Chubb Limited (NYSE:CB) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Greg Peters: Yes, that makes sense. Another area that Peter commented on, it seems kind of important. And I am going to have to review the comments in the transcript. But Peter, maybe you can go back. The gives and takes out of the life insurance, you talked about assimilating the accounting and then you talked about some other headwinds that happened in the fourth quarter. Can you go through that and maybe give us a little additional color on that?

Peter Enns: So, the one-time charge I have mentioned, and it’s a non-recurring charge was related to Huatai as it relates to aligning our accounting policies as our ownership levels increased and that was $52 million. There was an additional, which I didn’t say about $8 million of FX impact. And so that’s how I think about it. If you are looking at the international life insurance business, the reported income and adjusting for those two things, that would give you more of a sense of how we view ongoing income coming out of that business, which is why we spiked out the largest of the two, and I will just highlight the one other one.

Evan Greenberg: So, in our minds, that’s like that brings you to about $175 million.

Peter Enns: It’s about $60 million putting the two together.

Greg Peters: Okay. Got it.

Peter Enns: Excellent what it will be. But to be very clear, the $52 million, we view very much is one-time to align policies as we have gotten closer to and more insight.

Greg Peters: Got it. Thanks for the answers.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Tracy Benguigui from Barclays. Your line is open.

Tracy Benguigui: Thank you. Good morning. I would like to go back to the discussion on casualty. I fully understand that rate needs to increase to keep up with loss cost trends. But there are things you could do on the structural side, are you making any meaningful changes in attachment points or deductible? One of your competitors mentioned an inflation is causing more losses to creep into the excess layer?

Evan Greenberg: Yes, of course. That’s all that €“ listen we can track attachment point changes and all of that and ventilating of layers and all that good stuff. So, yes, and that’s all baked into our thinking, of course.

Tracy Benguigui: Okay, got it. And we actually got more color from you on loss cost trends by business line this quarter. And you mentioned just sticking with North American casualty that loss costs were 6.9%. Can you give context how that’s trended versus prior quarters? And if you could also see.

Evan Greenberg: Stable.

Tracy Benguigui: Stable, okay. And if you could tease out if this is a level you are observing right now, are you using a higher projected loss trend when you think about risk-adjusted returns?

Evan Greenberg: I am really not going to overly dwell on this subject now. So, I am going to move along. But what €“ the only other piece of information I will give you is that the loss cost trends we have, I gave you an overall and that means it is a mix of primary in excess and all of that baked into it. It is stable. Our view is stable at this time and we constantly look at it, and I gave you a lot of information in the second quarter and third quarter around inflation and how we adjusted for our views and forward views on inflation, both in the pricing and in our actual reserving. And so I am going to stop right there.

Tracy Benguigui: Got it. Thank you.

Evan Greenberg: You’re welcome.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Brian Meredith from UBS. Your line is open.

Brian Meredith: Hey, thanks. So I am just curious, given where your rate is and loss trend is there more room here as we look into 2023 for underlying margin improvement in the business, or are we getting close to kind of a good, solid acceptable return in the business?

Evan Greenberg: I think you €“ I mean look at it by ratios, Brian. I think they are just stellar. They are world-class returns and I am very happy with the returns in our portfolio. And as far as whether they would get any better, well, stay tuned.

Brian Meredith: Okay. Thanks. And then the second question

Evan Greenberg: You know, I don’t give forward guidance

Brian Meredith: I was hoping.

Evan Greenberg: I know you guy. I love you dearly. It’s a good try.

Brian Meredith: Okay. The second one, I am just curious €“ thanks for the comments on capital management. I know you guys have done a ton this year, and it’s great, but it did slow in the fourth quarter. Was there anything going on? Anything with respect to thoughts that’s why you slowed the share buyback in the fourth quarter relative to call it the third quarter?

Evan Greenberg: No. And that’s why I really did want to take time and step back and we all look at perspective together of our capital management policy and how it translated to numbers. And I mean it’s a stunning amount of capital that we have used. I mean it speaks to our stewardship of capital and our earning power over the couple of years. And I wanted to create that context and perspective, nothing has changed at all in how we manage, think about managing capital and buybacks is just one dimension of that as you know. And we have a buyback authorization. And we have a bunch remaining within that. And we say that as we do, when you read it, that we will repurchase up to that amount. And we are just steady as she goes. Nothing has changed about how we view it.

Peter Enns: Brian, maybe to revisit the context just to what Evan said, so we have about $1.6 billion left, so up to $1.6 billion through the first half of this year. And one more point in context as we looked at it. And this is not the framework we use this has come up on a prior call. But buybacks and dividends of $4.4 billion aggregate to about 75% of our income for the year, which we think is a reasonable way to compared to others. But it’s not actually how we manage it.

Brian Meredith: Got it. Thank you.