BRITISH FIRE COMPANY LOSSES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 11955, 2 May 1902, Page 5

BRITISH FIRE COMPANY LOSSES.

DISASTROUS PERIOD IN THE UNITED STATES. The Insurance News, London, says:—''For four years in succession fire business in the United States has proved simply disastrous. To this deplorable state of affairs must be directly attributed the collapse of the Lancashire and the Palatine, both of this city, not to mention the wretched Lion and quite a host of American companies. United States business has been bad before, but on no former occasion, we think, has the period of abnormal loss lasted so long. ... It has recently been a case of endurance; the small and feeble have been crushed out; the giants remain. But even the giants themselves cannot go on indefinitely, and if we are to believe latest reports all appear to have had enough." The tables of the results for 1501, us published by the Insurance Chronicle of New York, show that the United States business of British fire offices resulted in 14 of them losing in their underwriting business for the year the sum of £550,000. In a copy of Fair Play, published in London, we read that the "Manchester's" losses for 1901 totalled the enormous sum of £244.695. The figures arc as follows:—Net premiums, £829,859; file losses, £758,112; commissions and expenses, £298,043: taxes, £18,399: total, £1,074,554, showing an underwriting loss as above. The revenue is said to be £225.823 less than the previous year "owitig to largely restricted operations in the United States and the Continent." This state of affairs should prove a warning to all colonial companies.