American International Group president and CEO Robert Benmoschesaid he will focus on improving the company's balance sheet andrewarding shareholders after the company reported strong earnings,although the company's property and casualty business' combinedratio remained over 100.

Benmosche also used the occasion of an appearance on CNBC lastnight to say that the U.S. financial system is “safer than we'veever imagined,” and he praised retiring Federal Reserve BoardChairman Ben Bernanke for doing “an outstanding job of taking usthrough this crisis, and if you look at this trust test that banksare dealing with, the de-leveraging that's happened.”

AIG took a $265 million severance charge against fourth-quarterearnings — the cost of cutting 3% of its workforce as part of aconsolidation plan and a strategy to reduce the layers ofmanagement. Most of the cuts will be in property and casualtyoperations.

Excluding that, AIG earned $1.15 as compared to analysts'consensus estimate of 96 cents, and revenue of $4.62 billion vs.projected revenues of $4.56 billion.

Year over year comparisons were also strong, with full-yearafter-tax operating income per share of $4.56, up from $3.93 lastyear.

AIG reports net income of $1.97 billion, compared to a $3.9billion net loss in 2012's fourth quarter. For the year, net incomewas $9.1 billion in 2013 compared to $3.7 billion in 2012, howeveranalysts note that Superstorm Sandy impacted the prior year'sresults.

A contributing analyst to Seeking Alpha says the results showedimprovement in P&C results, “a unit that has struggled over thepast 24 months,” but adds that, while underwriting standards areimproving, AIG still lags peers.

According to the company's results, AIG Property Casualty had acombined ratio of 103.8, and took an underwriting loss of $330million, its steepest underwriting loss so far this year, but wellunder the 2012 fourth-quarter underwriting loss of $2.2billion.

Pre-tax operating income at AIG Property Casualty was $1.1billion.

A Seeking Alpha update this morning notes that some investmentanalysts were honing in on “continued weakness” in P&C inpremarket action this morning.

In lauding Bernanke, Benmosche said he deserved recognition byCNBC as one of the 25 most influential business people over thelast 25 years.

“I think Ben Bernanke stood up, and what was most important is,we needed somebody to make decisions in '08, however popular orunpopular, and make sure that we continued to stay focused onkeeping this economy from stalling,” Benmosche said.

He called Bernanke the “unsung hero” of the period, adding thathe “deserves an enormous amount of credit for just quietly takingthe abuse and leading us to where we are today.”

As for AIG, Benmosche said he doesn't believe the firm “posesany threat to the financial system.”

He said the public negative sentiment about AIG “is downdramatically to levels lower than we've seen. And the positive isstarting to move up, because people realize that AIG paid backAmerica plus a profit, for about $205 billion.”

Benmosche added, “Many people thought AIG was finished.”

He also that AIG employs 30,000-plus people in America. “Theseare jobs, and all the jobs we have here at AIG, we create many morethousands of jobs for people who do business with AIG.

Speaking to potential acquisitions going forward, Benmoschesaid, “If we could find a good business for the right price…we'lluse that money to buy a company that is something that will allowus to grow a little bit more rapidly in some of the countries we'redoing business in.”

But other than that, Benmosche said, “We will just focus on goodcredit ratings, and then our shareholders.”