{"id":22268,"date":"2013-06-18T03:14:56","date_gmt":"2013-06-18T07:14:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prefblog.com\/?p=22268"},"modified":"2013-06-18T03:14:56","modified_gmt":"2013-06-18T07:14:56","slug":"ccs-upgraded-by-sp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/?p=22268","title":{"rendered":"CCS Upgraded by S&amp;P"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Standard &#038; Poor&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.standardandpoors.com\/prot\/ratings\/articles\/en\/us\/?articleType=HTML&#038;assetID=1245353192350\">has announced<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>Following a review under our revised insurance criteria, we are raising our ratings on Co-operators Financial Services Ltd. and its operating subsidiaries Co-operators General Insurance Co. and Co-operators Life Insurance Co.\n<li>Our ratings on the group reflect its strong business risk profile as a top multiline insurer in Canada with well-established multichannel distribution platforms, as well as its very strong financial profile.\n<li>The stable outlook reflects our view that the group will sustain its strong competitive position and very strong capital adequacy.<\/ul>\n<p><b>&#8230;<\/b><br \/> In our view, Co-operators&#8217; life insurance operations are exposed to low industry risks due to high barriers to entry in a market dominated by a small number of life insurers and a strong institutional framework where the primary regulator, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI), maintains highly effective oversight of the industry. OSFI&#8217;s primary solvency metric, the minimum continuing capital and surplus requirements (MCCSR) ratio, comprehensively captures all insurance risks in each domestic life insurer and their respective international subsidiaries.<\/p>\n<p>Insurance products in Canada generally have less aggressive guarantees, bolstering our view of low industry risk, which has a strong track record of very tight asset-liability matching. This matching is needed because of financial reporting and a regulatory framework that applies fair-value accounting principles equally to both sides of the balance sheet. The framework also tends to be pro-cyclical, leading to earlier recognition of<br \/>\nlong-term adverse macroeconomic effects and reporting of relatively conservative financial results. But we see sensitivity to interest rates and equity-market volatility as somewhat offsetting these strengths and burdening long-term operating return prospects. We believe a weak global economy, persistent low interest rates, and established competition limit the sector&#8217;s growth prospects and potential for higher operating margins.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This follows the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.prefblog.com\/?p=20026\">positive outlook announced in October 2012<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Cooperators&#8217; is the proud issuer of CCS.PR.C and CCS.PR.D. The S&#038;P rating on these issues is now P-2, up from P-2(low).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Standard &#038; Poor&#8217;s has announced: Following a review under our revised insurance criteria, we are raising our ratings on Co-operators Financial Services Ltd. and its operating subsidiaries Co-operators General Insurance Co. and Co-operators Life Insurance &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-22268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-issue-comments"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22268","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=22268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22268\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}