Steve Zabel: Yes. I would say a normal run rate for that business is anywhere between 45% and 50% benefit ratio. That’s pretty consistent with what our estimates would be. It’s performed very well over the last few quarters. And I’d say it’s been broad-based. There hasn’t been one product lying that’s significantly over performed. It’s just that all of them are running pretty well right now. But longer term, but more closer to 50%, I think, would be our expectation. But feel great about how they’ve been performing over the last few quarters. I just kind of step back and you think about over the last three years, the Colonial business has been extremely stable from a profitability perspective and has really aided us and provided stability both in our statutory earnings as well as our GAAP earnings. So I just feel really good about that business.
Mark Hughes: And then the sales within Colonial that accident visibility, the core product this quarter down a point, a little bit softer than what we saw earlier in the year. Anything to that?
Rick McKenney: Do you have some commentary, Tim?
Tim Arnold: Yes, thanks, Rick, and Mark, I appreciate the question. Let me step back and first I’ll start talking about the market opportunity. We still see very strong interest in voluntary business products for employers. They are dealing with wage pressure and still trying to attract talent. And I appreciate the question earlier about the job market and whether unemployment is a factor, we’re not seeing that yet at all. In fact, we’re still seeing employers having a good peak more talent and as wage pressure is an issue for them, they turn benefits. A recent Ernst & Young survey said 58% of employers benefits to being very, very important in terms of attracting the employees and pretty voluntary benefits. And when you think about employees, that same survey said 47% of millennials who are our largest customer segment at the moment, view the benefits available at work as being more important than they were before the pandemic.
But they also want education around their benefits and employee wise pretty uniquely position provide that education across the benefit portfolio, including products that we do offer. There have been some headwinds coming out of pandemic small businesses were significantly impacted by the pandemic, and they represent about 75% of Colonial Life. Customer base going into the pandemic, nearly 100% of our sales occurred physically face-to-face. Thankfully, we have the tools and technology to enable people to enroll digitally, and through telephone and other means, and so now that number is actually down to about 40% that are digital, 60% face-to-face. So we’ve been able to deal with it for the most part. As was pointed out earlier on the Colonial Life side, you don’t really get the benefit of natural growth, and there have been some recruiting headwinds.
But let me pivot talk about why we’re excited about the future. We have a number of technology solutions currently being introduced, including modern enrollment and benefits administration platform that we’re seeing really strong excitement in our field force around that. We introduced the opportunity in certain market segments. We’re agents to begin marketing group employer paid products, which we think is a significant advantage in the marketplace. A number of years ago, we introduced an agent productivity tools, we’ve invested in significant enhancements to that tool, and we see strong adoption and utilization of it. So we ended the year with 6% sales growth a little bit below our long-term expectations. But given everything that we just talked about, we’re excited about the future.
We’re really pleased, as Steve pointed out earlier, that we’re about a point ahead in total premium of where we were going in to pandemic. I hope that gets to your question, Mark. Thank you.
Rick McKenney: Thanks Mark.
Mark Hughes: Thank you for that.
Operator: Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Ryan Krueger from KBW. Please go ahead, your line is now open.
