Liberty Mutual Group Expands in Massachusetts

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick joined Liberty Mutual Group Chairman, President and CEO Edmund Kelly, as the insurance executive announced Thursday at an event in Springfield that the Boston-based company will open a 300-person office in that city in the third quarter this year. The state’s fourth largest auto insurer has signed a 10-year lease for office space on Federal Street in the STCC Park, formerly the Springfield Armory. The new Springfield office will host a variety of business operations, including a customer service call center to support Liberty Mutual’s car and home insurance business in Massachusetts as well as the rest of the country. Other operations will include claims and legal administration. Liberty Mutual will start hiring and training for the office this spring and plans to have over 150 employees in place by year-end. The company’s expectations over time are to have in excess of 300 employees in its Springfield office. In anticipation of the April 1, 2008 start of managed competition, Liberty Mutual will add 30 sales positions across the state by this April, a 50 percent increase over current sales force levels. The insurer has also begun offering car insurance quotes to consumers using its new rates under managed competition. Liberty Mutual’s new prices are on average 10.7 percent lower than their 2007 levels, with some Massachusetts drivers eligible for premium decreases of 35 percent or more. In addition, Peerless Insurance, a Liberty Mutual Group company that sells exclusively through independent agents, in November 2007 became the first insurer to announce plans to enter the Massachusetts auto insurance market under managed competition. Once approved by the department of insurance, Peerless will write both car and home insurance in the state. In 1988, Peerless became the first of many companies to stop issuing new and renewal policies because of the state’s malfunctioning car insurance system.