Kemper Corporation (KMPR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Okay, good afternoon, everyone. I'm Greg Peters, and I'm the analyst at Raymond James who covers insurance stocks. And welcome to the afternoon schedule of our 42nd Annual Raymond James Institutional Investor Conference. Really, I'm honored to welcome back the management team of Kemper, who have participated in our conference in several of the last year -- couple of years and really has been a transformational story, led in part -- led in all by Joe Lacher, who serves as the CEO. So from management today, we have Christine Patrick, who is their Investor Relations Officer; Jim McKinney, who serves as the Chief Financial Officer; and Joe, the CEO. In your upper left-hand corner, I think, there might be a question box, a Q&A box that will allow you to log questions for the participants. And as an alternative, if there are questions during the course of the conversation, you can e-mail me at [email protected]. The presentation or the conversation is scheduled to last around 40 minutes. And to sort of set the conversation in the right tone, I thought I'd let Joe and Jim make some opening comments before we segue into some questions and answers. So with that, let me turn it over to you, Joe.

Terrific, Greg. Thank you. Thank you for those kind opening comments, and thank all of you for being with us today and your interest or in your interest in Kemper. Jim and I will tag team a couple of opening comments. I think we've all gotten used to Zoom and Webex and Teams meetings where -- so hopefully, we're not too clunky as we jump back and forth with each other. Look, we try to, in many ways, simplify what we're doing when we think about what our business proposition is as an organization. The best long-term businesses operate in a virtuous cycle. They understand and meet a customer need and do it exceptionally well. They generate a fair margin for their shareholders. They create attractive opportunities for their employees and really for all of their stakeholders. And that cycle perpetuates itself. You can measure it because if that's working well, you should see attractive earnings and margins. And you should see market share growth, and those should both occur in a sustainable fashion over time. Key metrics are that top and bottom line growth. The return, the return on average tangible common equity, tangible book value per share growth and cash generation. At the end of the day, we're all trying to run a business, and you want to know that it generates cash and produces those tangible earnings. We believe we've got a business model that's doing a beautiful job at that. We are a specialty insurer. We focus on specialty businesses where there's an unmet or underserved customer need, where we've got weak or unfocused competition that aren't doing a good job meeting that customer need. And we bring some unique strength or capability into that space and solve that customer need. We are, again, a portfolio of those specialty businesses. We have a group that we think of as foundational, sort of at the base of the pyramid, some that are in what I might describe as more emerging opportunities and some that are right at the top of that pyramid that might be more in the R&D bucket. Our foundational businesses right now are our Specialty Auto business and our low face amount Life business. We have systematic, sustainable, competitive advantages there. We do a great job meeting our customers' needs, and we wind up with a weaker and unfocused competition. We generate attractive returns in those spaces on an ongoing basis. And we've been generating sustainable market share growth. They're delivering on that promise. We've got a couple of other businesses that I would describe as emerging opportunities. Those are places where we believe we can develop that full competitive advantage and deliver those results. But for one reason or another, we're not quite there, and we believe that we can generate those. It will enhance the portfolio by having them get to and become foundational businesses. And then we have a couple of ideas that at any given point in time, might be ready to talk about, might be things that are on the drawing board. It's a relatively small part of our business, but we think about that as R&D that, again, if things work their way from R&D to emerging opportunities to foundational businesses, they really help the whole organization operate better. Those systematic, sustainable, competitive advantages in any individual one business and then being part of the portfolio either get enhanced by being part of the portfolio or you enhance the rest of the portfolio. And it makes that virtuous cycle continue to run better and better.

From a risk management perspective, transitioning there for a moment. We are a -- on the P&C side, we're a short-tail business. So you get tremendous transparency, and you can see the underlying trends in our business. We're also well diversified with where -- in terms of our -- we have a little bit of a concentration in geography in California, but we have a large, broad-based of customers both distributed between what we have on the KA side and on the personal insurance side. That diversification is enhanced by our Life business, which is a low face amount policy that you might think about traditional kind of life policies probably being 2/3 interest income, 1/3 kind of underwriting income. We would tend to be flipped from that, be 2/3 underwriting, 1/3 basically investment income. And again, well diversified, roughly 4 million policies, kind of average base amount, $6,000. The benefit of that is that we're able to achieve higher returns, well diversified with lower capital inside the business than what would otherwise be needed and essentially have actually an enhanced risk profile or lower total risk as a portfolio. You can see that in the sense of what the rating agencies have done in terms of their upgrades and our investment-grade ratings that are there. In short, we have enough capital that -- and we maintain enough to be on the balls of our feet but not enough that it's punitive from a pricing perspective and other. And we have more than enough capital even during the most challenging times, as you saw in March, to make sure that we're in a really strong position to always stand by our promises. And again, being on the balls of our feet to grow the business. The secondary component that undercuts everything that Joe said and is just systemic into how we manage and think about the business is we're a good operator is a conclusion kind of underneath all of the broad strokes that Joe outlined in our risk management approach. What that means is that we both see kind of the macro point of view as well as the micro points and that we're fundamentals based when we come across these things. You also see it in terms of our focus, starting with that customer, as Joe said, while also having that good business model. And then you see it from a strategy perspective in terms of having awareness of where things are going, but also an understanding of what the present is. And so when we design our business model and we make those decisions, it is a holistic view that is appropriately balancing both the near term and the longer term that comes into play. These things are apparent both in terms of what is easier to see with the growth, for example, with inside the KA business or inside the Life business, as Joe referenced, on those core businesses. But when you start thinking about some of the smaller details that folks potentially miss, but really highlight a culture in our sense of how we get after things. You might have missed or from a top line perspective, you might look at the quarter and say, hey, what is this pension outcome that's there? And kind of that onetime where we're retiring a good chunk or transferring a good chunk of our pension liability. You see us committed to where we have risk, it's going to be for strategic reasons. And where it's not strategic, we look to exit those or to minimize the impact. That decision that we made in the quarter, if you look at, added about $0.81 per share of value from a tangible net book value perspective. You might not notice that because when you see it from an accounting perspective, you see it coming, you see a little bit of a loss inside the quarter, but that happened many, many years ago from what the financial returns are there and the assumptions. And this is just where -- when it got recorded. So again, this highlights our sense and our focus as operators. It's about the cash, right? It's about maximizing the value of the business and not having nonstrategic risk. And here's the case where, again, that decision added $0.81 effectively per share in terms of tangible net book value. It reduced and got rid of a nonstrategic risk. And it highlights our focus both on kind of the macro things, making sure that our customers are getting service, but also the little things that we can do, it incrementally add value and improve our business. You also see that in terms of some of the things that we did throughout the year and have done to restructure our capital stack. We have one of the stronger positions that are out there. If you remember, when we came in, we had 28%, 29% total debt to cap. Today, we're right at 20.4%. So while we've achieved all of these results, while we've improved ROE, while we've done all of that, we've effectively derisked the business at that same point in time and done so in a way that's created a lot of value for shareholders. And really giving us that foundation to build off of in the future. So in summary, we continue to do well. And you think about that from a capital steward perspective, I was joking a little bit about this with Joe earlier today. When you think about on a 5-year return basis, we've returned -- total shareholder return has been about 196%. So strong financial returns on that front. 3-year perspective, right around 40%, strong returns. But again, we're continuing to kind of move the business forward, build on those foundational elements so that we can continue these types of things on a go-forward basis. Thank you, and look forward to the questions.

Thanks for those opening comments. Obviously, there's a number of directions we can go in to start things off. I'm going to stick with the pricing side of the equation. And I recognize, really, there's 2 different sides of the house, if you will, for pricing. One would be on the specialty business, and the other would be for preferred. And I'm speaking specifically around auto. So can you speak to accident frequency? Can you speak to miles driven? Can you speak to what you're seeing going on in pricing in those 2 very distinct and separate markets to provide us some perspective of what the future looks like?

Sure. I'll do my best. You got several things going on there, and correct me if I point in a wrong direction. As a general comment around the pandemic and frequency impacts, we've seen fewer miles driven and less frequency. As people have done less commuting to work, more stay at home, less economic activity, there's been a clear drop in frequency. We've seen a modest uptick in severity over that time period, and that's been generally described as maybe with fewer people on the road, people are driving a little crazy. Or maybe with fewer cars on the road, you get less minor fender benders, and you still get the big ones. I don't know what it is, but we've seen that. Over time, we have seen that effect more pronounced in preferred than in nonstandard. And I'm not 100% sure why, but -- and there's a whole series of theories, but we're not certain. Maybe it's because more of those Specialty Auto customers are still working or they're in more service industries. Or they're generally more active and less work environment stay at home. But for whatever reason, the impact we've seen was greater in preferred than it was in Specialty Auto. The other thing we've seen is there's geographic differences, and those are relatively significant. We had part of the year where, say, a Manhattan or a California were much more locked down and say, a Texas was much more wide open. So this becomes -- the depth of these issues becomes very important to be where are you talking about from a geography perspective, what subsegment of the market are you talking about, and what's happening. From a pricing perspective, we have tended to see the preferred carriers respond more with price changes. They responded with bigger premium credits, and they've responded more with price changes. My sense is what they're seeing is that frequency drop was more pronounced. And they're speculating that even when the economy reopens, you're going to see return to work be a little bit more gradual as more people work from home. So they're thinking that a rate change might be the appropriate way to handle that as opposed to a premium credit. The Specialty Auto environment, given that the frequency decline was less significant and we expect that it will perhaps rise more rapidly, we're seeing fewer competitors respond with long-term rate changes there. I said a lot, Greg, and I just want to make sure I was getting -- going where the direction you were...

I think you nailed the 2 separate distinct business lines in terms of your comments. So that was helpful. I'm also going to stay on a big picture thing that we're seeing other companies talk about and make actions on, and that's around expense ratio initiatives. In your specialty business, it's not lost upon me that your expense ratio is below 20%. And I was wondering if you could give us some perspective on how that matches up with your peer group because we know that these other large personal lines carriers look at that 20% sort of number or is sort of the holy grail of efficiency. And it seems like you already have that in your specialty business. So why does a company of your size have that result in your specialty business? And how does that compare with your competitors and -- comment on that, if you will, please.

Yes. So Jim and I will tag team this, and I'll start with a couple of thoughts. There's a couple of factors. We do believe inside of our Specialty Auto business, we are at a size where we have a scale advantage. We punch above our weight class. We -- when you take our premium, it is concentrated in a relatively smaller number of states and in tighter geographies inside of those states. That allows us to get an operational efficiency from an execution perspective. We're also large enough that the systems investments we make or the analytic investments we make, we've got enough premium volume to cover those. So those give us a significant set of positives. We do have, in the Specialty Auto environment, a higher fee base business. There's a lot -- there's more fees in this business, which some folks come bring in the revenue line, some bring in as a negative expense. So you get a little bit of a noise here. It's not 100% comparable when you're looking at preferred carriers because we deal with those sometimes differently. And we'll see some motion around our nonstandard auto expense ratio partly because of that, because the different products we have in, say, a California versus a Texas versus a Florida work those combinations a little bit differently. But I think it's a clear recognition that we have a scale advantage and are operating with it in this space.

And Greg, and I would build off of what Joe is highlighting there because I do think you're bringing about something that is really important and that I might add on. This was during a time period through the pandemic. And why that's important is you had greater than $85 million of premium credits that were coming out, right? And so our revenue line was overly adjusted down from what it would otherwise normally be. So that 19 5 accident year expense ratio is actually better than what you see on the surface. And second, we're not usually in the business of providing free insurance. And during the year between what you think about fees and bad debt and some of those other elements, there's an additional $10 million, $15 million, as we've talked about, that rolled through our financials even on a basis that wouldn't otherwise normally be there that is just different than our traditional kind of business practices, again, kind of inflating what that ratio would be. So I do think, similar to what Joe's saying, we're in a really strong competitive position. That's a great place for us to start when you think about pricing policies and others. The other element that I would build on top of that is the advantages that we have for capital. When people think about pricing and expense ratio, that's kind of the first derivative. The second offer, though, is when you think about what your ROE or whatever your pricing are. So if we're looking at a low double-digit ROE, what you think about in terms of that total price that goes to the customer has to be in a position to essentially hit those targets over time. Because we're able to operate from a much more -- from a stronger capital position with less of it but actually having an enhanced risk profile because of the diversification of business. Again, you might -- when you think about us on a premium to surplus ratio or other, we're going to be in a strong position. So as an example, maybe we operate at 1/3 less than what others would. Well, that leads to a pricing advantage as well. So not only do we have points when you're thinking about it on the expense ratio, we also have it in terms of having both a low cost of capital, but also needing less of it to have a superior risk profile because of the diversified nature of our business. And that adds another 2, 3, 4, 5 points to the pricing advantage that we have. And so when we can go to market, as you've seen from our growth rates where we have grown significantly above what population growth metrics or other elements would be, that's part of the secret sauce to being able to do that.

It's an excellent segue into the expansion states. Well, I don't know if there are expansion states, but looking at specialty, Florida and Texas year-over-year growth, 24.5%. Expansion states, 24.4%. When we look at this chart that you provided with your investor slide deck with your fourth quarter results and we look at this chart a year from now, what do you think it's going to -- are we still going to see Florida, Texas and the expansion states with these outsized increases with modest growth out of California and other? Or can you give us sort of a view on how that might trend?

So we don't give guidance on earnings or revenue. So I'm not trying to do that. What I will make is a broad comment. California is far and away our biggest state. It will be hard to project a long-term growth rate of 20-plus percent in that environment. So I wouldn't. I would expect that, that growth rate is going to be, at a minimum, what the population growth rate is. And I would expect it to be bigger than that because I think we should be able, with our business model, to take market share over time. That doesn't mean in any given quarter or any given year, you might find something different. But if you take a reasonable period of time, and I'm not talking 15 years. If you take a more narrow piece of time, it should regularly generate market share growth. As you move into smaller -- the states where you have smaller share already, I would expect the growth rate to be higher because of the fact that we have an increasing ability to penetrate. A state where we start with $1 of premium, the growth rate should be almost infinite. In a state where there's $1 billion of premium, the growth rate is going to be smaller. So what I would expect you would see over time and the reason we display the information that way is so that you can see that there continues to be a market share gain in California. There's increasing growth rates in the Florida and Texas, which are the next sized here. You should generally see increasing growth rates to the next tier of expansion states down. And at some point, we'll have another wave of expansion states, and you could sort of track them at that pace. As you move up the ladder and get bigger, the growth rate is probably a little smaller, but it should be still market share expanding.

Perfect. And then the final area to touch on, and we've got -- at least this relates to the specialty business would be just the underlying combined ratio again. Another -- last year was an outstanding result on a year-over-year basis. And there's some stay-at-home benefits that are filtering through that, some reduced frequency stuff. But when we think about the puts and takes and some of what you've already provided in your previous answers, is it fair to assume that there's going to be a modest drift upwards in the underlying combined ratio as we think about the next year or 2?

Yes. It's more than fair to assume, Greg. You should virtually guarantee it. And my instinct is investors should absolutely want us to do that. I go back to my first words that the way to make an effective long-term business proposition and create the most value for everybody involved is to say, meet those customer needs, generate a fair margin for shareholders, but not a [ userless ] one or not an exceptionally large one, but a fair long-term margin and attractive opportunities for employees and an appropriate benefit for all stakeholders. In any given time period, a month, a quarter, even a year, you might see those margins bang around a little bit. And that's what you've got going on in a pandemic, we saw a shockingly low period of frequency. We responded with premium givebacks. We responded with some of the bad debt and billing preferences that Jim talked about. We responded appropriately. We saw lower net investment income, so we needed to make larger margins. I think we did a fair job for customers there, but it was probably on the edge of the more profitable end of where we'd want to be. I think we get a much better shareholder value creation if we see a higher level of growth and a more traditional attractive margin. And we absolutely will continue to operate the business with that thought process. I think shareholders will be much better rewarded, and customers will be better rewarded. And that cycle works better and faster if we get more -- to a more normalized margin that gets to that -- our long-term target ROEs and accelerates growth.

Yes. The only thing I would add on top of that, Greg, is I do think it has to be the totality of a total -- it's not just a margin. It's how -- what ends up in terms of the net income line. And to that point, you've got some good guys that will help offset some of those elements of that potential trend increase over time, whether we're talking about life was impacted by more than, say, $30 million for the year. Now that won't just instantly come back, but that's an item there. You've got effectively continued growth, over 10%. So you've got new revenue source coming in with a margin that is associated with that. Then you had the premium credits and effectively the bad debt fee elements that should normalize over time as well. And then you saw us through this period of time because we've been good capital stewards and managed the business well, where we were able to announce the acquisition of AAC. And historically, that's been a company that's had $30 million to $40 million of income on a per-year basis that will further be added to this mix as we go forward. So those are things that, I think, you just got to keep at the back of your mind when you're trying to come up with, hey, what's the answer? A portion of the answer is related to margin. A portion is related to growth and essentially lifetime value of customers and how that comes in. And a portion of it is related to kind of the other businesses that had impact, whether it be on the investment income front or the other. Those are returning to what is a normalized state to continue to get to a reasonable answer and a good answer for our shareholders.

And one alternative, I suppose, would be to rename your specialty business the specialty fintech auto insurance operations. And then maybe you'll get one of those really attractive multiples that some of the recently minted IPOs have. Listen, I think another topic that's come up not only with the other companies that presented on the insurance carrier side but also with the brokers is Texas. What's emerging in Texas from the freeze, the snow and the ice is truly a tragedy. And yet, it's going to have some pretty serious consequences on the industry in terms of losses and frankly, pricing probably in the longer run. So I thought maybe -- I know you're not going to comment. It's too early to really give us some specific numbers about that. But maybe you can talk more generally about the reinsurance protection you have in place? And then, of course, any thoughts you have on what's going on in Texas.

So I'll offer a quick thought, and maybe Jim and I will tag team this and do a little more deeper dive into the reinsurance protection. Clearly, it's a human tragedy, and my heart goes out for all the folks. I've, over time, lived in the north, and I've lived in the southeast. And when you get freezes you're not expecting and you're not prepared for it, you don't have the right gear, it's scary and problematic. And freezing temperatures and no power and not potable water is a big deal and a problem. So there's no question there's a human element. Insurance is designed to respond when those events happen. So as much as I don't like to see them happen, I'm glad that from a customer perspective, as an industry, we can be here to respond to those issues. When I look at it from our own financial perspective, we are not expecting this to be -- have an outsized earnings impact for us. We've derisked a chunk of our portfolio there, and we've done a very thoughtful set of reinsurance work to where this may have a little bit of timing issue for where the events occur for us during the course of the year. But I don't think in total, it becomes an exceptionally large financial issue for us.

Yes. Building off what Joe said, when you think about kind of -- and quite frankly, part of the reason why we have a cat aggregate treaty is so that the risk is boxed. And you can kind of think about it on a full year basis as opposed to getting overly kind of focused on 1 quarter to the next and really having to think through that. Generally speaking, unless there's something that's tremendously wacky, our aggregate covers everything except for basically named storms as defined by tropical storms or hurricanes. And so what that means, when you think about that focus on the property business and our -- what would be the property that's inside our Life & Health segment, both our renters and content is you tend to get about $10 million to $15 million worth of net exposure on an after-tax basis to where these things can come in, in a year. We look at that as a very manageable risk kind of given the underlying return profile of those businesses are what they tend to be. And it really boxes the total financial risk to the company while we're able to create, we think, reasonable and meaningful value for customers and peace of mind, quite frankly in a time period like this where we're clearly able to stand behind our promises and be as helpful as we can in a moment like this. But we're doing so without creating any real financial risk for our stakeholders at the end of the day.

It's a great example of the comments that Jim made earlier, highlighting what we've done inside the organization in the last 5 years. We have improved the returns in that preferred business, but at the same time, significantly reduced the earnings volatility, the cat risk, if you will, because of these exposure reductions, price increases and reinsurance programs. We may not be everywhere we want to be from a return perspective right now, but we had 5 years ago, a risk that was much higher than a junk bond risk earning much lower than a T bill rate. We brought that risk way down and the return up. It is a much better trade as a result. And again, when we look at it on a full year basis, outside of tropical storms and hurricanes, expect the volatility to be inside of $15 million.

Yes, that's clearly an important change in the sort of the risk matrix profile of your preferred business. But it does bring up another point, catastrophes or your risk profile. But we've been talking about the preferred segment, you did talk about your efforts to sort of re-underwrite that business and change the profile. And frankly, it's been -- and the results have improved on an underlying basis, but it's been a drag on your top line. And it's been -- when I think about a core competency of your organization, I'm not sure preferred is exactly where your core competency is. So maybe you can just spend a minute or 2 talking about your perspectives on the preferred business and the outlook for growth because it has been shrinking and the outlook for margin as well.

Yes. Sure. Happy to. This is the case, and I'll go back to some of my opening comments that when we think about how businesses fit into our portfolio, our Specialty Auto business and our Life business are what I would describe as foundational for us. They have that key systematic, sustainable, competitive advantage. They've got a focused customer segment. They've got a focused competitive advantage, and they're generating appropriate returns over time and market share growth. The preferred business is one of those that I put in that emerging opportunity bucket. It's missing something to really step on the gas and have it be that foundational piece. The -- 4 or 5 years ago, it was focused where much of the rest of the industry is on trying to move into the mass affluent customer segments. We're actually positioning and focusing that business on what I might describe as a more main street customer segment, more of a working-class American segment, whether it's a plumber or an electrician, a teacher, a firefight or a police officer, the manager of a bowling alley. If you look at the median income for folks in the U.S., it's south of $80,000 a year. The median home value is under around $150,000. The customers in that segment want a more basic set of products. What much of the rest of the industry is doing keeps adding features, adding coverages, adding extras which boosts the cost of the insurance, which is not what the customer is actually looking for. That Main Street customer, that working class customer is an underserved niche, an underserved specialty where we've got competition that's not focusing on what they really want. That's exactly what we see in Specialty Auto. That's exactly what we see in our low face amount life insurance business. To get after it, we had to replatform the systems that were in that business because they were dated, and they weren't effective. We had to re-underwrite and get the margins under control for the business that we had. We had to enhance our claim capabilities, which were also part of what we were doing in our Specialty Auto business. So those investments were inuring to the benefit of both businesses. We were doing all of those. We had to de-risk the cat portfolio. We were doing all of those things that I think enable us to add another specialty inside of the place. If we're wildly effective at it, that will be a great answer. And we'll have a third business that's systematically, sustainably growing at attractive returns. If we get out another couple of years and we find out that we're less effective at it, then maybe it's a business that's not part of the portfolio. And we'll respond accordingly. But by the time we get to it, we'll have added value to that business. It right now is generating returns that exceed its cost of capital. It's been de-risked. It's adding value where it is, and we see it as another opportunity to expand the portfolio.

Excellent. I'm looking at the clock here, and we only have a couple of minutes left, and there's a lot of very important topics that we haven't covered yet. So I could -- we can do this as a rapid round or I'm going to do a 2-part question in 2 different directions. Talk about the low face amount life insurance specialty business you have. I'd like you to spend a minute covering that, and then pivot to capital management because that's been another very important tool that you guys have used to help deliver outsized shareholder returns.

Sure, and they go well together. Our low face amount life insurance business is a case where we have a clear competitive advantage. We've got a customer segment that most of the rest of the industry largely ignores because they see the premium values as too small and then don't want to focus their time there. These are customers who culturally, socially, religiously value a proper end-of-life funeral. They don't want a GoFundMe page for a funeral. They value the product and look for the service we provide. We make a fair return, and we do a great job servicing that customer need. The beauty of that business is it provides that benefit at the same time, we run a Specialty Auto business. When you think about those 2 working together, I use the example all the time, it's like having an ice cream stand and a Christmas tree farm. One of them is a steady, stable piece of earnings. It's not a function of where the weather is going to go. People are going to need and want the product. Then you've got that ice cream stand that might be a little more volatile, and it's more seasonally subject to whims and weather and tourism. When you have both of them under the same organization, you actually -- you're less risky as a place. You require less capital as an organization because of that diversification benefit, and you're simultaneously less risky. When you can simultaneously require less capital and generate less risk, it allows you to generate a better return. It's part of the capital management strategy, and it's part of the cost advantage strategy because a lower risk organization has a lower cost of capital, which then has the requirement to earn less money or need less money to get the same returns, which lets you be more attractive from a pricing perspective. It is a key fuel that works into our capital management process. We think about that in everything we do. And Jim talked about that and highlighted that earlier. We've improved our debt-to-cap ratio. We've improved the cash generation of the business. We've refinanced debt in ways that have lowered our cost of capital and improved the strength of our capital stack. And we really look at every transaction inside of the organization, whether it's COLI or whether it was de-risking our pension portfolio or any form of leverage, we're operating leverage. We look for each place where we can turn that screw 1/2 dial more that increases our capital efficiency and the efficiency of our ability to generate cash and generate returns. Sometimes, people miss that because they want to look for that intellectually simple answer, where does it fit just in the earnings piece of a financial statement. You got to look at the totality of the financial statement and all the components of the accounting, much like Jim was talking about. When you look at something like that pension transaction, huge increase to return value and de-risking the organization and huge benefit to the capital management inside of the place. We're pretty good stewards, and we're pretty thoughtful about squeezing every turn we can out of it.

So in line with that, I would say, and building off of that, Greg, our first and foremost priority continues to be to fund organic growth. Where we have that systematic competitive advantage, we're able to build it. Secondly, you've seen us be very thoughtful between the Infinity transaction and AAC, where if we are going to do something from an [ inorganic ], it's clearly to be better. And it's inside areas where we have or building systematic, sustainable competitive advantages. And one where we can get an outsized impact, where it's clearly cheaper to buy versus build and therefore, reduce the cost of earning the margins on other elements. I would wrap with this that on top of those elements, we have increased our dividend 29% over the last 3 years, which I think is a really strong element in terms of returning capital to shareholders. In addition, we've been very clear that when situations arise where we think that we'll have excess capital beyond our targets for greater than, say, 18 months, we look to return that as well. You saw us do that when we repurchased the $110 million stock that came in. And we still have, obviously, an open program and other elements that when those conditions are present that I think you'll find that we execute against and are good stewards of capital.

Excellent. Excellent comments. Your management team really has refocused the organization and upgraded their approach to capital management and operational management. It's to be applauded. I think it's been reflected in part by the stock price, but part of it's not captured by the stock price, and we're certainly recommending it. So we want you to be successful so our stock pick works out to be successful. But with that said, I wanted just to thank you again for participating in our conference. We do value your contribution and your leading voice in your marketplace. And I think it's good to have you in front of investors here. So thank you again for your participation, and everyone, have a great afternoon.

Thanks, everybody.

Thanks, all.

Thank you, Greg.