Like other insurers, MetLife Inc. has seen its investment portfolio take a beating over the past several months, amid volatile markets.

On Thursday, the New York-based company said it lost $1.43 billion during the second quarter as net realized investment losses climbed to $2.56 billion, compared with losses of $231 million a year earlier.

Losses in the most recent quarter were largely driven by losses on complex financial instruments known as derivatives. MetLife uses derivatives as a hedge against changes in interest rates and foreign currencies.

During a conference call with investors and analysts on Friday, Chief Investment Officer Steven Kandarian discussed his expectations for future investment losses.


QUESTION: Earlier in the year, you kind of talked about potential losses of 1 percent of general account assets. The results in the first half of the year are certainly consistent with that. Is that still a good number for the back half of the year and any preliminary views for 2010?

RESPONSE: It is really hard to project when you don't really know quite what this market is going to be doing quarter to quarter, month to month, even day to day. But the 1 percent number we have used I think is a pretty good guide for our estimate for the remainder of 2009. I think it is still early days to say too much about 2010. ... So much of this depends upon the overall economy, consumer sentiment, policies in Washington, impacts upon markets, psychologies of markets and so on. It's just very difficult to predict, but I think we can say that the 1 percent number that we have used ... is a pretty good guide here.