Question-and-Answer Session
[Operator Instructions]. Our first question today will come from Jimmy Bhullar with J.P. Morgan.
Jimmy Bhullar - J.P. Morgan Securities Inc.
Hi, thank you. I have a couple of questions. The first one is on your outlook for the U.S. business and what are you seeing in terms of activity in the reinsurance market? I would have thought that with the securitization markets being tight, you'd actually see a pickup in volumes. We're really not seeing that in the results. So if you could talk about just cession rates, are they declining further? Or what's causing the slowdown in your premium growth?
Secondly, on your capital position, if you can talk about when you anticipate needing additional capital based on your current growth plan? That's it.
A. Greig Woodring - President and Chief Executive Officer
Jimmy, this is Greig. I'll take the first one and I'll let Jack answer the capital question. In terms of the U.S., we've seen cession rates fall over the last several years and they fell again last year. In terms of our client base, we're really not seeing them retain any more, they're pretty much holding path. You're correct in saying that the securitization market would lead you to believe that ultimately companies might begin to reinsure more, but that's not happening yet. They're retaining the business or retaining, I should say, the XXX reserve at this point waiting for the market to change or something to change in the overall landscape that would allow them to handle that business in the future. Nobody seems to be particularly concerned about at all although there are couple of companies making a little bit of noise by doing something about their XXX reserves at this point.
U.S. market continues to be a very favorable market for RGA right now. It's a market in which we feel that the things that we bring to the table are valued highly by clients and our market share has slowly cropped upward over the last several years.
Jack B. Lay - Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Excuse me, this is Jack. Regarding the capital question, we don't have any imminent plans in terms of raising any sort of... I will confine the comments primarily to equity capital; I think that's the real issue. We have some leveragability and could add a little bit of debt, although we don't have any plans right now for that either. But in terms of equity, as I said no current plans, that's always influenced going forward by rates of growth which are pretty stable. So we don't really expect any surprise there, unless we do have an M&A opportunity in which case we would have to take a look at the capital base and make a determination as to whether an enhancement to capital would be appropriate. If we got to that point, we would obviously go through the deliberation of what type of capital.
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