Visualizing U.S. Life Insurers’ Nontraditional Liabilities from the FRB’s Financial Stability Report

Over the past decade, U.S. life insurers have increased their reliance on funding from nontraditional liabilities, including funding agreement–backed securities, cash received through repurchase agreements and securities lending transactions, and advances from the Federal Home Loan Banks. These liabilities can create liquidity risk through withdrawals or the inability to roll over funding if invested proceeds are not appropriately matched.

The chart below tracks those four series derived from figure 4.9 of the Federal Reserve Board’s Financial Stability Report, which have been converted from the published constant dollars to nominal terms.

Nontraditional liabilities of U.S. life insurers, billions of nominal dollars. Annual 2006–2010, quarterly from 2011 Q1 — bars are drawn across the period they cover, so the annual bars are four times wider.

View the data as a table

Source

Federal Reserve Board, Financial Stability Report, May 2026, figure 4.9, “Life insurers’ use of nontraditional liabilities increased further.” Underlying sources as cited there: consumer price index, Bureau of Labor Statistics via Haver Analytics; Moody’s Analytics, CreditView, Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Program Index; Securities and Exchange Commission Forms 10-Q and 10-K; National Association of Insurance Commissioners statutory filings via S&P Global, Capital IQ Pro; Bloomberg Finance L.P.