The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc. (NYSE:HIG) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Stephanie Bush : Hi, Tracy. I think about personal auto is largely the rate, and I appreciate your comments. Really, our results that we were able to realize, and from a rate perspective, is largely driven by the loss results are evident and they’re fully supportable in our filings. We have strong relationships with the regulators and then it was just truly outstanding execution by the team. But if I take you over to homeowners, how Chris described it that is a combination of both rate and then what we’re seeing in terms of the inflationary factors. And you bring those two together, and that gave us the 14.1.

Tracy Benguigui: Okay. Yeah, it was more on personal auto. I appreciate that. In Group Benefits, specifically to stability, could you see yourself being more competitive on pricing at one-one renewals, given what you said historically low long-term disability incidence trends and favorable claims recovery?

Chris Swift: I’m going to have Jonathan add his commentary, but the market is pretty competitive and pretty efficient. So I don’t think we have to make a conscious decision to be more competitive on price. We have our targets. Obviously, we’ll reflect new disability trends, both incidents and terminations for that cohort. We do expect a reversion to the mean there, Tracy. So that will put some upward pressure on pricing just from where we are today. But I wouldn’t say there’s a conscious mindset at 1/1/24 to do anything different than we’ve been doing in the past. But Jonathan, what would you say?

Jonathan Bennett : I would agree with that, Chris. I think that’s the outlook that we bring to the market. We can talk about when we look forward into 2024, we find the market to be competitive all the time. I don’t feel as though there’s any particular change in the nature of competition in the market. And for us, a fair portion of our book is upmarket, larger accounts, and there’s credibility in the data often by account there. And so we’re looking at those trends on an account-specific basis and have been doing that, continue to do that. That’s the way we compete in the marketplace. And so I think that we factor all of this insight into those selections. So I don’t think there’s any particular change. And if the underlying question is, is this a moment of drop pricing and to grow aggressively?

That’s not the outlook The Hartford brings really in any of its lines of business. So the discipline is there. It remains there. And our efforts are to continue to grow the book profitably and to make sure that we take care of our clients in a world-class fashion.

Tracy Benguigui: And you did mention reversion of the mean. If you had a crystal ball, when will you see that happening?

Chris Swift: We’ll tell you when we get there, Tracy.

Tracy Benguigui: Okay.

Chris Swift: I mean, we price for a reversion. Obviously, we hope it’s somewhat different given just the economic conditions. But I don’t know when the realized reversion to the mean will actually happen, but we got to be prepared for it.

Tracy Benguigui: Thank you.

Jonathan Bennett : Yeah. I think that’s a fair summary, Chris. And our pricing methodology includes a multiyear view of trend. And I think in that, Chris, as we’re thinking about it, we see that incidence levels are likely to be increasing overtime. But I think that horizon is always something that we’re working on and debating here ourselves and thinking about the right way to position ourselves in the market from a pricing standpoint.

Operator: And we will take our final question from Yaron Kinar with Jefferies. Your line is open.

Yaron Kinar : Thank you. Good morning. I want to go back to some of the reserve commentary earlier on the call. Can you maybe talk a little more about accident years ’16 through ’19? I think a lot of investors are honed in on those years specifically, and what you’re seeing there for lines like GL and like maybe financial lines as well.