The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc. (NYSE:HIG) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Elyse Greenspan: Thanks. Good morning. Appreciate all the color on the call. My first question, Chris, it sounds like you upped the ROE guidance, right, 14 to 15 as it previously been 13 to 14. When going through the pieces of everything, it sounds like it’s more a reflection right of just improved investment income and on the fixed income portfolio, but am I missing something in making those observations?

Chris Swift: Thanks for joining us, Elyse. I would say, you’re right. The NII is a big component, particularly coming off just €“ if the interest rate moves in our fixed income portfolio, but as Beth also said, we do expect lower alternative returns this year. But I do think that there is underlying margin improvement in our commercial book of business that maybe is underappreciated. And I would explain that the guidance that we set, I think is prudent as thoughtful, as reactive of the conditions that we have, but we have a high degree of confidence of achieving, particularly at the midpoint. So, from there then, we played to outperform. And I think we’ve got a good track record of outperforming over time. And that’s the mission next year.

So, the guidance says what it is and it does imply really when I really measured on a refined basis, about 50 basis points of improvement, but I don’t think we’re going to be done from there. And all that goes into our views of what our overall ROEs will be next year, including our buyback and programs.

Elyse Greenspan: Thanks. And then my second question, you guys are the dividends to the holdco are going to be higher this coming year. did go up and I know you guys have, kind of targeted a balanced level of capital return, but given the extra dividends to the holdco, could we expect capital return to pick up in 2023 via share repurchase?

Beth Costello: Yes. So Elyse, yes, you’re right. The dividends from group benefits are increasing. I would characterize that as, sort of kind of getting back to normal. The last couple of years they’ve been lower because obviously the statutory results have been impacted by the higher mortality losses. So, we’re kind of getting to more of our normal run rate, which we had contemplated when we evaluated the size of the update that we did to our share repurchase authorization. So, I would call the increases just totally in line and we’re going to continue to execute on the plan that we have.

Elyse Greenspan: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Jimmy Bhullar of JPMorgan. Jimmy, your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Jimmy Bhullar: Thanks. Good morning. I had a question on workers’ comp following up on some of Chris’ comments earlier. Obviously, margins have been pretty good and seems like you’re expecting that to continue through 2023. Is it reasonable to assume that there’s going to be a lot of pushback from regulators in allowing price hikes over even if you look beyond this year until margins get a lot worse from where they are or do you think that at some point over the next one to two years that the market could begin to show signs of an uptick in pricing?