A.M. Best Affirms Financial Strength and Assigns Debt Ratings to IDS Life; Assigns Negative Outlook.OLDWICK, N.J. -- A.M. Best Co. has affirmed the financial strength rating of A+ (Superior) of IDS Life Insurance Company (IDS Life) (Minneapolis, MN) and its wholly-owned subsidiaries, removing the rating from under review with negative implications. Concurrently, A.M. Best has assigned issuer credit ratings (ICR (Intelligent Character Recognition or Image Character Recognition) The machine recognition of hand-printed characters as well as machine printing that is difficult to recognize. ) of "aa-" to IDS Life. All ratings have a negative outlook. On February 1, 2005, IDS Life's ultimate parent, The American Express American Express (NYSE: AXP), sometimes known as "AmEx" or "Amex", is a diversified global financial services company, headquartered in New York City. The company is best known for its credit card, charge card and traveler's cheque businesses. Company (AXP The brand name Digital gave to its first family of Alpha-based computers. In 1998, Digital was acquired by Compaq. See Alpha. ) (NYSE NYSE See: New York Stock Exchange : AXP), announced its plan to spin-off its full ownership of American Express Financial Corporation (AEFC AEFC Aerospace Expeditionary Force Center ) (Minnesota) in a tax-free distribution to AXP shareholders. Since that time, A.M. Best has been in dialogue with management as they have been working to develop and implement a plan and strategy to rebrand rebrand Verb to change or update the image of (an organization or product) , recapitalize, separate operations from AXP and reestablish a new independent public holding company. As part of this process, AEFC recently announced the new name for its financial advisor arm, Ameriprise Financial Ameriprise Financial, Inc. (NYSE: AMP) is a company offering financial advice and products. It is the successor to American Express Financial Advisors (AEFA), which was a subsidiary of the American Express Company. , and the company's insurance, annuity and asset management businesses, RiverSource. A.M. Best is comfortable with the transition plan, the retention of key management personnel, the expected level of leverage at the new holding company and the additional capital that will be contributed to the life operations during the spin-off process. Ameriprise Financial will incur significant one time expenses over the next few years in order to establish its brand, to retain key personnel and to separate its technology and other operations from AXP. All of these costs will be pre-funded by AXP through an equity contribution to Ameriprise Financial. A.M. Best believes that there are still inherent execution risks associated with re-branding the enterprise, the successful execution of the plans to separate its operations from AXP and the challenges to maintain appropriate capitalization levels for the current ratings. As a result, all ratings have a negative outlook. A.M. Best has affirmed the financial strength rating of A+ (Superior) and has assigned issuer credit ratings of "aa-" to IDS Life Insurance Company and its following wholly-owned subsidiaries: --American Centurion Life Assurance Company --American Enterprise Life Insurance Company --American Partners Life Insurance Company --IDS Life Insurance of New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of For Best's Ratings, an overview of the rating process and rating methodologies, please visit http://www.ambest.com/ratings. For current Best's Ratings, independent data and analysis on more than 1,100 individual life/health companies and A.M. Best groups, please visit http://www.ambest.com/lh. A.M. Best Co., established in 1899, is the world's oldest and most authoritative insurance rating and information source. For more information, visit A.M. Best's Web site at http://www.ambest.com. |
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