Liberty Mutual Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Edmund “Ted” Kelly said only strong companies that recognize global business opportunities will succeed because they will be poised to take advantage of the market when it improves.

Any company with operations only in North America “will be totally irrelevant” eventually, “except as a niche company,” he told an audience at the 22nd Annual Executive Conference for the Property and Casualty Industry, presented by The National Underwriter Company in New York last month.

Several years ago Liberty Mutual faced staying a “smallish” North American company but chose to expand worldwide to tap into a growing middle class in countries outside the United States. It sold off its life and annuity business to concentrate on being a multichannel property and casualty carrier.

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