ACE CEO Evan Greenberg last week shot down criticism that the company may be leading a drop in insurance rates, instead saying the company was poised to walk away from business when premium prices went too low.

?We will not purposely write business at a loss,? the head of the Bermuda-based insurance giant said, adding the company was positioned to grow but not at the cost of sacrificing underwriting discipline.

Mr. Greenberg spoke of the company?s commitment to maintaining strict underwriting controls repeatedly during a grilling investment call with analysts after the company reported second quarter earnings on Tuesday night of $413 million in net income.

But he also maintained that ACE was a ?growth organisation? with plenty of business opportunities in the pipeline.

ACE has come under fire from analysts and rival insurers who say the company?s growth approach may be precipitating the softening of the market.

In an interview with The Royal Gazette following the conference call Mr. Greenberg discounted the criticism as ?a lot of competitor trash talk.

?Some are saying you can?t grow and maintain underwriting discipline at the same time,? he said, but maintained that it was ?still fundamentally a good time? to be an underwriter.

So far, the company has delivered on that, though conceding that business is flat or falling off in some areas.

ACE in the second quarter recorded a 19 percent increase in net premiums written to $2.9 billion. And in P&C lines 25 percent growth in net premiums written was achieved.

ACE CFO Phil Bancroft also updated guidance for the rest of the year, and pushed up expectations for net earned premium growth to 20 to 23 percent (from 15 to 20 percent predicted in April).

This was said to be ?as a result of higher production than anticipated in the first half of the year?.

Achieving that rate of growth in this market is something that ACE rivals have found more difficult to do.

The world?s largest commercial insurer, AIG, is one of those, with boss Maurice ?Hank? Greenberg telling analysts the company had seen the greatest slow down in its rate of growth during the last quarter (17.4 percent in general insurance) since 2001.

In a call with analysts last month, Hank Greenberg said: ?You cannot expect that you are going to see rates just go up and up indefinitely.?

Meanwhile, Mr. Greenberg would not be drawn on how long it would be a ?good? time to be an underwriter. He said though that ACE was ready to ?outperform? in this market.

?We are seeing an increase in business (with the company saying it was seeing a strong rise in submissions to write business) while at the same time we are being more selective in the business we write.?

He conceded that greater competition was a feature of this market, and fired his own shots without naming names but saying that price cutting that ?defies logic? was taking place by both new and established players taking an ?aggressive? business stance.

He said professional liability lines were one area where competition for selling coverage was high.

For ACE, he said lines that had seen rates decline were catastrophe and aviation reinsurance, D&O rates, and ?global energy business was simply not growing?.

He added that the company had a strong focus on casualty lines and there was opportunity for growth in retail areas, including its increasing its retail presence in the US .

Mr. Greenberg said the US was not the only geographic area being targeted however, and spoke of opportunities in Europe and Asia.

?I did give the US as an example but it is not limited to that. But clearly the US is a major focus as 40 percent of the world insurance market. People think we are so ubiquitous and large, but we don?t have that great a presence in some areas.?

Mr. Greenberg added: ?You have to have the ability to react quickly to good and bad news, that is one of our fundamentals and it will continue.

?There is an overall good rate environment; rates are adequate.?

He added that, in general, terms and conditions, were also holding.

When asked by Bijan Moazami, an analyst from Friedman Billing Ramsey, about ACE being blamed by others in the industry for the softening market, Mr. Greenberg said: ?We are growing in broad range of casualty products. We are not growing because we are breaking underwriting discipline. And we are not cutting rates and liberalising terms to write business.?

Mr. Bancroft pointed out financial data backing up the company?s shift to writing more casualty, saying that had accounted for 52 percent of the group?s business during the second quarter.

Mr. Greenberg also stressed that growth was only one side of the equation, with the company also being a ?cost efficient organisation?.

But he said the company?s focus on efficiency and trimming expenses was not a product of current market conditions, but good business sense whatever the state of the market.

?While we are facing growing headwind from competition, diversification puts us in a good place,? Mr. Greenberg said.