Now we have direct access to the best numbers in the insurance business. TFIS joins the NUCO stable and has been renamed The National Underwriter Insurance Data Group. We will be expanding the amount of financial data we offer in this publication and others at NUCO, including a wide array of company rankings by various performance and market share metrics.

The TFIS product set has been known by a variety of brand names, including Insurance Analyst, U.S. Insurance and InsLink, with information derived principally from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners' statutory data. The group also publishes the newsletters Insurance Chronicle, Insurance M&A Weekly and Daily Insurance Reporter. Corporately, this unit of Thomson has also been known by some legacy names, including OneSource and Sheshunoff. After a brief period of re-branding, these corporate names will disappear, to be replaced by the National Underwriter Insurance Data Group label.

It will be a pleasure to work closely once again with a number of managers I knew while at the Thomson Corp., and I welcome the entire data staff to our combined operation.

The NU Insurance Data Group will continue in its present location in Cambridge, Mass., along with product development and customer service there and in other locations throughout the U.S. The New York office will move to NUCO's present Hoboken, N.J. location. The Austin, Texas office, where key technology resources are situated, will also continue as before, albeit from new quarters, to be finalized in the coming weeks. (NUCO's parent, Highline Media, has also acquired Thomson Media's banking data business, headquartered in Austin.)

This has indeed been an action-packed period in NUCO's 107-year history. Since the merger last October, we've accomplished much all geared toward making our magazines, books, Web sites, information services and conferences more potent tools to help you increase your revenues, productivity and bottom-line profits.

One of the most visible changes is the redesign of this magazine. We put news front and center, starting on the cover, to capitalize on our franchise as the leading reporters in the field. We improved the info-graphics and overall story presentation to make them easier for you to digest and quickly grasp the most important points.

We have lots more to offer, with other NUCO divisions growing as well. People often forget that NUCO also publishes books, puts out print and electronic reference tools, and runs conferences. Our www.NationalUnderwriter.com Web site generates an incredible amount of traffic. Now we have a substantial data division, and there will be a lot more growth ahead, with additional acquisitions and product launches to come.

In short, NUCO is on the grow again!

The ultimate judge of our success will be you, the reader. Let us know how you think we've done, and how we can do it better.

Andrew L. Goodenough

President & CEO

Reproduced from National Underwriter Edition, May 14, 2004. Copyright 2004 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.