The Travelers Companies, Inc. (NYSE:TRV) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Jeffrey Klenk: Yeah, Andrew. This is Jeff Klink. So relative to D&O and cyber, public D&O pricing continues to be, I’d say, more pressured relative to the other liability lines. I would remind you that for public D&O and our management liability book, we’re relatively underweight there, that’s not been a major area of focus for us. On the cyber side, we continue to see some modest negative pricing there, I think, given some broader market perception on the returns in the line. Again, we feel really good about our execution there. We closely monitor our return profiles and are comfortable with our execution, both for those lines of business and management liability problem.

Andrew Kligerman: Got it. Great. And along the same lines in Business Insurance with regard to workers’ comp, I was wondering if you could put some numbers around that paid medical severity higher than the benign numbers you were seeing during the pandemic. I think that was in response to Meyer’s question. And then the same question on the pricing of workers’ comp. What are you thinking about going into 2024 as you proceed?

Dan Frey: Hey, Andrew. It’s Dan. So I’ll start and disappoint you on the work comp severity. So we’re not going to put a number on it. But again, it’s been benign. We’ve seen some of those numbers move up, but your starting point matters. So what you assumed medical severity was going to be inside of your overall loss pick. Pick really matters in terms of whether a move-up is problematic for you or not. And again, we saw more favorable reserve development this quarter. And then in terms of pricing, and I’ll turn it to Greg. I think the returns in comp have continued to be good. So pure rate has continued to be slightly negative for us. We are getting strong exposure increases, Greg referenced in the select comments a few minutes ago, that’s the poster child for where a lot of that exposure behaves like rate because it’s the same worker just earning a higher wage and we’re getting paid a higher price for it.

The rating agencies, the bureaus are looking at their data on a lagging basis and until returns come under some pressure in work comp, we wouldn’t be surprised to see this environment stay pretty steady.

Andrew Kligerman: Perfect.

Operator: Thank you. I will now turn the conference over to Ms. Abbe Goldstein for closing remarks.

Abbe Goldstein: Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. We appreciate your time. And as always, if there’s any follow-up, please feel free to reach out. Have a great day.

Operator: This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect.