Kemper Corporation (KMPR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary
May 17, 2022
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
Brian Meredith
analystGood afternoon, everybody, and thank you for joining us here for the personal auto insurance symposium here with UBS. I'm Brian Meredith. I am the insurance analyst, and it is my great pleasure to have our next fireside chat here with Kemper. We've got Joe Lacher, who's the President and CEO; and Jim McKinney, who is the Chief Financial Officer, to talk about all the stuff going on at Kemper in the personal auto insurance market. We've gone through a lot of stuff today, but I'm sure we've got a lot more to learn here.
Brian Meredith
analystSo Joe, let's start off this way, you guys had 11-point sequential improvement in your specialty auto underlying loss ratios in the first quarter, massive amount, right? Maybe you can talk a little bit about how that -- how you got there? I mean what was that 11-point improvement? How much of that's rate, non-rate? Can we still expect these sequential improvements to come here going forward? It clearly surprised people because your stock was up massively, which I'm glad because I'm recommending it. But -- so maybe we can talk about that a little bit.
Joseph Lacher
executiveSure. And Brian, this is Joe. I'll start, and we'll do, I'm sure, a little bit of tag team here. Look, this was not entirely unexpected for us. I'd tell you that 11 points in personal auto was a couple of things combined. There was -- and I'll take the sort of onetime items and separate them from the ongoing. There was a little bit of pressure in the fourth quarter last year from what might have been intra-year expansion. It might have been some higher numbers in the first or second or third quarter that drove a piece of it. There's some seasonality. The fourth quarter tends to be the worst quarter. So you would have naturally expected there to be some improvement when you adjust for those. And then the biggest single bucket was the result of profit improvement actions, both rate and non-rate activity that we've been pushing through the book. You can do a little bit of math. I think our disclosures, and I'm going to get the page wrong a little bit, it's 10 or 11 or 12 in our financial -- our earnings presentation, there's a page for specialty auto and a page preferred. And it shows the filed rate, the approved rate and the earned rate in each of those books from -- and you could sort of combine those quarters together and get a sense of what the earned impact was on rate. The balance of it's going to be non-rate activity. So it was some real robust improvement from the activities we've talked about in the last couple of quarters. We saw the issues last year. We started stepping on the gas on profit improvement activities. We acknowledge that we're going to take a little bit of time to earn in. And once they did, they would continue.
James McKinney
executiveSo just maybe putting some additional kind of metrics or color around that. Brian, a little bit of the way to think about that is seasonality. We talked about in our fourth quarter call was 3 to 4 points, and we're going to talk a little bit about that, I think, again, on the first quarter. Yes, that intra-year that Joe is referencing, think about that similarly in that 3 to 4 points and a 4-point improvement driven by non-rate actions and the other elements that we're doing from a frequency benefit. We see a little bit of the rate coupled with another sequential trend of about 3 points kind of coming through. And that remaining component was basically the non -- further non-rate actions offsetting the continued trend that came through in the quarter, the sequential trend, the 15 -- year-over-year, about a 15-point severity trend, again, that we referenced on the quarter. How to potentially move that or map that forward? A couple of the highlights that I made on the call because I know that it's complex, and this is something we don't normally try to provide this level of detail because there are moving pieces, so I just highlight that around. But in this environment, I think it's important. Big picture-wise, think about non-rate actions largely putting us in a position to offset the continued elevated trend in the sequential severity pressure that will -- that they has continued to build and will continue to build, albeit at a more moderate rate than some of the things that we were seeing kind of in that third or fourth quarter last year. And then the comments I made on the call were very much, okay, you could then think about earned rate as being a potential proxy for the continued sequential quarter-over-quarter improvement that you might see in third -- second and third quarter with probably more of a flat result from where we're actually on that standpoint in the fourth quarter because the continued sequential improvement that we'll have will largely effectively -- you have seasonality or that, that it is likely to offset that. So I've tried to provide a little bit of a window. You guys will know and others will -- whether we'll do a little better or a little worse than that. The items that would drive worth is a materially different or higher severity trend than what we've seen so far. I only highlight that. It's not that I'm expecting it, but it's a dynamic environment. But we continue to have that mindset. We are -- we had our reserving positions and our pricing positions correspond with a really challenging environment, and we're operating that way. And if things play a little bit better, that's great. But we -- just like everyone else, we rather push the ball that the environment's dynamic, it fundamentally changes in some ways. We can't guarantee that outcome, but we feel pretty good with where we're at right now, and we feel like that we're on the path back to our profitability.
Brian Meredith
analystYes, what are you baking in from a severity perspective as what are you assuming kind of going forward, right? What you're pricing for, right? Because like today, we saw used car prices were up a smidge, right just a little bit sequentially from April kind of midpoint on the Manheim Index. I get there's going to be volatility here and there on this stuff. But are you assuming stable used car prices here going forward? And also maybe a little bit on what are the key components, key things we should be looking for.
James McKinney
executiveNo. What we've highlighted and I mean we continue to highlight high single-digit, low double-digit trend expectations across the business here for an extended period of time. And so you're going to see some differences on how first quarter looks like. It's a 15-point year-over-year severity trend. But if I take it back to kind of the 4Q, it's more like a 3-, 4-point severity trend on a sequential basis. So we expect some ebbs and flows, but I would think about it when we -- we're looking at it for the full year. And again, we think there'll be some ups and downs. We don't think it will be constant improvement or constant step back and what we've got that view. I would think high single digits, low double digits is essentially what we're working around at this stage.
Joseph Lacher
executiveAnd we're also repeating our statement that we're not looking at the Manheim Used Car Index and pricing to that. We're looking at total loss trend, which is the combination of frequency and all the components that go into severity. And used car prices have changed a lot, which is one piece of it. We will expect, at some point, those will back off or won't increase forever, but we're also expecting labor rates may go up or cost of other parts or bottle. There's a bunch of things that go into severity. If you only pick that one item, you're going to be way too sensitive on that and you're going to miss the total. We're looking at the total in our pricing brought process. That doesn't mean we don't analyze those components. But when we're thinking out 9, 12, 15 months, we're thinking about the total.
Brian Meredith
analystThe total, right. So in that total, when you're thinking about the total, just -- I mean frequency for you and for you all, as you said, is already above 2019 pre-pandemic levels, right? Or you can still -- that was tough.
Joseph Lacher
executiveNo, we said the opposite. We said absolutely opposite.
Brian Meredith
analystStill below?
James McKinney
executiveFrequency is about 6 percentage -- 6 points -- 6% below where it was on a mix adjusted basis relative to 2019. And it's 5% overall relative to the P&C, if the total P&C book, if you're asking for that. So we feel pretty good about -- again, we continue to make enhancements on the underwriting side and feel good about that despite miles driven being up.
Brian Meredith
analystGood. Okay. Excellent. And then I guess another thing I just -- I get a lot of questions about is you kind of talked about it, but kind of rate versus non-rate. And the non-rate actions that, Joe, you've talked a lot about, maybe fill us in a little bit about what those actions are. And how much of that is still to come through? Or do you ease up on non-rate actions here as we get through 2022 and pricing becomes kind of more adequate?
Joseph Lacher
executiveSo let's go through what a couple of the actions are and then maybe a reminder of where and how we use them. Think of yourself driving a stick shift, if you have ever done that, remember it. And somebody told you when you first learned, you could slow the car down with the brakes, you could slow it down by engine braking. You can slow it down by taking your foot off the gas or you can actually slow down using the emergency break. There's a bunch of ways to do it. Now you don't want to drive with the emergency break all the time, and maybe engine braking isn't the best way all the time. But those are all effective. In an ideal world, we'd probably be using a normal rate process to work these things. In a geography where we were having problems getting rate, the non-rate action becomes more important. So we're using these tools differently by geography. A non-rate action might include an underwriting change. Some of those underwriting changes might be that we stop writing certain kinds of risks. Some of them, we actually have in our pricing programs, we might have multiple pricing tiers. If we adjust the eligibility and you're no longer eligible for the most favorable pricing, you're now moving to an unfavorable or less favorable pricing that effectively functions like a rate increase, but it's an underwriting eligibility change. The rate card didn't move. You just didn't get preferred pricing, you got less preferred. I don't want to say preferred in that rate tier. We could lower commission levels, okay? That's not a non-rate activity, but that basically if you lower commissions 3 points, that's a 3-point improvement in the profitability. We can change billing plan options. In some cases, we've got customers that are very cash flow sensitive. If you no longer allow them to pay monthly, you require 100% down payment, that cash flow dynamic might cause a customer to say, "You know what, I'm going to go somewhere else." That even if the absolute rate is higher, the monthly check or the payment is lower, and I can manage my cash flow better. So that will cause an underwriting change in the book. We might take certain customers where we were offering full coverage, and now we offer liability only. Well, the biggest inflation problems that are running through the book right now are in metal-related coverages. If we eliminate comp and collision, we eliminate all first-party metal coverages, and we're only left with third-party metal coverages and bodily injury. That is a non-rate action that changes the mix of the book. That probably wouldn't be tolerable in a preferred company because you're not going to find a lot of preferred customers who want liability only. But in a specialty auto case, they might be okay with liability only and not having the first-party coverages. Now those -- some of those activities we might do in all geographies. Some we might say, if state X has been very receptive to rate activity and we've been able to take a lot of rate increases, we don't need those. In a state that might be saying, "Hey, we're not allowing rate to move in", then our only choice is to use these non-rate actions. We may be more aggressive in that environment. So we're using them differently by geography based upon what tools are available in that locale and what challenges we're dealing with. So we describe them generally -- they're utilized very precisely.
Brian Meredith
analystGot you. And then I assume that as rate becomes more adequate, you get price through, you'd lay off some of those run rate actions and open it up a little bit to get growth going again.
Joseph Lacher
executiveCorrect. If the entire rate card moves up, you might open up the more preferred pricing in that rate card, and it opens up. I think Jim's used an analogy to some degree if you can think that we had a funnel of a certain with before or a pipe that led things in. It might be 5 inches wide. We've tightened it in some states to 2 inches wide, in another state to 1-inch wide. And if the rate card moves up, we can actually go back to 2 or 4 or 5 and adjust accordingly. And depending on the geography and depending on its rate adequacy, we've adjusted that to what comes through.
Brian Meredith
analystGood. Makes sense. And then one of your competitors talked about the number of states that are "rate adequate" for them right now or they're getting there close. Do you -- kind of in a similar kind of perspective, can you give us a similar perspective for Kemper and kind of how much your book do you think is getting close to that price adequate or rate adequate?
James McKinney
executiveYes. So I think, first, we've got to split it between business. I'm assuming you're asking largely a KA Component, Specialty Auto because that's the large...
Brian Meredith
analystYes, specialty auto. Sorry, I should have clarify that, Specialty Auto, yes.
James McKinney
executiveYes. So in states outside of California, I would -- we're close or largely at price adequacy or rate adequacy on the cohorts coming in. Now to avoid confusion, that doesn't mean you're going to see our historical combined ratios yet. It's at a cohort level. So you have a certain amount of pricing, a certain amount of new business cost. It will take time for that to season in to hit kind of our historical level of profitabilities where you have the same vintages kind of going out or that are renewing and essentially at that lower kind of combined ratio, offsetting kind of your new coming that usually has a higher combined ratio in that first year, but makes sense overall. So that mix still has to normalize, and that will take a little bit of time for that to happen. But we're largely rate adequate. But we still have to continue to file rate and do those activities, and that can change because you still have elevated severity trend, right? And so this still remains a dynamic. So when you're hearing kind of us and others, we're not telling you that we're done taking rate at this stage because the severity trend is continuing. And we're also telling you we're a little more cautious right now than fully open and appropriately and very thoughtfully kind of growing these markets because there's more surprises, and the surprises tend to be larger. That can be both positive and negative at this point in time. But anytime you have that kind of environment, you got to go a little bit slower in terms of how you approach it than you might otherwise normally would simply because of the risk environment and the unintended outcomes that certain things could happen.
Brian Meredith
analystGot you. So I guess what you're saying is you're going to be a little more cautious. It's not time necessarily in those states that are rate adequate to start stepping on the growth.
Joseph Lacher
executiveCorrect. Think of it as a risk-adjusted view. In an environment where there's 2% inflation and it's very stable, you get a high degree of confidence that it's a stable environment, you know where you are. In an environment that's less stable, you put a little risk adjustment around that and say, you know what, I need a little bit of margin for error. And where we are, the likelihood of it getting a little worse is a little higher than getting a little better. So we want a little more margin of safety around it.
Brian Meredith
analystGot you. Got you. Makes sense. Then I guess another thing that I think just curious about is your preferred auto business. How long do you think that takes to get back to underwriting profitability? I know you're doing a lot of work on it even prior to what was going on. Kind of maybe some perspective on kind of what's going on with your preferred auto book.
Joseph Lacher
executiveYes. It also had an 11-point sequential quarter improvement and that it's coincident and it was exactly the same, but a lot of improvement there. It has a challenge -- it's biggest challenge right now is in the state of New York, which has some similarity to California in terms of rate processes and unique rules. And it's just going to -- it has more 12-month policies as a preferred book. So it's just going to take a little longer to work its way through, and it's got a little bigger problem. So it's -- we're not nearly at the point where we would describe our Specialty Auto business that we've got rate adequacy in most states or near rate adequacy other than California. It's going to be another cycle out.
Brian Meredith
analystFor the preferred auto book, I got you. And then just curious, Joe, so a lot of times we talk about your Specialty Auto book, you say, listen, there's a part of our Specialty Auto book that's preferred, right? It's a better standard risk, right? Kind of how do I think about the difference between your preferred segment and your specialty segment, right? I mean, I think some people have and I have also thought of your specialty as purely nonstandard, but that's not the case.
Joseph Lacher
executiveYes. And let me try to help you with the words on it. Our preferred auto business is really typical of what you think is a definition inside of preferred in any other spot. Our Specialty Auto has some parameters in it that are different. Some of it is true core, what people would call nonstandard. Others is there's a different reason it requires the company to have a specialty. It might be a more urban geography. It might be difficult regulatory or fraud and abuse environments like Miami and Fort Lauderdale. It might be Hispanic customers where Spanish is their first language and what they're looking for is a different level of service and somebody who speaks their language and manages it that way. None of those had the risk profile that would be a stereotypical preferred view. They're not in what I would call sort of the preferred underwriting risk. But when you separate them inside of the Specialty Auto environment, some of them are high-risk drivers and some of them are less high-risk drivers. And so what's happening is we're trying to find the right adjective to people who understand it. If you think about the bucket shop high-risk nonstandard, there's a chunk of these risks that are more preferred than that or more standard than that. That doesn't mean they're looking exactly like their preferred profile, but they're not behaving in that way a traditional bucket shop set a nonstandard would. So they'll have better retention, they'll have better loss performance. They'll have things compared to nonstandard that are improved, but they're not sort of fully into that preferred bucket. It's -- there's some granularity underneath it inside of the Specialty Auto. And again, that's why we think it's a specialty, and we call that not nonstandard auto because it has multiple flavors inside of it.
Brian Meredith
analystGot you. And that preferred book, is that a kind of a long-term strategic kind of business for you all to be in?
Joseph Lacher
executiveThat continues to be one that we've described as a challenge, Brian. We're working hard to get into a better set of profitability. We had a point of view early in this team's perspective that we might be able to get a real effective mono line homeowner strategy, and we've talked about that in the last couple of years that we don't think that will work effectively. And it's got to be a more main street package product niche for it to work. And we had to get into profitability and get it to scale. Otherwise, it's going to be better served being part of somebody else's organization, and we're working through it right now. Given this particular environment, it's a little more challenged than it had been, and it remains strategically challenged for us.
Brian Meredith
analystMakes sense. And just one thing for the audience, if you're on the Open-Xchange, you can ask questions also, just jot them in on the lower right-hand side of your keypad, you can -- or your screen. You can type in a question and I'll see it, and I'm happy to ask it. Let's pivot back to California. Obviously, it's something that's very topical when investors call and ask about Kemper. Maybe talk about -- a little bit about kind of where we are right now with California in the process. Any insights into what the elections are going to look like in your view and what the potential outcomes mean for you guys?
Joseph Lacher
executiveSure. So there's a couple of pieces to it. The state has its own unique rules on how you do rate filings and how that process works. They've got a rate template that you have to fill out, which some of these are little bit of fill in the blanks. They go through a review process. There's an ability for an intervener to jump in if you ask for rate over -- largely over 7%. That slows processes and makes them different than other geographies. We file for rate in all 4 of our California pricing programs. I believe our first couple in were the first 2 accepted by the department and moved on to rating analysts. At least as we can see through their website, all 4 in the department now and in their queue and they're working through it, that normally takes them 4 to 5 months to work their way through them. My sense is they're operating a little slower than usual. Their insurance commissioner is an elected position. The primary, I believe, is the first week of June. The general election is in November. The primary gets you down to 2. And then those 2 move onto the general election. My understanding is the current commissioner is pulling ahead right now in the primary calls. I haven't seen the latest update, I don't have the exact numbers. But last I checked, there was a significant lead there. So that makes it a bit of a politically charged environment. The commissioner has expressed a clear point of view that he believes that the industry as a group did not provide enough rebates to customers for the early stage of the pandemic that when people weren't driving. I know we've expressed to the insurance department that they got a set of rules that look sort of at a rolling 8 quarters when they do rate filings. And if you pick a rolling 8 quarters, there were more than enough credits. But the commissioner has a strong point of view about some need there, and we'll see sort of how that works its way through. I think that, to some degree, is a onetime issue that he's focused on, and we're all collectively focused on rate which lasts for a long time into the future. And we're actively working with the department to navigate through those issues.
Brian Meredith
analystGot you. Got you. But I guess, as you think about it, I mean what happens, the scenario that you get through the primaries and ministers like, well, wait a second, I want to wait until we get through the actual elections before I'm granting any rate increases because it's a political issue. I mean, what do you do in that situation, right? And maybe also answer the question here that I often wonder about, I mean, isn't an insurance commissioner's job also to make sure there's an ample auto insurance market in the state, right? So at some point here, not just you, I imagine there's other carriers that are going to get pretty frustrated.
Joseph Lacher
executiveSo let me give you maybe 2 or 3 thoughts on it, and I'll do them in reverse. I think every insurance commissioner recognizes their primary job is to have a vibrant market and have solvent carriers. What we do as an insurance company is we promise -- we take money if you're on the front end and promise to pay a claim in the future. They've got to make sure we've got enough money to pay those claims in the future. Otherwise, we're not delivering on the promise. They have a secondary obligation to make sure the rates are both adequate and not usurious. And that has a little more political zip to it, but the primary is to make sure we're there and we're solvent to deliver on our promises and then the market is available. I think you're clearly seeing the California insurance market tighten. And every measurement we have says there's just fewer companies offering products on any given quote. The shelves in the store are starting to become more and more there, which will become an increasing issue. But if you're in a grocery store and you're selling bread and as long as there's 1 brand of bread on the counter, there's still bread. When there's none, like you got a problem. So this will become an increasing issue, but I can't factor in personally how the department is working through that calculus. I'll give you another thought, Brian, when you think about us because this is a sense that I think the people are trying to get through on our numbers. Almost everybody in the industry will talk to you about a new business penalty. It's not technically a new business penalty, but it's a little bit of a comment Jim was making before when we talk about rate adequacy on a cohort or a vintage. We know that if you put on a set of customers in the first half of 2022, we know some of them will renew in '22, and they'll renew in '23 and some will be here in '24 and '25. Typically, the ones that are gone in the shortest period of time make less money and the ones that are longer have a better long-term profitability. That's effectively that new business penalty. And in some ways, we all, as an industry tolerate putting on risk for maybe in the first policy period, it performs less adequately because over its lifetime, there's a totality of that book and cohort that's a winner. Okay, if you think back to our disclosures over the last several years, those same pages I referenced before with our Specialty Auto and our personal insurance, if you look at that Specialty Auto in the top right corner, what we showed you for a number of years was our growth in California, our growth in Texas and Florida and our growth in other states. There was much higher growth in Florida and Texas and other geographies. You should generally assume that there was a much higher new business penalty in those states. It might have been just as rate adequate to us over the length of time in the cohort. But in a given period, those stages were likely running a higher combined ratio because of -- you might argue that short-term growth penalty, okay? Does that make any sense?
Brian Meredith
analystYes, yes.
Joseph Lacher
executiveOne of the non-rate activities I didn't describe that I should have is reducing the new business penalty. If you actually slow down new business, what you get is the other cohorts just age and naturally improve and you're not adding the new in the challenge. So one of the things we -- you would have logically assumed if you did that math is all of the states -- if you assume that all of the states had exactly the same rate adequacy, you would assume in a given calendar year that Florida and California might have been performing worse -- I'm sorry, Florida and Texas would have been performing worse than California because of more new business, and the other geographies would have been performing a little worse. So the need to get to rate adequacy, California even have to move this far. So as you dial the new business down and slow the growth and as you get the rate in the other states, there was actually more improvement in some ways needed in the other geographies. As we dialed the business back in California and work the non-rate activity, we're making an impact there in a different proportion than you might expect in other spots. If you did that analysis a little bit and diagnose that new business penalty, it's not as if every state had the same combined ratio we reported in the fourth quarter because of those differences in new business.
Brian Meredith
analystRight. Got you. Got you. That makes sense. So I mean -- so for California, right, I know you're limited the amount of rate you can take when you ultimately get rate, right, without having to go through the longer process. Is it going to take more than one cut out as you think, to get there?
James McKinney
executiveIt's likely to take more than one cut. I think that would be -- when you just think about the California process, kind of the rate approval of 6 points is usually the right place for your thought. There's more inflation in that, that has come through the environment unless you start having negative trend on that. I would expect it will take a couple of times through the loop before we get to kind of the target profitability. That said, I want to point us back because I don't want us to get too lost in the California component versus the others. What I'm referencing and the numbers I'm referencing, they're not going to materially change one way or another at least here with California now. If California moves sooner than later, that's great, it will allow us to open up the funnels a little wider. But we'll fundamentally get to the same outcome, it's just the 1%, 2%, very small amount to fit higher, not really materially here. But that might be kind of the change that you see as we go through this. And so I wouldn't suggest that the numbers I'm referencing is a base case with what I know about the environment today have changed at all or would change relative to California moving. Now that said, shorter is better, but -- and I think it's better for California. So I think it's better for us. I think it's better for a lot of people. There are a lot of folks, like we're generally the low rate or certainly one of the low rate options in the market. And so to the extent that we're not able to provide access, that means that people are having to go to much higher priced options, and sometimes that will be lower quality as well. And so it's certainly not doing a service to Californians quite frankly to not have us to be able to provide the quality product at the same levels that we've historically provided, if not more.
Joseph Lacher
executiveThe book needs rate, but it probably didn't start and has challenged a position as some of the other states did. And by slamming the brakes on, on new business and moving the non-rate activity, we're probably holding serve on some of the loss trends and making meaningful improvement in other geographies. So it's not deteriorating and maybe making some modest improvement because of those actions. Again, not the best answer, I think, long term for the broad market and for consumers, but it's not an increasing hemorrhaging item for us.
Brian Meredith
analystGreat. Makes sense. And then let's shift here, actually, maybe we'll kind of, got a couple of minutes left here, talk about kind of long-term growth prospects for Kemper. Something, unfortunately, we haven't talked about for the last 18 months, which prior to all this thing, it was a great growth engine, kind of consolidating up this Specialty Auto area. Maybe, Joe, you can give us a little bit of a perspective on what your kind of TAM looks like in your marketplace? And what are the opportunities here, particularly as we come out of these profit issues?
Joseph Lacher
executiveYes. Brian, we've got a high degree of confidence in our business model. The specialties we've got, particularly in our Specialty Auto business and our core life insurance businesses, are strong where we saw the issues and have moved to impact profitability. We've got a risk-adjusted view as we said a moment ago right now that we're sort of not stepping on the gas at this moment. But what we've talked about for the last couple of quarters is the faster you spot the issues, the faster you work through the profitability issues, the faster you're able to open your funnel. And there are examples of folks out there who 2 quarters ago, said there's not a problem. And this is okay if somebody else had, but we're not getting it. And you find that they may have shown 1 point of sequential quarter improvement. As Jim talked about, there ought to be 3 or 4 points just from seasonality. If you only had 1 point of sequential quarter improvement, that means you lost ground. You didn't apply the penicillin you needed to, and you're going to -- you have to be taking knee-jerk reactions for a while. We're expecting in a reasonable period of time, not 60 days, not 30 days, but to be in a better position than the bulk of the competition and can see ourselves moving back towards a growth perspective. I don't know exactly how many quarters that is because I can't see what the inflationary environment is. But we do fully expect that we'll be through that funnel or through that tunnel faster than most and be on the other end to capitalize on the strengths that we've got.
Brian Meredith
analystGot you.
James McKinney
executiveWhat I would add to Joe's comments there. We also have a couple of different businesses. And those areas where we have rate adequacy and price efficiency, whether that be in like or essentially commercial auto, which is a great story. In those areas, we still have very sound market-leading type growth, if not top 5%, top 10% type growth if we're not the absolute leader in those sectors where we're earning strong returns on our capital, we're doing really good things for consumers in that space and further building on the totality of our competitive advantages across the place. So while you may not see the capital deployed in particular, this area, it is moving to other areas that are going to further diversify us and are going to be a nice tailwind and continue to produce strong profitability for the totality of the organization into the coming future. And at some point here, we're going to be back to kind of our rate adequacy. We're going to be able to widen the funnels. And not only will we have the advantages that we had before, we've continued to invest in this environment to improve on to further advance our competitive position. We have been very focused on home improvement projects. And you're going to see and we're all going to see the benefits of that when we come out of this. We are going to be stronger than where we were before we entered this environment. So we are taking advantage of it. And again, we don't know the exact timing, but we do feel pretty good about where we'll exit. And that when we exit, we're going to be able to achieve kind of more of those historic growth levels that you've seen for the business.
Brian Meredith
analystThat's terrific. That's a great, great spot. I think you conclude it there because -- really appreciate you all this time. This was really helpful and really appreciate it, and we'll be speaking soon. Thank you.
Joseph Lacher
executiveTerrific. Thanks, Brian.
For developers and AI pipelines
Programmatic access to Kemper Corporation earnings transcripts and 32,000+ others is available through the
EarningsCalls.dev REST API. Plans from $24.99/month — full transcripts, speaker segments,
full-text search, and the recently-added /api/v1/transcripts/recent polling endpoint for ETL pipelines.