NEW YORK (Bloomberg) — Chubb Corporation, the insurer of corporate boards and luxury homes, may buy back as many as 28 million shares.

The stock represents 7.3 percent of shares outstanding as of September 30, the Warren, New Jersey-based company said in a statement. At yesterday's closing price, the repurchase would be valued at about $1.5 billion.

US property and casualty insurers are buying back stock at the fastest rate in at least two decades. American International Group Inc., the world's largest insurer by assets, announced a new $8 billion buyback on November 14. Chubb and its peers earned a record $63.7 billion in 2006 when insurers raised prices in anticipation of storms that never came.

"This action reflects the board's confidence in the strength of Chubb's financial condition," chief executive John Finnegan said in the statement.

The plan announced today has no expiration date. Two 20 million-share buybacks approved last December and in March will be finished by year-end, according to the statement.

Chubb shares have gained 3.3 percent this year, the best return in the 10-member Standard and Poor's 500 Property & Casualty Insurance Index.

Nineteen of 25 insurers tracked by analysts at Credit Suisse Group purchased $4 billion of their stock in the first quarter, following $7.1 billion of buybacks during all of 2006.