Mercury Insurance 2009 Annual Report Download - page 19

PART I
Item 1. Business
General
Mercury General Corporation (“Mercury General”) and its subsidiaries (collectively, the “Company”) are
primarily engaged in writing automobile insurance in a number of states, principally California. The Company
also writes homeowners, mechanical breakdown, fire, umbrella, and commercial automobile and property
insurance. The direct premiums written during 2009 by state and line of business were:
Year Ended December 31, 2009
(Amounts in thousands)
Private
Passenger Auto
Commercial
Auto Homeowners Other Lines Total
California ..................... $1,696,378 $65,685 $205,469 $ 52,830 $2,020,362 77.9%
Florida ........................ 142,823 13,998 14,859 6,402 178,082 6.9%
Texas ......................... 71,064 6,679 1,724 16,451 95,918 3.7%
New Jersey .................... 81,225 — — 251 81,476 3.1%
Other states .................... 166,548 7,593 18,833 24,756 217,730 8.4%
Total ..................... $2,158,038 $93,955 $240,885 $100,690 $2,593,568 100%
83.2% 3.6% 9.3% 3.9% 100%
The Company offers automobile policyholders the following types of coverage: bodily injury (BI) liability,
underinsured and uninsured motorist, personal injury protection (PIP), property damage liability, comprehensive,
collision and other hazards. The Company’s published maximum limits of liability for private passenger
automobile insurance are, for BI, $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, for 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 BI 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 the Company’s California insurance subsidiaries and the Information Technology center are located in Brea,
California. The Company also owns office buildings in Rancho Cucamonga and Folsom, California, which are
used to support its California operations and future expansion, and office buildings located in St. Petersburg,
Florida and in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, which house the Company’s employees and several third party
tenants. The Company maintains branch offices in a number of locations in California; 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 the 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.
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