American International Group is reducing its stock buybacks to bulk up its capital as part of its efforts to transition to federal oversight as a systemically significant financial institution, President and CEO Robert Benmosche acknowledged today.

As part of that effort, AIG is supporting legislation proposed last week in the Senate and House that would allow the Federal Oversight to use current insurance accounting tools instead of "bank-centric metrics," Benmosche said.

Benmosche's comments were made in response to a question by Randy Binner, a stock analyst at FBR Capital Markets in Arlington, Va.. during AIG's quarterly call with analysts following release of its first-quarter earnings last night.

It came against the background of disclosure by the Federal Reserve Board last week that AIG and Prudential Financial, both of whom have been designated as Systemically Important Financial Institutions and therefore subject to federal oversight, will receive such oversight through a "cross-disciplinary special unit" called the Large Institution Supervision Coordinating Committee (LISCC).

According to the Fed statement, AIG and Pru are on a list of 15 U.S. and foreign financial firms that "may pose elevated risks to U.S. financial stability" and so will receive additional supervision.

The statement said the LISCC is a Federal Reserve System-wide committee, chaired by the director of the Fed's Division of Banking Supervision and Regulation, which is tasked with overseeing the supervision of the largest, most systemically important financial institutions in the United States.

The LISCC is comprised of senior officers representing various functions at the Board and Reserve Banks, bringing an interdisciplinary and cross-firm perspective to the supervision of these large, systemically important financial institutions, the Fed said.

Benmosche made mention of this when he told Binner that AIG reduced its stock buybacks in the first quarter as part of its effort to prepare to federal regulation, which will begin next year, or the so-called "stress test," or Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review (CCAR), that large bank holding companies now undergo annually.

AIG and Pru will be subject to this test starting next year.

Benmosche said the buybacks have been reduced with an eye on coming Fed oversight. "We want to make sure that we satisfy, especially the coverage ratio more than as they're asking us to do, and we're in dialogue with them," Benmosche said. He added that AIG will accelerate this process after it removes in the International Leasing Financing Corporation from its book when it completes the sale of ILFC to AerCap Holdings in the second quarter.

As to the Collins Act legislation Benmosche is supporting, he said it allows the Fed to examine insurance companies through their current accounting processes, helping the Fed to "clearly take a look at what we do here at the insurance companies."

He said insurance companies' "liabilities are very different and the way they behave is very different as we begin to match the assets and liabilities." Moreover, the goal of insurance companies "is really long-term solvency to make sure we live up to the promises that we make to our clients.

"That's a big deal, and not to say the banks haven't gone through that as well, but it's a different business and a different structure," Benmosche said. "We're continuing to work with everybody to make sure that, not only in the U.S. but around the world, we are adhering to and are part of the design of the appropriate regulation," he said.

The Senate version, S. 2270, is expected to be added to legislation reauthorizing the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act that industry officials anticipate will be taken up this month in the Senate Banking Committee.

S. 2270 and H.R. 4510 "clarifies" that the Fed can apply insurance-based capital standards to the insurance portion of the business, while still keeping banking capital standards for the banking portion of the business.

The House and Senate bills also prevent the Fed from requiring mutual insurance companies such as State Farm from preparing financial statements in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles, when they are already preparing financial statements in accordance with state-based statutory accounting principles.

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AIG Bulking Up Capital to Prepare for Federal Oversight

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