Industry weathers more than storms.

• Position: Insurance

In the last decade, the insurance industry has been beaten up in North Carolina and around the country. In life-insurance sales, it's facing rough competition from banks and brokerages, which market themselves as one-stop solutions to their customers' financial needs. Property and casualty have been hit again and again by hurricanes. After that run, Bonnie, which brushed the Carolina coast in August, doing relatively little damage, was a summer breeze.

But Bonnie's light touch didn't quell speculation that the Rate Bureau - the industry consortium that represents insurers to the N.C. Insurance Department - would ask for a rise in homeowners' rates. As of late November, regulators were still awaiting the request, expected by year's end.

Unlike P&C, the life-insurance sector is already taking a turn for the better, and that's benefiting Greensboro-based Jefferson-Pilot Corp., says Gerry Smith, vice president for investments in the Charlotte office of Salomon Smith Barney Inc. Baby boomers are planning estates of their parents and themselves, so more of them are buying life insurance. That can only help JP, which Smith calls the "Wachovia of the insurance business - well-managed, conservative, not just doing acquisitions for their own sake."

The company's '98 numbers bear her out. For the first nine months, Jefferson-Pilot's earnings before realized investment gains were up 20.5% over the prior-year period, reaching $2.47 per share. After realized gains, earnings.rose 11%, to $3.01. (1997 saw large securities gains as part of the buyout of New Jersey-based Chubb Life.)

While J-P took a break in '98, Morrisville-based Front Royal Inc. kept on buying. Founded in 1992, the holding company has cobbled together a diverse bunch of insurers in such niches as workers' compensation for coal miners, liability coverage for contractors and protection against environmental hazards. In August, it paid $35 million for Coral Springs, Fla.-based Preferred National Insurance Co., which offers surety, property and inland marine coverage. Front Royal has been trying to go public in a deal that could raise $96.8 million.

In Charlotte, another small insurer, Commerce Casualty Group Inc., was trying to go public. In September, it said it would sell 2.3 million shares at $5 each. It aims to use the money to expand beyond workers' comp, its core business.

A few years back, workers' comp was racked by crises and claims backlogs, with prices soaring and few companies...