Burglary Insurance Ratemaking, [Discussion]

One of the very nice things about Mr. Newman's paper is that, after his very clear description of burglary insurance ratemaking, he concludes with comments on the current situation for this line. Included in these comments is an exhibit of the underwriting results for a large group of comparable stock companies. The five year composite result indicating an underwriting loss of 5.6% is shown on page 325 of Volume LIII. From a comparison to the 5% provision for profit and contingencies indicated on page 319, we can reasonably conclude that a genuine problem exists for a substantial portion of the industry in this line. It would appear that "contingencies" outweigh "profits" by better than 2 to 1.