Cool. We want to give you an update on our half year trading. We've got this hot off the press, following the very recent completion of our half year reserve and exercise. Just if we can get the screen to move on. These are the people on the call. Myself, Adam, Trevor, and Matt. Hannah will coordinate questions. If you have questions as we go through, please feel free to type them in, or there'll be a raise hand function at the end. These slides have been loaded onto our corporate website now, if people need to refer to them after. Today's agenda, we'll go through the highlights. The summary of trading with Adam. We'll give some context, especially market context, which we're presenting these results, and then our outlook going forward. The highlights.
Underlined strong progress against our core strategic initiatives. Taxi and bike are growing well. We're continuing to focus on a forward-looking basis on pricing within our normal target operating combined operating ratio target. However, there are challenges presented by the very rapid increase in inflation to 30-year high. We've tackled that head on, which is really the reason for this presentation this morning. That has an inevitable impact in the current financial year. It also means we have a very, very rapid bounce back to normal levels of performance after this year is behind us. We've got 17% growth in gross written premium coming through in the first half of the year, with significant motorcycle and taxi business.
That's being slightly offset by reduction in motor as we continue to price in a disciplined way against what still seems a fairly undisciplined market. Following our recent pricing adjustments, we'll talk about the fact we've now increased prices by 19% so far this year. Our current policies are being written in line with our normal 80% or 75%-80% combined operating ratio. We've taken the corrective steps to ensure policies we write today are at the correct level in line with our normal performance targets. The adverse movement on the prior year claims is entirely or was entirely driven by inflationary impacts. Inflation has taken off, as people obviously know. That has inevitable knock-on consequences onto our view of the cost of open claims, and we'll talk about that more as we go through this presentation.
The reserve movement is to do with inflation, and we've already corrected for this in our new business prices. The top line is actually relatively healthy as we sit here today, but lower than planned due to persistent low market pricing. Expense ratio is under control and improving with growth. Despite inflation, we've managed to control inflation within our expense ratio. As I mentioned, inevitable consequence in this year from inflation, but a very strong bounce back in 2023. A little bit above our normal target as some of the sort of relative underpricing in the first half of this year washes through and then back to normal in 2024. The loss ratio 71% for half one, above our expectation due to the inflation impacts. That loss ratio will improve in the second half.
Adam will talk more about that in a second. Despite these inflation challenges, we do expect to pay an interim and final dividend for the year. Adam, at that point, I think you're gonna talk about the numbers.
Thanks, Geoff. I'll just very quickly take everyone through the numbers that we're planning to report in our interim accounts. I should note these will remain subject to review until the interim accounts are filed in a couple of weeks' time. The top line, as Geoff said, looking pretty strong, 17.4% ahead of where it was in H1 last year. That clearly is being driven primarily by the motorcycle and taxi business, and I've got a breakdown of how that works through in the next slide. Net earned premium will trail gross written premium as that new premium we're writing starts to earn through.
Loss ratio, which is clearly a focus of this presentation, we'll delve into throughout what factors are driving that up to 71.6%, which clearly is above where we might have expected it to be. What's driving that? Prior year loss ratio is an adverse movement of 4.3%, whereas normally we see runoff, as you can see from the last sort of couple of periods, 4%-5% range. Clearly there is a difference there against what we might normally expect. Currently our loss ratio, 67.3%, is a bit higher as well. What's driving that? In the prior year, the big story there is inflation.
We have taken a look at our prior year claims. They are settling relatively slowly, so there are a fair amount of claims open at the moment. They're all being subject to inflation, and we're reflecting what we think the cost of those claims is now through the actuarial best estimate that we're booking into our reserves, plus the usual 10% risk margin. Nothing has changed in the way that we're thinking about booking reserves. Our methodology is the same, but we just think that those claims are going to be more expensive than we thought last time we reported on them, which is why there's that movement in the prior year.
The impact of inflation comes through on the reinsurance indexation, which means that the attachment points or the amount of the reinsured claims that we hold onto increases by an inflationary amount each year. When inflation is higher, the amount we're holding onto is more. There's a direct impact of inflation on that as well. Prior year, clearly significantly affected by inflation, rapid inflation within this period. On the current year side, there are some things which are driving that up, some expected, some less expected.
The earn through of COVID-19 discounts where we're selling policies more cheaply during the earlier parts of last year with an expectation that there would be lower frequency, which would then build to higher frequency as the policy term went on. This is the sort of higher frequency bit, those would naturally be earning through at a slightly higher loss ratio. Clearly, the rapid levels of inflation that we've seen going through mean that the policy that we wrote, say, this time last year at an expectation of a slightly lower inflation, you know, is actually earning through in an environment where inflation is much higher than we expected. That's going to have a direct impact to the current year losses that we're experiencing as well.
There's always gonna be a bit of volatility in a shorter period in terms of claims experience. Of course, we've got the growth strain coming through on the motorcycle and taxi business as we record the first claims on those books as well. All of those things are coming together to drive this loss ratio, which, as I said, is gonna be delved into further in some of the later slides that we talk through on inflation. That means the combined ratio of 98.9%. Clearly expenses well under control, benefiting a little bit from some growth, but also tight control of where those expenses are at the moment as well.
That clearly feeds through to profit and the drop in profit we're reporting here of GBP 4.3 million is a consequence of that for the first half. Geoff, would you mind moving on to the next slide, please? This is just a breakdown of how our premium looks in regards to the motorcycle and taxi business and also the policy count. What we can see here is motorcycle and taxi are going great guns in terms of the amount of premium that we're writing. Books are building relatively quickly on those. There is some seasonality in motorcycle and taxi, which is why we're retaining our guidance at the GBP 20 million mark for motorcycle, even though we've already written away almost GBP 17 million.
The motor book, which I guess is our sort of legacy core motor policies, has been under pressure in the past few weeks. That really is a result of all the pricing action that we've taken to make sure that we get that combined ratio into just the right place, into the future against the backdrop of what we feel is still very soft market pricing relative to the levels of inflation. That's why we can see a slight drop off in premium on motor. That's it for the sort of financial summary for now. I'll hand back to Geoff to talk through some of these bits.
Thanks, Adam. Let's give some market context and why we're sort of facing into a challenging year. This, I guess, is the crux of the issue. This is underlying CPI inflation. Currently, I think heading for 9%. This is, I believe, the highest inflation in sort of 30 years. In context, highest inflation since I was at school and a lot of people here probably were in short trousers. No, this is unprecedented levels of inflation in, I think, most people's working career. If we look at what that means for claims inflation, our view of claims inflation, you may recall we were talking around 10% last time we spoke. We're now looking at, we believe, a claims inflation of nearer 12%.
I'd like to talk, spend a few minutes talking through some of these factors, and Trevor can maybe fill some detail at the end if there's more questions. These are market impacts, is our belief, rather than specific things to Sabre. We start at the top right-hand corner. Immense pressure on labor rates in body shops. We previously saw about 7% inflation there. We believe with some of the inflation in crash repair especially, and the body shop resource issues, we could be seeing up to 25% inflation on labor rates. The ABP labor rates. ABP is a sort of like a body, a trade body almost, or a trade club for body shop repairers. Their rate tends to get used as a benchmark, not as a contract.
That has increased in the last month from GBP 50 to GBP 62.50 an hour as a benchmark labor rate. That's a startling increase in labor rates. We come down the page to mobility costs. The vehicle repair delays continue, so part supply limitations, labor restrictions, body shop capacity highly limited. We're already seeing a high inflation of 30%. For the prior periods but on mobility, 35% increase on half one last year. Again, market impacts, not specific to Sabre. Injury, I guess, is what drives a lot of the reserve movement we've made today. We are seeing some care costs increasing by up to 30%. They're long-term increases, and we think they'll compound. General damages in claim valuations are reviewed against RPI. Well, let's talk about CPI in this context.
We can see 9%-10% increases coming through on some of those injury factors, further increase as we think over the next 18 months. Used car values, I think most people know, up by 30%. That clearly impacts total loss and theft. Again, absolutely a market impact there. Parts inflation, previously we saw this as a sort of temporary increase to 14%. We're seeing no signs of that tapering off so far. Looking at all parts of the sort of claims cost, it's very hard to see reason for optimism in terms of the severity of claims coming through, and that's what we're facing into and have faced into over the last few weeks. There are other non-claims inflation elements. The MIB Levy, the new call was announced this week, 30% increase on that levy.
The reinsurance rates that we believe we've just done our 2017 renewal and saw a increase of over 15%. We believe that will actually compare fairly favorably to increases that may come through towards the end of the year. We're aware of other insurers who've seen significantly higher increases than that. Why are insurance rates increasing so much? Concerned about the Ogden discount rate due to change in 2024, but that means policies that we're writing today will generate claims that may be paid in 2024. Probably, as importantly, reinsurers are as concerned about the injury cost inflation on their large claims as claims settle over the next two or three years.
In a highly inflationary U.K. environment, with some specific extra drivers on motor claims inflation, we've updated our inflation assumption of 12%, and we've now fully priced for that in our policies looking forward. There is some evidence, in fact, reasonable evidence that claims volumes are lower, the other side of the coin. That will be influenced by the MOJ whiplash reforms. We consider it very optimistic to bake that reduction into total claims costs so far. We think the frequency reduction will be significantly outweighed by cost increases. We're very cautious about the continuing benefits here. I think I'm right in saying 65% of cases are coming through with a non-tariff element on them. That non-tariff element, we don't know what the non-tariff claim value will be until that's been tested by the courts.
Very low settlement rates so far for cases presented through the MOJ. I think I'm right in saying only 9% of claimants are self-represented, with all the rest continuing to be represented by legal companies. Lots of room for those numbers to be uncertain at this point. A bit of market backdrop. EY did what's a pretty well-respected market seminar about a month ago. They have market pricing down. This is based on ABI stats. Down 5% to Q1 2022, the lowest levels since 2015. Pearson Ham did a presentation, I think last week or week before, which you can find on YouTube, talking about the lowest rates for eight years. The EY analysis suggests the market combined ratio of 114% for 2022, and 111% in 2023.
Importantly, 2022 being supported by above average reserve releases and an assumption of 20% premium growth in 2022 and 2023. EY are predicting that to come through mainly in 2023. Pearson Ham Group, listening to them, are a bit more bullish that may come forward into 2022. Overall, if you look through these numbers, we believe EY are calling claims inflation at somewhere over 10% as well. Clearly, the EY external analysis and our own internal data are landing in fairly close proximity. This is a combined ratio bridge to sort of show what's happened during this year. We start at the bottom. As we came into the year, we were thinking fairly confidently that we were writing at around an 80% combined. We'd built in an inflation assumption of 7% and 5.5%.
We had some growth in the motor book coming through as rates turned. Modest reinsurance rate increase. Some reduction in frequency post-COVID, and some benefit from the MOJ reforms. We look what's happened as we've come through this year. Firstly, the reinsurance cost increase that I mentioned. Damage inflation is now exceeding that we assumed when pricing the policies. So claims we're paying today are more expensive than we expected. That is exacerbated by supply chain issues pushing out repair periods. Inflation and injury cost has taken off more than anyone could have predicted. Having done the half year reserve review and washed that through the prior years, that is what gives us our prior year movement, reflecting our current view of inflation across all open and back years.
The motor book has not grown as much as expected because market pricing is still weak, so a bit of strain on the expense ratio compared to our expectations. As Adam mentioned, some of the COVID discounted policies were always gonna be impacting half year. I think we have a thoughtful slot at the top, which basically says, in a highly inflationary environment, are there things that could still impact that are not yet in our numbers? For example, as the cost of living crunch hits, will people be making claims they may otherwise have funded themselves? Could there be more fraudulent claims come through? Our view is it's important to maintain element of caution as we look forward for the guidance for this year, and these ought to price in into our policies.
I guess the key message here is we've already taken the steps needed to fix this challenge. We've taken very assertive, very robust, and very quick actions. Price increase of 19% is, I suspect, significantly above the market, and that is ensuring policies we write today, to repeat myself, are now priced at the right level. We've taken an appropriate reserve position to reflect our current view of inflation. We've got continued focus on development opportunities. We do see scope for similar deals to bike and taxi. We have some conversations underway. One or two may land, others may drift away. But we certainly see opportunity for more of those sort of deals. We're continuing to enhance our pricing function. We're recruiting into Matt's team.
We're looking to roll out some of the machine learning analysis we've been doing over the last couple of years, and just frankly, getting even more granular to pricing sophistication. This image reiterates what we've done on price, and we have accelerated our price increases over the last couple of months as our sort of views of inflation have hardened. On the material growth initiatives, motorcycle and taxi are growing very strongly. We're taking quite significant market share at the same time as implementing significant and correct price increases on those portfolios. The price increases haven't been able to fully protect against the rapid and extreme rise in inflation. There's been a catch-up through this year. We came into the year expecting 7% or 10% inflation for Q1. That's increased again. We've had to chase that inflation up.
We believe we've now caught up with our future view of inflation. We do consider that underpricing must correct. I think all external commentators would agree with us on that. Going forward, we'll continue to balance the loss ratio with growth in policy numbers. Absolutely, our view is that volume is an output, not a target, and we are focused on pricing correctly as we go forward. Very briefly, the summary, we've taken assertive actions following the recent analysis of impacts on claims reserves. We've absolutely priced into the inflationary environment, and we believe we've now taken the actions to correct for this extraordinary, inflationary period we find ourselves in. We expect a very strong bounce back, having taken those actions, towards our near normal performance in 2023.
A little bit of drag just as some of the policies that we wrote earlier in this year earn through. Moving back very close to our normal levels of performance. In 2024, we expect to be back fully in our normal range. Full year loss ratio expected to be in the range of 65%-70%. Full year combined, around mid-90s, having taken these actions. We're retaining our guidance on motorcycle and taxi growth. We anticipate material growth in the motor book in the near, in the medium term. We've positioned ourselves well now that we're sort of fully funded. I don't believe that's the case across the rest of the market necessarily, so we should be able to take growth opportunities as market pricing corrects.
Capital, we retain a very strong capital position, comfortably at the upper end or higher of our capital range. We'll confirm those numbers in a couple of weeks' time in the normal course of events. We do expect to pay an interim and a full-year dividend for 2022, despite these assertive moves that we've made. That, I think, is all we wanted to say. We're now very happy to answer any questions on anything we've said in the presentation. I know people may be typing stuff through or, hands up and we'll sort of load you onto screen.
Yes, Geoff. The first question we have is from Greg Patterson. Greg, I'll just allow you to talk.
Can you hear me, everybody?
We can. Thanks, Greg.
Yeah. Two questions. Just looking at the combined ratio in the first half, 98.9%. If you strip out the prior delta, which is, you know, about 8, 9 percentage points, you get down to about 90%, for sort of the on a normalized basis. You have been guiding previously to effectively just above 80%. There's a 10 percentage points unexplained item in the current year. If you track the story with inflation versus pricing, at most, the delta there was about 4 percentage points. What explains the gap? That's my first question. The second question, your combined ratio guidance for 2023 and 2024 on mid-80s and around 80%.
That is higher than your 70%-80% typical range, and that's in the long term. Am I correct in that guidance is prudence in the sense that you're not including any assumption about the industry cycle, pricing cycle turning?
Yeah, I'll take the second one. Adam, perhaps you can take the first one in a minute. Thanks, Greg. I think we are being pretty prudent on our call on growth. It's outside our control. We've I think once bitten, twice shy on this. You know, we've made comments in the past that we think the market turned, and it's not sustained. I think we won't call that until we see it. There is some reasonably weak evidence over the last month or so that rate is starting to go in. Not from all players. I think some players still have a pretty aggressive growth strategy that will, you know, clearly limit some of the price increase in the short term. So yeah, we haven't, Greg, built in a spectacularly optimistic growth assumption into our plans.
Adam, do you wanna take the first one on?
On the sort of H1 current year loss ratio, there are a few things going on. Firstly, we expected H1 current year to come in worse than H2. That would have happened due to the earning through of COVID discounts into H1 anyway, which would add a little to the expected loss ratio. The proportion of motorcycle business earning through relative to car is higher than we would've expected the last time we got into this, which will, you know, create strain into the first half as well.
Inflation is clearly hitting both those claims that are open and settled in the first year, and a lot of that is damage which is coming through quite quickly. That's impacting the current year as well. You know, there is some volatility in there. Currently a loss ratio of 67%, I suppose, you know, if we were writing at an assumed ultimate loss ratio of 55%, we would probably have to hold the risk margin, et cetera, on that business, so that the current year would look more like 60. That's maybe 7 points over a normal current year. I think those reasons probably explain why we got there in the first half. We would expect that to improve into the second.
Could you just your point about a strain associated with taxi and bike. Can you hear me?
I can, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. I thought that was a prior year development component. Just, can you just explain what you mean by bike is creating strain in the current year?
I can. There's two things going on there. One is that bike is written on purpose at a higher loss ratio than car. That's just our assessment of how the market works. This is to maximize our profit in that space. So we've always guided to higher loss ratios on bike anyway. Also, you know, because it's new, we're finding our way through, so we're booking loss ratios and experiencing claims and learning how they settle as we go. There's no prior year development effectively on bike and taxi at the moment 'cause they've primarily been earning through into this year, and that's where the exposure is.
Those things mean that the overall loss ratio we're recording on bike is high, and that's gonna bring up the loss ratio for the group certainly in the short term.
Is it the same for taxi?
Yeah. Taxi is the same, Greg. I mean, the other bit on bike is that we're currently in peak season for claims. Everyone has the bikes out the garage and is riding around. Peak season for claims, we're certainly not at the peak of our own premium pattern for that yet. As we go through the year, we'd expect the premium to grow significantly and the claims to drop quite significantly. We have a sort of short term impact as well that we fully expect.
Thank you.
Thanks, mate.
Next question is from Thomas Bateman. Thomas, you can speak.
Hi. Good morning, everyone. Hi. Can you hear me?
We can.
Hi there. I guess one thing that confuses me a little bit is you're saying inflation is around 12% now, but everything on your slide is something in the region of 20%-30%. In terms of, you know, why is everything up, but you're still seeing inflation at only 12%. The second question is, I guess inflation is higher than your expectations, so 12% versus 8%.
Yeah.
What's gone wrong or what's changed so much since your trading update, which was only six weeks ago?
Yeah. If I take the second one, and perhaps, Trevor, you might wanna comment on some of the claims drivers that you're seeing. I guess what's changed since the last update, Tom, is having done the half year reserve review and fully washed the inflationary impacts we see through the prior year, the reserves. Matt, anything you wanna sort of say around that?
No, I think you've got it on there. It's since the trade update, we've done the half year reserving, so we've been able to cement our position on prior movements.
Yeah. That's the key thing that's changed, Tom. I guess we've got further evidence of the inflation elements we see coming through here and now. Trevor, do you wanna talk about some of the things you're seeing?
Yeah. I guess what we've put in that slide is elements that make up the components to a claim, but not all of the elements. Those particular points are the ones which are moving, but there are aspects to a claim that aren't moving. For example, legal costs aren't moving up in the same way. Some of those are predictions in terms of where future costs are going. If we look at those ABP rates, those have only recently been announced, so they're unlikely to impact on the outstanding claims. There's lots of moving parts in there. It would be wrong to aggregate up all of those individual components to arrive at an inflation number.
That overall inflation really is a blend of all of the elements in that claim make up across first party, third party property, and third party injury.
Gotcha.
Thank you. Maybe just one final question. I guess I always view you guys as on the more conservative side. What's the risk of peers, maybe I'm not thinking about the larger peers, but small peers, having similar or potentially much worse results through the course of this year.
I obviously am not gonna comment on other people's results. I think what I can say is that any industry you go to, the number one topic of conversation is claims inflation. I think, Trevor, you see that in the sort of claims roundtables and functions you go to as well.
I think a number of events that I've been to have held anonymous sort of views in terms of where claims leaders then see inflation going. The majority see it at 10+. One would hope that they're taking those messages back into their businesses and they're starting to reflect them. I guess, Thomas, the overall message is what are EY saying? If we're to the left-hand side of sort of EY's predictions, then inevitably there are gonna be people to the right-hand side.
Brilliant. Thank you very much.
Yeah. Okay. Thanks, Tom.
We have another question. Unfortunately, I can't see the name, but if you've got your hand up and you end in Grove Six, you can speak.
Hi.
Hey there.
Sorry. It's Will Hardcastle from UBS. Thanks very much. I guess thanks very much for the clarity from this call. I've got to say, it makes an awful lot of sense. Just trying to split the 10 percentage points or so broadly of the reserve uplift between BI and damage. Is that almost we can just literally take that slide up from where you've got sort of 5 points and 3.5 points, that sort of breakup between BI and parts? And then could you also help us with some more clarity on the indexation and how that works, for example? Perhaps just understand also whether the higher reinsurance spend is all on excess of loss or is it also proportional?
No, sure.
The final one, sorry. Just it was really helpful where you said, you know, it was about, you know, you've done your H1 reserve review. That's what's led to this. Makes sense as well. Just trying to understand how proactive auditors are in this respect. You know, could you have probably got away with kicking the can down the road? Not that you'd want to, you wanna be upfront and clear, but is that possible or is this our auditors, you know, drawing a pretty firm hand at this point in time? Thank you.
Okay, thanks. I'll take those in reverse order. Trevor, you can talk about indexation when we get there. You're the actual resident expert. Adam, you can take the sort of breakdown of reserve, if that's okay. I think we should say these are pre-audited. These are not. This is not a move that's been forced on us by auditors. This is a move that we think, as a management team, is the right thing to do given the inflation environment we're facing into. We've discussed with other firms, not our own auditors to see what their views are on inflation. I don't think auditors or audit companies have any different view on some of the pressures that are coming through than we do.
For clarity, this is our management move, not a move that's been forced on us by the audit teams. On the insurance, that is entirely Excess of Loss. We don't have any other reinsurance arrangements. Our belief is that reinsurers' views have hardened very substantially during the first half year. Reinsurers' view on inflation is very similar to ours, as in cost of the care inflation. We're aware that other people who renew policies probably got similar increases around the 16, 17 renewals. Some of those are likely to hit people who renew at the end of the year, I would say. Trevor, maybe that's the point to hand to you on indexation.
Yes. The indexation is really, it's relatively straightforward insofar as the contract starts with an attachment point of GBP 1 million. Any claims and costs on an individual claim excess of GBP 1 million, we recover from our reinsurer or reinsurers. But over time, that indexation point is adjusted against an inflation measure. As inflation comes through, that reinsurance attachment point moves up. A claim that may be three, four years old, instead of having an attachment point of GBP 1 million, may have an attachment point of 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, et cetera. That then applies across all outstanding claims. It effectively reduces the recoverable under the contract.
Trevor, we believe that's market standard.
My understanding is that some Excess of Loss contracts. I'm not familiar with any Excess of Loss contracts that wouldn't have that indexation clause in there.
Yeah. That's a number that is presented to us on a sort of quarterly basis, effectively, isn't it?
Oh, yeah. We will review our positions quarterly.
Yeah. Adam, the first question.
Yeah. Will was really asking whether our combined ratio bridge slide sort of gave him a steer as to how much the prior year reserves moved, you know, as a result of BI versus, sort of other parts of inflation. I guess two things to know on that slide. One is the numbers are fairly indicative. It's quite hard to pull those together with any great degree of detail. So I think it's sort of orders of magnitude rather than, you know, pinning a precise number on it. The slide also aggregates the prior year and current year impacts. We're saying inflation has had this sort of order of impact on our expected combined ratio for the year, but we haven't really broken it down between prior year and current year in that sense.
Sure. Thanks, Adam. Thanks, Will.
Thank you.
All right. Any other questions?
Yeah, we've got another one from Alex Evans from Credit Suisse.
Yeah. One minute, Alex. Hiya.
Hi, Geoff. Hi, Adam. Just one quick one, around what you're saying about the 19% price increases. I was interested about sort of the COVID benefits and your view on frequency and timing of that. Is that basically 19% a year-on-year comparison, and it sort of offsets the frequency benefits you had in the last year? Or do we need to add the frequency benefits on top and therefore, you know, you're basically above 19%, if that makes sense?
I think it does. Matt, do you wanna sort of just say when we say 19%, how we define that?
Yeah. We're talking about 19% year to date, that's since January. The prices are currently 19% higher than they were in December. This is kind of post removing our expected COVID-19 benefits. There shouldn't be any frequency benefits, which means offset against that 19% increase.
Yeah. I guess, Matt, given that we're increasing prices through the back end of last year, a year-on-year increase for the individual policy will be somewhat.
Yes
More-
Yeah
than 19%.
We removed all the COVID benefits in the middle of last year. We believe we are now at 19% purely on the risk rate and in the absence of COVID.
Yeah.
Thanks.
Did that answer the question, Alex?
Yeah, it was very helpful. Thanks.
Okay, thanks. Any other questions, Hannah?
Yeah, there's one in the Q&A if you wanna have a look. Greg just wanna ask another question.
Okay, let's go to Greg first, if that's okay?
Yeah. Just two quick questions. One is, you've been talking about inflation and all the factors you put into pricing, but you haven't spoke about where and you've said you price within the 70%-80% combined ratio range. I was just wondering, at this moment, am I correct that you're pricing at the top of that range, adjusted for inflation and all that? That's question one. The second one is the Solvency II ratio. The release said comfortably above 140-160. Geoff, you said at the top of the range. I wonder if you could just be a little bit more accurate in terms of your Solvency II number for the half year and just explain whether that's pre or post-dividend.
Yeah, sure. You said that
Thank you.
Any other questions in person, Hannah? If not, I can see a couple.
Yeah. No, no further questions.
No? Okay. Trevor, do you mind taking this first one, which is, can you explain the drivers for the 30% increase in care costs? That seems to be much higher than underlying inflation.
Yep. That's relatively straightforward. We're seeing this as the examples on claims that are coming through today. It's a basic issue that there are not carers there to provide the needs of the seriously injured claimants that need care. It's an exit of effectively resource from that market, which is driving up labor rates. We're seeing sort of hotspots around labor rates in specific sectors, so where there are shortfalls of skills, we've also seen it in body shops. There are a number of other sort of areas, but these are absolute examples of what we are seeing today.
Okay. Trevor, there's a follow-up, actually, just come through on the chat, which is the indexation clause in reinsurance linked to the overall sort of general inflation index or the care worker wage inflation?
It's linked to wage inflation. There are some specific indexes. It's not care worker wage inflation. Care worker wage inflation is used as an index in periodical payments, but not in the reinsurance contracts.
Good. The final question I have on the chat is you mentioned some insurers are still being quite competitive and aggressive on pricing. Could you provide color on which insurers are pushing rates down and which insurers do you see acting sensibly? Not a chance I'm gonna answer that. I wanna be able to walk out the building in one piece later. I suppose what I would say is if you take our comments that with CPI at 9% and additional pressures in the car insurance motor market, to my mind, anyone who's calling a very low claims inflation number, I don't fully understand. I'm sure there'll be different views on where that inflation number is over the next few weeks and months, but I struggle to see why it's a low number at the moment.
That's about as much as I can say on that one. I guess in closing, what I would say is, you know, clearly we don't like taking short-term impacts. Our approach is we'll always do the right thing to protect the medium and longer term health of the business. We view this very much as a speed bump. It's a speed bump we think we've dealt with appropriately. We've moved the reserves appropriately. We're now pricing appropriately. We wanna put this behind us. Actually, the action's been taken in half one. Half two will start to improve, and then we'll see a very rapid rebound as we go to 2023 and 2024. These slides are now on the website, I believe. I'm happy to answer any other questions afterwards.
I guess just thank you for your time, and thank you for coming on at late notice. Thanks so much.