AIG Files Delayed Report

American International Group has filed its long-delayed combined statutory accounting for 2004 with regulators, the Pennsylvania Insurance Department said earlier this week.

The report, a stricter accounting of finances than securities markets require from companies, became available electronically today from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners data bank.

Such reports are due with regulators each May. Earlier, more than 30 individual insurance companies under the AIG umbrella filed statutory reports for 2004 with the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

The statutory combined report can sometimes disclose a radically reduced asset figure. But there appear to be no major changes from the combined filing of 2003. The company lists $86.3 billion in 2004 assets compared with $70.1 billion in 2003.

AIG had promised Pennsylvania in mid-January that it would be filing the 2004 combined report at the end of that month.

The company has been involved in a protracted restatement of its finances that began after federal and New York State investigators began examining various reported transactions suspected of improperly improving the company's financial picture.

Following three delays, AIG filed a five-year restatement last year with the Securities and Exchange Commission, using generally accepted accounting procedures, which reduced the company's profits for that period by 10 percent.

New York authorities lodged civil fraud charges against the company over the accounting, a suit which AIG settled last month for $1.64 billion. The fraud suit is continuing with former AIG Chairman Maurice Greenberg and former AIG Chief Financial Officer Howard Smith as defendants.

The missing combined statutory report has in the past revealed a sharply different picture of the group's assets than the figure obtained by simply adding the numbers from individual company reports.

For example, totaling the individual company assets in 2003 from individual statutory reports produces a figure of $80.3 billion, while the combined report for that year shows it to be $70.1 billion–$10.2 billion less.

The difference is created by the elimination of double counting of inter-company ownership of equity holdings and other transactions, according to insurance experts. It also involves a more conservative approach to accounting than the GAAP method used for SEC filings, they said.

Combined statutory reports are studied by investment banks, primary insurers, accounting firms and consultants, among others.

Pennsylvania oversees New York-based AIG's combined filing because it regulates the commercial property casualty pool that includes AIG's Pittsburgh-based National Union Fire Company. Combined statutory reports are filed May 1.