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But these factors are always there. Terrorism is obviously a significant wake up call in the last several years, domestically in the wake of 9/11 and globally for, probably, the last two decades. All too often in this industry, people can't resist the temptation to grow their business by cutting their rates. I'd love to see the industry adopt true pricing discipline, where competitive pressures didn't get in the way of charging an appropriate rate for a risk. We must be mindful of the changing landscape around us and of how we're positioned within it. In our case, we're a specialty/niche player, and we have to constantly re-evaluate and re-justify our niches. Competitive pressures are constant; they may be slightly different tomorrow than they were yesterday, but they're going to be just as real tomorrow as they were yesterday.

The more likely it becomes that you can achieve organizational alignment, the more you can adapt effectively to changing circumstances. I think the key is to build an organization that can adapt easily and effectively to change. The only constant in life is change. Doing so would substantially enhance the insurance industry's credibility with the public. I'd love to see the industry develop real pricing discipline and stick to it, so that we could level out some of these dramatic cycle swings. Nevertheless, the fluctuating market conditions do tend to impact our results, in spite of the fact that we don't give into market pricing pressure. We don't compete on price. We're probably the only insurance company in North America that can say that it has raised its rates every year for the last twenty years.

Our company operates in lines of business where we don't fluctuate with the market. The result is the hard market swings and soft market swings we've endured over the years.

The future holds more of the same. Measure every step you take along the way against each one of those changing dynamics. I think the way you deal with that is just to keep it as simple as you possibly can. Being able to keep up with the latest and greatest changes in technology and leveraging those innovations effectively into one's business without spending yourself out of existence is really a tremendous challenge. The other change that is real is the cost and pace of technological evolution.