The Hanover Insurance Group, Inc. (NYSE:THG) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Jack Roche: Well, let me let Dick comment on that, because I think if you watched us over the last few years, we’ve managed this particularly well in a pretty dynamic pricing environment. And so being an account writer, I think that gives us a little bit more stability than those that are writing monoline home and monoline auto tends to stabilize retentions. But Dick, why don’t you share a few things.

Dick Lavey: This is at the heart of our state management and actuarial science and what we spend every waking moment of the day looking at price, the price retention trade-off, by state, by customer segment. We have profit pools that we obviously know of and want to protect. So, we watch those retention metrics very closely, and we make our pricing increases appropriate such that we protect those. So, I wouldn’t put a particular number on it per se. And as Jack referenced, we’re proud of our capabilities in this regard back in the pandemic times when others were reducing rates, and we were sticking with our higher level rates, we did see retention start to drop a little bit and made adjustments and we think quite effectively. So, with our account strategy, we like retention in the — certainly the mid- to high-80s. So that’s certainly a barometer that we’ll watch closely.

Bob Farnam: Right. Okay. Thanks for that. And probably one last numbers question for Jeff. Just — you keep mentioning that the new money rates are in excess of expiring. So, can you just give us what the actual new money rate is these days?

Jeff Farber: We haven’t shared that. I guess treasuries are moving around so quickly, but I would suspect it’s somewhere in the 4.75% range, something like that or to 5%, somewhere in that range.

Bob Farnam: Okay. Great. Thanks for the questions — thanks for the answers, guys.

Jack Roche: Thank you.

Jeff Farber: Thank you, Bob.

Operator: Our next question will come from Paul Newsome with Piper Sandler. You may now go ahead.

Paul Newsome: Good morning, guys, and thanks for the call, all the help. I am getting a question from investors today that sort of surprises me, but I wanted to ask it is more of a philosophical question, maybe a little bit question, which is — it sounds like you folks are, what I would expect, focusing primarily on profitability improvements. I guess philosophical question is, philosophically, why do you think in this part of the cycle, you should be — you shouldn’t be focused more on top-line growth in the various businesses? I think this is mostly coming from people looking at Personal Lines where they think price increases are pretty heavy and maybe we’re seeing a reduction in competition. But just philosophically, how do you guys think about that?

Jack Roche: Well, Paul, I actually appreciate the question because I think that is the appropriate question given the business we’re in. And I think of growth really over a multiyear basis. The best underwriters in our business are able to generate good returns and grow ahead of the market over a period of time. And that is our aspiration. You saw that in our September 2021 aspirational goals. I think this year, we have the proper humility coming out of 2022 that the combination of hyperinflation and a challenging storm in the last two weeks of the year caused us to want to be a little bit more cautious with regard to growth rates and make darn certain that we can get our margins back on track and be a top-tier performer like we’ve been accustomed to being.

And we know we have plenty of headroom. So, I have complete confidence that as we see our margins improve and the environment play out the way we hope it will, that we have all the capability as a firm to elevate our growth back to where we were, and we can balance growth and profitability quite well as a firm.