On behalf of everyone at Markel Mid South, we want to first thank you for all your support during our first four years in the Mid South Region and wish you and your family a happy and blessed holiday season.

It's hard to believe that another year has gone, but it was a good one for our region.  Thanks to you, we will end  2012 with 6% growth, about what we expected at the start of the year.  While this may sound like a modest amount, we were able to achieve it even though we exited several unprofitable classes of business and terminated some larger producers in order to concentrate our efforts on our most loyal wholesalers.   

The year also marked one of several notable transitions.  Jeff Lamb accepted a promotion to Richmond to be the Executive Underwriting Officer for Markel's Wholesale Division and moved his family to Richmond.  Tiffany Fann delivered a baby, Jade, early in the year but then decided to move back to Atlanta to be closer to her family.  And a couple of other underwriters left for other parts of Texas in order to further pursue their dreams.

However, while the contributions of those folks cannot be overstated, as I look at our team at the end of the year we are in great shape for the future.  Wendy Houser returned to the Mid South after two years at our corporate office, bringing with her a lot of fresh ideas, a passion to help our customers succeed and a management style that brings the best out of people.  Jeff Fields added the responsibilities of our Binding P&C Department in addition to his Director of Marketing duties and has kept up the positive momentum in this product line.  In addition, several of our underwriters continued to advance their careers with promotions or additional responsibilities while we continued to bring in outstanding new talent into the organization.

As we look forward to 2013, we've got exciting products coming your way including those in environmental, brokerage casualty and excess/umbrella.  We will continue to make improvements to MarkelOnline; thanks for all the complements on the new site and how it rivals some of the best in the E&S segment.  One thing that won't change is Mid South's passion for exceptional customer service.  We'll keep working to turn around submissions quickly, to get you competitive terms, to treat you as a friend and a partner and to always go the extra mile for you.  With a pricing environment that seems to be moving in the right direction, I'm excited about the future and look forward to a great 2013.

Of course, if the Mayans were correct and the world is going to end on Friday, it might change my outlook a bit.  But, I'm betting that they're wrong and I'll simply close by saying that we know that you have a lot of different carriers to choose from, we appreciate every piece of business you send us and we'll keep working to get better every day.  Happy Holidays!