Mr. Watson: Argonaut Group is a national specialty underwriter. We break our business down into four different segments, the largest of which is our excess and surplus lines business. Today excess and surplus makes up about half of our business with gross written premiums by year end of about 400 million. The second-largest piece of the group would be our risk-management business, where we're providing casualty solutions to larger businesses throughout the US that are interested in managing their risk and are looking for insurance partners to help them do that. What has grown into the third-largest segment of our company on a pro forma basis is our public entity business. In fact, we just announced an acquisition in that area. We just announced the renewal rights acquisition of Coregis Group, one of our competitors in the public entity area, and the combination of their business with our existing business should make us the second-largest national underwriter of small to medium-size public entities here in the US. Our fourth segment, which we refer to as 'specialty commercial,' provides package policies to small businesses in specific industries.
TWST: Balancing the risk, pricing and policy issues that you see today,
what are the issues that you're facing as the insurer and the expert
versus what the companies that you insure need on their side?
Mr. Watson: That's really a very interesting question for a company like
ours, in that we are very focused on being in businesses where we can
use the value-added services we provide to our insureds and our
distribution partners to actually help our insureds manage risk. So when
customers work with an insurer like Argonaut, as a policyholder you are
more likely to get an underwriter that really understands your business
and your unique profile. You're also more likely to get a loss-control
team that can help you manage your risk environment, hopefully, to keep
losses from happening in the first place. The product marketplace has
been very volatile over the last couple of years, and you've seen a lot
of the larger companies retrench. This environment has really allowed a
company like Argonaut to focus on very specific lines of business and
tailor-make particular risk solutions for different businesses.
Tickers included in this excerpt: AGII
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