W. R. Berkley Corporation (NYSE:WRB) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Robert Berkley: Yes. I mean you’ll see more detail when the Q comes out. And to the extent it leaves you scratching your head, we’re happy to catch up offline. But I would tell you, we feel very good about where our reserves are and we think they’re well positioned to endure some of the things that we think either are ahead of the industry. And again, I think there’s been a lot of chatter amongst some observers as to given all the rate we’ve gotten, why haven’t we dropped our loss ratios more and it’s because of all the uncertainty. So when the day is all done, do I think that we’re in a good place? Yes. When push comes to shove, if you look at the average duration of our loss reserves there, give or take, 3.5 years. So if you think about that and you think about what that probably means as far as how far along that ’16 through ’19 year is, those years are as far as development, I think that things are — that would suggest things are quieting down.

And of course, as far as the more recent years, we are feeling as though that they’re an exceptional place.

David Motemaden: Got it. And then maybe if I could just sneak one more in, just on that last point, the more recent years. I know you had mentioned on the last call that you guys have been measured in terms of how quickly you recognize the progress from 2020 onwards and that could have implications for how you think about loss picks as you make your way through 2023 and into next year. Have you updated this view at all? This most recent quarter, just thinking about some of the comments you made about lengthening tails on occurrence and claims-made form [ph].

Robert Berkley: Obviously, the tail comment has applicability in different ways to different product lines. I think some of the comments, if I recall correctly and maybe I’m mistaken, that you may be referring to would stem from policies that are written on a claims-made form. And when you write on a claims-made form and there is no notice, then that chapter is closed. So putting that aside, to the extent that you do have a notice or you have an occurrence form, then you need to spend some time thinking about how do I think about that tail extending or not. So we, as you would expect, bifurcate the book as we examine it in a variety of different ways and look at it at a very granular level. But I think perhaps what I was just referring to may touch on what you had been raising.

Operator: Your next question comes from Yaron Kinar with Jefferies.

Yaron Kinar: If we could look at the insurance underlying loss ratio, I think you said that the impact of the non-cat fire losses has diminished a bit year-over-year — or quarter-over-quarter, sorry. And I think that the overall year-over-year result was greater deterioration than what we had seen in the prior 2 quarters. So I guess what else is driving that today? Is it that you have fewer favorable offsets relative to previous quarters? Is it mix? Why are we seeing that?

Robert Berkley: Putting aside the property piece, to your point, I would say the leading contributor to the question you’re raising is mix of business: different product lines, say, different loss ratio picks.

Yaron Kinar: Okay. But I guess on that front, it seems like you are growing the short tail lines faster than most of the other businesses I would have thought those may have a lower loss ratio, underlying loss ratio. Or am I not thinking about that correctly?

Robert Berkley: Some of them do and some of them are — hold on, I’m just pulling out a couple of papers. Why don’t we, as opposed to me fumbling through our papers, why don’t we catch up offline?

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