Good day, and welcome to the Hanover Insurance Group's Fourth Quarter Earnings Conference Call. My name is Chuck, and I'll be your operator for today. [Operator Instructions]. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Ms. Oksana Lukasheva. Please go ahead, ma'am.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, and thank you for joining us for our quarterly conference call. We will begin today's call with prepared remarks from Jack Roche, our President and Chief Executive Officer; and Jeff Farber, our Chief Financial Officer. Available to answer your questions after our prepared remarks are Bryan Salvatore, President of Specialty Lines; and Dick Lavey, President of Agency Markets. Before I turn the call over to Jack, let me note that our earnings press release, financial supplement and a complete slide presentation for today's call are available in the Investors section of our website at www.hanover.com [Operator Instructions]. Our prepared remarks and responses to your questions today, other than statements of historical fact, include forward-looking statements as defined under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 regarding, among other things, our outlook and guidance for 2022, the ongoing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, economic conditions and related impact and other risks and uncertainties that could affect company performance and/or cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. We caution you with respect to reliance on forward-looking statements, and in this respect, refer you to the forward-looking statements section in our press release, the presentation deck and our filings with the SEC. Today's discussion will also reference certain non-GAAP financial measures such as operating income and accident year loss and combined ratios, excluding catastrophes, among others. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the closest GAAP measure on a historical basis can be found in the press release, the slide presentation or the financial supplement, which are posted on our website, as I mentioned earlier. With those comments, I will turn the call over to Jack.

Thank you, Oksana. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I'll begin today's call with a discussion of our fourth quarter performance and full year financial highlights in the context of the current business and economic environment. I'll then provide an overview of our strategic and business accomplishments for the year and our high-level expectations for 2022. Jeff will review our financial results in more detail and discuss our 2022 guidance, and then we'll be happy to take your questions. 2021 was an outstanding year for our company. I am extremely proud of the way our talented team navigated the challenges of an exceedingly complex market environment and executed on our key business imperatives, building even more on the strong strategic, operational and financial momentum we have established over the past several years. Considering what was an extremely active catastrophe year for our industry and our company, we are very pleased with our financial performance, highlighted by operating income per share of $8.73 and an operating return on equity of 11.2%. We achieved a sub-90s x cat combined ratio for the year and generated record net written premium of $5 billion, reflecting the success of our distinctive and winning strategy. For the fourth quarter, we delivered outstanding results, posting our best ever quarterly operating earnings performance. In the face of higher inflation and evolving loss trends, we took advantage of the opportunities presented by a particularly dynamic market, fully leveraging our strong agent partnerships, broad and innovative capabilities, and organizational agility, posting a 16.8% operating return on equity and a combined ratio of 92.9%. Our results continue to demonstrate our ability to drive broad-based profitable growth through strong market awareness, excellent portfolio management and financial discipline. Looking first at growth, we gained considerable momentum over the course of…

Thank you, Jack, and good morning, everyone. I will first begin by reviewing our consolidated results and discussing our segment operating performance in more detail. I will then provide our typical update on our investment portfolio and capital position. I will close my prepared remarks by providing our guidance for 2022. Turning to our consolidated results. We reported excellent net and operating income per share in the fourth quarter, with both metrics beating our quarterly records. Furthermore, our fourth quarter operating ROE of 16.8% reflected outstanding underwriting and investment performance. Starting with underwriting. Consolidated net premiums written increased 9.2% in the fourth quarter compared to the prior year quarter. The primary drivers of the increase were robust rate, positive exposure growth and near-record high retention levels in addition to strong new business in Personal Lines. Given the impact of COVID in 2020, and some meaningful seasonality in our results in the fourth quarter due to our predominantly northern footprint, we believe it would be helpful to ground some of the following underwriting analysis to pre-COVID profitability, particularly for the lines of business that have been impacted by meaningful frequency benefits in 2020, including most substantially auto. Accordingly, I will provide some comparisons to 2019 where appropriate. We delivered a combined ratio of 92.9% in the fourth quarter, which is modestly above the prior year quarter. but reflects an improvement from the relevant pre-pandemic period of 2019. The combined ratio in the fourth quarter of 2021 included 3.1 points of catastrophe losses, which was below our catastrophe assumption of 3.9 points. We recorded favorable prior year reserve development, excluding catastrophes of $14.4 million or 1.2 points of the combined ratio for the fourth quarter. For the full year, we recorded favorable prior year reserve development, excluding catastrophes of $56.1 million or…

[Operator Instructions]. And the first question will come from Matt Carletti with JMP.

I wanted to start on a question related to kind of the severity trends that you're seeing in Personal Lines. I guess, can you help us on the outside as we look at various indicators, what are the best indicators or the mix of indicators we should look at? Like, let's take auto, right? And is it used car values? Is it labor cost/shortage? Is it parts cost rental car days? As we think about kind of the items that are changing, give us kind of a rough mix of how you look at it in terms of what is driving the severity pressures.

Yes, Matt, this is Jack. Thanks for the question. And obviously, it's the topic of the day. So we're happy to kind of give you our view on that. Before I pass it over to Dick to give you maybe some specifics. I would tell you that I think what makes it a little different for us is our strategy and our portfolio as we articulated in our prepared remarks, we have an account business, and we have a different customer base and frankly, the complexion of the losses that we see do change how inflation impacts our book of business versus maybe low limits, more physical damage-oriented competitors. So -- but with that, we clearly, as we said, are experiencing some inflation. And we're separating, if you will, what we think are some short-term phenomenon from the longer-term trend analysis that we still think is important and to keep focus on. So with that, I'll turn it over to Dick.

Yes. So Matt, just to kind of go right at the heart of your question, the leading indicators that we look at, the first thing to do is to look at the mix of losses, meaning, is it a total loss or is it a repairable loss? And this won't surprise you, but with the total loss scenario, that's really where the biggest element of severity is being driven from because of the actual cash value increases in used cars, right? So if we look at our -- all of our indicators, that's what we would say is the biggest one to watch for, offset a little bit by salvage prices, right? So you've got to keep an eye on what's going on in the salvage market, too. And then on the repairable side, it is about number of parts, cost per part and labor per part. So those indicators we watch closely. We have seen an uptick in the number of parts, some from more increased speeds and more severity. Cost of parts is up. But labor, interestingly is not up as much. there is some additional labor, of course, when you have more parts to repair, it takes longer time. So you put all those together, right, and -- with the appropriate percentages and you get to your total severity. So that's hopefully helpful to you how we track it.

Very helpful. Can you give a rough break -- and I understand this might be your book and other people's books could be different. Clearly, yours has performed certainly well versus peers. When you talk about a total versus repairable on just a number of accident basis, ballpark, do you have 10 accidents? How many are a total versus reparable? And has that changed at all recently?

Good follow-up questing because when you look at the total dollars, it's a bigger percentage than it is in terms of incidents. So it's around a 20-ish percent incident of a total loss.

Frequency. Got you. Great. That's incredibly helpful. And then just one, probably a question for Jeff on the investment portfolio. obviously, interest rates are starting to inch up here a little bit. Can you help us with where kind of new money is, what you're investing in versus where the book yield is, how that spread has moved?

Yes. So certainly, with interest rates rising, it makes that gap smaller, but there still is a gap. So the new money is still below the roll-off of the earned yield on the book. But we're closing it and we're comfortable that the cash flows will offset the diminished yields that we have in the portfolio.

The next question will come from Paul Newsome with Piper Sandler.

I want to beat the inflation issue a little bit harder again. But I was actually hoping if you looked across your commercial book versus your personalized book, it just hasn't -- nobody has behaved the same. Just curious if you have any thoughts about why you're seeing it so much more in Personal Lines versus [indiscernible] you are in Commercial Lines?

I want to make sure I clarify the question, Paul. Seeing -- you said seeing more. You're seeing more?

Well, we see this rapid increase in [indiscernible] claim frequency and severity and private passenger, much more than we have in the auto side of the house. And you write both. So you're in a pretty new position to look at it through the differences that we've seen over the last, just call it, couple of quarters between the two.

I think at the highest level, and we'll certainly let the business guys chime in here. At the highest level, think about what we're going through, right? We have, frankly, a lot less people going to work and a lot more people working from home. And so I suspect at the highest level, we just have a change in activity level. Within our Personal Lines book, we also see changes as we suggested, that might advantage [indiscernible] some other Personal Lines markets. But in aggregate, it seems quite logical that you would see more of that in the Personal Line side. I think the other thing is, is that when you look at how rate hits the book over time, it influences a lot of kind of the ultimate dynamics of the book. And we've been at Commercial Lines price increases for many years and Personal Lines went through a competitive period that now is going to rebound pretty substantially. So I don't know if [indiscernible], you want to chime in on that.

Interesting question. I don't have a perfectly clear answer for you, Paul. I do -- we did see -- picking up on what Jack said, the frequency declines in Personal Lines was a greater phenomenon than in the commercial line side. So you might think that, that would be a benefit to the PL side. But the severity on the Personal Line side, I think it is related to what I was just talking about around total losses versus repairable losses on the Commercial Line side. So I think the severity is probably coming though more acutely on the Personal Lines side.

I think what is important, though, related to yours is that the high quality companies have enhanced claims analytics working with actuarial, working with the businesses to keep an eye on all those frequency and severity measures relating them back to the complexion of the claims. And I can tell you, we have a lot of confidence based on the real investments we made in the claims department on analytics that are now really enhancing our ability to anticipate loss trend, not just reflect on it.

Focusing on the Commercial Line side of the house. Obviously, trends are in the right direction. Who -- you're gaining share in Specialty. What are the kinds of companies that you think you're gaining share from? Because one of the interesting things about this hard market is everyone is reporting very high retention rates, and nobody seems to be losing share. Who do you think is the classification type of company that you're gaining share from?

Paul, just a quick one there. The -- most of the increase in premium comes from rate and exposure, but we are gaining share. I think Bryan is a good person. [indiscernible]

Yes. So let's start with some [indiscernible] and then I think we can give you a little bit of commentary on kind of Small Commercial and some dynamics that are playing out there. But Bryan?

Yes. So I think what I would share with you is our growth is pretty broad-based. Jeff hit it right, good deal of growth from rate and retention that is better than planned. But our portfolio for a long time, has been pretty balanced. Balanced with, I would call, specialist brokers and producers, right, and are increasing growth from our Hanover agents that we've really invested in our technology, in our field be more coordinated. So we're really in a bit of a fortunate position that we're doing well in that specialist broker market, and we're doing well with The Hanover agents that value having that sort of total handover engagement with us. So for us, I think there's a number of different carriers that wouldn't single them out. I think it's our strategy. I think it's the combining of the specialist brokers, the wholesalers as a complementary source and then our Hanover agents.

Maybe just a quick comment on Small Commercial because I think in that area, there is quite a difference in terms of the winners and the losers. And at the macro level, I think you know we compete quite confidently against the national carriers in the BOP [indiscernible] market, and we also compete against the regional carriers on kind of the package Small Commercial accounts that aren't necessarily delivered through a point-of-sale system. And I think it's that breadth of appetite, we are clearly seeing more and more business getting pulled out of the regional carriers to the better nationals or the better, more capable Small Commercial players by just pricing efficacy and targeted strategies. So Dick?

Yes. No. I think that -- well said. I mean our -- it's always about ease of doing business in Small Commercial for the BOP and associated lines. Our new investment in TAP Sales now out in 37 states is just giving us an incredible tailwind, and we're winning business against the nationals, against their systems, the regionals who don't have a strong technology. And the agent population, of course, is getting smarter and more strategic about how they place their Small Commercial business that we're right in the mix on all those strategic discussions.

The next question will come from Meyer Shields with KBW.

Two really quick questions, if I can. First, is there a material difference in the loss trends between Specialty and Core Commercial?

Well, again, we got multiple businesses inside of Specialty. And so there's quite a difference, frankly, even within Specialty on what the loss trend looks like in our Hanover Specialty Industrial versus, say, our professional liability and management liability businesses. So in aggregate, I would imagine that the variance isn't dramatically different. But I think when we get down to the business unit level, we even see a pretty good difference between Small Commercial and middle market and the Core Commercial. So there's a full array of where inflation, how property-centric is the book of business. I think we all know that people are worried about some of the liability trends. But in the short term, some of that's been suppressed by the pandemic environment and the courts opening and closing and reopening. So I think some of this will change over time. But in aggregate, I don't think there's a major difference in those trends.

The only thing I would add is, to Jack's point, we measure this across each of our individual books. And then we look at our rate versus loss trend against each those books. So when we say we're getting rate maturity above loss trend, it's right down to the specific area. And that's why I think we have a lot of confidence in how that's developing.

No, completely understood. I was just trying to sort of get a sense as to the baked-in loss ratio improvement for Specialty versus Core Commercial. It sounds like it's greater, if I understand your comments correctly.

I would say in the short term, that's true.

Okay. Perfect. Second question, and I'm not sure what to do with this, but the pit count growth in both auto and home accelerated from the third quarter, which makes sense because most of the industry is raising rates. Is there anything to be worried about? Is there any adverse selection that we're -- any risk of adverse selection in that?

I would tell you, we feel terrific about the quality of the new business that we're writing and the historically high retention ratios. But I'll let Dick speak to that.

Yes, no, absolutely. We have all the quality indicators that we watch around liability limits and full account. I think you now 87% of our business is a full account, which speaks to the quality that we attract. So there's nothing at all in the new business trajectory that you see that gives me concern. It's of the highest quality that we've had in the past.

And remember that our growth is substantially coming from our Platinum experience in the Prestige product, and that's our highest quality business.

[Operator Instructions]. Our next question will come from Bob Farnam with Boenning and Scattergood.

I have two questions. One is on Personal Lines. You've been raising rates there for a few years. You're really profitable. I understand you may not be raising rates as much as peers at this point. But my question is, are you -- have you seen or do you expect to see some pushback from the regulators about the rate increases there? And probably the same question, have you seen rate increase fatigue from agents or customers at this point?

I think the high level answer is no, that we have -- we -- because of the approach that we're taking, we have not had to have excessive rate increases. Our strategy is to try to generate good returns, so we can be more consistent. But Dick, do you want to respond to that?

Yes. Love this question. It really comes down to your starting point and how much you're asking for in terms of what kind of pushback you get from the states. And hopefully, you appreciated the disclosures we gave on Page 9. But you can see, if I could just point out on that upper right-hand chart, where we have for the last several quarters and Jeff had this in his prepared comments, last couple of years has been above the industry in terms of taking rate. We -- you can see the industry taking rates down even negative. We've never gone negative. So we've always kind of been sort of steady, and we're now at a low watermark. But we will be adding rate in the next coming quarters, but we don't have as much of a substantial need. So when you approach a state and your need is not as great, and you've been steady, we've had no problems at all getting our rates approved.

Yes. And I think the agents, as you can imagine, love a market that isn't up and down and all over the place, that consistency is what allows us to generate the agency experience that is expected of our partners.

And on your second question of customer fatigue or agent fatigue, we're not seeing that. And we anticipate, with the hardening market, that our strategy will be well received. Our retentions are at some of the highest levels we've seen. So we believe that there's still room to kind of increase our rates modestly from what we have today. So -- but we'll watch that closely, right, understanding the rate we push and the elasticity that comes through from customer agent reaction and what happens to our retention. I feel very confident about it.

Great. The second question I have is on the reserves, and you and most of your peers have talked about being prudent or conservative with the social inflation, economic inflation impact that's going on. Can you tell us kind of how that works in practice? And if there's ways that we, from the outset, can actually see data about those trends?

Bob, I think it's difficult really from an outsider to see it. I was talking to another analyst, and they were saying, can we look at the page? And I said, well, if you're going to look at the page, they're going to be down quite a bit because, a, they're down; and b, they're delayed a little bit. I think when you get the scheduled Ps, I'm confident that you'll see conservatism will show itself in those schedules. We've been as prudent as one possibly can, and you're starting to see a little more meaningful prior year development from a lot of different years, not just 2020. So prior years as well. So we're feeling as good as we can, and we're feeling as good as we've ever been about our balance sheet coming out of '21.

The next question will come from Grace Carter with Bank of America.

I was wondering, looking at the kind of varying frequency and severity trends that we've seen in Personal Auto recently. Is there any difference in the Platinum book versus the Prestige book? Or do the trends look pretty constant across those 2?

Yes, there's not meaningful differences in our auto frequency or severity. It's -- I would say nothing to speak of.

I think the guidance from the Investor Day assumed flat loss ratio. Given kind of the earn-through of the recent rate increases in commercial lines and some potential margin improvement there maybe, I mean I was just kind of wondering I guess, the level of conservatism baked into the ROE guidance and just if there's any sort of change in the outlook there?

So clearly, we've talked about the rate that we're getting above loss trend across Commercial Lines. And that will bode well for all of our Commercial Lines businesses where we're seeing some margin improvement. On a short-term basis, in Personal Lines, for example, clearly, the loss ratios will go up from 2021 because we had that enormous frequency benefit in the first half of the year. So no one could continue with loss ratio or a 62% loss ratio in the first and second quarters. And as those move up a little bit to normal levels, that will be just fine for us. As you think about the Investor Day, Grace, that's a really long-term strategy where it's over a 5-year period. So over that particular period, we're assuming that loss ratios will be constant. Within any given period or any given year, there are going to be situations or times where they up, they move down, where we get more benefit from expenses or claims activity starts to jump in at certain points. So a little hard to answer, but over a 5-year period, we're comfortable that there'll be an equilibrium between price and loss trend.

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Ms. Lukasheva for any closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Thank you, everybody, for your participation today, and we're looking forward to talking to you next quarter.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.