Earnings Labs

Genworth Financial, Inc. (GNW)

Q3 2009 Earnings Call· Fri, Oct 30, 2009

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning ladies and gentlemen. And welcome to the Genworth Financial Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call. My name is Diana and I will be your coordinator today. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. We’ll facilitate a question and session towards the end of this conference call. As a reminder the conference is being recorded for replay purposes. (Operator Instructions) I will now like to turn the presentations over to Alicia Charity, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Miss Chari, please, you may proceed.

Alicia Charity

Management

Thank you. Welcome to the Genworth Financial third quarter 2009 earnings conference call. Our press release and financial supplement were both released last and are now posted on our website as well as some additional details regarding investor efforts. Again this quarter we would also (ph) post management prepared comments while in the call (indiscernible) reference. This morning you’ll hear first from Mike Fraizer, our Chairman and CEO, followed by Pat Kelleher, our Chief Financial Officer and then Ronald Joelson, our Chief Investment Officer. Following our prepared comments, we’ll call up for question and answer period. Pam Schutz, Executive Vice President of our Retirement & Protection, Tom Stinson, President, Insurance Products, Tom Mann, Executive Vice President of our International segment and Kevin Schneider, Senior Vice President of U.S. Mortgage Insurance will be available to take questions. With regard the forward-looking statements and the use of non-GAAP financial information, some other statements we make during will contain forward-looking statements or actual results may differ materially from such statements. We advised you to read the cautionary note regarding forward-looking statements and our earnings release and the risks factor section of our most recent Annual Report and Form 10-K filed with SEC in March 2009. This morning discussion also includes non-GAAP financial measure that we believed may be meaningful investors. Our supplements and earnings release non-GAAP haven’t reconciled to GAAP were required and accordance with SEC rules. And finally we talk about International segment results, please note that all percentage changes exclude the impact of foreign exchange. In addition the results we will discuss today for the Canadian mortgage insurance business was like total company results excluding the minority insurance almost, otherwise indicated. And with that let me turn over to Mike Fraizer.

Michael D. Fraizer

Management

Thanks Alicia, and thanks everyone for your time today. Let me begin by saying, I’m pleased (indiscernible) with Genworth strategic execution progress this quarter. And that progress evident on multiple fronts as outline in our earnings release. Moreover this progress represents an acceleration of an important strategies and actions you saw (indiscernible) in the first two quarters of 2009. And steps are up well as we positioned for 2010 and beyond. All economic business and consumer environment remained challenged, Genworth has focused on sound growth and profitability enhancement opportunities that fit with our strengths, expertise, and leadership platforms, engaged with our distribution partners to (ph) play offense and build stronger partnership positions, pursued risk management and loss mitigation opportunities quickly and relentlessly with tangible results, and build capital (ph) buffers and flexibility substantially using a number of levers across our businesses and as a holding company to do so. Now we’ve all seen tremendous change over the past year in response to new realities. In fact, it’s fair to say that we probably passed three to four years of change under normal circumstances (ph) into the past years (ph) generally. And that made sense to us as it became clear that we could emerge from this period stronger and more focused. Today, I’ll concentrate on three areas; our operating environment, our growth strategies (ph) are preceding, and capital deployment. Pat will address key financials and trends and Ron will update you on the progress and outlook across our investments portfolio. Turning to the environment, we were mainly encouraged by times of stabilization and improvement that we are seeing in key areas. Investment losses remained at manageable levels and unrealized losses continued to contract. In both Canada and Australia, home prices and unemployment improved during the quarter and economies are looking…

Patrick B. Kelleher

Management

Thanks, Mike. We have now reported a second sequential quarter of improved financial results as our businesses emerged from the recent financial crisis and economic downturn. during the quarter we have fortified our holding company capital position and improved financial flexibility we have seen further improvements in our investment portfolio and operating results and as Mike detailed, we are encouraged by the positive signs of reemerging new business growth. (Indiscernible) book value per share increase through the second straight quarter and is up 34% since the first quarter to $25.42 per share despite the 13% increase in shares outstanding related to our secondary offering. These financial trends and developments during the quarter included improving fundamentals in equity and credit markets generally, improving business and housing market conditions in Canada and Australia, positive impacts from re-pricing new product and cash reimbursement activities and effective loss mitigation programs, particularly in U.S. mortgage insurance. Here we have seen declining losses for two sequential quarters despite the impact of increasing delinquencies because of the significant increase in loss mitigation saving. This morning our focus on each of our three business segments (Indiscernible) provide some market context, review progress from our financial results perspective and share some views on how we expect trends to develop for the fourth quarter and into 2010. Starting with retirements and protection, we are seeing good continued performance trends. In life insurance, mortality and taxes were favorable in the quarter and we had a 16 million lift from an annual actuarial review of assumptions primarily from (Indiscernible) that were updated to reflect current emerging experience. After excluding both the unlocking and about 10 million relating to favorable mortality and taxes, this level of earnings at the (ph) fair base point from which we expect to grow into 2010. In long-term…

Ronald P. Joelson

Management

Thanks, Pat. We were pleased to see continued improvement in the investment portfolio for the quarter. Active credit market spread tightening and improved profitability of companies in the corporate portfolio have contributed to the performance and quality of the investment portfolio. This morning my comments are focused on three areas: Third quarter results, including realized and non-realized losses; our investment activities, and how cash deployment and derivative strategies generate yield while mitigating risk, and the performance of our commercial mortgage loan and commercial mortgage backed securities portfolios. Net income in the third quarter included net investment losses of 62 million, net of tax and other adjustments, compared to 59 million last quarter and 478 million in the third quarter of 2008. This includes a 127 million of net other than temporary impairments comprised of 15 million from corporate bonds primarily on CIT Group, 47 million from financial hybrid securities, where downgrades to below investment grade required us to use the impairment rules applicable to equity securities, 47 million from sup-prime and Alt-A RMBS, and 16 million from other structured securities primarily from prime residential mortgage-backed securities. Focusing on structured securities, impairments for the quarter totaled 63 million with 47 million from subprime and Alt-A and only 3 million from CMBS. The 63 million compares with 71 million in the second quarter and a 183 million in the first. Third quarter results included 12 million of gains on derivatives primarily associated with guaranteed minimum withdrawal benefit variable annuities, a change in market value related to credit derivatives offset by modest losses on our capital hedges. We use derivatives primarily to help manage duration and to protect capital adverse interest rate movements. Moving to unrealized losses, total net unrealized losses after tax and other adjustments improved significantly to 1.4 billion from 3…

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) We will take our first question comes from Mark Finkelstein with FPK.

Mark Finkelstein - Fox-Pitt, Kelton

Analyst

Hey good morning. I just wanted to dive a little bit more into the I guess the reserve per delinquency at the US semi company. I guess what I am trying to – what I am interested in is just how did you actually calculate the estimated savings from loss mitigation, is it based on paid experience? Can you just give maybe more of a granular color on what exactly was done to come to that estimate?

Michael D. Fraizer

Management

Sure Mark and good morning. Let me turn that over to Kevin Schneider. Kevin?

Kevin Schneider

Analyst

Good morning Mark.

Mark Finkelstein - Fox-Pitt, Kelton

Analyst

Morning.

Kevin Schneider

Analyst

I think it’s quite beneficial to start with just to remind here what our process is for loss mitigation because it’s really an upfront focus on loans, when loans are reported to us rather than to focus on them at the point they go to claim. We did it for both investigations and workouts because we think it’s more effective way to get after those loans when a problem is (Indiscernible). What we then do is we go and we investigate those loans, we select the loans for investigation based on some of our models, our risk models, our analytics, we request those loans from our borrower, from our lenders and then once they get into the system then the file is returned, w go through the review process and depending upon the life of the review that could take two or three months to go through. What you saw in this quarter as it relates to our reserve change is our reserve model and the selection of primary case loss reserve factors that we go through on a regular basis, every single quarter, incorporates historical claim and rescission data into the frequency and the severity loss factor calculations. So, in this quarter our loss mitigation efforts which we had been ramping up through out the year continued to identify rescission that were executed. We continue to have increased doubt development, so that increased the number of opportunities that we could go after and identify. And then we began to see the actual realized benefits and improvement in that frequency factor that was driven by those rescissions. And so we – based upon our actual experience for the quarter, we that frequency factor improvement that we realized as a result of rescission and it was it was applied back to our normal reserving process and had the resulted impact that Pat talked for the quarter.

Mark Finkelstein - Fox-Pitt, Kelton

Analyst

Okay. And then I guess, maybe….

Patrick B. Kelleher

Management

Let me just add to that Mark, think of it this way. If you had the amount of change in improvement driven by the rescission experience that we actually witnessed, it’s then built in the factors applied over the remaining delinquency base, because there is many of those loans that we still have the opportunity to go in and investigate and attempt to cure.

Mark Finkelstein - Fox-Pitt, Kelton

Analyst

Okay, that’s helpful. And then I guess similarly you raised the estimated loss mitigation for the year to 775 to 825, I assume kind of the explanation for that is similar to what you basically just gave me on the reserve per delinquency.

Patrick B. Kelleher

Management

Well, we have certainly continued to ramp up our focus on, and as you see the trended improvement in our overall loss mitigation savings over the past several quarters, that just continues to extend that out through the fourth quarter this year on top of our year-to-date results of a little over 550 million.

Mark Finkelstein - Fox-Pitt, Kelton

Analyst

Okay. Is there any HAMP assumptions in that – I know it’s less of an impact kind of this year than next year, is there any HAMP impacting that 775 data.

Patrick B. Kelleher

Management

At this point in time our HAMPs that have completed have had very little impact at all on our loss result. We have a significant ramp up in the number of loans that have entered in to the HAMP trial period. So we have absolutely no impact on our reserves associated with expectations on future HAMP performance. We will treat it the same way as we do our rescission activity. When we see the actual experience then we will include it in our result.

Mark Finkelstein - Fox-Pitt, Kelton

Analyst

Okay, that’s perfect. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

We’ll hear next from Nath Otis with KBW. Nathaniel Otis - Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: Good morning. I think I’ll try to follow up on actually both those questions. Just following up on that reserve adjustment change, anyway you can give a little bit of color into, you talked about the change had to – was related to certain types of delinquencies. Anyway to give a little bit of color on what those delinquencies are that might be the clear ones that are driving new (Indiscernible) change and if not any way to get a little bit of color, what the actual mix is, products mix is of – what’s really being successful from a (Indiscernible) mitigation standpoint right now?

Kevin Schneider

Analyst

This is Kevin again. It’s a great question. When you look at where we are seeing the recession experience a lot of that activity first of all is in the ’06, ’07 books. We’ve got significant amount of it, particularly in (Indiscernible) which were higher, home (Indiscernible) area is higher, loan balances as a result and generally higher especially product content. So you sort of believe (Indiscernible) together. So if the ’06, ’07 book in California, Florida, Arizona, Nevada, largely and at higher loan amounts in - and lot of it is Alt-A. So the actual expiries then on those product types and on those loan types is then expanded out to the broader delinquency population and hit those delinquencies that are more concentrated in those areas as well. Nathaniel Otis - Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: Okay. All right, so it’s pretty right now it is Alt-A (Indiscernible) the book to business that were – we would expect it to be…

Kevin Schneider

Analyst

Yes, it’s the same. I would think of it as the same products and types that’s been driving our previous incurred performance up to this point in time. Nathaniel Otis - Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: Is there any idea what percentage it is of prime business?

Kevin Schneider

Analyst

I don’t have that handy but I would really say – even if you think about our book which was relatively low Alt-A concentration a lot of the, the concentrations we have is drawing off at disproportionate amount of delinquencies. Therefore, you’ve got a lot more opportunities there and that’s what we are really seeing upfront, just not as much from the core book. It’s much of more the Alt-A, some of it the A minus product and the more fully (Indiscernible) product does not have as much recession activity. Nathaniel Otis - Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: Okay. Great. And just on – that makes sense and just following upon your HAMP commentary. With that 1,500 HAMP loans that you shared is included in HAMP – when you say included does that mean there, in their three-month trial or does that mean they didn’t give a HAMP offer?

Kevin Schneider

Analyst

At the end of the quarter that number was loans that have actually been approved for the HAMP trial. By now those loans are actually in the trial period. That’s up from about 1,200 – that’s up from about 1,200 loans at the end of second quarter. So material ramped up. and I just think that – I think it’s a good question, I’d like to elaborate on it just a little bit more because there’ve been really a lot of discussions around the re-default rates around HAMP and a lot of questions around, is this program really going to work. And I got to tell you we remain cautiously optimistic about it and fully supportive of the government’s efforts and the administration’s efforts on both HAMP and HARP. The way we look at our book we say – we think there’s about 40 to 50% of our eligible delinquency population that could qualify for HAMP. So that write-off (ph) the basket pretty big number if look at our current delinquency population and then on top of that you apply even a 50% re-default rate which many are talking about as being something that’s unsuccessful. I think we’ve got to think about it differently. 50% of that potential population would yield very large potential benefit results for us when you compare that back to our current reserve for delinquency level. Nathaniel Otis - Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: Certainly, certainly. One – then I’ll follow-up quickly on that re-default question. Probably haven’t had a chance to think about it yet. But even though (Indiscernible) you had someone go to HAMP, do go the through trial period, going to be performing loan again and then re-default. Would you anticipate any change in your reserve methodology with that loan versus say, a new 30-day delinquent loan?

Kevin Schneider

Analyst

No. That’s (ph) the advantage of process and they successfully maintain and pay their loans for three months and the documentation is closed allowing them to close the modification and that’s – you know I like with it, it’s going to take about six months to get there. At that point that became a performing loan. That’s why we retreated (ph) and the next time through we retreated (ph) through our normal cash reserving process as we did today. Nathaniel Otis - Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: Okay. Great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question will come from Andrew Kligerman with UBS.

Andrew Kligerman - UBS

Analyst

Hi, good morning. Staying on USMI since it is so popular. I just want to make sure I understood Pat’s comment earlier. He mentioned that the rescission’s involved 135 million in change or reversal in reserve assumption. Is that correct?

Kevin Schneider

Analyst

Yes, that’s the after-tax impact of that rescission adjustment in our loss provisioning was 135 for the quarter.

Andrew Kligerman - UBS

Analyst

So, it’s an after-tax number. So if I apply that to your loss ratio, then that would be somewhere in the 120ish percentage point benefit to reserves this quarter, is that correct?

Kevin Schneider

Analyst

Yes, you’d get essentially added back in to on top of our current reported loss ratio.

Andrew Kligerman - UBS

Analyst

Right, so I’d thought that the XC arbitration charge it would’ve been about 162%, it would have been closer to 282 without the rescission assumption I suspect.

Kevin Schneider

Analyst

If you – first you’re adding that back – you’re adding that back in on top of the number without the settlement.

Andrew Kligerman - UBS

Analyst

Without the – yes because that’s…

Kevin Schneider

Analyst

I think that’s how you have to think about it because that was a one-time event.

Andrew Kligerman - UBS

Analyst

Okay. And then just very encouraging comment a moment ago about the 11500 delinquent loan spending, if I understood that, you guys think that roughly 40-50% of these things can qualify for half and of all your other delinquent loans you think that 40 or 50% -- I’m sorry let me just get this right. You said 40 or 50% of your delinquent loans overall will qualify, correct?

Kevin Schneider

Analyst

Yes.

Andrew Kligerman - UBS

Analyst

And of these 11,500 are you getting the sense that half of them will actually get modified as you are applying. Are you that optimistic?

Kevin Schneider

Analyst

We simply do not have enough data yet to see what the flow chart is going to be out of the trial period. When I start with 45 to 50% eligibility, the program is geared to owned or operate or owned or occupied homes. So if I just take this rate cut of owned or occupied homes out of our delinquency calculation and then think about some of our other analytics about what would it take to a borrower to qualify to 31 debt-to-income level target. That’s how we get to the 45 to 50% level. But it’s premature at this point to declare what we believe the trial period success rate will be.

Andrew Kligerman - UBS

Analyst

Okay. But you’re still somewhat optimistic around it.

Kevin Schneider

Analyst

I remain optimistic around it. I really think that there was a lot of discussion around this in the marketplace and if we at a 100% success rate we are simply not targeting enough borrowers. And so while we will certainly be going after impacting re-default rate that’s above – that’s below 50%, again he’d be in a 50% level, we’re optimistic. If that will help materially.

Andrew Kligerman - UBS

Analyst

Okay. And then I just want to kind of round out on this to get back to where I really wanted to go. So if you take that 280ish percent loss ratio that I would estimate for this quarter x the rescission. And I think I heard Pat mention earlier that there is an expectation in delinquency rate should come down a little more even in the fourth quarter despite the fact that 4Q is high in seasonality. Where do you think the loss ratio can go from that 282. I mean should we see a sharp fall off. Should we see it hanging around at 280 level for the next several quarter. I mean what kind of trajectories, can we expect over the next few quarters.

Patrick B. Kelleher

Management

Andrew this is Pat. I’d like to offer a perspective on at least how I am looking at the loss ratio is the math of your calculation is correct, but I would suggest that the change in the loss ratio associated with the demonstrated effectiveness of loss mitigation activity should be viewed as a measure of the effectiveness of the program and from our perspective, in terms of best estimate of the portion of delinquencies which will ultimately develop into losses. A rescission is just as good as cure via other means. So, that from my perspective has been a positive development which bring down our loss ratio. And with respect to the other comment on continuing impact, we didn’t indicate that the delinquency rate would be expected to decline in the fourth quarter but we did indicate that (Indiscernible) these ongoing activity as well as the (Indiscernible) changing mix of business that reserve per delinquency should continue to trend down and that’s really a measure of both that mix of business change as well as the ongoing effectiveness of the loss mitigation program. So I would view expected loss results in the context of after the impact of loss mitigation.

Andrew Kligerman - UBS

Analyst

Okay, so the starting point should be closer to this (Indiscernible) arbitration charge, not that (Indiscernible) number?

Patrick B. Kelleher

Management

Yeah.

Andrew Kligerman - UBS

Analyst

Okay, and then no cover around the quantity of doing (Indiscernible) going forward is just the reserve per delinquency. Okay, I mean I guess I will take it off one but I – maybe I am thinking of it the wrong way but I am thinking with recession assumption changes more of a one-time thing but you’re saying that this could continue forward. And I’ll take more detail offline but as you actually think it can go forward.

Michael D. Fraizer

Management

Andrew, it’s Mike. Let me give it to Kevin for a little more color but I mean this – just remember this is current experience and this is real benefit. And as Pat said in his remarks, we see it as we move in next year, material benefit continuing to come from loss mitigating as it built off the stage. So you’re going to have more modification benefit content. Kevin, you want to provide any additional color?

Kevin Schneider

Analyst

Yeah, I do. I would like to provide some additional environmental color for everybody on the phone because I think we are helpful. We have four months of home price improvement that we recognize in the marketplace. We see some stability developed in the marketplace. Total inventory is down through September about 7% from where it was which is really the lowest level of available unsold inventory since April 2006. So we are seeing some encouraging signs of market stabilization but we remain cautious on potential further unsold inventory pressures associated with foreclosures. As a result, we continue to manage our business assuming there’s going to be some downward pressure on home price appreciation. At this point in time if you think about that on a National Association of Realtors basis, we’re still managing the business. I think it may go down 10% more before it’s all over. On a FHFA index, which we think probably more resembles really our booked portfolio, we think there’s potential seven more points to decline there. The reason that’s important is that coupled with ongoing pressures on unemployment, because unemployment I believe is going to tick up a little bit above 10% and trend that way for fair amount of next year until we see it start to come down, that’s going to going to pressure delinquencies going forward. So we are going to continue to see little bit of delinquency build. What I think you will see is continued opportunity to drive down reserve for delinquency because the delinquencies are beginning not to come from lower loan balance state. They are not as concentrated in the specialty product and the high loan home price state. So, that mix is starting to be effective in run-through of our provisioning as well as the real life benefits of those loss mitigations to help that or help you think about going forward as we close up this year another into 2010.

Andrew Kligerman - UBS

Analyst

I mean this is great color. I guess with so many contrarian pros and cons going in different directions. Do you think we go up here in terms of loss ratios or we go down? I am going to keep it really blunt.

Michael D. Fraizer

Management

Well, what I would do (Indiscernible) stay tuned.

Andrew Kligerman - UBS

Analyst

Stay tuned?

Michael D. Fraizer

Management

Yeah.

Andrew Kligerman - UBS

Analyst

Optimistic or pessimistic? I am going to stay tuned. I just want to know whether it would be optimistic or pessimistic.

Michael D. Fraizer

Management

Hey, we’re focused on executing our strategy and we’ll continue to update you on this. Hopefully, it depends well on our investor day and at the next quarter call.

Andrew Kligerman - UBS

Analyst

Okay, I got some follow-ups but I’ll get out of here and get back in the queue for later.

Michael D. Fraizer

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

We’ll take our next question from Donna Halverstadt with Goldman Sachs.

Donna Halverstadt - Goldman Sachs

Analyst · Goldman Sachs.

Good morning. Congratulations on your quarter. I had one strategic question I wanted to ask about on mortgage insurance. I know that time and place (Indiscernible) and running it on the self-contained capital perspective is I understand where you need it to be, but at some point going forward there will be the next strategic decision taken and I am not going to ask you to speculate on what that might be. But I am curious about the timeframe. And when you think about strategic alternatives for USMI, will you want to wait to finalize your own internal decisions until it’s clear? What the outcome would be if the administration’s actions related to the GSE’s structure and role in Charter, or would you like to finalize your own decisions before the GSE topic has resolved.

Michael D. Fraizer

Management

Donna, this is Mike. I’ll give you a few different perspectives, first let me start at the end. It could take some amount of time to figure out what the public policy and governmental approach will be regarding the GSEs, so that’s one that we will closely monitor and along with others, in the mortgage industry and the mortgage insurance industry being gauged in that dialog and we will just have to see where that goes. Second perspective I’ll provide is it’s clear that we’ve approached this market and taken our business platform and approached it aggressively to improve the business model and here’s a business model where we have basically now doubled the effective returns with some upside. We have taken down the volatility, we’ve taken up the quality, and we have great capital strength. So the way we are approaching this is we have a lot of value – shareholder value to recreate here. And that’s what we are focused on doing. Kevin and the team have done a wonderful job on that front. Continue to execute very well on that front. It’s good, frankly for America, if you need that counter-party risk in the lending system and we are also a big proponent of spreading good underwriting practices and we are going to be a very energetic on all of those fronts. Longer term, your implicit question is how you are going to manage your mix of business. And we like all – unlike others, we’ll always look at our portfolio over the years. We’ll look at that strategically, we’ll actively manage it. Any calls on how you would change that mix, specifically would be premature as I have shared in other conversations over time, I would expect protection and retirement content in the enterprise to come up given our international positions, our domestic position. And where we have housing related exposure to be very focused on where we can indeed win and have these very attractive risk return models and then certainly the pruning we’ve done both internationally and how we focus domestically have shown that we have that model in place right now. So, those would be the three ways I’d suggest you think about it.

Donna Halverstadt - Goldman Sachs

Analyst · Goldman Sachs.

Okay. One quick follow up I agree we’ve aggressively to improve that business model. Do your comments imply that beginning succeeded capital in the near to intermediate term might be on the table.

Michael D. Fraizer

Management

Well, again I’d think about that in three steps. First, we have a lot of excess capital in the business and we because we moved early we pulled out of certain markets and products, managed our volumes carefully. We are very early and proactive on the risk mitigation and loss mitigation front. We’ve created capacity to participate in the rebound of the market, and Kevin’s commercial team is very focused on doing just that. Second is, you have heard and talked about in the industry, we’ve continued to actively study, perhaps some similar but with some differences – approaches in such things as legal entities stack and that creates additional flexibility and capacity. So that’s your second line of flexibility to support growth. Third, it gets to be a different question which says when you have a business that’s making mid-20s returns and performing up north of that and probably will perform north of that for new business, would you consider if you moved to those first two steps, giving us some additional capital on that front. And those returns with those risk profiles, the answer is sure, we just don’t see that as anything immediate because there is tremendous flexibility that Kevin already has in the business but – and that’s the way to think about it.

Donna Halverstadt - Goldman Sachs

Analyst · Goldman Sachs.

Okay, great. And the last quick question is actually on retirement and protection. I’ve been very curious to watch some of the re-tooling he’s done with respect to products and target customers, and you talked about a lot of positive traction you are getting in that business. Can you just comment on what things you are most focused on continuing to do as you re-tool that business and overall what do you think you feel you are in with respect to that transition.

Michael D. Fraizer

Management

I’ll just provide a general comment and turn it over to Pam Schutz. We made great progress. When you get – when you make choices you focus on your leadership position and really engage with your distribution, you can get very positive energy going and I would say that is exactly where we are. Let’s got to more specifically on the platforms, Pam, you want to take that?

Pamela S. Schutz

Analyst · Goldman Sachs.

Yes. Just let me make a few points and one is we are very pleased with our leadership lines that are lifelong term care and wealth management. We have strong competitive positions today in the industry and we believe we have upside in those as we take that forward. In addition, we’ve been very smart about our targeted lines of annuities and Medicare supplement to focus on those distributions and those products where we can win and achieve good returns. Having said that, as we look forward or looking at sequential sales that are improving in our leadership lines, as well as in variable annuity. We are putting on good new business at good returns which will bode well for the future of the business. In addition as was mentioned earlier we are looking at good fundamentals of good mortality in our life business and loss ratios and long-term care, good margins, wealth management and if you look at (ph) where this power going forward, two levers. One is putting cash back to work as well as improve investment performance. So all in all we are very optimistic about taking this business forward.

Donna Halverstadt - Goldman Sachs

Analyst · Goldman Sachs.

Thanks. Thank you for taking my questions.

Michael D. Fraizer

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, we have time for one final question and that will come from Eric Berg with Barclays Capital.

Eric Berg - Barclays Capital

Analyst

Thanks very much and good morning. I have two questions. The first, pardon me, first given the extraordinary declines that we have seen in housing prices in some parts of the country more than 50%, why would you be doing, why would you be ensuring 95% loan to value loans and it seemed like the 5% cushion could easily be erased given recent history, is it that you just feel you can price forward or it just struck me as curious given what you have just gone through to the increasing (Indiscernible)?

Kevin Schneider

Analyst

Hi Eric. This is Kevin. I will take that one. First of all when we think and look at what’s going on in home price decline we look at it at a granular (ph) NSA level and so what are we looking and tracking what (Indiscernible) performed ever to date from the peak to the current point in the cycle and what our expectation is going forward from now to the ultimate drop of the cycle. So our recent expansion and we have been – we have been doing 95s throughout the year in places that work on our declining market (ph) less and our performance from a delinquency standpoint on that production has really been quite attractive, very, very low delinquency levels. Going forward, we have number one increased pricing on 95 above the level of performance variance that we have seen between the 90 to 95 (Indiscernible) three times. So we think we got sufficient price. We think that the collateral and the loss ratios and the box that we are currently underwriting and showing today even previous most recent cycle will stand up to the pricing and stand up to the performance that we are seen at. And then I think you got to remember we moved pretty aggressively early on for our book and we were really holding our horns on this early on the cycle we weathered through, we are starting to see stability coming out the other side and when you think it may impact us just be an ideal time to be doing this still cautiously, still prudently and properly underwritten but what the elimination of almost all the (Indiscernible) risk factors that were running through this production throughout the industry up to this point, we just feel solid about our risk and I will illustrate now in our expectation of that performance.

Eric Berg - Barclays Capital

Analyst

Second and final question relates to lifestyle protection, you mentioned that in crisis but if you also have been changing products and doing things differently with your distributors, can you provide a couple of just one or two illustrations of the product changes that you made to make this concrete whether in abstract and just tell us how you are changing the relationships with your distributors to mitigate losses? Thank you.

Michael D. Fraizer

Management

Eric, I will give that to Tom Mann. Tom?

Thomas H. Mann

Analyst

(Indiscernible) this morning and then I think you put the question when you back up from distributors to where – the first part of the answer and that is what we have done in Europe across the board is fundamentally decreased our exposure to the only format cover that we offer. So we are pretty much done that with all distributors where we felt that we had excessive unemployment exposure in what we see with the environment (Indiscernible) next sort of three years. Let me talk a little bit about re-pricing. I will try and do this (Indiscernible). I think the important thing to remember is that the majority of distribution of arrangements that we have in place run about three years. So what we have done is enter into a re-pricing strategy with those various distributors in the context of the three year time span that we have. All of our contracts that re-pricing triggers when we have losses exceed certain (Indiscernible) so what we have done is really three things. We work – we are working to re-price all the contracts that we have today or distributional arrangements where the loss ratios have been breached. Secondly we work with those lenders to re-price our agreements where we think we may be trending towards these higher losses and last but not least when we have solid performance with lenders although we may be decreasing our unemployment exposure we will work to re-price those when their normal contractual renewal period (Indiscernible). With regards to the structures, we like that in three ways. We have the opportunity to increase the price to the consumer or a new business. We have the opportunity to adjust our commission rates which puts more revenue in our pockets and our system if you work for the purpose of covering losses and more (Indiscernible) to your questions we can revise the terms and conditions. A simple example of that is that we may reduce the duration of coverage for unemployment cover as an example. And it’s really there are a lot of distributors and there is a mixture of those three things that we are doing as (ph) Kev mentioned to you we have identified those clients that we think are going to have the most material impact on our operating income. We are about 20% through that re-pricing average of the quarter, 60 to 70% through by the end of the year and you are going to start seeing although the results this quarter were not that strong, you are going to begin to see a very nice incremental bill on quarter by quarter basis as more of our enforced (Indiscernible) will reflect all the actions that I just took you through.

Eric Berg - Barclays Capital

Analyst

Great, great response. Thanks Tom. All the best to you.

Michael D. Fraizer

Management

Thank you.

Alicia Charity

Management

Thank you all for your time this morning. Unfortunately we have run over our time and there are a number of people who didn’t get to ask questions. So I apologize. I will be available all day to answer your many questions. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen this concludes Genworth Financial’s third quarter earnings conference call. Thank you for your participation. At this time the call will end.