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RM 497 Group Project Assignment (200 points)

Overview. The purpose of this project is two-fold.  First, the project is designed as an assignment that allows students to apply the concepts that we have learned about in class to a real-life insurer.  Working in groups of five students, each group will select a publicly traded insurer and examine the factors that are critical to that firm’s current and future competitive success.  The paper will include a SWOT analysis of the firm, a financial review of the firm using analysis provided by rating agencies and financial analysts, a summary of the recent financial performance of the firm’s stock, and a description of the current competitive marketplace in which the insurer competes.

Another objective of the project is to examine the competitive effectiveness of the firm in today’s financial services marketplace.  For this second goal, the objective of the group is to demonstrate their understanding of the current events shaping the competitive financial services marketplace and to assess how well their firm is performing in this environment.  In this regard, each group will be expected to conduct a thorough analysis of all publicly available sources of information on the firm (trade publications, annual reports, analysts’ reports, conference calls, rating agency assessments) and to demonstrate their  under-standing of the key drivers affecting their firm’s performance. Included in this analysis will be a report on the key factors affecting the firm’s stock price, with special focus on the factors associated with the largest changes in stock price over the last five years.

Selecting a topic. One factor critical to the success of the project is selecting an appropriate insurer to study.  To assure availability of information, it is recommended that the firm studied in your project should be a publicly traded stock insurer.  Students should assess the information content available on the firm that they select for analysis before choosing the topic of their paper to assure that they have sufficient information to complete this project.  Each group is expected to conduct a thorough analysis of all public information available for the firm, and it is advised that each group carry out this search using the electronic databases available through the library (e.g., Proquest).  Projects cannot be used in or derived from projects in other courses without notifying me. Groups must submit their topics to me for approval via email (CC all group members in the email). In the event that two or more groups request the same insurer, the group who emails me first gets top for that topic.

Project details. Papers should be concise. Reports can be no longer than 12 pages of text and five pages of appendices (the bibliography is not counted as a part of the text.)  Text must be double spaced with one-inch margins and 12-point font. The report must include an additional separate one page executive summary by the team (that does not count toward the page limit).  A detailed bibliography of key articles used in your analysis must be included in the report.  The bibliography should consist of reports from major international news media sources (e.g., Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg), insurance and financial services trade publications (e.g., Best’s Library Center) and electronic business media sources (Mergent, Morningstar). The following segments should be included in your reports:

· A brief overview of the organization (core products and services, recent financial performance over the past five years),

· A SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis on the firm to assess its competitiveness within the industry.  The professor will make available a sampling of SWOT analyses for a variety of insurers for the class to review.  If I have provided a SWOT analysis for the insurer selected by the group, it is expected that the group will conduct analysis to support or refute all conclusions of the SWOT analysis.  In this section, each group should identify those factors that provide an insurer a competitive (dis)advantage that is sufficient to provide the firm greater pricing power and competitive strength in the industry (for example, financial strength, product development, distribution channels, information technology capabilities, etc.)

· A review of reports on the financial strength on the firm.  In this section, each group should summarize the reports of rating agencies (e.g., AM Best (see Best Library Center), Moody’s, S&P) and the reports of financial analysts who cover the firm (e.g., Refinitiv includes reports by JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank, Wells Fargo, etc.)

· An analysis of the stock price of the firm.  Groups should examine the share price of the firm relative to an index of the stocks of other insurer and financial services firms over the last five years (or longer, if the longer time frame is more appropriate for the firm, as in a demutualized insurer).  Stock price tracking tools are available at Morningstar or Yahoo Finance. Groups should focus extra attention on the causes of significant share price changes during this time, as such shifts offer valuable information about factors that the market believes are important to the firm.

· Summary on the ability of the firm to compete in current market conditions.  A section summarizing the key conclusions of its findings to assess the current abilities of the firm to compete in the financial services markets today and in the future.

Bibliography. To demonstrate the thoroughness of their analysis, each group must pro-vide a detailed bibliography of the sources used in this project.  In addition, the group is expected to identify the three most influential citations in this bibliography, and explain why these three sources were key to the analyses in the paper.

Grading. The criteria used in grading will include consistency with the requirements specified in this project description, conciseness, the thoroughness of the analysis, and the depth of coverage of the financial services trade literature in support the conclusions of the paper (as documented by the thoroughness of the bibliography).  Projects will be graded relative to competing teams in your class.  The top papers will not merely meet the requirements specified in this paper, but will go above and beyond their peers.

Peer grading. To limit the potential for free riders, each group member will assign a grade for every other member of his or her team.  These scores will be used to adjust the overall score of the team’s project for the relative contributions of each team member.

Timetable for deliverables

· Names of group members can be submitted starting on November 17.

· Groups will be finalized by November 19.

· Project topics, which are subject to my approval, can be submitted starting at 8 am on November 19. However, if you have 5 group members, you can request a topic sooner.

· All groups must send me their topic by or before 5 pm on November 21.

· All projects are due at or before noon on the Monday of finals week.