Mercury Insurance 2008 Annual Report Download - page 12

2
PART I
Item 1. Business
General
Mercury General Corporation (“Mercury General”) and its subsidiaries (collectively, the “Company”) are engaged
primarily in writing automobile insurance in a number of states, principally California. The Company also writes homeowners,
mechanical breakdown, commercial and dwelling fire, and commercial property insurance. The direct premiums written during
2008 by state and line of business were:
Private Passenger
Auto Commercial Auto Homeowners Other Lines Total
California 1,842,129$ 72,050$ 204,027$ 52,993$ 2,171,199$ 78.9%
Florida 145,952 16,272 15,892 8,921 187,037 6.8%
New Jersey 84,028 - - 304 84,332 3.1%
Texas 74,690 9,995 1,473 17,368 103,526 3.8%
Other states 157,438 8,826 12,641 26,895 205,800 7.5%
Total 2,304,237$ 107,143$ 234,033$ 106,481$ 2,751,894$ 100.0%
83.7% 3.9% 8.5% 3.9% 100.0%
Year ended December 31, 2008
(Amounts in thousands)
The Company offers automobile policyholders the following types of coverage: bodily injury liability, underinsured and
uninsured motorist, personal injury protection, property damage liability, comprehensive, collision and other hazards. The
Company’s published maximum limits of liability for private passenger automobile insurance are, for bodily injury, $250,000 per
person and $500,000 per accident and, for property damage, $250,000 per accident. Subject to special underwriting approval, the
combined policy limits may be as high as $1,000,000 for vehicles written under the Company’s commercial automobile
program. However, under the majority of the Company’s automobile policies, the limits of liability are equal to or less than
$100,000 per person and $300,000 per accident for bodily injury and $50,000 per accident for property damage.
The principal executive offices of Mercury General are located in Los Angeles, California. The home office of its
California insurance subsidiaries and the Company’s computer and operations center is located in Brea, California. The Company
also owns office buildings in Rancho Cucamonga and Folsom, California, which are used to support the Company’s California
operations and future expansion, and office buildings located in St. Petersburg, Florida and in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, which
house employees of the Company and several third party tenants. The Company maintains branch offices in a number of
locations in California as well as branch offices in Richmond, Virginia; Latham, New York; Bridgewater, New Jersey; Vernon
Hills, Illinois; Atlanta, Georgia; and Austin, Houston and San Antonio, Texas. The Company has approximately 5,000
employees.
Website Access to Information
The internet address for the Company’s website is www.mercuryinsurance.com. The internet address provided in this
Annual Report on Form 10-K is not intended to function as a hyperlink and the information on the Company’s website is not and
should not be considered part of this report and is not incorporated by reference in this document. The Company makes available
on its website its Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K and amendments
to such reports (the “SEC Reports”) filed with or furnished to the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) pursuant to
Federal securities laws, as soon as reasonably practicable after each SEC Report is filed with or furnished to the SEC. In addition,
copies of the SEC Reports are available, without charge, upon written request to the Company’s Chief Financial Officer, Mercury
General Corporation, 4484 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, California 90010.