The Hartford Insurance Group, Inc. KBW Insurance Conference 2026
Review the key takeaways and the transcript of this earnings call.
Transcript
Preview the first fifteen paragraphs, organized by speaker.
Okay, good morning. We are going to do our best to stay on schedule today. I am very excited to kick off day two of the conference with Beth Bombara, CFO of The Hartford. Thank you very much for joining us. Usually start off asking if there are opening comments or anything that you wanted to hit on before we get started.
Yeah. Well, thank you, first of all, love being here. Very happy to be here today. I will just make a few comments which are very consistent with comments that Chris and I have made in the past, which is we feel really good about how The Hartford is performing, how we started the year. The first half of the year, I think our results speak for themselves. Very strong. We continue to focus on delivering high ROE for our shareholders, deploying our excess capital, and when we look at all of our businesses, really happy with how each one is performing and the outlook going forward. Again, happy to be here.
Okay, fantastic. I am going to start maybe counterintuitively on the employee benefits side rather than P&C, just because you have got this recent acquisition.
coming from Equitable. Two questions. One, I was hoping you could elaborate on the technology, because in the press release you called that out. What does that provide? Then the second, maybe more mundane part of the question, legacy Hartford's employee benefits results seem to have been better than Equitable. What is the pathway to getting them to Hartford-level returns?
Yeah. Well, great question. First of all, we are very excited about this acquisition, and excited about the people that will be coming with it. As you point out, the technology is something that we found very intriguing. We have talked before that when we look at our employee benefits business, obviously a very strong national accounts player. But getting into the under 500 lives and below has been an area of focus for us, and technology is a really important part of that. The technology platform that comes with this acquisition, we feel really will position us well in that marketplace. I would have you think about the technology as sort of an underwriting platform.
Okay. It is from quote, to bind, to installing the cases and so forth, access from a digital perspective for employers and employees, being able to access the information.
It is just really is a full suite, and as I said, to really compete in that part of the marketplace, we felt that that technology was really important. Also comes with a dental and vision product set, which again, when you get into the lower part of the market and employee benefits, those product lines are very important. So, team is really excited about it, and as I said, we have talked about this being an area of focus, so it really was a way for us to accelerate that strategic focus that we have.
As far as overall profitability, obviously bringing it into our ecosystem, applying our claims tools, our efficiency initiatives that we have, all of that will put us in a place to bring the profitability of that business up over time. So the team is really excited about it, and as I said, really excited about the employees that will be joining us as well.
Okay, fantastic. You mentioned some of the ancillary products that they have. Can you talk a little bit about the cross-sell prospects, whether with the current employee benefits group or maybe even on the P&C side, how those new product sets can be disseminated more broadly?
Yeah. As it relates to the acquisition itself, cross-sell was not a big part of the equation as we thought about it. More broadly, as we think about going into the smaller end of the employee benefits market, coupled with obviously our strong presence in small business on the P&C side, we see some natural synergies there over time. Nothing immediate, but over time, when you think about us competing for small business on the P&C side and being able to offer this product set on the employee benefit side, we would see some benefits to that over time.
Okay. Do you have a sense in terms of client overlap with the current small business on the P&C side?
We do not. Until we close, as you know, a lot of times you do not get that level of information. Once we close, obviously we will have a better insight into that. But as we think about the growth potential over time, we would see that there should be some overlap there.
Okay, fantastic. This question is going to come up later also, but in terms of employee benefits, how do you think about scale? Obviously, this helps a little bit and giving you another customer segment to target. But fundamentally, where are you relative to competitors in terms of adequate scale and what is next?
Yeah. Well, if you step back and you look at our employee benefits business and where we rank overall.
From a fully insured disability, paid family leave perspective, we are number one. All-in, when you add in all product sets, we are number three. We definitely have scale in employee benefits. As I said, our market set tends to skew to national accounts, and this opportunity and the, what we call priority business, which would be less than 500 lives, is definitely an area of focus for us. We feel very good about the scale that we have. It has allowed us to, I think, develop very strong capabilities across the board. It has allowed us to invest in the platforms. Which again, as we have talked about before, is really important, especially in today's world as technology becomes more and more important. Again, overall, feel very good about our ability to compete in this space, and we see ourselves as a market leader.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Continue the full translated transcript in StockNow.
Access every statement, the English original, and speaker-by-speaker history with StockNow Pro.
View the full transcript with ProCall participants
1 people spoke on this call — only 1 are shown here.
PARTICIPANT LIST
View participant details in StockNow.
Log in to see executives and analysts, their roles, and complete speaking history.
Log in to view all participantsKeep exploring