Underwriting is probably the smallest part of our business.
My dad was in the life insurance business, so I learned about selling when I was about 14 because I started working as a secretary.
My father, John, ran the Dowd Insurance Co. in town, which was started by his great-grandfather. My mother, Dolores, was a homemaker who kept an eye on all of us.
What the insurance companies have done is to reverse the business so that the public at large insures the insurance companies.
It's been my observation, after years in the [insurance] business, that a certain percent of the population simply can't resist the urge to cheat.
We have always said that over the medium and long term, we will disinvest some part of our holding in our major subsidiary companies, and life insurance is our largest subsidiary company.
I started selling insurance in 1979 and continued doing that until 1985 when I opened my own insurance firm.
XL is a world class brand with very successful insurance, reinsurance and life reinsurance businesses and I look forward to helping it realize its full potential.
In the insurance business, there is no statute of limitation on stupidity.
We set no volume goals in our insurance business generally-and certainly not in reinsurance-as virtually any volume can be achieved if profitability standards are ignored.
