CNA Financial Corporation (NYSE:CNA) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Josh Shanker: And when someone takes a benefit reduction, is it immediately beneficial to your capital position, or what are the economics for CNA when somebody says, I will limit the number of years of payout or I will cap my benefit, what happens to your balance sheet, your capital position when that occurs?

Scott Lindquist: So, that’s an improvement. I mean that’s a reduction in our reserves, both statutory and GAAP. So, it’s obviously reflective of the lower risk in that policy going forward, and that’s reflected in our results when that happens.

Josh Shanker: Premium goes down, but capital goes up, I guess, is that right?

Scott Lindquist: In effect, correct because the reserve will come down. Reserves may come down too. Yes. Sure. Thanks for the question.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Meyer Shields from KBW. Please go ahead.

Meyer Shields: Great. Thanks and good morning. One question on long-term care, if I can, so Slide 14 notes that premium rates are 45% higher than 2015. What’s the corresponding number for loss trend over that period?

Scott Lindquist: I am sorry, can you just repeat that? Corresponding and loss trend?

Meyer Shields: Yes, the loss trend that corresponds to the 45%.

Scott Lindquist: Yes. Meyer, I don’t have that number on the top of my head. We can take that offline follow-up. So, we can get that for you.

Meyer Shields: Yes. Perfect, will do. And then a couple of other small questions. First, third-party captive gross written premium has been declining for almost 2 years. And I understand that has not been an impact on underwriting results, but I was just trying to understand what’s going on there.

Dino Robusto: Yes. It’s really – and the captive is with respect to the cell phone business, and there has been merger there, and so we lost some premium on the cell phone capital. That’s all it is, Meyer.

Meyer Shields: Okay. That’s helpful. And then final question, and this is absolutely not CNA-centric, but the industry has been struggling with commercial auto for a long time, and it’s great to hear that rate increases are accelerating. What has seen anything you do differently so that this perpetual problem of not being able to catch up with loss trends is no longer an issue?

Dino Robusto: Yes. It’s clearly been a catch-up game on commercial auto. It seems to be even though we don’t have it, it seems to be some similar trends in personal auto. And I think it is the issue really around the same thing that’s impacting, sort of excess casualty lines. The social inflation impacts had a big – has a big impact. But on commercial auto, you tend to see it impact the results quicker than on complex sort of BI losses. And so it’s just a catch-up game. And I think it started off slowly, but it seems to be picking up momentum. And I really do think this is going to be a continuing trend for longer. And really, that’s what you have to do. It just needs more pricing. And that’s why we have been particularly focused on it.

And whenever we do something like that, we highlight it to you. And we have seen an increase in this third quarter and in the second quarter. Now, we just got to keep pushing because the social inflation, I think impacts it quicker.

Meyer Shields: Okay. That’s perfect. Thank you so much.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] There are no more questions in the queue. This concludes our question-and-answer session. And I would like to turn the conference back over to Dino Robusto for any closing remarks.

Dino Robusto: No, that’s great. Thank you everyone for joining us today and we will talk to you in a quarter.

Operator: Conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.

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