The Travelers Companies, Inc. (NYSE:TRV) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Elyse Greenspan: Thanks. And then my second question, I wanted to go back to the liability reserve increase in the quarter. Could you give us a sense, if there were some additions, I know the numbers are modest, like you guys said, on accident year 2023. And then, given the additions you see here, are you adjusting your longer trend, long-term loss trend assumption for the liability lines following this?

Dan Frey: So, Elyse, it’s Dan. I’ll start with the PYD piece and avoid the temptation of splitting what is a small number to begin with into its individual accident years. So we’re not going to do that. I do think if you look at the results in Business Insurance, we talked about the fact that you saw some improvement in the underlying combined ratio, including in the underlying loss ratio. You have the benefit of pricing and a couple of other things like mix, which we talked about last quarter. The same time, like in any quarter, you’ve got some puts and takes, and one of those puts and takes in this quarter is booking a little bit more IB&R in the current accident year to reflect some of the uncertainty that we’re seeing. Not big numbers, but we are reacting to it.

Elyse Greenspan: Thank you.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Brian Meredith with UBS. Your line is open.

Brian Meredith: Yes, thanks. First one for Michael. Michael, I’m just curious, one of your competitors in the personal auto space is showing some pretty strong growth in policy and so forth, really kind of capitalizing the market. I’m just curious, are you in a position at this point to kind of go after and get some growth given how your results have improved so much?

Michael Klein: Sure, Brian. Thanks for the question. Certainly, again, underneath the results in the quarter, if you look at it on a state-by-state basis, the states where we have achieved written adequacy, we’ve achieved written adequacy, we did achieve new business premium growth. And consistent with our comments last quarter, what I would say to you is we’re executing a very granular state-by-state, geography-by-geography strategy as we look to temper some of the non-rate actions that we had in place in auto. And if you take a step back, if you look at it over the last couple of years, we have a small increase in policies in force in auto over the last couple years or so. We got a small decrease in property, all the while premiums are up 30-plus percent.

So we feel pretty good about the starting point. And directly to your question, our focus in auto is on profitably growing auto on a go-forward basis. Our focus on home remains on improving profitability, and so that’s why we talk about sort of balancing profitability and growth across the whole portfolio.

Brian Meredith: Makes sense. Thanks. And then a follow-up on the Business Insurance. Alan and Greg, I wonder if you could kind of dissect kind of the competitive landscape, kind of large, middle, small. Are any of them kind of incrementally more competitive? It feels like small, middle seems to be a little more stable right now than maybe the large from what we’re hearing in the marketplace.

Alan Schnitzer: Brian, let me just comment and I’ll turn it over to Greg. I think all of these markets are always competitive all the time, and that’s sort of the way we think about it. So I’m not sure. I mean, as Greg shared in his prepared remarks, to the extent that you’re thinking about, renewal price change as a proxy for competition, and I don’t think it is, by the way. That did come down a couple of points, but, again, still among our highest rate achieved in any line, and, double digits and a reflection of terrific returns in the line. So I don’t think there’s been any sea change in or any significant shift, among those businesses. I’d say competitive business that we have. I don’t know, Greg.

Gregory Toczydlowski: Yes, maybe I’ll touch on new business since Alan just hit on rate. And you can see in the new business we had a real strong quarter in small commercial up 22%, so that we are seeing a little more dislocation in that market than we are in middle market. But the combination of our new segmented product, BOP 2.0, and our new commercial automobile product, we feel terrific about, our position there and where we’re writing that new business and what returns we’re going to achieve there. Middle market still had, the delta wasn’t as big on new business, but we had a record result on the first quarter of the prior year, so really strong new business levels. So not as much dislocation, Brian, in the middle market, but really feeling good about the combination of where the returns are and our field team staying really active on the new business front.

Brian Meredith: Terrific. Thank you.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Ryan Tunis with Autonomous Research. Your line is open.

Ryan Tunis: Hey, thanks. Good morning. I just had a couple, I guess, on exposure acting as rate. So, yes, exposure acting as rates clearly been a tailwind in particular for margins. It’s been flagged, for the past couple years, especially in the workers’ comp line. But this is the first quarter in a long time I think, I’ve seen that workers’ comp NPW shrink year-over-year. So curious sort of, what dynamic might be going on there?

Gregory Toczydlowski: Yes. Good morning, Ryan. How you doing? This is Greg. Yes, exposure continues to be strong, down somewhat as you look at the businesses. Not a surprise to us as the Fed has been very active in curtailing inflation. So definitely we’re seeing some of that in workers’ comp. But the primary driver of the down in comp is, we do still have rate reductions, as I shared in my prepared comments, relative to the other products. And as we’re an account solution, we’re going to remain very active and disciplined with our underwriting. And as we invoke both of those dynamics in the business, that’s what drove the overall net written premium change in the comp line.