Berkshire Hathaway Inc., through its subsidiaries, engages in the insurance, freight rail transportation, and utility businesses. The company provides property, casualty, life, accident, and health insurance and reinsurance; operates railroad systems in North America; generates, transmits, stores, and distributes electricity from natural gas, coal, wind, solar, hydroelectric, nuclear, and geothermal sources; operates natural gas distribution and storage facilities, interstate pipelines, …
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Competitive advantage assessment
Key strengths
Improving Expense Discipline Over TimeEfficiency trend is positive (score 1.00), suggesting improving operational cost discipline.
Key risks
Below-Peer Return on EquityROE signal is weak (score 0.33), with ROE at 9.8% trailing peers — raising capital efficiency concerns.
Volatile Capital Returns Signal Cat ExposureCapital adequacy stability is low (score 0.33), indicating elevated catastrophe or reserve cycle exposure.
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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Berkshire Hathaway Inc. ranks #7 of 17
scored companies in Insurance - Diversified by moat score — the top 41%.
The widest moat in the group is Arch Capital Group Ltd. (ACGL)
at 81/100.
Moat scores for companies ranked near BRK-A in Insurance - Diversified
How BRK-A scores on the Insurance & Reinsurance defenses
Underwriting Discipline
Score 42
· 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 39
· 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 36
· 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 33
· 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 89
· 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 54
· 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.
Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK-A) scores 46 out of 100 on the StatsAlpha Moat Map, which rates its competitive advantage as developing. It ranks #7 of 17 scored companies in Insurance - Diversified, the top 41%. The score is a weighted composite of 6 competitive defenses, each measured against industry peers of 17 companies in Insurance - Diversified. Its strongest defense is Operational Efficiency (89/100) and its weakest is Capital Strength & Solvency (33/100).
How does Berkshire Hathaway Inc. compare with other Insurance - Diversified companies?
Berkshire Hathaway Inc. ranks #7 of 17 scored companies in Insurance - Diversified by moat score. The widest moat in Insurance - Diversified is Arch Capital Group Ltd. (ACGL) at 81/100. The companies ranked closest are Waterdrop Inc. (WDH) at 48 just above it and Aegon Ltd. New York Registry Sh (AEG) at 43 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 17 companies in Insurance - Diversified. The defenses are then weighted to produce the overall score out of 100.
Why is Berkshire Hathaway Inc. 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 Berkshire Hathaway Inc.?
The Insurance & Reinsurance template measures 6 defenses, and BRK-A scores: Underwriting Discipline (42), Float Investment Quality (39), Pricing Power (36), Capital Strength & Solvency (33), Operational Efficiency (89), Scale & Diversification (54). 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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