The companies are insurance subsidiaries of the Bermudian holding company, Commercial Risk Partners Limited (CRP) and are ultimately wholly-owned by SCOR (Paris, France).
In response to management's request that the operating subsidiaries be removed from A.M. Best's interactive rating process, the ratings will be withdrawn and assigned a rating of NR-4 (Company Request). In January 2003, these companies ceased writing new business and placed themselves into voluntary run off.
The rating downgrades have taken into consideration the current level of risk-adjusted capitalization, the potential for continued adverse reserve development and the timing risk of payments and investment returns, which may vary from projections.