Hi, I’m Kevin Finn, President & CEO of MCA. We started the series Mutual Matters early this year to share with you all our experiences, expertise, and insight into the personal lines marketplace. We very much appreciate the feedback we’ve gotten from so many of you as we’ve gone through this and continue to do so going forward.
When we started the series at the beginning of the year there was optimism that the personalized marketplace was going to nurse itself back to health, and many were talking about the second half of 2023 being a time when carriers were starting to hit their target returns.
Boy, was the industry wrong. The first quarter was historically bad. All in, the combined ratio was 102%. For personal lines itself, the direct incurred loss ratio was 75%. That was the worst first quarter on record.
This marketplace has been challenging for carriers of all shapes and sizes. Just last week, a major carrier announced that they were no longer going to be writing any new homeowner’s
policies in the state of California. Another carrier admitted that they were decades behind in their use of telematics. Others are talking about double digit rate double dipping, and it goes on and on. In this type of marketplace, carriers need to be using all the tools in their toolkit to be successful.
We’ve hit on some of these in the first half of our series, and we’ll continue to expand upon those in the second half. Things like non-rate action, underwriting initiatives, portfolio optimization. These are things that carriers have at their disposal to be able to manage both top and bottom-line success.
As we go forward, please continue to give feedback, make sure that our sessions are relevant and meaningful for all of you. Thank you for your time and enjoy the rest of our series.