For nearly ten years, Kevin Ingram knocked on S&P’s door, arguing that FM’s A‑plus rating undervalued its balance sheet. Other agencies, such as Fitch, already had the mutual insurer at AA. Each visit, Ingram presented fresh data; each time, the agency hesitated, wary of revising a long‑standing mark. Last summer, six months after FM dropped “Global” from its name, S&P finally moved, lifting the company to AA‑minus—a hard‑won validation.
Throughout the campaign, Ingram stressed a core belief: “capital is our product.” By capital, he means policyholders’ surplus—the net assets that back every policy. That surplus, he tells us, doubled from $12 billion in 2014 to $26 billion today, even as insured exposure expanded far more modestly.
Read MoreThe widening cushion lets FM keep more risk on its own books, ride out catastrophe swings, and focus on clients committed to engineering‑led resilience instead of chasing marginal premium growth.
That discipline took shape after the 2017‑18 catastrophe losses, when Ingram led a rigorous re‑underwriting that bolstered profitability and reserves. Drawing on decades of loss data and hundreds of engineer‑captured risk points, his team now deploys AI models to rank mitigation projects for FM’s 1,600 core policyholders. Those accounts generate over $8 billion of the company’s $11.2 billion (gross operating) revenue.
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CFOTL: FM’s mutual structure appears to let you favor long‑term retention over quarter‑to‑quarter earnings. How does that influence your growth and profitability choices?
Ingram: Being mutual frees us from chasing top‑line targets to satisfy external shareholders. Instead of pursuing every available premium dollar, we ask whether a prospect aligns with our risk‑improvement philosophy and will leverage our engineering services.
We still need to be profitable, but we can stomach more volatility because policyholders—not stockholders—own the company. That lets us keep higher retentions on the limits we write and buy less reinsurance than competitors. Yes, the approach introduces short‑term swings, yet over the long haul it has proven the right structure for capital growth, resilience, and policyholder value.
FM | www.fm.com | Johnston, RI