The Hanover Insurance Group, Inc. ($THG)

Good morning, and welcome to the Hanover's 2026 Annual Meeting of Shareholders. Please note that this call is being recorded. And I would like to turn the call over to Ms. Egan to commence the meeting.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the 2026 Annual Meeting of Shareholders of The Hanover Insurance Group, Inc. My name is Cynthia Egan, and I am Chair of the company's Board of Directors. Thank you for your participation in the meeting this morning. With me is Jack Roche, President and Chief Executive Officer and a Director of the company. As Chair, I will serve as presiding officer and lead the formal part of our meeting this morning. After we've concluded the formal part of the meeting, Jack will provide a brief presentation, and we will have an opportunity for questions and comments. For the benefit of interested listeners, we are transmitting the audio portion of the meeting and accompanying slide presentation through a live webcast posted on our website. At this time, I call the meeting to order. In addition to Jack and me, the other directors in attendance are: Francisco Aristeguieta, Kevin Bradicich, Theo Bunting, Bill Donnell, Jane Carlin, Paul Condrin, Kathy Lane, Joe Ramrath and Betsy Ward. I ask that the board members stand together to be recognized as a group. The company's tabulation agent, Mediant Communications, has delivered an affidavit of mailing, establishing that notice of this meeting was duly given. The notice, along with the proxy statement for the meeting were made available to shareholders on March 26, 2026. A copy of the notice of the meeting and the affidavit of mailing will be filed with the minutes of this meeting. All shareholders of record at the close of business on March 19, 2026, are entitled to vote at this meeting. A representative from Mediant is here today and has been appointed Inspector of Elections. The inspector has informed me that the company has received valid proxies representing a majority of the outstanding shares. Accordingly, a quorum is present. The Board has proposed 3 items for consideration, discussion and voting, all of which are set forth in the company's proxy statement. They are as follows: Number one, election of directors, Francisco A. Aristeguieta, Kevin J. Bradicich, Theo H. Bunting Jr.; Jane D. Carlin, William A. Janel, Joseph R. Ramrath, John C. Roche and Elizabeth Award have each been nominated to serve for a 1-year term. Item #2 is an advisory vote on executive compensation, and item #3 is the ratification of the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as the independent registered public accounting firm of the company for 2026. At this time, I would like to ask for a motion with respect to each of the proposals. Representatives of PricewaterhouseCoopers are also attending today's meeting and will be available for questions during the discussion period. I would now like to open the floor for discussion by shareholders of these specific proposals before the meeting. Following the discussion, we will distribute ballots to any shareholders who wish to vote in person. If you are a shareholder of record as of March 19, 2026, and have a question regarding these 3 proposals, please raise your hand to be recognized. Then please state your name and indicate whether you are a shareholder or hold a valid proxy before asking your question. If you have questions or comments about matters other than these proposals or wish to propose other matters, time will be allowed in just a few minutes. If there is no discussion regarding these proposals, which were set forth in the company's proxy statement, then I declare that the polls are now open for receipt of votes by ballot. If you are either a shareholder of record or hold a valid proxy and you want to change your vote or vote for the first time, then please raise your hand and one of the ushers will provide you with a ballot. I declare that the polls are closed for voting. Please allow us a moment to determine the voting results. I have been informed by the inspector that each of the nominees for election to the Board of Directors has been duly elected, and all other proposals have been approved by the requisite shareholder vote. Now before we close the formal part of the meeting and move to management's presentation and session for questions, is there any other business to properly come before the meeting? Again, there will be time for questions in just a few minutes. Since there is no further business on the agenda, the formal portion of the meeting is adjourned, and we will now turn to management's presentation followed by questions or comments. I'd like to introduce Jack Roche, our President and CEO, and turn the meeting over to him.

Thank you, Cynthia. And good morning, everyone. Welcome to our Annual Shareholders Meeting. As a CEO of this great company, I am very proud of our team and the important work employees across our company do every day to deliver value for our policyholders, shareholders and other key stakeholders. In this moment of time in our world -- excuse me, in this moment -- dynamic moment,in our world and in our industry, I have the utmost confidence in our ability to continue to evolve and deliver even greater value. Today, I am pleased to highlight our continued progress competitive positioning, growth momentum and unique culture, review our recent financial performance and results and outline the actions we're taking to execute our strategy and drive sustained value into the future. We delivered exceptional results for the year, once again demonstrating the strength and resilience of our team, the effectiveness of our strategy and strong execution across the organization. We strengthened our predict and prevent capabilities, combining sensor technology, data insights, and risk expertise to help customers improve safety and reduce losses. Furthermore, we reshaped our catastrophe profile, reducing exposures in select geographies, to position our portfolio for improved loss performance and persistency of earnings going forward, and we expanded our product and service capabilities, strengthening our underlying performance. At the same time, we invested in our distinctive independent agency partnerships as well as our talent across the organization, reinforcing the unique culture that drives our performance. Today, our company is stronger and better positioned than ever. Our team is focused on accelerating growth and advancing our goal to be the premier property and casualty franchise in the independent agency channel. We made meaningful progress last year, improving the durability of our margins through higher pricing, a more attractive business mix and targeted underwriting actions. These actions translated into outstanding financial results in 2025. For the year, we delivered record operating income per diluted share of $19.09, record operating return on equity of 20.1%, an 87.1% ex-CAT combined ratio and $6.3 billion in net premiums written. We grew our net investment income during the year to $454 million, up 22% year-over-year and increased our book value per share by 27% to $100.9. At the same time, we increased shareholders' quarterly dividends by nearly 6%, marking 21 consecutive years of annual increases, underscoring our disciplined approach to capital management and our long-standing commitment to returning value to our shareholders. The positive momentum we established last year has continued into 2026. For the first quarter of this year, we reported record results, including operating return on equity of 20.3%, operating income of $5.25 per diluted share, we also increased net written premiums by 3.2% from the first quarter of last year. And finally, at the same time, we achieved an outstanding underwriting performance as evidenced by our ex-CAT combined ratio of 85.4% and our 91.7% combined ratio all in. Our results in 2025 reflect years of intentional work to build a diversified and balanced income statement -- income streams, excuse me. This approach enhances stability across market cycles, improves resilience and reduces earnings volatility. For the year, each major business segment delivered meaningful contributions to both growth and profitability. In our Personal Lines business, we strengthened our position as a leader in the total account market, improving profitability significantly and taking strategic underwriting actions to diversify our book and reduce property concentrations. We also continued to advance our focus on writing full account business, bundling home, auto, umbrella and other ancillary lines to meet the broader needs of individuals and families. Account business now represents approximately 89% of our personal lines portfolio and remains a strategic differentiator, driving higher retention and supporting expansion into higher-value home and auto markets. As a result, our Personal Lines business is well positioned to drive profitable growth going forward. Our Specialty business delivered another strong year in 2025, generating attractive margins, stronger agency relevance and robust growth in its most profitable lines, including excess and surplus lines, surety, health care and marine. We continue to invest in our product offerings, expand our distribution, particularly in the wholesale channel and introduce AI-enabled tools to streamline new business acquisition and improve operational efficiency. As demand for specialized insurance solutions continues to increase, this business represents a robust and profitable growth engine for us and is well positioned to continue delivering industry-leading performance. Our Core Commercial business also delivered strong results for the year, maintaining a careful balance between growth, portfolio quality and profitability. We continue to invest in scalable digital capabilities and focus on growth in our most profitable industry segments, while implementing underwriting and pricing actions where necessary. And in today's liability environment, we believe we are well positioned as we refined our exposures, maintained our reinsurance protections and reduced our exposure to highly litigious jurisdictions. Overall, our core commercial business is well positioned to continue to deliver strong results in 2026. We remain committed to our vision during the year, investing heavily in the key tenets of our strategy: distinctive agency partnerships, specialized products and capabilities and a customer-driven approach. A defining strength of our company has always been our independent agency distribution model. Over our nearly 175-year history, we have built deep trusted relationships with many of the best agents in the industry. As a result, our relationships with our agent partners continue to grow stronger. During 2025, we continue to modernize our workflows, enhancing operating models and delivering technology solutions to make it easier for agents to submit, quote and bind business. Through our proprietary Agency Insight program, we expanded advisory services that help our agents gain efficiencies and better serve their customers. As we continue to work with our agent partners across all of our business segments, we are focused on making ease of doing business a priority, offering our agents innovative and responsive products and services, and helping them serve their customers and grow their businesses as we grow ours. We made significant strategic progress over the last year as well, focusing on transformation across the organization, intent on enhancing our operating model, business responsiveness and the many ways work is performed. Our efforts are gaining traction, and these investments have positioned us to accelerate our use of data and analytics and AI to make meaningful progress. For example, in claims, high-impact AI capabilities are enabling us to transform and streamline workflows and expand adjuster capacity. In the E&S space, we are introducing technology to ingest submissions, and we will begin to analyze that information in ways that help our underwriters make quicker, more informed decisions about the risks being submitted. These and other efforts are beginning to have a positive impact across the organization, allowing our employees to focus on what matters most, our agents and our customers. As our business evolves, we are committed to sustaining our strong corporate culture. Our culture, a culture that is based on trust and respect that attracts outstanding professionals that brings our care values of collaboration, accountability, respect and empowerment to life and one that creates an environment where our employees can make a difference in our business, and in our communities. These efforts have not gone unnoticed. In 2025, that commitment was recognized through multiple external honors, including recognition by Time, Forbes and U.S. News & World Report as Best Place to Work and a best insurance company. During the year, we continued investing in career development, leadership programs and employee engagement, ensuring our teams can build fulfilling careers while making a meaningful impact. Similarly, we maintain our commitment to be an environmentally conscious organization and to help build strong vibrant communities, finding ways to enable and support employee volunteerism while making contributions that address a wide range of community needs. These efforts have brought positive momentum to our organization as we strive to attract and retain the talented team required to drive sustainable, profitable growth in an evolving market. I am proud to say that, once again, our employees and our company came together in our annual employee giving campaign contributing more than $1.5 million to benefit thousands of nonprofit organizations and countless individuals and families across the country. We also came together in many other ways throughout the year, providing financial in-kind and volunteer support for public education, after-school programs, shelters, food pantries health and safety, community building and more. Today, our company is better positioned than ever with the strength of our franchise, the depth and experience of our team and the effectiveness of our proven strategy, we are moving forward from a position of strength. I am incredibly proud of what we have accomplished in 2025, and I am confident in our ability to drive sustained success in the years ahead. Embracing change, navigating challenges and capitalizing on the opportunities to deliver lasting value for our shareholders and our other stakeholders. Thank you for your continued trust and support. At this time, we'll open the floor to questions if there are some. Hearing none, I am happy to turn the the floor back over to Cynthia Egan, our Chair, for our closing. Thank you.

Jack, thank you for your comments. Once again, the company delivered excellent results. Your leadership and the exceptional bench strength and unique culture that has been meticulously developed in every corner of the organization continues to deliver value to your shareholders, your agent partners, your policyholders and every constituency. On behalf of the Board of Directors and your shareholders, we thank you. And we thank each and every member of The Hanover team for an excellent year. This concludes today's meeting. Thank you all very much.

The call has now concluded. We thank you for attending today's annual meeting presentation. You may now disconnect your lines.