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  • Symetra CFO: Company Working to Become a National Player in Life Insurance

    September 5, 2014 by Marie Suszynski

    NEW YORK – Symetra Financial Corp., a U.S. stop-loss carrier, sees opportunity to grow its group life and group disability business to eventually “rival” its stop-loss operations, the company’s chief financial officer said.

    “We’re trying to build ourselves into a national player life insurance company,” Margaret Meister, executive vice president and CFO, said at the Keefe, Bruyette & Woods Insurance Conference in New York on Sept. 3.

    The challenge with growing the business is getting Symetra’s name out as a direct writing participant in life and disability.

    “We’ve been in stop-loss for 38 years selling through major benefits brokers,” but Symetra still has to build its reputation for offering life and disability and provide the confidence the company can bring the same quality and constant market presence it has for stop-loss, she said.

    The insurer is more transparent to employees when talking about group life, “and they may ask, ‘Who is Symetra?'” Meister said. Employers are also asking a deeper, different set of questions about life and disability compared with stop-loss.

    The company wants to have a nationally recognized presence in each of its divisions. “Clearly, we’re well-known in the world of stop-loss,” Meister said, but life and disability is an “enormous marketplace” with a lot of premium.

    “We feel like we can grow this premium over the coming years,” she said. “We don’t have an exact time frame, but it certainly has the potential to rival the size of our stop-loss business.”

    In May, Jim Park, Symetra’s senior vice president, corporate marketing and investor relations, said during an insurance conference the company is ramping up efforts to grow its individual life business at a faster clip than its annuities business (Best’s News Service, May 30, 2014).

    Meanwhile, health care reform has had a positive effect on stop-loss insurance, Meister said. The company is seeing new employers looking for stop-loss solutions, including smaller businesses.

    Because of the Affordable Care Act, self-insuring and using stop-loss coverage has become a way for employers to more affordably provide health care and offer a more robust health care solution, she said. Premiums only apply to catastrophic medical claims and employers don’t have to pay premium taxes and other fees that are usually baked into insurance premiums. “It’s just an attractive, more affordable insurance program,” she said.

    In the second quarter of this year, Symetra’s net income was up nearly 59% to $71.5 million, with lower claims frequency in its medical stop-loss insurance business.

    Symetra Life Group is the 39th-largest U.S. life/health insurer out of a list of the top 200 based on 2013 total admitted assets of $27.9 billion, according to A.M. Best Co.

    Symetra’s subsidiaries have a current Best’s Financial Strength Rating of A (Excellent).

    On the afternoon of Sept. 3, shares of Symetra (NYSE: SYA) were trading at $24.44, down 1.53% from the previous close.

    (By Marie Suszynski, Best’s News Service correspondent)

    Originally Posted at A.M. Best on September 3, 2014 by Marie Suszynski.

    Categories: Industry Articles
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