A second consecutive sub-30,000 claims year allowed Church Mutual Insurance Company to post some record numbers, according to CEO Mike Ravn.
“The partnership between our 94,000 customers and our 1,000 employees, combined with favorable weather patterns, allowed us to report only nine more claims than 2013 with 28,221,” Ravn pointed out. “That two-year total of 56,433 claims was the lowest in the past 25 years!”
That low claim volume contributed to some record numbers for the 118-year-old property and casualty insurance company:
• The highest policyholders’ surplus in company history at $536 million
• Assets approaching $1.5 billion
• Direct written premium of $639 million – the 11th consecutive year the company has topped $500 million
• Net income of $76 million, which was the second-highest in company history
All of that helped Church Mutual achieve a combined ratio of 88.7 percent, on the heels of 92.5 percent in 2012 and 91.7 percent in 2013. The 88.7 mark was the company’s best since 1979.
“It is hard to believe that in 2011 our combined ratio was 116 percent,” Ravn said. “Since that time, our company has engineered a complete turnaround. We’ve done it the old fashioned way with every employee at every desk making a difference towards a positive outcome.”
Continuing to emphasize the importance of customer service, Ravn noted that the company’s National Customer Service Center in Merrill was recently recertified a Center of Excellence by BenchmarkPortal for the sixth consecutive year.
Church Mutual is rated A (Excellent) by industry rating analyst A.M. Best. It insures more than twice as many religious organizations as its nearest competitor.