Strategies

With our background as the investment manager for insurance clients nationwide, Opus Investment Management has an orientation to investments that incorporates the essentials of risk management. We are experienced in the full range of fixed income investment vehicles suited for insurance groups and have the ability to tailor a portfolio to each client's specific guidelines.

Meaningful Performance

| top |

We recommend that the measurement of investment management success be based on clearly defined client objectives and expectations. Three distinct areas should be monitored to accomplish this:

• Client Service.   The ability to completely understand a client’s investment and business objectives is the first step in achieving quality client service. The ability to understand a client’s business and marketing environment allows an investment manager to deal with investment issues pre-emptively, eliminating surprises and excuses. The significant portion of Opus’ history and culture is in the management of insurance assets. You need someone who speaks your language. We can do that.
• After-tax results.   Given the tax issues and constraints of property/casualty insurers, investment objectives defining after-tax results should be established.   We may then be reviewed based on our ability to maximize after-tax income and/or minimize the AMT/regular tax differential. An index of comparable duration and sector weightings will be identified and we will tax-affect the income of the index to compare to our performance.
• Total rate of return.   Each property/casualty insurer has a unique tax situation which cannot be replicated within an index with any accuracy. As a result, we feel that total return alone is not an effective measure of performance. However, we do consider it useful if combined with the other criteria listed above to present an overall picture of how we are serving our clients.

| top |