Assured Guaranty Ltd., together with its subsidiaries, provides credit protection products to public finance and structured finance markets in the United States and internationally. It operates through two segments, Insurance and Asset Management. The company offers financial guaranty insurance that protects holders of debt instruments and other monetary obligations from defaults in scheduled payments. It also provides specialty insurance and …
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Competitive advantage assessment
Key strengths
Strong Premium Pricing MarginsPremium margin signal is strong (score 0.97), with operating margin at 73.3% vs peers — indicating pricing authority.
Top-Quartile Underwriting MarginsGross margin at 100.7% (top 0%) and operating margin at 73.3% (top 6%) reflect strong underwriting discipline.
Key risks
Volatile Underwriting ResultsUnderwriting stability is low (score 0.29), indicating significant exposure to loss cycle or catastrophe volatility.
Revenue Concentration RiskRevenue stability is low (score 0.24), suggesting limited diversification across risk segments.
The dashed ring is the peer median. Defense scores are percentile ranks
against peers, so 50 is roughly the typical company in this group.
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Assured Guaranty Ltd. ranks #8 of 19
scored companies in Insurance - Specialty by moat score — the top 42%.
The widest moat in the group is NMI Holdings Inc (NMIH)
at 78/100.
Moat scores for companies ranked near AGO in Insurance - Specialty
How AGO scores on the Insurance & Reinsurance defenses
Underwriting Discipline
Score 56
· 25% of the moat score
Underwriting discipline is the core insurance moat, and it consists mostly of the willingness to lose business.
Float Investment Quality
Score 56
· 20% of the moat score
Float is the money an insurer holds between collecting premiums and paying claims — capital it invests but does not own.
Pricing Power
Score 95
· 18% of the moat score
For an insurer, pricing power is the ability to push rate ahead of claims inflation and keep the policyholders anyway.
Capital Strength & Solvency
Score 54
· 17% of the moat score
Capital is what lets an insurer credibly promise to pay a claim that has not happened yet, and it is scrutinised by regulators and rating agencies alike.
Operational Efficiency
Score 94
· 12% of the moat score
The expense ratio — what it costs to acquire and administer a policy — is the half of the combined ratio management fully controls.
Scale & Diversification
Score 40
· 8% of the moat score
Diversification is a real economic advantage in insurance rather than a portfolio preference: risks spread across perils, geographies and lines are less likely to arrive at once, so the same capital supports more premium.
Assured Guaranty Ltd. (AGO) scores 66 out of 100 on the StatsAlpha Moat Map, which rates its competitive advantage as moderate. It ranks #8 of 19 scored companies in Insurance - Specialty, the top 42%. The score is a weighted composite of 6 competitive defenses, each measured against industry peers of 18 companies in Insurance - Specialty. Its strongest defense is Pricing Power (95/100) and its weakest is Scale & Diversification (40/100).
How does Assured Guaranty Ltd. compare with other Insurance - Specialty companies?
Assured Guaranty Ltd. ranks #8 of 19 scored companies in Insurance - Specialty by moat score. The widest moat in Insurance - Specialty is NMI Holdings Inc (NMIH) at 78/100. The companies ranked closest are Ryan Specialty Holdings, Inc. (RYAN) at 67 just above it and ICC Holdings, Inc. (ICCH) at 54 just below it.
How is the moat score calculated?
Each company is scored with an industry-specific template — Insurance & Reinsurance in this case, chosen because the defenses that matter to a bank are not the ones that matter to a software company. Every defense combines several financial signals, and each signal is measured as a percentile against a peer group of 18 companies in Insurance - Specialty. The defenses are then weighted to produce the overall score out of 100.
Why is Assured Guaranty Ltd. scored with the Insurance & Reinsurance template?
An insurer is paid before it knows what its product cost, and invests the money in the meantime. Profit therefore comes from two sources that must both work: pricing risk better than rivals, and earning a return on the float those premiums create. The Insurance template scores that pair, along with the capital that lets a company survive the year in which the losses arrive together.
Which competitive defenses are measured for Assured Guaranty Ltd.?
The Insurance & Reinsurance template measures 6 defenses, and AGO scores: Underwriting Discipline (56), Float Investment Quality (56), Pricing Power (95), Capital Strength & Solvency (54), Operational Efficiency (94), Scale & Diversification (40). Each is scored independently as a percentile against peers, so a company can be strong on one and weak on another — the overall score reflects how those defenses are weighted for this industry.
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