S&P Indicates U.S. Insurers Have Minimal Exposure to Argentine Default

As Argentina’s debt crisis continues to deepen, international credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s issued a statement indicating that “U.S. insurers have negligible exposure to further defaults by the Republic of Argentina on its debt obligations.”

S&P’s report determined that “no single insurer has more than 3% of its total bond portfolio invested in debt issued by the republic. Aggregate exposure of U.S. insurers is $709 million, spread across 43 life companies.

In fact S&P stated that only the life insurance sector currently carries any Argentine debt. It downgraded its ratings of the republic’s long-term local and foreign currency to ‘SD’ (selective default) from double-‘C’ on November 6.