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

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It’s really an investment in our future. It’s an investment for our owners, investment for our customers. So, it’s something that we’re excited to do in terms of how we manage the business? And again, we have the caveats with our ceiling of an aggregate, all business lines, 96 combined ratio. So it’s hard to compare from the past where we’ll go. But we know that this has been a really volatile environment and we have the levers to pull back should we need to and throttle forward should we need to. So, can’t tell you the exact amount. I will tell you that we’re pretty excited about the position we are in right now. And again, we’re Progressive. So, we’re never going to be cocky and we’re always going to be really paranoid and we follow the data maniacally and talk about it all the time.

But we are really excited about what we believe this hard market, however long it lasts, brings.

Alex Scott: Second question I have maybe a little more applicable to the telematics. When I think through this and the pricing advantage that it gives you over some competitors that are not doing it to the same scale or maybe even just to the industry broadly, I appreciate you probably don’t want to like quantify some of these things, but could you kind of talk to us about directionally has that pricing advantage that it provides, has it expanded because of some of the things you’re doing? Or some of these things that you’re doing just allowing sort of your pricing advantage to be maintained as others begin to do more on the telematics front but not to the same degree? Or is it sort of diminishing as more competitors are just like more broadly adopting telematics? I guess, just high level if you could talk about that.

Tricia Griffith : Yes. I’ll talk about it high level and then Jim and Cory can weigh in for their perspective on businesses. But one, it takes a lot to get history of driving behavior and to continuously learn on that. So, I think you have to have a headstart, which is why we sort of did a primer on the history of where we’ve been. We were out ahead of it, obviously, nearly three decades ago. A couple points though, I think the — and one that Jim made is, I think it’s important to make sure that we are pricing rate to risk. So although customers are never happy when they get a surcharge, when they do and if they go somewhere else again, that’s adverse selection. So there is multiple pieces of not just the, N equals 1, but also what can happen from a competitive perspective.

So, to be able to have the UBI as well as our other segmentations to truly understand that rate to risk in what John talked about with our underwriting acumen is also an important piece. I think it’s probably more important on the commercial line side from the perspective of, if I’m a good driver and I drive a truck, can I save money on my insurance, which is a big cost in the commercial line? So I don’t know if Jim or Cory, you want to add anything?

Jim Haas: Personal Lines side, yes, there is certainly more activity in UBI than there was 10 years ago, let’s say. We are just continuing to move our pricing forward, price more aggressively, take more advantage of that regardless of what anybody else is doing. We want to price as accurately as we can, and get as many people into that program as we can.

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