Bob Abramson, a managing director at Bliss & Glennon,recalls that his first specialty-insurance program idea—a packageof coverages for alarm installers—was the outgrowth of his priorjob as a salesman for Security World magazine.

Moving to the insurance industry in 1984, he explored thepackage-program idea and found there wasn't a lot of competition.“We went after the class vigorously,” he says, reporting that theprogram “had a good run,” with the endorsement of an alarm-installer's association coming along the way.

“We managed to write $5 million at a very good loss ratio—about50—[until] a competitor decided to take our program over at halfthe price in 1998. They failed miserably,” he says. “A 50 percentloss ratio at half the price makes 100 percent. It doesn't take agenius to figure that out.”

Among its current specialty programs, Bliss & Glennonmanages a program for transporters of mobile homes in Texas and anationwide program for mall kiosks.

Does Abramson worry that the kiosk program might suffer the samefate as the alarm program? “The premiums are so low that it wouldbe strange for a carrier say, 'Oh yeah, I want to go out and write$39 policies,'” he says.

In spite of the low premium dollars collected for eachindividual risk, the program has the potential to deliver $2million in overall volume to the current carrier, Diamond State, aunit of United America Indemnity, he said. “It peaked out at about$2 million before the economy went bad [and] probably will be backin the $2 million range again this year,” Abramson says.