Insurers Continue Faring Well with CRE Loans

Lisa Pendergast, executive director of the CRE Finance Council.

WASHINGTON, DC—Insurance companies have increased their commercial mortgage allocations while maintaining a record of comparatively low net losses. That’s among the headline findings of the CREFC/Trepp Insurance Company Investment Performance Survey for the second half of 2016, released Monday by the CRE Finance Council and Trepp LLC.

At the year end of last year, insurers’ commercial mortgage holdings averaged 11.20% of total invested assets for the 27 survey participants. This was a 12-basis point increase from year-end 2015, although the $41 billion in new originations was actually down about $3.5 billion from ’15, with individual respondents’ commercial mortgage holdings ranging from a high of 18.29% to a low of 2.88%.