According to our analysis of loss reserves published in mid-March, the year 2020 marked the 15th straight year that the U.S. property/casualty industry’s loss reserves developed favorably—by about $7 billion during 2020, or just slightly more than during 2019.

The “big news” we conveyed at Assured Research was that our reserve estimate for the industry moved to a significantly redundant reserve position at year-end 2020 (YE2020)—$28 billion, or 4 percent of carried reserves across the 10 most recent accident years. That’s a material change from our estimated reserve deficiency last year ($5 billion) and stems primarily from what we believe is a consistent and exceptionally conservative reserve position on the pandemic plagued accident-year 2020 (or AY2020) loss ratio across nearly every line of insurance.