XL Capital Ltd. chief executive officer Michael McGavick told an investor conference yesterday that the business insurer's management team is "at the end of the beginning" after a year of strong recovery.

Speaking at the Goldman Sachs US Financial Services Conference, Mr. McGavick said the Bermuda-based business insurer was now focused on "being the best".

"Clearly the last year has been very kind to us," Mr. McGavick said. "We've more than doubled our book value and we've seen the sixfold increase in our stock price and these are very gratifying things in and of themselves to be sure.

"But I would tell you that we just feel, as the management team, we are at the end of the beginning. We didn't gather at XL to just navigate what went on last fall. We gathered to bring XL back to being one of the great insurance and reinsurance franchises in the world."

XL was hard hit in 2008 by its exposure to the sub-prime mortgage crisis through then affiliate bond insurer Security Capital Assurance, now known as Syncora Holdings. Investment losses compounded the problems and XL posted a net loss of $2.6 billion in 2008.

This year the company has trimmed its global work force, de-risked its investment portfolio and its situation has stabilised. In afternoon trading yesterday, XL shares were priced at $17.75, up 380 percent in the year to date.

Having recently returned from a tour of XL's operations around the world, Mr. McGavick said: "Right now, we are basically in a very internally focused phase, having stabilised the franchise, having got lots of noise behind us, we're really focused on making sure our underwriting teams understand what their objectives are and how to navigate a soft market. Believe me, we had the soft market play book out and are acting on it."

XL was reorganising to embed accountability more deeply into the organisation, Mr. McGavick added.

On the investment portfolio, the CEO said XL was at the end of de-risking. He added: "There is no one source of loss that keeps us up at night even though we are not quite where we want to be.

"The progress is sufficient now that we are focused on getting the portfolio just right as opposed to the maps of de-risking we were engaged in for the rest of the year."

In December 2008, XL suffered downgrades from Standards and Poor's and Fitch, in both cases from A+ to A.

Talks with the credit rating agencies were continuing "on a very consistent basis", Mr. McGavick said. "We continued to argue from the front foot that the changes that have been made now make it impossible that some negative outcomes will take place and that's our view."

XL's was maintaining high underwriting standards and walking away from business it considered underpriced, Mr. McGavick said. "We were about a $3 billion reinsurer three years ago. And we're right about $1.7 billion this year. That's purely on price."