The Hanover Insurance Group has announced the expansion of its casualty offering with the launch of a specialty general liability solution.
The firm suggests that with the new offering, its agents and brokers can provide an admitted general liability and excess coverage solution for hard-to-place risks, including manufacturing, distribution, wholesale and import businesses with higher hazard product liability exposures or clients with loss-sensitive premises liability insurance programs.
In addition, the new offering is backed by an expert team that includes experienced dedicated underwriters with knowledge of dealing with tough liability exposures.
The Hanover states that during the risk qualification process, these underwriters work closely with a team of Hanover risk engineers to help ensure each insurance program is crafted to address a business’s risk.
Pamela J. Rushing, president of alternative markets at The Hanover, commented, “A dynamic market has created a unique set of challenges for agents and brokers, particularly when it comes to navigating coverage for more specialized accounts.
“Social inflation and increasingly costly verdicts are driving hardening in the casualty market, creating limited capacity for businesses with complex products exposure in the standard market.
“As a result, agents have expressed a need for a “middle ground” solution in the casualty continuum, and that’s where our specialty general liability solution comes in.”
The rollout of the offering was successfully initiated in several states at the beginning of last year. Implementation across the company’s national footprint was done on a rolling basis and completed in the fourth quarter.
At this level, the pre-tax loss represented 13.9 points of net earned premiums, and was approximately $137 million above the company’s Q4 catastrophe assumption.
The loss also raises The Hanover’s combined ratio to 108.0%, up from 99.8% for the same period last year, when catastrophes accounted for only 7.7 points.
Excluding catastrophe losses, the combined ratio would be 94.1%, versus 92.1% last year.
