Selective Insurance Group Q4 2024 Earnings Report

Selective Insurance Group EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $1.62
• Consensus EPS: $1.99
• Beat/Miss: Missed by -$0.37
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Selective Insurance Group Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: N/A
• Expected Revenue: $1.27 billion
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Selective Insurance Group Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q4 2024
• Date: 1/29/2025
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Thursday, January 30, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 8:30AM ET

Selective Insurance Group (NASDAQ:SIGI), together with its subsidiaries, provides insurance products and services in the United States. The company operates through four segments: Standard Commercial Lines, Standard Personal Lines, E&S Lines, and Investments. It offers casualty insurance products that covers the financial consequences of employee injuries in the course of employment and bodily injury and/or property damage to a third party; property insurance products, which covers the accidental loss of an insured's real property, personal property, and/or earnings due to the property's loss; and flood insurance products. The company also invests in fixed income investments and commercial mortgage loans, as well as equity securities, short-term investments, and alternative investments, and other investments. It offers its insurance products and services to businesses, non-profit organizations, local government agencies, and individuals through independent retail agents and wholesale general agents. The company was founded in 1926 and is headquartered in Branchville, New Jersey.

Selective Insurance Group Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Presentation

[Operator]

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Selective Insurance Group, Inc. 4th Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question and answer session.

[Operator]

Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Brad Wilson, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasurer. Please go ahead.

[Brad Wilson, Senior VP of Investor Relations & Treasurer at Selective Insurance Group]

Good morning. Thank you for joining Selective's 4th quarter and full year 2024 earnings conference call. Yesterday, we posted our earnings press release, financial supplement and investor presentation on the Investors section of selective.com. A replay of the webcast will be available there shortly after this call. John Marchioni, our Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive Officer and Patrick Brennan, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, will speak about results and take your questions.

[Brad Wilson, Senior VP of Investor Relations & Treasurer at Selective Insurance Group]

Our commentary today references non GAAP measures we and the investment community use to make it easier to evaluate our insurance business. These non GAAP measures include operating income, operating return on common equity and adjusted book value per common share. We include GAAP reconciliations to any referenced non GAAP financial measures in the financial supplements posted on our website. We will also make statements and projections about our future performance. These are forward looking statements under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, not guarantees of future performance.

[Brad Wilson, Senior VP of Investor Relations & Treasurer at Selective Insurance Group]

These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that we disclose in our annual, quarterly and current reports filed with the SEC. We undertake no obligation to update or revise any forward looking statements. Now, I'll turn the call to John.

[John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman at Selective Insurance Group]

Thanks, Brad, and good morning. 2024 was a challenging year. Our operating ROE of 7.1% was below our 12% target, but we ended the year with a strong capital position and the financial flexibility to execute our strategy of disciplined profitable growth. Our actions to strengthen our casualty reserves coupled with our solid underlying profitability have positioned us well to meet and exceed our return targets in the years ahead. For the year, we grew net premiums written by 12%, delivered an underlying combined ratio of 89.4 and increased book value per share by 6%.

[John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman at Selective Insurance Group]

Investment performance was strong with after tax net investment income of $363,000,000 that contributed 12.8 points of return on equity. We advanced important strategic initiatives in 2024, including adding 5 states to our standard commercial lines operating footprint, achieving significant repositioning in personal lines and enhancing our technology foundation to support excess and surplus lines. Our combined ratio for the year was 103, up 6.5 points from 96.5 in 2023. The underperformance relates to our reserving actions addressing elevated severities in recent accident years, particularly in general liability. Social inflation remains a headwind for us and the industry.

[John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman at Selective Insurance Group]

We've extensively discussed this in previous quarters and continue to operate in an environment where loss trends are elevated. In the quarter, we strengthened prior year casualty reserves by $100,000,000 and added $47,000,000 to the current accident year above our original guidance. In 2024, we took casualty reserving actions totaling $411,000,000 with $311,000,000 or 7.1 points on our combined ratio related to prior accident years. Our 2024 actions were predominantly in general liability for accident years 2020 and subsequent, primarily impacting 20222023. Recognizing these trends over the course of the year, we increased our 2024 accident year losses by $100,000,000 relative to our original guidance, adding 2.3 points to the combined ratio.

[John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman at Selective Insurance Group]

Ashok will go through these actions in more detail. Our growth strategies, underwriting targets, performance measurements and employee profit based compensation are focused on creating long term shareholder value. Combined ratio is the primary success measure for our insurance operations. Our 2024 underlying combined ratio, which excludes catastrophe losses and prior year casualty development was 89.4, a 90 basis point improvement from 2023. Standard commercial lines and excess and surplus lines reported underlying combined ratios in line with 2023 despite actions to increase current year loss cost expectations.

[John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman at Selective Insurance Group]

The personal lines underlying combined ratio improved 9.6 points in 2024 as we implemented significant price increases, took meaningful underwriting actions to address underperforming business and continued transitioning to the mass affluent market. We remain comfortable with the overall composition and quality of our underwriting portfolio despite the adverse emergence in general liability. While rate increases will continue to be our primary focus for profitability improvement, We also have been making underwriting refinements, including managing limits and coverage grants and challenging jurisdictions, driving improved terms and conditions and focusing production on better performing classes of business. Consequently, new business growth in commercial lines moderated in the past two quarters. This quarter's commercial lines renewal pure pricing of 8.8% and retention of 85% were both in line with last quarter's results.

[John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman at Selective Insurance Group]

Exposure growth added 3.8 points contributing to our total renewal premium change of 12.9%. Commercial lines pricing excluding workers' compensation increased 10.1%, the same as in the 3rd quarter. Renewal pure pricing in commercial property was 11.3% and commercial auto was 10.7%. General liability renewal pure pricing was 10.6%, up from 10.2% in the 3rd quarter, 7.6% in the 2nd quarter and 6.5% in the Q1. Excess and surplus lines delivered a strong year with 29% growth exceeding $500,000,000 of net premiums written for the first time.

[John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman at Selective Insurance Group]

The 2024 combined ratio was 89.7 including 4 points of prior year reserve strengthening. The underlying combined ratio was 81.1 in line with last year despite actions to increase current year loss expectations. We continue to pursue technology and automation investments to increase E and S scalability. While growth has been robust and we continue see continued market opportunity, we remain mindful of social inflation's broad based impacts. As a result, we continue to build higher severity increases into our E and S loss picks.

[John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman at Selective Insurance Group]

We also achieved strong price changes in recent years. While these higher severity assumptions held up relatively well, $20,000,000 of our prior accident year booking actions were from this segment. Growth in brokerage, our middle market E and S business, along with rate and exposure increases drove the average E and S account size from 4,600 at the end of 2023 to approximately 5,300 at the end of 2024. While the average premium size increased, our appetite is generally unchanged and we are comfortable with the pricing, terms and conditions and mix of business. Our 2025 guidance incorporates strong overall profitability assumptions for the E and S segment.

[John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman at Selective Insurance Group]

In personal lines, net premiums written increased 4% for the year. However, we saw a 3% decrease in the 4th quarter. Our strategic repositioning and significant actions to improve personal lines profitability contributed to a combined ratio of 91.7% for the quarter and 109.3% for the year. Both are meaningfully better than the prior year. 2024's underlying combined ratio was 89.3% with the quarter at 86%.

[John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman at Selective Insurance Group]

Renewal pure price increased 27.3% for the quarter and 20.6% for the year. In states where we have filed and received approval for adequate rates, we are focusing on growth in the mass affluent segment. With the actions we have taken, we expect personal lines will produce an underwriting profit in 2025. In summary, our team responded well to 2024's challenges, improving our position for 2025. In this uncertain environment, we are focused on rate and non rate actions to drive underwriting profitability while prudently growing the business.

[John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman at Selective Insurance Group]

I'll now turn the call over to Patrick, who just completed his 1st full quarter at Selective. His significant insurance experience and deep background in corporate finance has added a new perspective to our executive leadership team, significantly enhancing our ability to manage the challenging environment and restore our profile of strong and consistent underwriting results. Patrick?

[Patrick Brennan, Executive VP & CFO at Selective Insurance Group]

Thanks, John, and good morning. We reported $1.52 of fully diluted EPS in the Q4 and $1.62 of non GAAP operating EPS. This produced a return on equity of 12.7% and an operating return on equity of 13.5%. For the full year, fully diluted EPS was $3.23 and non GAAP operating EPS was $3.27 down 44% from a year ago. Return on equity was 7.0 percent and operating return on equity was 7.1%.

[Patrick Brennan, Executive VP & CFO at Selective Insurance Group]

This was disappointing after 10 consecutive years of double digit operating ROEs. However, we think the actions we've taken in 2024 position us to quickly return to meeting or exceeding our ROE target. Our GAAP combined ratio for the quarter was 98.5%, including 8.8 points of prior year reserve strengthening. Catastrophe losses reduced the combined ratio by 90 basis points due to very low event frequency and reduced loss estimates for prior period catastrophes. The Q3 $85,000,000 Halina estimate has held up well.

[Patrick Brennan, Executive VP & CFO at Selective Insurance Group]

For the full year, our combined ratio was 103, 7.5 points higher than our original guidance. Catastrophe losses of 6.5 points exceeded our original guidance by 1.5 points and prior year reserve strengthening added another 7.1 points to the full year combined ratio. The 2024 underlying combined ratio of 89.4 was 110 basis points better than our original guidance. The expense ratio and non cat property losses were favorable by almost 3 points, but the current accident year casualty loss ratio was unfavorable by 1.9 points. Reserving actions accounted for 2.3 points that were partially offset by business mix changes.

[Patrick Brennan, Executive VP & CFO at Selective Insurance Group]

The expense ratio for the year was 30.6%. Our 2025 guidance assumes that the expense ratio will increase to approximately 31.5%, partially due to greater profit based compensation from expected underwriting improvement. We remain focused on expense discipline while investing to support our strategic objectives. Turning to reserves. In the quarter, net prior year casualty reserve strengthening was $100,000,000 At the line level, dollars 25,000,000 of favorable prior year workers' compensation development was more than offset by strengthening of $100,000,000 of general liability, dollars 20,000,000 in E and S and $5,000,000 in personal auto.

[Patrick Brennan, Executive VP & CFO at Selective Insurance Group]

There was no commercial auto development in the quarter. We booked $47,000,000 of increased current accident year loss costs in the Q4 compared to our original guidance. This included $41,000,000 or 14.4 combined ratio points in general liability and $6,000,000 or 4.2 combined ratio points in E and S. The quarter's $47,000,000 increase builds on the 3rd quarter's $21,000,000 increase, the 2nd quarter's $28,000,000 increase and the 1st quarter's $4,000,000 increase. Our 20 24 accident year actions are predominantly in general liability and driven by movement in recent prior accident year severity as 2024 frequency emergence has met our expectations.

[Patrick Brennan, Executive VP & CFO at Selective Insurance Group]

We believe these actions are prudent considering the elevated uncertainty in the external environment and its impact on our reserving diagnostics. We will continue to respond to emerging information, incorporate our view of risk factors and book our best estimate. The favorable prior year workers' compensation development was primarily driven by results of our annual tail development study, which showed better than expected severity in older accident years. These relatively small factor changes are applied to all accident years. Run rate profitability in this line for us and the industry continue to be impacted by significant negative bureau filed rate changes even as favorable prior year development benefits results.

[Patrick Brennan, Executive VP & CFO at Selective Insurance Group]

After tax net investment income for the 4th quarter was $97,000,000 up 24% from a year ago. For the year, after tax net investment income was $363,000,000 slightly above our 2024 guidance of 360,000,000 dollars and up 17%

[Patrick Brennan, Executive VP & CFO at Selective Insurance Group]

from

[Patrick Brennan, Executive VP & CFO at Selective Insurance Group]

2023. We invested $683,000,000 of new money during the quarter at an average pre tax yield of 6.1%. As a result, the average pretax book yield increased by 3 basis points to 4.9% at year end. We expect this embedded book yield will provide durable elevated investment income. In 2024, investments generated 12.8 points of return on equity, up 40 basis points from 12.4% in 2023.

[Patrick Brennan, Executive VP & CFO at Selective Insurance Group]

The portfolio remains conservatively positioned. Total fixed income and short term investments represented 92% of the portfolio at year end with an average credit quality of A plus and a duration of 4.0 years. Alternative investments, which report on a 1 quarter lag generated $8,400,000 of after tax income in the quarter and $29,300,000 for the year, up 38% from full year 2023. We successfully renewed our property catastrophe reinsurance program effective January 1st, maintaining our $100,000,000 retention while increasing our coverage exhaustion point to $1,400,000,000 from $1,200,000,000 The increased limit reflects the growth in our book's total insured value. The top layer of our program is 75% collateralized and provides $600,000,000 of coverage in excess of an $800,000,000 retention.

[Patrick Brennan, Executive VP & CFO at Selective Insurance Group]

With attractive market conditions, we completed the renewal with risk adjusted price decreases and improved terms and conditions. We also supplemented our main tower with a new personal lines only buy down layer. This coverage attaches at a slightly lower return period than our broader catastrophe program, providing additional protection as we transition to the mass affluent market. Our peak peril U. S.

[Patrick Brennan, Executive VP & CFO at Selective Insurance Group]

Hurricane is well within our risk tolerance at 4% of GAAP equity for a 1 in 2 50 year net probable maximum loss. Our reinsurance program includes casualty access and property per risk treaties that renew on July 1. The treaty retentions are currently $2,000,000 per occurrence for casualty and $5,000,000 per risk for property. Turning to capital. Our capital remains strong with $3,100,000,000 of GAAP equity and $2,900,000,000 of statutory surplus at year end.

[Patrick Brennan, Executive VP & CFO at Selective Insurance Group]

Book value per share decreased 2% in the 4th quarter with increased after tax unrealized losses for fixed income securities offsetting profitable results. For the year, book value per share increased 6% and adjusted book value per share was up 4%. Our debt to capital ratio of 14% and strong operating cash flow provide ample financial flexibility to support organic growth plans and execute our strategic initiatives. We did not repurchase any shares during the quarter, so our authorization had $75,500,000 in remaining capacity at year end. We currently view our organic growth within our insurance operations as the most attractive opportunity to deploy capital.

[Patrick Brennan, Executive VP & CFO at Selective Insurance Group]

Turning to 2025 guidance, we expect our GAAP combined ratio to be 96% to 97%, including 6 points of catastrophe losses. With no personal lines or standard commercial exposure in California, we expect the devastating Los Angeles and Southern California wildfires will not significantly impact our Q1 results. As always, we assume no prior accident year reserve development. After tax net investment income is expected to be $405,000,000 This is a 12% increase over 2024 reflecting

[Patrick Brennan, Executive VP & CFO at Selective Insurance Group]

growth

[Patrick Brennan, Executive VP & CFO at Selective Insurance Group]

in our invested asset base and slightly higher book yields as we prudently manage the portfolio. Our guidance includes an overall effective tax rate of approximately 21%. Weighted average shares are estimated to be 61,500,000 on a fully diluted basis without any share repurchase assumptions under our existing authorization. Now, I'll turn the call back to John.

[John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman at Selective Insurance Group]

Thanks, Patrick. We entered 2024 with an expected loss trend of 7%, including 4% for property and 8% for casualty. Our renewal pure price last year, excluding exposure change was 9.5%. Nonetheless, we increased our loss picks because of the unfavorable emergence in recent accident years. These actions reflected further elevated severities, primarily attributable to general liability and excess and surplus lines.

[John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman at Selective Insurance Group]

Our 2025 guidance implies an underlying combined ratio in the 90% to 91% range, up from the 89.4% we reported in 2024. We expect our expense ratio to increase about 1 point to approximately 31.5 The guidance reflects elevated uncertainty in the external environment and embeds an overall expected loss trend of approximately 7% in line with last year. It assumes an expected loss trend of approximately 3.5% for property and 8.5% for casualty. Our reserving actions, pricing response and progress on our strategic priorities in 2024 have us well positioned to quickly return to delivering operating ROEs at or better than our 12% target. Our 2025 guidance implies an operating ROE of approximately 15%.

[John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman at Selective Insurance Group]

I'll now ask the operator to begin our question and answer session.

[Operator]

Thank And our first question is going to come from the line of Michael Phillips with Oppenheimer and Co. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

[Mike Phillips, Managing Director and Insurance Analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.]

Hey, good morning. Thanks. John, first question is kind of a basic one on reserving methods. It's been a couple of decades since I sat in the seat of a reserve and actuary role, but I think the mechanics haven't changed that much. Look at a bunch of reserving methods, get a range, do some weighted averages, come up with a best estimate or a point estimate and then book something.

[Mike Phillips, Managing Director and Insurance Analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.]

I guess sometimes when we hear a company take a fairly significant reserve charge, we sometimes hear comments about how the booked amount is different than what that embedded point estimate is and therefore some margin may be built in. Maybe can you speak to that? And on your GL book for the current year, calendar year, you have $300 plus 1,000,000 What kind of embedded extra margin might there be in that relative to either your own best estimate or maybe the external actuaries if that's happened already? Thanks.

[John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman at Selective Insurance Group]

Yes. Thanks, Mike. So just a comment relative to the reserving process and while the fundamentals haven't changed, I think the level of detail and insight and the expansion of methods has continued to evolve and be refined. So yes, the underlying approach is very similar, but I think the depth of analysis and the insights we have are much better than they were a couple of decades ago. So that's just with regard to your first question.

[John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman at Selective Insurance Group]

On the second point, we have consistently had a process whereby we carry a position or a risk margin above the actuarial best estimate. And that position and the magnitude of that position is always determined by our view of the risk factors that we observe. And what I can tell you is that risk margin has been very consistent over time and would be consistent with what we've seen in more recent years if you were to look at the position

[Mike Phillips, Managing Director and Insurance Analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.]

Second question, if I heard you right, on the end of your comments about the casualty loss trends embedded into your guidance for 2025, I think you said 8.5%. I feel like that's a little bit lower than what you said last quarter at 9%. I want to make sure that's right and kind of what's behind that?

[John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman at Selective Insurance Group]

Yes. So the 9% we've been talking about is for GL and that continues to be where we have GL on a forward trend basis. We've given you a casualty trend number, which is all in, including workers' comp and commercial auto. But yes, the GL trend that we were citing more specifically at around 9, actually a little bit north of 9 from a severity perspective is what we continue to embed in our 25 loss expected loss ratios.

[Mike Phillips, Managing Director and Insurance Analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.]

Okay, perfect. And then last one kind of a numbers question. Your primary casualty versus your kind of excess and commercial umbrella, I think that's about a 2 thirds, 1 third split on a premium basis. Can you say how much of your GL calendar year 2024 charge, how much of that was primary versus excess in umbrella on commercial lines?

[John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman at Selective Insurance Group]

Yes. It was predominantly GL. There was some umbrella movement, but there was predominantly GL and predominantly in the 20 20 2, 20 23 accident years. And remember, I think it's important that the difference with us not for against all competitors, but against many is our umbrella book is entirely written on a supported basis. So that gives us an earlier indication of frequency because we have the underlying auto and or GL that's triggering those umbrella losses.

[Mike Phillips, Managing Director and Insurance Analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.]

Okay. So again to confirm, your GL your excess commercial didn't see much reserve charge. It was more the primary?

[John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman at Selective Insurance Group]

Yes. We did see some, but it was predominantly GL.

[Mike Phillips, Managing Director and Insurance Analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.]

Okay, cool. Thanks, John. Appreciate it.

[John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman at Selective Insurance Group]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. And one moment as we move on to our next question. And our next question is going to come from the line of John Newsome with Piper Sandler. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

[Jon Paul Newsome, Managing Director at Piper Sandler Companies]

Good morning, it's Paul. I wanted to see if you could give us just a few more comments to make us comfortable about the potential for just higher accent year loss ratio picks as we go forward. Remarkably, in general, underlying combined ratio was pretty good, very good. But with all of these casualty charges and workers' comps deteriorating a little bit, things of that nature, you would think you have pretty substantial higher loss picks. I realize there's some conservativeness in your guidance, but if you could just give us a little bit more of why those loss picks in your view are the right loss picks as you look forward into next year?

[John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman at Selective Insurance Group]

Yes, Paul. Thank you for the question. So I guess the most important piece is to unpack this between property and casualty. And the current year movements in 2024 impacted the total combined ratio, the 24 underlying by a total of 2.3 points and 2.6 points in commercial lines. So that sort of increases the starting point.

[John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman at Selective Insurance Group]

And as you look forward to 2025 on an overall basis, you have casualty expected loss ratios moving a little bit higher despite strong rate, but we have that higher trend assumption. And you've got property continuing to improve because as we've cited, the property trend has been running in the 3% to 4% range, whereby whereas rate on the property lines have been running in the 10% to 12% range. So that's giving some positive influence on a go forward basis. But from a casualty perspective, year over year, we have been increasing our severity trend assumption and that is all baked into the 2025 guidance of a 90% to 91% underlying. And then you also had the expense ratio change year over year, which also needs to be incorporated in there.

[John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman at Selective Insurance Group]

But I guess the key point from my perspective to highlight is, we've reacted quickly to an increase in severity trends in relatively immature accident years and our 25 casualty loss ratios assume that severity increase continues at a similar pace in 2025. And you could describe that however you'd like, you could call it conservative, I will call it prudent. But I think that's an important fact that underlies our guidance and I hope would give most of you comfort that we have an appropriate level of severity increase baked into our 2025 expected loss ratios for the casualty lines of business and GL in particular.

[Jon Paul Newsome, Managing Director at Piper Sandler Companies]

That makes a lot of sense. Just a little bit more to beat the dead horse of casualty. Sequentially, we've seen additions to reserves. And I guess just to make sure I get this correct, essentially, are we seeing sequentially elevated levels of casualty exposure losses coming through each quarter and that's triggering it? Because I think you are selected as a little bit different than others and that there's no sort of year end true up thing.

[Jon Paul Newsome, Managing Director at Piper Sandler Companies]

It's a full, if I recall, a full analysis every quarter. So what we saw in the quarter would potentially be just a reaction to what we saw from a casualty reserve charge would be just a reaction to what you saw in the quarter, if I got that right.

[John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman at Selective Insurance Group]

Yes. So you are right. We do a full reserve review for each major line of business each quarter. There's no big year end process that differs from what we see in the quarters for GL. Patrick mentioned the workers' comp tail study that is one of the areas we do an annual review on.

[John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman at Selective Insurance Group]

But there's no question, we're reacting to the data that comes through the reserve analysis in the quarter, but we're also using that data to project ultimate loss ratios for those lines of business and we're reacting to what we're seeing. So you've got case and incurred activity that happens over the course of the quarter. And then obviously on immature accident years, you're projecting those changes that happened in the quarter to ultimate. And we think it's appropriate to be reacting more quickly based on what we've seen historically. And if you look, and I know there's been a lot of focus on the 2016 to 2019 accident years for the industry, most of that emergence that was social inflation and severity driven by all accounts wasn't recognized until 2022 2023.

[John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman at Selective Insurance Group]

And we're sitting here now saying based on the elevated trends we're seeing early, we're reacting very quickly to the 2022 and 2023 accident years. And more importantly, despite frequencies behaving well in 2024, we thought it was prudent to boost the 2024 year with very little reported claim activity, which then incorporates into our 2025 expected loss ratios.

[Jon Paul Newsome, Managing Director at Piper Sandler Companies]

Got it. Thank you. As always, much appreciate the help. Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question is going to come from the line of Jing Li with KBW. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

[Jing Li, AVP - Equity Research at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods (KBW)]

Hi. Thank you for taking my questions. I want to go back to the GL commercial reserve charge. I'm just wondering, can you add more colors on what you see behind the data that comes in? Some of the peers are saying that some states that used to be more core friendly have changed.

[Jing Li, AVP - Equity Research at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods (KBW)]

Are you seeing the same trend or anything you can add to the drivers behind the data that you saw this quarter that made you decide to be more prudent? Thank you.

[John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman at Selective Insurance Group]

Sure. So just a couple of comments. Number 1 is, I think our commentary on this question in the past is consistent to how I view the question currently, which is social inflation is broad based in nature. It impacts all jurisdictions. And from a where on the GL front, it impacts more significantly is with regard to bodily injury accidents, not property damage liability.

[John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman at Selective Insurance Group]

So that's the first thing. And we do view this and see this as broad based. Now that said, and I pointed this out a few quarters back, there are certain jurisdictions that either because of statute or because of case law, see a higher or more exacerbated impact of social inflation. And I cited some of those states and some of them are in our footprint. A state like Georgia is a state that we have taken significant action to curtail growth, because there's been some recent challenging case law and some challenging statutes there that exacerbate the impact of social inflation.

[John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman at Selective Insurance Group]

But those are widespread. And I did see one of my peers who I think is very accurate in his commentary point to other states like Texas that have been less of a hotspot that have more recently become a hotspot. Now a state like Texas and Texas and Florida, California, Louisiana are the states that are driving more of the nuclear verdicts. Those states are not in our standard commercial lines footprint. So yes, it's widespread.

[John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman at Selective Insurance Group]

Yes, it is exacerbated based on individual state statute and or case law. But those states that are hotspots are fairly widespread, some are in our footprint, some are not in our footprint.

[Jing Li, AVP - Equity Research at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods (KBW)]

Got it. Makes sense. I also have a follow-up on the ES ES casualty reserve charge of $20,000,000 It seems to indicate some emerging loss trend. Are you addressing the other writing appetite and pricing in this segment going forward?

[John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman at Selective Insurance Group]

Yes. Thank you. A couple of additional comments on E and S because we've made these points in the past and I think they continue to hold. First of all, what we've said to this point on E and S is the same social inflationary trends have been evident in E and S casualty like they've been in standard insurance ops or admitted casualty. The difference has been on a couple of fronts.

[John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman at Selective Insurance Group]

Number 1, for us in our book, there's been a much more pronounced decline in frequency over the last several years in part because of underwriting mix changes that we proactively implemented to improve profitability. Second thing is we've been embedding much higher assumed severities in our expected loss ratios for E and S for the more recent accident years. And then the third piece would be the pricing has been a lot stronger in E and S casualty than it's been in admitted casualty for us in the market broadly. And I would say our updated view of that at year end would be the frequency trends continue to remain favorable. The casualty pricing environment continues to remain favorable, but we thought it made sense for us to top up some of our severity assumptions across a number of more recent accident years and the impact at any given accident year is not all that significant.

[John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman at Selective Insurance Group]

And let's also remember that we're talking about a segment that's generating a slightly under 90 all in combined ratio. So we're reacting quickly. It's not a substantial move, but we think it's an appropriate one based on what we've been seeing in other segments of our business.

[Jing Li, AVP - Equity Research at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods (KBW)]

Got it. Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank

[Operator]

you. And our next question is going to come from the line of Michael Zaremski with BMO. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

[Daniel Cohen, Equity Research Associate at BMO Capital Markets]

Good morning. Thanks. This is Dan on for Mike. I guess just first on your reserve review process.

[Daniel Cohen, Equity Research Associate at BMO Capital Markets]

Would you say there's something

[Daniel Cohen, Equity Research Associate at BMO Capital Markets]

structural in the way you're reviewing your reserves every quarter that would lead it to where these small bites of the apple occur versus maybe just like a one time ground up? We're just looking at the cadence of the additions where last quarter took a pause relative to what we thought maybe would have been closer to a kitchen sink type charge in 2Q. Thanks.

[John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman at Selective Insurance Group]

Yes. So again, I think there's always recency bias. And obviously, in 2024, we've acted and we've acted in a way that we think is timely and prudent. But I think it's important to look back over time, especially to more mature accident years to see how our reserving process and equally important our planning process has held up over time. And I know many of you subscribe to the Dowling publications.

[John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman at Selective Insurance Group]

I think there's a really interesting analysis by Dowling that's been published that shows the 2016 to 2019 accident years by major writer of general liability and for the overall industry. And it shows for that group of challenged accident years 2016 to 2019, when we first started to see social inflation spike. And then you look at the initial loss ratios to where they are currently viewed. And again, I'll say these are largely mature accident years at this point. Our average increase in loss ratio from initial to current over those 4 years is 2.5 points, up 2.5 points.

[John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman at Selective Insurance Group]

That same 4 year period across the entire industry, those accident years are up on average about 8 points. And if you look at a number of individual peers, you'll see very similar movements. And I point to those because they're more mature accident years. And I think they speak to how well our process in terms of both setting expected loss ratios and our reserve review process to update those views of expected loss ratios has held up well against the test of time. And I think it's a relevant period to compare to because it's the same driver.

[John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman at Selective Insurance Group]

It's social inflation that started to manifest itself in those accident years that we think we're still reacting to. Now we think our process of reviewing reserves from a ground up basis on a quarterly basis is appropriate and it's prudent. You could do a more high level review and just look at actual versus expected claim emergence. I think the concern that you would have by just reacting to actual versus expected claim emergence is you ultimately need to project those that activity to what you think it does to your ultimate loss ratios. And we think doing that on a quarterly basis gives us more insight and allows us to more quickly respond with regard to pricing and underwriting actions when we see something change in the underlying data.

[Daniel Cohen, Equity Research Associate at BMO Capital Markets]

Great. Thank you for that. And then maybe just switching gears to auto a little bit and maybe for Patrick, given you've been in the seat for 3 months now, you're coming from a major commercial auto writer. What are your view of the commercial auto reserves today? And just given it's the epicenter of social inflation, what gives you confidence that the issues in GL necessarily don't bleed into the commercial auto reserves?

[Patrick Brennan, Executive VP & CFO at Selective Insurance Group]

Yes, I'll hit on a few things there. Thanks for the question. In terms of confidence in that we may not have this bleed over into commercial auto. I think we've said in previous conference calls that we think commercial auto was actually the 1st shoe to drop as it relates to commercial to social inflation. And what gives me confidence is what John just outlined is our process.

[Patrick Brennan, Executive VP & CFO at Selective Insurance Group]

We have a very strong reserving process. I had the opportunity to see it on my very first day on October 1. I was the opportunity to see it on my very first day on October 1. I was sort of right in the middle of it just to kind of see what that looked like and how that operated. And then obviously, more recently, being in it with a lot more context and background.

[Patrick Brennan, Executive VP & CFO at Selective Insurance Group]

So I have a lot of confidence in our process and our ability to react to new information as we get it and incorporate that into how we view our underlying profitability and our go forward pricing and actions that we need to take. In terms of coming from Progressive and then being a big commercial auto writer, they absolutely are. They're the number one in the industry. I just want to sort of help people understand contextually the type of business that we write here is not at least similar to the type of business in the P and L that I ran when I was a product manager there. We just about every policy that we write here has an additional line of coverage attached to it.

[Patrick Brennan, Executive VP & CFO at Selective Insurance Group]

And as you know, Progressive has historically been much more focused on monoline business. And so that factors into how we price the business and how we operate with agents and other third parties. So I think contextually, I understand the commercial auto business pretty well from my experience. I feel good about our process and more specifically the behaviors we have around seeing new information and reacting to it in a way that we think is prudent and helps us continue to achieve our long term goals of profitable growth and mid teens excuse me, 12% ROE.

[John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman at Selective Insurance Group]

And if I can just add a couple of additional points. This is John. And I appreciate Patrick's comments and I think they're spot on. But I want to come back to the point he started with, because I know there's this concern out there that commercial auto is the next shoe to drop. And as Patrick said, we believe it was the 1st shoe to drop.

[John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman at Selective Insurance Group]

And I think this is an important distinction for everybody to understand. First thing is the commercial auto BI bodily injury has a shorter tail, has a shorter reporting tail than GL and has a shorter disposal tail than GL, which means that the ultimate severities are known sooner than the ultimate severities are known in general liability. So that's point number 1. As a result of that, if you look back, our reaction was more quick to increase expected loss trends for the commercial auto bodily injury line dating back to 2021. So if you look at the 2021 through 2024 accident years, our assumed loss ratio trend across all of those years on average was 8%.

[John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman at Selective Insurance Group]

Whereas in general liability, as I mentioned, it takes longer to recognize a change in severity patterns. We and others in the industry that disclose their forward loss trend assumptions were sitting on loss trend assumptions in the 5% range. You've got a big difference in assumed loss ratio trends in the more recent accident years. And then equally important, our average commercial auto BI price over the last 4 years, 21 through 2024 is 10.3%. So you've got earned rate per year of a little over 10% on loss trends that we assume to be around 8% and those have held up and we've now seen GL historical trends kind of settle into that level.

[John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman at Selective Insurance Group]

So I think this was recognized more quickly. We assume the elevated loss trends and our expected loss ratios more quickly and our pricing adjusted accordingly and has been running above that historical trend level on a consistent basis. And that I think all supports the idea that we view it was the 1st shoe to drop, not the 2nd shoe to drop.

[Operator]

Thank you. And I would now like to hand the conference back over to John Marchioni for closing remarks.

[John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman at Selective Insurance Group]

Well, thank you all for participating. We appreciate your engagement this morning. And as always, please feel free to follow-up with Brad with any additional questions. Thank you.

[Operator]

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Participants

Executives

• Brad Wilson, Senior VP of Investor Relations & Treasurer
• John J. Marchioni, CEO, President & Chairman
• Patrick Brennan, Executive VP & CFO

Analysts

• Mike Phillips, Managing Director and Insurance Analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.
• Jon Paul Newsome, Managing Director at Piper Sandler Companies
• Jing Li, AVP - Equity Research at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods (KBW)
• Daniel Cohen, Equity Research Associate at BMO Capital Markets