AM Best Assigns ‘A’ Rating to Nebraska’s Summit Specialty Insurance
AM Best has assigned a Financial Strength Rating of A (Excellent) and a Long-Term Issuer Credit Rating of “a” to Summit Specialty Insurance Co. (SSIC), based in Omaha, Neb.
The outlook assigned to these ratings is stable.
SSIC is a newly formed member of ReAlign Insurance Group (ReAlign).
The ratings reflect SSIC’s balance sheet strength, which AM Best categorizes as very strong, as well as its adequate operating performance, neutral business profile and appropriate enterprise risk management.
The ratings reflect the addition of SSIC to the group’s intercompany reinsurance pooling agreement, as well as SSIC’s strategic importance to ReAlign. SSIC will write excess & surplus lines business.
The ratings also reflect the execution risk associated with the intercompany pooling agreement and onboarding any new program business that SSIC will underwrite.
These concerns are partially mitigated because several of the new programs SSIC intends to write are currently managed by a program manager with extensive experience writing profitable admitted and non-admitted programs that also has a strategic relationship with ReAlign.
The very strong balance sheet assessment reflects ReAlign’s consolidated risk-adjusted capitalization, which is projected to remain at the strongest level over the next five years, as measured by Best’s Capital Adequacy Ratio.
The adequate operating performance considers ReAlign’s favorable, but volatile, five-year average total return measures that are driven by frequent and severe weather-related events, a reflection of geographic concentration of the current book of business.
This factor will be mitigated by the renewed emphasis on expanding the group’s geographic footprint and product expansion in 2021.
Source: AM Best