'Mortality Is More Predictable Than Interest Rate Risk'

Summary

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In the 162 years that it has been around, New York Life Insurance Company has insured a wide variety of people, including Presidents of the United States (Teddy Roosevelt and Richard Nixon, among them), famous sports stars (baseball legend Babe Ruth) and legendary journalists (Henry Luce). Over the last 10 years, it has been Sy Sternberg's responsibility to keep New York Life as the #1 insurer in the US. A native of Brooklyn, New York, Sternberg is the Chairman & CEO and also the man instrumental in kick-starting New York Life's joint venture in India with Analjit Singh's Max Group. In India recently, Sternberg, 64, met BT's Anand Adhikari to talk about the challenges of growing in mature markets like the us and the opportunities in emerging markets such as India. Excerpts:

NYL is well known for charity and philanthropy. How difficult is to earn every dollar in the competitive life insurance business?

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'Mortality Is More Predictable Than Interest Rate Risk'

Insurance is a tough business in the sense that you have to invest capital today and there are chances that you may not get the return in the next 10 years. So, a lot of people do not want to enter the insurance business because of long gestation periods. We, having been in the business for over one-and-a-half century, understand this business much better than many others.

Let me put it another way: how do you manage the ever growing expectations of policy holders, especially when insurers are seeing escalating costs, higher life expectancy and also competition?

We tell ...

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