BestWeek: MetLife Says SIFI Designation a Product of FSOC ‘Imagination’
August 29, 2015 by Rick Cornejo, managing editor, BestWeek: rick.cornejo@ambest.com
OLDWICK, N.J. – The Financial Stability Oversight Council’s designation of MetLife Inc. as a systemically important financial institution is not based on facts, but on the council’s imaginative concepts of how the company could lead the country into another financial meltdown, a MetLife legal filing said, according to the latest edition of BestWeek.
The FSOC critique was contained in a MetLife legal brief filed Aug. 21 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. “Ultimately, FSOC asks this court to endorse an infinitely elastic framework that would permit the agency to designate a company based on whatever adverse financial conditions and macroeconomic consequences its boundless imagination can conceive,” the brief said. “That free-wheeling approach is irreconcilable with the designation criteria prescribed in Dodd-Frank.”
Also featured in this week’s BestWeek:
— Aviation insurance customers, historically accustomed to dramatic ups and downs in premium levels, may finally be able to look forward to a period of predictable, low pricing — thanks to a combination of ever-improving safety and a sustained influx of capacity, according to industry experts. “The improved safety is putting positive pressure on reducing the insurance rates,” Nigel Weyman, London-based chief executive officer of broker JLT Aerospace, told BestWeek. “And it’s attracting insurers into aviation, where they believe they can make a profit.”
— Premiums, deductibles and exclusions have risen and now the 80% of Missouri homes most at risk in the event of an earthquake aren’t insured for it, the state’s Department of Insurance said in an annual report. The insurance regulators refer to it as a “coverage crisis” in the southeastern part of the state. They estimate uninsured residential property losses of $100 billion in the event of a magnitude 7-7.9 earthquake, on par with what could be $101 billion in insured losses.
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