¶ … financial position of Aflac Inc. And its competitor MetLife Inc. Aflac, http://www.aflac.com/, is a Fortune 500 company founded by John, Paul and Bill Amos in 1955. Aflac insures more than 50 million people worldwide. At year end 2010, Aflac had assets totaling more than $101 billion with annual revenues of more than $20.7 billion (Aflac Inc., 2012). I chose to write about Aflac for this assignment because of my interest in the insurance industry and my desire to learn more about it. This analysis of Aflac has helped me to gain familiarity with and a deeper understanding of insurance company financial operations. This report analyzed financial statements for the year ending December 31, 2010 for both Aflac and MetLife. Financial statement data was taken from Aflac's "Year in Review" published by Thomson Reuters, http://thomson.mobular.net/thomson/7/3187/4452/document_0/YIR_2010.pdf as well as Aflac's cash flow statement by MarketWatch, http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/afl/financials/cash-flow. MetLife financial data was taken from the company's "Annual Report," http://phx.corporate-ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9NDE5MDc1fENoaWxkSUQ9NDMyMjQzfFR5cGU9MQ==&t=1.

This report reviewed Aflac's return on assets (ROA), a measurement used to determine how much profit a company generated for each dollar in assets. ROA measures a company's earnings in relation to all the resources at the...

ROA is therefore a stringent test of return to shareholders. ROA also provides an indication of how asset intensive a business is; in this case the insurance industry is asset-light. A comparison of Aflac's ROA of 2.5% shows that it is above the industry average of .4% (CNN Money, 2012) and also above its competitor MetLife, whose ROA is .43%.
Aflac's profit margin for the 2010 fiscal year was 11.3%, which was well above the industry average of 4.7% (Yahoo! Finance, 2012). The net profit margin looks at how much of a company's revenues are kept as net income and shows how effectively managers run a business. Higher profit margins provide an indication of more profitable companies, those with better control over costs compared to competitors. Aflac's profit margin is higher than MetLife's at 5.28%, indicating that Aflac is the more profitable company even though it is significantly smaller than MetLife in terms of revenues and market capitalization ($23.3 billion versus $39.8 billion).

Aflac's asset utilization rate is 22.4%, while MetLife's is 8.3%. This ratio indicates a company's efficiency in using its assets, showing management's ability to make the best use of its assets to generate revenue. In comparison with the accident and health insurance industry, Aflac ranks in the 44th percentile; in the…