Crawford & Company, an independent provider of claim management solutions to the insurance industry, bucked the negative financials trend by announcing this week that it exceeded $1 billion in revenue in 2008 for the first time in its history.

According to a release from the company, its U.S. P&C unit led the way by accounting for $59.8 million in revenue for just the fourth quarter alone, which was a 35 percent increase over the same period in 2007. Revenues generated by the company's catastrophe adjuster group were $11.3 million in the 2008 fourth quarter, compared to $1.8 million in the 2007 period. Operating earnings in the 2008 fourth quarter in the U.S. Property & Casualty segment improved to $4.8 million, or eight percent of revenues, compared to an operating loss of $466,000, or 1.1 percent of revenues in the 2007 fourth quarter. Crawford said that the improvement was due to increased efficiencies from technology investments and from the completion of catastrophe-related claims.

"Our consolidated revenues before reimbursements improved by seven percent in the fourth quarter on the strength of our U.S. Property & Casualty segment," said Jeffrey T. Bowman, chief executive officer of Crawford & Company. "The solid performance of our core business was enhanced by incremental catastrophe-related business due to Hurricanes Gustav and Ike in the U.S. as we worked to complete claims arising from those storms in the 2008 fourth quarter."