RLI Corp. (NYSE:RLI) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Gregory Peters: Excellent. Thanks for that color. I guess, the final question I had is just in the area of surety, you talked — the premium growth, you talked about some of the economic challenges for premium growth in that business. I’m just curious, there’s a lot of headlines out there and noise in the marketplace about how the economy is going to look for next year. And as you guys are going through the budgeting process, I’m curious, with your customer set, how you think the surety business might shape up next year. Any sort of guidepost you might be willing to provide would be helpful. That’s my last question.

Jennifer Klobnak: Sure. So I don’t know if you follow the results that get published every quarter. They came out about a month ago, there was a pretty big lag. But if you look at the results for the industry, they’ve been elevated for the last couple of years. And if you look at our results, we are performing very well compared to the industry from a bottom line perspective. From a top line perspective, you’ll see that we’ve actually — I’ll say, falling down the chart a little bit in terms of the larger surety market. So we are now right around the 20th largest surety market. And some people would say, “oh, that’s disappointing.” But we’re not. We used to be, I think, the 10th largest. And so that is a little bit disappointing, but the point is the bottom line — sometimes, as I mentioned, they do stretch and so we want to be sure that the good projects that the contractors bid on in particular, that they’re building in enough profits to sustain their business.

So it’s hard to say how our business is going to grow. It’s going to depend on how our competitors act. But for us, we’re going to continue to focus on the discipline and the risk selection.

Gregory Peters: Great. Thank you for the answers.

Operator: Thank you, Greg. Our next question comes from Andrew Andersen from Jefferies. Andrew, your line is now open. Please proceed with your question.

Andrew Andersen: Hey, good morning. Looking at casualty reserve leases that were a bit stronger quarter-over-quarter, though a little bit lower year-over-year. I guess to start, is there different reserves that are reviewed in the third quarter versus the second? And secondly, has the approach to reserve studies and viewing inflation trends changed through 9 months this year?

Todd Bryant: Hi, Andrew, it’s Todd. The process is the same. So there’s nothing different quarter-to-quarter. So nothing unique about the third quarter, relative to the first two quarters and nothing different as we compare to what would have been done third quarter of last year. So no change whatsoever. This is just how the studies fell out, if you will.

Q – Andrew Andersen:

Todd Bryant: Nothing material whatsoever on the current accident year, not at all.

Andrew Andersen: Okay. And maybe last one for me. At the top of the call, you kind of mentioned the expense ratio improving and perhaps a little bit of noise from the reinstatement premium. But what kind of opportunities do you see here with the investments that you’re making in technology to perhaps improve the expense ratio a little bit from here?

Todd Bryant: Well, yes, that’s a good question. I think we are always looking to see where we can drive efficiencies as we grow. So there is opportunity there on the technology front. Trying to get fewer either front end systems or getting to one billing system. So looking on the efficiencies there. But a big part of it is really that customer experience. So that — anything positive that we do from that standpoint, the hope would be that would be supportive of growth in premium, which will also improve the expense ratio. So there’s opportunity, certainly investments we need to make, and we’re focused on all of that.