Assurant, Inc. (NYSE:AIZ) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

John Barnidge: That’s very helpful. I appreciate that. Earnings growth has been very strong. And my follow-up question, I’m not trying to get ahead of formal guidance coming in February, and I appreciate what you’ve offered today. But how do we think of reinsurance savings next year emerging on the book that’s being run off within Global Housing, juxtaposed against what’s fortunately, knock on wood, but somewhat favorable of a cat environment for you this year?

Keith Demmings: Yes. So maybe I’ll just offer one thought and then Richard can speak to the process. But to your point, we’ve obviously had a favorable cat year to this point, significantly below last year, and we talked about a target cat load of $140 million. We’re sitting at $89 million year-to-date. So obviously, that’s fortunate from that perspective and we’ll certainly look to those statistics as we talk to our partners heading into the renewal cycle and hopefully a little bit of a different environment than we were in last year. But Richard, maybe talk a little bit about how we’re thinking about reinsurance.

Richard Dziadzio: Yes. Thanks, Keith. Yes, in terms of the reinsurance, it’s a little bit early days to talk to specifically about it, but I think you hit it on the head in the question. The market has stabilized in terms of processing pricing, it has stabilized versus what it was in the last couple of years, so we’re going into better market conditions. I would say we’ll have a consistent approach that we’ve had in the last couple of years when we go into the market. And as Keith said, we’re entering the market, I would say, as one of the good guys in terms of we have not gone up into our past our retention levels to the reinsurers this year for the cat reinsurance. So we walk into the meetings, we’ll be there in presenting a very favorable position relative to the reinsurers, where they ended up in 2023.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Tommy McJoynt of KBW.

Tommy McJoynt-Griffith: I think you said, Keith said and this [indiscernible] for 2024 that you’re expecting more modest growth in housing in 2024. Just want to clarify that, that is still expecting growth? And then is that in reference or I guess some terminology excluding catastrophes or including catastrophes?

Keith Demmings: Yes, great question. So we’re looking at ex cat, first of all, obviously, hard to predict what cats are going to look like. But as I think about Housing in ’24, I think when we suggest modest growth, there’s a couple of things to remember. First of all, a phenomenal 2023. I mean this is a pretty significant recovery year, obviously, a little bit more challenged in ’22, but roaring back in 2023. So we’re extremely pleased about that. And of course, that trend line can’t continue because it’s been such a turnaround. But what I would say is we’ve also seen about $40 million of prior year development benefiting the P&L in 2023. But we still think we’ll grow housing even though we’ve got to grow through that $40 million of PYD before we generate $1 of growth, we still think we’ll grow Housing because of the momentum that we see and all the great work done by the team.

So that’s what we’re trying to signal. Obviously, we’ll get into the detailed forecast as we come back in February, but we do feel good about how we’re positioned, right? Housing obviously is going to moderate, but we’ve got great trend lines sitting behind us and great momentum. And then as we saw in Lifestyle in the third quarter, although we’ve got challenges we’re working through on the auto side, overall, we’re exactly where we thought we would be. We’re still signaling down modestly for the year. We are signaling growth in 2024 for Lifestyle, and we’ll come back with more details, but certainly driven by the strength of the U.S. Connected Living business, which has been growing nicely for 7 or 8 years.