Manzana specialized in commercial insurance, with property insurance, making up 65% of its revenues, liability insurance 20%, and investment income and miscellaneous specialty lines constituting the remainder.
Golden Gate Casualty is one of the largest property-liability insurers in California, it is also the powerful competition with Manzana in the market. Below listing 3 advantages with Golden Gate:
Golden Gate promise of one-day turnaround time to all agents, Manzana got lots of complaints from agents about turnaround time and lots Manzana agents are going to defect to Gold Gate.
Golden Gate corporate parent was one of the largest retailers in the world, Backed by its parent's resources, Golden Gate launched an intensive marketing campaign and precipitated a price war in an attempt to gain market share from Manzana
Most senior underwriters (those with more than 10 years' experience), who were being intensively courted by Golden Gate.
Manzana is in the bad state now, need improve their operation management soon for fighting with Golden Gate Casualty.
Case question 2
The financial situation at Manzana-Fruitvale is getting worse every quarter. The branch managed to stay profitable in the year of 1989 and 1990, but the profit turned negative since the first quarter of 1991.
Manzana-Fruitvale was doing well in 1989, where they can generate profits above 1 million dollars each quarter. However, the profit from Q4 of 1989 signaled that the company was declining, when the figure dropped 35% compare with the previous quarter.
The profitability kept decreasing since, and the branch was facing a deficit in the first two quarter of 1991.
The income of Manzana-Fruitvale, which mainly came from the premium paid from the new policies, did not decrease like the trend in profitability. Instead, the branch managed to maintain the premium income