Earnings Labs

The Progressive Corporation (PGR)

Q3 2016 Earnings Call· Thu, Oct 6, 2016

$202.52

+0.27%

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Transcript

Susan Griffith

Management

Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for those out-of-towners who came in, and welcome to Progressive's 2016 Investor Relations Day. We're glad to have you. I think you're all familiar with the Safe Harbor statements, and if not, there's also a copy in your materials as a reference guide. So this particular investor relations meeting represents a really big change. For many, many years, Glenn Renwick was the host of these meetings. In fact, I think he started them. Last week, Glenn celebrated his 30th anniversary with Progressive, of which more than half of that he was our CEO and President. During his tenure as CEO, he tripled the company in size. So by most record books you would say that is phenomenal, and it is. But it's not just that. It's not just what Glenn did, it's how he did it: Always making sure to instill in us that desire to win, but doing it in the right way, always following our core values. He always would set the bar higher every year for all of us. And then he wouldn't walk away, he would help us get over, and that is really his legacy. So Glenn, on behalf of the 30,000 Progressive people, our shareholders and the customers we're privileged to serve, thank you for, well, being Progressive. Okay, enough about Glenn. I thought what I'd do to start off is just remind you of our segments. So we outlined these several years ago when we first started talking about our Destination Era strategy. So I'll just briefly go over those. The focus today will be on the Robinsons, and we're really excited to talk to you about what we have done since we last met you in May of 2015. So Sam. Sam is a segment we grew…

Patrick Callahan

Management

Thanks, Tricia. So last year, when we talked, I laid out 3 key strategic priorities for our Personal Lines business. And those are: Restoring growth in agency, increasing our bundled penetration and ultimately, and then advancing our product development cycle. I want to give you updates on all 3. And what we'll do is start with an overview of the market from an overall channel and market size perspective. As Tricia mentioned, U.S. personal auto and home is rapidly approaching a $300 billion market. And when you look at the independent agency share of that, it's a little more than 1/3, or about $100 billion of home and auto premium. And despite the fact that technology adoption has been rapidly increasing the growth rate for direct distribution of Personal Lines products, the independent agency channel continues to grow premium. And that's due in part to broad distribution of their footprint, but also a great value proposition from a breadth of products offered and depth of carrier choice available. When you look more specifically at the homeowners market in the U.S., it's about a $90 billion market, and that's about 90% sold through agents, more than 40% through independent agents. And as the #1 writer of auto insurance through the independent agency channel, we believe we're incredibly well-positioned to leverage our strength in the channel, combined with ASI's property offerings, to become the #1 writer of auto and home insurance through the agency channel. Last year, I told you that restoring growth in agency was a top priority for myself and lots of other folks within our Personal Lines organization. So today, I'm thrilled to show you some information that after our business shrunk slightly into 2014 and barely recovered into 2015, we've turned that agency business around from a size…

John Sauerland

Management

Thank you, Pat. Good afternoon. It's been a while since we gave you a deep dive on Snapshot, our usage-based rating program. We have a new model in the marketplace, I'll share results around that, but also share more holistically why Snapshot is so powerful for Progressive. Later this year, we will roll out a new delivery mechanism to experience for Snapshot and that is via mobile. I'll share the rollout plans there, we're very excited by that, but I'll also share what our expected benefits from that rollout are. But overarching all of this is something that I think is even more powerful than Snapshot, sort of an ancillary benefit from Snapshot, if you will, and that is the big data management and analysis capabilities that we've developed around Snapshot that are now paying dividends across the organization and I believe can be a source of competitive advantage going forward. If you're familiar with Progressive, you know that we have a history of innovation. I would say that Snapshot is as a result of that history of innovation. We started out many years ago installing this football-size device in the trunks of some cars in Texas, proved out the concept a little bit. We enjoyed the benefits of Moore's law, shrinking of technology. I mean, we're able to get the technology into a device that could plug into an OBD port on a vehicle. Unfortunately, back then, connectivity was an issue. We mailed this device to our customers, along with a cord that we asked them to go find. Six months after plugging the device in their car, plug that cord in the device, into their desktop, more than likely back then, by the way, and more than likely try and upload via their dial-up modem. Obviously, not a…

Andrew Quigg

Management

Thank you, John. I have the pleasure of speaking to you today on 2 topics. The first half of the section will be on retention, and I'm going to tell you about the improving momentum we see with our retention. And then in the second half of the section, I'll provide an overview of our customer marketing initiative and I'll describe the advanced analytics we're applying to this problem, as John Sauerland alluded to. So first off, I want to just reiterate our preferred retention measure, which is Policy Life Expectancy or PLE. PLE is the average length of time we expect a new policy to stay with Progressive. We calculate PLE by first calculating our retention decay curve, and then we take the area under this curve to get our PLE statistic. That retention decay curve can be calculated multiple ways depending on the trade-off in responsiveness versus stability that we see. Our standard measure is to use 12 months for each point along that curve. That is our trailing 12 PLE that we've always reported out. We also calculate a trailing 3 PLE starting in 2014. That trailing 3 PLE uses 3, the most recent 3 months along that retention decay curve. So it's more responsive to more recent observations. Just some notes on the PLE calculation. The first 60 months represent actual data that we've recently observed and between months 60 and 300, we use an extrapolation. And we've seen all policies end after 300 months, which is a conservative assumption. We think the PLE statistic is accurate for a number of reasons and I'll highlight one of those today. We think it removes any tenure bias. So if we use simple retention rates, as our book of business ages, all else being equal, we think we'd…

John Barbagallo

Management

Thanks, Andrew. Hello. Good afternoon. I'm going to share a little bit about what we're seeing in the Commercial Auto insurance marketplace. I'm going to touch on our most recent results and share a little bit about our near-term action plans. And then I'm going to shift to talk about 2 disruptive trends that are coming to you, small business insurance and non-fleet Commercial Auto insurance. And these are trends that we have not only been monitoring, but we've actually been making investments around them over the last several years, and we think we're very favorably positioned to take advantage of them. But first, let's start talking about the marketplace. I'm going to start with a little history. This is a chart that I've shared with this audience in the past. It's now been updated through 2015. And what it shows is Progressive's relative performance relative to the industry on 2 measures: combined ratio and growth in direct written premium. And 2 things you can take from this graph. One is that over this time period, Progressive, by being intensely focused on Commercial Auto as a specific line of business, has been able to consistently outperform the industry on combined ratio, usually by a margin of 10 to 15 points. And for the last few calendar years, it's actually been by 20 points. Now some of that is from our expense ratio. We have a very cost competitive expense ratio. We believe we are the low cost provider in Commercial Auto, but a lot of that is loss ratio. And by being focused in the way we are, we believe we see things sooner and react faster than most of the rest in the industry and that contributes to this advantage. The other thing you can take from this chart…

Susan Griffith

Management

Thank you. We hope it's evident how bullish we feel about the future. Clearly, last year, Pat stood up here and said his primary goal, our primary goal, is to restore business in the agency channel. We didn't just restore it, it's at the highest level ever. We continue with our segmentation of more and more product models and having deeper segmentation at the quickest amount of time ever. So we really think that's a competitive advantage. And our bundled PIFs have grown 20% to 30% across channels. John Sauerland talked about our most important variable, our UBI or usage-based insurance, so Snapshot, and how we're continuing on that evolution and how with that work we've actually had even more data capabilities across the enterprise that we believe will be a winning strategy for Progressive. Andrew Quigg talked about PLE. We finally made that breakthrough in PLE, especially in the Robinsons segment. Andrew talked about the massive amount of customer data that we have and how we're going to use that data to understand the moves of our customers and be out in front of that, give them a reason to stay. John Barbagallo talked about the fact that we're outperforming our peers relative to profit and growth, so that's extraordinary. Bottom line is though, we have to respond quickly to our frequency trend, and we're doing that with rate. John has his own era coming up in terms of the direct business with small business owners as well as technology and data-driven technology in the commercial space. I hope you're thrilled as our team is about what we've executed upon and what we're going to be doing in the future. And I want to thank you for your interest in Progressive. So with that, I will ask John Sauerland to join me for some Q&A.

Elyse Greenspan

Management

Elyse Greenspan with Wells Fargo. So my first question is in terms of the 96% margin target. The way you spoke about it today, seems like a company-wide goal. From the last conference call, you kind of spoke as the homeowners focus not necessarily included in that 96% target for now. So if you could just kind of clarify that. When you look at the 96% goal versus the 96.2% year-to-date, is that company-wide goal? Or I thought for the time being, you were excluding the homeowners portion of the business.

Susan Griffith

Management

Yes, Ian asked that question during the conference call. I corrected myself. I was thinking from a gain share perspective. It is a 96% across all products, including homeowners.

Elyse Greenspan

Management

Okay. And then so, I guess, combined with that target as well is that we have this storm approaching Florida. So as we, I guess, double-part question, think about both your retention and exposure to the loss, and we do see it kind of contained to your retention, how are you thinking about your exposure, just in terms of the hours clauses in your contracts, given that the storm might end up impacting Florida twice? And then how do you just think about exposure there in terms of still hitting that 96% target for the full year?

Susan Griffith

Management

Well, when you mean exposure, reinsurance? In terms of that, I'll let you answer that part of that. But obviously, we can't predict the amount of the storm and the loss cost that will come from that. We have a CAT load that we put in each year. This seems to be something extraordinary. So right now we're at a 96.2%. Depending on what happens, clearly, you can kind of get to the outcome of that. We feel good about where we're at with reinsurance, and I'll let John talk a little bit about that.

John Sauerland

Management

And my bet was that was going to be the first question, so thank you for it, because I'm sure it was on all of your minds. ASI has maintained the reinsurance philosophy they had before we acquired a majority stake in the company. We haven't disclosed the complete reinsurance program, but I'll give you some quick highlights. So $50 million of retention for a main storm. The first storm has a tower that is up to what -- the average model, I'll say, equates to about a 1 in 300 years storm, so that's pretty high up relative to what we believe other carriers have. We have a second event that also has a $50 million retention on it. But we're -- I think ASI has done a great thing in that it's only typical in the marketplace, in that they prepay reinstatement for about 70% of that tower. That tower is not quite as tall as the first tower, but it's about a 1 in 100-year event, and about 70% of that has reinstatement premiums prepaid. And Trevor Hillier and John Auer -- Trevor Hillier, CFO of ARX, and John Auer, the CEO, are both here. So if I misstate or I need corrections, please feel free to chime in. So $50 million on an ASI book, it's material for sure. $50 million on the Progressive book, you can do the math. We can absolutely sustain that and still hit our calendar year 96% targets.

Unknown Attendee

Management

That's homeowner only?

John Sauerland

Management

That is property only, yes. So we also have boats sit on the coast of Florida. Thank you for reminding us of that. That exposure, we're pretty confident we have a pretty good feel for it as well, and our expected, our modeled exposure for Matthew is lower than that $50 million. It's probably like half. Now will that be -- it's a model. We all get that reinsurance models are not accurate. So the ultimate losses won't be known until they're known. But we think again, with even -- and auto on top of that, we'll have flood losses for sure, but we would still expect to hit a calendar year 96%, even with the storm.

Amit Kumar

Management

Amit Kumar from Macquarie. Two questions, both broader. First of all, just going back to the target of 50% increase in PLE. Last year, obviously, when we were here, you sort of sounded a bit disappointed in terms of trying to get to that number. Based on what we have seen today, do you think that 50% is a time-bound target or is it an aspiration target? And I guess linked to that is based on the numbers which we saw in the slide, is the improvement from here more linear or is it more exponential? That's my first question.

Susan Griffith

Management

Okay, great question. I -- from the PLE, I believe that it is, it will continue. It's not -- we haven't time-bound it. And we look differently at our PLEs across segments. So when we look at Sam, Sam stays about the same amount of time. So we often look at our PLE in, excluding Sam, and then all else. So Dianes, Wrights and the Robinsons. I believe we have just gotten started. So when we think about PLE, we think of nature and nurture. So as we continue with our new product models for those preferred customers, and we understand what Pat talked about, having 2 competitive products in the -- both home and auto available, I can only see that continuing to improve. And then what Andrew talked about in the nurture side is we're learning so much about our customers, so I think those 2 together, I believe, the possibilities are extraordinary.

Amit Kumar

Management

Got you. That's helpful. And the second question is, maybe switching gears, going back to Snapshot mobile. Doesn't that product skew the customer base away from the preferred customer? Wouldn't Snapshot model, I guess, attract a younger driver or is this much more, I guess, non-standard-ish? Or am I thinking of that in the wrong manner? In terms of the customer base, who will use that product?

Susan Griffith

Management

Well, I can start, and John went over -- no, I think though the chart he showed actually talked about consumer acceptance at any age.

John Sauerland

Management

Yes. And so we haven't marketed the app yet for Snapshot. Smartphone adoption is pretty broad now. I don't know the exact numbers across ages, but it's a very high penetration. Might adoption be younger? Perhaps. We wouldn't expect it to skew towards Sam, so to speak, for any reason. Snapshot, generally speaking, as you saw, is more relatable and preferred by preferred customers. So we'll see how the app distribution goes, but we're not going into it expecting it to skew any differently than our current Snapshot market.

Amit Kumar

Management

But does that mean -- following up on the loss cost trends, based on all the data you have initially, the loss cost trends are similar, is what you're saying?

John Sauerland

Management

So we have -- Snapshot app is in pilot stage today. We don't have it broadly, so we don't have enough data to tell you that it's exactly like Snapshot, but we are confident that our algorithm will react the same as the device or similar to the device, so we're confident that the rates that we apply will be accurate.

Susan Griffith

Management

We'll know a lot more next year. We're rolling out in 2 states later this year and the rest in the first half, so probably later part of next year we'll have more data.

Charles Peters

Management

Greg Peters with Raymond James. I just wanted to follow up real quick on the Snapshot product. Some of your peers, I think, have observed that their product stays on continuously even past that -- your pricing period. And I'm curious if you have a perspective on that as it relates to what you're doing. And then I have a different question, sort of in the same area.

Susan Griffith

Management

Yes, I think that we believe that we obtained enough data to properly rate that, that person with other variables. And we feel like we did not need to pass that time frame.

Charles Peters

Management

So in the data collection process, do you feel like you're missing out on data because you're not continuously tracking while they are customers, especially as you move towards the Robinsons, who are going to be with you longer, don't you think that data would be more valuable if you continue to collect it?

Susan Griffith

Management

We felt -- we thought that we had enough data to accurately price for those exposures.

John Sauerland

Management

We tested multiple models years ago, actually, with Snapshot. So we actually tested a continuous model, to use your words, meaning the device remained in the car past 6 months. And we concluded we were good with 6 months.

Charles Peters

Management

Okay. And then I just want to get back -- I was fascinated with Andrew's presentation. Thank you for offering us the opportunity to listen to that. And I'm just curious, from your perspective, can you tell us a little bit about the amount of money that he's invested in all of these different models and initiatives in marketing and maybe how it's changed this year versus last year? Because maybe you're spending less in advertising, more on modeling, quantitative analytics, et cetera. Just give us some color behind that, that would be very helpful.

Susan Griffith

Management

Yes, I mean, Andrew was the perfect person to put in the new role that we put him in last year, because we really wanted to understand deeply about our customer and how to get out in front of those things. And we just didn't have a lot of modeling done. We've been hiring across the company for data analysts. But I wouldn't say it's had any effect on what we pay for advertising. So that, those are 2 different things. We pay for advertising based on trying to get -- use an efficient amount of money to get customers in the door. So I would say this is -- we're spending the right amount -- I don't know the exact amount, I don't know that Andrew does either -- with just understanding data and then getting out in front of understanding how to proactively approach our customers when they think they need us and make sure they nurture right. This, to me, is worth it because how it should play out is our customers should stay longer and it should pay for itself by far.

John Sauerland

Management

I would agree. It will pay for itself many times over. I think the biggest investment is people. And we are moving some of our best data modelers in the company into the CRM group, which we previously hadn't done. And we think it will pay big dividends.

Kai Pan

Management

Kai Pan, Morgan Stanley. I have 2 questions. Number one is on the combined ratio. It's increased about 3.5 points compared with last year. You mentioned that CATs contributed to 1.5 points of that. Is the rest of the 2 points mostly because the new business have higher loss ratio? And do you expect that you were slowing down the new business to improve the 96% combined ratio currently?

Susan Griffith

Management

Actually, the CATs for 2016 have contributed 3 points.

Kai Pan

Management

Yes, but relative to last year, it was 1.5. So it increased 1.5.

Susan Griffith

Management

Yes, so the increase is 1.5. We don't intend to slow down our new growth. We want as much new growth as we can. We anticipated the new growth tax that came into play. I think as the next 4 months play out, we'll clearly take action, but rational action, to get closer to that 92. So yes, the new business has been a huge part of that process, especially on the direct side, where we front-load all those acquisition costs. So yes, we prepare to have that new business tax for that growth.

John Sauerland

Management

I might point out one difference, if you go on year-on-year, last year, we had about 2 points of favorable development at this point in the year. Right now, we have 0.1 point of favorable development. Again, I want to be as accurate as possible, but if you're doing the year-over-year, some of last year's calendar year result was prior year favorable development.

Susan Griffith

Management

And just to add on to that, we started out this year with some unfavorable development from December losses from 2015. So there's a couple of different things in play there that account for it.

Kai Pan

Management

Okay. And the second question is sort of larger picture. If you look at the adoption technology in the car -- safer car as well as driving behavior change like using shared mobility, using Uber, how do you think this would impact your business over the long term as well as in the next 3 to 5 years?

Susan Griffith

Management

Well, we've showed several times on how frequency over the last 50 years has continued downward. And of course, it's been offset by a lot of severity trends. We know that continuous safety models, and ultimately, at some point, we think that will be in the far future, autonomous cars will happen. So that's obviously a big threat to the insurance industry. And we're thinking about that. We have a group we call a runaway team that every day thinks about what could we do to monetize different things, what could we do to have new innovations? And so normally, we've been on the cadence of discussing the technology around vehicles about every other year. As our -- we did it last year, we'll update you this year -- the next year, I should say, on what we're doing with that. But we don't think -- we don't believe frequency trends are going to reverse, and we have to prepare for that.

Meyer Shields

Management

Meyer Shields, KBW. John, I have to ask, just because I couldn't hear, were you saying that the model retention was 5-0 or 1-5 on the catastrophe?

John Sauerland

Management

What's the question?

Meyer Shields

Management

On the catastrophe model, catastrophe loss, I just couldn't tell if it was...

John Sauerland

Management

5-0 retention.

Meyer Shields

Management

Okay. Real question, I'm trying to understand why, when we had sort of an industry-wide uptick in frequency, the Personal Auto performance was actually pretty robust and held up through that. In other words, you didn't see margins deteriorate rapidly or beyond expectations. On the commercial side, it seems to have been very sudden, and I', wondering if that's an internal issue or the nature of the external variables.

Susan Griffith

Management

Well, John, you can add more to that. We -- it did creep up pretty aggressively. We added a lot of new business in, and we saw that -- the first few months when we saw the frequency trend go up, we weren't too shocked by it, because relative to those months, it was a little bit higher, but -- to the months compared to last year, it was a little bit higher, but nothing too detrimental. And then when we saw that third month, we dug in deeply and reacted quickly.

John Barbagallo

Management

I guess I need to get on camera.

Susan Griffith

Management

Okay, fine.

John Barbagallo

Management

I think and I tried to add this color, in Commercial Lines, we're also seeing increased levels of economic activity. And we know when we see that, frequency follows. So that, when you put it all together, I think there's a general rise in frequency, which we see across all auto. But when you look at the verticals where we participate, a lot of construction, a lot of aggregate haulers, over-the-road trucking, so freight transport, definitely positive movement in all those indicators. So higher levels of economic activity is driving that as well, we believe.

Susan Griffith

Management

You want to stay up here? Because Jay Cohen from Bank of America has a question. Like homeowners, will you feel the need to manufacture your own commercial policies ex auto, such as BOP and GL?

John Barbagallo

Management

Well, my comments today were mostly focused on the direct channel. And there, we feel very comfortable that we can develop a very robust platform for direct small business customers using non-affiliated partner products. We've already done that, and we think we will continue to enhance that capability. I think a solution for the agency channel is more challenging. We found that with homeowners. And the bundling dynamic for commercial is also different. I tried to share that today, so when does Commercial Auto even get introduced into the equation. It tends to be these other coverages that drive the relationship. And I would just say we are exploring a number of different alternatives for the agency channel, but we have not necessarily settled on a particular strategy.

Susan Griffith

Management

Thanks, John.

Brian Meredith

Management

Yes. Brian Meredith, UBS. A couple questions here. I'm just curious, how are the agents reacting to 3.0? Given the surcharge, I would think that might be something that they may not like, having to go back to a customer and say, "Listen, you're getting a higher rate," and that could potentially hurt your relationship.

Susan Griffith

Management

Actually, the agents have reacted favorably to 3.0 because of the discount. So it's easy for them to talk about what is involved in the UBI approach. So it's actually improved -- the take rate has improved in the agency channel.

Brian Meredith

Management

Okay, great. Second question, I'm wondering with the -- on the Commercial Auto side, has any change in mix maybe caused any more seasonality to loss ratios and those types of things in the business?

Susan Griffith

Management

You're digging into it more than them. I think you've seen some seasonality. And I think because we've had a lot of new business growth as well, we're learning some things.

John Barbagallo

Management

Yes, we've always had seasonality in the business. I mean, a lot of it is tied to construction-related trades. We have seen a shift in our mix of business a little bit toward more of the transportation, which arguably is less seasonal. But in terms of a direct response to your question, I don't know that seasonality has become any more or less of a factor in what we're seeing.

John Sauerland

Management

And I think it's fair to say that we've seen that BI frequency uptick across segments in the Commercial Lines space.

Brian Meredith

Management

Right. And then I guess my last question, and kind of to what Kai was asking, with respect to this new business tax that you all talk about, is there anything that you can help us out with in trying to figure out exactly what that new business tax is right now on your underwriting results? How should we think about it? And as policies in-force growth starts to moderate, is the new business tax higher on direct versus agency? Can you give us some color? Because that's something a lot of us are asking ourselves right now.

Susan Griffith

Management

I tried to do that with showing both the agency and direct. So clearly, it's higher on the direct model because of the acquisition cost. So those acquisition costs are all front-loaded versus a relatively fixed commission. And I tried to talk about that in terms of the ULUP as well as how we think that's going to earn in. I mean, I can't predict exactly how it will earn in, because there are a lot of inputs. But we feel positive about it because of the influx of the type of new business we're bringing in, the average written premium and how we believe they'll run off in terms of ULUP. I'm not sure if I'm answering your question. I mean, we, I...

Brian Meredith

Management

What about the loss ratios? You generally have the new business tax on loss ratios.

Susan Griffith

Management

Higher [ph].

Brian Meredith

Management

Yes. Exactly. How to think about that?

Susan Griffith

Management

Well, I think it's a shorter-term thing. And as those customers stay longer, especially the Robinsons and the Wrights, with that PLE, you're well below that 96. So that's why we feel good. So you've got that new loss -- and I figure, are you saying is it coming in, the new -- the next new tranche of new business.

Brian Meredith

Management

Yes.

Susan Griffith

Management

Yes, I mean, I think....

Brian Meredith

Management

Each new tranche that comes in, it's got a higher loss ratio. As it runs down, obviously, the loss ratio improves. But how do we think about the math and how that kind of comes down?

Susan Griffith

Management

I think we think about the math in terms of targets. And so we know in each segment, new and renewal, agency, direct, Robinsons, Sam, at the very lowest level, we have specific targets that we believe will run off profitably. And we know when we're writing at or below targets, we feel that business is good. And so that's how we think of it.

John Sauerland

Management

I might add, just for -- and we won't give you the complete math. But know that we are hitting -- the calendar year 96 for the aggregate of the business remains. So regardless of which channel is growing, which segment is growing or not, we are committed to hitting that calendar year 96 regardless of there's a storm. We also work to price segments to lifetime cohort targets, as we call it. So we would take a direct auto segment and say over the life of that policy, we want to hit that 96. And that's why Tricia was showing the economics very differently in a calendar year period than a lifetime period. So we're trying to manage through the lifetime targets as well as the calendar target. And we can switch a lot of levers to ensure that we hit the calendar year target, which may or may not have implications on the longer-term lifetime targets. But more recently, if anything, it has had the effect of having the lifetime profitability, the ULUP, if you will, of that business, even better.

James Naklicki

Management

James Naklicki with Citi. Two questions. So first, you talked about 1 point on the P&L from technology spending from 2.0, that I guess it goes down under 3.0 because of the mobile device. So can you talk about would that flow through to bottom line or will it be factored into pricing? And my second question was, it appeared to me that loss trends were elevated in the second quarter relative to what they usually are historically. So -- and I think that was Personal Auto. What was driving that?

Susan Griffith

Management

Do you want to take the first one, and I'll take the second one?

John Sauerland

Management

Sure. So as we were just saying, whenever we find opportunity to price stuff differently or if we improve our cost structure, we plow that back into the pricing. So we will continue to price the Snapshot business to those similar lifetime targets of 96. So if we can take 1 point out of the expense ratio, we'll plow it back into the rates, be it through the non-acquisition expense ratio efforts that Tricia mentioned earlier, technology expense, what have you, so that goes back into the rates.

Susan Griffith

Management

Yes. Loss trend, we talked about that for new business, as well as frequency was relatively flat, severity was up about 4 points.

John Sauerland

Management

And second quarter was a little higher than first quarter, but I wouldn't interpret that as a trend. And 0% frequency and 4% severity is very consistent with historical trend that we've seen.

Unknown Attendee

Management

On Commercial Auto, how does the new business penalty work through and stopping new business applications? I mean, how many points does that bring the combined ratio down, put another way?

Susan Griffith

Management

I'm not sure how much. I mean, it has an impact on it. Again, most of our commercial business is written through the agency channel. So you're not going to see that same new business tax because we're not using the direct, so it's commission-based. I think it's also slightly higher on both underwriting and loss cost, so...

John Barbagallo

Management

And the new business restrictions will affect about less than 10% of our normal new business mix. So that will significantly affect the short-term combined ratio.

Susan Griffith

Management

With the underwriting that you're putting in place.

John Barbagallo

Management

Yes.

Susan Griffith

Management

Yes.

Unknown Attendee

Management

So slowing down growth does not impact the run rate in the combined ratio by itself? Is that your answer?

John Barbagallo

Management

No, it does. Not in the short term. So those actions are really designed to make sure 2017 is where we want it to be. And those restrictions will stay in place until the new rates are in place.

Unknown Attendee

Management

I guess, I didn't follow. What is the 10% that you're -- your new business that you're not writing in Commercial Auto?

John Barbagallo

Management

Sure. It's some high-frequency segments. Logging operations, new venture trucking operations, things that always have a high frequency. And until we get our rates where we want them, we're just going to not take that business for a while.

Unknown Attendee

Management

So it's the most volatile segment in the business, in theory?

John Barbagallo

Management

The highest frequency, and yes, typically high limit segments.

John Sauerland

Management

So I'll take it to a little -- maybe a little higher level. We can get more profitable by raising rates or we can underwrite out segments at new business or at renewal that we think are the cause of the problem until we have rates in that segment high enough where we are then comfortable letting new customers back in. So in Commercial Lines, they've identified segments of new customers that they believe will be the least profitable. And they're working upfront to underwrite that. In Commercial Lines, they have a lot of ability as well to underwrite a renewal with credits, debits. And they've done a lot of that over time and have targeted that, of course, as well. In Personal Lines, we're actually employing a lot of underwriting these days as well. It hasn't been what we've been -- it hasn't been our forte historically. But probably 4 or 5 years ago, we started getting a little more conservative around ensuring that we were bringing in business that was intent it was to insure and not otherwise. And I think that's helped us a lot. But higher level, you can improve profitability through raising rates or underwriting segments. And Commercial Lines has been very fast to react in turning on the underwriting where necessary, and they're now reacting very quickly in getting rates up and expect to have those rates up about 9% by the end of the year.

Susan Griffith

Management

Great. If that's all there is, there's none from here. Again, we want to thank you for your interest in Progressive. We hope that this is informative. Normally -- we'll have the Q out probably in the next couple of weeks. So normally, we would have a conference call in November. We're not going to because of the recency of this meeting. So we will talk to you soon after that. Thank you.