Verisk Analytics, Inc. (VRSK) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Okay. Hi, and welcome to the next session of the Redburn Atlantic CEO Conference. I'm Russell Quelch, the data and analytics analyst here at Redburn Atlantic. And it is my pleasure to host Elizabeth Mann, CFO of Verisk. We're going to conduct this as a sort of Q&A session between Elizabeth and myself. [Operator Instructions] And I'll remind people that again during the call. But Elizabeth, thank you so much for joining. As we agreed before the call, we're going to look at sort of a different part of maybe Verisk than what's normally discussed. Obviously, the market is very familiar with your core underwriting and claims solutions businesses. But there are a number of newer growth verticals which you did provide detail on at the Investor Day and have updated us then since the earnings calls. And we're going to take that fact when we run through the Q&A as we agreed. But maybe I'll hand over to you to start with just maybe some opening remarks if you'd like to.

Yes. Russell, thanks so much for having us here, and thanks to your audience here for taking the time and giving us the attention. We're excited to talk here. So I'll give just some quick framing remarks for Verisk as a whole and then we can dive into the questions that Russell has teed up. So Verisk, as a whole, I would say 2022 was a year of transition and transformation for us in that, in that year, we had both a leadership transition with a new CEO. I joined in September of last year. And we also divested a number of businesses. So we have gone from a three-segment company with strength in common themes in data and analytics. We have sold an energy business and a financial services business to focus primarily on our core insurance data and analytics business. So we are now the leading data and analytics and solutions provider to the insurance industry. Our core business is primarily focused in the U.S. and primarily focused on property and casualty. But we have grown around that in a number of businesses throughout the insurance industry, which are some of the ones that we will focus on today. Just to frame for you our insurance-related revenues. About $2.4 billion of revenues in 2022, 80% of those are subscription. It is a very sticky, very, very recurring revenue-heavy business. Approximately 40% of the revenues come from businesses that go back to the foundation of Verisk in the 1970s, when a consortium of U.S. property and casualty insurers decided they needed to share their data to better price and analyze risk and to better process claims and identify fraud. And those are still some of our leading business today. They separated out from the insurance industry in the '90s to become an independent company. And we've grown since then. We went public in 2009. And around those core businesses, we have built other adjacencies and other growth areas in the insurance industry. And I think that's probably where we'll focus today.

Super, brilliant. Well, let's -- maybe if we could start on the Extreme Event Solutions business, which I think you mentioned is around about $300 million of revenue in 2022 according to your Investor Day slide. And you have a market share of around about 12%, if I'm not wrong, growing in the mid-single-digit range. Elizabeth, would you mind just giving us a quick overview of the key product area here and who you serve, the main competitors and perhaps how global that business is?

Yes, great question. So the products in the business, the business creates large-scale stochastic models to assess risk and quantify risk for natural perils around the globe. So different types of risk will have their own models such as a North Atlantic hurricane model, a California wildfire model, a Pacific tsunami model and so on. The core platform of that business is called Touchstone. That's kind of the product name. And also, inside that business sits a small resilient sustainability business called Verisk Maplecroft that provides geospatial risk analysis. The business overall, you were asking about its customers and the type of customers, we gave this breakdown at our Investor Day. Approximately 38% of the revenue comes from reinsurers. So that's our single largest customer type for this business. Insurers are about 31%. Brokers are about 19%. Corporates are about 5% of the revenue. That's primarily that resilience and sustainability business, the Maplecroft business. And then government and other businesses is about 7%. That includes the capital markets business. So these catastrophe models are used as the main benchmark of risk in the securitization catastrophe bond market, or otherwise known as the ILS market. So that is a use there.

In terms of the type of growth in that business, to what degree is it cyclically linked to the regularity or how regular will you get extreme weather events? We've obviously come off the back of a big year for sort of extreme weather events. How much of the growth this year is kind of one-off? And how big is the long-term kind of path of the growth of this business?

That's a great question, Russell. This business, the extreme events business, is over 90% subscription. So it does not -- it is not directly tied to the -- to sort of a catastrophe cycle. It doesn't -- there isn't a sort of, so to speak, windfall revenue in the event of large storms. I suppose in the long run, to the extent that increasing storms or increasing losses, raise the awareness of the need for both for capital to support potential losses and also raise the understanding of the need for models and detailed analysis and quantitative analyses to assess and price the risk of catastrophes, that is a long-term benefit to that business.

In terms of your customers, how sophisticated are they in their liability modeling and analysis around that sort of perils and extreme events? Are you seeing like a fast pace of change in customer behavior in this regard? Or is it -- or kind of steady, slow growth, which kind of lays that long runway for growth in this business?

Great question. It is -- this is a steady growth-type business. While our largest customers may have some capabilities to do some of this modeling in-house, most of our customers do not and tend to use our models or some of our competitors' models in it in this business. It's a very science-heavy -- so this business has, I think, over 100 PhDs in not only in oceanography and weather science and Earth science and meteorology, it also requires fairly detailed construction and engineering knowledge to understand how is a building constructed? What are the building codes in that area? And what are the implications of that for potential losses in the event of peril.

In terms of the competition, who else is doing this? Who are you running into? Have you got one or two direct competitors or -- because even sort of indirect competitors have got some good data around this business area, thinking of people like Moody's, et cetera. So who are you running into? And how competitive is the kind of landscape right now?

Yes, the primary competitor to this business is Moody's RMS business, which also does very similar catastrophe models. Many, though not of all of our customers, will use -- will take both models to better assess and quantify the risk. And they will typically have one as primary and the other is secondary. So there is a significant amount of customer overlap from those who take both. There are other products also created by Aon and Oasis, so there are some models, some brokers have some offerings in the space. But Moody's RMS and then our extreme events business are the primary two.

And what do you think about investments in the product offering in this area? Can you give us some insight as to where the biggest opportunities lie for product expansion? I noted on the -- I think on the recent conference call results about the one Verisk offering for property analytics as a link to this area. And do you think it's right for Verisk to go and develop these internally? Or would you consider kind of adding to this business in an inorganic fashion going forward?

Great question. So there's two main areas that we've been focused on expansion in this product. And the first is continuing to optimize the Touchstone platform as a SaaS platform. The business today operates in the cloud. We host many of our customers' instances in the cloud. But we are investing in the platform to build it as a true cloud-native architecture. So that work is underway. That's one piece. I think I would add that we do invest continuously to update and refresh the models, make sure that they are incorporating the latest and most up-to-date climate data and climate science. So that's an area of steady investment in this business. And then finally, we have been working on ways of integrating some of the portfolio exposure analytics with some of our other property data that exists within the core Verisk to be able to help our clients create portfolio-level analyses. And they need that at different levels of granularity, whether they are an insurer with a small but detailed portfolio or a reinsurer that wants less granularity but to understand larger -- sort of larger classes or larger swathes of portfolio. So those different data granularity needs actually require different products according to the level of detail that they use and the level of scale, whether you're analyzing a bucket of 100 properties or a portfolio of 100,000 properties.

And to the point on the kind of inorganic versus organic kind of expansion in this business, how do you feel about that? Is this an area you might look for inorganic growth? Is it quicker to do it that way? Or would you prefer to keep any kind of product development in-house?

As with most of our businesses, we will continue to look at both. So if we see other interesting tuck-in opportunities and other interesting capabilities, we would be open to that.

Okay. Maybe let's move on to talk about life solutions. It's a big, obviously, topic of conversation that I see clients at the moment. You mentioned at the time being about $2 billion with Verisk having a smaller market share in there, about 4%, I think it was presented at the Investor Day. And obviously, you're starting from a lower revenue base. But then you gave $75 million as the revenue number for 2022 but growing in the double-digit range. I think you mentioned even that might be in the 20s in your conference call. But can you again kind of start off by detailing what exactly Verisk is offering in the large market, how that differs to what you offer the online market, P&C market and the key opportunities you see here? I'm also interested to kind of pull out the competitive landscape, again who is doing the same as you? What are you doing different to them?

Yes. Great question. So this -- our life business, and this, we acquired it at the end of 2019, we asked ourselves the question, given our strong presence in the P&C insurance space, were there things -- ways that we could or should be playing in the life insurance space? And this was a start to answering that question. The business is unlike our core business, which is more data-based, or in the extreme events case, sort of models-based. This business is a true software business. It is a low-code/no-code platform. It's a cloud-based SaaS product. And it is a policy administration workflow system. So it helps an insurer manage a portfolio of policies, can have actions on a single policy to underwrite it, to onboard it into your system and then to kind of manage the lifecycle of that policy, risk management and then eventually claims and processing and portfolio analyses. The business was -- when we acquired it was originally called FAST, that stands for Flexible Architecture, Simplified Technology. And it is quite easy to use and implement sort of out of the box. And so life insurers can enhance or replace their existing policy administration systems. Now to your question of what is it replacing or what could be the competitors? So what's fascinating about life insurance that is very different from property and casualty insurance, which took me a while to appreciate, but it comes from something very simple, which is that your -- almost every policy and casualty policy renews typically annually. And so there's a way -- so those policies get updated over time. The policy language evolves over time to address newer risks, potentially to carve out other questions. So the language stays modern with times. The economics of it updates with time, so the policy -- the premiums can increase or, in some cases, decrease. Life insurance, if you write a policy -- and there are many life insurers that have policies in-force that have been written in the 1980s. And that policy, when it was written, was a paper policy. And the owner of that policy is continuing to pay the premium under the economics that were determined at the time. So life insurers in that way are, in some cases, significantly behind the P&C industry in terms of how they evolve and how the administration of their policies evolve. So our platform can, in some cases, replace homegrown systems, can replace system -- can replace even literally a lack of a system because a portfolio of policies was written and is saved -- is in a file cabinet or saved down on to a hard drive. So that's been improved over time. There are some competitors. Accenture has a product, Oracle has a product, there's a handful of others. But ours is the kind of the leading product, which is truly SaaS-based. It is Gartner -- sort of Gartner upper-right quadrant whenever it gets benchmarked against the policies. It has an RFP win rate well over 80%. So we view this as really a winning product in the space.

Okay. In terms of the sustainability of the double-digit growth, can you talk to that and how sensitive this growth is to economic growth, if at all? And what do you look at when you think about the structural driver of the growth for this business in the life area?

Yes. I think the primary structural driver has been this need of life insurers, they recognize that they need to modernize their systems, improve their efficiency, improve the time to market for underwriting new policies. So we think -- and they are -- despite our growth so far, it is still a relatively small business in a fairly large field. So we do view there to be a fairly long runway of greenfield opportunity for this business. We have recently expanded the capability. And so we've primarily been focused on the individual life space. There's also the group life space and annuities. So we do think there's a fair amount of runway for this business to continue. Obviously, the law of large numbers, at some point, with growth north of 20%, eventually trees don't grow to the sky. But we do think there's a long runway for this.

Okay. And I appreciate you're coming from a low base here. But when you think about the long-term outlook for Verisk, do you picture the life solutions becoming a meaningful contributor to the top line? It's coming around sort of 3% of revenues only. And when would you think about that being the case, do you think you'll grow through market penetration or market share gain, pricing or maybe all three? Just kind of interested in kind of the timing of when this will become basically a bigger part of the business.

Yes, I think it will continue to grow with those three drivers. Obviously, organically, it would -- organically, there's plenty of runway to grow off of those drivers. As you say, the numbers are still small. So organically, it would be a question of compounding. If -- for there to be a step change in its size in the portfolio would probably be a function of inorganic investment.

And that brings me perfectly on to my next question. What areas are there that you could look to expand into as adjacencies to which is what is predominantly a software offering for the life insurance business? You and I discussed previously how there are some big structural changes going on in the way that life insurance is priced and underwritten. So what other opportunities are there for Verisk in the life space, where to look for inorganic growth opportunities?

Yes, I think if we were looking in that space, I think we would look across some of the other axes and vectors that we've looked at before. Again, going from individual life into group life or annuities is one area. Extending the SaaS platform to more analytics, bringing more analytics, bringing more data, potentially combining with some of Verisk's existing data and then international expansion could all be vectors for growth.

Yes. And that international expansion opportunity, how easy is it for you to take an international stance for growth? Because we've discussed before how it's a little bit more difficult in P&C, given it's quite a national kind of approach to P&C insurance. But it's supposed to be that life is a bit more global in the way that it's priced and the way that it's structured. So is this a case that the platform can be taken into international growth opportunities quicker than, say, P&C insurance can?

It is. I think globally, life insurance is very widespread, including in developing markets. That said, it is also heavily regulated. And so it does need to be done with an attention towards the local regulatory environment.

Okay, great. Maybe I will move on to talk about the specialty business solutions. You gave the numbers around this at the Investor Day earlier in the year, similar size to the life solutions business, I think, in terms of revenue contribution in 2022, about $80 million. Maybe again, Elizabeth, let's start off, if you can give a quick overview of the key products in this area. What exactly is it that you are doing, what the competitive landscape looks like and the size of the opportunity for Verisk?

Yes, great question. So this business is also like the life insurance business is more of a software-based business. And it is also a policy administration workflow system. What defines that system is that it is tailored for the specialty insurance market, or otherwise known as the excess and surplus lines, or also known as the nonstandard market. So these are insurance policies -- the Lloyd's of London is the sort of the central place and the central meeting place of many of these participants. So our products can power that network of participants, including the underwriters, the brokers, the reinsurers. And the software allows them to underwrite price and place complex risks digitally. It also -- we also have, if you like, a marketplace where insurers and brokers primarily can transact with their policies digitally.

How quickly is revenue growing in this area? I can't remember if you've given that number or not. Maybe you could give it on the call. And what are the structural drivers of growth in this business? It's a bit more difficult but less obvious, I think. Yes, maybe let's start there.

Yes, I think the drivers of this business, there is a penetration play here still in this market. So there is significant adoption of the product. But there is -- it is a fragmented market in terms of people's workflow. And so there is quite a bit of expansion there. It's also -- currently, the product is primarily based in the U.K. But there's expansion opportunities with U.S. customers that also transact on excess and surplus risks.

And you said that the market here is quite fragmented. How well penetrated is Verisk already in the addressable market? And maybe let's start with that.

Yes, I don't think we've given estimates of that. But I think it is a relatively low market share and a significant growth opportunity still.

Okay. And then are there other adjacencies in this area you might look to expand into, either organically or inorganically? Maybe if you could detail that for us, that would be great.

Yes. I think actually, this business, we -- one of our acquisitions this year was targeted in this space. We acquired a business called Morning Data. It was a relatively small acquisition. But that is a customer play. The Verisk specialty business solutions product is designed primarily for large brokers. And the Morning Data product is much more targeted at the smaller broker landscape, who requires a different product, slightly different scale, different ease of implementation and different price point. So we now have an offering to sort of serve that market completely end-to-end. So that's a good example of something that we wanted to do inorganically. Other areas for growth, again there is some interesting integration of some of the Verisk data, particularly property data, which is very important to this market, and many of the risks that trade here. So there's internal synergies there. And then the opportunities to expand, again primarily the customers it faces right now are in the U.K. market. But the risks are global. The transactions are global. So we're looking to expand that customer set globally.

Great. Okay. And then to complete the sort of new growth areas, maybe we could talk about marketing solutions, maybe the most difficult area of growth for you this year out of the four we've just discussed. Again, sort of similar size in terms of revenue contribution in '22 to the others we just mentioned, or the other two we just mentioned, specialty and life, think about $80 million you mentioned in terms of revenue contribution in 2022. Can you maybe again give us a quick overview of the products in this area, who they serve, who the main competitors are and what the kind of runway for growth is in this business area, please?

Yes, this also was a business that was grown out of acquisitions. It's two main acquisitions that were put together. Jornaya was acquired in December of 2020 and Infutor was acquired in February of 2022. Jornaya has the behavioral data assets from customers -- of consumers, I should say. Infutor has a proprietary identity resolution. So what that means is when a carrier is targeting consumers, and this is now for personal lines of insurance, property and auto, most of that shopping, as we would assume today, is done online. And so the marketing for those customers is often done online. So our products help the carriers identify and target leads for the individual insurance policies. If you think about it, marketing is a very large area of spend for the carriers. They are looking to -- it's their customer acquisition funnel. There was an article in The New York Times weekend magazine this weekend on Flo, who is -- since this is a European audience, you're probably not familiar, but is the main character in the Progressive auto insurance advertising and has been a well-known figure in advertising over, I think, 15 years. But the article quoted the statistic that U.S. carriers spend $11 billion annually on advertising, which is more apparently than the top beer brands combined, which was pretty striking. So insurance marketing is a heavy area of spend for them. Like many other marketers, they are shifting that spend from just broad television advertising, which is very hard to measure the success and the ROI, they're looking more and more to targeted online spend. That's kind of the secular trends and the reason behind us going into the marketing business. That said, Russell, as you mentioned, this business has had challenges this year. That is entirely sort of environmental in terms of what's going on in the industry. Most of our customers, the insurance carriers in the U.S. have had significant challenges on profitability and significant challenges on losses. The reason for that being the inflation that all of us have experienced dramatically increased their cost on claims well beyond what was anticipated when they underwrote the policies originally. So in order to address that, they have been looking to increase prices on their existing policy and looking to decrease their own operating expense, both of which point to reducing marketing, number one, that's in discretionary spend that can be moderated in difficult times. And number two, there's no point in marketing to compete to acquire customers when they're in a world where they're not sure if they want these customers yet from a profitability standpoint. So that's been what's going on in the immediate moment. And again, that's not just us. You've seen that across the industry. You'll see many carriers commenting about their marketing spend. You'll see other marketing-related businesses have headwinds. But we think the secular reason, and eventually as the carriers return to profitability, they will look to return to growth and continue to try to acquire new customers, at which point they will try to turn on that marketing engine again.

Yes, okay. And maybe when you think about monetizing this business, the marketing solutions business, can it be monetized as separate product? Or is it more of an add-on product, which you use to kind of attract and then retain customers and it maybe becomes a commodity as part of a bigger bundle of solutions?

It's a good question. It is a different buyer than our typical products. And one of the things that we find is that our businesses, we will cover a large carrier with many of our different businesses, but it's often a different buyer base. And so this one typically sells to the CMO as opposed to the underwriting officer or the claims officer. Obviously, it depends about the dialogue, and so it can be combined and bundled, it can be sold separately.

Okay. Maybe we could probably switch tracks a little bit, I've got a few questions come in on the Q&A. [Operator Instructions] But the first question that's come in here is around cross-selling. And it's an area that you've obviously talked around, Elizabeth, a lot this year. But the question goes, are you seeing sizes of cross-selling changing or the change you've made in terms of the sales remuneration policy leading to all cross-selling rates of penetration in your end markets' divisions working together to kind of drive this enterprise-level approach? I think that you've talked around this a fair bit now. But are you seeing that kind of materialize in the P&L yet? Or is that kind of -- is the benefit of that still to come, I guess?

Great question. Yes, we are seeing signs of that. I think we have some good examples of success. We have some good examples of places where we've had that senior-level engagement that Lee has talked about. And that, that's led to new product sales or opening up of dialogue on sort of whitespace with a customer. So yes, we're starting to see that. I would describe it as still at the anecdotal level, if that makes sense. So I can tell stories of it, we're seeing and signing some customers. I think for it to become really systematic and really start to actively play out in the P&L and have big numbers that we can point to, it will -- that will still take some time.

Okay. And there's a question here, and I'm going to try and earmark particularly to the best I can in terms of the contributions to growth in 2023 and how this might translate into opportunities but also headwinds in 2024. Obviously, some of the areas we've discussed have been the high-growth areas in 2023. Can you maybe kind of break down the algorithm for us, how much of the growth we saw in 2023 was driven by these newer growth areas? How much was driven by this point here on pricing? How much was driven by kind of one-off transactional-based revenues? And then when you think about 2024 and kind of coming off a very good year of top line growth, is that sustainable? And can you again kind of talk to the year-on-year company to these areas, newer growth areas, organic growth, transactional growth and then pricing? Are those the lines?

Yes, that's a hard question. Let me try to break it down for you. We haven't given any sort of 2023 in the aggregate pictures on that yet, obviously because '23 is not done. But in the quarters, when I talk about kind of the factors and the reasons for strong growth, and we've had 3 quarters of excellent growth for us so far, I do tend to talk about those in order of size. And so if I think back across the last few quarters, thematically, the items that I have mentioned, top of that list, look, pricing and the environmental -- the inflationary environment for carriers and, therefore, for us, has been a big factor in that. So that's one element. The recovery in the auto insurance space and in our auto insurance business has been a big factor of it. And some of that has been driven by increased auto insurance shopping activity from customers -- from consumers. That's been a transactional growth phenomenon. And we've talked about we had a non-rate action deal with a large carrier, so sort of a single contract that's been contributing to that growth. That is one where I think we have a more measured approach going forward. And we've had some very high activity levels that will create a strong comp -- a difficult comp into next year. So those are the elements. These new growth vectors that I'm talking about, they're great and they're doing well. They haven't really risen to the levels of the things that I have called specifically out on that earnings call with the exception, I would add, the life solutions business has been one that I've mentioned here and there as contributing to outsized growth. So that's been one of the elements that we've seen.

And then the other element is obvious pricing. Can we talk a bit to how much price you took this year? There's a couple of questions on this, kind of wrapped them together. How much price you took this year? Is there a headwind to pricing next year, given that the pricing is linked to, in one part, net written premium growth, which, okay, you've come off a strong year, next year? It's on a 2-year lag but still a decent kind of, if you look at the 2022 data, kind of good growth opportunities, but it comes at a lower level than it did in 2021. And also, we're running into obviously a lower level of inflation starting this year than we were last January. So do you have a big headwind in terms of pricing this year relative to what maybe you had in 2023, which may have been a one-off good year for pricing?

Yes, great question. So a couple of things that I've said previously on pricing, typically -- so our medium-term growth target, and we phrased that as annually every year between our Investor Day and 2025, we've said 6% to 8% organic growth. And we had the building blocks to that, of which pricing was about 3% to 4% or about half of that total growth. I've commented in this inflationary environment that for this year, pricing has come in above that level but not dramatically above largely because we view our relationships with customers as a long-term one, and we don't hit the pedal to the metal on pricing in a year in an environment like this one, just as we don't take pricing declines in -- kind of in years where net written premium has decreased. So we have a long-term sort of steady build with our customers. I think the data on the net written premium across the industry shows a slight tapering from 2021, which impacted us this year into 2022, which will impact us next year. So there is some tapering of that net written premium growth. And yes, Russell, you highlighted it well, the world is not as much in an inflationary environment as it was this time a year ago, so there's definitely that. I think it's very much -- it's on us. We talk about the fact that we price our products based on the value that they deliver. So I think it's very much on us to continue to demonstrate to our customers the value that we're bringing, the opportunity cost of not going with us and the -- I think for most of our -- for many of our customers and for many of our core products, if they try to do it some other way, they certainly could, but it could be a lot more work, a lot more people-intensive. So it's on us to demonstrate to our customers that we are there to make their workflows more efficient, to help them save money elsewhere and to really demonstrate the value of our products. And we will continue trying to do that. The final point I'll make is we've been -- we've talked about our investment in our core products. And so we've been continuing to do that. And I think that's an important element for our customers to understand the continuous improvement that they're getting in our products.

And maybe on that point, which is a nice bridge into one of the questions here, investment in core product, there's a lot going on. You spoke about core lines reimagined and some other big areas of investment you're making in the core business. And then you and I both ran through all the areas you're investing in for growth in these newer vectors. 2023, obviously, saw this build on the margin on the back of the sort of asset disposals and the synergy opportunities that came from that. How should we think about margins going forward? Is there -- are we now kind of steady state? Is there kind of -- any kind of margin benefit then reinvested back into the business? Or is there still operating leverage that we -- that should come through and drive earnings growth in the business?

Yes, we're still focused on the margin expansion plan that we talked about starting in 2021. We gave ourselves a target of expanding margins from 300 to 500 basis points from the 2021 base. That was initially a 53% to 56% margin target. We upped the ante on ourselves. We increased that target to 54% to 56%. And so we are -- we know that, that's an important point to continue to demonstrate the ability of this business to operate efficiently. I think over -- as we transition to a longer-term mentality, we very much believe that the business can and should continue to demonstrate operating leverage. And we also see significant opportunities for reinvestment in the business. We're looking to create value and drive return on invested capital with our investments, both CapEx and OpEx in the business. So we will look to do that in ways that we think will continue to generate long-term growth. So I think you will continue to see us do two things: invest in the business, target creating value; and also demonstrating operating leverage and continued margin expansion. So we don't expect to stop expanding margins. We don't expect to be flat. But we also don't expect to expand margins at a rate of, I think, 150 basis points per year has been about what we've been averaging in the last couple of years.

Okay. Just to go back, one question, in terms of what drove the growth in 2023, what headwinds you may face in 2024, obviously, transactional revenue growth was strong this year. Can you talk to what your thoughts are in terms of that continuing or slowing down into 2024? And maybe expand on this point around does greater amount of consumer activity, which has been a primary driver of the transactional growth this year, translate into more insurance activity from the underwriters or the carriers as we move into 2024, which then becomes a continued kind of tailwind as we think about the growth next year?

Yes, good question. So yes, transactional growth has been -- I think it's been double digits every quarter so far this year. That's been a function of a couple of different things. One is still comparing to a fairly weaker comp in 2022 based on still slower pandemic-related transactional activity in 2022. So that's recovered very well this year. It's been driven by some of that auto shopping activity that we talked about. Yes, that is an unusually high level of growth for transaction revenues. And we wouldn't expect that to see that sustained on a long-term basis. Auto shopping activity, as we've talked about, has been very high this year. We would expect that to normalize. And by the way, even if it didn't normalize and just stayed at the level where it is, the impact on us, we would begin to anniversary that strong growth impact. So even if it stays where it is, that's a headwind to growth for us. But that's just one element of our transaction revenue. Our property estimating solutions business can drive transaction revenue. And that is one that does get an impact in the aftermath of strong weather events. So we have some dependency on frequency of weather events. 2023 has been an interesting year for that transactional revenue. There hasn't been a single large hurricane as there was, say, with Hurricane Ian in Q4 of '22. But the level of localized weather activity has been uniquely high. So that's been still a strength on the transactional revenue side. So I think it's fair to say, off of those comps, there are some headwinds going into 2024.

And just on this point around it, maybe moving into more carrier activity or more insurance activity, is that something that we should think about? Or do you think actually that, that is unlikely to happen?

It is possible. One of the things, and some of the J.D. Power data shows this, there's been higher consumer shopping for insurance. There hasn't actually been that much switching activity because the consumer will get their bill, "Wow, I have a 15% price increase. I'm going to go check three other carriers and see what they can do." But unfortunately, for the consumer, they're finding that all of the carriers are needing to raise rates. So, so far, it hasn't led to higher underwriting activity. It could, it could in 2024. I think we're also watching the property space and what home transactions will mean and a potential decrease in personal property sales could mean for insurance rates. So we're keeping an eye on it.

And you mentioned Hurricane Ian being a difficult comp for Q4. There's a question here, which is obviously very near-term-focused, and maybe if you could just touch on the kind of why the targets imply such a low growth in Q4 from the rates relative to the strong rates you've reported for the rest of the 3 quarters of this year.

Yes, I'll comment on -- our guidance is not intended to really focus on a particular quarter. What we're looking to do with our guidance is give a material range for the full year. Again, we gave a pretty tight range on revenue of a $30 million range. And so we're looking to change that when there is a material update on the full year.

Okay. And then we couldn't escape without a question on AI, so let's do that. The question has kind of looked at what -- maybe just ask what investments in generative AI you're making across the business. Would you look to do this organically? Or would you look to partner in this area? And from my perspective, you talked quite a lot about your underlying customer base being slow-moving. Is generative AI something that even if you invested in an area -- in a product area opportunity, do you think it would take a long time for your customers to adopt that type of technology when -- in the underwriting process?

Yes, it's a great question. In terms of our customers and how they respond to it, they're definitely watching generative AI. This is a perfect example of how Verisk can help the industry. I think our customers know that gen AI is something that can bring some opportunity to them. It would be inefficient -- it's hard for them to each invest on their own to try to develop new products and solutions. We can be almost a vehicle for innovation within the industry. And so I think we do have an opportunity to explore what's possible here, and we're working on that. As to the adoption rates with our customers, I think that's on us. If we can create a product that while based on gen AI, does it require a deep investment or a heavy implementation for them, I think they would be very, very interested in exploring that, again subject to that we've explored gen AI in an ethical way and in a way with respect for fairness and integrity of data and data use and data privacy. Fortunately, I think we are a trusted player in the industry to be able to do that.

And just to be clear in terms of would you look to do this organically? Or would you look to partner with Moody's and LSEG with such able partners with various generative AI cloud-based operators? Would you look to do it all internally? Or would you like to partner with someone if the opportunity were there?

We're definitely open to either approach.

Okay, great. Well, we've got 1 minute left. So maybe, Elizabeth, can I just ask you to give some kind of concluding thoughts as to what do you think of the growth algorithm for 2024 for the business, what you're mostly excited about, where the biggest tailwinds lie for Verisk in the near term and where we might need to just consider some headwinds when thinking about the growth for the next year coming off the back of a really good year for you guys, which has clearly been reflected in the share price rerating?

Yes, we're really excited about the runway that continues to exist ahead of us as a management team that we've had a year under our belt together, and it's been a fabulous year in 2023. A lot of that has been some factors in the environment that have helped us. And sometimes it's best to be lucky. But we also are beginning to see, I think, the seeds of the strategy that we have laid and, in particular, the customer-centric approach that we've taken and engagement with our large customers. So I think we see continued opportunity for that. We recognize that 2024 may have some difficult growth comparisons and some areas that have helped 2023 that may not persist. But we do continue to have a lot of excitement about the long-term opportunity and about the growth trajectory in line with what we described at Investor Day.

Great stuff. Elizabeth, thank you so much for joining today. Thank you to everyone who joined this session. And a replay of this will be available in due course on our website. Elizabeth, thank you very much.

Thanks so much, Russell, for the questions, and thanks to the audience for your time.