Mr. King: Highlands Insurance Group is a group of property/casualty insurance companies. We operate through a number of geographic territories throughout the United States, where each regional office has local underwriting and claims authority. We follow a strategy of regional authority so our local people will know the risks inherent in their geographical marketplace, and we'll be able to provide local service for our customers' needs. We have a minimal corporate overhead. The support services our field operations need are supplied out of the corporate headquarters, which is in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. Actuarial support, financial support, product management and our senior claims support comes out of the home office, whereas, the line authority is in our regional offices. The regional offices are located in Lawrenceville, New Jersey; Nashville, Tennessee; Houston, Texas; Columbus, Ohio; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Des Moines, Iowa; Denver, Colorado; and Woodland Hills, California. We provide products to local commercial accounts, small businesses, the local entrepreneur, the local artisan and small contractors. We tend to do business where we either deal with the owners of the company, or with the Chief Financial Officer. Our average premium size on our commercial lines business is between 10,000 to 500,000. We also write personal lines business in selected states where, again, we have an agency plant that targets quality personal line accounts and services them with a dedicated customer service team.
TWST: Could you comment on your competitive position, including your
market share?
Mr. King: We have been increasing our premium writings over the last 12
months, and have been able to increase the rates, and the premiums, on
our different insurance lines. In almost every one of our regions our
market share is increasing, although it still remains relatively small
by industry standards. We try to stay below the 'radar scope' of our
competitors, and find that our competition varies by region. We don't
try to drive the company based on market share or market position. We
focus on individual single risk underwriting where we can make an
underwriting profit on a consistent basis.
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