In last week's editorial, I expressed an eagerness to start meeting NU's readers and to engage in conversation with you about the industry.

One of the first people to take me up on the offer was Michael LaRocco, CEO of Fireman's Fund Insurance. We met March 8 in Manhattan in the offices of the parent company of Fireman's Fund, the financial-services giant Allianz, in a 49^th-floor conference room with a commanding view of Central Park. “The view is paid for by the asset-management side of the business, not the property and casualty side,” Mr. LaRocco joked as we sat down for our talk.

I lucked out with my first P&C interview—I found Mr. LaRocco funny, frank and filled with spirited opinions about what the industry does well—and where it needs to improve. I was also impressed with the clarity of his vision for where he wants to take Fireman's Fund and how he plans to get there.

What follows are some highlights from our conversation—read an expanded version on our website.

On Current Market Conditions: “There is no indication prices are going to do what they need to be doing, which is going up. The underlying costs of the commercial lines business are rising: the cost to repair buildings, the cost to repair automobiles, the cost to repair people—all are rising. As such, prices should be going up. At Fireman's Fund, we are staying very disciplined on our pricing; we are increasing our rates appropriately. So it's frustrating and very disappointing to see the lack of discipline in the industry. It's bad behavior, and the industry should be ashamed of itself…The only positive indicators are that it looks like companies have begun to run out of gas in the tank from prior-year reserve releases.”

On Growing the Business: “Our first goal is to make an underwriting profit on each of our lines of business. So at the end of the day if we can't grow because we have discipline around underwriting profit, that will be something we'll have to accept. But it's still a very inefficient market, so there are lots of opportunities for us to grow. There are some areas of the country where we don't have a large amount of volume, so there are opportunities on a geographic basis. There are product opportunities: highly protected risk is an area where we're growing. We're seeing some significant growth in our entertainment center. We're seeing small-business growth. We fully anticipate that we can grow this year.”

On Appealing to Independent Agents: “If I'm an independent insurance agent and looking for an efficient partner—particularly an independent-agent-only company that's also national, that has the combined financial strength of Allianz and Fireman's Fund, and that also has everything from personal-lines auto all the way through complex commercial risk expert lines of business—we really fit that bill.”

On Attracting Talent: “The industry has been almost borderline pathetic in that we haven't really been able to attract people as much as we should, and it's a shame because insurance is a powerful, very exciting industry. What we do is such important work. We protect individuals and businesses, and we do it really well—but somehow we allow ourselves to be painted in a negative light.”

On Technology Investments: “We're a very small writer today of automobile insurance, but we want to become a broader writer. We also want to write middle-market homeowners, as well. And if you write in auto and home in the general market across the U.S., to do that in this day and age you have to have sophisticated products, which means multivariate models and the ability to match rate to risk at a very segmented level. And to do that you have to have a sophisticated quote-and-issue-type technology platform. So that's where some of the investments we've been making over the last couple of years have been.”

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Fireman&rsquo;s Fund: Ain&rsquo;t Misbehavin&rsquo;

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