But a big part of the loss was directly related to its insurance activity — A.I.G. increased its reserves on the advice of its outside actuaries. The move seemed to vindicate a study by the Sanford C. Bernstein research firm last November, which found a big shortfall in A.I.G.’s reserves for its property and casualty businesses. Those businesses have been renamed Chartis and are expected to be A.I.G.’s backbone.

Hence, Proving that AIG has been under- pricing their insurance.

February 27, 2010/NYTIMES

A.I.G. Reports a Loss and Increases Its Reserves

By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH

The American International Group, the insurance giant, said Friday that it lost about $11 billion last year, and cited a rebound in annuities sold by its renamed life insurance companies as a bright spot.

The insurer’s year-end result was a small fraction of the record-breaking loss of $61.7 billion that it reported for 2008, when its large derivatives portfolio blew up, leading to a government bailout. Most of the 2009 loss came from a fourth-quarter charge taken to reflect that its bailout had been restructured — a one-time charge that A.I.G. has been warning about for months. The charge was not connected with the company’s core insurance operations.

But a big part of the loss was directly related to its insurance activity — A.I.G. increased its reserves on the advice of its outside actuaries. The move seemed to vindicate a study by the Sanford C. Bernstein research firm last November, which found a big shortfall in A.I.G.’s reserves for its property and casualty businesses. Those businesses have been renamed Chartis and are expected to be A.I.G.’s backbone.

Insurance companies set aside reserves to pay claims that they anticipate, and when they have to strengthen inadequate reserves, they take money from earnings. The Bernstein analyst, Todd R. Bault, had predicted that A.I.G. would have to “take some kind of a reserve charge” before it could offer Chartis’s shares to investors, as part of the company’s plans to restructure and pay back its government bailout.

For the fourth quarter alone, A.I.G. lost $8.87 billion, or $65.51 a share. That compared with a loss of $458.99 a share in the period a year ago. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters forecast a loss of $3.94 a share.

A.I.G. said that $2.7 billion of its loss, on a pretax basis, came from increasing its reserves. Much of the increase took place in the fourth quarter, after an annual study showed a deficit in the amounts needed to pay workers’ compensation and other commercial claims that are gradually coming due on policies sold in 2002 and earlier.

Mr. Bault had reported that A.I.G.’s reserves seemed inadequate for its workers’ compensation and other types of insurance where claims take a long time to develop. But he said the deficit appeared to be much larger, estimating it at $11.9 billion. A.I.G. said the increase in reserves left Chartis with a surplus of $27 billion, 4 percent more than its surplus in 2008.

The chief executive, Robert Benmosche, said in a statement: “Our team has made great progress during the year in executing our strategic restructuring plan.”

In addition to strengthening the insurance companies, he cited the progress made in winding down A.I.G.’s derivatives business, and “positioning certain businesses for sale.”

A.I.G. has announced that it will sell shares in its biggest international life insurance company, the American International Assurance Company Ltd., on the Hong Kong stock exchange sometime this year. It has also been negotiating the sale of another large international life insurance company, known as Alico, to MetLife. The talks have proceeded slowly because of questions about a possible tax liability and who would pay it.

The first $25 billion in proceeds from those two transactions are to go to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, to pay back part of the cost of rescuing A.I.G.

Already, A.I.G. had replaced $25 billion of rescue debt to the New York Fed with $25 billion of equity, an investment which will pay off when the sales of the two foreign life insurers go through. The debt-for-equity swap lightened A.I.G.’s debt burden, averting a credit downgrade that loomed in the first quarter of 2009, when the company announced its disastrous 2008 results.

The company said $5.2 billion of its year-end pre-tax loss was the result of eliminating the $25 billion of debt to the Fed. It has been carrying the lending commitment as an asset on its balance sheet, but was able to speed up the amortization of the so-called commitment asset, leading to the $5.2 billion pre-tax charge.

In addition, A.I.G. paid the New York Fed $5.2 billion of interest on its rescue loans over the course of 2009.

Another big factor in A.I.G.’s losses for 2009 was the pending sale of yet another foreign life insurance company, the Nan Shan Life Insurance Company, of Taiwan. Although the sale has not yet closed, A.I.G. said it had recognized a $2.8 billion pretax loss on the sale in the fourth quarter.

In his statement, Mr. Benmosche said his team was “increasingly confident in how we see the mix of A.I.G.’s businesses over the long term.”

He said the “nucleus” would consist not only of Chartis but of “a strong U.S. life and annuity operation and several other businesses,” which he did not identify. In the months immediately after A.I.G.’s rescue, its interim chief executive, Edward Liddy, had spoken of selling the company’s domestic life insurance companies.

Since then, the life insurance companies have been renamed and at least some of them have emerged as significant sources of cash for A.I.G. Mr. Benmosche cited in particular a subsidiary once called A.I.G. Annuity, which last year reverted to the name it used before A.I.G. acquired it, Western National.

Under the new name, Western National has reclaimed its former position as the largest seller of single-premium fixed annuities in banks. Some banks had suspended the sales immediately after the bailout, but in the second half of 2009 the sales were resumed. Demand was strong because the annuities, which are not insured by the F.D.I.C., have offered customers more interest than similar bank deposits.