The above was said in my best Richard Dawson voice (which is not very good).
Thanks for the terrific response to the survey; we ended up with a pretty good response rate – nearly 20% – which our marketing department tells me is not bad for a blog survey. I broke down the results by showing the average position for all respondents and then the average by industry. Here are the results:
All | HC | P/C | L/D | |
Healthcare Reform | 3.2 | 1.4 | 4.7 | 4.6 |
Fiscal Policies | 4.7 | 4.8 | 4.7 | 4.5 |
Monetary Policies | 4.9 | 5.4 | 4.5 | 3.8 |
Other Regulatory | 5.3 | 3.8 | 6.5 | 3.1 |
U.S. Economic Performance | 2.6 | 3.6 | 1.9 | 2.6 |
U.S. Labor Market | 3.6 | 3.0 | 4.2 | 3.7 |
Catastrophes | 4.6 | 7.0 | 3.0 | 7.5 |
Access to Capital | 4.8 | 4.8 | 5.2 | 4.9 |
Other (specify) | 5.3 | 6.2 | 1.9 | N/A |
* On the scale used for this survey 1 stood for the most impactful.
The ‘Other’ category skews the data a bit because most respondents did not include this category in the rankings and those that did all had different specific issues. I should also qualify this by saying that less than 10% of the respondents were from the life and disability industry, so the results are based upon a handful of opinions.
Thoughts on the Results
It is not surprising ‘U.S. Economic Performance’ was the clear winner among all respondents. I found it a bit more surprising that ‘Monetary Policy’ was rated as low across the board, as it was considering the impact of investment performance on the returns of our industry.
Within the industry groups, there were no major surprises, though the anticipated impact of ‘Other (non Healthcare Reform) Regulatory Changes’ within healthcare was notably strong. Because I wasn’t very specific in my descriptions, I am not sure where we draw the line between healthcare reform and other government regulation; though I imagine that the 2011 deadline for Private Fee-For-Service plans to develop networks and the 4% anticipated reduction in Medicare Advantage reimbursement both played significant roles in the high ranking for ‘Other Regulatory.’
As one would expect, we saw a big disparity between the healthcare perspective and the property and casualty perspective, as ‘Catastrophes’ were of significantly higher concern and the labor market was considered a lower impact issue. I imagine that the current 5-6 year soft market for most lines is considered of high impact, and it was mentioned in different manners a few times in the ‘Other’ category.
In the life and disability industry, we saw a higher level of consternation for ‘Monetary Policy’ decisions as expected given the fact that this is the most investment driven of the three industries. While I hesitate to read too much into this very unscientific poll, I found it intriguing that ‘Access to Capital’ was of little expected impact.
Over the next few months, I will offer my take on many of these subjects and try to summarize what we are hearing in the market as we talk to clients and candidates. I will also be watching the returns in the MA Senate race with great interest this evening – the impacts on current health insurance reform could be significant.
As always, I welcome your comments.