The Progressive Corporation (NYSE:PGR) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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But we’re in just a different position, because we got out in front of it. So, there’s a lot of shopping, a lot of ambient shopping, which is really efficient for us. And what happens with what both Jim and Cory talked about, as well as other variables, we believe we have superior segmentation. So, we’re going to grab onto as many customers and obviously keep as many customers as we can for as long as we can. However, this timeframe in this hard market lasts, and of course that segmentation and the adverse selection flywheel works in our favor because of our many, many decades of investing in things like segmentation, competitive prices, our brand, et cetera. So, while I can’t foreshadow what our PIF growth is going to be, we are going to do everything we can to follow our longstanding goal of growing as fast as we possibly can at our 96 combined ratio and making sure we can take care of our customers.

David Motemaden: Okay, great. That’s very helpful. And maybe just following up there, it sounds like the continuous monitoring that’s been an interesting development that — I’m interested to hear what sort of impact that has had on underwriting profitability, and growth in the 12 states where you’ve rolled it out. And how we should think about that as you roll it out on more states? Is that something where we can maybe see a step change in terms of profitability or frequency or anything from that perspective just on — just greater segmentation that you might get from that?

Tricia Griffith: Yes. I mean, I think from a cost perspective, obviously continuous is a little bit more expensive, but those costs have gone down over the years. But I think, what we’re excited about and what Jim talked about — the excitement about is the services that we’re going to provide especially in some of the claims examples. So, we will continue to evolve like we have since 1996 with our UBI products. And we believe that we’ll continue to enhance our ability to out segment our competitors. What that means from the exact amount, we don’t know yet, but we’ll continue to monitor and I’m sure ever so often we’ll update you on where we’re at with our UBI offerings.

Operator: Our next question comes from Alex Scott of Goldman Sachs.

Alex Scott: First question I had was just on — all the potential new business just looking at the application growth and so forth. How is — how does sort of the growth penalty from new business coming on look in this kind of environment maybe during prior periods?

Tricia Griffith : Yes. You know, I’ve been thinking about that a lot because in times where we have high growth, we often talk about the new business penalty. And as I’m thinking about it, penalties from my perspective are something that is done to you because maybe you did something wrong. As an example, Sunday, I was watching our youngest son play Lacrosse. He got a penalty for slashing. He knew it. He was emotional. He did it. He took a knee. We’re a little bit different because the things that we do and the amount that we pay is all controllable. As you witnessed when we pulled back on media and did some other things to make sure we reached our 96. So, from my perspective, what we are paying, so you’ll — you saw the increase in January and our expense ratio specifically on the direct side because we front load our acquisition costs there.

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