State Street Global Advisors says 27 fixed income SPDR exchange-traded funds have received risk-based capital designations from the Securities Valuation Office of the National Association of Insurance Companies (NAIC).

The Securities Valuation Office assigns credit quality designations to securities held by state-regulated insurance companies.

NAIC designations are opinions of credit quality that range from NAIC 1, being the highest quality, to NAIC 6, being the lowest quality. NAIC designations allow fixed income ETFs to be reported as bonds and are used to set risk based capital requirements.

Twenty-one of the 27 fixed income SPDR ETFs that were evaluated received an NAIC 1 rating, two SPDR ETFs received an NAIC 2 designation, two SPDR ETFs received an NAIC 3 designation, and two high-yield bond SPDR ETFs received an NAIC 4 designation.

With the addition of these 27 fixed income SPDR ETFs, the total number of NAIC rated ETFs is nearly doubled to include 63 funds.

"Insurance companies are steadily increasing their use of SPDR ETFs as awareness of their value proposition grows," says James Ross, senior managing director and global head of SPDR exchange-traded funds at State Street Global Advisors. "The NAIC designations awarded to our fixed income SPDRs are instrumental to helping insurers manage their RBC capital requirements."