The Globe and Mail reports in its Monday, Aug. 4, edition that the big three insurers -- Great West Lifeco, Sun Life Financial and Manulife Financial -- will report quarterly results this week, but insurance stocks are currently lagging behind banks. The Globe's guest columnist Amber Kanwar writes that TD Cowen analyst Mario Mendonca notes that insurers are trading at a 14-per-cent discount to banks based on forward profit-to-earnings. While earnings growth is expected to be 7 per cent, it's a slowdown from the double-digit growth of the past two years. Sun Life has underperformed recently, with concerns about its U.S. stop-loss business. Chief executive officer Kevin Strain believes that any increased costs can be offset through repricing later. Mr. Strain says: "One of the beauties of [group benefits and stop-loss] is that they're repriceable. You might think of it like a property and casualty business, where property and casualty gets hit by a hurricane or by flooding. They have to pay out a lot of costs, and then they reprice for that the next year."