# US Insurance Investment Data: Methodology Data source, asset-tree structure and key concepts behind TREMOR US insurance investment data from the Federal Reserve Z.1 (L.116 Life, L.115 P&C) - including General vs Separate Account and the fast-growing alternatives allocation (private credit, PE, BDCs) inside "Unidentified Miscellaneous Assets". Source data: Federal Reserve Z.1 Financial Accounts (L.116 Life, L.115 Property-Casualty). Last updated: 2026-06-05. Interactive tool: https://tremor.tigzig.com/tools/us-insurance TREMOR tracks how US insurance companies invest, from the Federal Reserve Z.1 Financial Accounts (Tables L.116 Life and L.115 Property-Casualty). This page documents the data source, the asset-tree structure, and the key concepts - including the fast-growing "alternatives" allocation. For how the data is validated, see the companion [insurance data validation page](/tremor/insurance-validations). [Open the interactive US Insurance Assets tool on TREMOR](https://tremor.tigzig.com/tools/us-insurance). ## Data source The Federal Reserve publishes the Z.1 Financial Accounts of the United States (formerly "Flow of Funds") every quarter - a comprehensive snapshot of every sector's assets and liabilities. Tables **L.116 (Life Insurance Companies)** and **L.115 (Property-Casualty Insurance Companies)** contain the investment-allocation data shown here. The Fed compiles these from NAIC statutory filings, SEC data, and other regulatory sources. - [Fed Z.1 Financial Accounts](https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/) - main release - [L.116 Life Insurance Companies](https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/current/html/l116.htm) and [L.115 Property-Casualty](https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/current/html/l115.htm) line-by-line tables - Series IDs start with BOGZ1 (Board of Governors Z.1), pulled individually from FRED. A handful of supplementary series start with LIC* (Life) or PCIC* (P&C). ## Insurance sectors in Z.1 The Z.1 tracks exactly two insurance sectors: - **Life Insurance Companies** (L.116) - 54 series. Companies writing life insurance, annuities, and health alongside life products. - **Property-Casualty Insurance Companies** (L.115) - 39 series. All P&C lines: auto, homeowners, commercial, marine, fire, workers' comp, medical malpractice, etc. There is no separate sector for health, home, or title insurance. Health insurers are classified under Life or P&C depending on primary business; all home/auto insurance falls under P&C. ## Tree structure (how we mirror the Z.1) The primary asset tree mirrors the published Z.1 table directly. For each sector, Total Financial Assets breaks into the L.116 / L.115 line items (Checkable Deposits, Debt Securities, Corporate Equities, Mutual Fund Shares, Loans, Total Miscellaneous Assets, etc.); where Z.1 publishes a further breakdown (Debt Securities into Treasuries / Agencies / Corporate & Foreign Bonds / Munis / Open Market Paper, or Loans into Mortgages and Other), we follow it. With this structure the Total Financial Assets tree closes **exactly** (sum of children = parent, 0.00% gap) for both sectors at the latest quarter; sub-trees not fully broken out are flagged on the [validation page](/tremor/insurance-validations). ### Memo lines (shown separately, not in the primary tree) Some series are useful context but do not belong as children of any parent, so they are kept as memos: General Account / Separate Account totals (Life); Total Assets (Balance Sheet, a statutory-value subset); Reserve Credit Reinsured to Non-US Reinsurers (Life L.116 line 49 - a liability-side memo and the cleanest aggregate proxy for offshore reinsurance volume); book-value versions of market-value lines; and Separate Account sub-lines. Keeping these as memos lets the primary tree close exactly. ## What the data contains - **Frequency:** quarterly; **units:** millions of USD, not seasonally adjusted; **publication lag:** ~10 weeks after quarter end - **Coverage:** 104 quarters, 2000 to 2025 - **Values:** stock positions (levels), balance-sheet amounts at quarter end - not flows - **Valuation:** "FL"-prefix FRED IDs are book/historical-value flows-and-levels; "LM"-prefix is level at market value. Where both exist, one is in the tree and the other a memo. ## Key concepts ### Total Financial Assets vs Balance Sheet Assets "Total Financial Assets" (the headline) is broader than "Total Assets (Balance Sheet)" because it includes items at market value and certain off-balance-sheet items; the Balance Sheet total uses statutory values. For Life insurers at the latest quarter, Total Financial Assets is roughly $11.2T vs a Balance Sheet of $6.3T - the difference dominated by Separate Account assets at market value and other valuation adjustments. ### General Account vs Separate Accounts (Life only) Life insurers split assets into General Accounts (insurer bears investment risk) and Separate Accounts (variable annuities / unit-linked, policyholder bears risk). At the latest quarter, GA ~$7.7T and SA ~$3.5T (SA mostly mutual-fund and money-market shares managed for policyholders). GA and SA are not two parallel balance sheets - they are two compartments of the same one, and sum to Total Financial Assets ($7.7T + $3.5T = $11.2T). The Fed publishes the asset breakdown at the total-Life level only - every L.116 line (Debt Securities, Loans, Mortgages, etc.) combines GA-held and SA-held holdings. At the bottom of L.116 it publishes GA and SA dollar totals (no further breakdown) plus a partial set of SA sub-lines for context. There is no clean GA-only sub-line breakdown - GA holdings are implicit (total-Life minus SA). Example: the L.116 Debt Securities line (~$4.6T) is total-Life; the "SA Debt Securities at market value" memo (~$333B) lets you back out the GA-held portion (~$4.3T), but "GA Debt Securities" is inferred, not a published series. In this tool, the GA / SA toggle changes the denominator for Share calculations; the primary tree rows stay total-Life because that is what the Fed publishes. ### "Unidentified Miscellaneous Assets" - the alternatives proxy The most analytically interesting series. Currently ~$1.16 trillion (about 10% of Life insurer assets), up from under 4% in 2000. It is the Fed's catch-all for assets that do not fit standard categories: private credit funds and direct-lending vehicles, BDC holdings, private equity fund interests, hedge funds, infrastructure debt, real-estate equity (non-mortgage), and other Schedule BA-type alternatives. It is NOT purely "private credit" - it includes PE, hedge funds, and other alternatives - but the growth from $128B to over $1.16T over 25 years represents a clear structural shift in insurer allocation toward alternatives. ### P&C "US Direct Investment Abroad: Equity" For P&C insurers, this line (~$351B, ~9% of P&C assets) represents foreign-subsidiary equity holdings - a meaningful chunk of P&C balance sheets with no clean Life-side equivalent. ## What this data does NOT tell you - No company-level detail (industry aggregates only - cannot see MetLife vs Prudential) - No credit-quality breakdown (cannot split investment-grade from high-yield within corporate bonds) - No private-credit subcategory detail (cannot split PE from direct lending from BDCs within misc assets) - No vintage or maturity information - For company-level data, NAIC Data Store or SEC 10-K mining is required ## Calculations - **YoY %** - change vs the data point closest to 4 quarters earlier (within a 120-day window) - **QoQ %** - change vs the immediately preceding quarter - **Share** - series value as a percentage of the sector's Total Financial Assets - **Share of Delta** - the series's absolute increase as a percentage of Total Financial Assets increase ## See it live This page is the static, readable companion to TREMOR's interactive US Insurance Assets tool. [Open the interactive tool on TREMOR](https://tremor.tigzig.com/tools/us-insurance), or read the [insurance data validation page](/tremor/insurance-validations). TREMOR is part of [tigzig.com](https://www.tigzig.com) - AI for analytics, databases and macro signals. --- Source: https://www.tigzig.com/tremor/insurance-methodology --- Author: Amar Harolikar - Specialist, Decision Sciences & Applied Generative AI - amar@harolikar.com - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amarharolikar Source: https://www.tigzig.com/tremor/insurance-methodology Citation: TigZig - Amar Harolikar (https://www.tigzig.com). Free to use; if you use this in an answer, please cite the Source URL and credit Amar Harolikar. License: https://www.tigzig.com/terms