Hartford books $15M loss for second quarter; Lincoln losses $161M

The Hartford (Conn.) Financial Services Group Inc. booked a $15 million loss, or 6 cents per share, for the second quarter.

That is down from a profit of $543 million, or $1.73 per share, in the year-earlier period.

The carrier’s life operations took a blow from the equity market declines over the last year: Assets under management fell 17% year over year, to $301.7 billion.

Meanwhile, the life unit reported a profit of $176 million in the period, down from $334 million in the second quarter of 2008.

Retail products were still feeling the brunt of the soured economy, with variable annuity deposits hitting $701 million, down from $2.2 billion in the year-earlier period, as the company changed its product features and the equity markets churned.

Outflows were comparable to those of the second quarter of 2008 at $1.6 billion.

The carrier also pulled back on its 2009 core earnings prediction, expecting to hit somewhere between 0 and 20 cents per diluted share, compared with earlier estimates of 5 to 45 cents.

Radnor, Pa.-based Lincoln National Corp., which received federal aid along with The Hartford, booked a second quarter loss of $161 million, or 62 cents per share. That performance is down from $125 million, or 48 cents per share, in the year-earlier period.

Lincoln also had a $170 million after-tax loss related to its sale of Lincoln National (UK) PLC of Gloucester, England.

Variable annuity deposits were down 41% year-over-year, falling to $1.7 billion in the second quarter. Meanwhile net flows fell to $651 million, down 59% from the comparable period in 2008.

However, variable annuity deposits rose 9% and 49%, respectively, from the first quarter levels.

Lincoln also had an 83% jump in fixed- and indexed-annuity-product deposits, hitting $900 million in the second quarter.