Peter Streit Quotations

Overall, we're happy with the level of underlying earnings in the third quarter. The prospect of future accounting restatements disappoints us, but it's likely most of them are out of the way.

At this point insured loss estimates vary widely,

The National Hurricane Center is projecting Hurricane Rita to hit the Texas coast Saturday morning with 145 mile-per-hour winds. That would hit the insurance companies again and trigger reinsurance coverage too,

They're in commercial and personal lines insurance in the U.S. and also sell insurance to the energy industry through Lloyd's of London businesses, so they're heavily involved in this.

For AIG to break this out is nice. Although AIG isn't the first, hopefully more companies will provide this information in future.

For AIG to break this out is nice, ... Although AIG isn't the first, hopefully more companies will provide this information in future.

It's good to have this data because most insurance companies' investment dollars come from interest and dividends, which are usually fairly consistent quarter to quarter. Outside of that, we like to know what else they're earning on their investments and the biggest swing factor is usually partnership income.

Chubb did much better than expected because of their great underwriting. They also benefited from a lack of catastrophic losses in the first quarter.

If each case gets its own limit, that could create more exposure.

The hurricane losses have highlighted the need to be a large, well-diversified company across many lines of business and across many territories with a capital base that is big enough to sustain losses.

The company is on the road to recovery and they've done a lot to try to remove any hints of conflict of interest. But now that they've done away with contingent commissions, it remains to be seen if they will able to make close to the same level of profits under the new business model.

The competition out there is pretty intense. There is a lot of business that is being bid on, and it's being bid on aggressively.