Good afternoon, my name is Ashley and I'll be your conference facilitator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Crawford and Company First Quarter 2012 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. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, this conference is being recorded, Tuesday, May 8, 2012. Some of the matters to be discussed in this conference call and in the supplementary financial presentation may include forward-looking that involve risks and uncertainties, these statements may include but are not limited to statements regarding the funded status of our defined benefit pension plans, our expectations related to future revenues and expenses, our long term liquidity, requirements and our ability to pay dividends in the future. The Company's actual results achieved in future quarters could differ materially from results that may be 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. In addition, you are reminded that operating results for any historical period are not necessarily indicative of results to be expected for any future period. 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 31st, 2011, filed with the Security's and Exchange Commission, particularly the information under the headings: Business, Risk Factors, Legal Proceedings and Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations, as well as subsequent company filings with the SEC. This presentation also includes certain non-GAAP financial measures as defined under SEC rules. As required, a reconciliation is provided for those measures to most directly comparable GAAP measures. I would now like to introduce Mr. Jeffrey Bowman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Crawford and Company. Mr. Bowman, you may begin your conference.

Thank you, Ashley. A warm welcome to our investors, clients and employees this afternoon. I'm Jeffrey Bowman, President and CEO of Crawford and Company. And 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. I will begin with some opening comments on our first quarter results. Bruce will then review the quarterly financials in a lot more detail, which will be followed by a review of our business, comments on our strategic initiatives, and conclude with our corporate focus and an update of our 2012 guidance. Our consolidated results we reported were in line with our initial expectations in the aggregate. On a segment base, we had some events both positive and negative that affected our results. Our first quarter 2012 operating results reflected a positive performance in our Broadspire operation, which helped offset an expected decline in our legal settlement administration division. Primarily as a result of the historically mild winter weather this year, we also saw frequency declines in our North American and U.K. regions from last year's first quarter. As we have discussed our expectations coming into 2012 were the revenues relating to the special project in our legal settlement administrations segment would taper. We began to see volume declines in the fourth quarter of 2011 and again in the 2012 first quarter. In the first quarter, Crawford's GCG Subsidiary was awarded a role to provide administration services in the recently announced class action surrounding the Gulf oil settlement. We are pleased to advise that last week the court confirmed that appointment. And obviously we are excited about once being again begin selected to work on this very important special project. Second, continuing a trend we saw in the fourth quarter, the weather in the first quarter was the mildest in history in North America and milder than expected on a global basis. Our U.S., Canada, and U.K. businesses saw claims intake decline as milder weather affected volumes. On the encouraging side, in Broadspire, we have been focusing on business development and cost control measures for the past several quarters. We have seen continued progress on both fronts during 2012, and we're pleased to generate a positive operating earnings in Broadspire during the 2012 first quarter. We are committed to delivering sequential quarterly operating improvements in our Broadspire operation as we work to return it to the sustained level of profitability. The turnaround of Broadspire is one of the key objectives for our management team. And we are encouraged by our progress thus far. That concludes my initial remarks and I will discuss the business unit operations after Bruce has reviewed the financials. Bruce, would you please review the company's overall performance for the first quarter.

Companywide revenues before reimbursements in the 2012 first quarter were $267.8 million, down 6% from $285 million in the prior year's first quarter. Our net income attributable to Crawford and Company, totaled $6.1 million in the 2012 first quarter, decreasing 50% from $12.1 million in the 2011 period. First quarter 2012, diluted earnings per share were $0.12 for CRDA and $0.11 for CRDB compared to earnings per share for each class of $0.23 in the 2011 period. During the 2012 first quarter, the company recorded a pre-tax charge of $890,000 related to a project to outsource certain aspects of its U.S. technology infrastructure. The company expects this project to continue through the 2012 third quarter with additional pretax costs of approximately $2.1 million expected. This special charge decreased earnings per share by $0.01 in the 2012 first quarter. There were no special charges in the 2011 quarter. The company's selling, general and administrative expenses or SG&A, totaled $55.7 million or 20.8% of revenues in the 2012 first quarter, decreasing slightly from $56 million or 19.6% of revenues in the prior year quarter. This decrease in cost is primarily to due to lower professional indemnity self-insurance expense, partially offset by an increase in travel costs. SG&A expenses increased as percent of revenues, primarily due to the anticipated drop in quarter-over-quarter revenues associated with the GCCF special project in our legal settlement administration segment. In the 2012 first quarter, the company paid a higher dividend on its CRDA common stock than on its CRDB shares. This dividend differential can result in different earnings per share for each class of stock, due to the 2-class method of computing EPS as required by current accounting guidance. References to EPS in this call will generally be only for CRDB, as that is the more diluted…

Thanks, Bruce. Our revenue in cases increased sequentially for the group versus the fourth quarter 2011. But decreased against the first quarter of 2011. Reflecting the mildest winter weather and event environment in the U.S. and Canada in history. For the quarter, group case volume decreased 12% and revenue decline 6%. The difference between the first quarter 2012 and 2011 revenue reflects the industry wide swings in claims volumes driven by high levels of weather and event losses a year ago. And the unexpected very low levels through the most recent quarter. Secondly, consolidated revenues reflect the anticipated GCCF reduction and overall volumes as we have discussed earlier. We have also seen an improvement in the Broadspire segment where worker's compensation claims increased 9.8% in the quarter. And in the quarter our client retention rate was extremely high at 98.1%. While the overall claims frequency at Broadspire slowed, primarily due to casualty case volumes, it is important to note that the client relationships remain solid with external validation of quality and performance. Let me now turn to the outlook for each of our business units starting with the America segment, which represents 29% of our consolidated revenues year-to-date. Following a strong claims frequency pattern in early 2011, the U.S. saw claims frequency decrease in the fourth quarter due to a lack of weather events. The first quarter 2012 frequency has increased only slightly from the fourth quarter 2011 levels. In the U.S., as clients are reporting substantially reduced frequency in the first quarter, we have responded by imposing strict control on expenses. Some bright spots for the U.S. P&C in 2012 are as follows: The U.S. P&C group has invested in resources for our casualty services business and we are growing in this area through new client wins. Our continually…

[Operator instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Mark Hughes with SunTrust.

The U.S. business, how quickly can that get back up to sort of a historical levels of profitability. Do we need top line to bounce back sharply or can we do that on the cost control?

I think it's a mixture of both, but I mean, we're actively managing the cost in the operation at this moment and we're obviously converting a lot of fixed cost to variable cost as we change some of the operational procedures. But I think it's just worth pointing out Mark that this weather pattern we're in at the moment is outside of any trend that we've seen before and whilst it lasts for a while, it's been outside of where even we saw it when we put it in our planning for 2012 based on historical trends so that's given us, as I said earlier, an unexpected challenge that we didn't quite project nor could anybody. We have clients who are reporting anything between 20% and 40% lower volumes and you can see that in some of our clients' first quarter results as they come in. But I think we are working very hard to get that unit where the cost and the revenue match and they give us a profit to come forward with.

Is that lower claims activity the key point in your comment about certain clients I think in the U.K., in-sourcing some of their claims? Is it just they didn't have as many claims and more of them they handled internally and didn't need to outsource.

I think the U.K. is a slightly different model to the U.S. The U.S -- the U.K. has been 2 changes. One is obviously they've had incredibly benign weather. And secondly, there is a slight trend towards in-sourcing in some of the major operations, but we are attacking that market very hard. We've got new client wins that we expect to announce in the next couple of quarters as well to offset that. And we've got a very active transformation program ongoing in the U.K. But I do think the weather just contributed to it this year especially over the large surge that we had in the business last.

Right. The Broadspire had a nice result this quarter. Would we anticipate continuing sequential improvement? Is there any kind of seasonality that would influence the progression from Q1 to Q2 and was that new contract [ph] wins? I know you said the claims frequency had slowed somewhat in the quarter. Just a little more on the Broadspire.

Well, it slowed on the casualty claims. Increased on the worker's comp claims. I think it's a compendium of a number of events. It's technology. We announced in the fourth quarter that we had consolidated onto the RiskTech platform, 1.2 was released in early part of December. Technology is having an effect. Reputation, I think the Broadspire team has done a fantastic job on getting the reputation with our clients. We've recently just come back from the RIMS Conference where we had a very good RIMS -- meeting a lot of our clients at that particular event and we're getting a lot of accolades for our technology and our quality that's coming out of it. Thirdly, we had a sustained cost control program in the Broadspire operating and that will continue until we get that sustainable revenue to profit percentage that we're trying to achieve. And then the other issue really is around just effectively winning new business. And I think our team here is doing a good job on pushing that forward and that really affected the first quarter because we've got our costs very much under control and we know that stabilization has come around. So I think it's a compendium of all of those.

All right. The class action suit, it sounds like you've been very successful on that front. Is there any way to size those for us? I know it's still early but if you look at your base of legal settlement business sort of pre-Gulf spill, how does the size of it compare now? How will it compare when these new contracts get up and running?

We've been very successful at winning programs. If you're saying what is the re-balancing without the GCCF project, I mean we don't report on the individual business units. I mean I think as we've said before, the bankruptcy and the class action market are challenging. There's a lot of competitive pressure there but we've -- our team is working very well in terms of really producing and bringing in those individual programs that have been certified. I think over the next year or 2 there is a pent up number that should start to get certified from coming out from some of the filings that have happened over the past 2 years. But the actual business is very well run by the team there and I think we have a market leading solution.

And your next question comes from the line of Chris Leikhim with William Blair.

I was just hoping to follow up quickly on the new claims projects that you got for the Gulf Coast. Are you expecting revenues to start hitting next quarter or is there going to be a delay before it starts impacting results?

I'll just take it from a historical point of view and I'll let Bruce go through the revenue. We've gone very recently from the GCCF historically, from GCCF to a transitional facility which is then gone into the new facility which as of last week is really a little bit of an unknown quantity to us. And we've got a lot of people working on that project. The outcome whilst we think it is significant is really difficult to project in terms of revenue at this moment.

Okay. And then in terms of the interest expense. I know you mentioned it. Is there any color behind that and should we expect that level going forward for the rest of the year?

Yes, Chris. In the fourth quarter of 2011 we refinanced our credit agreement and we went from a syndicated term loan to an all over revolver facility and we lowered the cost of our debt significantly in the process. This lower interest expense was expected and based on our current levels of borrowings we should see a similar result as we go throughout the year.

[Operator instructions] And there are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back over to Mr. Bowman for closing remarks.

Thank you. Thank you very much for your time and questions this afternoon. I'd like to thank everyone for joining us and wish you all a great rest of the week. Thank you and goodbye.

Thank you for participating in today’s Crawford and Company conference call. This call will be available for replay beginning at 6:00 p.m. today through 11:59 p.m. on May 18, 2012. The conference ID number for the replay is 75202295. The number to dial for the replay is 1 (855) 859-2056 or (404) 537-3406. Thank you. You may now disconnect.