Ethos Insurance Valuation Multiples

Berkshire Hathaway is a holding company with a wide array of subsidiaries engaged in diverse activities. The firm's core business segment is insurance, run primarily through Geico, Berkshire Hathaway Reinsurance Group, and Berkshire Hathaway Primary Group. Berkshire has used the excess cash thrown off from its operations to acquire Burlington Northern Santa Fe (railroad), Berkshire Hathaway Energy (utilities and energy distributors), and the companies that make up its manufacturing, service, and retailing operations (which include Precision Castparts, Lubrizol, Clayton Homes, Marmon, and IMC/ISCAR). The conglomerate is unique in that it is run on a completely decentralized basis. Berkshire is expected to generate close to $375 billion in revenue in 2025.

Visa is the largest payment processor in the world. In fiscal 2025, it processed almost $17 trillion in total volume. Visa operates in over 200 countries and processes transactions in over 160 currencies. Its systems are capable of processing over 65,000 transactions per second.

Mastercard is the second-largest payment processor in the world, having processed close to $10 trillion in volume during 2024. Mastercard operates in over 200 countries and processes transactions in over 150 currencies.

American Express is a global financial institution, operating in about 130 countries, that provides consumers and businesses charge and credit card payment products. The company also operates a highly profitable merchant payment network. It operates in four segments: US consumer services, US commercial services, international card services, and global merchant and network services. In addition to payment products, the company's commercial business offers expense management tools, consulting services, and business loans.

Allianz was founded as a transport and accident insurance firm in 1890 by Carl von Thieme and Wilhelm von Finck, the founders of Munich Re. It took the company five years to expand the business into Europe and North America and subsequently list in Berlin. After World War I, individuals were confronted with the loss of wealth, life, and security and Allianz founded a life business in the 1920s. In the years after World War II, Allianz's foreign assets were seized, and it lost its foreign business. By relocating its head office from Berlin to Munich in 1948, Allianz began the long road of rebuilding its domestic business. It took 20 years for the company to reacquire its prior foreign interests, starting in Austria. It became the largest European insurer in the postwar boom era.

Ping An Insurance was founded in 1988 and headquartered in Shenzhen. As an integrated financial service provider, the company offers healthcare services and integrated financial products. Ping An is China's second-largest life and P&C insurer. The company strives for an integrated financial services platform comprising life insurance, P&C insurance, banking, and other financial services. These business segments contributed 58%, 11%, 32%, and negative 4% of the company’s pretax profits, respectively, in 2024.

Charles Schwab is one of the largest retail-oriented financial-services companies in the US, with $11.9 trillion in client assets across its brokerage, banking, asset management, custody, financial advisory, and wealth-management businesses at the end of 2025. While best known for its retail brokerage offering, Schwab generates the lion’s share of its revenue and profits through its Charles Schwab Bank and asset management segments. The firm is a dominant player in registered investment advisor custody, with over 40% market share, and has recently pushed into wealth management with robo-advisory, direct indexing, and other managed-investment solutions.

As the largest life insurance company in China, China Life commands about 16% market share by end-2024. The firm offers group and individual life insurance through exclusive agents, bancassurance, and other marketing platforms. While the bulk of profits stem from life insurance policies, additional operations include short-term policies such as accident and health insurance. The company is focusing on building a senior-care ecosystem and reforming a new agent team for long-term growth.

S&P Global provides data and benchmarks to capital and commodity market participants. Its ratings business is the largest credit rating agency in the world and S&P's largest segment by profitability. S&P's largest segment by revenue is market intelligence, which provides desktop, data and advisory solutions, enterprise solutions, and credit/risk solutions mostly in the financial-services industry. S&P's other segments include energy (formerly commodity insights, this segment includes Platts and other data), mobility (Carfax), and indexes. S&P plans to spin off mobility in 2026.

ACE acquired Chubb in the first quarter of 2016 and assumed the Chubb name. The combination made the new Chubb one of the largest domestic property and casualty insurers, with operations in 54 countries spanning commercial and personal P&C insurance, reinsurance, and life insurance.

Headquartered in Hong Kong, AIA is one of the largest pan-Asian insurance providers with diversifed products offerings including retirement savings plans, life insurance, and accident and health insurance. It was previously part of American International Group and went for a separate listing in Hong Kong in 2010. The firm also provides employee benefits, credit life, and pension services to corporate clients. AIA operates in 18 markets and serves the holders of more than 30 million individual policies and over 16 million participating members of group insurance schemes.

Progressive underwrites private and commercial auto insurance and specialty lines; it has almost 24 million personal auto policies in force and is one of the largest auto insurers in the United States. Progressive markets its policies through independent insurance agencies in the US and Canada and directly via the internet and telephone. Its premiums are split roughly equally between the agent and the direct channel. The company also offers commercial auto policies and entered homeowners insurance through an acquisition in 2015.

Capital One is a diversified financial services holding company headquartered in McLean, Virginia. Originally a spinoff of Signet Financial’s credit card division in 1994, the company is now primarily involved in credit card lending, auto loans, and commercial lending. Following the acquisition of Discover in 2025, the firm also has a modest personal loan business, though credit card lending provides the majority of the bank's revenue.

Intuit serves small and midsize businesses with accounting software QuickBooks and online marketing platform Mailchimp. The company also operates retail tax filing tool TurboTax, personal finance platform Credit Karma, and a suite of professional tax offerings for accountants. Founded in the mid-1980s, Intuit enjoys a dominant market share for small-to-midsize business accounting and self-serve tax filing in the US.

Zurich is a multiline insurer that writes business across both life and nonlife insurance and also owns Farmers Management Services. Zurich was founded in 1872 as a marine reinsurer to provide reinsurance to its parent company. The company subsequently expanded into transport and accident insurance and rode the wave of transport technology innovation that drove rising demand for insurance. One of Zurich’s early principles was that setting prices too low would result in unfair claims handling, which would be damaging to both customers and Zurich. Over the years, Zurich has sought to combine customer goodwill through claims and a sufficient premium. Zurich is one of the most successful European multilines.

Based in Chicago, CME Group operates exchanges giving investors, suppliers, and businesses the ability to trade futures and derivatives based on interest rates, equity indexes, foreign currencies, energy, metals, and commodities. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange was founded in 1898 and in 2002 completed its IPO. Since then, CME Group has consolidated parts of the industry by merging with crosstown rival CBOT Holdings in 2007 before acquiring Nymex Holdings in 2008 and NEX in 2018. In addition, the company has a 27% stake in S&P Dow Jones Indices, making the Chicago Mercantile Exchange the exclusive venue to trade and clear S&P futures contracts. Through CME's acquisition of NEX, it also expanded into cash foreign exchange, fixed-income trading, and collateral optimization.

AXA’s origins date back to Ancienne Mutuelle, which was one of the few insurers that remained after the creation of the French social security system. With the threat of nationalization, a merger took place between Drouot and AXA (still known as Mutuelles Unies in 1982) and later Présence. Ten years later, AXA acquired North American life insurer Equitable Holdings. This was a time of expansion as AXA also bought the French insurer UAP. As markets crashed at the turn of the millennium, AXA decided to refocus its business and exited its stake in US investment bank Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette. A few years later the firm expanded again with the acquisition of Swiss insurer Winterthur. About five years ago, AXA started to reshape its portfolio to technical risks.

Intercontinental Exchange is a vertically integrated operator of financial exchanges and provides ancillary data products. Though the company is probably best known for its ownership of the New York Stock Exchange, which it acquired in 2013, ICE operates a large derivatives exchange, too. The company's largest commodity futures product is the ICE Brent crude futures contract. In addition to the exchanges business, which is about 54% of net revenue, Intercontinental Exchange has used a series of acquisitions to create its mortgage technology business (22% of net revenue) and fixed-income and data-services segment (24% of net revenue).

Dating back to 1879, Tokio Marine is Japan’s oldest insurance company and was its top property and casualty insurer in terms of market share for many decades. After mergers of its smaller rivals in the past few years, the company is now roughly the same size in the domestic nonlife market as MS&AD and Sompo, but it remains the most valuable listed Japanese insurer in terms of market capitalization due to its larger overseas business portfolio. The majority of its overseas business is in the US, where it has purchased four specialty insurers since 2008: Philadelphia Consolidated, Delphi Financial, HCC, and PURE.

MercadoLibre runs the largest e-commerce marketplace in Latin America, with about 150 million active users and more than 600 million active listings across 18 countries stitching into its commerce network or fintech solutions when last reported. The company operates a host of complementary businesses to its core online shop, with shipping solutions (Mercado Envios), a payment and financing operation (Mercado Pago and Mercado Credito), advertisements (Mercado Clics), classifieds, and a turnkey e-commerce solution (Mercado Shops) rounding out its arsenal. MercadoLibre generates revenue from final value fees, advertising royalties, payment processing, insertion fees, subscription fees, and interest income from consumer and small-business lending.

Elevance Health remains one of the leading health insurers in the US, providing medical benefits to 46 million medical members as of June 2025. The company offers employer, individual, and government-sponsored coverage plans. Elevance differs from its peers in its unique position as the largest single provider of Blue Cross Blue Shield branded coverage, operating as the licensee for the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association in 14 states. Through acquisitions, such as the Amerigroup deal in 2012 and MMM in 2021, Elevance's reach expands beyond those states through government-sponsored programs, such as Medicaid and Medicare Advantage plans, too. It is also an emerging player in pharmacy benefit management and other healthcare services.

Moody’s, along with S&P Ratings, is a leading provider of credit ratings on fixed-income securities. The ratings segment, Moody’s Investors Service, includes corporates, structured finance, financial institutions, and public finance ratings. MIS represents a majority of the firm’s profit and often (depending on bond issuance levels) a majority of the firm's revenue. The other segment, Moody’s Analytics, consists of decision solutions, research and insights, and data and information.

Cigna primarily provides pharmacy benefit management and health insurance services. Its PBM and specialty pharmacy services, which were greatly expanded by its 2018 merger with Express Scripts, are mostly sold to health insurance plans and employers. Its largest PBM contract is with the Department of Defense (current contract through 2029), and it recently won a multiyear deal with top-tier insurer Centene. In health insurance and other benefits, Cigna primarily serves employers through self-funding arrangements, and the company operates mostly in the US with 17 million US and 2 million international medical members covered as of December 2024.

Munich Re was founded in 1880 by Carl Thieme amid a flurry of other reinsurance companies set up independently of primaries. In those early days, most reinsurers typically focused on a few strong customers. Thieme focused on a broader set of cedents to drive stronger growth in premiums. This coincided with a strategy of risk diversification and a preference to partner rather than take on a one-sided transfer of risk. In the 1890s, Munich Re introduced the first machinery insurance. After Thieme and Wilhelm von Fink founded Allianz, this was the main channel to sell insurance on machinery. We believe the approach of partnering with insurers and preferring to avoid one-sided risk, in conjunction with combining inspection and insurance services, remains at the heart of the firm.

Robinhood Markets Inc is creating a modern financial services platform. It designs its own products and services and delivers them through a single, app-based cloud platform supported by proprietary technology. Its vertically integrated platform has enabled the introduction of new products and services such as cryptocurrency trading, dividend reinvestment, fraud detection, derivatives, fractional shares, recurring investments, and others.

Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing is a vertically integrated securities exchange business offering listing, data, trading, clearing and settlement services across equities, debt and derivatives. HKEx, like Hong Kong itself, functions as a gateway between China and the rest of the world. HKEx serves as a preferred listing venue for Chinese companies outside of China and, through the Connect Scheme, offers two-way trading for a growing group of financial products with the Shanghai Stock Exchange and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.

The roots of Generali date back to the 1830s and the Bora wind and rough seas that hit the Trieste region. Over that decade, Generali sought to expand throughout Italy, but this growth was held back by the fragmented nature of Italy. The Italian Revolution in the 1840s paved the way for easier expansion in the country. After World War I, Trieste was handed back to Italy. The dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire created a fragmented Europe and a fragmented Generali. To this day, Generali remains quite a diversified company, but its core operations remain in the historical Austro-Hungarian countries of Austria, Central and Eastern Europe, Germany, and Italy. This is the case in Generali’s nonlife business, and France is also an important contributor to life and savings.

Manulife Financial is one of the Big Three Canadian life insurers. The firm provides life insurance, annuities, asset management, and wealth management products to individuals and group customers in Canada, the United States, and Asia. The Canadian business segment contributes approximately 22% of adjusted earnings. The Asia segment operates across 12 countries and contributes around 36% of earnings, with a significant presence in Hong Kong and Singapore. The US business, which primarily operates under the John Hancock brand, contributes about 23% of earnings. Manulife’s global asset and wealth management business contributes approximately 20% of its earnings and had around CAD 1.03 trillion in assets under management and administration as of the end of 2024.

Nu Holdings Ltd provides digital banking services. It offers several financial services such as Credit cards, Personal accounts, Investments, Personal Loans, Insurance, Mobile payments, Business Accounts, and Rewards. The company earns the majority of its revenue in Brazil.

Travelers offers a broad product range and participates in both commercial and personal insurance lines. Its commercial operations offer a variety of coverage types for companies of any size but concentrate on serving midsize businesses. Its personal lines are roughly evenly split between auto and homeowners insurance.

Bajaj Finance Ltd is the holding company for various financial services businesses under the Bajaj Group, which operates in India. The company is an NBFC in India offering payments, partnerships, services, and lending solutions to customers. The company's model is focused on the acquisition of customers and offering multiple loans and services on a cross-sell basis to meet their financial service needs. The company provides discretionary spending across consumer electronics, furniture, and digital products in India. The company's strategies and structure are closely aligned with those of commercial banks in India. All of its revenue is generated from India.

London Stock Exchange Group is a fully integrated financial exchange company covering the financial market value chain from primary and secondary markets across multiple asset classes over data, index, and analytics down to clearing and post-trading reporting. With the acquisition of Refinitiv, LSEG generates about two thirds of its revenue from data and analytics including its FTSE Russell and WM/Refinitiv benchmarks as well as data feeds and terminals. The group is also a majority shareholder in Tradeweb, one of the dominant global fixed-income trading venues, as well as LCH, the largest clearinghouse for over-the-counter swaps globally.

Aflac Inc offers supplemental health insurance and life insurance in the United States and Japan. In addition to its cancer policies, the company has broadened its product offerings to include accident, dental and vision, disability, and long-term-care insurance. It markets its products through independent distributors, selling the majority of its policies directly to consumers at their places of work, and also reaches out to its customers outside of their worksite through digital mediums. The company has two reportable business segments; Aflac Japan which generates the majority of the revenue, and Aflac U.S.

Founded in 2012, Coinbase is the leading cryptocurrency exchange platform in the United States. The company intends to be the safe and regulation-compliant point of entry for retail investors and institutions into the cryptocurrency economy. Users can establish an account directly with the firm, instead of using an intermediary, and many choose to allow Coinbase to act as a custodian for their cryptocurrency, giving the company breadth beyond that of a traditional financial exchange. While the company still generates the majority of its revenue from transaction fees charged to its retail customers, Coinbase uses internal investment and acquisitions to expand into adjacent businesses, such as prime brokerage and data analytics.

Allstate is one of the largest US property-casualty insurers in the US. Personal auto represents the largest percentage of revenue, but the company offers homeowners insurance and other insurance products. Allstate products are sold in North America primarily by about 6,000 exclusive agents.

Life Insurance Corporation of India is engaged in providing life insurance in India. The company offers diversified product portfolio covering various segments across individual products and group products.

Deutsche Boerse is a financial exchange company headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany. The company primarily generates revenue through its Eurex and Clearstream segments. Eurex allows for the trading and clearing of derivatives. Clearstream offers custody and settlement services for domestic and international securities, as well as collateral management services. Other segments include Xetra, which generates revenue through trading and clearing cash equities, STOXX (an index business), and several others.

MetLife is one of the largest life insurers in the US by assets and provides a variety of life insurance and annuity products. It is organized into six segments: Group Benefits, Retirement and Income Solutions, Asia, Latin America, Europe/Middle East/Africa (EMEA), and MetLife Holdings (products in run-off). Group Benefits and RIS are US-based, contributing to around 48% of the firm’s 2024 adjusted earnings. The Asia segment contributes around 25% of earnings, mainly tied to Japan. The company also holds leading market positions in Mexico and Chile, with the Latin America segment contributing around 13% of 2024 earnings. The EMEA and MetLife Holdings segments contributed around 4% and 10% of 2024 earnings, respectively.

Established in 1988, China Pacific Insurance is China's third-largest life insurer and third-largest general property and casualty insurer, with headquarters in Beijing. The company strives to create an integrated financial services platform that encompasses insurance, banking, and asset management. CPIC's major shareholders are state-owned companies related to the Shanghai government.

Founded in 1971, Nasdaq is primarily known for its equity exchange, but in addition to its trading business (about 22.5% of sales), the company sells market and financial data to investors, offers Nasdaq-branded indexes, and lists companies through its capital access segment (42.5%). Nasdaq's newest segment, financial technology, was primarily constructed through the acquisitions of Verafin and Adenza and has expanded the company into capital management, financial crime, and regulatory compliance software (35%) as it seeks to become a diversified technology company.

Great-West Lifeco is one of the Big Three Canadian life insurers. The firm's Canadian business contributed around 30% of adjusted earnings. The firm generates a further 32% of adjusted earnings from the United States, attributable to its recordkeeping business, Empower, and its US life insurance business. Great-West Lifeco also offers various products across European markets with a strong presence in the UK and Ireland, which collectively accounted for 20% of adjusted earnings, while the firm's reinsurance business accounts for the remainder. Great-West Lifeco had around CAD 3.5 trillion of assets under administration across its business segments at the end of September 2025.

East Money Information Co Ltd is engaged in securities business, financial e-commerce service business, financial data service business, and Internet advertising service business. It mainly provides paid financial data services, financial e-commerce services, and Internet advertisement services through its Website, eastmoney.com. It generates majority of ots revenue from the securities business.

PICC Group, headquartered in Beijing, is the largest state-owned insurance group in China. It holds a 69% stake in PICC Property and Casualty, an 80% stake in PICC Life, and a 69% stake in PICC Health Insurance. The P&C subsidiary is the largest nonlife insurer in the country, with approximately one-third of market share. The life insurance and health insurance subsidiaries hold about 2.9% and 1.3% of market share, respectively. The Ministry of Finance is the largest shareholder with a 61% stake, while China's Social Security Fund is the second-largest shareholder, holding nearly 13%.

Founded in 2009, Block provides payment services to merchants, along with related services. The company also launched Cash App, a person-to-person payment network. In 2024, Square's payment volume was almost USD 250 million.

PICC P&C is headquartered in Beijing. The company is the largest nonlife insurer in China, commanding nearly 33% market share in the country. It was founded by the People's Bank of China in 1949. The company is a flagship subsidiary of the PICC Group, a state-owned insurance group, which owns 69% of PICC P&C. The company offers a wide range of nonlife insurance products, including auto, commercial property, liability, credit and surety bond, accidents and health, energy and aerospace, and agricultural insurance.

MSCI has described its mission as enabling investors to build better portfolios for a better world. MSCI's largest and most profitable segment is its index segment, where it provides benchmarking to asset managers and asset owners. MSCI boasts over $18 trillion in benchmarked assets, including over $2.3 trillion in ETF assets linked to MSCI indexes. The MSCI analytics segment provides portfolio management and risk management analytics software to asset managers and asset owners. In its sustainability and climate segment, MSCI provides ESG data to the investment industry. In private assets, MSCI provides real restate reporting, market data, benchmarking, and analytics to investors and real estate managers.

Rocket Companies is a financial services company that was originally founded as Rock Financial in 1985 and is currently based in Detroit. Rocket Companies offers a wide array of services and products but is best known for its Rocket Mortgage business. The company’s mortgage lending operations are split between its direct-to-consumer lending, which sees borrowers accessing the company’s lending arm directly through either its mobile app or website, and its partner network where mortgage brokers and other firms use Rocket’s origination process to offer loans to their customers. The company has rapidly gained market share in recent years and will also be the largest mortgage servicer in the US following its acquisition of the Mr. Cooper Group.

Fubon Financial Holdings Co Ltd is a full-service financial holding company. Along with its subsidiaries, the company operates in the following reportable segments: Bank business, Insurance business, Life insurance business, Securities business, and Others. It generates maximum revenue from the Life Insurance business segment, which provides a variety of life and property insurance services. In addition to its reportable businesses, the group is also engaged in financial holding, venture capital, and asset management businesses. Geographically, it generates maximum revenue from Taiwan, followed by other Asian regions, and other markets.