It is an innocuous enough sentence, little different from what chief executive John Neal has been saying.

But there is still a subtle difference between Mr Neal’s "enhanced capital flexibility to support its growth ambition" and this: "When executed, these initiatives deliver significant additional cash and capital resources that will substantially improve the group’s financial flexibility and ability to better withstand a reasonable range of downside scenarios."

After QBE’s increasingly monotonous run of downgrades, you don’t have to squint too hard between those lines to see a little concern about capital adequacy in the event of the odd natural disaster that has been (blessedly) missing from the insurance landscape lately.

CLSA analyst Jan van der Schalk says he has argued for QBE to raise capital for the past two years. "We’ve always known that the balance sheet was stretched," he said.

It is one thing for an analyst to have an opinion about a balance sheet being "stretched", and quite another for an insurer to remark upon its ability to withstand a reasonable range of disasters.

Given QBE’s track record and the number of attempts to clear the decks, rebase, move forward, new broom and so on, one can’t help wondering at what stage the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority would seek to have a cup of tea and a quiet word.

Part of the reason Australia fared relatively well during the global financial crisis was that our regulators were awake. And a key reason for that was Australia’s largest corporate failure, the disastrous HIH collapse in 2001, when the regulator turned out to be asleep. That one put a rocket through APRA. (We can only hope that one day a firework of similar impact will be felt at the Australian Securities and Investments Commission after any number of damp squibs.)

Which is why insurance and its prudential regulation are very serious businesses indeed, and why the "ability to better withstand a reasonable range of downside scenarios" is absolutely crucial.