The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc. (NYSE:HIG) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Jonathan Bennett: Sure. In terms of our sales, good numbers in there, yes. Sometimes late in the year you get opportunistically a sale or two. A lot of our business trades in the first quarter. And then some other big numbers will happen oftentimes in at the beginning of the third or maybe the fourth quarter, but so some nice numbers for us in the quarter. Strong disability results for us, I would say, primarily and we continue to see really good response to our voluntary, our supplemental health product set. So, those would include critical illness, hospital indemnity, and accident. And that book has been building for us steadily now for a number of years and had our highest sales numbers in 2022 since inception of those programs. So, I think those are the ones that are really driving at disability and sub health. We continue to compete effectively on the life side, but definitely a stronger mix on the disability and self-help side.

Andrew Kligerman: Okay, thanks a lot.

Chris Swift: Thank you, Andrew.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Meyer Shields of KBW. Meyer, your line is now open.

Meyer Shields: Great. Thanks. Good morning all. Broadly speaking, can you talk about your for allocating more investments to LPs and alternatives over the next few years given the higher interest rate environment?

Chris Swift : Meyer, I had a hard time hearing your question. I don’t know if Beth, if you heard the question. Were you asking about the investment philosophy of alternatives or dollar amounts?

Meyer Shields: So, really just the plans. I was thinking about it on a percentage basis, whether there is more or less appetite for current cash flows to go to alternatives in LPs?

Chris Swift: I would say generally we have our targeted portfolio that we update every year. And I would say generally we had a slight increase to our targeted alternatives. Think of a percent. So, not a meaningful change, but it’s something we have really deep skills in. And I think if you look at our performance over a longer period of time, Meyer, you’ll see that I think we’ve outperformed consistently with just lower volatility. So, from a pure sharpen ratio side, I think it’s a great trade and we got great partners in that area, particularly in the real estate area, Beth. But what would you add?

Beth Costello: I think you captured it well. I mean, it’s an asset class that we’ve been slowly increasing allocation to. And as Chris said, continue to look to do that, but really not in a meaningful change in the overall construct of our portfolio, but as you said, it’s an asset class that we’ve been very pleased with.

Meyer Shields: Okay. That’s helpful. And obviously, this is overwhelmed by positive news, but we’ve had a few quarters of adverse development for commercial auto liability, I was hoping you could talk us through that.

Beth Costello: Yes. So, we have experienced some large losses that have come through in that book that as we’ve closed the last several quarters we’ve decided to increase our reserves there. It is a line also that we’re looking very closely at from a rate perspective and continuing to re-underwrite and look at the risks that we’re putting on. So, nothing specific that I’d point to, but we have had just a few large losses that we’ve reacted to as we made our quarter-end judgments on reserves.

Meyer Shields: Okay, perfect. Thank you very much.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from David Motemaden from Evercore. David, your line is now open.