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On Wednesday, 11 June 2025, The Hanover Insurance Group (NYSE:THG) presented at the Morgan Stanley US Financials Conference 2025, offering a strategic overview that balanced optimism with caution. Led by CEO Jack Roche and CFO Jeff Farber, the company highlighted its diversified earnings stream and strategic partnerships, while acknowledging macroeconomic challenges and weather-related risks.
Key Takeaways
- Hanover Insurance is focusing on profitable growth in specialty lines and proactive risk management.
- The first quarter exceeded expectations, driven by specialty and personal lines, despite elevated property losses.
- The company is leveraging technology to enhance customer service and agent profitability.
- There is a cautious approach to new business growth in the program space due to macroeconomic conditions.
- Hanover Insurance maintains a strong capital position, prioritizing growth, dividends, and share buybacks.
Financial Results
- First Quarter Performance:
- The quarter exceeded expectations with strong performance in specialty and personal lines.
- The ex-cat combined ratio was favorable compared to the annual guidance range of 88.5% to 89.5%.
- The company experienced elevated property losses in commercial spaces.
- Premium Growth:
- Premium growth guidance was 6% to 7%, though the first quarter fell short due to slow new business in small commercial lines.
- Growth is largely attributed to price adjustments and exposure.
- Expense Management:
- Opportunities exist to improve the expense ratio alongside pricing actions.
- Investment Income:
- Net Investment Income (NII) remains robust.
- Capital Allocation:
- Share repurchase capacity stands at $275 million as of April.
- The capital allocation framework emphasizes growth, consistent dividend payments, and share buybacks.
- Loss Ratios:
- Core commercial CMP loss ratios rose to 61% due to several large losses.
Operational Updates
- Midwest Exposure:
- The company has reduced its Midwest concentration, adjusted terms, and increased rates to manage property mix in commercial lines.
- Significant price increases and higher deductibles for all peril and wind/hail have been implemented.
- Personal Lines:
- The team has executed flawlessly over the past 18 months, leading market pricing and adjusting deductible terms.
- Specialty Business:
- The specialty business portfolio exceeds $1 billion, focusing on property and casualty specialties with smaller account sizes.
- Commercial Auto:
- Commercial auto remains a small line, excluding long haul trucking, with prudent reserving.
- Program Business:
- The program business is in its best financial shape in a decade, though growth is approached cautiously due to the macro environment.
Future Outlook
- Growth Opportunities:
- Hanover aspires to increase market share across all business lines, beyond just price-driven growth.
- Opportunities for growth in personal lines are present, excluding certain Midwest areas.
- Tariffs:
- The impact of tariffs is expected to be minimal, primarily affecting auto within personal lines, with potential effects in 2026.
- Pricing:
- Liability lines are gaining pricing respect, and overall commercial pricing is deemed rational.
- Reinsurance:
- Companies that price and underwrite well are expected to be rewarded by reinsurers in terms of price or maintaining attachment points.
Q&A Highlights
- Macro Volatilities:
- The company navigates macro volatilities through sophisticated analysis and portfolio management.
- Competition:
- Competition in the homeowner segment is decreasing.
- Agent Channel:
- The trusted advisor model remains valid amid market volatility and uncertainty.
In conclusion, The Hanover Insurance Group is strategically positioned for growth, leveraging partnerships and technology to navigate market dynamics. For a detailed analysis, please refer to the full transcript below.
Full transcript - Morgan Stanley US Financials Conference 2025:
Bob, Morgan Stanley Sales Representative, Morgan Stanley: All right. Good afternoon, everybody. So before we get started, for important disclosures, please see the Morgan Stanley research disclosure website at www.morganstanley.com/researchdisclosure. The taking of photographs and use of recording devices is also not allowed. If you have any questions, please reach out to your Morgan Stanley sales representative.
With that out of the way, we’re privileged to have Jack Roche, the president, CEO of Hanover Insurance, and also Jeff Farber, the executive vice president and CFO of Hanover. So gentlemen, welcome. So it it would be nice to kind of maybe do a brief intro on Hanover, especially as we head into rest of this relatively interesting year, so to speak.
Jack Roche, President, CEO, Hanover Insurance: Yes. Well, and foremost, Bob, thanks for having us and appreciate the conference. I think some of you know us, some maybe less familiar with us, but we’re really excited frankly in the position that we put ourselves in, in this most dynamic time in our business. There isn’t much that isn’t changing or that doesn’t require constant evaluation and collaboration. But in a lot of ways, what we’ve been through over the last few years in terms of addressing some challenges head on related to inflation and the weather, the severe convective storms in the Midwest have given us an opportunity to really strengthen the company on a number of dimensions and allowed us frankly a marketplace that has allowed us to accelerate the diversification of our business.
And so as we look forward, we’re excited about the fact that we have the most diversified earnings stream that we’ve had in the company and that we see the emerging opportunities that are coming to those companies that have a really good access to the better business through the better agents, but also have the capability inside of their firms to evaluate loss trends, to be able to look forward and not just look backward. And so we really believe that we’ve not only put ourselves back in a nice trajectory from a financial standpoint, but we strengthened our ability to understand the business trends that are going on around us and to accelerate our profitable growth. So last but least, I would just say our value proposition for those that know you know us less is that we have a unique partnering strategy with the best agents in the country. We bring a broad set of diversified specialized capabilities to the marketplace and we have an increased focus on the end consumer in terms of leveraging technology and some of the transformation opportunities to better serve customers in a more efficient way. So we think that’s a winning strategy and we’re really excited to share more.
Bob, Morgan Stanley Sales Representative, Morgan Stanley: Excellent. So in that spirit, right, like if we think about what has happened recently, you’ve executed on multiple initiatives, reducing concentration in the Midwest, introducing terms and condition changes, adjusting rates, proactively manage property mix in commercial, and variety of other things. Right? What are the experiences that you’re taking out of this process? And what can you maybe say about the state of the marketplace and your overall strategic positioning going forward?
What are the things
Jack Roche, President, CEO, Hanover Insurance: that we’re excited about? Yes. I think the silver lining of what we’ve been through is that our I think we’ve got the chance to test drive our company’s capabilities. How sophisticated are we in terms of analyzing the trends that surround us? How agile are we in terms of moving our portfolio management and our pricing and being able to lead in some ways the marketplace, particularly in the Midwest.
I think we learned that our partner strategy with agents not only gives us some offense in the good times, but has bared fruit on the defensive side when we had to make some pretty substantial changes in terms of conditions in particular in the Midwest and get the full support of our agents in doing so. So I think it’s both an internal and an external view that we have. Our relevance to the best agents in the country and our ability to maneuver through some pretty challenging times, I think is a testament to the strength of that distribution strategy. But I got to see firsthand that we have a very talented and engaged team that’s up for the challenge of managing through this very dynamic and uncertain time in our business.
Bob, Morgan Stanley Sales Representative, Morgan Stanley: Got it. That’s very helpful. So maybe if we think about the overall performance, right, like so despite some macro volatilities earlier in the year, you’ve given out relatively solid guidance. Your first quarter ex cat combined ratio was very strong compared to the full year guided range. So as additional pricing is coming in, it feels like you should be in a very good position to achieve your combined ratio 88.5% to 89.5%.
Can you maybe talk about maybe are there any additional incremental that we should think about? Are there any additional opportunities on the expense side or on the loss ratio side? What are some of the critical areas that you can think about from an underwriting perspective?
Jeff Farber, Executive Vice President and CFO, Hanover Insurance: So we’re really pleased with the performance in the first quarter. Things are really going well, notwithstanding the somewhat anomalous elevated property losses in the commercial space, which happens really once every few years, you get that kind of a quarter. So in terms of specialty is really performing well. Personal lines has improved so dramatically and is great. And I think we’re optimistic about core commercial.
Having said that, we’re only one quarter in. And I think it’s a little early in the year to be updating a view on guidance. We would love to outperform and we hope to do that, but we’ll see how that goes. We’re getting price above loss trend and that bodes well for our future. And of course, the NII is really strong.
So we’re quite bullish about our ability to deliver this year.
Bob, Morgan Stanley Sales Representative, Morgan Stanley: Got it. So on your 6% to 7% premium growth guidance, From that perspective, how much would you say is coming from pricing? And how much of it was more volume and exposure growth? Is there a way for us to think about that?
Jack Roche, President, CEO, Hanover Insurance: Sure. Well, obviously the first quarter came through a little bit lower than we had planned for and that we were hoping for mainly attributable to our small commercial business, which just simply got off to a bad start on new business. We already feel like we’re making the adjustments there to get ourselves back on that trajectory in a business that frankly is generating terrific returns. But if you look at the overall guidance and the initial plan, a substantial amount of it is price and exposure. We look at each business in terms of what not just the PIP growth is, but what the absolute growth is in the business.
One of the dynamics in that, if you just look at even personal lines is that we if we grow at three percent to 5% this year, that clearly means that we’re moving backwards from a PIF perspective. But part of that is by the design and that we’re gradually moving up in the Coverage A position with our Prestige product that is geared for kind of the upper middle market and over time allowing some of the lower end to that is more commoditized to kind of move out of the portfolio and certainly not replace from a new business standpoint. So we’re actually, I think, right where we wanted to be in terms of overall growth, but we believe that if we navigate this year well as we hope to that there is plenty of additional growth opportunity in the future. And our aspiration is to increase our market share in our businesses, not simply ride the pricing wave.
Bob, Morgan Stanley Sales Representative, Morgan Stanley: Right. No, for sure. But speaking of pricing though, so if we think about the personal lines, right, you took some pricing increase and you’re probably looking to prioritize profitable growth. And then from that perspective, can you maybe talk about what are the additional opportunities you are seeing in the personal line? And then also further, can you maybe give us a little bit more color on your how you’re managing the Midwest exposure as Well,
Jack Roche, President, CEO, Hanover Insurance: and foremost, I’d be remiss if I didn’t once again compliment our Personal Lines team. I think the execution over the last eighteen months has been nothing short of flawless. We have driven market leading price. We’ve introduced deductible terms and conditions in the Midwest that were not in place and frankly are being relatively well perceived. And that’s because we move so fast that many of the people we compete against the regionals and the mutuals are still in the or inning of getting the price they need and for whatever reason are not deciding to leverage deductibles quite the same way we are.
So it puts us in a relative good position in that we’re not only kind of coming down from the high watermark of our pricing, but we are giving some marginal credit for the deductible implementation. And when a customer in the Midwest is looking at the price that they can get today from an alternative versus the way we’re positioned on a go forward basis, it comes through quite favorable. So that leads us to the other part of your question is, we are committed towards using this time to further diversify our portfolio, not just in personal lines, but particularly in personal lines making sure that the earnings volatility that we witnessed in 2023 doesn’t get replicated. And so that’s what’s causing us to continue to be very cautious on new business. In the other states, in the vast majority of the other states, we’re already making our way into a more elevated growth.
We like the margins that we’re seeing in almost every state. And that as you can imagine, the growth in those states combined with some suppression in new business in Michigan and a few Midwest counties that surround that actually really catapult that diversification on a modeled basis and we’re seeing that come through pretty dramatically.
Bob, Morgan Stanley Sales Representative, Morgan Stanley: Got it. No, that’s very helpful. One thing in that business mix is that talking about the increased frequency and severity of catastrophe events and then that and its previous impact on your business. Right? Particularly given the recent weather patterns and loss patterns, can you maybe talk about how is the company addressing those increased frequencies and severity?
Jeff Farber, Executive Vice President and CFO, Hanover Insurance: Sure. I’ll jump in. We’ve been extremely active at addressing those frequencies, particularly across and severity across the Midwest. So number one, it’s been price, price, price. So over the last several years, we’ve gotten dramatic increases
Number two are the terms and conditions. So we’ve increased our all peril and wind and hail deductibles and those are proving to be useful in addressing particularly roof issues and hail issues. But really across both the cat and ex cat portfolio, they’ve been really helpful. And then finally, micro concentrations throughout the Midwest and particularly in Michigan, disaggregating some of those, thinning those, particularly with new business, but in terms of some non renewals, it’s dramatically improved and enhanced the performance and how that portfolio behaves.
Jack Roche, President, CEO, Hanover Insurance: I think also, Bob, the thing strategically is that we believe if we can continue to navigate those property aggregations and pricing our product appropriately, the competition on the homeowner side of the business obviously is lessening. People are not as anxious to write home. And so we see some companies that were their aspirations were to be more of a bundler and do account round and to target that. They’ve kind of calmed that part of their strategy down. And that I think longer term plays to our advantage that we are the best account writer in the independent agency channel.
And if we can solidify that position and find a way to navigate the weather appropriately, I think in some ways these dynamics might play to our advantage over time.
Bob, Morgan Stanley Sales Representative, Morgan Stanley: I think that’s an interesting point, right? Because from kind of like what you said before, like homeowner side, the intent for people to compete is lessening. But on the personal auto side, it does feel like from all the data we’re seeing, people are much more willing to compete, almost a decoupling of the bundling story. But curious as to your view as to how do you navigate that change in competitive environment? Is this something that you can take advantage of going forward?
Just curious your thoughts.
Jack Roche, President, CEO, Hanover Insurance: Well, we’ve been very aggressive myself, Dick Levy and other parts of our management team getting out and talking to agents about this dynamic that at the end of the day, we bring value to the value channel. And it’s really important that the agents across the country realize that this is an inflection point and one in which they need to reinforce that value proposition with their customers and not let the decoupling happen. We’re not seeing that in a dramatic fashion. In fact, if you look at the direct to consumer and the captive and the IA channel, the IA channel is showing real resilience. There is more shopping going on, but that’s different than cross channel movement.
I would tell you that we are getting a really favorable response from agents that they realize this is an opportunity to and people want somebody to talk to when these dynamics are happening. So the trusted advisor model is very valid given all the volatility and uncertainty that surrounds us.
Bob, Morgan Stanley Sales Representative, Morgan Stanley: Got it. So maybe on the question of tariffs, so this is probably for Jeff. From this perspective, we think about our first quarter earnings call, you kind of talked about mid single like a limited impact, probably mid single digit onetime impact tariff impact for your business. Things have since calmed down a little bit, a little bit being the emphasis here. Just curious, have your views changed on tariff?
Or given the narrative today, are you preparing differently in terms of how you think about the financials?
Jeff Farber, Executive Vice President and CFO, Hanover Insurance: Yes, things change regularly coming out of the administration for sure. I think we’re getting better data and better analysis. And we’ve got metrics that we look at. And we can see what’s happening quickly. And we’ve got plenty of time to prepare.
I suspect my view really has not changed that much Bob. I think it will be largely in auto. It will be largely in personal lines. That’s really the biggest area. We’ll have time to deal with it.
If and when tariffs go in and really start to show themselves, I suspect there’ll be a small delay for when it starts to impact the price of particular goods, think used cars, new cars, auto parts, there’s some inventory, how does it build into steel and lumber and all those issues. But we’re extremely well prepared to be able to address in terms of price. And I think we can react to it. I suspect at this point as we’re getting later in the year, it’s less of a 2025 issue and probably shows itself on an earned loss basis really in 2026. And I think we’re very well positioned to deal with it.
Bob, Morgan Stanley Sales Representative, Morgan Stanley: For sure. Time flies when you’re having fun. It sure does. So maybe pivot a little bit to specialty, right? If we look at specialty excluding programs, you are seeing very strong results.
And then can you maybe comment on the opportunity set here and what how should we think about the growth trajectory as many other carriers also find the segment to be attractive as well?
Jack Roche, President, CEO, Hanover Insurance: Sure. Yes, I think, listen, we’re really excited about our specialty business, what we’ve built over time, 1,000,000,000 plus portfolio across nine really business areas and 20 something products. What makes us unique in the specialty space is that we focus on a variety of property and casualty oriented specialties. And the average account size tends to be on the lower side. So your opportunity set is more about do you have operating models and visibility within the particularly the retail channel to extract that business out in a cost effective way and help independent agents improve their EBITDA margins in this aspect of their business.
So we’re not running and hanging around exclusively in the wholesale channel or working on large accounts that always have pricing pressure both ways through the cycle. It’s a more stable subset of the specialty business, but it requires technology and distribution to be able to get in and bring that business over and help agents genuinely operate their business models more effectively. You can imagine with the distribution consolidation that continues, that’s just in a really high priority, not just from the top 25 agents, but we see it well all the way down into the midsize agents. They need help. And if they don’t have companies that have done the work to help streamline, to make the appetite broader and to be able to leverage technology and operating model changes to help their margins, not just the company’s margins, then it doesn’t help them go forward.
So we’re really excited about the progress we’re making in specialty and the value proposition we present.
Bob, Morgan Stanley Sales Representative, Morgan Stanley: And if you’re fairly insulated from the competitive environment?
Jack Roche, President, CEO, Hanover Insurance: Yes, there’s always competition, but I do think that we are not in the more volatile parts of the business. Even in the E and S sector, we write small face value E and S business both retail and wholesale, but we also have a lot of our E and S businesses like the line of business associated with other parts of our business. So we’re not really just an E and S for E and S play.
Bob, Morgan Stanley Sales Representative, Morgan Stanley: Got it. That’s helpful. So if we can maybe pivot into the commercial auto a little bit. Commercial auto industry as a whole are is seeing some clear reserving pressure, uncertainty around loss cost trend, other factors, social inflation. Can you maybe talk about how you feel about your operating environment in commercial auto?
And then maybe also a little bit of commentaries on your reserves, even though I believe you’re fairly adequately reserved, but just curious is your view on how you think about reserving in this line, how you think about the risk and things of that nature?
Jeff Farber, Executive Vice President and CFO, Hanover Insurance: Yes. It’s a relatively small line for us. We don’t really do long haul trucking. It’s a truck which is related to a small business generally. In many cases, it’s a private passenger vehicle, which actually is used in their business, so it becomes commercial.
But we’re certainly not immune. It is, I think been shocking to anybody in P and C just how long the underperformance of commercial auto has been. And the severity of issues continues to worsen even though people keep getting price upon price. And obviously, the litigation environment, it’s the epicenter of lawyer involvement. It seems to be easy for them to go after a commercial auto claim.
They have a formula. They know how to do it. Having said that, we’ve been reserving prudently for a long period of time and we feel comfortable with our reserves and going back to 2016 when we took a reserve charge and even since 2020 when we took a prudent position about the frequency benefits coming out of COVID, I think one has to have uncertainty reserves and this certainly is defined and meets the classification of uncertainty. So I think we’re well positioned from a balance sheet perspective.
Bob, Morgan Stanley Sales Representative, Morgan Stanley: Got it. So we’re certain to be uncertain in some ways. But how do you feel about pricing in this environment? Do you feel you have enough pricing for commercial auto? Yes.
Listen, we don’t write we’re an account
Jack Roche, President, CEO, Hanover Insurance: writer and we try to look at every line of business and have some integrity in our pricing by line of business. But as Jeff said, this is kind of the industry has suffered for over a decade to get on top of a trend that clearly has been deteriorating. So I think the way we approach it is we have restructured frankly the way we price commercial auto in a more disciplined particularly in areas like fleets where people will unit rate them and of move away from the integrity of the base rates and how that works. So we’ve strengthened that tremendously. And then the real issue is the umbrella.
At the end of the day, the severity lives in the umbrella limits. How have you attacked your pricing there? What kind of retention do you have in your reinsurance and not that that not that you can avoid the issues just by passing it on to the reinsurer forever, but it does allow you to kind of protect the short term earnings volatility while you solve for the longer term severity trends that are becoming more evident. So I feel really good about the way we’re pricing our product today. And as Jeff said, I think we’ve done a really nice job of being pretty prudent on our reserves.
Bob, Morgan Stanley Sales Representative, Morgan Stanley: Got it. No, that’s very helpful. Maybe take a step back, just looking at core commercial overall, You’re obviously seeing favorable pricing trend and staying on the concept of pricing. Obviously, are some competition in properties, but broadly speaking in commercial, is there anything in pricing that you feel is improving or any parts of pricing where you feel you might need to do more work on?
Jack Roche, President, CEO, Hanover Insurance: I would say that on the improvement side, I see the early indications of the liability lines gaining some more respect. You can’t cry wolf about liability trends and then go out and price mid single digits, which is where the market has been for too long. So I see people now that’s coming on simultaneously with some aspects of the property lines becoming more competitive, some of that appropriately in some areas maybe a little bit too quick, particularly in the E and S side of property. Think I see it’s probably recovering a little too fast for our liking. But at the end of the day, I think the pricing I still think in aggregate, Bob, the pricing is pretty rational.
I started in this business in the mid-80s. I know what a real hard market looks like and I know what a real soft market looks like after a real hard market. And so I think the better companies that can underwrite prudently that have better pricing integrity are going to be really well positioned because the market is responding. And the reinsurance, I think landscape is changing to make sure that the discipline comes at least just in time to deal with some of these trends.
Bob, Morgan Stanley Sales Representative, Morgan Stanley: Right. And you essentially exert that prudence on the company to make sure that nothing is?
Jack Roche, President, CEO, Hanover Insurance: Yes. We’re a gross line underwriter and pricer and we don’t plan on giving our problems to reinsurers. We have formidable relationships there. But in some ways, what you’re going to see is the companies that do a good job in the marketplace, pricing their product, underwriting appropriately, will get rewarded by reinsurers either in terms of relative price or being able to maintain their attachment points, which I think is going to be a really important aspect to watch over the next two or three years.
Bob, Morgan Stanley Sales Representative, Morgan Stanley: That’s helpful. So earnings, one thing we’re seeing is middle market businesses rebounding. Also, you’ll see expecting better growth out of the small market as well. So for a small commercial space, so can you maybe talk about the momentum in both? And then maybe what indicators that we should pay attention to heading into rest of the year as well?
Jack Roche, President, CEO, Hanover Insurance: Yes. Listen, I think we admitted in our first quarter call that we were disappointed with how we came out of the block in small commercial. We’ve had tremendous momentum. We’ve got as much submission we’ve had more submission activity than we ever had, more account manager and CSR engagement. And the reality is, is I think we just were probably too ambitious with our pricing for too long, particularly given the margins that we’re generating.
So we have really made some adjustments on the new business pricing. We believe that we can get back on the trajectory intended to be on and that is a very strong business for us. Middle market, while we got out of the gates relatively good in the first quarter, this is still the business where I think the earnings volatility of the industry kind of resides. And even though we play on the lower side of the middle market sector, that’s where the limits are more exaggerated both for property and for liability. So we’re going to be more cautious.
We have aspects of our middle market business that are incredibly profitable and we’re competing quite robustly. But we do have other areas that are maybe still coming into their own in terms of profit margins and we’re being more cautious. Our belief is that heading into 2026, the companies that can prove that they are on the right profitability trajectory will get rewarded with growth. There will definitely be some retrenching heading into the New Year.
Bob, Morgan Stanley Sales Representative, Morgan Stanley: Got it. Maybe if we think about capital allocation, share repurchase, right, you have about $275,000,000 remaining on your share repurchase, capacity as of April. And just going forward, can you maybe help us think about the capital allocation framework? Because you do you are generating a decent amount of cash and you are essentially just curious as how you think about that cash generation abilities going forward and how you’re going to allocate that capital going forward as well?
Jeff Farber, Executive Vice President and CFO, Hanover Insurance: We generate a lot of capital and we’re in a very good capital position. And growth will use less than half of that organic growth, at least for the growth that we expect to have this year, not the growth that we had in the first quarter. So that still leaves a fair bit of capital to be deployed. We’re committed to the ordinary dividend. We’ve increased our ordinary dividend each year for more than twenty years and that’s something I expect we will be committed to again.
And then share buyback at these levels and in this market, I think share buyback will play a meaningful role in the capital management of the firm.
Bob, Morgan Stanley Sales Representative, Morgan Stanley: Got it. That’s helpful. One thing we kind of skipped a little bit earlier was on the program side, right? So obviously, rest of specialty is very strong, but can you maybe give us some updates on the profit improvement plans and then also the work that you’ve done around the program
Jack Roche, President, CEO, Hanover Insurance: Yes, listen, of all, we write program or programmatic business across a broader subset of our company than just our program business unit. And the reason why we’ve done some given some cautionary wording around programs is that has more to do with kind of the macroeconomic situation or the macro environment that we’re seeing in programs in the MGA, MGU space that causes us to pause a little bit. The actual portfolio, so less than half of our programmatic business resides in the program unit. And that business is in probably the best financial shape that it’s been in a decade. So our commentary more is about new business growth and wanting to not over participate in what we think is a challenging time for the primary carrier in the program space.
And so we’ll see how that plays out. Occasionally, we get some nontraditional programs that come to us through our retail agents that don’t fit into that MGA, MGU kind of environment and we are entertaining those. So that’s why the growth that we give in specialty is a little bit of, hey, if we keep programs in the box for a little bit longer until the opportunities are more fruitful, we can focus on what we think is the most profitable part of our specialty portfolio.
Bob, Morgan Stanley Sales Representative, Morgan Stanley: Okay. No, that’s very helpful. Maybe last one from our side is commercial multi peril, right? That’s a large part a large portion of your business. And then as we think about that book’s performance overall, can you maybe give us some commentaries on how should we expect the overall core loss ratios going forward in terms of when will that revert to a more normalized range just going from where the performance is today?
Jeff Farber, Executive Vice President and CFO, Hanover Insurance: Yes. If you look at the last five quarters and I think about it as core commercial, which is small and middle versus just narrowly the CMP unit versus BOP or etcetera, It’s generally been in the 58 and change range for a loss ratio. There was one quarter, maybe second quarter at 24 where it dipped to 55. And of course, the reason we are talking about it is it ballooned to 61 in the first quarter of twenty five on the back of half a dozen or so extra losses, which were large losses from what we normally would get, think fires or $3 plus million each. It happens from time to time.
It is every few years you see one quarter where it happens. No reason to believe that it is part of a pattern. There’s no commonality of those losses. So I have every optimism really about the core commercial business and a return to normalcy on those loss ratios.
Bob, Morgan Stanley Sales Representative, Morgan Stanley: Got it.
Jack Roche, President, CEO, Hanover Insurance: No. And I think if you look at strategically what we’ve been saying over multiple quarters is that we’re growing our small commercial business. We’ve been more conservative on our middle market business, which is where the limits and frankly a lot of the bigger large losses reside. So I don’t think this is a situation where anybody would look at us and say, well, they’ve just been growing the wrong business at the wrong time. We’ve been probably very disciplined in the core space, particularly in middle market.
That’s what gives me confidence that this is an anomalous every few quarters type of situation. And all you have to do is look back to the second half of last year where we were guiding people away from a couple of quarters that were better than our run rate and we didn’t want people to think that that was the go forward run rate going for our business. So we’re really proud of what we’ve done in core commercial, got really great leadership and we’re bullish that we’ll continue to perform.
Bob, Morgan Stanley Sales Representative, Morgan Stanley: All right. Well, really, thank you very much for your time. It sounds like you’re well positioned for profitable growth going forward. So once again, thank you.
Jack Roche, President, CEO, Hanover Insurance: Thank you, Bob. Appreciate it.
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