Moody's also found that the level of details contained in the financial information online varied significantly from company to company.

Non-public insurers fared even worse in the Moody's survey, with none of the 27 private insurers examined providing a complete statutory annual statement on its Web site.

The non-public insurers surveyed in Moody's report included both p-c and life companies and mostly consisted of mutual insurance companies owned by their policyholders.

Statutory annual statements?with the substantial amount of exhibits and schedules accompanying them?are highly useful for the thorough financial analysis of an insurance company, noted Jeffrey Berg, an analyst at the New York-based Moody's.

Mr. Berg is a co-author of the report on insurer Web sites titled "Investors' Public Access to Information in the U.S. Property-Casualty Insurance Industry."

"Our surveys were conducted under the premise that easy public access to key financial and related information is vital to assisting investors and others in their evaluation of insurance companies' credit and financial fundamentals," said Mr. Berg.

Moody's also noted that much of an insurance company's financial information is considered part of the public domain under state insurance department and other regulations, but nonetheless there is "a huge difference" between information considered public and information that is actually readily available to investors.

"Moody's believes that best practices for insurers dictate that a company should post important regulatory filing information onto its Web site to facilitate convenient access to the public?much in the same way that companies now post important product and marketing information on their Web sites," according to Mr. Berg.

"Our recently completed surveys on the availability of financial information on insurance company Web sites found that this best practice is rarely followed," he added.