Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from Michael Phillips - Stifel Nicolaus.
Michael Phillips - Stifel Nicolaus
Bob, a couple things. You mentioned the homeowners doing well ex cat. You mentioned auto was somehow affected by weather and cat. Any way you can help us quantify that auto piece on the cat piece? Because we look at the loss ratio you give and see it spike up quite a bit, and some of that’s weather related, but I just wonder how much?
Robert Restrepo.
Two points in the loss ratio.
Michael Phillips - Stifel Nicolaus
Okay. Thanks. And a numbers question here. You might have said this. If you did, I apologize, I didn’t hear it. Organic growth in commercial lines, 0.5%?
Robert Restrepo
0.7.
Michael Phillips - Stifel Nicolaus
Okay, and then the first question on auto. The loss ratio ex cat, obviously impacted by more weather claims that just didn’t make the cat threshold; any way you could help us quantify that please?
Robert Restrepo
The big change that we saw this quarter relative to what we see is higher incidents of large losses that affected our [personal] on the field line. Just to give you an example we had 13 losses over $250,000, which is higher than usual, both the size and the frequency, and 12 of those were 2007 or prior losses.
We also had a higher incidence of large losses in our commercial automobile general liability business, and as I mentioned in my opening comments, we increased customer reserves on prior accident years for worker’s compensation almost exclusively related to increases in medical costs.
Michael Phillips - Stifel Nicolaus
Trying to understand what’s happened there. Is that the adjuster was looking at that and maybe, I’m picking a number, $5,000 per claim and then they say ?oh gee it’s no longer $5,000 it’s $250,000.’ Is it a big jump or was it $100,000 and then $250,000, and some of these got over $250,000 over time? Or was it more of a big jump?
Robert Restrepo
It’s a timing issue. These things work out over time it’s just we had an unusual concentration of them and, in the third quarter we regularly review all of our outstanding claims.
But often times we’re at the mercy of a doctor sending us bills and we had a uptick in several cases where we reassessed what we thought the ultimate liability would be for medical costs for several people that were seriously injured in automobile loses.
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