CNO Financial Receives Approvals to Merge Three Insurers
October 25, 2010 by Fran Matso Lysiak
CARMEL, Ind. October 22 (BestWire) — CNO Financial Group Inc. said it received regulatory approvals from its home state of Indiana and three others to merge three insurance company subsidiaries.
Two subsidiaries, Conseco Insurance Co. and Conseco Health Insurance Co., were merged into Washington National Insurance Co. in a deal that also required approval from regulators in Illinois, Arizona and California. The transaction was first announced last August (BestWire, Aug. 31, 2009).
Related to and before the merger, Washington National was redomesticated from Illinois to Indiana, CNO Financial said.
An attempt to speak to the Carmel, Ind.-based CNO Financial (NYSE: CNO), which sells long-term care, Medicare supplemental and life insurance, wasn’t immediately successful.
“Although the redomestication and merger process has taken longer than initially anticipated, as we indicated when we first announced the plans, we do expect this merger to provide many benefits, including an increase to CNO’s total adjusted statutory capital,” said Jim Prieur, chief executive officer of CNO Financial, in a statement.
The re-domestication and merger will simplify the structure of Conseco Insurance Group, putting nearly half of its inforce business and all of its new sales activity into a single company, CNO said.
For statutory reporting purposes effective Oct. 1, Washington National now has about $5 billion of statutory assets, 925,000 policies in force, $575 million of annual premiums, and $4.3 billion of statutory policy reserves, comprised of specified disease and other supplemental health policies, at 60%; annuities and other deposits, at 31% and life insurance policies, at 9%, CNO said.
CNO said its main subsidiaries are now Bankers Life and Casualty Co., Colonial Penn Life Insurance Co. and Washington National Insurance Co.
In May, shareholders of the Conseco Inc. approved a change in the company’s name to CNO Financial Group Inc. at the company’s annual meeting. The change would separate the identity of the holding company, an investor brand, from that of its operating subsidiaries — the insurance brands that agents and consumers know, the company said (BestWire, March 25, 2010).
Washington National Insurance Co. currently has a Best’s Financial Strength Rating of B (Fair).
(By Fran Matso Lysiak, senior associate editor, BestWeek: fran.lysiak@ambest.com)BN-NJ-10-22-2010 1646 ET #
