Definition:Business segment: Difference between revisions
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Publish curated Definition page (Business segment) — overrides legacy glossary entry |
merged into Definition:Business mix (the four level labels are used inconsistently across issuers; one umbrella term) Tag: New redirect |
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#REDIRECT [[Definition:Business mix]] |
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{{Infobox definition |
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| category = concepts; taxonomy |
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| aliases = Business segments |
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| related terms = Business unit; Business line; Property & casualty; Life & health |
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| short definition = A major division of the insurance business by nature of risk and accounting treatment (Property & casualty, Life & health). |
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| review status = authored |
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}} |
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🧱 '''Business segment''' is a major division of an insurance business by the nature of its risk and its accounting treatment: property & casualty on one side, life & health on the other, with asset management or banking standing beside them where a group runs such operations. The split is analytical rather than organizational. It groups contracts that behave alike, annually repriced damage cover versus long-duration person-linked cover, whichever unit happens to write them. |
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⚖️ The segment axis owes its power to accounting and capital treatment. Measurement, reserving, and disclosure differ fundamentally between short-duration property-casualty contracts and long-duration life business, so results only make sense sorted along this line: combined ratios and catastrophe commentary belong to one segment, investment margins and contractual-service-margin release to the other. Insurers' accounts therefore present revenue and result by segment, and analysts model each segment with different tools. A business segment cuts across business units: at AXA, most market units write both property & casualty and life & health, and the segment totals reassemble those books group-wide. |
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📊 Reading insurers well requires keeping this axis separate from the organizational one. A business unit says where and by whom business is run; a business segment says what kind of risk it is. Peer comparison runs on segments, since AXA's property-casualty book compares with Allianz's or Zurich's regardless of how each group organizes itself internally. When a document says a segment grew, the essential follow-up is which axis the figure sits on, because unit and segment tables slice the same premiums two different ways. |
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Latest revision as of 13:20, 25 July 2026
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