When Vince Donnelly took the reins at
PMA Capital Corp. in late 2003, the insurance provider was limping along, dragging
its reinsurance business around like a damaged limb.
The first thing Donnelly had to do as president and CEO was to stabilize the present
to ensure that PMA Capital would have a
future.
“At the time, we basically had two operating segments or subsidiaries,” he says.
“One was our insurance business, which I
was running at the time, and the other was
our reinsurance business. At the end of
2003, our reinsurance business had experienced some pretty significant financial difficulties. The result was we closed that
operation down.”
But that didn’t stop the fallout from hitting PMA Capital hard. The CEO to
which Donnelly reported resigned, and
perhaps most damaging, one of PMA
Capital’s most important industry ratings
was downgraded.
“Having our rating downgraded from
an A-minus to a B-plus-plus was certainly an inhibitor in operating on an ongoing basis as an insurance company,”
Donnelly says. “You really need to have
rating with a letter ‘A’ in it to move forward.”
In addition to the mechanics of restructuring the business and attempting to
regain an A-level rating, Donnelly had to
oversee the far-reaching challenge of
restoring faith in the company among
employees, customers and shareholders.
It’s something that tested Donnelly’s leadership skills before he even had a chance
to get settled into his new role. Before he
could continue to grow PMA Capital,
first he had to stabilize and repair it.
