Analyst estimates for an insurance company
Something to consider is how broad is Yahoo! Finance taking in their data for making some comparisons.  For example, did you look at the other companies in the same industry?  On the Industry page, the Top Life Insurance Companies by Market Cap are mostly British companies which could make things a bit different than you'd think. Another point is how this is just for one quarter which may be an anomaly as the data could get a bit awkward if some companies are just coming back to being profitable and could have what appears to be great growth but this is because their earnings grow from $.01/share to $1/share which is a growth of $10,000 percent as this is an increase of 100 times but really this may just be from various accounting charges the company had that hit its reserves and caused its earnings to dip temporarily.
Governments only have a few ways to get income: tax income, tax consumption, tax property (cars & boats), tax real estate, or tax services (hotel & meals). The National, state, county, city, and town taxing authorities determine what is taxed and what the rate will be to get enough money to run their share of the government. In general the taxing of real estate is done by the local government, but the ability to tax real estate is granted to them by the state. In the United States the local government decides, generally through a public hearing, what the rate will be. You can usually determine the current rate and tax value of the home prior to purchase. Though some jurisdictions limit the annual growth of value of the property, and then catch it up when the property is sold. That information is also in  public records.   All taxes are used to build roads, pay for public safety, schools, libraries, parks.. the list is very long. Failure to pay the tax will result in a lien on the property, which can result in your losing the property in a tax sale.  Most of the time the bank or mortgage company insists that your monthly payment to them includes the monthly portion of the estimated property tax, and the fire insurance on the property. This is called escrow. This makes sure the money is available when the tax is due. In some places is is paid yearly, on other places every six months. With an escrow account the bank will send the money to the government or insurance company. Here is the big secret: you have been indirectly paying property tax. The owner of the apartment , townhouse, or home you have been renting has been paying the tax from your monthly payment to them. "In general, ""billed amounts"" don't mean a whole lot, since if the provider has a contract with the insurance company (usually called ""in-network""), the insurance company picks what the rates are that the treatment ""should"" cost, and how that cost gets allocated between what the insurance company pays and what the patient pays. Due to that contract, the insurance company and provider should agree on how much the patient owes, and one shouldn't pay a provider more than what the insurance company says you should. On the other hand, some insurance plans have a level of ""out of network"" coverage. In that case, the insurance company has its same sense of what the treatment ""should"" cost, but is really only concerned with paying its share. The EOB then should show how much they pay, but will generally show the full ""billed amount"" minus their payment as the amount the patient owes. That is, since there's no contract between the provider and the insurance company, the insurance company has no way to stop the provider from ""balance billing"" you for whatever they want beyond the amount that the insurance is paying, since any payment amount is purely a transaction between you and the provider. In general (as with anything involving large amounts of money), it's best to get all you can in writing. The provider should be able to provide you with a statement showing zero remaining due, and including both any payment you've made to them and any payments made by the insurance company. It may take a while for the payment from the insurance company to be processed, and until it does there may be something on the statement showing ""estimated amount to be paid by insurance"", which isn't as comforting as one showing ""actual amount paid by insurance"" and ""zero due""." "Often you are right, and the current information is ""priced in"", but I would say in times of market boom like this that the market can definitely overprice. Price is driven by trades/last trade. Someone may be willing to pay X, and do so, making the price now X, but that does not mean it is worth X. You could very well be paying a premium for it's perceived desirability. This is why investors/analysts spend time and energy on valuations, they want to compare the markets current price to what the price theoretically should/would be if it were purely driven by the data, in effect trying to remove sentiment from the equation to gain a more realistic idea of what a company is worth.  Side note adding on that, don't mistake this as saying one should pay a lot of attention to analysts or their price targets, though analysts do have insightful things to say." "&gt; Let's just say the insurance industry knows a lot more about underwriting than you do.  I'm sorry, but that is a meaningless statement. I work in insurance (first as a consultant, before 'retiring' to work in insurance distribution a few years ago), and I know that our industry frequently uses flawed or outdated methodologies due to the simple fact that insurance companies are very conservative and *very* resistant to change when it comes to changes to their core business. Unless you can show a direct, negative impact on the bottom line caused by the currently used method, you are unlikely to make any changes at all. In this case, if the entire US car insurance industry is using the same flawed system, it won't affect a single company if they also stick to it.   Until 1996, before the current system was introduced, insurance companies in Germany used to rate liability insurance for cars (almost) exclusively by engine power output. The industry had known that this method was fundamentally flawed since at least the late 1980s (comprehensive and partial coverage had been rated by the 'new' system for a few years at this point, which had also taken years to work out), but it took additional years of planning, negotiations and cooperation by the entire industry to change to the new system for liability.   So please, do not ever assume that ""the insurance companies are the experts, they know what they are doing!"". It might very well be the case that they are stuck with flawed/outdated systems simply because there is no sufficiently strong impulse to change what they do.   The current Tesla rate adjustment situation is a wonderful example of this - it apparantly took AAA *5 years* since the Model S first came out to realise that their initial estimate was wrong (it seems unlikely that the accident rate or repair costs have suddenly changed over the last year) and take appropriate actions. By late 2013, there were easily enough Teslas on the road (about 20,000) to get realiable data, yet nothing happened for nearly another 4 years." I find the higher estimates a bit unbelievable. A big part of my job is liability valuation and small assumption changes can have a huge impact on results.  They may be right (future) dollar value wise but the proper way to think about this stuff is in present value terms.  This could actually be a really interesting study - you all just gave me a great idea for a potential masters thesis :) Gartner, Forester, etc., data and analysis are not worth shit.   I learned that from 20+ years as a financial analyst: my wild ass guess was no worse than their wild ass guess on anything but my wild ass guess was a lot cheaper.  Its a pity so many investment decisions and strategic plans are based on the garbage cranked out by industry analysts. Having an interview next week with a few companies, one of which is a bank as a financial analyst. Now the main job description is on detailed financial analyst, audit firm experience, 3 yr exp and review of customer/segment. Was it investment banking? Interview wise what I need to prepare for? I have prepared my project experiences and examples relevant to what they are finding for in power point. What else should I be prepared for? Hours appear to be relatively consistent, at least in my experience.  Analysts (all levels) have much more flexible schedules and travel much more but are responsible for more information/responsibility.  The difference is that associates do the grunt work with models/writing and analysts provide more direction/fine tuning and interact with clients more(they're on the phone half the time from 7-4 every day). Its generally not night work but if a company announces earnings after market close and then has an evening conference call, we need to have the report out by the next morning well before the market opens, so yeah sometimes it can get pretty late.