Following the U.S. Treasury's recent sell-down to a minority stake in American International Group, two ratings agencies offered positive assessments of the insurance giant, with Moody's Investor's Service calling the development “another credit-positive milestone” and Fitch Ratings stating that the recent actions have rejuvenated AIG.

Peter Eastwood, President & CEO of the Americas for Chartis, spoke with NU about why he believes the future is bright for the rebounding carrier.

How do you see the remainder of 2012 playing out, with regard to AIG's resurgence?

I've worked for the company for 21 years, and I've never seen a more exciting time within AIG. If you go back over the last four-and-a-half years, starting with AIG's liquidity event in September of 2008, I think many people would have said that it was unlikely there would be an AIG. I think those who were optimistic believed it would be many years before we would see clarity beyond AIG's [financial] situation, its capital management and what its business was going to be.

Over the last 12 months, there's a tremendous amount of progress that's been made, a clarity that's been brought to the situation that's allowed us to see clearly what's core to AIG: Chartis, Sun America, Financial Group and United Guaranty. And you can see some non-core assets that the holding company still owns, with some very clear plans on what can happen with those assets—and the ability that AIG has to raise upward of $18 billion to $25 billion in capital that it can use in whatever strategic way it wants to, including the ability to use those proceeds to go and buy shares back from the U.S. Treasury.

That line of sight and clarity allows us to focus on our core business. I look forward to the day when the tagline isn't: “AIG, the bailed-out insurance company.”

What's the realistic time frame on reacquiring all of AIG's shares from the government, putting this chapter for the company behind it?

There's the potential for the U.S. Treasury to be out of its equity position in 12 to 18 months, but it's up to them what they want to do with their [remaining] shares in the company—not up to us. There's a whole bunch of external factors that could come into play that could change that time frame for better or for worse.

What's your take on the potential for increased federal regulation for the insurance industry now, and for AIG in particular?

Our experience over the last few years, starting in September of 2008, was that the regulatory framework that's currently in place—meaning state regulation—proved to be quite effective in terms of its ability to protect the policyholders of the AIG Property/Casualty businesses from the liquidity event that took place, both in the holding company and with the capital-market subsidiary.

With respect to AIG, we'll continue with the insurance entities being regulated on a state-by-state basis. There's potential that the holding company itself from a prudential-regulation standpoint gets designated a SIFI [systemically important financial institution], and that's regulation we'd welcome. [Editor's note: AIG has since received notice that it is under consideration for proposed determination that it is a SIFI.] We think the opportunity to have a regulator who's looking at the company holistically, in a robust way, really will make us a better company.

How that applies to the broader industry, I'm not really sure. I think you may have one or two other institutions within the industry that end up with a similar designation, but it's unlikely that it's going to be broad-based.

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AIG&rsquo;s Peter Eastwood: Better Days Ahead

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