Penn National Sells ESL Inc. Subsidiary to Atlantic Specialty Lines

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania-based Penn National Insurance said it has completed the sale of its wholesale insurance brokerage subsidiary, ESL Inc., to Atlantic Specialty Lines of Pennsylvania for an undisclosed amount.

Atlantic Specialty Lines operates as a wholesale brokerage specializing in excess, surplus, and specialty lines of insurance for retail agents in most of the United States.

In a statement announcing the deal, Penn National Chairman and CEO Dennis C. Rowe said the company was “not able to grow the business enough to gain access to the depth and breadth of non-standard markets that our agents need today. After careful consideration, we determined that it would be in our company’s best interest to focus our resources on our core standard-market business, and that it would be in our agents’ best interest for us to sell ESL to a larger entity that could provide more markets to them.”

The deal became effective May 1.

Penn National Insurance sells personal and commercial property-casualty insurance in much of the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast through a network of approximately 700 independent agencies. It had a combined $568 million in premium in 2007.

Source: Penn National Insurance