Interest rates are rising, but Ameriprise Financial is still working to reduce exposure to life insurance and annuity guarantee risk.
Jim Cracchiolo, the CEO of the Minneapolis-based company, said Wednesday that he believes the Federal Reserve Board and other central banks will have to continue to increase interest rates to get inflation under control.
The increases in interest rates "will lead to a slowing of the U.S. and European economies," Cracchiolo said. "It looks more like we're heading for a mild recession. Therefore, I expect there will be more volatility ahead."
Life insurers make heavy use of bonds and other fixed-income assets to support life insurance and annuity guarantees. After the second quarter, some life insurance company executives suggested that the recent increase in interest rates would be an opportunity to assume more guarantee risk and increase the rates promised to customers.
Walter Berman, Ameriprise's chief financial officer, said the company will continue to focus on sales of low-guarantee products, such as variable annuities without living benefits and variable universal life insurance. The firm's strategy continues to focus on reducing the need to pay fixed benefits as its own investments perform poorly due to low interest rates on bonds, stock market declines and other issues in the financial markets.
What It Means
Helping clients lock in strong life insurance and annuity benefits guarantees might get harder before it gets easier.
The Earnings
Ameriprise executives talked about the economy and the company's life and annuity business during a conference call the company held to go over earnings for the third quarter.
The quarter ended Sept. 30.
Ameriprise is reporting $548 million in net income for the quarter on $3.5 billion in revenue, compared with $1 billion in net income on $2.9 billion in revenue for the third quarter of 2021.
Results for the year-earlier quarter included a $521 million operating income gain related to an annuity reinsurance transaction.
The Ameriprise Retirement & Protection Solutions unit, which sells annuities, life insurance and disability insurance, reported $31 million in pretax adjusted operating earnings for the latest quarter on $786 million in adjusted operating net revenues, compared with $187 million in operating earnings on $834 million in adjusted operating net revenues for the year-earlier quarter.
The adjusted operating earnings figures include the effects of "unlocking" earlier assumptions about Retirement & Protection Solutions unit performance.
Operating earnings excluding the effects of the unlocking increased to $203 million, from $192 million.
"The business continued to generate strong free cash flow and a high return on capital," Ameriprise said.
Annuity and Insurance Sales
Ameriprise variable annuity sales fell to $948 million in the third quarter, down 35% from the total for the year-earlier quarter.
The decrease reflected the "discontinuation of sales with living benefit riders that was completed in June, as well as industry slowdown due to market dislocation," the company said.
Sales of life insurance and disability insurance fell 29%, to $65 million, "primarily due to market volatility," the company reported.
Most of the product sales involve variable universal life policies, which help customers accumulate assets and offer relatively high profit margins for Ameriprise.
