts that the LDTI rules will lead to near-term profit reporting increases for term life, employee benefits, group retirement operations and asset management businesses.
