The Hartford Q4’22 earnings call

The Hartford hosted its Q4 2022 earnings call on Feb 3, 2023. The highlights:

• 19,000 employees
• Hartford Next program, the company’s cost transformation program, “is contributing to [Hartford’s] overall efficiency and effectiveness”
• Small Commercial – produced sub-90 underlying combined ratio
• Looking to expand addressable market with capabilities in the E&S binding lines – expects to become a “leading destination for E&S binding opportunities”
• Commercial Lines renewal written price increases for the quarter were 4.9%, flat compared to the third quarter
• Workers’ compensation pricing remained positive, benefiting from average wage growth
• Auto underlying combined ratio remain elevated – fourth quarter filed auto rates averaged 8.3% increase, up 3.4 points from the third quarter
• One of Hartford’s key strategic initiatives over the last 5 years is to be a bigger property writer – it has about $3 billion of property premium, including homeowners premium of about $1 billion
• Accelerated pricing in home and auto
  • In the fourth quarter – filed auto rates averaged 8.3% increase, up 3.4 points from the third quarter
  • In home – kept pace with loss cost trends through net rate in insured value increases reflected in renewal written pricing of 10.7% for the year and 13.3% through the fourth quarter
• Small commercial – 3 key principles – 1. being easy to do business with, 2. being accurate when it provides pricing, 3. being consistent, “particularly when you come from a renewal perspective”