Mario Rizzo: Yes, thanks Tom, and thanks for the question, Paul. First thing, I would reiterate what Tom said. We continue to view our claims capabilities as a competitive differentiator and a source of real value for Allstate. We think that’s been €“ certainly been true in the past and it’ll continue to be true going forward. The reality is given the environment we’re operating in, both from a casualty perspective as well as physical damage, we’ve talked a lot throughout the year around the drivers of inflation and the things that are driving up loss costs at such a rapid pace. And I think what that does is it really forces us and the industry to continue to evolve those practices. And it’s certainly something we’ve done overtime to continue to maintain in our leadership position and our edge when it comes to claims.
So let me just spend a minute and I’ll break out casualty versus physical damage. In terms of the action plans, we talk a lot about changing operational processes. I’ll say a couple things starting with casualty first. One of the things we’ve done over the past 12 plus months is we’ve meaningfully reduced the volume of pending bodily injury claims by about 20%. And what that does is it reduces risk of both of inflation impacting those claims that certainly that we’ve settled and remediated going forward. But also reduces we think reserve uncertainty on those claims going forward. And to just give you a sense of context, the current level of bodily injury pending claims in aggregate is at its lowest level that it’s been since before 2016. So we’ve looked to de-risk the bodily injury pending portfolio by leaning in and settling claims.
We’re also focusing on a strategy that I would characterize as an earlier strategy when it comes to bodily injury. Things like earlier recognition of injury claims, earlier claimant contact and earlier settlement of claims that we should settle quickly again to avoid the inflationary risk in the current environment. And what we’re doing is we’re leveraging our advanced data and analytics capabilities to execute on all components of that strategy to continue to evolve and get better in casualty claim handling. On the physical damage side, I think it’s really around, broadly continuing to focus on estimation accuracy cycle time and leveraging €“ further leveraging our scale to the fullest extent. It’s continuing to increase the utilization of our good hands repair network to reduce costs, both in terms of parts and labor costs and improve cycle time while continuing to improve or provide a high quality customer experience.
Enhancing total loss processes to reduce cycle time and reduce costs around things like storage and rental costs and identification of preexisting damage on vehicles, again, to move total losses through the system more rapidly. And then continuing to look to leverage our scale additionally when it comes to sourcing parts and getting as efficient as we can from a process perspective. So we’re really attacking claims across a number of fronts. Again, feel really good about where we’re positioned with claims. And this is all about continuing to get better and maintain that industry leading capability on the claim side.
Operator: Thank you. One moment
Paul Newsome: Is there any difference in how you handle claims across the distribution systems at this point that would vary the execution of claims?
Mario Rizzo: This is Mario. Yes, sure. I’ll jump in. Process wise, we adopt consistent processes across claims. There’s certainly unique processes. For example, in National General, given the non-standard auto mix, there’s just a different approach to those claims because they potentially have a higher risk of fraud. So there’s some unique processes there. But in terms of claim handling consistency for similar types of claims, we tend to leverage best practices across brands.
Paul Newsome: Great. Thank you for your help as always. Really appreciate it.
