Allstate Corp at Goldman Sachs U.S. Financial Services Conference Transcript

The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.

Question: Robert Cox - Goldman Sachs & Company, Inc. - Analyst : Awesome. All right. Appreciate the comprehensive overview there, Tom, and thanks for being here with us. So I'll start where you started on auto insurance. So the margins have improved meaningfully towards target levels. Can you give us a sense of what that means for the pricing strategy going forward? And just how much can margins improve back towards underwriting margins improve back towards prepandemic levels in sort of a steady state?

Question: Robert Cox - Goldman Sachs & Company, Inc. - Analyst : Okay. Got it. And then you just talked about a lot of the different pieces here, but maybe slightly more quantitatively, like what are you thinking about in terms of frequency and severity as we head into 2025?

Question: Robert Cox - Goldman Sachs & Company, Inc. - Analyst : Okay. Sticking with the margin, as part of transformative growth, you've decreased the underlying expense ratio meaningfully. Where does this expense efficiency come from? And can you give us a sense if that's all being used towards increasing advertising or if some of that -- some of those savings are being passed along to the customer?

Question: Robert Cox - Goldman Sachs & Company, Inc. - Analyst : Okay. And then switching to growth. So Allstate is growing new apps in each channel. How should we think about the contribution from the different distribution channels to PIF growth? And can you give us a sense of where you feel you might have an edge or where Allstate is placing greater value on growth?

Question: Robert Cox - Goldman Sachs & Company, Inc. - Analyst : Okay. And you talked about one large competitor, State Farm before. When you think about large competitors like GEICO, Progressive, State Farm, does Allstate need to take share from those large competitors in order to achieve these growth objectives? Or can you take share solely from smaller players in the market?

Question: Robert Cox - Goldman Sachs & Company, Inc. - Analyst : Got it. And I just wanted to double-click on something you just said related to homeowners. It seems like one of the key differentiators of Allstate's competitiveness right now in the market is that you might be willing to grow in homeowners in areas where others are pulling back, how meaningful can that be for auto policy growth? And why are you comfortable growing in those areas?

Question: Robert Cox - Goldman Sachs & Company, Inc. - Analyst : Okay. And you just touched on some of the bigger states there. I think you've talked about 75% to 85% -- or 75% to 80% of the premium volume in auto insurance now open for business. Can you talk about the rate impacts and your expectations for the market conditions in some of those bigger states that have been a little bit more difficult to kind of reach that pricing threshold?

Question: Robert Cox - Goldman Sachs & Company, Inc. - Analyst : Okay. And then a broad characterization on the competition right now, do you feel like the competition in today's market is tougher than it was, say, pre-pandemic with more carriers reaching pricing adequacy or is this sort of normal course and it's always pretty competitive market to operate in?

Question: Robert Cox - Goldman Sachs & Company, Inc. - Analyst : Okay. And retention, a material driver of the growth formula obviously, and I was hoping you could talk a little bit about some of the things Allstate is doing to proactively improve the retention profile and just your expectations on the retention improvement over time? REFINITIV STREETEVENTS | www.refinitiv.com | Contact Us consent of Refinitiv. 'Refinitiv' and the Refinitiv logo are registered trademarks of Refinitiv and its affiliated companies. DECEMBER 10, 2024 / 1:40PM, ALL.N - Allstate Corp at Goldman Sachs U.S. Financial Services Conference

Question: Robert Cox - Goldman Sachs & Company, Inc. - Analyst : Got it. Yes, I want to ask on capital deployment. Also, PIF growth is going to require some more capital to be set aside maybe more so than Allstate has needed in the past. How do you anticipate that dynamic impacting the pace of share repurchases and other avenues?

Question: Robert Cox - Goldman Sachs & Company, Inc. - Analyst : Awesome. Well, I think we'll leave it at that. We're out of time. So thanks for the -- (multiple speakers)