We're live. Everyone, hi. This is Josh Shanker. Again, it's the Bank of America Annual U.S. Insurance Conference. If you're tuning in now, we're on the Selective Insurance slate of the conference. We're joined by my associate, Grace Carter, also, of course, from Selective. We're very excited to have John Marchioni and Mark Wilcox, CEO and CFO of Selective, here with us right now, broadcasting live, I think from Selective headquarters. I can't tell. It looks like, John, you have a real- Yes background on you, not a virtual one. That's pretty good. We're really happy to have you here. Before I begin, as I say in most of these meetings, we're very thankful that you're joining us and also your employees adapting to these very difficult times. Perhaps you just want to introduce a little bit what's going on at Selective during COVID, and then we'll get on with our Q&A. Well, thanks, Josh. Good morning, and it's great to be here. Always appreciate the opportunity to present at this conference. I appreciate you leading off with a question about employees. We often say that our best, longest, most sustainable competitive advantage as an organization is the strength of our talent and the commitment of our employees. I would say throughout the last year, our employees have come together to continue to deliver great value for our customers, our distribution partners, and our shareholders. I think culture is so important in our business, and we've worked hard to build a highly engaged team. I think throughout this time, as we quickly transitioned to a work-from-home environment for all of our employees last March and had the tools in place for them to do their jobs and do them effectively and continue to find ways to support employees as they've dealt with their own personal challenges, whether caring for school-age children or elderly adults. We've tried to support them as much as possible and kept them engaged, and I think that's been a great part of our success over the course of the last year. We're proud of what they've done and continue to do to deliver great value for our customers. As any investor who's on the line should know, you can ask questions through the Veracast app. All you got to do is type it in, and I will be reading those questions. Please don't be shy and ask questions, and they'll be addressed. On this topic of COVID, now look, we're unfortunately in some ways the end is the darkest part. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Can we talk about what your priorities are? Let's assume that we're 4 months into the future, 50%-60% of the country is vaccinated, including the most vulnerable part of the country. Maybe it's a little bit optimistic, but what will be the priorities for Selective in that emergent period? I would say, Josh, for us, we went into this pandemic knowing that we had a very unique business model that positioned us well in any environment. Honestly, coming out of this, I think we're going to emerge a stronger organization. Like you, I think we're all hopeful that we're much closer to the end than we are to the beginning, and there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I would say, I'll point to three specific areas that we really think set us apart and have really solidified our position in the market in the last year and really helped us deliver value for our customers. The first is the strength of our distribution partnerships. Our ability to come together with our distribution partners to continue to grow collectively, but also to continue to deliver great value to our customers, has only been solidified through this pandemic. We're going to continue to make sure that we focus on supporting our distribution partners because they've been so supportive for us and our mutual customers throughout this pandemic. The second point, I already covered this, our team and having a highly engaged team has been a critical part of our success. We're going to make sure we continue to invest in creating that highly engaged team, giving our employees the tools to do their jobs more effectively, giving them the opportunities to move up and take on more responsibility, and continuing to build out a diverse and inclusive organizational culture. The third area I'll highlight, I think this is also something we'll continue to invest in, not new, we've laid a lot of the foundation, it really came through in a significant way during the course of the pandemic, was our efforts over the last several years to deliver an omnichannel customer experience, deliver a digital experience, and a virtual experience for those customers who wanted it. The ability to have those tools in place and have customers increasingly taking advantage of those, I think really positions us well coming out of this environment. We've never lost focus on the mission and continuing to build for the future. As we work so hard to service our customers through this challenging time, also adding to the pandemic, a very, very high cat year. For us, 8 points of catastrophe losses in that 94.9% combined ratio is much higher than typical for us, and continuing to be able to service our claimants in a way that was very efficient and very effective. Despite all of those challenges, we made great progress on redesigning our small business system. Small business has always been a big portion of our business. We've invested in improving the technology. We're about half of the way through that rollout. We've started the repositioning of our personal lines organization. We've enhanced our E&S technology. When we look at where we are now, starting with a very strong, profitable base in terms of our book of business, and have only continued to invest in growing on a go-forward basis, starting to fire up our geographic expansion. The strategy we've had that have positioned us so well, I think have been enhanced over the last year, and we think we're extremely well-positioned in the emerging market. All right. Well, Grace, why don't you ask the next question on your list? Sure. Building on your comments about distribution and growth, could we talk a little bit about how the pandemic has impacted your plans for expanding geographically and increasing agent count over the past year or so, and how your plans now might compare to your plans prior to the pandemic? Yeah, sure. Thanks, Grace. Let me hit the distribution side of it first. I'll come back and hit geo expansion. I would say this has been a longstanding strategy for us. Our long-term goal is to achieve a 3% market share in our commercial lines, current footprint states. We're currently at about a point and a half if you look at all 27 commercial line states. We focus on two levers that really help us drive towards that market share growth. That additional point and a half of market share is about a $3 billion opportunity. We view that as the lowest risk opportunity for us to grow. It's with agents we know for the most part, with products we know and geographies we know. The two levers are getting our distribution partners to represent about 25% of the available markets in their states. We're currently at about 22% across all of our 27 operating states. There's some headroom there to strategically appoint agents. In 2020, this goes to your question of how did the pandemic impact that, in 2020, we appointed on a net of termination basis, 90 new distribution partners. Granted, there was a lull in the spring, early summer, with regard to making new appointments as agents were really focused on getting their operations up and running. A lot of those appointments were in the second half of the year and will really benefit us moving into 2022. That's a typical, I'm sorry, 2021. That's a typical year for us. I would say we were able to continue to add agents strategically at the pace that we've done historically. The other lever is share of wallet. You hear us talk about this a lot. We think it's reasonable for us to achieve a 12% share of our agents' commercial lines business over time. We're currently at about 8% across all of our distribution partners. We've remained focused on that. We've talked about the MarketMax automation tool that we rolled out late last year that really helps agents profile their book of business and find opportunities to grow with us on both controlled accounts and accounts that are new to the agency. We run that in about 250 of our distribution partners. There's a lot of upside with those partnerships that we still haven't realized. We'll continue to roll it out more broadly. Geographic expansion, as you recall, we opened up five new states in 2017 and 2018, the primary focus being the Southwest region. We've been extremely pleased with the progress there. We continue to take a very deliberate approach. Candidly, in the last year and a half or two, we've really shifted our focus to make sure that our small business technology platform and servicing platform was best in class. We're in the process of completing the rollout of those enhancements. Now we're about to get back into a geographic expansion cadence. We have talked about opening up and starting the work to open up three additional states. They'll open in late 2022 or early 2023. It's about an 18-month process start to finish. We have identified Alabama, Idaho, and Vermont, which are adjacent to our current footprint. Smaller premium opportunity than some of our more recent expansion states, but we think present great opportunities for us, and that work will begin in earnest in the latter half of this year. Can we shift to the past year, thinking about what it means for your risk management? Obviously, catastrophes, very large cat years for the last few years, at least some perceive it. I may argue that long-term trends are for elevated cats. You can sort of tip that both ways. What do you think that means for Selective? How are you changing your reinsurance purchasing behaviors? Will there be lower volatility in results going forward, or is your positioning similar to what it's been in the past? Excellent question, Josh, and why don't I take that one, and John can jump in and provide some additional color and commentary as well. I think, let me just start with the fact that 2020 was a strong and profitable year for Selective. We generated a 10.5% operating ROE on a profitable 94.9% combined ratio. The underlying profitability of our insurance portfolio is very strong, and we have excellent price and momentum going into 2021. That said, 2020 was close to a record year for us in terms of the eight-point impact of cat losses on our combined ratio. Unlike in prior years, such as if you look at 2011 and 2012 for us, which were heavy cat years, and 2017 and 2018 for the industry that were headlined by major events, 2020 really witnessed a range of mid-size events, including the winter storms, the Midwest derecho, tornadoes, convective storms, wildfires, civil unrest, and hurricanes. The list is pretty lengthy. It really was the frequency of these mid-sized events that impacted our results as they were all full retention losses. In fact, of the $250 million of cat losses we incurred in 2020, about two-thirds of that came from six events, while the remaining one-third came from over 50 individual PCS events. That really kind of drives home the point of it really was the increased frequency of those mid-sized, call it full retention events that really impacted our results in 2020. Just taking a step back for a minute, there clearly has been a trend of elevated cat losses and non-cat losses in almost every quarter starting in 2017. In fact, 2017, 2018, and 2020 were all elevated from a cat loss perspective. We believe that climate change might be driving this, and it's an issue that the industry has to grapple with longer term and understand implications for underwriting and risk mitigation. From an underwriting and risk management standpoint, to answer your question, Josh, we did not see anything that materially surprised us in 2020. The events of last year were highly localized and impacted companies based on their geographic footprints. Over the last 15 years or so, the impact of cat losses on our combined ratio has averaged a very manageable 3.2 points, versus 5.3 points for the industry as a whole. That said, going into 2021, we have increased our assumption for cat losses to four points on our combined ratio from our annual prior guidance of three and a half points for the last number of years. From our perspective, we do look to manage the cat loss volatility in multiple ways, and we do have a lower volatility profile than many of our peers. That starts with the type of business that we write. We really seek to write low to medium hazard accounts, with more of a casualty focus. Second, we have very strict underwriting guidelines that stipulate clearly our risk appetite. We largely avoid writing property risks in coastal areas and don't deploy our commercial lines capacity in some of the very heavy cat-prone states like Florida, Texas, and California. That has really served us well over the years. Third, we are prudent purchasers of reinsurance. We limit our one in 250-year peak single event PML exposure to about 4% of our GAAP equity. We have a cat excess of loss treaty that provides $785 million of coverage above a $40 million retention for single events, including a $5 million retention for our non-footprint and recent expansion states. We also have a per occurrence property treaty that covers us for $58 million of property losses over a $2 million retention. Then for any exposure above the $60 million, we factor out 100% and therefore limit the net exposure for large losses to $2 million. In thinking about 2020 going into 2021, we did evaluate multiple different types of reinsurance structures for our 1-1 renewal, including looking at aggregate structures. At the end of the day, we maintained our existing structure. It does and has served us very well in the past. We did buy an additional $50 million at the top of the program. We do expect to pay a little bit more for reinsurance in 2021 given the market conditions. That's about a 50 basis point headwind on our combined ratio, and that's factored into our 2021 guidance of an all-in combined ratio, including cats, but excluding prior year casualty reserve development of 95%. Hopefully that provides you some perspective on the record level of cat losses in 2020, and how we think about risk management and reinsurance. The only thing I would add to that, I think Mark did a great job of explaining how we approach it and how we think about our portfolio. Our portfolio has been fairly stable in terms of what we write from a limits profile and where we write it. I think, Josh, to the question, I think we should probably assume that the volatility we've seen, not just in cat losses, but in non-cat losses, will continue. We think about target combined ratios on a risk-adjusted basis. The property line is one with the volatility we've seen on both a cat and non-cat basis that we think needs to be managed to a much lower combined ratio in an average year. That's why this is a line that we think we need to increase pricing. We saw pricing in 2020 on the property line at just under 7%, and we think we want to continue to try to manage that sort of rate level going forward because we have to assume that you're going to see some increased volatility as we've seen in the last couple of years. Grace, why don't you queue up next? Sure. Can we talk about the pricing outlook for 2021 and how that might impact your expectations for growth and margins over the next year? Sure. Great question. We've said this previously and continue to believe that the drivers of the pricing environment that we're currently in are not going to go away soon, and we think it'll continue to be a tailwind through the balance of 2021 and into 2022. Really the primary drivers, and I think everybody probably knows this, but clearly the lower for longer interest rate environment is one of the biggest drivers, and everybody needs to be looking out and understanding the potential impact on their investment income and making up the difference that they're going to lose from lower yields on investment income in lower combined ratio results. That is not going to go away. That's an industry dynamic that everybody's going to continue to deal with. As we just talked about, elevated cat and non-cat property losses will continue to push rate level higher. We do have a firming reinsurance market. You've seen that, and I think there's different views of whether it's firmed as much as people expected it to on the property side, but pricing is going higher and terms and conditions are becoming tighter. We also have elevated loss trends. I think we've all talked about that. We were talking about it in the first quarter of 2020 before the pandemic hit. At some point, as the economy normalizes, we expect loss trends to come back to where they were pre-pandemic, and that needs to be accounted for in pricing. We have, in our disclosures, in the guidance, and Mark reconciled how we get from the 2020 year to the 2021 year. Pricing is certainly a big part of that. With regard to the 2021 year, however, a lot of that price is already written. Much of your earn rate for anybody in our business, much of the earn rate for 2021, is largely banked in that it was written in 2020. Any shift in the market would likely be more of a 2022 impact. Again, we think it's a sustainable pricing environment, and we think this goes to the second part of your question around how we think about growth and retention in this kind of an environment. If you look at our history, our track record over the last 10 or 11 years, we've been able to manage pure renewal pricing at or above expected loss trend for each of those years, and done it in a way that didn't negatively impact retentions. I think that really goes to two of our key focus areas. Number one is having the tools to be very granular in our approach. We're focused on account-by-account basis on projected loss experience going forward to provide very specific pricing guidance to our underwriters on individual accounts. That's also allowed us, in this rising price environment, to see retentions go higher. Our retentions in 2020 were up a full 200 basis points over the prior year, and we think that says a lot about how we administer our pricing philosophy. Then the second part of effectively managing that balance between rate and retention is the strength of your distribution partner relationships, and we think that came through in 2020 as well. We have the same discipline in terms of how we think about pricing individual accounts for new business, and we did generate about two points of new business growth year-over-year in 2020, and we think we did that in a very disciplined way. We think this is a great market for us. We've proven our ability to manage the pricing environment effectively and still grow the organization, and we think we're well positioned to continue to do that into 2021. I have a question coming in from investors. It's a bit of a pivot. We would get to it anyways, I suppose. What does the future hold for the personal lines business for a company like Selective looking forward 10 years? With the likes of GEICO, Progressive, Allstate, and State Farm, as well as the influx of Lemonade, Root, Metromile, et cetera, will the segment be a good use of capital? We do still like the business. I will say that I think there's a segment of the market that we're built to compete in, and there's a segment of the market that we're not built to compete in and don't plan on. The mass market personal auto business that's driven by comparative rating, either with an agency distribution or direct-to-consumer platforms, is not how we're built. It's not the business we're looking to pursue. We do think there's a segment of the marketplace, and specifically when you think about the affluent and mass affluent markets, that price matters, but it's not the driving factor. The driving factor is more coverage and service and guidance from an agency distribution partner, to make sure they're placed with the right company. What we're doing as we speak is repositioning ourselves to be able to compete more effectively in that slice of the market. We think we have most of the product and service capabilities already. We think our distribution plant is largely positioned to grow that segment of the marketplace, and we're in the process of rolling that out. By mid-year 2021, early third quarter, we'll have some additional product and service enhancements that we think will well position us to serve that market. The answer is, for that segment of the business, yes. For the very price sensitive, increasingly commoditized mono-line personal auto business, where price is the determining factor, that is not a business that we think is a good investment for us, and that's why we're repositioning our business in a different direction. In terms of thinking about the ROE target for 2021, what are the greatest downside risks to you with achieving your target, and what would be the greatest upside risks as well? Why don't I take that one, Josh, let me just kind of frame that out just to make sure everybody's clear as to what the target is and how we set the target. Each year, we do establish an operating ROE target, it's based on at least a 300 basis point spread over our weighted average cost of capital, as well as other factors, including market conditions. For this year, we've established a non-GAAP operating ROE target of 11%, which is close to 400 basis points over our current estimated weighted average cost of capital. That target really sets a high bar for our financial performance. It challenges us to perform at our best, it does align our incentive compensation structure with shareholder interests. It is important to note that our ROE target does not constitute financial guidance or earnings guidance. It is a top-down target based on what we believe is an appropriate return we need to generate for our shareholders over the long term, we do adjust that on an annual basis. Just in terms of a couple of risks in terms of achieving the ROE target, I could name a few. Of course, insurance is an inherently volatile business, an elevated level of catastrophe losses like we saw in 2020, or elevated level of non-cat property losses like we saw in 2018 and 2019, or in fact, higher than expected claims frequencies or severities from prior accident years on casualty business. All of those could negatively impact and put pressure on expectations around ROE for 2021. We're clearly in a lower for longer interest rate environment that's holding investment yields on a go-forward basis, particularly the new money rates. That really, as John mentioned, supports the need for additional rate and margin improvement going into 2021 and beyond. The lower interest rate environment is factored into our net investment income guidance for 2021, the $182 million of after-tax net investment income. If reinvestment rates really declined materially and collapsed and credit spreads continue to tighten, that could impact the net investment income and the ROE, although probably more of an issue for 2022 and beyond. Clearly, if we had a significant risk-off environment like being experienced in March of 2020, that would negatively impact our alternative investment income and our ROE. When thinking about the pricing environment, that remains constructive and a tailwind going into 2021. If our competitors look at the prior accident year, 2020 specifically, and view the frequency benefit as anything other than an anomaly, and view it as some sort of fundamental shift in frequency and potentially severity trends, that could create a headwind as well if competitors start shifting pricing strategies and driving rate lower than expectations. I'd say finally, while the macroeconomic environment remains challenged, the forecast is for good GDP growth this year. As you know, industry premium is highly correlated to GDP growth. If we remain in this pandemic throughout the year, there's always the potential for a risk to our top line from lower exposures, potentially less new-new business from new companies starting up. The potential for more negative audit and midterm endorsement premium. We could also see some pressure on the bottom line from higher bad debts or having to increase our provision for uncollectible premium receivable. All of those factors would put some pressure on ROE. Overall, we believe we're extremely well positioned to hit our targets in 2020. The earnings guidance that we've provided in terms of the combined ratio, net investment income, et cetera. To the extent many of these factors I just mentioned allow us to continue generating accelerating rate above trend, it could provide some upside to our current targets as well. Thank you, Mark. Grace, why don't you ask a question next? Sure. Certain lines experienced a frequency benefit over the past year during the pandemic. I was wondering how that might impact pricing dynamics for 2021, and how that might lead 2020 reserves to season differently relative to other years. For example, if you want to watch them for longer before changing reserving levels. Yeah, great question. I think the answer to that is going to be very company specific. I think it's hard to determine how the market is going to react to what is an anomalistic year. I think Mark described it well in his comment to call it an anomaly from a frequency perspective. As you know, other than a small movement in the commercial auto current year in the fourth quarter, we've remained on our loss picks for the longer tail casualty lines. The reason we do that is we clearly have seen a frequency benefit, and the size of that frequency benefit is going to vary a little bit from one line to another. I think there remains significant uncertainty around the severity side of that equation. From our perspective, we're comfortable with our loss picks on the casualty side. To that frequency benefit would be an offset to the extent severity emerges unfavorably. You've got a few things to consider. Number one is it is definitely a year with a very different reporting pattern than you're used to in terms of frequency of loss on the casualty side, and also how those losses will emerge, the time frame in which they will emerge. You certainly have some potential for higher severity driven by a legal backlog. When you think about litigation rates and where you would expect to see your litigation rate on the current or the most recent prior accident year, you would expect that reporting to shift a little bit and potentially be a little bit longer. You also have some unknowns relative to the ultimate COVID exposure on lines like workers' comp and general liability. I think everybody has a sense. The NCCI has been fairly public about what they're seeing in terms of COVID losses and being well under what they expected. I think there's still unknowns relative to a couple of things from a severity perspective. Are there long-term effects that aren't currently being understood from a COVID perspective would be one of the primary ones. Also for ongoing claims, even if they're less severe, was there a slowdown in treatment or a slowdown in diagnostic testing on some of those claims that could ultimately emerge in some additional severity? I say all that because I think that's why when we look at the current year, I'm talking about the 2020 year now, so the most immediate prior year, we really want to be careful to not just overreact to what appears to be a frequency benefit and ignore what could be some severity development that could offset that frequency benefit. In terms of rolling this forward now to 2021, from our perspective, I think it's much more instructive to look at the original 2020 loss picks as a starting point, as opposed to the 2020 year as we've seen it now at the end of the year, based on everything I just said. Our process to making loss picks on the casualty side has been very consistent and very conservative over a long period of time. You want to really think about loss trends over a several year period. Our practice has always been to take the last four plus the current accident year, fully trend those, so you're essentially reflecting the actual historical changes in frequency and severity, and then you're bringing those to present rates. That's your starting point. There's a lot of focus around expected loss trend, which is how you think about inflating your loss pick on a go-forward basis. Again, I would say that in that exercise for us, we're going to put much more weight on the original 2020 loss picks for casualty than we are on the current view because of the unknowns and the uncertainties around how that year is emerging. We're getting short on time, we'll try and get two more questions in. Can you talk about your E&S strategy, why Selective is going to be successful at a business that a lot of competitors have had more experience in ultimately? What do you see as the sort of prospect for expanding those lines? Yeah. We like the E&S business, while it's our newest segment, it's been around now, we've been in this business for about nine years. While we had some profitability challenges early, if you look over the last couple of years, we've delivered some pretty consistent and favorable margins In that segment of business, the growth has been a little bit more volatile than we'd like, we think we're now positioned, having addressed the small issues that we had to address on a handful of segments and having profitability and margins generally in line with our targets, we think we're in a position to more consistently grow that segment on a go-forward basis. I mentioned earlier, we've also retooled our agency-facing automation, which we think will improve our competitive positioning in that segment as well. That's in the middle of rolling out. It's been rolled out for new business, we're coming back and finishing up some work relative to post-acquisition, so endorsements and renewals. That automation platform will dramatically increase our competitive position. Now remember, we write a certain segment of the E&S market. We write small binding authority business. Our average account size is $3,000. This is not the high severity, high exposure. This is a lower limits profile. It's a fairly stable segment of the E&S market. It's not the focus of where the significant rate has been, which has been more of the higher exposure, severe catastrophic exposure classes of business. We like the growth prospects there. We've talked about it being between 10% and 15% of our company over the long term. It's about 9% now. We think we've done a good job of positioning ourselves in that market and think we look good in terms of future growth prospects. Grace, why don't you ask another one, and we'll see how we're doing on time? Sure. Given the current hardening pricing environment, could we talk about how you're balancing growth versus returning capital to shareholders? Building on that, if we could talk about the thought process behind authorizing share repurchases. Sure. I'm happy to take that one, Grace. I know we're out of time, getting close to being out of time, so I'll try and keep this short and punchy. No, we can stay a few minutes. Oh, we can? Okay. All right. Thank you. I know the shop clock's running down. I think as the backdrop, just to take just a second to talk about our capital position going into 2021 because Selective has had a long and successful history. We've been around for 94 years. We went into 2021 in the strongest financial position that we've ever been in. $2.7 billion of GAAP equity, that's up $544 million from the end of 2019. We have $490 million of cash and investments at our holding company. Our debt to capital ratio is down considerably to 16.7%. A measure that we spend a lot of time thinking about is our net premiums written to surplus ratio. We have a target range of 1.35 to 1.55 times, and we're slightly below the low end of the range at 1.3 times. We have a record level of statutory capital and surplus, and our AM Best A rating is currently on positive outlook. When you put that all together, we feel really good from a capital standpoint. Our primary goal is to deploy that capital into our insurance operation and to grow our business and generate strong returns for our shareholders. If the capital is not a constraint to our growth objectives, we are open and will evaluate some inorganic options that make the most sense for our shareholders, including accelerating our strategic priorities and initiatives. We could do that through a series of different types of transactions, including a renewal rights transaction, for example, perhaps purchasing a team to expand a product offering or perhaps a modest size M&A transaction. When thinking about returning capital and share repurchases, we really like to use the term returnable capital. It's a metric that we track internally, and we really define that as the amount of capital that's above what we need to run the business and above all our most binding risk tests and above an additional buffer or margin of safety. When thinking about what to do with returnable capital, should we be in that position, we do look at a range of capital management options, and we typically Hello? Did we lose Mark? The goal with that is to be opportunistic and focus on making sure if we execute on that it delivers strong IRRs to our shareholders over the long run. Why don't I stop there? Okay. There was a glitch. I hope it didn't interrupt what people heard. I don't know, maybe it was on my end with the Wi-Fi. I hope everyone got through, but very clear from what I heard. Unfortunately, we have lots of questions and not enough time. We can certainly try and rectify that in the future. I really appreciate you coming out here virtually. Rohan, I know Richard always help and will continue to dialogue on this. I will forward you on any questions coming in from our investors who are on this line. John, Mark, thank you very much for your time. Be safe. Make sure your employees get vaccinated. I realize it may not happen as quickly as we want it to, but we're almost through the eye of the needle, I guess. Yeah. Well, thank you, Josh and Grace. Thank you. Great to talk to you. Thank you both. Thank you for your time today. Take care. Be well. Bye-bye. That's so much, everybody. Thank you. Bye-bye