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Today, Standard & Poor's (S&P) Ratings Services downgraded our life insurance operating companies (including Transamerica Life Insurance Company and Transamerica Financial Life Insurance Company) one notch, from AA to AA- (Very Strong, 4^th of 21 categories), with a negative outlook.

In response to the downgrade announcement, AEGON has restated its commitment to maintaining solid financial ratings, along with freeing up capital, reducing costs, and working to maintain existing core businesses.

It's important to note that this downgrade is in line with actions taken by S&P on other insurance companies in both the U.S. and Europe, and that our current financial strength rating by S&P remains strong compared to our U.S. peers.

According to the press release issued by S&P, "The downgrade of the operating company reflects the higher than expected investment-related losses in 2008, the continued weakness in financial markets in 2009, and our opinion that de-risking and capital preservation actions will reduce future underlying earnings." Click HERE to view the press release.

AEGON has made the acceleration of capital preservation a priority since the financial crisis began. As noted in the S&P press release, "The ratings on AEGON's core operating entities continue to reflect what we see as the group's very strong, well-diversified competitive position; very strong capital adequacy; and strong risk controls for most key risks. These positive factors are partially offset by a difficult industry-wide operating environment in AEGON's core markets, and its exposure to investment risk." While we agree that we are operating in a difficult market environment right now, we believe that we have a high-quality investment portfolio that is defensively positioned for current market conditions.

AEGON continues to maintain the same excellent capitalization standards and at the end of 2008, held EUR 2.9 billion of excess capital over AA requirements.

I'm confident that the strength of our business—combined with a solid financial position and the actions AEGON is taking—will enable us to withstand the ongoing turmoil. At Transamerica Insurance & Investment Group, we will continue to do as we have always done, and that is to focus on delivering quality products and service to our customers and distributors.