AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL GROUP INC

Russia/Ukraine Conflict

The Russia/Ukraine conflict began in February 2022. The conflict has and may continue to have a significant impact on the global macroeconomic and geopolitical environments, including increased volatility in capital and commodity markets, rapid changes to regulatory conditions around the globe including the use of sanctions, operational challenges for multinational corporations, inflationary pressures and an increased risk of cybersecurity incidents.

The conflict is evolving and has the potential to adversely affect our business and results of operations from an investment, underwriting and operational perspective. While we believe we have taken appropriate actions to minimize related risk, we continue to monitor potential exposure and operational impacts, as well as any actual and potential claims activity. The ultimate impact will depend on future developments that are uncertain and cannot be predicted, including scope, severity and duration, the governmental, legislative and regulatory actions taken (including the application of sanctions), and court decisions, if any, rendered in response to those actions.

Impact of Changes in the Interest Rate Environment and Equity Markets

Certain key U.S. benchmark rates continued to rise during 2023 as markets reacted to heightened inflation measures, geopolitical risk, and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System implementing multiple increases to short term interest rates. The yield pick of new investments over sales, maturities and paydowns and redemptions, excluding Fortitude Re, averaged 195 basis points during 2023. This combined with resetting of coupon rates on floating rate securities and loans has steadily improved the overall portfolio yields. However, the key benchmark rates remain highly volatile. We actively manage our exposure to the interest rate environment through portfolio construction and asset-liability management, including spread management strategies for our investment-oriented products and economic hedging of interest rate risk from guarantee features in our variable and fixed index annuities, but we may not be able to fully mitigate our interest rate risk by matching exposure of our assets relative to our liabilities.

Equity Markets

Our financial results are impacted by the performance of equity markets, which impacts the performance of our alternative investment portfolio, fee income and net amount at risk. For instance, in our variable annuity separate accounts, mutual fund assets and brokerage and advisory assets, we generally earn fee income based on the account value, which fluctuates with the equity markets as a significant amount of these assets are invested in equity funds. The impact of equity market returns, both increases and decreases, is reflected in our results due to the impact on the account value and the fair values of equity-exposed securities.

In Life and Retirement, hedging costs could also be significantly impacted by changes in the level of equity markets as rebalancing and option costs are tied to the equity market volatility. These hedging costs are partially offset by our rider fees that are tied to the level of the Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index. As rebalancing and option costs increase or decrease, the rider fees will increase or decrease partially offsetting the hedging costs incurred.

Market and other economic factors may result in increased credit impairments, downgrades and losses across single or numerous asset classes due to lower collateral values or deteriorating cash flow and profitability by borrowers could lead to higher defaults on our investment portfolio, especially in geographic, industry or investment sectors where we have higher concentrations of exposure, such as real estate related borrowings. These factors can also cause widening of credit spreads which could reduce investment asset valuations, decrease fee income and increase statutory capital requirements, as well as reduce the availability of investments that are attractive from a risk-adjusted perspective.

Alternative investments include private equity funds which are generally reported on a one-quarter lag. Accordingly, changes in valuations driven by equity market conditions during the fourth quarter of 2023 may impact the private equity investments in the alternative investments portfolio in the first quarter of 2024.

Annuity Sales and Surrenders

The rising rate environment and our partnership with Blackstone Inc. and its investment advisory affiliates (Blackstone) have provided a strong tailwind for fixed and fixed index annuity sales, however, higher interest rates have also resulted in an increase in surrenders. Rising interest rates could continue to create the potential for increased sales, but could also drive higher surrenders relative to what we have already experienced. Fixed annuities have surrender charge periods, generally in the three-to-seven year range. Fixed index annuities have surrender charge periods, generally in the five-to-ten year range, and within our Group Retirement segment, certain of our fixed investment options are subject to other withdrawal restrictions, which may help mitigate increased early surrenders in a rising rate environment. In addition, older contracts that have higher minimum interest rates and continue to be attractive to contract holders have driven better than expected persistency in fixed annuities, although the reserves for such contracts have continued to decrease over time in amount and as a percentage of the total annuity portfolio. We closely monitor surrenders of fixed annuities as contracts with lower minimum interest rates come out of the surrender charge period.

Reinvestment and Spread Management

We actively monitor fixed income markets, including the level of interest rates, credit spreads and the shape of the yield curve. We also frequently review our interest rate assumptions and actively manage the crediting rates used for new and in-force business. Business strategies continue to evolve and we attempt to maintain profitability of the overall business in light of the interest rate environment. A rising interest rate environment results in improved yields on new investments and improves margins for our Life and Retirement business while also making certain products, such as fixed annuities, more attractive to potential customers. However, the rising rate environment has resulted in lower values on general and separate account assets, mutual fund assets and brokerage and advisory assets that hold investments in fixed income assets.

For additional information on our investment and asset-liability management strategies, see Investments.

For investment-oriented products, including universal life insurance, and variable, fixed and fixed index annuities, in our Individual Retirement, Group Retirement, Life Insurance and Institutional Markets businesses, our spread management strategies include disciplined pricing and product design for new business, modifying or limiting the sale of products that do not achieve targeted spreads, using asset-liability management to match assets to liabilities to the extent practicable, and actively managing crediting rates to help mitigate some of the pressure on investment spreads. Renewal crediting rate management is guided by specific contract provisions designed to allow crediting rates to be reset at pre-established intervals and subject to minimum crediting rate guarantees. We expect to continue to adjust crediting rates on in-force business, as appropriate, to be responsive to changing rate environments. As interest rates rise, we may need to raise crediting rates on in-force business for competitive and other reasons, potentially offsetting a portion of the additional investment income resulting from investing in a higher interest rate environment.

Of the aggregate fixed account values of our Individual Retirement and Group Retirement annuity products, 54 percent were crediting at the contractual minimum guaranteed interest rate as of December 31, 2023. The percentage of fixed account values of our annuity products that are currently crediting at rates above one percent were 50 percent and 55 percent as of December 31, 2023 and 2022, respectively. In the universal life products in our Life Insurance business, 59 percent and 62 percent of the account values were crediting at the contractual minimum guaranteed interest rate as of December 31, 2023 and 2022, respectively. These businesses continue to focus on pricing discipline and strategies to manage the minimum guaranteed interest crediting rates offered on new sales in the context of regulatory requirements and competitive positioning.

General Insurance

Our net investment income is significantly impacted by market interest rates as well as the deployment of asset allocation strategies to manage duration, enhance yield and manage interest rate risk. As interest rates increase, so too does our ability to reinvest future cash inflows from premiums, as well as sales and maturities of existing investments, at more favorable rates. For additional information on our investment and asset-liability management strategies, see Investments.

While the impact of rising interest rates on our General Insurance segment increases the benefit of investment income, the current and medium-term inflationary environment may also translate into higher loss cost trends. We monitor these trends closely, particularly loss cost trend uncertainty, to ensure that not only our pricing, but also our loss reserving assumptions are proactive to, and considerate of, current and future economic conditions.

For our General Insurance segment loss reserves, rising interest rates may favorably impact the statutory net loss reserve discount for workers’ compensation and its associated amortization.

Impact of Currency Volatility

Currency volatility remains acute. Strengthening of the U.S. dollar against the Euro, British pound and the Japanese yen (the Major Currencies) impacts income for our businesses with substantial international operations. In particular, growth trends in net premiums written reported in U.S. dollars can differ significantly from those measured in original currencies. The net effect on underwriting results, however, is significantly mitigated, as both revenues and expenses are similarly affected.

These currencies may continue to fluctuate, especially as a result of central bank responses to inflation, concerns regarding future economic growth and other macroeconomic factors, and such fluctuations will affect net premiums written growth trends reported in U.S. dollars, as well as financial statement line item comparability.

General Insurance businesses are transacted in most major foreign currencies. The following table presents the average of the quarterly weighted average exchange rates of the Major Currencies, which have the most significant impact on our businesses:

Unless otherwise noted, references to the effects of foreign exchange in the General Insurance discussion of results of operations are with respect to movements in the Major Currencies included in the preceding table.