The Travelers Companies, Inc. (NYSE:TRV) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Michael Klein: Yes. Elyse, I think we are not going to get into specifics on frequency and severity assumptions for next year. I think what we have talked about pretty consistently is we have been booking to the loss experience that we have seen, those booked trends remain double digit as we talk €“ as we sit here today, talking about the fourth quarter. And again, we have pretty consistently talked about observing double-digit severity trends in the book. Frankly, that’s a property comment and an auto comment. And is the severity and loss pressure that we are contending with. And we have also said that we have been factoring those increased costs into our expectations, both in terms of the actual experience and our outlook. But I don’t think we are going to put a number on the forecast severity and frequency trends beyond that.

Elyse Greenspan: Then on the reinsurance program, can you give us a sense of €“ an absolute sense of how much your reinsurance costs went up? And then on the capital side, as you guys have added more volatility right by retaining additional cat losses in €˜23, how could that affect your capital allocation? What should we expect slower buyback in the second quarter and third quarter? And could this even impact the excess capital that you would have for new business growth?

Dan Frey: So, a couple of things, Elyse, it’s Dan. We are not going to go into the details of reinsurance pricing. What I was trying to communicate in my comments was when we consider the pricing that we are getting on the direct business that we are writing in our management and terms and conditions. We don’t expect the higher pricing for reinsurance to have much of an impact on our margins. And again, the change in the overall treaty, I don’t think it’s going to have a significant impact on our capital position, I really think of it as sort of business as usual. We made the comment that the attachment employee increase is sort of in line with our increase in property premiums. So, the attachment point went up 16% or 17%. Our premium volume in 2022 compared to 2021 was up 15% or 16% or 17% in both business insurance and personal insurance I don’t think it’s going to have a dramatic impact on €“ it does not have a significant impact on our view of capital adequacy now.

And I don’t think it’s going to have a significant impact on the way you see us behave from a capital perspective in 2023.

Elyse Greenspan: Thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from Meyer Shields from ABW.

Meyer Shields: Thanks. Good morning all. A quick question on, I guess the quota share arrangement. Can you talk about €“ and I am putting this as binary, and it’s probably not. But can you talk about why Travelers is going through sort of quota share arrangements to capitalize on the hard property market as opposed to your own excess and surplus science paper?

Alan Schnitzer: Yes. Meyer, it’s we have got all the flexibility in our property business and in our other businesses with E&S paper and otherwise to do whatever it is we want to do. This was an opportunity for us to work a little bit more closely with Fidelis. We think they are interesting in what they do and wanted to understand it a little bit better. And they are in some businesses that we just haven’t historically been in. And so in cases like that, it’s not the only place we have done it. But in cases like that, we look to leverage the capabilities of other talented underwriters and this is just one of those opportunities.