American International Group's property and casualty business was able to generate rate increases of 7.3 percent in the U.S. as it shifted its emphasis to high-value businesses, its top officials told analysts today.

Net income attributable to AIG for the quarter was $2.7 billion, up from $2.3 billion a year ago.

The P&C business “is continuing a strong turnaround, you can see that in the accident-year losses, the ability to get rate where it makes sense, we're still growing the top line in a very strong way, and you could see that our reserve is continuing to be maintained at roughly the levels we think it's necessary,” Robert Benmosche, president and CEO told analysts in opening remarks at the conference call.

The U.S. casualty business had the highest rate increases, up 9.4 percent, Peter Hancock, CEO of AIG Property Casualty, added.

P&C second-quarter operating income was nearly $1.1 billion–the seventh consecutive quarter of positive after-tax operating income attributable to AIG–and included catastrophe losses of $316 million from flooding in Europe and the Americas, as well as U.S. tornadoes and hailstorms.

AIG took an underwriting loss in the quarter of $225 million, compared to a $217 million underwriting loss a year ago, and the insurer's combined ratio climbed to 102.6 compared to 102.4 in 2012's second quarter.

The company notes that the combined ratio includes catastrophe losses and adverse net prior year development of $154 million, net of premium adjustments, primarily due to a Superstorm Sandy-related loss reserve increase of $142 million.

The Sandy losses stemmed from severe damage to a number of high-value properties insured by AIG in the downtown Manhattan area, Hancock and Benmosche said.

“This was a very serious storm and a very complicated storm to deal with,” Benmosche said in his opening remarks.

Hancock said he is optimistic that the P&C unit of AIG will be able to maintain its “positive momentum.” Property and financial lines in the U.S. reported positive rate of 5.7 percent and 6.8 percent, respectively.

“We saw growth in property from entry lines and specialty which all benefited from improved retentions, new business and pricing,” Hancock said.

In general, “the second quarter mark continued progress towards increasing the intrinsic value of AIG Property Casualty,” Hancock said.

“Our shift to high-value business combined with underwriting and claims practice improvements exemplified how our focus on balancing growth, profitability and risk is helping to produce better margins,” he said.

“We maintain our commitment to capital efficiency and optimizing our risk profile,” Hancock added.

Benmosche announced AIG would resume paying a quarterly dividend, 10 cents a share, and its board had authorized the repurchase of up to $1 billion of shares of AIG common stock. It will be AIG's first dividend since the fall of 2008, when the company's involvement in various aspects of the mortgage market, including acquisition of mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations backed by packages of MBS, went sour, forcing the government to step in and provide liquidity to AIG in return for 79.9 percent of its stock.

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AIG Touts P&C Successes as Q2 Net Income Rises

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