Risk / Insurance
Mr. Bault leads the global Insurance practice at SSR. He has over 20 years of combined experience in the insurance industry and equity research. Most recently, Mr. Bault served 10 years at Sanford C. Bernstein, where he was rated the #1 US Non-Life Insurance analyst for the years 2004-2008 by Institutional Investor. As an equity analyst, Mr. Bault pursued an in-depth, realistic, and unbiased portrayal of the complex industry of insurance. As a Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society since 1994, he incorporated the rigor of loss reserve analysis, price monitoring, and loss trend forecasting into actionable equity research.
Before joining Bernstein, Mr. Bault was Senior Vice President and Chief Actuary for Stamford-based Odyssey Re during the years 1998-99. He started his career in 1988 with a 10-year stint at The St. Paul Companies, now part of Travelers. At St. Paul he served in many roles, including time in the London reinsurance market assisting St. Paul in acquiring some of the first Lloyd’s corporate capital vehicles, and culminating as an Officer in St. Paul’s Strategic Planning & Corporate Development unit. Mr. Bault has a BA in Mathematics and BFA in Music Composition from SUNY at Buffalo, and an MS in Applied Mathematics from Michigan State University.
Coverage Universe
In order to understand dynamics at the sector, subsector and firm level, we monitor relative valuation and share price performance throughout insurance. By tracking firms relative to their (cap-weighted) subsectors; subsectors relative to the insurance sector; and the insurance sector relative to the broader market we are able to highlight high and low outliers, track variability in relative performance and steer our analytic agenda to the most investable opportunities. The full review capturing data at the company level is available here INS.Sector Screen 2.21.12 and by e-mailing Hinds@sector-sovereign.com or calling (203) 901-1632.
Recent Blog Posts
February 8, 2012: Quick Thoughts – Why Not Spin Off Hartford’s P&C Business? Because Life Might Be Nearly “Zero”
Insurance is not generally known for heated exchanges publicly aired. Yet this is exactly what we got this morning on Hartford’s (HIG) Q4 earnings conference call. About 55 minutes into the call (and we do recommend listening to the playback if you missed it), a well-known major (largest, actually) shareholder angrily challenged management to take more seriously the idea of spinning off the P&C unit of Hartford in order to realize more value. Specifically, he cited the research of a competitor firm that suggested up to 70% appreciation in the value of the P&C unit in the case of a spin-off. Hartford themselves brought up the idea in a presentation slide, but their determination was that many “challenges” existed that currently rendered the proposal unfeasible. The irate shareholder faulted management for not figuring out ways to overcome the “challenges” to accelerate value creation…. See more at our Insurance blog
Research Archive
Registered clients can access the full-text of Todd Bault’s published research here.
Recent work includes:
Life Insurance in 2012: Jumping a Big ROE Hurdle
P&C Pricing Expectations: Backing Off Reinsurance, Play It Through Specialty
Insurance in 2012: It’s (Still) About the Risk
A Portfolio Manager’s Guide to Global Risk Management
Audio Archive
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