Earnings Labs

CNA Financial Corporation (CNA)

Q4 2016 Earnings Call· Mon, Feb 6, 2017

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, and welcome to this CNA Financial Corporation Fourth Quarter 2016 Earnings Conference Call. Today’s conference is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Mr. James Anderson. Please go ahead, sir.

James Anderson

Management

Thank you, Shannon. Good morning and welcome to CNA’s discussion of our 2016 fourth quarter financial results. By now hopefully all of you have seen our earnings release, financial supplement and presentation slides. If not, you may access these documents on our website, www.cna.com. With us on this morning’s call are Dino Robusto, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Craig Mense, our Chief Financial Officer. Following Dino and Craig’s remarks about our quarterly results, we will open it up for your questions. Before turning it over to Dino, I would like to advise everyone that during this call there may be forward-looking statements made in references to non-GAAP financial measures. Any forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from the statements made during the call. Information concerning those risks is contained in the earnings release and in CNA’s most recent 10-Q and 10-K on file with the SEC. In addition, these forward-looking statements speak only as of today, Monday, February 6, 2017. CNA expressly disclaims any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements made during this call. Regarding non-GAAP measures, reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP measures and other information have also been provided in the financial supplement. This call is being recorded and webcast. During the next week the call may be accessed on CNA’s website. With that, I will turn the call over to CNA’s Chairman and CEO, Dino Robusto.

Dino Robusto

Chairman

Thank you, James. Good morning, everyone. First, let me say that it feels great to be back in the game. After spending 29 years immersed in insurance, I made the best of my time away. But not being in the market for one year was difficult for me. And I couldn't wait to start again, late last November. I want to thank the team at Loews, particularly the CEO, Jim Tisch, for the opportunity to lead CNA, and I believe that there is a lot of upside for us to capture. I'm absolutely honored and thrilled to be here. Before I get into my remarks, I also want to thank Tom Motamed for his development of an organization built around continuous improvement. Having worked with Tom in the past, it is an honor for me to take the baton from him and continue the work of making CNA a top-tier carrier. As you might expect, over my first 75 days, I have immersed myself in virtually all aspects of CNA, with a particular emphasis on CNA's underwriting operation and more specifically the people, processes, portfolio and governance as well as our expense infrastructure. Starting in late November allowed me to immediately engage in 2017 business planning discussions, as well as quickly turning the fourth-quarter results. These activities naturally had me interacting with the senior management here on the initiatives and issues of the day. I couldn't have asked for a better starting point. In that 75-day period, I have learned, and, in some cases, just confirmed a lot of great things about CNA. Namely, the Specialty Business not only performs well, but also has meaningful portions of the portfolio that are very difficult to replicate by others. In particular, in the Professional Services and Healthcare segment, decades-long relationships with these…

Craig Mense

Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Dino. Good morning, everyone. We reported fourth-quarter 2016 net operating income of $221 million and net income of $241 million, markedly different from last year's results for the fourth quarter. For the full-year 2016, net operating income was $824 million and net income was $859 million; increases of 60% and 79%, respectively, from 2015's full-year results. Our operating ROE was just above 7% this quarter, relatively consistent to the 2016 full-year result of just under 7%. Our property and casualty operations produced net operating income of $217 million, 7% above the prior-year quarter, helped by improved net investment income. For the full year, P&C's net operating income was $982 million, a 2% increase over 2015. P&C's 2016 full-year underlying combined ratio was 97.9; 1.5 points higher than 2015, with both the accident year loss and expense ratios contributing to the increase. These factors are offset by an overall higher level of favorable prior-year reserve development, producing a 2016 calendar year result relatively consistent with the prior year. Specialty had another strong quarter, highlighted by the favorable reserve release. The favorable reserve outcome lowered specialty's loss ratio by 11 points, and came from a broad-based number of professional and management liability products. The majority of the release was centered in accident 2012 and prior. Specialty's underlying combined ratio for the quarter was 96.1% slightly above the prior-year's quarterly results, and reflecting a higher level of large losses this quarter. Commercial's overall underwriting result was burdened by the $90 million increase in loss reserves of our runoff Defense Base Act business, adding approximately 13 points to the loss ratio, and just under 1 point to commercial's expense ratio in the quarter. You will recall that CNA decided to exit what we call the programmed Defense Base Act business in 2012. But…

Dino Robusto

Chairman

Thanks, Craig. Before we move to the question-and-answer portion of the call, let me offer a brief summary. We were able to generate net operating income of $824 million in 2016, a significant improvement from 2015. We are pleased to have once again returned essentially 100% of our earnings to shareholders. Our specialty and international segments posted very good results in the fourth quarter, but we still have a number of opportunities to improve each of these segments, as well as in our commercial operation. Our long-term care business has been stable, and executing efficiently over the past year. Our balance sheet remains rock-solid, with more than $45 billion of invested assets generating $2 billion of investment income each year. With that, we’ll be glad to take your questions.

Operator

Operator

Yes, sir. Thank you. [Operator Instructions] We’ll take our first call Amit Kumar with Macquarie.

Amit Kumar

Analyst

Thanks. Thanks and good morning, and welcome to a great franchise. A few quick questions; the first question maybe is a numbers question. Did you break out the amount of large losses in the quarter? I guess I’m trying to figure out what is the real underlying LR?

Craig Mense

Chief Financial Officer

I think that that – as we’ve said – the large losses is really what drove our 0.5 point increase for the full-year estimate. And that’s what we would really point you to, Amit. So look at the year-over-year change from 2015 to 2016; so that added about 0.5 point. Those were largely within commercial. Those losses were largely property-related. And in specialty, there is no significant – I can’t really point you to any individual particular trends.

Amit Kumar

Analyst

Got it. The second question I had was going back to the discussion on the defense book. Do you have a sense, after the steps you’ve put together, you sort of ring fenced this issue? And, going forward, we won’t – the likelihood of seeing any noise is minimal.

Craig Mense

Chief Financial Officer

That’s correct. Absolutely.

Amit Kumar

Analyst

Okay. That’s good to know. The third question, or the third and fourth question, might be for Dino. The first question for him is going back to the discussion on capital management, should we anticipate the continuation of that thought process in terms of returning capital? Or does anything change on that front, going forward?

Dino Robusto

Chairman

I think, just like we said, and been consistent on prior calls, we continue to generate capital through consistent earnings. And we’re going to return that capital to shareholders, unless we come up with options to deploy it at any higher returns. So, steady as she goes.

Amit Kumar

Analyst

Got it. And the final question, Dino, for you. Obviously you’ve come from a company which might have had a different playbook which you used to trade at a premium to book; one of the top franchises out there. Now that you are here, are you willing – and again it has been not that long that you’ve been here – are you willing to sort of disrupt the status quo in terms of when you look at all the operations, the options this Company has, and some of the frustrations that we have faced in terms of where the stock trades, even though it has recovered nicely over Tom’s tenure, but still it trades at a relative discount to other franchises. Are you willing to disrupt the status quo, and do sort of whatever it takes to get us to the right multiple? Or, near-term, should we anticipate you following in Tom’s footsteps, and sort of blocking and tackling from here, at least into the near future? Thanks.

Dino Robusto

Chairman

Thanks, Amit. I mean so just a couple of observations, right. I think we tried to provide considerable detail in the opening remarks about the focus on growing underwriting profits; pulling a host of underwriting levers – all of them, including levers on the expense ratio. I think I highlighted that it is a serious a focus of mine. And I think that’s the way you should take a look at it. If you look at the strategy, you have heard over numerous prior calls, CNA increasingly becoming a middle-market specialist, going after certain nations where you got product expertise, underwriting expertise. And that has led to an improvement. So I’m going to continue to obviously drive on that. But there is always refinements you can make. So can we drive deeper into the ones where we make the most profits? What new ones are we going to go after? How are we going to sequence that? What are we going to export in terms of if we’ve got segments that really work for us in this country, United States, maybe it will make sense to have them in Canada, or have them in Europe, right. And so there is – I referenced talent. There is an enormous amount of strong talent here in CNA. And it’s part of my job to make the strong talent even stronger, and then to continue to look for opportunities. Tech and analytics, right? Those are important components. We’ve already taken a step; we’re going to focus on it – expense discipline. So I think you got a sense for how I’m going to drive this. You know what’s intriguing a bit and I think important to recognize is the people at CNA are smart. They understand what’s working and what needs improvement. What’s great about that is it makes for an open dialogue. It makes for an ability to be able to change, to be able to drive, with less disruption. So that’s maybe more than you wanted, but I’ll leave you with that.

Amit Kumar

Analyst

That’s actually very helpful. Thanks for those comments, and I can see the passion. So thanks for the answers, and good luck with the future.

Dino Robusto

Chairman

Okay.

Operator

Operator

Next question comes from Josh Shanker with Deutsche Bank.

Josh Shanker

Analyst · Deutsche Bank

Yes, good morning, everyone and welcome, Dino. Thanks for answering questions.

Dino Robusto

Chairman

Thanks.

Josh Shanker

Analyst · Deutsche Bank

So, oftentimes, us investor sell-siders – we often think that a new CEO comes and has an opportunity to look over the reserves and to true-up the book to some extent. Obviously, there were some reserve changes here in the quarter. But it seems that these were CNA-oriented changes that would have been made, regardless. Are you bringing a new set of eyes to the reserves? To what extent does this – do these reserve reactions have your stamp on them? And to what extent are you comfortable to stay the reserves of CNA today?

Dino Robusto

Chairman

Okay, Josh; clearly an understandable question. So what I would say is I said in the opening remarks, look, I confirmed the strength right of the balance sheet; that it is rock-solid; and the capital position. The balance sheet obviously includes the reserve that’s in there, right. As part of year-end reserve meetings, we had independent auditors the final year. So that’s included in the statement on a rock-solid balance sheet. The reserve increase on the DBA business because, as you saw, it was discussed earlier in 2016; I believe it was in the second quarter. So, clearly something that management, Craig, and the folks have been intimately looking at, and have been working on. And so that’s the way to really consider this. And it’s more confirming, I think, the rock-solid nature of our financial statement. But important question.

Josh Shanker

Analyst · Deutsche Bank

And do you feel that your best practices that you bring with to the reserving function have already been incorporated into the numbers?

Dino Robusto

Chairman

Every day, you learn more and more about the company and the process. And it’s 75 days; at some level, given the hours, it is maybe 100 days, but that’s neither here nor there. The reality is, every day you are going to get more and more into this, and we’re going to have more of these calls. And every quarter, we are happy to continue to talk through what we see, and how we are moving forward, the strategy – in the pursuit of trying to be as transparent as we can. So, some more to come, Josh. But I stand by the statement I made about the balance sheet.

Josh Shanker

Analyst · Deutsche Bank

Very good. And in terms of personnel, I think there’s a lot of people in the insurance industry who would like to come to work for you. To what extent are you seeing new talent coming in the door? And to what extent are you allowed to pursue talent from your former employer?

Dino Robusto

Chairman

I would just say – again, a couple of observations – but I would just say that’s one of the most important questions, so I appreciate you putting it out there. As a CEO, I consider it my personal responsibility to be intimately involved with talent management. And by talent management, it’s the entire gamut. It’s recruiting. It’s retaining. It’s taking the strong talent you have and making it the best that it can be. Now, what I’m focused on is talent from companies across the entire P&C supply chain. That’s very broad – the best companies that touch upon all aspects of the supply chain. There isn’t any one focus on one company. But I think you made an interesting observation, which I do believe and have seen it already – there is an increasing desire by real talent from this variety of companies to want to be a part of CNA and to build a rewarding career here. So I see that. I can feel it. And again I just – bottom line, I view it as my personal responsibility to be intimately involved with talent management. So really thanks for that question.

Josh Shanker

Analyst · Deutsche Bank

Good luck, and we look forward to hearing more from you.

Operator

Operator

Next question comes from Bob Glasspiegel with Janney.

Bob Glasspiegel

Analyst · Janney

Let me echo Amit’s and Josh’s welcome to you, to CNA; look forward to meeting you, Dino.

Dino Robusto

Chairman

Thank you.

Bob Glasspiegel

Analyst · Janney

You come from sort of behind the Chubb curtain. So just curious if there’s any low bearing fruit that you see out there. You mentioned the expense ratio, and the Company has already had actions in that regard. The home office move – Craig, I actually want you to talk about that flows through the numbers as well. But where can the expense ratio get to over time? And do you have to spend money to get there, or can you do it from the get-go?

Dino Robusto

Chairman

Okay, Bob. I look forward to meeting you, also. I just – let me make a couple of observations about the expense ratio, and then I’ll turn it over to – Craig’s got some more details on the specific question you had. When you take a look at the expense ratio in the organization, you look back, there’s been a lot of investment – and prior management talked about it – a lot of investment in replacing legacy technology. That’s an expensive proposition, but it has to be done. Over the years, we continued to broaden that branch infrastructure; not only in the United States but in Canada, and in particular in Europe; and then higher talent for the branches, because we are very much a company that believes in local producer relationships. Now, during that time, they were also shedding underperforming businesses, right so, which led to negative growth. You put that together, you get the expense ratio increase. And so, is it low-hanging fruit? I think, at the end of the day, it’s important – I don’t know if I would call it low-hanging fruit. It’s a mindset – it’s an expense disciplined management that has to be incorporated, so that every day in every decision, you are thinking about where you’re spending your money, how it’s being spent, what the returns are. More importantly, though, it’s what can I do to make what I do be much more productive? And if everybody is focused on doing that, and we’re using things like technology and analytics that we’ve been investing in, then we are going to get that. And as I said, hopefully as we work on the underwriting levers, and you work on your focus of growing profitably, then the denominator starts to help. I’ll turn it over to Craig on the more specific office question.

Craig Mense

Chief Financial Officer

So, what can I answer for you, Bob, about the office move?

Bob Glasspiegel

Analyst · Janney

I think you said $10 million of savings in the December press release, if I recall. You are doing a sale-leaseback. It’s a complicated transaction. So I didn’t know if there’s anything other than that $10 million number that you are throwing out.

Craig Mense

Chief Financial Officer

Well, and do remember that that doesn’t really manifest itself until we move. So that’s a mid-2018 run rate kind of adjustment downward that happens then. I’d stand by the other numbers I gave you last quarter, which we expect about $15 million a year less of annual run rate expenses in 2017 from 2016, as a result of the actions we took over really last quarter. And there’s a little bit of that noise in this quarter, but it’s not enough to have mentioned or make really a difference. And recall that another of that 50 – 10 of that was changing IT infrastructure providers, which you did see in the commercial, as we pointed out in the press release, in that expense ratio. So we acted on that. That’s real. That’s happening. So I think those numbers are happening. And we all recognize that’s – there’s more to be done. I think that’s really the message from here. And nobody is complacent and no one’s – no apologies; we’ve made the decisions we’ve made. But we’re going to need to do more to improve our competitiveness, and you should expect that we are going to keep acting.

Bob Glasspiegel

Analyst · Janney

If I could squeeze one more in, Craig and Dino. In the corporate and other line, that’s slowing down sequentially. I see there was $9 million of other revenues, and your other expense has also trended down. Any sense in where that’s leveling off as a run rate?

Craig Mense

Chief Financial Officer

The run rate is more in prior quarters in the low to mid 20s loss. So, we had a couple recoveries, and the amortization of the deferred gain in national indemnity was a little elevated because paid losses were a little elevated. So I’d point you to more in the low-, mid-20s range as run rate.

Bob Glasspiegel

Analyst · Janney

Thank you.

Craig Mense

Chief Financial Officer

You’re welcome.

Operator

Operator

Next question comes from Jeff Schmidt with William Blair.

Jeff Schmidt

Analyst · William Blair

Hi, good morning, everyone. Could you talk about loss trends in some of your key liability lines? Any detail you could provide on workers’ comp, professional liability, or anything – more detail?

Craig Mense

Chief Financial Officer

I think in comp, frequency remains low, and frequency trends are down. I think we do build in a medical loss cost inflation expectation of around 6%, and that’s about what we are seeing. So most loss trends are relatively benign. In professional and managed and liabilities, we have seen a bit of an elevation in large losses. I don’t know if you call that a trend particularly, because it’s been more large accounts and maybe large underwriting bets that didn’t work out. And so we have seen, probably more importantly, some elevation in public D&O, some elevation in some of the financial institution business; and, more importantly, elevated risk in aging services and nursing home business, where we’ve seen a litigation uptick of some significance. But I think those would be the most important things to point out to you.

Jeff Schmidt

Analyst · William Blair

And then we are hearing some competitors talk about a more active plaintiff bar. It sounds like you are seeing that in healthcare specifically. Is there any more you can say about that, or anything – any other areas you are seeing that?

Craig Mense

Chief Financial Officer

Not particularly, no.

Jeff Schmidt

Analyst · William Blair

Really just kind of a healthcare issue?

Craig Mense

Chief Financial Officer

Yes; and very much pronounced in healthcare, nursing home business. But we have not really seen that across the board.

Jeff Schmidt

Analyst · William Blair

Okay. Thank you.

Craig Mense

Chief Financial Officer

Welcome, Jeff.

Operator

Operator

Next question comes from Jay Cohen with Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Jay Cohen

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Thanks. I guess for Craig, on the large losses, you talked about the year-to-year change and what that meant. Was one year outsized or undersized? In other words, is what you saw in 2016 kind of a normal run rate, and 2015 was light, or vice versa?

Craig Mense

Chief Financial Officer

No; 2016 was elevated, as we’ve said, by about 1 point over what we would think would be more normal, and elevated over what we even had in 2015.

Jay Cohen

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Got it. That’s helpful. And then when you talked about the premium adjustments, the retro workers’ comp, you had small business – the error in the rating of that. And I guess there was – you talked about the premium impacts and then the loss ratio impact. Was that loss ratio impact all in the accident year, or is that in the prior year as well?

Craig Mense

Chief Financial Officer

No. There’s no prior-year action in that. And really what I was trying to describe, Jay, is just that by pushing the net earn down and losses, the level of dollar losses remain the same; you get an elevated loss ratio. So nothing more complicated than that.

Jay Cohen

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch

So that really explains a fair amount of the upward pressure, along obviously with a larger – large loss activity.

Craig Mense

Chief Financial Officer

Absolutely, absolutely.

Jay Cohen

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch

One other question, war hazard recovery – that’s kind of a new one for me. Can you explain what exactly that is?

Craig Mense

Chief Financial Officer

Remember our – maybe not remember them, because maybe we didn’t talk about it – but our contracts in that Defense Base Act business really were with the Federal Government. And we kind of had to take then all comers in different parts of the business. So what we do is if someone – a worker is injured, in say Afghanistan for example, if it’s just a typical – he fell off the – in the construction site; fell and hurt himself, then that’s our responsibility because we are a comp provider. If the injury was caused directly by a war hazard, meaning an act of war, then the Federal Government reimburses 100% for that injured worker’s cost. Now, I think what’s probably most important is that that recovery process is a very – recovery from the Federal Government, now – is very lengthy. Because there are bunch of rules, as you would imagine, around documenting exactly the direct approximate cause that it was a war hazard that caused it. And then there is a requirement that the injured worker returns to maximum medical recovery improvement before we can submit the claim. So it’s really the – some of the complexity of the process, and it’s the length of the process. And this was a relatively new business for CNA. So we did that. We did add in some expert resources that had long-tenured experience, and it was really kind of their view of what our ultimate recoveries and government, our ability to prove each of these was going to be that kind of drove the difference.

Jay Cohen

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Got it. I’m sure the new administration can speed up that complexity.

Craig Mense

Chief Financial Officer

If you could lobby in a Tweet for us, that would be helpful.

Jay Cohen

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch

You got it.

Craig Mense

Chief Financial Officer

Okay.

Operator

Operator

Next question comes from Meyer Shields with KBW.

Meyer Shields

Analyst · KBW

Thanks. Good morning. The retrospective premium adjustment, is that relevant to accident years before 2016? In other words, were those accident years’ premium volumes recalculated?

Dino Robusto

Chairman

It did affect other accident years, really more 2015, 2016. But the amount that we took the charge is – or the numbers I gave you accounted for those potentially.

Meyer Shields

Analyst · KBW

Okay, perfect. And the DBA reserve adjustment – does that have any bearing at all on the expectations for your go-forward workers’ compensation book?

Craig Mense

Chief Financial Officer

No; not at all. That’s completely isolated piece of business. And it’s a runoff line, runoff business, and actually has none – the ongoing workers’ compensation, I tried to say that even in my remarks – that we took another look at all of the major reserving product lines in the fourth quarter in commercial. And I would say that the workers’ comp line particularly continues to perform very well.

Meyer Shields

Analyst · KBW

Fantastic. Last question: the P&C portfolio duration went up sort of materially from the end of September. And I was hoping you could talk about what drove that.

Craig Mense

Chief Financial Officer

I don’t think – nothing in particular drove that. You can see there’s not really – there’s little in the way of change in our portfolio allocation among – we did add a fairly significant amount of – I say that, like $500 million of taxes and munis because we did see a little opportunity at window for a few weeks in November when the market kind of blew out spreads there. So we added – so that might have added a bit. But there was nothing particularly intentional. It was nothing significant in the portfolio composition change.

Meyer Shields

Analyst · KBW

Okay. That’s perfect. Thanks so much.

Craig Mense

Chief Financial Officer

You’re welcome.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Ron Bobman with Capital Returns.

Ron Bobman

Analyst · Capital Returns

Hi. Patiently waiting here at the end of the line. Welcome aboard. I had a question about the commercial lines business. Even obviously putting aside Defense Base Act reserve adjustment, Dino, how far away is the expense ratio and loss ratio in that book from what you would consider top quartile, and presumably sort of the destination of where you hope to get it to at some point?

Dino Robusto

Chairman

That’s an important question. But look, at this particular juncture, it just – as we in the past, on earnings calls in the past – we’re not going to set and put out targets now. You hit the nail on the head, though. It’s easy to know and see what top-tier performance looks like, and that’s clearly what we’re going after. And it’s essentially the top priority. And although, having said that, truthfully even as this combined ratio improves, it’s still going to be the top priority because it’s always going to be. The important thing right now is we’ve put it out there. You can sense and understand our emphasis and focus on it. We’re going to focus on all of the levers that we articulated. And as we start to see the improvement, we will continue to refine our targets. And we'll keep you abreast of our process and strategy.

Ron Bobman

Analyst · Capital Returns

I'm not asking you – what do you consider the top quartile for a loss and expense for that profile book of business?

Dino Robusto

Chairman

Again, I'm not trying to play around with the question. At the end of the day, if you lined up the companies and who we consider to be our peer group; and you can see what – who falls – what numbers fall into that top tier. And you want to be a top-tier carrier so you want to be able to play at that. As I get more and more involved into the book and the portfolio and the organization, you get a much better feel. So again I'm not trying to work around the question. It's just simple, mathematically, what it is as top tier, and that's where we want to play. That result changes as the marketplace changes. But usually, the top-tier performers tend to stay the same. And so you know…

Ron Bobman

Analyst · Capital Returns

Thank you. When you look – thank you – sort of a related question, when you look at, for example, the loss component of where CNA is now compared to admirable others, what is the differential that drives CNA's loss result as compared to that admirable other group? Is it the verticals that you are targeting being just higher loss in nature? Is it the accounts that CNA has retained in some of those verticals, or just a greater loss-producing cohort within those sort of industry verticals? Could you just talk about that in some form, please?

Dino Robusto

Chairman

Okay. So, let me make a couple, and then I'll turn it over to Craig who's obviously been . There has been a direction and a shift towards more of being, as I indicated, a middle-market specialist underwriter. Prior management has talked about that over the last couple of years, and it has shown loss ratio improvement. So, yes; I think you are very correct when you talk about the portfolio, the verticals. And as those divisions have been made, you've clearly seen the improvement. Hence, in my opening remarks about you want to drive further into the ones that you've really developed a competitive advantage, because some are going to have larger markets. Can we go deeper? Can we export those to other geographies? And so we are going to continue the trend. We're going to try to do it as assertively as possible, as we can. But, yes; in the broader portfolio management, your verticals does make a significant difference. I don't know, Craig, if there's anything sort of you want to add.

Craig Mense

Chief Financial Officer

I wouldn't yes, Ron, I'd just say, look at Slide 11 in the earnings package. You can see where our full-year loss ratio is in commercial; compare that to the very best peer underwriting companies. It's slightly – it's above, so there's room to get better. But there's nothing – we are largely a casualty-focused business. We have managed still 80% of our revenue is longer-tail casualty. So there's certainly opportunities to improve that mix and drive improvement there. And I think that there is just all the levers that Dino laid out. It's really more of a – it's not like it's not there in the market. It's an execution process and continued refinement and improvement, whether that's talent or process or those underwriting judgments. It's all the things that I really referenced in my final remarks, about bringing that intense focus on all those things to just improve results. But there is no kind of hidden problem in there, in that it is – but there's certainly some improvements on portfolio mix, and there's a lot of improvement on the execution side.

Dino Robusto

Chairman

On the expense ratio.

Craig Mense

Chief Financial Officer

Right. And that's the other big thing is the – and you could see that clearly – yes, exactly. You can see the expense ratio.

Ron Bobman

Analyst · Capital Returns

Thanks, gentlemen. Best of luck.

Craig Mense

Chief Financial Officer

You’re welcome, Ron.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] We move to our next caller Ron McIntosh with Lomas Capital.

Ron McIntosh

Analyst

Thank you. Congratulations, Dino, first of all, on your new role and being back in the game. I've got a question for you, a variation on Josh Shanker's question earlier, and this relates to the long-term care business. You mentioned at the outset that business is relatively unknown to you. How did your due diligence get comfortable with that business on the balance sheet in light of two recent industry trends? One being a PricewaterhouseCoopers study that says the industry is 45% under-reserved; and then recent guarantee fund assessments on Penn Treaty, where their reserves are roughly 200% under the levels?

Dino Robusto

Chairman

Okay, so thanks for the question. And I'll make a few general observations, about long-term care. And I'll let Craig, who is clearly much more familiar with the business, jump in. As I said, previously unfamiliar; so tried to spend some quality time understanding it better. What I would tell you is first, I think you really have to applaud management's efforts in the last couple of years to really generate much more operational effectiveness in this building – in this business. Just as one example, going from an outsourced claim operation to now it being insourced has provided an enormous amount of ability to affect the business, to learn a lot more. And I think that has really started to show up in the improvements. They have done an excellent job at attempting to de-risk the exposure. And that goes from at the policyholder level where you might offer some reduced benefit in lieu of some large rate increases to management really looking at mechanisms to – the larger are meant to transfer some or all of it to third parties. Now there really hasn't been any viable options at that level, but clearly something that we are going to stay vigilant. In the meantime, we're going to continue this process of operational effectiveness; and clearly a lot more comfort in the last four quarters, hopefully evidence that. But I'll turn it over. So that is just some observations I wanted to make. And I'll turn it over to Craig, clearly much more familiar with the portfolio.

Craig Mense

Chief Financial Officer

And I think what I – there's really nothing better to point you to than the periodic results that we've had over the last four quarters because those periodic results reflect the reset assumptions in 2015. And they've – so our periodic results have been breakeven, and actually slightly better, relative to claim severity that's in our assumptions. And I think that's the other – you have to remember that while we are a member of the industry, it's – everybody's beginning level of assumptions against any of those key levers are going to be different. So we are mindful of that. We look at our own and our own, at the moment, have – are working out and performing as we expected them to. And that's along the continuum. I think the other silver lining in that negative you just threw out there is what we said – what I said earlier about part of the positive margin changes. Because the rate increases that we had filed, we actually were able to achieve more than we thought. And I'd say the regulatory environment is actually becoming more constructive, not that we've ever had any particular problems with regulators in our own dialogue and conversation; but I think that's generally positive. And you have to look at yourself, and look at your own results, and be wary of what you are seeing outside. But we certainly examine that closely enough, I can assure you that.

Ron McIntosh

Analyst

Very helpful. Thank you.

Craig Mense

Chief Financial Officer

You’re welcome.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, with no further questions in queue, I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. – our speakers for closing remarks.

Dino Robusto

Chairman

Thank you very much, everyone. Real pleasure.