Markel Corporation (NYSE:MKL) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

John Fox: So thank you for that. I just want to ask if I’m looking at this the right way. Tom, I heard you talk about the investment income potential to continue to grow. And I’m wondering if you’re under selling it. When I look at the Q, it’s about $13.7 billion in bonds at fair value, which assuming you get without any credit hits and it’s yielding less than 3% at this point. So it seems to me, there’s a couple of hundred million of investment income, latent earnings power that’s going to earn in over the next few years as those bonds mature. Am I looking at that the right way?

Tom Gayner: Yes. Excuse me of being too wordy in my answers, right. Yes.

John Fox: And that magnitude seems reasonable?

Tom Gayner: Yes.

John Fox: Okay. Great. Thank you.

Tom Gayner: You’re welcome.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our next question will come from the line of Scott Heleniak with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Scott Heleniak: Yes. Good morning. The first question I have was on the insurance unit. The premium growth there, it ticked up a little bit versus Q1. And just curious how you’re feeling about just overall pricing in new business environment. Are you constructive in terms of growth for the rest of 2023 and 2024. It sounded like you were kind of based on the commentary about most pricing. I mean there’s a few areas. But just anything you can talk about that? And is the growth just being impacted mostly by professional liability and D&O, but the rest of the portfolio you’re feeling pretty good about in terms of the rest 2023 and 2024?

Jeremy Noble: I think that’s pretty well said, Scott. I don’t have a lot to add to that. There’s a number of product classes and I mentioned some of this earlier, where we feel it’s very attractive. We’re seeing great opportunities to grow. I mentioned property and inland marine and personal lines and binding, surety programs, marine and energy in London. So that’s one of the benefits we have of having a very broad and diversified product portfolio, we can really sort of choose our points that are most attractive in the insurance market cycle. And we’ve talked about the fact that it’s pretty nuanced right now, so you have to have a strategy around each major product on. You’re exactly right. We are a large professional liability lines rider.

And so because of one part, a lack of activity in the space that reduces exposure being brought to the market overall and also how the pricing environment is looking not just in public D&O. I mean, that’s the best example. But we’re being cautious and thoughtful around E&O, EPLI, other lines as well. And because we had a large book that weighs some of the growth opportunity. Casualty is an area where the growth is more tempered compared to last couple of years, but it’s a good example of where we are able to push rate and we’re certainly able to sort of have sort of segmentation strategies about how and where we choose to play in the casualty line. So overall, if you okay in that space as well. So I think the growth opportunities remain out there, and we’re pretty confident about our platform given the breadth of product offering.

Scott Heleniak: Okay. Great. That’s helpful detail. I just wanted to follow up one quick question, too, on the reserve add and general liability, the umbrella excess casualty for 2017 and 2019. Is this a – it’s based on some of the – an uptick in cases and claims. Obviously, you’re seeing something, but – is it just kind of early signs and you’re putting up IBNR just to be conservative on that? Or just anything you can touch on the actual activity that you’re seeing there, either frequency or severity in those lines? Is there anything more you can comment on that?

Jeremy Noble: Yes. I mean, there’s something to completely pinpoint, Scott. Beyond just suggesting within our actuarial models, especially when you’re starting to talk about those older years. So these are on sort of really the 2017 and 2019 years – so several years these would be maturing well under their cycles. We have had a lot of history with these programs. And we would be seeing this point more reported loss activity than we would have been anticipating. I don’t – I’m not drawn to a specific element with regards to frequency versus severity. It’s just in total, the claims reporting pattern, the volume of activity is more significant than what we would expect. And then you extrapolate that. So a little bit of out – a little bit more reported activity than we would have expected in our underlying models, if we concerned that could become a trend.