Liberty Mutual and Safeco

[wlunday]

Here we go...

Not knowing anything about Liberty Mutual has me concerned. I have a 40+year relationship with Safeco and I feel big changes are in store. Can any of you that deal with LM and Ohio Casualty offer me some opinions?

Swymmer

[chill]

You won't really see much change in operations. I've been through the Indiana and Ohio Casualty purchases. The only change with Ohio Casualty over the Indiana is that they will be state specific now. We no longer do business with OC and our Indiana underwriters handle all of the OC business that we had.

[briand]

WLundy,

We recently went through the Ohio Casualty purchase in PA. We were OC agents and had actually recently parted ways with Peerless and have found the new company to be a pleasant surprise. We were a bit apprehensive because we had a difficult time writing new biz with Peerless for a number of reasons AND because we were losing an underwriter with OC that we worked very well with. With all that being said, we are happy with how things have gone and are going with the new version of Ohio Casualty. Ohio Casualty has gone above and beyond to make the transition easy for us and I would expect the same for the Safeco agents. Hope this helps, you can email me if you have any other questions briand@lunarinsurance.com. Good luck and happy selling!

[twobeacon]

I'm also a former Ohio Casualty agent in NJ, now Peerless. We've found the new company to have a much broader appetiete, and they are very aggressive from a pricing standpoint. If you are a high growth agency, I think you will benefit. I think the smaller agency just sitting on their book might have cause to be concerned, however.

[rick_vh]

I agree, i think Safeco will have better appetite and price points than before.