Cincinnati Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:CINF) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Grace Carter: Good morning. I’m thinking about the guidance for 8% plus premium growth in 2023. Like we keep hearing about potential for a macro slowdown. I was just wondering if you could go over the macro assumptions that underpin that guidance.

Steve Johnston: Yeah. That’s a good point. At 13% for this year, that’s the highest percentage growth in net rent premium we’ve had it since Insurance since 2001. And so we do recognize that there could be a slowdown. We’re not predicting that necessarily or giving guidance on it, but it’s possible as you point out, we want to be disciplined in our underwriting. Profit always comes first with us. And so our guidance is for a little bit less than what it was this year, but we are still very optimistic across all of our business areas in terms of the growth that we’re seeing, the relationship we have with our agents, the technology we have, the models that we have, we feel very bullish about growth, but we did temper back a little bit from where we are for the full year, just to be cognizant of the points that you bring up, even though I wouldn’t say that we’re predicting it for sure.

Grace Carter: Thank you. And looking at the attritional loss ratios for commercial property and homeowners in the quarter, they were a bit improved versus the first nine months of the year. So I was just wondering, if there is any sort of change in trend regarding frequency or severity that you’ve observed for those lines or if this is just kind of normal variability just given the volatility of those lines can see?

Steve Johnston: Grace, I’m sure there is some of that volatility that you can see, but I also know there’s a lot of hard work that’s been going on in addressing property. And it predates our addressing and say umbrella, for example. And it’s nice to see the hard work of our underwriters and really everybody throughout the company chipping in here in terms of underwriting, loss control, pricing. And I do think it’s paying off.

Grace Carter: Thank you.

Steve Johnston: Thank you.

Operator: And our next question will come from Mike Zaremski with BMO. Please go ahead. Hello, Mike. Perhaps your line is muted.

Mike Zaremski: Sorry. Thanks for seeking me in. So I’m just going back to thinking about the combined ratio goals for the company. Are there specific lines of business you’d like to call out and maybe they’re obvious, maybe it’s commercial casualty and commercial property both. But were there kind of the most wood to chop when we’re thinking about improving the combined ratio in outer years? I guess when we look at the pricing disclosure that you offer us the mid-single digit plus numbers. The pricing, I guess, isn’t at levels that are, I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong, are like extremely high levels relative to inflationary levels. So just kind of curious where you feel you have the most wood to chop over the coming couple of years.

Steve Johnston: Yeah. We haven’t provided that any lower than at the company-wide level. And it’s really because it’s a big team effort. Every one of our operating areas is focused on profit improvement, and we’re seeing it across the board from underwriting to claims to loss control in the pricing and underwriting part of it. We are reflecting on the property in the exposure, the increase in inflation. We are trying to reflect that. And we’re also getting a pure net rate on top of that and really feel that with our accident year ex cat wood is and the underwriting that we’re doing in terms of cat exposure and geographic diversification that we’re in a good spot to hit the numbers that we gave in the comments.