First Mercury Financial Corp. Q2 2009 Earnings Call.

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2009-08-04 11:57:11.0

Tags: Earnings, Carrier, First Mercury Financial Corp., Seeking Alpha

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instruction) Your first question comes from Amit Kumar - Fox-Pit Kelton

Amit Kumar - Fox-Pit Kelton

I guess just going back to your perhaps closing remarks, you talked about companies that are new to your target markets, being more aggressive, can you just sort of expand on that a bit, are we talking about larger carriers here or Bermudians?

John Marazza

Well, Amit, I’m not going to mention specific companies, but it’s not new companies and it’s not necessarily of new interest. But it’s people that we haven’t seen in our market place before. So we see some pressure from some of the very large companies, but I would say that’s been pretty constant across, and I don’t think it’s necessarily the Bermudian company.

I would say it’s US; maybe specialty based companies that are doing something new. Maybe through an acquisition or maybe through teams or however they grow, but new to our markets and over the last month I tried to visit the number of our offices or visit number of the underwriters, and there is sort of a consistent theme coming forward of these specialty carriers new in the markets that seem to be the biggest competition we have faced.

Amit Kumar - Fox-Pit Kelton

So, it’s more a question of more capacity than the rate aggression.

John Marazza

Yes, I would say both. Not just rate aggression, terms and condition, we’ve seen pressure on from a couple of the carriers. So I would say a matter of capacity and aggressive bargaining.

Amit Kumar - Fox-Pit Kelton

Okay, that’s very helpful. I guess just going back to your discussion on contract underwriting and giving notice to line underwriter, I guess NGA in terms of non-renewing, can you maybe just expand on that a bit and remind us how much offshore topline or is it just one person responsible for?

John Marazza

Overall property I think was less than 10% of our program, right about that, and this one carrier, this one program is certainly less than 10%. So neither represent a significant impact, this is a MGA that we’ve been doing business with for over two years, certainly, and I have had good results.

We have had them under close scrutiny over the last year, and just feel like, as I mentioned, we have had a chance to talk to other carriers with larger positions in property and just feel like the market conditions right now with the specific lines that this carrier is in, are conducive at least in the short terms plus making a recent return in the market.

 

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