Hi there,
I'm planning to launch a special investment vehicle mainly investing in insurance/reinsurance companies. Sounds familiar? Yes, this is going to be very similar to what Berkshire Hathaway is doing. I see lots of hidden values in those companies. To put it in a simple way, imagine all these companies locking in the policy holders' cash-flow (from premiums), and payout the claims some times in the future, and most of the times, those claims never happened. Even if they happen, given the law of large numbers, the probability on the winning side is still extremely high, losses will be smoothened once we have a big pool of policy holders. Remember they hire the smartest people on earth to run those numbers, the Actuaries. It's much better than running banks, your loan default rate is dependent on the market condition, the default rate is not fixed. But for insurance loss ratio, in long run, the mortality/loss probability should be pretty much the same unless there is a WW3 or nuclear war...
Monitoring insurance/reinsurance companies worldwide is part of my job as an Analyst. Area of focus will be mainly those companies listed on any of the exchange in the developed and emerging markets we could gain access to.
I do look at other type of companies as well... usually go for recession proof and high earning visibility companies.
If you like the idea, we could discuss more. Please PM me as I usually don't visit this site very often. Don't contact me if u are a market speculator. Thanks.