The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc. (NYSE:HIG) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Greg Peters: Fair enough. That’s good detail. I wanted to pivot for my second follow-up question to your comments around technology. You spoke about Generative AI, you spoke about the initiatives ongoing at the company. And then I’m looking at the Hartford Next slide too. So I guess what I’m curious about is just the view on technology spend inside the organization seems like there’s always a lot more projects that you could spend money on, but you have to exercise some discipline. So can you talk to us about how you expect the budget for technology spend to evolve over the next 18 months or so?

Chris Swift: Yes. I’m happy to just give you high level commentary. Obviously, we will plan appropriately over the next three year on time horizon. But I would say, the Hartford Next program actually helped fund a lot of the investments that we continue to make today. So Beth, I would say, it’s been a successful program. It’s nearing its end. We do have a continuous improvement mind set. So there will always be opportunities to reduce expense and create greater efficiency, while continuing to invest thoughtfully in the next-generation of technologies. Broadly defined, Greg, I mean, we run sort of a constrained model. Everyone needs to compete for capital with appropriate IRs on their projects over a multi-year period. And that’s generally how we do it.

I think we’ve shared with you, we do expect a significant structural savings over a longer period of time, particularly as we take all our data and applications to the cloud. We’ll move about 100 apps to the cloud this year. Our Global Specialty business is completely in the cloud right now with all its business and data and apps. And that will generate meaningful savings. I would say probably Beth more 2025 and beyond because there is a little bit of an upfront invest. So yes, I’m really proud of the team and how thoughtful they are on creating the business strategies and then the linkage to technology to create that differentiation for us in the marketplace.

Greg Peters: Got it. Thank you for the answers.

Operator: Our next question comes from Brian Meredith from UBS. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Brian Meredith: Thanks. Hey, Chris. So one quick numbers question clarification on the commercial line side. Chris, I believe you said you think that the underlying margins and course lines should be stable or improve on a year-over-year basis and look through six months at about 60 basis points deterioration year-over-year. Do you still think that’s achievable?

Chris Swift: Greg, or excuse me, Brian. I’m looking at a underlying combined ratio on a six-month basis of 88.4 compared to 88.2 last year. So I don’t know where your math is, but that’s 20 basis points.

Brian Meredith: Look, I’m talking about loss ratio. I’m talking about loss ratio.

Chris Swift: Oh, excuse me.

Brian Meredith: Underlying loss ratio.

Chris Swift: Sorry, I’m putting the two together because as we just talked about, we are focused on expenses. So to not give us credit for it Brian, I think is just not proper. So I’m putting the two together and yes, as I said in my opening comments, when I put the two together, I – we are going to have year-over-year improvement from 88.3 last year to somewhere below that on a full year basis. So that’s all I’ll say.

Brian Meredith: Perfect. Perfect. No, that’s perfect. I appreciate that. Second question, just moving over to personal lines. I’m just curious from a claims perspective and personal auto, is there anything that you’re doing or can do to maybe help mitigate some of these inflationary trends that you’re seeing or catch it quicker in data and analytics? And also on that, are you seeing any difference? I know it’s really new, but any difference in the prevail experience versus your legacy book?