Question-and-Answer Session
[Operator Instructions]. We'll take first question from Jimmy Bhullar of J.P. Morgan.
Jimmy Bhullar - J.P. Morgan
Hi good morning. I have a few questions the first one is just to your comfort with your liquidity and capital proposition. You mentioned you will have to raise equity if you see opportunity to write large block of business. But given what's going on in the current market do you need to raise equity absence at and if you can give us an idea on like you had $100 million of investment losses in third quarter. How much more can you sustain in realized losses before having to raise equity, ignoring the new business opportunity?
Jack B. Lay - Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Jimmy, this is, Jack. Let me take a crack at that. First of all on the liquidity front, we can pretty much scheduled cash outflows for the most part and we feel like we're in very liquid position in terms of cash and cash equivalents on hand as well as access to our line of credit and the... FHLB lending facility.
So, we feel very comfortable in that respect in terms of capital I thought it's always hard to gauge exactly where we are because we are dealing with our own capital model and those discrete models of each agency. But best estimate is we probably have about a $150 million or so of excess capital at this point.
So, in terms of the question, at what point would additional asset losses hamper that, you saw what we considered to be a fairly extraordinary securities related losses in the third quarter. And we still added... not a great deal, but we at least added some to the retained earning space. So, it would take... and I guess the answer to question it would take another quarter or more... probably emphasis on more of similar sort of impairments and securities losses. And our view before it would really hamper the capital base.
Jimmy Bhullar - J.P. Morgan
And can you write new business at margins, good enough to really offset if you have to raise equity at these levels to the offset the dilution from any share offering?
A. Greig Woodring - President and Chief Executive Officer
Well, Jimmy. We don't really know. But, for anything they use as large amounts of capital we will either write them or not write them, if we can get those returns. We think there are opportunities like that out there. And as we said, there are more opportunities then we have capital for that are lined up in our shop right now. And so we are going to be selective in what we do, and what we can reach for, and we'll have to make that call whether we think the opportunities are so good or not.
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