Briefly:

Canada’s largest life insurance companies are scheduled to issue their latest earnings reports this week, and there’s a real risk that things could get ugly.

According to a report out of CIBC World Markets, the industry could see losses of up to $1.6 billion in the first quarter, or about one third of analyst forecasted earnings for the industry for the year. That’s the “worst case” scenario laid out by industry analyst Darko Mihelic.

His rosier “bad case” scenario sees the insurers losing $890 million, or 18% of forecast earnings for 2009.

“We are approximately 80 per cent confident in our conclusion that lifecos are well capitalized for difficult equity/credit markets,” he wrote in his report. “Even if lifecos need some extra capital, we believe it would not be overly material to investors unless the environment was in a truly catastrophic state.”

• • •

TD improves sustainable investing process

TD Asset Management announced today that it has contracted Asset4 to improve its sustainable investment research.

“As part of our commitment to sustainable investing, we’ve been developing a proprietary sustainability matrix to ensure our analysis of a company includes a thorough examination of ESG factors,” said Bruce Cooper, managing director, TD Asset Management.

A leading provider of environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) information, the Switzerland-based Asset4 will provide TD with verifiable ESG data on 278 key performance indicators for more than 2,500 public companies, which will include the full S&P/TSX Composite Index.

Asset4 will also provide a variety of tools that will help TD analyze the data and ensure investments meet the United Nations Principle of Responsible Investment (PRI) — TD and Asset4 are both supporters of these principles.

(05/05/09)

Staff

The staff of Advisor.ca have been covering news for financial advisors since 1998.