Kemper Corporation (NYSE:KMPR) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

So what you’ll see us doing is a restricted diet and restarting the process. We’re going to do that while the combined ratios are continuing to improve. There’ll be a high probability in our mind that that new business will perform well. It is at 100% of new business rates when it comes in where some of our renewal book continues to have not renewed at the newer rates. And we’re watching the really the underlying loss ratio. One of the things I think you’ve noticed you’ve heard us talk about before, think about expense ratios. Our expense ratio has a little bit of a temperature partly because there’s some decline in new business and partly because or there’s a declining business overall, and partly because there’s new business fees that are charged as a contra expense.

They’re higher on new business than they are in renewals. So we’re watching and testing that underlying loss ratio, knowing that as we reopen the new business and that expense ratio reverts back to its norm, that will hit the underlying target profitability. So again, what I’d expect, if we roll forward 90 days and we’re having a conversation about the fourth quarter, there is not going to be massive growth or a massive amount of new business in there. There’ll be some incremental as we’re testing it, and at the same time we’re watching what we expect to be changes in our underlying results and the underlying loss ratio.

Greg Peters: Got it, just to clarify. Yes, it does. In your answer, I think you said, all right, some of the business that’s renewing isn’t renewing at the new rates.0 Is that right or did I miss?

Joe Lacher: As it renews, it gets the new rate. But our profitability right now doesn’t, some of the business hasn’t renewed yet, so it’s still at the old rates.

Greg Peters: Got it. Okay.

Joe Lacher: So if you include the state of business, not all of it is at the higher rate level, where if we started new business, all of it would be. So we actually think that by opening the filters slightly, the cohorts we’re adding and the business we’re adding should be better from a target return perspective on its lifetime basis than the full enforces right now.

Greg Peters: Okay. Last question, I don’t want to hog the floor. So the last question, I’m just going to pivot to the balance sheet, parent company liquidity. It’s a source of concern in the marketplace when we see just on the one slide in your investor decks on page 10, see how the parent company liquidity, the total has gone from $1.3 billion down to $821 million. And then just looking what these numbers were like in the second quarter, it was $970 million down again to $821 million at the end of the third quarter. So as we look forward, because you keep reiterating that you’re adequately capitalized, can you sort of give us a roadmap of how you see uses of cash and how you see the balance sheet evolving say over the next couple quarters? That might be helpful.

Brad Camden : Sure, Greg. This is Brad. You are correct. If we look at the end of 2022, we had $1.3-ish billion of cash. That was elevated versus kind of historic levels. That was mainly related to the third quarter Bermuda Optimization where we took up a dividend from that company. So it was elevated at the end of last year. We look at it from Q2 to Q3, we’re down about $150 million. That $150 million was split between a decline in holding company cash and liquidity and a reduction in our revolver capacity. So we’re at $820 million approximately. As we look forward, we expect by the end of this year to be up another $250 million plus as it relates to that will increase due to the Bermuda Optimization effort. You’ll notice if you look to the right of that slide on slide 10, you’ll see the RBC ratio is much higher than they have been historically.