MLAN Midland Co (MM)

The Midland Company's American Modern Insurance Group Receives A.M. Best Award for Advances in Technology Web-based modernLINK(TM) earns top honors at A.M. Best's 2004 E-Fusion Conference CINCINNATI, Nov. 4 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The Midland Company (NASDAQ:MLAN), a highly focused provider of specialty insurance products and services, today announced its wholly owned subsidiary, American Modern Insurance Group, received the A.M. Best Company's 2004 E-Fusion Agent/Broker Management Award for modernLINK(TM), a suite of applications designed to allow Agents to perform policy quoting, issuance, inquiry and policy payment applications. According to Lee McDonald, the Program Chairman for the 2004 A.M. Best E- Fusion conference, the E-Fusion Award is designed to spotlight innovative uses of technology to address insurance business challenges. Competition for the 2004 award began with 80 nominees, with six finalists in the Agent/Broker management category invited to appear at the E-Fusion conference to present their project's business case and to provide a project demonstration. "American Modern's modernLINK(TM) application highlighted the key items the judges were looking for," said McDonald. "Using technology in a way that hasn't been used before to address business problems, and to invent new ways to do business." John W. Hayden, Midland's president and chief executive officer, said, "We are very honored and proud to receive the 2004 E-Fusion Award. Over the last few years, we have directly involved our business partners, dedicated significant resources and heavily invested in our new information systems in developing the right tools to serve the needs of our business partners and policyholders. We are committed to further developing our infrastructure and believe this initiative underscores our differentiation strategy to build a sustainable competitive advantage." About the Company Midland, which is headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, is a provider of specialty insurance products and services through its wholly owned subsidiary, American Modern Insurance Group, which accounts for approximately 96 percent of Midland's consolidated revenue. American Modern specializes in writing physical damage insurance and related coverages on manufactured housing and has expanded to other specialty insurance products including coverage for site-built homes, motorcycles, watercraft, snowmobiles, recreational vehicles, physical damage on long-haul trucks, extended service contracts, excess and surplus lines coverages, credit life and related products as well as collateral protection and mortgage fire products sold to financial institutions and their customers. Midland also owns a niche transportation business, M/G Transport Group, which operates a fleet of dry cargo barges for the movement of dry bulk commodities on the inland waterways. Midland's common stock is traded on the Nasdaq National Market under the symbol MLAN. Additional information on the company can be found on the Internet at http://www.midlandcompany.com/ . DATASOURCE: The Midland Company CONTACT: John I. Von Lehman, Executive Vice President and CFO of The Midland Company, +1-513-943-7100 Web site: http://www.midlandcompany.com/

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