Annual statement blanks are repositories of financial data.

Insurance companies file quarterly and annual financial accounting statements with the insurance department in the state where they are domiciled and the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

The Annual Statement Blank provides the appropriate format for filing the financial data including key annual results data, a key financial profile and basic data about business written, assets and liabilities.

Versions of the annual statement are available for property, life, health, fraternal, surplus lines and title insurers. In addition, there are special reporting forms for risk retention groups.

The following description details the accounting specifics contained in the two most often used blanks: the property and casualty statement and the life, accident and health statement.

Property and Casualty

This blank includes a summary Balance Sheet, listing assets, liabilities, capital and surplus--the details of which comprise much of the statement--and a Cash Flow statement. Underwriting and Investment Exhibit is a form of income statement that summarizes the profit or loss of the company as a whole, including investment results.

Exhibit of Premiums and Losses includes a separate page or pages for each state in which the company has done business. This enables regulators in a particular state to monitor the insurer's underwriting results in their state.

Schedule D displays in detail the insurer's holdings of bonds, itemized by the remaining time to maturity, ranging from less than one year to more than 20 years. The timing of maturities--the recoveries of principal--is important because they are selected to match the insurer's claim-payout obligations over time. Details of purchase and sale transactions in bonds and other securities also are disclosed.

Schedule F reports reinsurance obligations owed to and by the company, including business ceded to a reinsurer and assumed from another insurer. Reinsurance proceeds recoverable on ceded business often are critical because they represent an offset of liabilities, and are, therefore, the practical equivalent of an investment-type asset.

Schedule P, the analysis of losses and loss expenses, is often very lengthy. It shows the development of incurred and paid losses from initial reserve estimates over the past 10 years and all prior years, broken down by lines of direct insurance and by different kinds of reinsurance. Since loss reserves are initially estimates of future pay-outs, this analysis compares the initial and later estimates with the actual payouts over time. (Comparable life company Exhibit 5.)

Schedule Y contains information concerning activities of insurance members of a holding company group.

Life and Accident & Health

This blank includes a Balance Sheet, a Summary of Operations (excluding Unrealized Capital Gains and Losses), a Cash Flow statement and an Analysis by Lines of Business, including Life (Ordinary and Group) and Annuities.

Exhibit 1 reports on premiums received, separated into first year, single and renewal categories.

Exhibit 2 shows general expenses in many categories, such as employee, agency and office expenses.

Exhibit 5, a very important component, shows aggregate reserves for life contracts. It is, roughly speaking, the counterpart to a property/casualty company's statement of loss and loss expense reserves. It differs significantly insofar as life reserves are legally required to be calculated according to strict and conservative mortality and interest assumptions. Most fundamentally, statutory accounting requires that the company's invested assets be adequate to meet future obligations, after taking into account future premiums.

Schedule D records investment holdings, including bonds and their maturities. The statement values of bonds and other securities are based on calcutations made by the NAIC's Securities Valuation Office in accordance with strict statutory standards, which often require valuations that differ from market values.

Schedule S accounts for reinsurance. It corresponds to Schedule F of the property and casualty statement.

Schedule T shows premiums segmented by state and territory.

Statements of Net Investment Income and of Capital Gains (or Losses) disclose investment activity.