With economic, interest-rate and competitive challenges expected to persist through 2013, part of the title of Conning Research and Consulting's latest report aptly sums up the firm's recipe for insurance-industry success in a year marked by numerous headwinds: “Nothing to Be Gained by Waiting for Things to Get Better.”

The report's theme is reinforced perhaps most clearly when Conning discusses the investment landscape for insurers. “Continued low interest rates will drive investment yields and investment income lower. Companies will be compelled to find a way to move forward, no longer willing or able to wait for an improving interest-rate environment.”

In the report, whose full title is “U.S. and Global Insurance Industry Outlook: Economic, Capital Markets, and Regulatory Challenges Continue—Nothing to Be Gained by Waiting for Things to Get Better,” Conning questions if this new reality will drive changes in insurers' investment portfolios, but the firm notes that so far there have been “relatively few significant actions.”