Selective Insurance Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:SIGI) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Mark Wilcox: Yes, Grace, it’s Mark. You have it correct. And what I would say is it’s just too early in the year to make a change to our full year guidance. So, if you take our full year guidance to 96.5%, 4.5 points of cats, which clearly implies to John’s point, being about a point above expectations, a little bit of favorable cat loss activity later in the year. That’s a volatile line and there’s some variability around that. And then if you kind of annualize the Q1 favorable development of 1.4 points through the rest of the year, assuming no more favorable reserve development, it sort of gets you to an underlying combined ratio of 92.3% for the full year to come back to the 96.5% with 4.5 points, assuming the expense ratio doesn’t change.

And that actually implies, I think, an underlying combined of 92.8% for the rest of the year, Q2 through Q4 to get there. So, all I would say is we feel really good about Q1. Cats didn’t behave well. They were a little bit a bit heavy. But overall, we saw the non-cat property loss ratio come in at 2.8 points better than expected. The expense ratio came in right on track and feel really good about all the other components of the combined ratio. But it’s just a little bit too soon for us to take that benefit and roll it through the rest of the year. We just assume if things normalize back to our initial expectations for the full year. But we’ll give you a further update and a little bit better insight into the full year when we report again in 90 days’ time.

Grace Carter: Okay. Thank you. That’s helpful. And on Personal Lines, I think last quarter, you all had mentioned maybe needing to catch up a little bit on rate versus the industry just given some of the distraction from changing mix in the book over the past few quarters. Some of your peers have mentioned targeting reaching a target profitability by the end of 2024. I was just curious on the outlook for when you all think that your personal lines book can reach target profitability and if next year is a fair assumption for your book as well?

John Marchioni: Yes. Grace, this is John. First of all, I think it’s always dangerous to put a target out there, especially in an uncertain loss trend environment because a big driver on what happens to margins in personal lines is what happens with regard to loss trend. I think all of us, Selective included, have a clear understanding of what our rate plan is in terms of written and earned over the next several quarters, next year plus. And we have to make assumptions around the direction of loss trend. And I realize sometimes some of our peers do make pretty convicted statements around rate relative to loss trend. But I do think you have to put some qualifiers around that when you project out loss ratios that far in advance.

We have our sights on achieving profitability. We have assumptions in that plan around where loss trends go in subsequent quarters. But all we have to do as an industry is look back to the last five quarters and realize that loss trends can surprise us. So, I think that always is a reason to be somewhat hesitant about putting near-term profit improvement targets out there. That said, you have to remember, our book, and put this in context, personal lines was 8.5% of our premium in the quarter, but that book is also going through a significant transformation. And the change in the in-force from mass market to mass affluent, which is a place that we think we’re much better positioned to compete is impacting our run rate profitability. And we think long-term will impact in a positive way.