US Insurance Investment Data: Methodology

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.

Open the interactive US Insurance Assets tool on TREMOR.

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 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