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

Tracy Benguigui: Okay. Would you think that pollution exclusion in GL is broad based enough that it could include PFAS?

Chris Swift: What I would say in PFAS is obviously it’s nothing new. We’ve been monitoring the exposures for many, many years. All the known exposure we have and discussion with our clients is included in our evaluation quarterly for reserving, and we make adjustments as we deem necessary. And also part of our A&E cover that we’ve done with national indemnity, the pollution portion of PFAS, not the bodily injury portion, but the pollution portion is available to be seated to that cover.

Tracy Benguigui: Awesome. Just a really quick numbers question. It looks like personal auto your [indiscernible] decline year-over-year sequentially that makes sense given all the price increases. Why then is your retention going up? Is that a timing difference or something else?

Chris Swift: Yes. The honest answer is it’s – obviously it’s a calculation. Some of it could be influenced by our six-month policy trend versus 12 months. But I’ll have Susan follow-up with you on the details of the calculation.

Tracy Benguigui: Thanks a lot.

Operator: Our last question will come from Yaron Kinar from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Yaron Kinar: Thank you. Good morning. Chris, in your opening comments, you reiterated confidence in the 14% to 15% ROE. Obviously, we talked about the pressure we’re seeing in personal auto, so it sounds like you do have some offsets or areas where you’re – you think you’ll be better than original guidance. I realize you don’t really like talking or updating guidance over the course of the year. But would be curious as to where you are seeing – where you’re more optimistic relative to your original targets?

Chris Swift: Well, Yaron, what I would say is, there’s a lot of good things that are happening across the platform. Two of our biggest lines are performing well and probably better than we expected workers’ comp and disability. If I look at our investment portfolio, as far as yield maybe slightly above where we planned. I think that’ll contribute. I think there will be a normalization of our non-CAT property losses that we talked about. We’re out of the aviation war business, so that tail should be less impactful. So I put those components to there. And even with the ongoing pressures which I admit are continuing longer than we thought in personal lines. Personal lines is still a relatively small business and its overall contribution to ROE will be muted by it’s just by its size. So we continue to buy in shares, that we find attractive from a valuation side. So those are the component pieces I would share with you Yaron.

Yaron Kinar: Okay. I appreciate it. And I would just note that I think the two larger businesses as of today, at least first half of the year, seem to be tracking in line with full year guidance. So I guess it would suggest further improvement or maybe in some cases even significant further improvement from here?

Chris Swift: I’m going to resist talking about the future much more than I typically would.

Yaron Kinar: Fair enough. And then maybe a quick one for Beth. I think new money rates have actually been coming down the last two quarters if I look at Slide 13 of the presentation, can you maybe talk about that?