Your company will take advantage of what opportunities in2013?

Chris Zoidis: We will continue to expand andbuild out our specialty products areas, where we can provide trueexpertise to our customers. We are seeing strong growth in theareas of healthcare, professional liability and environmentalliability and we continue to invest in those areas. Throughacquisition in 2012, we established a presence in Canada and haveaggressive growth goals for expanding our business by opening newoffices and pursuing additional acquisitions in 2013.

Tom Curtin: In 2012, we merged two of thecountry's largest wholesaler brokers: CRC and Crump. The newcombined CRC Wholesale Group now has eight wholesale-dedicatedproperty-casualty brands designed to service specific insuranceneeds. Those brands include: CRC, CRC|Crump, Southern CrossUnderwriters, TAPCO Underwriters, 5Star Specialty Programs, Negley& Assocs., Hanleigh and Target Insurance Services. We nowemploy 1,700 people, operate 54 office locations and have placedmore than $4 billion in premium in 2011.

We see the merger and the resulting scale of our company as abenefit to our agent and market partners. For retail agents, thecombined company offers an even broader range of property, casualtyand professional liability products through open market, MGA andMGU facilities and exclusive programs. For our carrier partners,the merger provides the enhanced ability to distribute theirproducts through one of the largest wholesale insurancedistribution networks in the country.

Steve DeCarlo: The small business space,defined by insureds paying less than $10,000 in premium, is anattractive market for carriers but a difficult market for wholesalebrokers. Historically, large wholesalers have struggled with themanpower needed to serve these clients well on a national scale. Asa result, we believe this is an underserved class of business, andin the last year have made significant investments in technology toprovide a platform for specialty small business lines. We haveconfidence that our system, which we hope to release by Jan. 1,2014, will revolutionize the approach to serving this market.

What are your business goals for 2013? Are you and yourinsurers on the same page?

Curtin: We have set a number of strategic goalsfor 2013 and beyond. One of our primary goals for next year is toensure the integration of CRC and Crump continues smoothly. Sincewe announced the merger of the companies in April 2012, we haveaccomplished many integration items and, according to the feedbackprovided by our agent and market partners, we have done so withvery little disruption. We want to ensure that continues. Anotherstrategic initiative we are excited about is our broker trainingprogram where we recruit, hire, educate and grow the nextgenerations of great CRC brokers and underwriters. Those are just acouple of the many items we will focus on next year.

Zoidis: We have established strong growth goalsfor 2013 across the many areas of our business, with emphasis onour specialty products and brokerage business. We have beeninvesting heavily in these areas and we plan to continue that in2013. We also will expand our international capabilities throughour offices in Canada and London to better serve our customers inthe U.S. We have been aggressively hiring over the last few yearsand we will continue our focus on recruiting, training anddevelopment in 2013.

Our carrier partners continue to support us as we look for waysto grow profitably in this market. We are working together toinnovate our product offerings and design new customized programs.We also look to collaborate with them in non-traditional ways,including partnering with them in our formal training anddevelopment programs. 

How important has program business become for yourcompany?

DeCarlo: Program business has continued to bean important and growing area within AmWINS. Today, AmWINS'underwriting division writes more than $550 million in premiumacross dozens of specialty programs. As the insurance world becomesmore complex and coverages more specialized, our program offeringsare becoming even more critical in meeting the needs of our retailagents.

Have you shifted your business strategy to accommodateeconomic changes?

Zoidis: We have continued to strengthen ourproduct offerings in segments of the economy where we are seeinggrowth. Examples include healthcare-related classes, technologyfirms, start-up consultants and environmental contractors. We alsohave worked to make add-on coverages more affordable by offeringlower sub-limits and creating modular coverage parts to tailorcoverage to the insured's specific needs.

Curtin: Wholesale brokers must be flexible, andour company has demonstrated that quality during the last fewyears. The economic downturn presented many challenges, but ouremployees rose to meet them. We worked with our market partners tocustomize our product offerings to capitalize on the segments ofthe surplus lines marketplace that we are growing. In addition, ouremployees all found ways to be more efficient and we continued tomake strategic investments in our business to prepare for the yearsahead. As we move into a transitional insurance market and aneconomy that we hope will continue to improve, I am confident ourhard work and investment over the past few years will deliverrevenue, profit and market share growth.

Are you still seeing significant competition from thestandard insurance market?

DeCarlo: When the market is soft, which it hasbeen for the last several years, we tend to see the standard markettaking risk that would otherwise be reserved for the E&Smarketplace. Despite Superstorm Sandy creating significant lossesin the Northeast, we do not foresee the resulting changes to themarket to be significant, with respect to terms and pricing; so wewill continue to see an overlap between risks that belong in thestandard verses E&S markets.

Zoidis: We still see standard carriers writingtraditional E&S risks. We are seeing an increased outflow ofE&S business from the standard carriers into the E&S marketfor the first time in many years. The standard markets are trimmingthe edges of their underwriting portfolios by non-renewingindividual risks that do not meet their revised underwritingguidelines or classes of business that they no longer wish towrite. We are seeing a significant increase in submission volume asa result. 

How important are professional designations to yourcompany's professionals?

Zoidis: We place a heavy emphasis on educationand training, which includes encouraging our employees to pursueindustry designations such as CPCU, RPLU and CIC. We have more than250 employees pursing those designations today. We developed TheKaufman Institute, which is an on-line learning portal that allemployees can access to take advantage of a wide array of business,leadership and insurance-specific courses.

What technology investments will you make in2013?

Curtin: We continue to make significantinvestments in technology in a number of key areas. One priority isour TAPCO Underwriters small business platform.  Over thenext few years, we will continue to invest in our ability toefficiently write smaller accounts via TAPCO. Our market and agentpartners remain very excited about TAPCO, and we want to ensure theplatform retains its technological advantage. On the brokerage sideof our business, one area of technology focus is data. We areworking to capture better data and information at the transactionlevel and then use that information to benefit our brokers, retailagents and carriers. We are developing  a number of keytools to accomplish that goal in the year ahead. Perhaps mostimportantly, we are investing in infrastructure and businessapplications to ensure a smooth integration of legacy CRC andlegacy Crump technology systems.

Zoidis: We continue to upgrade our tech systemsto improve our speed and responsiveness to customers includingfaster quotes, comparative rating and efficient policy issuance.We're also expanding information and services we provide to brokersonline.