ProAssurance Corporation (NYSE:PRA) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Matt Carletti: I was hoping you could just give us a little more color around the competitive environment, just trying to get a feel for two things. One is, when you guys are competing for business is it one or two kind of aggressive outliers that are garnering market share or are you guys the outlier on the high end and most of the rest of the market that is less interested in making a profit? And then when you do win business, you guys are obviously very well known for kind of your reputation of standing by your insureds and defending them. In the past, I think you’ve talked about how there is some amount, people willing to pay for that. Did you find that’s the same now or better or worse?

Ned Rand: Yes. So I guess on the first question around the competitive environment, I don’t think the environment is kind of symmetrical as you’re hoping to make it. It really is almost down to a risk-by-risk difference and who competes on a particular risk can be driven by geography, it can be driven by the type of risk that it has. Kind of echo what Rob said earlier, we are beginning to see kind of larger carriers that are showing greater price discipline, but we continue to have a number of very well-capitalized mutual companies that are willing to chase price down to levels that we think don’t make a lot of sense and kind of who is getting involved in any one risks, it’s going to vary. So, sometimes we are going to be the outlier because we’re going to be the higher price, we do see that frequently.

I think that’s in part why you see an 83% retention in the quarter. And other times, we are going to find risk, where our service model allows us to charge a higher price and sell. The insureds that we are selling to today are different in a lot of ways from the insureds of 10-plus years ago, and so the value proposition can and does change for larger, more complicated insureds, the hospital systems are very, very large groups of physicians, that defense are very valuable, especially and just our ability to work up claims even if they’re not going to go to trial, just the diligence that our claims team puts into understanding and researching and finding experts around claims, continues to add value even if you don’t plan to go to trial, but the desire to go to trial across the entire book I’d say is less today than it was 10 years ago.

Matt Carletti: Okay, fair enough. Thank you very much.

Ned Rand: Yes. Thanks, Matt.

Operator: This concludes our Q&A. I’ll now hand back to Dana Hendricks, CFO, for closing remarks.

Dana Hendricks: Hi. Well, thank you to everyone that joined us today. We look forward to speaking with you again on next quarter’s conference call.

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, today’s call has now concluded. We like to thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.