With a combined revenue of $21 trillion and $2.1 trillion in profits, the 2026 Fortune 500 is the definitive list of America's largest companies.

Fortune 500

The 300 companies on this year’s list brought in over $12.5 trillion in revenue for the latest 12 months, with the median revenue figure at $24 billion.

America's Most Innovative Companies

Almost $20 trillion in revenue—and a record-breaking $1.87 trillion in profits. Introducing the 2025 Fortune 500, the definitive list of the biggest companies in America.

The 300 companies on this year’s list brought in over $12.6 trillion in revenue for the latest 12 months, with the median revenue figure at $22 billion.

Industries included in the sector are banks, insurance, and real estate companies.

Fortune Sector Leaders: Financials

The Fortune 500, in its 70th year in 2024, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

The 200 companies on this list are transforming industries from the inside out.

The 300 companies on this list are transforming industries from the inside out.

The Fortune 500, in its 69th year in 2023, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 68th running of the list.

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 67th running of the list.

The insurance company is one of the largest home insurance providers in the U.S., and is the home and auto insurance provider for AARP members.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 66th running of the list.

F500-2020-160-Hartford-Financial-Services-Group

Better known as The Hartford, the insurance and financial services company was founded in 1810 and is headquartered in Hartford, Conn.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 65th running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 64th running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 63rd running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 62nd running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 61st running of the list. Wal-Mart claims the top spot again. See who made the list.

Global business is back. After limping through a worldwide financial crisis and economic slowdown, the 500 largest companies ranked by revenues shattered all sorts of performance records in 2013: They racked up combined revenues of $31.1 trillion, up 2.5% from 2012, and profits soared 27% to nearly $2 trillion. China’s 95 companies (up from 89 last year) posted $5.8 trillion in revenues. The U.S. has four fewer companies on the list than last year but remains (for now) the country leader, with 128 corporations on the list—including No. 1 Wal-Mart Stores—reporting $8.6 trillion in revenues. 

Fortune Global 500

Key Financials

Revenues ($M)

Profits ($M)

Assets ($M)

Sector

Strongest Dimension

Years on list

Previous rank

State

Key Financials (last Fiscal Year)

Total Stockholder Equity ($M)

Profit Ratios

Profit as % of Revenues

Profits as % of Assets

Profits as % of Stockholder Equity

Earnings Per Share (last Fiscal Year)

Earnings Per Share ($)

EPS % Change (from prior fiscal year)

EPS % Change (5 year annual rate)

EPS % Change (10 year annual rate)

Total Return

Total Return to Investors (last year)

Total Return to Investors (5 year, annualized)

Total Return to Investors (10 year, annualized)

The Hartford Insurance Group provides both individuals and businesses with insurance and financial services. The company operates through several segments: business insurance, personal insurance, property and casualty, employee benefits, and Hartford Funds. Its coverage categories include property, health, livestock, environmental, disability, and more. The Hartford was founded in 1810 and operates in the U.S., the U.K., and internationally.

Q2 2026

Q1 2026

Q4 2025

Q3 2025

Q2 2025

Q1 2025

Q4 2024

Hartford Insurance Group (HIG): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

legacy

Hartford Insurance Group

hartford insurance group

Good morning, and welcome to The Hartford Financial 4th Quarter and Full Year 2024 Results Conference Call and Webcast. All participants are in a listen only mode. After the speakers' remarks, we will conduct a question and answer session. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Susan Spivak, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us today for our call and webcast on Q4 and 2024 earnings. Yesterday, we reported results and posted all of the earnings related materials on our website. Now, I'd like to introduce our speaker. To start, we have Chris Swift, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer followed by Beth Costello, our Chief Financial Officer. After their prepared remarks, we will begin taking your questions.

Also with us to assist with your questions are several members of our management team. Just a few comments before Chris begins. Today's call includes forward looking statements as defined under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results could be materially different. We do not assume any obligation to update information or forward looking statements provided on this call.

Investors should also consider the risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from these statements. A detailed description of those risks and uncertainties can be found in our SEC filings. Our commentary today includes non GAAP financial measures. Explanations and reconciliations of these measures to the comparable GAAP measures are included in our SEC filings as well as in the news release and financial supplement. Finally, please note that no portion of this conference call may be reproduced or rebroadcast in any form without The Hartford's prior written consent.

Replays of this webcast and an official transcript will be available on The Hartford's website for 1 year. I'll now turn the call over to Chris.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. Before beginning, I want to take a moment to address the recent wildfires that have devastated the Los Angeles community. Our thoughts are with all those impacted by this tragedy. Our team on the ground is working tirelessly to help our customers rebuild and recover, and I thank them for their dedication. After Beth and I summarize our outstanding Q4 and full year results, we will then be joined by our business leaders for a Q and A session, including Moe Tooker, who was appointed President effective tomorrow, February 1.

Moe will lead all our P and C businesses and will be responsible for stewarding several enterprise wide initiatives. Moe is an exceptional leader with a strong reputation for strategic growth, customer focused solutions, underwriting discipline and building a cohesive culture. He is ideally suited to step into the President role as we advance our growth and innovation strategy aimed at addressing our customers' changing needs. So let's get started. Our 4th quarter results capped off another outstanding year of financial performance and strategic achievements.

These results highlight the strength of our franchise, particularly our exceptional underwriting execution, extensive distribution relationships and an unparalleled customer experience. I wanted to extend my heartfelt thanks to our dedicated employees. Your unwavering commitment and hard work are the driving force behind our success. Reflecting on some key achievements from 2024 for both the quarter and the year. Top line growth in Commercial Lines was 6% for the quarter with an underlying combined ratio of 87.1%.

For the year, growth was 9% and the underlying combined ratio of 87.9% percent was consistent with prior year. Personal Lines achieved 9.3 points of underlying combined ratio improvement in the quarter, including over 10 points in auto. For the year, Personal Lines delivered an underwriting gain, including an auto underlying loss ratio that was 1 point better than our expectations. We continue to achieve strong renewal written pricing increases across P and C during the quarter, including notable double digit increases in commercial and personal auto, commercial property, homeowners and general liability. Group Benefits delivered an impressive core earnings margin of 7.8% for the quarter and 8.2% for the year led by strong life and disability results.

And our investment portfolio continues to generate solid performance. All these items contributed to an outstanding core earnings ROE of 16.7% for the year. Let me dive deeper into the performance of each of our businesses. Our Commercial Lines business achieved significant top line growth, while maintaining highly profitable underlying margins. Written premium growth was driven by strong pricing increases across most lines, double digit new business growth in our SME focused business and exposure growth that continues to benefit from a resilient economy.

expected, underlying margins for the year were consistent with 2023, reflecting our steadfast commitment to disciplined underwriting, while sustaining industry leading performance. Favorable underwriting results in property along with strong renewal written pricing execution across all lines offset industry wide elevated liability severity. Beth will provide specifics around prior year development in her comments, but I wanted to take a moment to address our general liability reserves. Based on our Q4 review, we have strengthened our general liability reserves by 130,000,000 dollars before tax. We believe that we have addressed the most recent trends and have adjusted our ultimate losses accordingly, reflecting the potential for increasing settlement costs due to a higher percentage of attorney representation across all claim sizes and the rise in average settlement rates.

Moving into each of our commercial lines businesses. Small commercial remains the cornerstone of growth and profitability for The Hartford, setting an industry standard that is difficult to replicate in the market. I am very pleased to share that for the 6th consecutive year, Knovel Group has ranked The Hartford as the number one small commercial carrier in overall digital capabilities and important competitive advantage in this market. Our top ranking reflects our commitment to providing exceptional functionality, ease of use and unparalleled support and access to our agents and customers. Our financial performance reflects this top ranking where we achieved a record breaking written premium of $5,500,000,000 in 2024, including $1,100,000,000 of new business, while extending a decade long trend of annual sub-ninety underlying combined ratios.

With another year of exceptional results and relentless advancement of our capabilities, I remain incredibly bullish on the outlook for our small commercial business. Our middle and large commercial organization continues to demonstrate strong growth and underlying profitability. We are capitalizing on elevated submission flow, driven in part by our strategic investments to expand product capabilities and enhance the efficiency of the broker and agent experience. Our investments in middle and large commercial position us well to drive additional top line growth and deliver exceptional results. While 4th quarter new business was slower than previous quarters, full year performance included strong top line growth and an underlying margin that remained below 90%.

Written premium growth reflects strong renewal rate execution and a 16% increase in middle market new business with robust growth across nearly all product lines led by construction and marine. 2025, we expect to sustain our track record of delivering meaningful growth with underwriting discipline. Global Specialty had an exceptional year maintaining excellent underlying margin performance in the low to mid-80s for the past 3 years. Our competitive position, breadth of products and solid renewal written pricing drove strong gross written premium growth and record new business. This expansion was fueled by significant contributions from Global Re and our wholesale business.

We remain excited about our position in the wholesale market and across Global Specialty with execution that has never been stronger. The transformational work we have done over the last 5 years has put us in a strong position to accelerate our market leading competitive advantage driven by technology, data science and an experienced workforce. Whether in standard lines or E and S lines, we are gaining market share due to our unique underwriting capabilities and strong distribution relationships. Across Commercial Lines, our continued emphasis on property expansion generated 16% premium growth this year. We achieved our full year goal ending the year with $3,000,000,000 in written premium and plan to continue building on this success in 2025.

We remain confident that the market conditions support earning strong risk adjusted returns through disciplined underwriting, while maintaining a stable approach to catastrophe risk management. Despite industry wide elevated catastrophe losses, we are proud that our full year cat ratio remained flat with 2023 even with our significant property portfolio expansion. Moving to pricing. In Commercial Lines, renewal written pricing in the quarter excluding workers' compensation of 9.7% was up 40 basis points from the prior quarter. All in, ex comp renewal written pricing in commercial lines remained comfortably above loss cost trends.

Workers' compensation pricing was slightly down sequentially. As we look to 2025 pricing, we are focused on keeping pace with loss cost trends Across Commercial Lines, with our diversified and expanding product portfolio and innovative mindset, we are primed to continue to grow market share at highly attractive margins. Turning to Personal Lines. 2024 was a transformative year, positioning us well for the future. We have positioned the business with new products and capabilities, revamped our operating routines and equipped ourselves with data and technology resources.

We have faced business and environmental challenges with unparalleled determination and I want to recognize the team's hard work and commitment to our vision and strategy. For 2024 in auto, we achieved significant rate increases across the book, driving an overall auto underlying loss ratio improvement of 7.3 points over a point better than the high end of our expectations. As a result of the significant written pricing actions that we'll earn into the book, combined with moderating severity trends, we expect continued underlying combined ratio improvement to reach the mid-90s during 2025. Our homeowners business had an exceptional year highlighted by an impressive underlying combined ratio for the quarter, the best we've seen in over a decade and a slightly improved cat ratio in a year of elevated industry catastrophe losses. Pricing remained strong all year outpacing underlying loss cost trends.

Substantial investments have significantly improved price to risk matching and enhanced underwriting capabilities that are benefiting the homeowners book more broadly. With our rates in insurance to value keeping pace with loss trend, we are confident about our strong position in the market. Turning to Group Benefits. Our strong core earnings margin in 2024 demonstrates focused execution, a resilient economy, improved mortality trends and continued strong disability results. Group life mortality trends were favorable, though they are expected to remain above pre pandemic levels.

The full year disability loss ratio of 68% primarily reflects favorable long term disability trends, offset by pressure in paid family and medical leave products. These leave products are highly utilized and valued by employees and we are implementing the necessary rate and underwriting actions to improve the margins. Overall, the benefit landscape is evolving with increased awareness of features and benefits, which is positively impacting our supplemental products such as critical illness, hospital indemnity and accident. We continue to expect the Group Benefits market to remain dynamic with digital transformation, product innovation and increasing customer demands. As a result, we are investing in this business and have a clear road map that I am confident will only strengthen our leadership position.

Looking ahead, we expect a modest increase in sales during 2025 and are off to a solid start. Core earnings margins in recent years have exceeded our long term targets. However, we continue to expect a core earnings margin of 6% to 7% in this business with disability incidence trends returning to historic levels. Moving to investments. The portfolio continues to support The Hartford's financial and strategic goals performing well across a range of asset classes and market conditions.

Beth will provide more details. In closing, excellent 4th quarter results capped a year of outstanding financial performance, positioning us to sustain consistent and superior results in 2025. I remain incredibly optimistic about our future, because 2024 financial results have showcased the effectiveness of our strategy and the value in our ongoing investments. Commercial Lines continues to maintain excellent underlying margins, while delivering robust top line growth. Group Benefits core earnings margin remains outstanding.

We have achieved key milestones in our Personal Lines journey and plan to return auto to targeted profitability by mid-twenty 25. Investment income remains strong, supported by attractive yields and a diversified durable portfolio of assets and share repurchases and dividends remain our primary capital management tool. As our businesses continue to generate excess capital, we will proactively manage capital resources to further drive shareholder value. All these factors contribute to my excitement and confidence about the future of The Hartford and our ability to extend our track record of delivering industry leading financial performance. Now I'll turn the call over to Beth to provide more detailed commentary on the quarter.

Thank you, Chris. Core earnings for the quarter were $865,000,000 or $2.94 per diluted share with a full year core earnings ROE of 16.7%. Commercial Lines had a strong quarter with core earnings of $665,000,000 written premium growth of 6% and an underlying combined ratio of 87.1%. Small commercial continues to deliver excellent results with written premium growth of 9%, including 22% new business growth and an underlying combined ratio of 86.7%. This is the 18th straight quarter of an underlying combined ratio below 90%.

Middle and Large Commercial had another quarter of strong profitability with an underlying combined ratio of 90.2%, slightly improved from the prior year and written premium growth of 5%, reflecting lower new business as we remain disciplined, particularly with elevated general liability severity loss trends. Global Specialty's 4th quarter underlying combined ratio was an excellent 83.6% with record earned premium of 865,000,000 dollars Written premium growth of 3% in the quarter reflects lower new business in primary and excess casualty and from our global reinsurance business, which declined 14% primarily due to lower premium in Latin America. Global Specialty Written Premium, excluding Global Re, was up 6%. In Personal Lines, core earnings for the quarter increased to $155,000,000 including the first underwriting gain in 2 years with an underlying combined ratio of 90.2 percent driven by a 17.3 point improvement in the loss ratio over the prior year. The 4th quarter auto underlying combined ratio of 103 percent improved 10.5 points from the 2023 period and homeowners produced an outstanding underlying combined ratio of 61.7 percent.

Written premium and personal lines increased 12% in the 4th quarter, in part driven by steady and successful rate actions. In auto, we achieved written pricing increases of 19.1% and earned pricing increases of 21.9%. In Homeowners, written pricing increases were 13.9% 14.9% on an earned basis. Additionally, new business growth was robust in both Homeowners and Auto with homeowners more than doubling to $59,000,000 and auto increasing by 18 percent to $77,000,000 The Personal Lines 4th quarter expense ratio of 26.5 percent increased from the prior year by 1.9 points, primarily driven by higher direct marketing costs, higher staffing costs and higher commissions, partially offset by the impact of higher earned premium. Total P and C net unfavorable prior accident year development within core earnings was $97,000,000 before tax, primarily driven by $141,000,000 of asbestos and environmental development.

Excluding the A and E development, core prior accident year net development was favorable by $44,000,000 due to reserve reductions in workers' compensation, catastrophes, bond, professional liability and personal auto, partially offset by increases in general liability and commercial auto. As Chris mentioned, we strengthened our general liability reserves this quarter by $130,000,000 before tax. This included strengthening to the 2015 to 2018 accident years, driven by higher than expected constructive defect claim activity in those years. In addition, across our general liability lines, we strengthened the incurred but not reported reserve for more recent accident years as we observed an increase in severity on reported claims above our expectations and anticipate a higher claim severity trend on unreported claims as the industry continues to face increasing settlement costs with rising attorney representation rates and higher average settlement rates. We completed our A and E reserve study in the quarter, resulting in an increase in reserves of $203,000,000 comprised of $167,000,000 for asbestos $36,000,000 for environmental.

As I mentioned, dollars 141,000,000 impacted core earnings and $62,000,000 was recorded as a deferred gain, exhausting the ADC cover we have for A and E. As a reminder, we have recorded a total of $850,000,000 before tax as a deferred gain within other liabilities for A and E as of December 31. For our Navigators ADC, in 2024, we have amortized $145,000,000 of the total $209,000,000 deferred gain. Based on our estimate of payment patterns, we expect the remaining balance of $64,000,000 to be amortized in 2025. This will positively impact net income and have no impact to core earnings.

With respect to cats, P and C current accident year catastrophes in the 4th quarter were $80,000,000 before tax, which was essentially flat to the prior year and included $68,000,000 from Hurricane Millen as well as net reductions for cats incurred earlier in the year of $18,000,000 For the year, cats totaled $768,000,000 We continue to actively manage our cat exposure through aggregation management and underwriting discipline, especially in certain higher risk areas. Additionally, we have a robust and comprehensive reinsurance program on both a per occurrence and aggregate basis. In terms of our catastrophe reinsurance program renewal on January 1, we were very pleased with the placements and terms and conditions for our programs. Our expiring core per occurrence catastrophe protection was renewed at an approximate 10% decrease in cost on a risk adjusted basis, which based on publicly available information compares favorably with the overall market and speaks to the quality of our underwriting, strong reinsurer relationships and favorable experience. Additionally, we continue to strategically leverage the combination of traditional reinsurance capacity with the sponsorship of our catastrophe bonds, Foundation Re, to ensure robust and diversified protection for our portfolio.

As of January 1, after the reset of our catastrophe bond, our occurrence program provides protection from peak peril up to a gross loss event of 1,500,000,000 dollars The majority of that protection is secured on a multiyear basis. We also renewed our aggregate treaty under the same structure and at a favorable decrease in cost on a risk adjusted basis. The continuing strength and diversification of our property, occurrence and aggregate protections aligns with and supports our strategic growth in property writings. Although it is too early to estimate the potential losses from the current California wildfires, we are closely monitoring the situation in areas where we have insured properties and businesses at risk. Our current reinsurance programs includes coverage for wildfires that attaches at $200,000,000 and exhausts at $1,200,000,000 Our reinsurance program does include provisions allowing a combination of events subject to hours and radius provisions.

We have summarized the catastrophe reinsurance programs within the slide deck. Moving to Group Benefits. We achieved core earnings of $139,000,000 for the quarter. The core earnings margin of 7.8 percent for the quarter reflects improved life results and continued strong disability performance. The group disability loss ratio of 66.9 compared to 63.6 in the Q4 of 2023 was driven by a higher loss ratio in paid family and medical leave products and slightly higher LTD incidents in 2024 after 2 years of all time historically low incidents, partially offset by favorable long term disability claim recoveries.

The group life loss ratio of 79.9 for the quarter improved 3.1 points versus prior year, reflecting an improving mortality trend. The group benefits expense ratio of 26.7 increased 2.5 points for the quarter, reflecting higher staffing costs and increased investments in technology. Fully insured ongoing sales in the quarter of $68,000,000 combined with increased exposure on existing accounts and excellent persistency above 90% resulted in a 1% growth in fully insured ongoing premiums. Turning to investments. Our diversified portfolio continues to produce solid results.

The overall credit quality of the portfolio remains high with an average credit rating of A plus For the quarter, net investment income was 714,000,000 dollars The total annualized portfolio yield, excluding limited partnerships, was 4.6% before tax, 10 basis points above 3rd quarter. We continue to benefit from higher reinvestment rates and accretive trading activity earning into the portfolio. The 4th quarter reinvestment yield continued to exceed the sales and maturity yield. Looking forward to 2025, we expect net investment income, excluding LPs, to be higher driven by an increased level of invested assets resulting from continued growth and anticipate yields to be marginally higher than 2024. As expected, our 4th quarter annualized LP returns of 6.4 percent before tax were higher than previous quarters.

We continue to anticipate LP returns to improve in 2025, exceeding 2024 on a full year basis. Turning to capital. As of December 31, holding company resources totaled $1,300,000,000 For 2025, we expect net dividends from the operating companies of approximately $2,500,000,000 a 9% increase over 2024. During the quarter, we repurchased 3,400,000,000 shares under our share repurchase program for $400,000,000 and we expect to remain at that level of repurchases in the Q1. As of year end, we had $3,150,000,000 remaining on our share repurchase authorization through December 31, 2026.

To wrap up, 2024 business performance was excellent, and we are well positioned to continue to deliver on our targeted returns and enhance value for all of our stakeholders. I will now turn the call back to Susan.

We have about 30 minutes for questions. Operator, can you please repeat the instructions for asking a question?

Certainly. Our first question comes from Andrew Kligerman from TD Securities. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning. First question, and hate to even bring this one up because the quarter was so darn excellent. But the prior year development of general liability $130,000,000 Could you break out that mix between the 2015 2018 underwriting year construction defect policies versus the IBNR on the more recent accident years? What was the mix there? And then with that, really curious about how confident going forward you won't likely need to take other GL charges because I think with construction defect policies and correct me

wrong, the pricing now is much higher for labor and material loads as that's probably the reason for 2015 to 2018 charges. So I'm kind of curious on construction defect in particular, but I think those are much tighter policies today.

Andrew, thank you for joining us for the question. Let me give you some context and then I'll ask Beth to add her commentary on the splits by year. So you're right, we made a move on our reserves and added $130,000,000 in PYD across a number of accident years and product lines. And we also did a little move in commercial auto. So I think what I really want you to know and you said it, with this move and Beth will explain more on some of the approach changes that we made this quarter, I feel highly confident that we put a good if not all, a good chunk of this behind us.

And we've been working hard at getting our reserves right every quarter, but more importantly, pricing our products for the new trend to make sure that we're improving our economics into the extent possible. So on the PYD side, I'm highly, highly confident. I think the implication though there is, we also then needed to take a move on our 2024 accident year, where we added about 1 point on a year to date basis to our expectations for GL. So we needed to then true up 2024. And then as we looked at 2025, I could share with you that we have these higher loss cost trends in our assumptions.

The team, our underwriters are already reacting with increased pricing, really effective oneone and will continue throughout the rest of the year. So comprehensively, I feel like we got our arms around it and are hitting the ground running as hard as we can in 20 25. And if I put that all in context for you Andrew of all people gets it is I do believe we can generate margins that are consistent with 2024. And that's ultimately the proof of all our actions, all our strategies, all our ability to execute at a high level. And I think that's an important data point for you and others to hear.

So I'll ask Beth to do the splits and any other commentary she'd like to make.

Yes. Thank you, Chris. So, as it relates to the liability reserve increases between sort of the older years, the 2015 to 2018 and then more recent years, I think the split is roughly half and half. And Andrew, I would agree with your characterization on the older years that that really is related to sort of increased costs that have happened. I think it's sort of post COVID and the inflation that we've seen.

That really is related to legacy book. And as we've talked about in the past, we've made adjustments to those reserves. That's a book that we've done significant re underwriting on and really feel that contained in those years. The more recent years, that activity I would characterize as more related to social inflation. And as it relates to how we approach the reserve increases this year, this quarter, I would say we did a little different approach.

In the previous quarters when we had PYD in the general liability lines, we were reacting to the elevated activity we were seeing. We were adjusting that accordingly. And if we had followed that same approach this quarter, I think our reserve strengthening would have been more consistent with what we saw in previous quarters. But given that it was another quarter of this elevated activity, this quarter not only did we react to the observed activity, we also increased our severity assumptions going forward for unsettled and unreported reserves resulting in a larger increase to IBNR. And as Chris said, we also incorporated these estimates into our 2024 accident year.

So when we step back, when we look at the actions that we took for prior years, the actions that we've taken in the current year, we think this positions us very well going into 2025, both in terms of the overall adequacy of our GL reserves and equally important and Chris comments on this, but I want to reemphasize it. These trends are incorporated into our pricing models going forward and that's what our business leaders are executing on with the goal of getting pricing increases above these loss trends.

Very helpful. And just quickly on net revenue and commercial. Small commercial was a really strong 9%, mid large was 5%. And I think last year, there was kind of a disconnect on or there was some underperformance at some of your competitors and you were able to capitalize. So I want to understand, can the do you still have that momentum in small commercial in that upper single digits?

And then with mid to large at 5%, I think in the past, Moe has talked about mid being the lower end of mid being pretty robust just like small commercial. So how sustainable is the mid single digit in mid large net written premium growth?

Andrew, I'll start and then ask Moe to comment. So I think on an overall basis, if you look at the components of commercial, particularly on a year to date basis, we feel really good about the growth, the execution, how we're capturing additional market share. So nothing philosophically is going to change in our approach other than we just need to continue to be disciplined from an underwriting side. And yes, from quarter to quarter, you could have some variations. It's a competitive marketplace.

Others might lean in a little bit more to us, but I really would want you to know. Yes, we want to grow and capture more market share and serve more clients and serve more of our agency needs, but only on our terms and conditions and with the proper underwriting and proper pricing. And I think that's really what's reflected in this quarter.

Yes. Maybe I'll take it a little bit deeper, Andrew. I would say that the small commercial just had a terrific year. I think 9% overall, new and renewal strong, the flows continue to be really good.

And this is especially in the face of some disruption around us over the past couple of years. And I think the team has really been measured in the way they've grown so that we can be consistently growing going forward. So I think really what you saw in the quarter was our strategic advantage is throwing through showing through. That's our investments in technology, helping the customer and the agents get things into the system easier to data advantage. And then all on top of that for small, I think we just had a really good year on the E and S binding front and they will continue to push into the E and S space because we think we can bring our same strategic abilities into that space.

Middle and large commercial is a little bit of a different story. We're really happy there too with the 9% for the year, but the market is competitive and the team there has really tried to stay disciplined. And what we saw in the quarter was a little bit more of a competitive market, especially in the workers' comp, the GL and the umbrella space. And we're just going to make choices on that and that's what the team did. I was really proud of what they did.

But I will kind of echo Chris' comments. I think it's an out of pattern quarter. We still see submission flow really good into the middle and large commercial space, especially in the lower end to your point. The market is broadly supported from a pricing perspective. And again, the investments that we're making in that space, we're trying to take all that advantage we have in small into the middle space.

And we think that just allows us to gain market share in the middle market space over time. So again, I think 2 different stories, but confident about our ability to grow it and grow market share over time.

Our next question comes from Brian Meredith from UBS. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Yes, thanks. Good morning. First one, Beth, I was trying to get a baseline on kind of what the underlying loss ratio looks like in Commercial Lines with some of the antidotes you were talking about. So what was the kind of favorable non cat kind of property loss? And then, any current year development when you increase that IBNR, anything from 2024 that may have impacted it?

Brian, if I understand your question, Beth can add her commentary. I think what I said in my commentary was for the GL line, it was a 1 point true up on a year to date basis for the elevated combined ratio given some of the things we just talked about from PYD. It's probably 2.5 points in the quarter on a comparable basis year over year. And then we're also asking about property, I think I heard.

Yes, yes. I think you mentioned that non cat weather was a little bit favorable this quarter.

Yes. So I know you're jumping and trying to get numbers from me. So I would say on a year to date basis compared to prior year our non cat property experience is about 0.9. Better than we than prior year. And from an expectation side, it's probably 1.5 points, a little better than our expectation.

No, I would agree with that. And as you know, a non cat property can, obviously bounce around quarter to quarter. But in looking at the numbers that Chris just quoted relative to the prior year, I'd also say that we did take underwriting actions in 2023 on our property book. So some of that we would expect would continue to benefit.

Got you. That's helpful. And then I'm just wondering, is it possible to give us a little more color on perhaps exposure to the L. A. Wildfires here, kind of what your share in the area is?

Do you have commercial exposure with your small commercial business? Do you think you're going to hit your cat reinsurance programs here?

Yes. I'm going to Beth and I tag team. And I would say, I think you're very observant that this is for us going to be both a commercial lines event and a personal lines event. If I look at our personal lines market share for home and auto and because obviously some cars will also be damaged, we're less than 1%. We've managed California very tightly, I would say over the last 7 or 8 years, Beth, with concentrations of risk that we had in certain zones that we needed to remediate.

So personal lines, obviously, what will have some losses. And then our bigger market share is in our middle market book and our product small commercial. So we do have larger market share there. We'll have to see how things develop. And we just been recently been able to get on-site and start to do more inspections.

We have a reinsurance business that will have a little bit of exposure. And then we'll have to see what the FAIR plan does with any assessment. So instead of just putting numbers out, we really wanted to just be more deliberate and thoughtful. And when we're ready, Brian, we'll share with you what we believe and see. So Beth, what would you add?

Yes. So again, maybe to put it in context as you asked to our reinsurance program, as we sit here today and we look at our exposures, as I said in my prepared remarks, our first part of our per occurrence coverage starts at losses once they've reached $200,000,000 So that first layer, we have $150,000,000 of protection in excess of $200,000,000 We retain 60% of that, 40% of that's reinsured and very likely that we will be in that layer. The next layer then comes in at $350,000,000 That layer again provides $150,000,000 excess of $350,000,000 We retain 25%. We reinsure 75%. Sitting here today, it's not entirely clear that we'll be at that level.

We could very well be below that. Again, all of that would exclude Global Re. Global Re has its own retrocession program. That program attaches when U. S.

Property losses hit $60,000,000 and we would right now, we'd expect to be below that. So hopefully that gives you some context of just

we're framing it. And the last thing I'll just remind you of is that as it relates to wildfire losses up to losses of $350,000,000 excluding Global Re, those losses would count towards our aggregate treaty, which again attaches similar to last year at $750,000,000

Our next question comes from Elyse Greenspan from Wells Fargo. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hi, thanks. Good morning. My first question is on group disability. The loss ratio ticked up by 3 points from last year. I was hoping to get a sense how much of that was driven by paid family and medical leave versus higher LTD incidents?

Elyse, thanks for joining us. I would say when we characterize our LTD excuse me, our disability book, it includes both the LTD portion, the STD portion and then obviously some of our new paid medical and family leave products. So on a call it year over year basis, I would say that the PFML incident trends that are elevated is creating 3 points of that difference. Our long term disability incidences, one point and then the offset to that is our recoveries or terminations are probably one point better. So that's the step between years I would have you to think about.

Thanks. And then my second question is on the kind of the high level view you provided on commercial lines for 2025. Chris, I think in response to an earlier question, you said kind of like flat underlying combined ratio. And you pointed to that contemplating continued higher GL picks. But then you guys did say that there was 1.5 points of favorable non cat in 2024.

So you assuming that that normalizes like and reverses in your outlook for flat margins in 2025? And is there anything else we need to think about kind of when thinking about commercial margins in 2025?

Yes. I would say, again, you heard it right, right? I think we're ending the year at 87.9 on an underlying combined ratio in commercial lines. And I think we can produce a consistent result in 2025. That's what I want you to hear.

And if you want to do all the pluses and minuses by product line and things like that, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to tell you that that's what we're going to deliver in totality with a diversified product line point of view, executing strongly, particularly in the general liability lines. And if there's returns to normal or if there's additional benefits that we're able to get, That will all be part of the results that we'll communicate quarterly to you on it, but I'm not going to get into a reconciliation by product line.

Our next question comes from Bob Huang from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hi, Bob. You might have addressed this, so apologies if this is a little redundant. So if we think about the GL reserve charge this quarter and the 2 smaller ones in prior quarters, can you maybe help us get a sense of how much of loss ticks would have gone up from the initial loss pick assumptions for the year, like just for the entire book? Yes, that will be the first question.

Yes. I think Bob, thanks for the question. It's actually a good one. All I'm going to ask you to do is wait until we file the 10 ks and schedule Ps and you'll see it there. And Les, Beth, you want to add any color right now.

But I would say that the overall trends, Bob, that we've talked about as far as attorney rep rate, slip and falls in certain areas, just the dollar levels of to settle some of these cases, the time limit demands that the plaintiff bar uses to sort of jam us. I mean, that is generally consistent and nothing's changing. And as Beth said, what we did take is just a more holistic approach to estimating that these trends most likely will continue and that's what's reflected in the charge. But I'd ask you just to wait for the K and the scheduled fees to be filed and you could see those trends.

Okay, got it. My follow-up is Group Benefits. One thing you previously said was moderating incidents and fast claims recovery really drove a lot of the outperformance in the prior quarters, especially in Long Term Disability. Now it does look like it's changing this quarter to be a more normalized trend. Is there like how should we think about what is a normal run rate for that long term disability business in terms of incidents and claims recovery knowing that the last 2 years was abnormally low?

Yes. I'll do my best to try to explain that to you. Then I'm going to ask Mike Fish to add his commentary. I would first start with saying that remember a lot of our LTD clients and policies have 90 or even 180 day elimination periods. So really the last two quarters of the year were not out of elimination period and we're still sort of in pick.

And when we look at sort of trends in totality, those were some of the judgments we always make. And from quarter to quarter, we might make judgments that are different on what's emerging versus what's still in pick. So I would say though that overall, over the last 2 years, our disability incidence trends have been like at all time lows and rock bottoms. And what we're beginning to reflect now is just a, I'll call it, a more normalized return to mean assumptions, so that we don't get caught short in any of our reserving positions here. So those are the 2 components I would share with you and I'll ask Mike to add any of his color.

Chris, I think you captured that well. The only couple of items that I would add to your point on what we saw with historically low incidence levels and that was early back in 2022 2023 accident years. And when we look at that and we look at where we're running more recently, I would say our recent experience you're seeing here in the quarter would correlate back to about a 5 year average of incidents, historical sort of average. And that's about where we set our pricing. So as you know, we've got rate guarantees generally 2, 3 or maybe beyond 3 years.

So we're looking at a longer term average around both incidents and recovery. So again, I'll just leave you with incidents rates more recently trending back to a historical 5 year average. And then our recovery experience has been very favorable. Our team does an outstanding job on the claim side and we expect to see strong performance moving forward.

Our next question comes from Josh Shanker from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Yes. Thank you, Chris, Beth for all the detail on the cash flow stuff. One more question, it's more philosophical. I think that you've gotten yourself comfortable that you've put this issue to bed. Generally, putting something to bed means that you've put a layer of caution on top of something beyond your best actuarial estimate of where it is, so you don't have to revisit that again.

But I know that you're always trying to get to the best number. In the grand scheme of things, dollars 130,000,000 is not a lot of reserves given the size of your general liability book. Have you done something differently other than given the data you have gone to the most precise number you can or you put a layer of caution on top of the number?

Hartford Insurance Group (HIG) Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Company Participants