Credit & Insurance: A Value Investor's Guide

• The Bottom Line: Credit and insurance are the two pillars of the financial world, turning risk and time into profit; for a value investor, they offer unique opportunities for compound growth, provided you can understand their complex balance sheets and risk models.
• Key Takeaways:
• What it is: Credit businesses are in the business of renting money (lending), creating assets from promises to be repaid. Insurance businesses are in the business of selling protection, creating liabilities from promises to pay for future losses.
• Why it matters: Both industries are highly leveraged and deal in promises, making trust, conservative management, and a deep margin_of_safety paramount for long-term success and investor survival.
• How to use it: Analyze them by focusing on underwriting discipline (for both), float (for insurers), and credit quality (for lenders) rather than just traditional earnings metrics.

Imagine you're at a farmers' market. One farmer, let's call him Ben the Banker, has a huge surplus of seeds. He “lends” 100 seeds to another farmer, Sally, who needs them to plant her field. In return, Sally promises to give Ben back 110 seeds after the harvest. Ben's business is credit. He is renting out his capital (seeds) in exchange for a future profit (interest). His primary risk is that a drought hits Sally's farm and she can't pay him back. Now, imagine another stall run by an old, wise farmer named Ingrid the Insurer. She tells all the farmers, “Farming is risky. A single hailstorm could wipe you out. Pay me one seed each week, and if a hailstorm destroys your personal crop, I'll give you enough seeds from my collection to get you through the winter.” This is insurance. Ingrid collects small, regular payments (premiums) from many people to create a large pool of capital. She then uses that pool to pay for the large, infrequent, and unfortunate losses of a few. Her primary risk is a massive storm that wipes out everyone's crops at once, or miscalculating the odds of a storm and not charging enough premium. At their core, credit and insurance are businesses built on promises.

• Credit: “I promise to pay you back, with interest.”
• Insurance: “I promise to pay you if something bad happens.”

The crucial thing for an investor to understand is that the true cost of these promises isn't known for a long time. Ben the Banker won't know if his loan was “good” until Sally pays him back months later. Ingrid the Insurer might not know the true cost of a policy she wrote today for decades (think of asbestos claims). This time lag between receiving cash and paying out the true costs creates a unique and powerful financial dynamic, but also a dangerous one if managed poorly.

“The lines of business we are in are basically selling promises… It's all about promises. And the question is, which promises are good and which are not?” - Warren Buffett

For a value investor, who prizes stability, predictability, and a strong margin_of_safety, these industries can seem like a minefield. However, when you find a well-run credit or insurance company, it can be one of the most powerful wealth-creation engines you can own. 1. The Magic of Insurance “Float” This is perhaps the most important concept. Insurance companies collect premiums upfront but pay claims later. The massive pool of money they hold in the interim—money that belongs to policyholders but which the insurer gets to invest for its own benefit—is called float. Imagine Ingrid collects 10,000 seeds in premiums this year but only pays out 9,000 in claims and operating costs. She not only has a 1,000-seed profit, but she also holds the entire 10,000-seed premium pool for a year, which she can “lend out” like Ben the Banker to earn even more. A disciplined insurer aims for an underwriting profit, meaning premiums collected are greater than claims and expenses paid. When they achieve this, their float is, as Warren Buffett describes, “money we hold that we get to invest for our own benefit… It’s like having a bank that pays you to hold its money.” This is the engine of a compounding_machine like Berkshire Hathaway. 2. The Double-Edged Sword of Leverage Both banks and insurers are highly leveraged. A bank might have $10 of loans for every $1 of its own equity. An insurer might have written policies with potential claims far exceeding its capital. When managed conservatively, this leverage magnifies returns on equity. A bank earning a 1% spread on its assets can turn that into a 10% return on its equity. However, leverage is unforgiving. A small percentage of bad loans (say, 5% of assets going bad) can wipe out a significant portion of a bank's equity. A single, mispriced catastrophe can bankrupt an insurer. A value investor, therefore, must prioritize businesses run by paranoid, risk-averse managers over those chasing short-term growth. 3. The Importance of a circle_of_competence The financial statements of these companies are notoriously opaque. Earnings can be easily “managed” by tweaking assumptions about future loan losses or insurance claims. This makes them a “black box” to the average investor. A value investor must be willing to do the hard work to look past reported earnings and understand the underlying quality of the loan book or insurance policies. If you can't, it's best to stay away.

Because these businesses are so different from a typical manufacturing or retail company, you need a specialized toolkit to analyze them.

Your job is to answer two questions: 1) Is the company a disciplined underwriter? and 2) How is it managing the float?

1. 1. Check the Combined Ratio: This is the most important metric for an insurer.
   • Formula: (Incurred Losses + Underwriting Expenses) / Earned Premium.
   • Interpretation: A ratio below 100% means the company is making an underwriting profit—they are being paid to take on risk. This is the gold standard. A ratio of, say, 97% means for every $100 of premium they earn, they pay out $97 in claims and costs, leaving a $3 profit. A ratio consistently above 100% (e.g., 104%) means they are losing money on their core business and are relying on investment income to stay afloat. This is a far riskier proposition, as it means they are effectively “paying” 4% for their float.
2. 2. Evaluate the Float:
   • How to Find It (Simplified): Look at the balance_sheet for “Loss Reserves” and “Unearned Premiums.” The sum of these (and a few other liability accounts) is a good proxy for the size of the float.
   • Interpretation: Is the float growing over time? A growing float provides more capital to invest. Is the “cost” of the float (as determined by the combined ratio) low and stable?
3. 3. Assess Investment Quality:
   • What to Look For: Where is the float invested? A portfolio of safe government and corporate bonds is conservative. A portfolio loaded with speculative stocks, junk bonds, or complex derivatives is a major red flag. The investment strategy should be as conservative as the underwriting.
4. 4. Look at Reserve Development:
   • What it is: This is an acid test for management integrity. In their annual report, companies must show how their estimates for prior years' claims have changed. If they consistently have to “add” to reserves for old claims, it means they were too optimistic in the past, and their current earnings might also be overstated. This is called “adverse reserve development.”

Your job is to answer two questions: 1) How risky is the loan book? and 2) How efficiently is the bank being run?

1. 1. Scrutinize Credit Quality: This is paramount.
   • Key Metrics: Look for “Net Charge-Offs” (NCOs) and the “Provision for Credit Losses.” NCOs are loans the bank has given up on collecting. The Provision is what they set aside from current income to cover expected future losses.
   • Interpretation: Are these numbers rising as a percentage of total loans? A sharp increase, especially during good economic times, signals that the bank has been making bad loans that are starting to sour. Compare their NCO rate to conservative peers.
2. 2. Analyze the Net Interest Margin (NIM):
   • Formula: (Interest Income - Interest Expense) / Average Earning Assets.
   • Interpretation: This is the bank's core profit margin on its lending activities. A stable, healthy NIM is good. Be wary of a bank whose NIM is suddenly expanding much faster than its competitors'. This often means it is “reaching for yield” by taking on much riskier borrowers.
3. 3. Check the Efficiency Ratio:
   • Formula: Non-Interest Expense / (Net Interest Income + Non-Interest Income).
   • Interpretation: This measures how much it costs the bank to generate a dollar of revenue. Lower is better. A well-run bank might have an efficiency ratio in the 50s or low 60s. A high ratio can indicate a bloated cost structure.
4. 4. Track Growth in Tangible Book Value Per Share (TBVPS):
   • Why it matters: For a bank, whose earnings can be lumpy and opaque, the steady growth of its tangible equity base is often the best indicator of long-term intrinsic_value creation. It shows that the bank is retaining profits and growing its capital base after accounting for all costs and losses.

Let's compare two hypothetical companies to see these principles in action. Fortress Insurance Co. vs. Rockslide Reinsurance

Steady Savings Bank vs. Go-Go Growth Lending

• Powerful Compounding: A well-run insurer with profitable underwriting has access to a low-cost, growing pool of investment capital (float), making it one of the best business models for long-term compounding.
• Durable Economic Moats: The largest banks and insurers benefit from immense scale, customer trust built over decades, regulatory barriers to entry, and low-cost deposit bases. These are deep and wide moats.
• Essential Services: Modern economies cannot function without credit and insurance. This provides a durable, underlying demand for their products.

• Opacity and Complexity: Financial statements for these firms are difficult to understand, and management can hide problems for years by making aggressive assumptions about future losses. This “black box” nature can lead to nasty surprises.
• Catastrophic Risk: The leverage inherent in these models means that a single, large-scale event—a financial crisis for a bank, a mega-catastrophe for an insurer—can permanently impair or even destroy the business. A true margin_of_safety is essential.
• The Temptation of “Dumb Growth”: In both industries, the easiest way to grow is to lower your standards—make riskier loans or write insurance at unprofitable prices. The pressure to do this is immense. The value investor must find management teams with the discipline to shrink, if necessary, rather than chase foolish growth.
• Cyclicality: Performance is heavily tied to the economic cycle (for credit) and catastrophe trends (for insurance). It is easy for a poorly run company to look brilliant during the good times. The true test of quality is performance across a full cycle.

• margin_of_safety
• intrinsic_value
• compounding_machine
• circle_of_competence
• economic_moat
• balance_sheet
• risk_management