{"id":10469,"date":"2010-04-13T22:22:28","date_gmt":"2010-04-14T02:22:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prefblog.com\/?p=10469"},"modified":"2010-04-13T22:22:28","modified_gmt":"2010-04-14T02:22:28","slug":"sp-downgrades-slf-prefs-now-p-2high-bbb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/?p=10469","title":{"rendered":"S&amp;P Downgrades SLF: Prefs now P-2(high) \/ BBB+"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Standard and Poor&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www2.standardandpoors.com\/portal\/site\/sp\/en\/ca\/page.article\/2,1,1,0,1204855555982.html\">has announced<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>We believe Sun Life Financial Inc.&#8217;s 2010 after-tax operating earnings will come in below our expectation and that the U.S. investment portfolio will show further asset impairments, which will add pressure to the group&#8217;s capital.\n<li>Based on weaker-than-expected operating earnings and expected future pressure on capital, we have lowered the ratings on SLF and its North American subsidiaries by one notch.\n<li>The outlook on SLF&#8217;s North American subsidiaries is stable, and the outlook on SLF is negative.<\/ul>\n<p>Standard &#038; Poor&#8217;s Ratings Services said today that it lowered its long-term counterparty credit and financial strength ratings on Sun Life Financial Inc.&#8217;s (SLF) core insurance subsidiaries&#8211;Sun Life Assurance Co. of Canada (SLA), Sun Life Assurance Co. of Canada (U.S.) (SLUS), and Sun Life Insurance &#038; Annuity Co. of New York&#8211;to &#8216;AA-&#8216; from &#8216;AA&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>Standard &#038; Poor&#8217;s also said that it lowered its financial strength ratings on Independence Life &#038; Annuity Co., which benefits from an explicit claims guarantee for policyholder obligations provided by SLUS&#8211;to &#8216;AA-&#8216; from &#8216;AA&#8217;. The outlook on these companies is stable.<\/p>\n<p>In addition, Standard &#038; Poor&#8217;s lowered its long-term counterparty credit rating on SLF to &#8216;A&#8217; from &#8216;A+&#8217;. The outlook on SLF in negative.<\/p>\n<p>The ratings and outlook on SLF&#8217;s Hong Kong subsidiary, Sun Life Hong Kong Ltd. (A+\/Stable\/&#8212;), remain unchanged&#8230;<br \/><b>&#8230;<\/b><br \/>Sun Life&#8217;s 2009 operating earnings were well below the C$1.75 billion normal run rate required for the higher ratings, as outlined within the report we published on March 6, 2009. We believe SLF&#8217;s 2010 after-tax operating earnings will also come in below our expectation of at least C$1.75 billion. The company&#8217;s current earnings guidance is for adjusted earnings from operations for 2010 to be C$1.4 billion-C$1.7 billion, which is notionally below the above target.<\/p>\n<p>Supporting the ratings are Sun Life&#8217;s very strong business profile and competitive advantages in Canada as well as its very strong earnings, capitalization, and investments. We view Sun Life&#8217;s enterprise risk management (ERM) as strong and a neutral to the ratings given the group&#8217;s complexity and risks. We view Sun Life&#8217;s financial flexibility as a weakness to the ratings.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Sun Life has six issues of PerpetualDiscounts outstanding: SLF.PR.A, SLF.PR.B, SLF.PR.C, SLF.PR.D and SLF.PR.E, as well as one FixedReset, SLF.PR.F. All are tracked by HIMIPref&trade; and assigned to their expected subindices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Standard and Poor&#8217;s has announced: We believe Sun Life Financial Inc.&#8217;s 2010 after-tax operating earnings will come in below our expectation and that the U.S. investment portfolio will show further asset impairments, which will add &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-issue-comments"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10469\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}