WC: The P-C Industry's Quiet Crisis? Show me a line of insurance that managed to lop 15 points off its combined ratio in a single year, realized double-digit premium growth for the second consecutive year, chopped its underwriting losses by more than half and cut its reserve deficiency by a billion or two, and Ill show you a line that, remarkably, still has a lot of problems.

And so goes the never-ending saga of workers' compensation insurance. From balance sheet black hole in the early 1990s to profit juggernaut just a few years later, the commercial property-casualty industrys biggest single line of coverage today finds itself stuck in profit purgatory. But how can this be?

Theres no question that moving from a calendar year combined ratio of 122 to an estimated 107 is a giant leap in the right direction, and that slicing underwriting losses from $6 billion to $2 billion is impressive. Twenty-plus percent premium growth is nothing to sneeze at, eitherbut is it enough? The answer is unequivocally no.