Good morning, everyone. We're going to get started in the interest of keeping on schedule, also because I think we've got a really interesting session coming up with Chris Swift, Chairman and CEO of The Hartford. Pardon me. Beth Costello, CFO. I'm going to turn it over to Chris for some opening comments, then I will ask a few questions of my own. As always, if you have any questions in the audience, please don't hesitate to let me know by raising your hand, we'll turn it over to you. With that, Chris, good morning. Thank you. It's great to be with you all, thank you for having Beth and myself join you today. Just a couple of quick points. One, I'm very pleased the way our two largest businesses are performing. If you look at it from a top-line and bottom-line perspective, both commercial and Group Benefits, I think, is performing well, actually very, very pleasing. More importantly, I think we see that continuing, at least over the near term. The one business that has its challenges, or as I like to say, the self-help improvement schedule, is personal lines. I don't think we're unique from everyone else, nonetheless, it is still a long slog to get back to targeted profitability, which we estimated sometime in 2025. Again, the team knows what needs to be done. We're working our filing programs, those that require prior approval, then using all our capabilities to file rates when needed in various states. I put it all together. We still feel like we're a 14-15 ROE organization this year and into next. Again, we're buying back our shares, which we think are attractive, being thoughtful with our use of just excess capital in general. Where I'm at right now, I'm fairly bullish on the outlook for at least the next 12-24 months. It's fantastic. Looking forward to it, am I. Let's talk about We're going to talk about a lot because there are a lot of positive things going on that Hartford is taking advantage of in this environment. One of them is growth in commercial property. It's been a fairly long period where growing the property book is an explicit part of Hartford's strategy. One of the main stories this year has been elevated catastrophe weather-related losses. Accompanying that, or exacerbating that, has been a shift in the reinsurance environment, where attachment points are higher. That means that the primary companies are retaining a lot more risk. What I was hoping we could start off with is a discussion of how you see those concerns, the benefits of a turbulent marketplace, and maybe the concerns of worsening or bad weather-related risks going on, and how you're thinking about the property strategy in that context. Sure. I think the context, we just need to maybe just get some facts, is that historically, we've been under-indexed commercial property. We'll keep homeowners aside for right now. Even if I look at it right today, we have about 8% of our premiums on an annualized basis in commercial property. Really, what we've been working on very hard over really the last seven, six years is diversifying our product sets. That's why we did the Navigators acquisition, which has been very successful, to help us have more product sets to sell through our vast distribution network. We have all the distribution partners, but we needed more product capabilities. If you really look at history, we just de-emphasized property for the last 20 years. Starting five years ago, we made the conscious decision to invest in more underwriting tools, better risk management, building out multi-peril models so that we can bring a broader base property skill set to our distribution partner. That was before all the activities that you referred to as far as elevated catastrophes, whether it be this year, last year. Remember, we had some wildfire exposure going back to 2016, 2017, and 2018. We've been working very hard. As we sit here today, I feel very confident that we have the tools, the risk management capabilities, more importantly, the talent on a national basis to make property more of a growth focus for us. That is also then going to generate exceptional risk-adjusted returns in this environment. I think I've said on our earnings call, that you should not think of this as just a cat strategy. We'll take on cat, but we really want fire perils on a national basis. With that little market share, I think we could be very conscious in building, I'll call it property capabilities in force on a national basis that gets us a good spread of risk. If it does come with a little tornado hail exposure, maybe a little wind wildfire exposure, and we think we're getting the price for that cat, along with the price for the attritional losses with terms and conditions, attachment points, sublimits on flood, and other things as a property underwriter. We've got more modern products, both for middle market, large, and E&S, and then global. You put it all together, and we had about $2 billion of premium in 2022. We set a target to get to two and a half this year. We'll tell you what the target is for 2024 when we get there. I think we're growing nicely. We're up about 23% in written premium volumes with a 15% overall rate increase. If you look at large, it's even bigger growth because it's a smaller base. If you look at E&S, E&S properties, I think up 29% with 25 points of rate. Even in our reinsurance book, we're growing the property component there about 50% with 30-plus points of rate. Giving you all these facts and details to emphasize the point that it's profitable growth, we're under-indexed, we have the skills and capabilities, and we have a reinsurance program that is virtually unchanged from prior years, with attachment points that have been consistent and aggregate retentions that we renewed also. I don't know, Beth, if there's anything else on the reinsurance program you'd want to comment. We commented as we went through our renewals in January and some in July that things were in line with what we expected. We were expecting cost to be the increase, and we had already incorporated that into our pricing models. Feel very good about the attachment points that we have and the overall protection that our reinsurance program provides us and gives us the ability to hit the growth rates that Chris is talking about. You might be interested to know, again, first half of the year, I would say our catastrophe results were a little elevated. From expectations. I think a lot lower than industry, which speaks to, again, spread of risk, selection, avoiding concentrations in certain areas. Really through the first two months of the third quarter, we're basically right on budget, our internal budget for cat, and we'll see how that plays out the rest of the year, which we know there's still a lot of activity left in the cat season. Yeah. Unfortunately, for better or for worse, we're also seeing faster hurricane formation. Let me shift gears a little bit to workers' compensation. Workers' compensation has been this remarkable story industry-wide for the past few years, with sustained profitability despite some compounding flat or declining rate levels. That said, Hartford's still outperforming, and I think, from my perspective, one of the areas that's underappreciated is the skill set at Hartford that allows that outperformance. I get that industry-wide results are good. There is some chatter now about maybe workers' compensation loss trends inflecting, whether that's because wages are rising, whether that's a function of medical cost inflation, and again, it's specific to workers' compensation, not necessarily analogous to the CPI, and maybe some other factors, maybe the employment picture in one direction or another. In that backdrop, what's The Hartford's expectation for workers' compensation for the next, I'll say, 12-18 months? Well, we've talked about this in various sessions, I think, in the past. As really the nation's second-largest workers' comp player, I appreciate you giving us a pat on the back, if it was a pat on the back, of our deep expertise in this product line for many, many years, operating in all 50 states. We have a unique perspective. Our data's rich. Our claims practices are very superb. It all contributes to the overall results. I think maybe, again, from a context side, what we see right now is generally a little outperformance on net rate, driven by just better renewal pricing than expected and what we call the component of AOI, which is the wage inflationary components that we get credit for, are just actually outperforming our expectations through the first six months of this year. Really what that sets up, if that continues, is we have the opportunity to think about how we want to set the overall accident year. I'm trying to give you the utmost comfort that this accident year is performing well, and maybe even slightly ahead of our expectations. From there, what we've generally talked about is, without specific numbers, frequency is still behaving very well. The long-term trend of our economy is just lower frequency, whether it be business mix, we'll have to see what happens with manufacturing if there is a resurgence of U.S. manufacturing. Generally, frequencies have been negative and are continuing to be negative in our judgment. I think the specific pressure that you might've been alluding to was medical services and inflation. It might sound like a broken record, I think it's worth repeating that generally, we price and reserve for a 5% medical trend. We have for a long time. I think that's worked out pretty well. What's worked out fairly well is that generally that trend has been lower- at least the last couple of years. Generally, I estimate that about 50% of that trend is actually emerging in our incurred triangles over the last couple of years. Again, building margin, whether it's on the balance sheet or eventually comes through the P&L, the margins are there. If there's any shocks in inflation, we got the balance sheet and the margin in our current accident year picks to absorb that. Some might say, well, medical CPI, the indexes are going up. They are. They have been. We've also talked about a basis difference between broad-based medical CPI and what carriers like us and other carriers will actually experience. There's a lot of fundamental differences between the two. First and foremost is we're getting injured workers back to health. That generally involves outpatient treatment and physician office visits as opposed to in-hospital visits that can be more expensive, and their costs are probably rising faster than broad-based indices in other areas. You put it all together, then combined with our outstanding claim capabilities, where we challenge and regularly review medical bills, push back. We have multi-year contracts that have stated and set rates for procedures. It lends itself to a lag effect on any long-term medical CPI trends that are emerging. I don't know how long that lag effect will really take place. It depends on a carrier. I could tell you from our perspective, the multi-year contracts and our claims capability give us quite a bit of distance between perceived headline CPI medical trends and what we're going to experience. As we sit here today, I feel good about the accident year pick, feel good about the balance sheet, obviously, we're watching these trends closely, we can make needed pricing adjustments, we do have some margin built into our pricing today. Did you add anything, Beth? No, I think you covered all the pieces of it. Okay. I'm going to ask one related question to workers' compensation, and you've talked about this. Pardon me. In concept. Am I choking you up? No, no. I've only had three coffees, so I'm a little behind. Your Group Benefits book offers some significant data synergies with workers' compensation. I was hoping you could talk about that with some examples. Yeah of how that actually helps you generate better insights, better results. That's a great point. Again, context, just because I think it's important. Workers' comp, we're getting people back to work caused by a workplace injury. That allows us to dictate, in some cases, or help determine course of medical procedures and treatment that need to be, in essence, pre-approved or approved by us that will be reimbursed. We're quite actively involved in the medical side. Again, we're not delivering care, but we're actively involved in the care required, or at least what we're going to reimburse for, to getting people back to work. Disability, long-term disability and short-term, think about it as a disabling condition that you're not able to work, where we're replacing that income, usually at 50% or 70%, depending on what an employer chooses. We're not involved in the medical course of treatment at all. Obviously, we could challenge medical records when we get them. We can ask questions. We could make sure people are legitimately disabled, and continuing to be disabled, but it's more passive from the medical side. The way we run the claim departments there are somewhat by product line, but there's a layer of management and a layer of data science that sits on top of all that. What we've been able to do is curate data to understand trends that are happening in both, then trends that there might be interdependencies for, depending on what product line you're in. What I specifically mean is that generally what we've been able to determine with our advanced data and analytics is that comorbidities extend disability and extend getting workers back to work. What do I mean? You could think in terms of diabetes. You could think in terms of prescription drug use or abuse in certain areas. You could think of mental health. All that data is being brought forth in both product lines, then our clinical nurses, which we have about 300 or so in the organization, can actually then intervene, both on the comp side and disability side, with course-correcting treatment, with suggestions where we can make it. More importantly then, when a customer uses both our comp and disability product from a risk side, there's additional layer of service that we've created for those customers just to have better insights on what's causing the leaves across various parts of their organization, whether it be comp leaves, disability leaves, whether it be paid family leaves. We have a broader array of data sets that we're able to share with the clients. I think it's working well. Our brokers, remember, most of our brokers have 50% of their revenues coming from medical and benefits. We've been able to work with them either on a product line basis or a combined basis more and more frequently. They want, call it, an account round with one of the product lines they don't sell, and actually bring us in. Again, then you add that additional layer of service or insights. It's been pretty successful, and it really works for us. Okay. Fantastic. Beth, was there anything? No, I think. Okay. I'm going to move to I'm hopeless today. I'm going to move to the Global Specialty side of things. Pricing there is all over the map. We've got public D&O rates collapsing, catastrophe exposed property rates are skyrocketing, and I assume some stuff is in the middle. I was hoping you could give us some insight, first of all, what you're seeing, and second, how does this variation performance actually makes sense. Why is this happening? It's one of those great mysteries of life. What? I don't know. That's good for poetry. No. I think what's happening, again, context, Global Specialty, I'd say the two large top of the house trends is anything casualty related, primary excess umbrella is running firm from a pricing side, then you can add, obviously, property in there. Anything in the large property, excess, shared, and layer, is just running hot. For our book, if I give you some numbers, we have about $1 billion of premium in the wholesale channel. Prices are up about 11% in that segment. That segment includes casualty, property, construction, as sort of an industry vertical concentration within there. Again, that business is running rate increases about 11%, and I see that continuing at least through the end of the year. You mentioned E&O, D&O, or financial lines. Obviously, it's under pressure, particularly from the public side. We've shifted probably 12-18 months ago to focus a little bit more on the private D&O side, emphasize more of the management liability and professional liabilities. Think of contractors' liabilities and things along those lines. We've actually shifted the book. We only have about $200 million of gross written premium in the public D&O. It's not going to take a big hit on growth but it will obviously improve our profitability from a return perspective, because I just think, at least in the U.S., it's flipped where it's not going to be accretive. Just pricing has come down too much given the exposures, it's just not going to be accretive. I think that this third area I just would comment upon is international. Our international specialty book has a focus in on D&O, both private and public. Again, similar trends there. The public D&O it's actually quite negative. For us, it's about 11 points of rate. Profitability there is still okay, but I see a tipping point come where we're going to have to pull capital out of that product line also. I think on the positive side, both in the U.S. and internationally, anything cargo-wise, ocean marine, is high single to low double digits rates. We have an energy capability in London that, again, is in that high single-digit casualty capabilities. Our trade credit and political risk business continues to chug along with high single-digit prices. U.S. surety, I would say it's just been a steady eddy. Nothing close to double-digit rates, but keeping up with trend. There's always a little worry about large losses during sort of challenged economic times. There has been some, but not in any concentrated fashion in our book of business to date. Feel pretty good with our broad-based mix. The one specialty line of business that is minor for us, but still has important trends, is cyber. We view cyber as a product that is an accommodation, particularly to our small business owners, and then those middle-market customers that really need some protection, usually in a shared and layered approach there. Cyber's gotten a little soft, but it's still generally positive. The rate of increases have come down substantially over the last two quarters, but generally still feel good about that overall profitability and where that product line is going to. It's going to more monitoring, real-time monitoring, which we've been a long advocate for, and companies applying corrective actions, and if you're not applying corrective actions, that generally has a underwriting implication, either on new or on renewal or midterm. Generally, a stable product line, but relatively small for The Hartford at about $150 million of premium. Okay. Fantastic. One other line of business that I wanted to delve into is commercial auto. It's a big line of business. Other than the COVID period, the industry's kind of been struggling to get rates to catch up with loss trend. I was wondering if you could talk about maybe Hartford's exposure and experience in commercial auto. Yeah. Again, context, we have about a little less than $1 billion of commercial auto premium between small and middle. To the contrary to your point, usually I'm not going to argue with you. Okay. We have decent profitability there. This year and last year on an accident year basis. There's always some noise with prior year development, particularly coming out of the 2015 to 2019 accident years. On an accident year basis, we're hovering around a 95% overall combined ratio, which is dramatically different than it was seven, eight years ago. We've been at it for seven or eight years of putting substantial rate into the book, re-underwriting the book, doing better underwriting on the book with drivers and kicking out drivers that just aren't insurable based on driving patterns. To the point where we're not meeting our targeted returns of 15%, but with a 95% combined ratio, it's accretive, and we see a path over the next couple of years to get to our targeted ratios. The dynamics in this line of business aren't anything new to you. You've written more about it than most is, there's still plenty of lawyers in the world. Litigation rates are high, representation rates are high. Average settlements are increasing, particularly on the bodily injury side. You sprinkle in a nuclear verdict here or there, it takes a toll on the line. Again, with disciplined underwriting and rate actions over the last seven or eight years, I think we're in a position to continue to improve this line with discipline to meet our targeted returns. Chris, I think you'd agree that we also see the added benefit of increased use of telematics, and how that can also improve our ability to underwrite and to see how drivers are behaving. For us, it's also really important when we look at where we're providing insurance is, are those companies taking that to heart and using it? Because we definitely see a correlation between companies that monitor what their drivers are doing and how they're behaving and taking that seriously with the overall performance. I think we'll continue to see added use of that. Fantastic. Are we talking telematics as an underwriting tool, pricing tool, or both? I think it's really both. Yeah. Okay. Both. Yeah. Again, Beth brings up a good point. You should not think though, that we're applying that to large fleets. Right. We're not in the large fleet business, we do have some clients. They've got van, yep 100, 200 vehicles that are leaning in from the risk management side to help bend the behavior curve of distracted driving. Okay, fantastic. I'm going to move on to personal lines, but if there are questions in the room, I want to stop just to attend to those. I'm sorry, yeah. We've got a question. We're just going to bring you the mic. What do you do on the underwriting front to deal with the nuclear verdict situation? Are you just offering lower top-end limits or what? Yeah. It's limits management. Again, if you think about our book of business, small and middle, we're generally in the $1 million to $2 million primary limits, and then you really have to be judicious with your umbrella or excess strategies on any of those accounts. Generally middle market accounts. That's the best way to control it. Moving on to personal lines, which no one likes to talk about, so we're going to. You've got one thing in common with the rest of the industry, which is struggling with significantly and surprisingly difficult severity trends. One unique aspect, which is the AARP distribution relationship. How are you balancing those two concerns as you work your way towards restoring profitability? You want to tag team this one? Sure. Again, context. We've had a 35-plus year relationship with AARP. Very proud of it. We've created, I think, some unique product capabilities and insights into the mature market segment, which generally means 60 plus. AARP's got strategies to try to be in the 50 to 60 category, but the majority of our business is still 60 plus. That relationship is one of an endorsed carrier relationship on an exclusive basis. We're the exclusive endorsed party for home and auto products nationally. In exchange for that endorsement, we pay royalty fees based on premium volumes. It's viewed as a commission. That's their role in the relationship. We co-brand some things. You've seen the advertising. They have nothing to do with pricing. They have nothing to do with rate filings, have nothing to do with claim settlements. They leave that up to us to manage. To their benefit, though, if we can grow, and have, obviously, good profitability. That's a major distinction sometimes maybe people don't understand. The underwriting, the growth, the investing strategies that we have are all of ours. We keep them informed. It's one of co-marketing and positioning the AARP brand with our brand in that mature market segments. That's the nature of the relationship. I would tell you from a priority side, it's not surprising that our sole focus is getting this book back to profitability, no matter what happens to PIF count or the top line. Full stop. Obviously, AARP will have a point of view. Contractually, those are our decisions, and we'll keep them posted on it. That's what I would say on that. If you want to get into specifics of what's really happening with loss cost trends and filings and profitability, I'm happy to talk about that. I think we've been pretty clear is that unfortunately, we missed our combined ratio on an underlying basis targets this year. I said on the second quarter call probably about nine points. As we head into the second half of the year, I think that's going to hold. Time will tell. Just to be clear, nine points on auto. On auto. It has a little bit lower on personal lines. That's on personal and even less on consolidated. Correct. Home is actually performing well. Right. On an underlying basis, obviously with a cat load in there, it's actually performing well. The strategies become how quickly can you get rate into the book, and when will it turn? In the context I think I've given you all in prior settings is about 47% of our premium volume is in states that require prior approval, 53% then we could file and use or use and file and start to get the needed rate actions into those states. 50% of the book has a longer tail to get rate into it, and there's a handful of states that are probably even longer than that. West Coast states, New York state. Somewhere around here, perhaps New Jersey, Massachusetts. Those are challenging states to get rate in on an approved basis. What we've said is that, we think we'll have about 20 points of rate in the auto book by the fourth quarter, and continuing into 2024. We estimate that we probably will need another 15-20 points of rate in 2024 to be able to hit our targeted margins and our lead targets in 2025. That's assuming essentially stable severity trends from what we're seeing now. I would say trends that revert slightly. Okay. Right. I guess we're seeing that in the Manheim Index, for example, which is one of the things that we watch. That I think makes a lot of sense. I'm going to move to Group Benefits, but if there are questions here on the P&C side or really anything, don't hesitate to let me know. Group Benefits had a really good second quarter, it does seem I'm sorry. There's a question back there. Okay, Robbie. Hi. Thank you. You can say hi. This is almost maybe more of industry homeowners question than one about The Hartford's experience in particular, but how do you think about maybe the cat experience the industry's had, particularly last quarter, but it's been elevated for a little while, and the reflexivity of that into pricing or policy construction over time in homeowners? Thank you. Well, obviously, it's obvious, so I'm sorry to be obvious, but tornado hail continues to be the biggest exposure we, and I think most of the industry is experiencing, and those trends in tornado hail are moving east, say from Colorado to Missouri into Tennessee. There's an eastern movement of those trends, primarily driven by weather patterns and moisture patterns, and things like that. For us, what we're fanatical about it is really just spread a risk and just watching to make sure we just don't have any concentrations in micro areas, micro zones, that it could really cause an outsized loss. If you look at the second quarter results, they were elevated, but they weren't outsized compared to others. That's primarily because you've got to be disciplined in populous states. Texas is a populous state, but you got to be really disciplined on how much you want in any one zip code, neighborhood, things like that. That continues up to Colorado with hail, and then into the greater Midwest area. That's what we worry about more than anything. We'll see what happens with the hurricane season. Again, just to give you context, we have not been in new business in homeowners and- In Florida in Florida for 15 years. Yeah. 20 years, maybe. 2007. 2007, we exited completely. That was a difficult conversation with AARP at the time. That's right I've been told. Again, they accepted our decision from an underwriting, pricing, and economic side. We probably have about $25 million of premium, $20 million of premium in Florida home today. We've limited quite a bit of wind exposure by that policy over the last 20-odd years. Moving on to Group Benefits. I was hoping you could talk a little bit comparing pre-COVID, post-COVID, both in terms of claim emergence and policyholder behavior, and how that impacts underwriting and pricing. We didn't tag team on the last question. I added some points at the end. You did? Okay. All right. I corrected you. We'll tag team here. Group Benefits, there's a life component, there's a disability component, both short-term and long-term, and then there's a voluntary product capability. Think of Critical Illness, Hospital Indemnity, accidental death type of policies. I think the question is probably most relevant on the life insurance side because pre-pandemic, during the pandemic, and post-pandemic, I think our disability results have been very stellar. We might had a little pop in COVID on STD, as people dealt with the virus and there were some early learnings that was needed to be learned. Generally, it's a small product line. There's not very much risk in those products, we did have a little bit of elevation in utilization of STD benefits, but that's back to normal. That's short-term disability. I think it stands for something else also. Yeah. I didn't go there. You did. I'm a child. Yeah. On the life insurance side, what we're seeing is this shift from a pandemic state to an endemic state, which COVID is continuing to circulate, and hopefully, no one has contracted it recently. It's still circulating, probably less lethal, but it has primary and secondary impacts. Obviously, the primary impact is depending on your health, you can still die from COVID. The secondary impacts is that you don't die from COVID, but you increase your mortality or shorten your life expectancy by just living through the disease, and there's lingering effects and all those challenges, you could put it into a comorbidity range. COVID losses, mortality losses, have actually come down and stayed down. The elevation in mortality that we're continuing to experience, we really do forecast that to continue for the next three or four years, is the secondary impacts from COVID, or just higher mortality rates in general compared to pre-COVID. That's what I think we've seen pretty consistently over the last six or seven quarters. You might ask, what have we been doing about it? I would say over the last 15 months, we've been trying to get in additional rate for this endemic state of COVID and this pull forward of mortality. Generally, we've been asking our clients to pay 2%-3% more on mortality rates. That's our goal. Obviously, there's individual account decisions made on renewals and retention implications, but generally, we're getting more life insurance premiums to cover for that elevated mortality that we think is going to persist for the next three or four years. What would you add? No, I would agree with all that. Just to reemphasize that on the long-term disability side, just continues to perform very well. We talk all the time about, for this business, we look at a 6%-7% core earnings margin, definitely see ourselves earning that. The disability trends just continue to be very favorable. I would say the only other component here of just, we retain the first $1 million of life insurance benefit per our own account. We have reinsurance through Munich Re for any dollar face amounts above $1 million, which again, in certain industries that happens frequently. We do cut off a tail severity events with that reinsurance program. Right. We've got time for one more question. I want to see if anyone here has one. If not, let's talk about capital management, because The Hartford has been remarkably disciplined in terms of share repurchases, in terms of your guidance, in terms of the execution. What would it take for you to increase or accelerate the share repurchase program? Well, I'll start with what you said, which is, I think we've had a very well-disciplined program, I think deploying excess capital for share repurchases we see as being very accretive, especially where our shares trade. As we've talked about, as our businesses continue to increase earnings, we can increase the dividends that we take out of subs, that will increase the amount of excess capital that we have. We do like to deploy it in very systematic, consistent way. I think that has worked to our advantage. We're continuing to execute on the plan that we have. Okay, fantastic. With that, please join me in thanking Chris and Beth for a very helpful session.