RRGAReinsurance Group of America, Incorporated

Reinsurance Group of America reinsures mortality risk — taking on part of life insurers' obligations.

A life insurer does not want to hold all the risk itself and passes part to a reinsurer. The reinsurer takes it across many portfolios in different countries at once, and the law of large numbers works for it: a single death is unpredictable, the statistics of millions of policyholders are not.

The company's value lies in data and actuarial expertise: it sees mortality across dozens of insurers' books and therefore prices risk more accurately than any of them alone. A separate line is assuming already-accumulated obligations in full. Risks: an error in longevity assumptions, epidemics and interest rates. The dividend has been raised for many consecutive years.