Cincinnati Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:CINF) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Greg Peters: Right. I wanted to pivot just on property, whether it’s inside the commercial or in the personal line space because I feel like the rate is a combination of factors, including insured to value numbers being reset. And so I’m — when I look, for example, in your personal lines, your net written premium in homeowners up 27% in the second quarter. I’m wondering how much of that is pure rate versus actual just getting the insured to value numbers right? Or — maybe I’m looking at this the wrong way? I don’t know. It seems like a valid question though.

Steve Spray: Yes Greg, Steve Spray. On — specifically on commercial property and personal property and homeowner, it’s about 2/3 exposure, about 1/3 rate would be a good way to look at it.

Greg Peters: Okay, that’s helpful. I guess the final question I have — recognizing that others are going to want to ask questions would just be before you’d previously mapped out sort of an expectation for the combined ratio for the year. I’m just wondering how you’re thinking about that range in the context of the second quarter results as we think about the second half of the year? That’s my last question.

Steve Johnston: Greg, this is Steve Johnston. And I think we’re still where we were at the — when we first came out with it at the first quarter, we don’t think it’s we think it’s reasonable that we would be able to be in the low to mid-90s combined ratio, 8% growth. But we have those caveats of that the weather and the market conditions are volatile and that will play out over the second half. I think the key point is we are just very confident in the movement of the ex-cat core portion of the book. It’s improving nicely and that’s really our focus at this point. But again, I think we’re still where we were with the information that we gave in the first quarter.

Operator: Next question comes from Mike Zaremski with BMO.

Mike Zaremski: Curious, any insights into pricing power into July? And also just curious, have you guys been a bit surprised at some of the pricing power that you’ve experienced given the strong interest rate tailwinds that are a good guy? Or does it make sense that we’re seeing kind of broader industry pricing inflect — accelerate a bit?

Steve Johnston: This is Steve Johnston. And it is — it’s just — it’s an execution of our business model that makes us feel good and that we are — have great relationships with our agents. We tend to communicate and try to communicate where we are risk by risk early in the process of a renewal and just feel the execution that makes us so proud of our field people as they’re out in the field, balancing discipline with being responsive to our agents’ needs has boded well for us and we see it continuing to do so as we go into the second half.

Mike Zaremski: Okay. You mentioned that the — I think in the prepared remarks, the umbrella components, of your portfolio kind of eked out a small underwriting profit. Just curious as umbrella, given kind of what you’ve known — you’ve experienced over the last year or 2 or maybe more — maybe it’s more also just prone to social inflation. Is umbrella, are you are you kind of targeting a better combined ratio for that versus the broader segment it’s in.

Steve Spray: Yes. Over — I think over the last ’22 — the end of ’22 and prior, Mike, again, this is Steve Spray. Our combined ratio in umbrella was running around 80%. The last, like you said the last couple of years, have been challenging. It’s jurisdictional. It could be state by state, it’s risk by risk. And that loss ratio, like Steve said in the prepared remarks, we’ve been profitable here for the first half and obviously in the second quarter. We’ve been very deliberate about improving that line of business. And I would say, yes, we expect that loss ratio to improve from where it is today. I’ll give you maybe a little bit more color on that, too. In the second quarter, our commercial umbrella net written premium was down 9 points which contributed a 2-point drag on the overall Commercial Lines net written premium.