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.
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 - main release
- L.116 Life Insurance Companies and L.115 Property-Casualty 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.
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 three separate tables for Life insurers, and this tool currently uses the first:
- Total Life (table S.128.1.s, formerly L.116) - the asset breakdown behind the primary tree here. Every line (Debt Securities, Loans, Mortgages, Total Miscellaneous Assets and so on) combines GA-held and SA-held holdings.
- General Account (table S.128.1.1.s, formerly L.116.g) - a full GA-only asset breakdown, around 37 series including GA Debt Securities, GA Corporate and Foreign Bonds, GA Mortgages and GA Corporate Equities.
- Separate Account (table S.128.1.2.s, formerly L.116.s) - the equivalent SA-only breakdown.
What this tool currently tracks: the primary tree is built from the total-Life table only. From the GA and SA tables it carries the two compartment totals plus a partial set of SA sub-lines (SA Debt Securities at market value, SA Mortgages, SA Variable Annuity Mutual Fund Shares, SA Foreign Bonds and a few more). The GA and SA line-level breakdowns exist at the Fed but are not yet ingested here. That is a limitation of the tool, not of the data, and it is on the list to extend.
A concrete example. Take Debt Securities. The total-Life line at the latest quarter is $4.6T, combining bonds held in the General Account and in the Separate Account. The Fed separately publishes GA Debt Securities ($3.9T) and SA Debt Securities at market value ($0.7T). This tool shows the $4.6T total-Life figure in the tree and the SA figure as a memo; the GA figure is published by the Fed but not yet carried here. The GA / SA toggle changes the denominator used for Share calculations; the primary tree rows stay total-Life.
"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, or read the insurance data validation page. TREMOR is part of tigzig.com - AI for analytics, databases and macro signals.