Good afternoon, my name is Mollie and I will be your conference facilitator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Crawford & Company Fourth Quarter 2008 Earnings Release Conference Call. In conjunction with this call, a supplementary financial presentation is available on our website at www.crawfordandcompany.com under the Investor Relations section. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker’s remarks, there will be a question-and-answer period. Instructions and will follow at that time. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, this conference is being recorded today Monday, February 09, 2009. Some of the matters to be discussed in this conference call and in the supplementary financial presentation may include forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, including statements regarding liabilities associated with our frozen defined benefits pension plan and our ability to pay dividend in the future. The company’s actual results achieved in future quarters could differ materially from results that maybe implied by such forward-looking statements. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly release revisions to any forward-looking statements made in this conference call, to reflect events or circumstances occurring after the date of the call or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. For a complete discussion regarding factors, which could affect the company’s financial performance, please refer to the Company’s Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2007, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, particularly the information under the headings Business, Risk Factors, Legal Proceedings and Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and the Results of Operations. This presentation also includes certain non-GAAP financial measures as defined under the SEC rules. As required, a reconciliation is provided for those measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures, which is available on our website at www.crawfordandcompany.com/quarterly releases. I would now like to introduce Mr. Jeffrey Bowman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Crawford & Company. Mr. Bowman, you may begin your conference.

Thank you and good afternoon. A very warm welcome to our investors, clients and employees this afternoon for a discussion of our 2008, fourth quarter and year-end results together with our earnings guidance for 2009. I’m Jeffrey Bowman, President and CEO, of Crawford & Company, joining me from the Global Executive Management Team this afternoon are; Bruce Swain, our CFO and Allen Nelson, our General Counsel and Chief Administrative Officer. Today, we will be talking briefly about our markets followed by the highlights of fiscal 2008. Bruce will review the fourth quarter financial results and I’ll wrap up with the review of the segment operating performance and a discussion on the guidance and economic headwinds we face in 2009. The greatest economic impact of the downturn is being felt in our U.S. and U.K. businesses with less initial impact in our Canadian and overseas markets. In the U.S, the economic downturn had placed many corporations in a challenging financial position. This results in a greater need for us to manage accounts receivable and customer credit worthiness very adversely. In our Broadspire segment, a significant portion of the TPA business is tied to the workers’ claims administration, which is in turn tied to U.S. employment levels. We are monitoring this closely. In our U.S. Property & Casualty and international business, we have not seen an appreciable impact on claims volume or customer relationships today. We have a very strong story to tell on how we provide quality, consistency and value-added outcomes for our clients in managing their indemnity dollars, which are the most significant portion of the claim. We will continue to refine our services to meet the changing needs of our claims. So, let me review some of the progress made in the fourth quarter. Throughout, the fall and despite…

Okay. Thanks Jeff. Companywide revenues before reimbursements increased by over 7% in the 2008 fourth quarter to $262.9 million and $245.2 million in the prior years’ fourth quarter. This increase is attributable to double-digit organic growth from our International Operations and U.S. Property & Casualty segments, which offset weakness in revenues generated in our Legal Settlement Administration and Broadspire settlements. Our net income totaled $8.3 million, as compared to net income of $3.3 million we reported in last year’s fourth quarter. We recognized fully diluted earnings per share of $0.16 for the current quarter as compared to earnings per share of $0.07 in last year’s fourth quarter. Fourth quarter 2008 earnings per share included $0.02 related to the recognition of our foreign tax credit related to calendar year 2007, as well as $0.02 related to the recognition of the current year R&D tax credit as a result of legislation passed by Congress during October, which reinstated the credit for 2008. Net income in the 2008 fourth quarter, included a $2.5 million non-taxable gain on the sale of the business in our Holland subsidiary, or $0.05 per share. We also incurred restructuring costs in certain of our operations, which totaled $2.2 million after related income taxes or $0.04 per share. The Company’s selling general and administrative expenses or SG&A totaled $53.5 million or 20.3% of revenues in the 2008 fourth quarter. Increasing about $2.7 million from $50.8 million in the prior year, declining as a percentage of revenues from 20.7% in the prior quarter, this increasing cost is primarily due to higher incentive compensation expense as a result of the Company’s improved financial performance during 2008. Let’s look at the results in our International Operations. During the 2008 fourth quarter, the U.S. dollar strengthened dramatically against most of the major foreign…

Thanks Bruce. Let me add some comments and thoughts about our business progress and outlook for each of our business segments, starting with the International Operations. We continue to see strong revenue growth from contract wins that are predominately Property & Casualty programs in our Canadian and U.K. operations. Currently, many of our clients are in the process of renewing contracts with us and we are very optimistic on retention and renewal. When we look at our claims referred and compare 2007 to 2008, we see a decrease in international claims of 13.6% in the fourth quarter. This was expected as it relates primarily to 2007 flooding in the United Kingdom. It is a positive sign for these operations that despite the claims trend, revenue and operating earnings continue to growth. For the year, International Operations represented 42% of the Company’s total revenue, compared to 39% in the previous year. Through good expense management in quarter four, the international business unit had an operating margin of 9.9% and a margin of 8.7% for the year. The strengthening of the dollar in October is worth commenting on. Typically, there is not much movement in exchange rates on a quarter-over-quarter basis. Historically, the dollar has been gradually weakening against the currencies in which we do business over the past several years. That trend reserved abruptly in October and had a negative impact of 9.5% for the fourth quarter. The current strength of the dollar has affected our guidance and outlook for fiscal 2009, which I will discuss in a moment. Now reviewing our U.S. Property & Casualty segment, as previously stated our goal in 2008 even in the challenging overall claims environment was to improve U.S. Property & Casualty’s revenue growth and to ensure that we managed costs to provide an acceptable…

(Operator Instruction) Your first question comes from Mark Hughes - SunTrust.

The new business in the Broadspire area, can you give us some sense of what that ought to mean to the top line next year? Are we looking at positive growth, low single-digits what the impact should that have?

We’re looking at, we don’t give segment information obviously, but the new wins are coming as a result of the restructuring of the sales organization that we did in the back-end of last year and the new clients we are bringing onboard are actually ones that we’ve been working on for a short while and the gestation period is now taking place and these clients are now locked in for 2008 and this is the first month of the year and we are seeing very positive responses to the model, to the messages that the Broadspire operation have been putting out in the second half of the year. So yes, we do see the revenue improving with these new wins.

Was there some up-front cost associated with bringing those customers online that showed up in the fourth quarter?

No.

Okay and then the catastrophe revenue, I think you have got $15 million you have assumed.

You’re right.

Some amount of that that’s carry over from the assignments you have already got related to the 2008 storms, that you got visibility into?

We closed off in 2008 about 95% of the storm claims that we took in. So, we have a small residue, some of these will be the larger claims in terms of indemnity dollar value, which take a longer period to close down, but the revenue effect will not be significant on that in 2009.

Okay, then the final question, Bruce currency exposure, what the mix of exposure that you have got, if you can share that?

We operate in four primary foreign currencies and kind of an order of significance. We have got the Great Britain Pound, which is about 37% of our revenue, the Canadian dollar comprises about 27%, the Euro would be next at 13% and the other major concentration we have would be Australian dollar at about 7%. After that you have got all sorts of other currencies that make up the remaining 16%, but I think if you look at of those major four currencies, it gives you an idea of how we are impacted.

(Operator Instructions) Your next question comes from the line of Matt Reams - Buckhead Capital.

I was just wondering if you could provide some additional information on ‘09 guidance. What are you expecting for amortization?

Amortization of our customer relationship intangible or?

Yes.

That amortization runs approximately $6 million a year. We expect that to continue into 2009.

Okay and will depreciation levels be similar in ‘09 from ‘08?

Yes, the overall depreciation and amortization level should be comparable in 2009 as compared to ‘08.

Okay, you have mentioned in ‘09 guidance that interest expense is going to be down about $2.9 million.

Correct.

So, that’s just a reduction from which you had in ‘08 levels.

That’s right.

Okay, what about tax rate?

For 2009, we are estimating our effective tax rate at 28%.

In the new credit agreement that you released the details in 8-K, it mentions that you wanted to do some restructuring in International Operations. I was wondering if you could explain more in detail about that. And I think it also mentioned something about new U.K hold “notes” and then also some de-leveraging and I was hoping you could kind of clarify all that for us?

We recently amended our credit facility to enable us to do a legal entity restructuring, but also to allow us to repurchase up to $25 million of our outstanding term-loan B in the open market. And what the legal entity restructuring is, is we looked at all of our legal entities internationally as well as in the United States and wanted to structure them to be more closely aligned with how we manage our operation internally and also how we report our information externally, so this reorganization isn’t a management reorganization or a change in the segment results that we are going to be providing to get our underlying legal entities to be more inline with those two structures. So, that’s going to provide us management efficiencies, administrative compliant savings and treasury flexibilities just to name a few of the benefits. The amendment didn’t change any of our underlying interest rates or spreads, debt covenants or maturities of the facilities.

Okay, have you already bought in the term-loan debt that you outlined?

We have not as of yet.

Okay, so your interest expense assumptions for 2009, does that include that you buy-in that sometime this year?

Our interest rate assumptions have the assumption that we will reduce our total funded debt by approximately $10 million during 2009, but it does not include any, obviously wouldn’t include any significant repurchases of the term-loan B.

Okay. So this global restructuring, are they going to be cost associated with it or is it just clearly a kind of an internal?

There were costs associated with it. We had fees that were paid to the lender group in order to get the amendment done and there is also professional fees with lawyers and accountants with the process. The bank fees totaled approximately $1 million and those are capitalized and amortized over the remaining life of the credit facility. The legal costs buy and large were incurred during 2008 in our component of the restructuring cost that we took in the fourth quarter, but there will be some expenses that flow through in the first quarter as everything is finalized and put in place, but we don’t expect those to be material.

Okay. Obviously you made significant improvements in working capital. Are any of those, is all of that to be sustained or are there additional improvements or are we likely to see some give-up in 2009?

On that particular issue, we are driving our operations worldwide to decrease through our DSO up and working capital accounts receivable, both billed and unbilled by 10% in the next year; and that is as we’ve seen in ‘08 is significant in getting us to a working capital level that is basically what we wanted to be rather than what it currently is and we shouldn’t be at that level we are. We know we can get this down by better management of our work in progress, better management of our accounts receivables and basically ensuring that our staffs are motivated to do that as well. So, we do see improvements still to come on that, we haven’t hit the bottom yet on this one.

That’s great. I would imagine that’s why you have an interest in getting some flexibility to retire some term-B notes?

That’s right.

Okay, great. What’s your CapEx budget for ‘09?

For ’09, we’re expecting about $31 million, which is comparable with where we were in 2008.

Okay. Related to the pension expense, what was the actual expense in 2008?

In 2008, we actually had a credit and pension cost of about $2.6 million and that’s going to turn in 2009 to an expense of about $14.3 million.

Okay and that were probably because of the significant under funding, are you going to be running at that rate for a few years?

Well, it’s difficult to tell. I mean there is a lot of moving parts in the determination of pension expense. Obviously, the sharp downturn in the financial markets was the primary driver, what happened in the fourth quarter. To the extent that we see, a sharp recovery our pension expense could be lower going forward. If the recovery is slower and doesn’t have sharp movements up to offset some of the decline that we took in 2008 and you could see that level of expense continuing on, but that’s a number that gets measured at 12/31 each year and it’s based upon investment returns that have occurred in the market value of assets as of year-end as well as discounting of the liabilities based on the interest rates that exist at year-end so. We’ll know more about that expense as we get through the year end and we see how our investment returns have performed and where the interest rates look like they are heading.

Okay, great and one last question, I’ll get back in the queue. With Broadspire, what amount of expenses, do you expect to take out in 2009 versus ‘08 due to the technology efficiencies?

Hi, Matt this is Jeff. In that the last five months of the year, we have a contract with a third-party vendor for basically hardware that basically will be removed from the organization, that is about $6 million per annum cost saving plus and there will be legacy costs that we’re able to takeout with that old program that’s been outlined in our filings before and we are onboard at this moment for that particular saving to start kicking in and that is initially the first part of getting the RiskTech system onto fewer systems within the organization. So, we see that starting to move out. The other positive issues around is we’re seeing process efficiencies coming out of the implementation of RiskTech. We’re able to go to our clients and start talking to them about it. One of our clients’ is already on the live model and we have very positive feedback from them about what the system is doing. So, we’re excited about this system beginning to really drive the efficiencies that we anticipated when we did the Broadspire acquisition. It’s a long road and it’s a very complex system, but we’re well on the way to moving along it now.

Are the legacy and efficiency opportunities as big as the hardware?

I mean the legacy issues are quite significant. We put out an 8-K at the beginning that said that our savings from technology would be in the $15 million to $20 million range and that we have no reason to shy away from at the moment.

Okay, but you haven’t specified a specific target for ‘09 of that $15 million to $20 million?

No, correct.

Okay, it just over the life of the opportunity?

That’s right. It is once we are fully implemented.

(Operator Instructions) Your next question comes from Mark Hughes - SunTrust. Mark Hughes – SunTrust: In the U.S. Property & Casualty, the 4% increase in the claims assignments, is that sort of a good underlying run rate if we takeout the CAT activity?

I can give you a quick analysis of that. We’ve seen a significant upturn in the property claims and a decreasing causality claims and this is inline with the market scenarios that are out there in generalities. Obviously, cash catastrophe claims are up, but we’ve got a few outlines in there that we had a vehicle leased outsourcing that ceased in the prior year, which really sort of screws with the figures a little bit, but property we’re seeing an increase in volume in our property through taking market share, new clients and then the small increase in the weather patterns that we saw in 2008. I would expect that the range is somewhere between normal 0.5% on claims, but it is a good indicator. The total year was about 1.6% increase in total claims.

Likewise in the International business down 13.5, you corrected for the U.K., flood activity, is there a kind of run rate we should think about that there?

I think, we’re going to be looking at flat run rates for the next year or so. There will be some increases; we had two effects that came in ‘08. One was our Canadian operation got up to speed with a couple of large contracts that they had brought into the operation and then we had that really being diluted by the expected decrease over the prior year of the U.K. and there are too much significant operations. We’ve seen an increase in our Asia-Pacific claims going up and with the tragic events happening in Australia at this moment around the bushfires, we see a small up tick in claims coming in through that over the next couple of months. There are always ups and downs on a global basis. I think we should be looking around the flats scenarios for 2009 year unless there is some significant weather events that occur, but our book-of-business is growing, which is very good and then obviously, we’re watching very carefully the economic situation with all of our clients. Mark Hughes – SunTrust: In Broadspire, the 15% decline in claims, for you how did that compare to the first nine months?

For the year, well I I’ve got this figures for year and for the quarter. For the year, we’re down to 11.1% and if I give you workers comp claims alone, that in totality for Casualty and workers comp clams, we were down 9.1% for the year, but we were down 14.5% in the fourth quarter. So the fourth quarter, the employment figures obviously do have an effect on our model and we are very focused on our model reflecting from the staffing perspective, the claims intake and that’s why I made reference to the inventory management, because we’re looking very carefully at those trends coming in and then adjusting our model appropriately. Mark Hughes – SunTrust: I wonder where the claims, was the claims frequency off more than the decline in employees covered, do you have a sense on that?

Not really. We’d have to get in, it depends on the individual clients that we have within the organization and we can get some work done on that Mark and come back to you on that. Mark Hughes – SunTrust: Presumably, the employment hasn’t dropped-off that much, it seems like the claims frequency was down more than if we just think of general employment statistics booked out.

Well, I mean we’ve got 1.5 million people and it was 2.5 million people that have come onto the unemployment. There is going to be a knock on effect on workers comp claims decreasing. I mean less that has been a decade long trend anyway and workers comp claims are reducing as you know, the U.S. has gone from manufacturing base to a services base.

Your next question comes from Carter Newbold - Rutabaga Capital.

I think you’ve given us most of the components of free cash flow next year, but I don’t if I’ve heard you yet say what you think your cash pension contribution will be for next year, have you given that figure yet?

We haven’t, but I can give it to you now. Our cash contributions will be approximately $10.5 million in 2009.

Okay and then Bruce, so I guess as I add that in and sort of roll that into all of figures. I think you all, that 70 something million of cash as of year-end are well north of the amount of cash that you’ve at least indicated in the past that it takes to kind of sustain the business. So, sort of a two-part question, I guess A, is that assumption is still good or has something changed in the core level of cash that you require and then does that roll up all the free cash flow opportunities, plus the amount by which I think your north of the core level of cash in the business. I get a number bigger than the amount of what I presume will be an attempt to buyback term-loan B at a discount. So beyond that, could you talk about, I guess first off, can you confirm that any of those assumptions hold and if so, what are your priorities for free cash flow beyond that?

Sure, yes I can help you with. Our underlying assumption of the cash required to run the business has not changed, $40 million to $45 million is the cash level that we seek to hold to run the business day-to-day. Given the dislocation in the credit market and all of the financial uncertainty, we took the decision that we wanted to hold as much cash as we could and be as liquid as we could and we’re still in that position. In terms of where our priorities are from a free cash flow standpoint, I think that we have required contributions into our defined benefit pension plans this year, but we know we’ll have contributions in the future. So, to the extent that our operations generate the cash, I think we’d look at excess cash first to be used to fund our defined benefit pension plans, after that we’d be looking at de-leveraging our third-party borrowings.

Sure, yes I can help you with. Our underlying assumption of the cash required to run the business has not changed, $40 million to $45 million is the cash level that we seek to hold to run the business day-to-day. Given the dislocation in the credit market and all of the financial uncertainty, we took the decision that we wanted to hold as much cash as we could and be as liquid as we could and we’re still in that position. In terms of where our priorities are from a free cash flow standpoint, I think that we have required contributions into our defined benefit pension plans this year, but we know we’ll have contributions in the future. So, to the extent that our operations generate the cash, I think we’d look at excess cash first to be used to fund our defined benefit pension plans, after that we’d be looking at de-leveraging our third-party borrowings.

This maybe a sensitive line of questioning, given the constituents for a call like this, but was there anything extraordinary going on in the way that you guys had invested your pension assets either in the U.S. or the U.K. or that has required revision, whether risk metrics that were not well tended to or did you have an experience, it was kind of outside the balance of your actuarial expectations or are you just reacting to what’s been a very negative year in the markets?

No, it’s just very negative year in the markets. I mean our returns for the year were negative obviously, but they were inline with other negative returns that other people with defined benefit pension plans have experienced.

Last question, I think you said there has been some consolidation and legal settlement industry and I guess I either have forgotten or I’m not aware of what’s happened there, can you just review how much consolidation and how many sort of global scale players there are at hand?

There are three major players, the one company that was consolidated was taking up by one of those three players about five or six months ago and effectively there were three major players you have EPIC, in the bankruptcy EPIC, KCC are two of them, in the security class actions you have [Rust], which is owned by [Inaudible] but we have the largest position on security class actions that we run about third in the bankruptcy, that is our two main areas that we are in.

Your next question comes from the line of Shamo Sadukan - Lotus Partners.

Can you talk about how much this year you feel like in 2008? The company benefited from the claims that were coming from some of these national disasters that happened and kind of what you expect that part of the business to do in 2009?

Yes, sure. I mean, predominantly we are talking about in the U.S. CAT division, which is this year had revenue about $22 million, which was significantly up from the prior year. As I said in the earlier part of the presentation about 25,000 claims. When we look at what catastrophe it was and how it has changed over the years is that we really saw in ‘06 and ‘07 as very non-catastrophe events in the United States. Then ‘08 picked up again with a number of events in the Texas area, I mean with Iken with Gustav and Dolly. We had prior to that here where for many years we had a minimum of $20 million in catastrophe revenue. So, we’re still being very conservative when we put into our projections of $15 million, but we are not here to run the organization on catastrophes, we are here to run the organization in a steady state and then effectively able to ramp-up our staffing when those catastrophes do take place.

Okay and then what’s the latest update on the difference between A&P shares, it’s about $3 now still and there doesn’t seem to be very much economic difference between the two shares given the effective control of the company by insiders. So, do you guys have any plans to take any actions that would equalize the value discrepancy?

Well, management of the Board of Director’s are very aware of the price differences between the two classes of share and obviously we monitor that situation constantly. The markets as a whole set the price of the Company’s shares, which have expanded and contracted substantially over the past 10 years, we believe that a lot of the spread can be explained by the overall stock market volatility that we’re experiencing at the moment and the only difference between the A&P shares are the voting riots attached to the B shares. Any decision to change capital structure of the company is the Board of Directors decision and we’ve not taken a position on that issue at this moment. Should we do that well, obviously we will publicly announce and promptly advice.

Your next question comes from Matt Reams - Buckhead Capital.

Hi this is a broad general question. I was wondering, if you could comment on how the downturn in the economy and the financial and other problems in the credit markets have affected your competitive position in any of your business units, to the extent there are some competitors that are heavily leveraged or having other problems?

I mean, we concentrate on profit Matt from the way we’re managing our organization and dealing with our customers who are our number one importance that we’re handling. I can’t really comment on the competitors because, we’re the only publicly quoted corporation in the industry. I think from our aspect, we are putting investment in technology, we’re continuing to train our staff, we’re continuing to provide segmentation analytics to our clients to be able to validate that what we are doing and that really is from our perspective is a leading indicator on growing our business. I know that from our prospective that we are in a position where we have more clients coming onboard than we had in the prior year and from that perspective, we’ll staff accordingly as necessary. The only area where we see a downturn is obviously, we’ve seen a reduction in workers comp claims at the market scenario and we will adjust the model accordingly to deal with that, it is very difficult with not very much information to be able to comment on competitors and we say that we know from the U.S. self-insured market position we’re probably running number three, after (Inaudible).

Have you noticed any kind of pickup in RFPs, where you’re getting hints from those submitting the RFPs that, they are concerned about the services levels that they could get or that potentially there are some dislocations that are being caused by what’s going on the economy in the financial markets?

Not really, but we know with the restructuring we did of our sales team last year and the number of our RFP’s are, I mean we have an increasing pipeline on this. We have business process, an outsourcing model appeals in this economic environment to be a business proportion our clients are listening to very carefully. There is a significant expense management in all organizations and that is the ability where you have to take a fixed cost for a client and turn it into a variable cost. That is a business model that we will continue to be predominant over the next 12 to 24 months.

There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn call back over to Mr. Bowman for closing remarks.

Thank you. I’d like to thank everyone this afternoon for joining us and I wish you all a great week. Thanks very much.

Thank you for participating in today’s Crawford & Company conference call. This call will be available for replay beginning at 06:00 pm today, through 11:59 pm on February 16, 2009. The conference ID number for the replay is 829-430-95. The number to dial for the replay is 1-800-642-1687 or 706-645-9291. Thank you, you may now disconnect.