From the Executive Team

It is hard to believe that 17 years ago Florida was ground zero for Hurricanes Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne. Out of the four storms that year, Ocala, the location for the main office of both Equine Mortality and Equine AgriBusiness®, was affected by the last three with Frances and Ivan striking only ten days apart. I remember the events well because my son, Tyler, was 6 weeks old at the time and to lose power at home for 8 days with the first storm and then 10 days with the second was quite daunting. The office, however, never lost power and with the help of our friends at the home office in Cincinnati, we had minimal down time.

Fast forward to today, the CAT events that used to be “just hurricanes and tornados” are now exacerbated with wildfires and derechos as the larger looming threats. Wind events generally cause partial damage, but wildfires are all too often total losses. Historically, CAT season has always been a fairly limited window of concern, but as of this writing, I watched Hurricane Ida make landfall in Louisiana as a CAT 4 and it occurred to me that we used to think that entering the last quarter of the year would allow us to breathe a little but looking back over the last several years, it seems that CAT season is now year-round. While we have no intention of leaving the CAT states, we must be conservative in our approach and help mitigate risks where needed.

I was once asked by an agent, “how do we continue to grow in Florida or California?”. My answer was simple, “we grow everywhere else!”. Our goal is to expand our footprint in many other states in order to spread the risk and we need your help in doing this. We are targeting Michigan, New Jersey, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia and inland areas of North Carolina and South Carolina. This will help diversify our risks in areas that are not generally CAT prone.

If you have not sent us a risk from a target state because you are concerned we would not be competitive, we invite you to give us another try and then give us your feedback. We appreciate your business and look forward to growing and expanding profitably with you. Please feel free to call me anytime with questions or concerns.