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InsuranceCapital & Craft
A colonnade at sunrise, from the platform's own panorama
About

Insurance Capital & Craft

An AI-assisted intelligence and analytical platform for insurance.

Why this exists

Insurance is at once a business of underwriting risk and a system for managing and deploying capital. The two are usually analysed apart.

Underwriting results are read without the balance sheet that carries them, and investment strategy without the liabilities that fund it. Yet an insurer's choices about what to underwrite, how much capital to hold and where to invest are one set of decisions, and changes in markets, regulation, technology and ownership act on all of them at once.

Insurance Capital & Craft examines them together: how insurers make money, how their balance sheets shape their choices, and how those forces alter their economics. Reported facts are kept apart from interpretation, and every figure carries its source and period.

Our methodology and data sources

From public evidence to labelled judgement, in five stages.

Each stage is marked by how far it is in place today. The aim is that any material claim on this site can be traced to the evidence behind it.

  1. 01Public evidence and source collection

    Partly in place
    • Annual reports, interim reports and financial statements
    • Results releases, presentations and supplements
    • Company announcements, transactions and appointments
    • Securities filings (SEC EDGAR)
    • Capital Markets Day and investor day materialsPlanned
    • Solvency and financial condition reports (SFCRs)Planned
    • Earnings-call transcriptsPlanned
    • Regulatory and policy publicationsPlanned

    Primary evidence comes first. Specialist media can point to a development, but material claims are checked against the primary source.

  2. 02Structure, verify and establish the baseline

    Partly in place
    • Reported facts recorded with source, date, period and page
    • Reported figures kept apart from calculations and estimates
    • Like-for-like periods only: full year with full year, half with half
    • Figures cite source and page; other records list their sources
    • Compilation date and comparability limits recorded

    In place for the representative company profile and for every signal. Figures are extracted with AI assistance and each is checked against its source; nothing is published automatically.

  3. 03Analyse through insurance-specific lenses

    Partly in place
    • Capital and capital allocation
    • Balance sheet, liabilities and ALM
    • Investments and private markets
    • Underwriting and risk
    • Distribution and products
    • Technology, AI and operating model
    • Ownership, control and M&A

    Cross-cuttingLeadership, organisation and governance · Growth, profitability and returns

    Management communications Planned as a systematic practice

    • Changes in priorities and language over time
    • Rising or fading emphasis on capital, investments, underwriting, distribution and technology
    • Differences between CEO, CFO and business-unit narratives
    • Evidence of commitment: targets, budgets, named accountability, plans
    • Evidence of execution: transactions, hires, launches, operating metrics, results
    • Counter-evidence and alternative explanations

    A reusable taxonomy, not mutually exclusive categories. AI is one lens among several, and more mentions of a term are not taken as evidence of adoption.

  4. 04Separate evidence from judgement

    In place

    Fact · Estimate

    What is reported, or quantified from it with the basis and limits stated. Calculations are labelled.

    Inference · Thesis

    What it might mean and why: an interpretation of the evidence, or a proposition still to be tested.

    1. Management rhetoric
    2. Stated commitment
    3. Implementation
    4. Demonstrated outcome

    A change in narrative is a reason to investigate, not proof of a strategic pivot. Where material, supporting evidence, counter-evidence, confidence and what to watch are shown.

    Confidence labels are editorial judgements, not statistically validated measures.

  5. 05Publish and update

    Partly in place
    Company profiles
    Establish the financial and strategic baseline.
    Signals & Interpretation
    Examine new evidence and changes in management narrative.
    Industry Pulse
    Synthesise patterns across companies.
    Outlook
    Develop forward-looking scenarios and theses.

    Every published record is demonstration content until it receives explicit editorial approval. Target cadence, not yet in regular operation: profiles quarterly and after material results; signals, Industry Pulse and outlooks when material evidence changes. There is no continuous monitoring. Nothing updates automatically.

The method as practised today, with each stage marked by how far it is in place. It is applied with AI assistance; no analytical step runs or publishes automatically. The detailed rules are set out in How we assess insurers.

Evidence

Data sources

What the platform uses, how it can be accessed and what it is used for. “In use” means cited on this site today; “Planned” means not yet used.

  • Company annual and interim reporting

    In use
    Examples
    Annual reports, half-year reports, financial statements; US annual and quarterly reports (10-K, 10-Q, 20-F)
    Access
    Publicly available, free. On company websites and SEC EDGAR
    Use
    Financial performance, segments, balance sheet, investments, capital and cash flows

  • Results materials and investor presentations

    In use
    Examples
    Results releases, investor and media presentations, financial supplements
    Access
    Publicly available, free, where published
    Use
    Headline figures, management targets, stated priorities

  • Capital Markets Day materials

    Planned
    Examples
    CMD and investor day presentations and transcripts
    Access
    Publicly available where published
    Use
    Strategy, multi-year targets, changes in priorities. Today only references to them in annual reports are used

  • Company announcements and leadership changes

    In use
    Examples
    Press releases, appointments, acquisitions, disposals, capital raises
    Access
    Publicly available, free
    Use
    Signals: dated developments and leadership changes

  • Transaction and ownership disclosures

    In use
    Examples
    Scheme documents, completion announcements, securities filings (8-K, 6-K)
    Access
    Publicly available, free
    Use
    M&A, ownership and portfolio transformation

  • Regulatory disclosures and SFCRs

    Planned
    Examples
    Solvency and financial condition reports, Swiss Financial Condition Reports, supervisory returns
    Access
    Publicly available, free, where published
    Use
    Solvency, available and required capital, risk profile. Not yet used: one attempted retrieval failed

  • Earnings-call transcripts and management communications

    Planned
    Examples
    Call transcripts, webcasts, management interviews
    Access
    Public where companies publish them; otherwise often subscription-dependent
    Use
    Management narrative and how it changes over time

  • Regulatory and policy publications

    Planned
    Examples
    Consultation papers, policy statements, legislation, supervisory decisions
    Access
    Publicly available, free
    Use
    Industry constraints and structural change

  • Specialist insurance and financial media

    Discovery only
    Examples
    Trade and financial press found through web search
    Access
    Mixed: some free, much subscription-dependent
    Use
    Discovering developments and context only. Never cited for a material claim

  • Commercial market data and licensed datasets

    Not used
    Examples
    None
    Access
    Subscription or licence; would be disclosed by provider if used
    Use
    Not used

Source hierarchyPrimary sources first. Reputable secondary sources for discovery, context and corroboration. Figures cite their source and page; signals, subjects and outlooks list the sources they rely on as a whole, not sentence by sentence. Every source cited on this site today can be read without a paid subscription or privileged access.

Questions

What is Insurance Capital & Craft trying to understand?
How insurers make money, manage risk and deploy capital, and how changes in their business models reshape the industry. Underwriting, the balance sheet and investment strategy are read together, because an insurer's choices about each are one set of decisions.
How do you distinguish reported facts from calculations and interpretation?
A reported fact is printed in a cited source. A calculated figure, such as a change or a share, is derived from reported values with the method stated. An estimate states its basis. An inference interprets the evidence; a thesis is a proposition still to be tested. Each is labelled where it appears, and the site will not build if a calculated figure has no formula or an estimate no basis.
How do you analyse Capital Markets Days, investor presentations and changes in management language?
Targets and commitments from results materials and presentations are recorded and attributed to the company, as in Zurich's profile. A systematic comparison of management language over time, across CEO, CFO and business-unit narratives, is planned but not yet in place. When it is, a change in language will be treated as a reason to look for evidence of commitment and execution, not as proof of a change in strategy.
What does a signal mean? Does it show that a company has changed strategy?
A signal is a dated development, set out as reported with its primary source, with our interpretation of why it may matter labelled separately as supported by the sources or as a hypothesis. A signal does not by itself establish a change in strategy; each lists what remains uncertain and what to watch.
How often are company profiles and signals updated?
The targets, not yet in regular operation, are: company profiles reviewed quarterly and after material results or announcements; and signals, the Industry Pulse and outlooks updated when material evidence changes, not to fill a daily feed. These are targets, not commitments, and there is no continuous monitoring. The work is done with AI assistance, primary sources first, and nothing updates or publishes automatically. Each profile states when its figures were compiled, and each signal shows the date of the development it records. Signals older than six months move to the historical record.
How can I flag an error or challenge an interpretation?
A channel for reporting errors and challenging interpretations has not yet been set up; how it will work is awaiting a decision. Until it exists, corrections are made in the record itself when errors are found.
How is editorial independence handled?
Gigi X. Jia previously worked at KKR (2023 to 2024) and NN Group (2015 to 2020), both of which the platform covers, and at EY-Parthenon advising financial institutions. That is disclosed, not discounted. The safeguards in operation are: every figure cites a public source, every record lists the public sources it relies on, and no confidential or client information is used; facts are kept apart from labelled interpretation; recommendation language is not permitted; and every company is assessed with the same method. A fuller independence and conflicts policy is awaiting approval and will be published before launch.

Author and editor

Gigi X. Jia

Gigi X. Jia researches, writes and edits Insurance Capital & Craft, after a career at the intersection of insurance, capital allocation and transactions. That career began at NN Group, one of Europe's largest insurance and pensions groups, in life insurance and pensions and in M&A, with early responsibility for allocating capital and managing risk inside regulated, balance-sheet-intensive businesses.

It continued in strategy consulting at EY-Parthenon, advising financial institutions and private equity investors across EMEA on capital formation and allocation, portfolio strategy and M&A, and at KKR, as a Principal in EMEA private equity, evaluating investments, executing acquisitions and scaling portfolio platforms.

That path shapes the platform's perspective. Insurers, asset managers and private capital are converging, and advantage is shifting from individual products toward the integration of capital, distribution and operating capability. Understanding an insurer now means reading its underwriting, its pension and retirement liabilities, its balance sheet and its investments together.

The ambition is practical as much as intellectual: to make that reading inspectable, with figures that trace to their source and judgements that are labelled as judgements.

Professional experience informs the questions the platform asks. Its conclusions rest on the evidence it cites and are the platform's own analytical judgements.

Insurance Capital & Craft is the research publication; Gigi X. Jia is its author and editor. Personal writing is published separately at gigijia.com .