This past week saw multiple industry-related quotes out of Washington, as well as multiple quotes on cyber issues.

Experts also weighed in on Progressive's Q2 results, and a PC360 interview with Aspen Insurance Holdings' CEO yielded some interesting thoughts on the importance of growth in a changing reinsurance marketplace.

See the top quotes of the week below and on the following pages.

Progressive Corp. saw its Q2 profit fall 9.6% as investment gains narrowed, Bloomberg reports, but Sandler O'Neill & Partners analyst Paul Newsome also believes the innovations that drove premium growth for Progressive in the past have not been there recently.

Newsome: “The biggest issue is that they really haven't had a major change in the last decade. It's really about 10 years ago when they had really rapid premium growth.”

A bill advanced in the Senate would allow companies and the U.S. government to share information about hacking threats, offering legal protections for those operating critical computer systems when they share such hacking threats with each other and the government, Bloomberg reports.

Privacy advocates worry the plan could enable the National Security Agency to collect information about innocent Americans.

Bank of America Corp., Visa Inc. and other companies operating critical U.S. computer systems would be given legal protections for sharing hacking threats with each other and the government under a bill backed July 8 by the Senate's Intelligence Committee.

In opposing the bill, Democratic Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado said in a statement, “We have seen how the federal government has exploited loopholes to collect Americans' private information in the name of security. Without these protections in place, private companies will rightly see participation as bad for business.”

Rep. Scott Garrett, R-N.J., continues his push to gain more information on the process the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) uses to determine whether non-banks should be designated systemically important financial institutions (SIFIs).

Garrett wrote a letter to the New York Federal Reserve Bank asking it to provide information on the process, and he has supported recent bills designed to delay the FSOC's authority to designate SIFIs and expand access to and participation in the FSOC's meetings.

In supporting one of the bills, Garrett said: “The council meets in secret, refuses to disclose substantive transcripts, and blocks any requests by other regulators or Members of Congress for a more open and transparent process.”

As the reinsurance sector comes under continued pressure from alternative capital, companies pursue strategies to cope. A May Nomura report says reinsurers may need to merge to gain the size and scale needed to survive.

Speaking to PC360, Aspen CEO Chris O'Kane says growth is important, but not growth at all costs.

O'Kane: “There probably aren't many boards of companies who say our ambition is to get smaller.” He adds, though, “You have to stick to your knitting.

“We're specialty insurance and reinsurance. If [a class of risk] is in our competency and skill set, we'll take a look at it, and if we think we can make money from doing it, we'll do it. And there's a certain growth rate you can get with that disposition, but I think it would be a great mistake to say, 'We have to bulk up, we need to get more scale so let's go and do something that's completely foreign and unknown.'”

Cyber crime is a rising threat for cargo and freight. Keith Lewis, vice president of operations at CargoNet, explains how cargo thieves create fake identities through the Internet, and set up fake websites, invoices and insurance certificates:

“They'll pose as a legitimate carrier, or they'll set up a fraudulent company. Or they'll go back and find a company that went out of business—their certificate is still out there on the Internet, all they have to do is reactivate it. For a few hundred bucks, I can get an MC number and be a trucking company.”

Special Reports /

They said what?: Insurance quotes of the week for July 11

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