Is Assurant (AIZ) Outperforming Other Finance Stocks This Year?

For those looking to find strong Finance stocks, it is prudent to search for companies in the group that are outperforming their peers. Has Assurant (AIZ) been one of those stocks this year? Let's take a closer look at the stock's year-to-date performance to find out.

Assurant is a member of our Finance group, which includes 890 different companies and currently sits at #5 in the Zacks Sector Rank. The Zacks Sector Rank includes 16 different groups and is listed in order from best to worst in terms of the average Zacks Rank of the individual companies within each of these sectors.

The Zacks Rank is a proven model that highlights a variety of stocks with the right characteristics to outperform the market over the next one to three months. The system emphasizes earnings estimate revisions and favors companies with improving earnings outlooks. Assurant is currently sporting a Zacks Rank of #2 (Buy).

Within the past quarter, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for AIZ's full-year earnings has moved 6.5% higher. This means that analyst sentiment is stronger and the stock's earnings outlook is improving.

Our latest available data shows that AIZ has returned about 18.2% since the start of the calendar year. At the same time, Finance stocks have gained an average of 4.3%. As we can see, Assurant is performing better than its sector in the calendar year.

Another Finance stock, which has outperformed the sector so far this year, is BlackRock (BLK). The stock has returned 4.5% year-to-date.

In BlackRock's case, the consensus EPS estimate for the current year increased 3.9% over the past three months. The stock currently has a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

Looking more specifically, Assurant belongs to the Insurance - Multi line industry, a group that includes 49 individual stocks and currently sits at #193 in the Zacks Industry Rank. Stocks in this group have gained about 4.9% so far this year, so AIZ is performing better this group in terms of year-to-date returns.

In contrast, BlackRock falls under the Financial - Investment Management industry. Currently, this industry has 36 stocks and is ranked #206. Since the beginning of the year, the industry has moved -10.7%.

Going forward, investors interested in Finance stocks should continue to pay close attention to Assurant and BlackRock as they could maintain their solid performance.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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