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Earnings Call: Q4 2022

Feb 2, 2023

Operator

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Kemper's fourth quarter 2022 earnings conference call. My name is Jason, I'll be your coordinator today. At this time, all participants are in listen mode only. Later, we will conduct a Q&A session. Instructions will follow at that time. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded for replay purposes. I would now like to introduce your host for today's conference call, Karen Guerra, Kemper's Vice President of Investor Relations. Ms. Guerra, you may begin.

Karen Guerra
VP of Investor Relations, Kemper

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Kemper's discussion of our fourth quarter 2022 results. This afternoon, you'll hear from Joe Lacher, Kemper's President, Chief Executive Officer, and Chairman; Jim McKinney, Kemper's Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; Matt Hunton, Kemper's Executive Vice President and President of Kemper Auto; Duane Sanders, Kemper's Executive Vice President and the Property and Casualty Division President; and Tim Stonehocker, Kemper's Executive Vice President and President of Kemper Life. We'll make a few opening remarks to provide context around our fourth quarter results, followed by a Q&A session. During the interactive portion of our call, our presenters will be joined by John Bisceglie, Kemper's Executive Vice President and Chief Investment Officer. After the market closed today, we issued our earnings release and published our earnings presentation and financial supplement.

We intend to file our Form 10-K with the SEC within the next week. Our discussion today may contain forward-looking statements with the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements include, but are not limited to, the company's outlook and its future results of operations and financial conditions. Our actual future results and financial conditions may differ materially from these statements. These statements may also be impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. For information on additional risks that may impact these forward-looking statements, please refer to our 2021 Form 10-K as well as our fourth quarter earnings release. This afternoon's discussion also includes non-GAAP financial measures that we believe are meaningful to investors.

In our financial supplement, earnings presentation, and earnings release, we've defined and reconciled all the non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP where required in accordance with the SEC rules. You can find each of these documents on the investor section of our website, kemper.com. All comparative references will be to the corresponding 2021 period unless otherwise stated. I will now turn the call over to Joe.

Joe Lacher
President, CEO, and Chairman, Kemper

Thank you, Karen. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining us today and welcome to our fourth quarter conference call. I want to start by saying that I'm optimistic about Kemper's future. The quarter included improving underlying profitability masked by a few infrequent items impacting financial results. Our top priority remains returning the company to target profitability. Further, our initiatives to enable greater capital return while reducing volatility in earnings and cash flow are well underway. We're observing continuous improvement in the underlying profitability of our core businesses. Our recent strategic actions are already delivering results. I'm bullish about achieving Adjusted Consolidated Net Operating Income during the first half of 2023 and producing underwriting profits during the second half of the year. The strength of Kemper's differentiated capabilities, market focus, and enhancement initiatives positions the company to provide attractive near and long-term returns to shareholders.

In the fourth quarter, we made progress on each of our initiatives. Highlights include the following: rate taking activities exceeded the third quarter forecast, rate approval for California specialty personal auto, cost structure enhancements aligned with third quarter commitments, continued strong profitable commercial vehicle growth, and improved life profitability. The current operating environment remains dynamic. This requires us to be agile, use quality and timely information, and have a team that can quickly ingest, adapt, and respond to these changes. We have the right team in place to navigate through this period and capture the opportunities that will emerge on the backside. As a reminder, we'll be holding an investor day in New York on Thursday, March 9th. This will be a great platform to discuss Kemper's journey to date and the road ahead.

The event will include presentations from myself and Jim, as well as Matt Hunton, who leads our specialty auto franchise, and Tim Stonehocker, who's responsible for our life business. As a result, Matt and Tim are joining our usual speakers today. I'll now turn the call over to Jim to discuss additional details on our operating results and an update on our strategic initiatives.

James McKinney
EVP and CFO, Kemper

Thank you, Joe. I will begin on pages 4 and 5 with our consolidated financial results. For the quarter, we generated a net loss of $0.87 per diluted share and an Adjusted Consolidated Net Operating Loss of $0.41 per diluted share. This included unfavorable prior year reserve development of $8 million and $9 million of catastrophe losses in the quarter. The ongoing environmental challenges facing the P&C and life insurance industries continue to impact Kemper's financial results. Significant factors include severity trend inflation, seasonality, modest adverse development, and while moderating elevated mortality. Our energy and efforts remain concentrated on restoring the business to profitability and the inputs that will enable us to achieve our target returns. These include filing for additional rate, implementing further underwriting actions, and reducing expenses.

The combination of profit actions earning in at an accelerated pace, improvements in expense run rates, and reduced mortality in our life business will lead to continued improvement in our financial results. Turning to slide 6. To enable greater insight into our underlying results, we have included an underlying reported to normalized combined ratio walk. It details the biggest items impacting our P&C ratios. This includes seasonality and modest reserve development. Normalizing for these items, we saw approximately 1 point of sequential improvement in specialties underlying combined ratio and approximately 3.5 points of improvement in preferred P&C. Moving to page seven. This quarter, we had modest prior year and intra-year development. It was driven by elongated settlement timelines for third-party claims, additional defense costs driven by an increase in litigated PIP claims, and a decline in salvage values relative to used car prices.

Consistent with our reserving philosophy, we react quickly and provide operating transparency into trend changes. Despite the challenges today's environment creates, we are able to accomplish this due to the quality and speed with which we gather and act upon information. This allows us to maintain appropriate reserves. Recall that for the year, we had favorable prior year development of approximately $17.4 million. Moving to page eight. Last quarter, we announced several operating model enhancements to improve productivity and growth, including expense reductions. These initiatives are on track, and we expect to deliver on each of our commitments. During our fourth quarter, we secured approximately $61 million in run rate savings. This included 0.6 points or $34 million improvement in our LAE ratio, approximately $18 million in enterprise expense reductions, and $9 million in savings from real estate optimization. Turning to page nine.

We highlight the strength of our balance sheet. We have appropriately capitalized insurance businesses and a healthy liquidity balance of $1.3 billion. Further, we continue to have the capital needed to navigate this environment and appropriately invest in the advancement of core capabilities. In addition, as previously disclosed, we are committed to reducing debt outstanding by $150 million and bringing our debt-to-capital ratio back to our long-term target of 17%-22%. Moving to page 10. Net Investment Income for the quarter was $106 million. New investment yields are up 250 - 300 basis points over the prior year, leading to a pre-tax equivalent annualized book yield of 4.6%.

We estimate $275 million-$325 million of our fixed income portfolio will be subject to reinvestment in 2023. This will provide incremental improvements to future investment income. On page 11, we provide an update on our strategic initiatives. During the quarter, we submitted our initial filings with the Illinois Department of Insurance to establish a reciprocal exchange. We also formed Kemper Management LLC to serve as the reciprocal's attorney-in-fact. The project is on track, and we expect to write premium in the structure during the third quarter of 2023. Additionally, we completed the sale of Reserve National Insurance Company and its subsidiaries, otherwise known as Kemper Health, to Medical Mutual of Ohio on December 1st.

Finally, as indicated on our third quarter call, we initiated a strategic review of Kemper Personal Insurance, our preferred home and auto business. We continue to explore options and will share additional details when available. I will now turn the call over to Matt to discuss the specialty P&C business.

Matthew Hunton
EVP and President, Kemper Auto

Thank you, Jim, and good afternoon, everyone. Moving to page 12 and our specialty P&C business. Aligned with Joe's earlier comments, we are laser-focused on restoring the business to target profitability. Our actions are outpacing loss cost trends and underlying profitability is improving. As noted on page six, during the quarter, the specialty auto book reflected a sequential normalized underlying combined ratio improvement of approximately 1 point, driven by the realization of earned rate exceeding loss trends. Let me comment on the two components of specialty auto business. Since the third quarter of 2021, on a weighted average basis across our entire personal auto book, we have filed for approximately 43 points of rate. Through the fourth quarter, 21 points have been approved and are effective in the market, with 8 points of that having been earned.

As we move forward, we will continue to file rate aligned to loss cost trends. Shifting to commercial vehicle, the business continues to perform well. For the year, the underlying combined ratio was 93.8. Year-over-year net written premiums grew 33%, and policies in force grew 17%. To reaffirm, the segment is expected to see additional improvements in the first quarter and deliver underwriting profits in the second half of 2023. I will now turn the call over to Duane.

Duane Sanders
EVP and President of Property and Casualty Division, Kemper

Thank you, Matt. Now we'll turn to page 13. Similarly to the specialty auto business, the Preferred segment is focused on restoring profitability. As noted on page six, Preferred this quarter was impacted by a few unusual items. This includes seasonality and modest prior quarter reserve development. On a normalized basis, the underlying combined ratio improved by approximately 3.5 points. As we look forward for the next couple of quarters, we expect the rate and non-rate actions we have taken and will continue to take to keep pace with trend, and we will deliver profit improvement in the second half of the year. I will now turn the call over to Tim to cover the Life business.

Tim Stonehocker
EVP and President, Kemper Life

Thank you, Duane. Turning to our life and health business on page 14. Despite higher levels of inflation impacting our market segment, the business continues to see strong sales demand and good persistency. New business sales are aligned with pre-pandemic levels and profitability continues to improve with pandemic-related headwinds subsiding.

Excess mortality has declined from the last three quarters, and we are nearing pre-pandemic mortality levels and expect continued improvements. The business continues to benefit from new investment yields at or above our pricing assumptions. The combination of these items will lead to additional improvements in our financial results. I'll now turn the call over to Joe.

Joe Lacher
President, CEO, and Chairman, Kemper

Thanks, Tim. Turning to page 15. In summary, I continue to be optimistic about our prospects. You should leave this call with a strong understanding of the following. First, the financial benefits of our initiatives will earn into the book on an accelerated basis. We expect to be profitable in the first half of the year and make an underwriting profit during the second half.

Second, the inputs that drive profitability continue to trend positively, including rate and excessive loss trends, improving mortality, and interest rates above pricing assumptions. Third, restructuring and integration efforts are on track to produce targeted expense savings. Lastly, our reciprocal in Bermuda capital initiatives provide short and long-term opportunities to further optimize capital and reduce risk. We are confident in the actions we have taken in response to increased loss costs seen over the last 18 months. We are trending in the right direction.

Enhancements in our operating model will further advance profitability gains. Finally, I want to thank our entire Kemper team for their collective effort and dedication. With that, operator, we can now take questions.

Operator

If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If for any reason you'd like to remove that question, please press star followed by two. To ask a question, it is star one. Our first question is from Greg Peters with Raymond James. Your line is now open.

Greg Peters
Managing Director, Raymond James

Well, good afternoon, everyone. To start off with, Joe, thanks for the guidance that you've provided regarding expectations for operating income in the first half of 2023 and underwriting profitability in the second half of 2023. I'm wondering how the rate actions that we're seeing that you filed for the first quarter of 2023, how those come into play and intersect with the guidance that you've provided. Or is the guidance you've provided really a reflection of the previous rate action you've taken?

Joe Lacher
President, CEO, and Chairman, Kemper

Greg, thanks for the comments. The bulk of it is gonna be driven by, and particularly the first half of the year, is gonna be driven all by actions that are already taken. If we file for something in the first quarter, the likelihood of it being approved and effective and then working into the written rate and the earned rate, it will have a de minimis impact on the first half of the year. It could, if it were approved early enough, in the year, start to be written in and have some impact on the back half of the year. Those could affect it.

You should assume, though, that our statement that we're expecting to make profits in the first half and an underwriting profit during the second half to be regardless of whether or not we get an approval on the first quarter numbers.

Greg Peters
Managing Director, Raymond James

Okay. That's appropriate. Can you pivot and maybe this is a good opportunity for Matt to chime in on and Duane, but it seemed like you're calling out Florida PIP again, and then I look at the policy count growth and the decline. Can you give us a sense of where is this across the network, or is this regionally specific or some color around where the problems, where the real hotspots are at this moment in time?

Joe Lacher
President, CEO, and Chairman, Kemper

Sure, Greg, and I'm gonna start with a quick comment, then I'm gonna actually ask Jim too, because I would tell you this is a function maybe a little less operational and a little more of how it's working through some of the reserving numbers. Maybe Jim, you offer some comment since these guys want to add.

James McKinney
EVP and CFO, Kemper

Yeah. Greg, and thank you, Joe. I think the big element that what we see kind of in this quarter, and again, maybe it's some of the changes in the assignment of benefits or other elements, is we've seen an additional amount of litigation activity associated with PIP claims, obviously in Florida. That change caused us to take, you know, revisit a little bit when we look back across this year and in prior years and then going forward, what we think that litigation rate's gonna be. We don't importantly see a difference in terms of what we're seeing from a severity side that's notable. This is purely about the defense costs, and making sure that we've got the right dollar amounts that are associated with that here, kind of given again, that increased frequency with which that's occurring.

Again, I'm not 100% sure I can tell you kind of some of these changes in that, kind of more revealed here. Maybe it's a little bit related to, you know, some of the, again, the property changes in that and where folks can go. Overall, we think we took care of it here this quarter and nothing here really to note more than that.

Duane Sanders
EVP and President of Property and Casualty Division, Kemper

This is Dwayne. Only one thought beyond that. I think it's important to recognize that in that space, from a litigation perspective, not all litigation is created equal. A lot of times there's, you know, what I would prefer or call frivolous or meritless type litigation, but you still have an obligation to defend. To Jim's point, you probably don't see a lot on the, on the, you know, the severity piece, and it's more on the defense side. We're just truing that up, making sure that we're in position to handle those as they come through.

Greg Peters
Managing Director, Raymond James

Got it. thanks for that detail. Last question, just is gonna pivot to the catastrophe reinsurance renewals, it's obviously pretty topical in the industry. Maybe you could, y ou know, I was looking at the slide 19, where you talk about, your program. It doesn't look like your retention on cat XOL changed, but you did drop the ag program. Maybe you can just give us some color on what's going on there?

James McKinney
EVP and CFO, Kemper

Yeah. No. Thanks, Greg. Jim again. Big picture-wise, obviously, I think everyone's aware of kind of the trends in the reinsurance market, obviously with inflation and other elements and some of the uncertainties that have gone on there. Over the last couple of years, we have been close to essentially where we were break even, you know, from a crossover perspective from a pricing on the catastrophe aggregate. Again, we haven't had a claim or used anything since, like, 2018. When you think about that relative to kind of the increased pricing that was out there today, it just no longer penciled, both with the shrinking book, and that we have in the property or the diversification that we've added with inside that book at this stage, from an economic perspective just to maintain it.

Again, it's kind of the net historical value to us was a couple million dollars. Again, once you included kind of capital considerations of this, it would've been $3 million, $4 million if you kind of think about it the other way. Not a big element in terms of the total change to us. We, you know, our frameworks in that have us make sure that we're always solving for what we think is the best answer, for our shareholders and our stakeholders. With the changes that are inside the market, we updated kind of our program thoughts accordingly.

Greg Peters
Managing Director, Raymond James

Got it. Makes sense. Thanks for the answers.

Operator

Our next question is from Brian Meredith, UBS. Your line is now open.

Brian Meredith
Managing Director, UBS

Yeah. Thanks. A couple of them for you here. Just quick clarification. When you say profitability in Specialty P&C, do you mean Specialty Commercial and Specialty Personal will both be profitable underwriting-wise in the second half of the year or just in total?

James McKinney
EVP and CFO, Kemper

Yeah. In those comments, Brian, we're referencing the segment, you know.

Brian Meredith
Managing Director, UBS

Gotcha

James McKinney
EVP and CFO, Kemper

in total.

Brian Meredith
Managing Director, UBS

Yep. Gotcha. 'Cause Specialty Commercial's already profitable, so I gotcha. Okay.

James McKinney
EVP and CFO, Kemper

Correct.

Brian Meredith
Managing Director, UBS

The second question on that Gotcha. On that, I'm just curious, what is your kind of loss trend assumption in making that type of a statement? Are you assuming that we're gonna continue at these, you know, double-digit levels that we're seeing right now? Are you assuming it goes down to single digits? What's your assumption?

James McKinney
EVP and CFO, Kemper

We don't, you know, disclose our assumptions on that standpoint other than what we can give you is what we have been seeing more recently is something that's much more comparable to kind of some of the historical norms. There's still some inflation inside there. We see a higher level. You might think about low double digits on some of the things that we're seeing from a commercial perspective. Auto, you may be running more in that kind of, you know, 5%, 6% kind of area. Any way that you look at this does take into account what we think is the mix component that would be there, both from a state perspective, a coverage perspective, and other. What we're trying to give you is kind of the net answer. It includes what the earned rate and other elements are gonna come in.

If you think about kind of the framework that we outlined before, where we talked about jumping off of kind of that normalized underlying, think about sequential improvement as it relates to the, basically the additional earned rate coming in and underwriting actions, you know, offsetting effectively some of the trend.

What I would suggest is maybe you're adding, at this point in time, you know, a point and a half inside there for trend, just because some of the underwriting actions on a sequential basis aren't gonna continue to materially increase from that perspective. They won't fully offset trend. If I'm giving you any advice, maybe you got a little bit there. You should basically kind of be coming to that outcome where you're.

A baseline way to kind of think about improvement and begin to think, are we gonna be a little faster or a little slower than that would be, again, kind of that earned premium change earning in maybe a point, 1.5 difference from, you know, effectively, you know, trend kind of exceeding those underwriting actions. Essentially, you know, your answer begins to fall out, and then you can appropriately adjust up or down relative to you think the additional progress will make against that.

Brian Meredith
Managing Director, UBS

Gotcha. Gotcha. That's my point I was just trying to get to is that if you missed your thought of, like, getting to that number by the end of the underwriting profit by the end of the year, it's gonna be because trend is running hotter than you'd expected.

James McKinney
EVP and CFO, Kemper

It would be. We obviously would correspondingly update guidance as we went, but it would be.

Brian Meredith
Managing Director, UBS

Right.

James McKinney
EVP and CFO, Kemper

This would be something unforeseen, right? Significant to some degree, not, you know. It should not be, you know, if we're talking about a point or two, you know, throughout the year, a little higher, a little lower, we're comfortable relative to the guidance in that we're, we've provided here.

Brian Meredith
Managing Director, UBS

Gotcha.

James McKinney
EVP and CFO, Kemper

A bsent something significantly materially changing adverse response, we're pretty comfortable t he thoughts or profitability.

Brian Meredith
Managing Director, UBS

I get it. Well, we've learned the last two years, nothing's surprising, right?

James McKinney
EVP and CFO, Kemper

Everything's based on what we know right now to avoid any confusion.

Brian Meredith
Managing Director, UBS

I get it. The second one, I'm just curious. California looks like you all are filed for and were approved for 6.9. I know a competitor of yours actually achieved a lot more than that. I think it was north of 17%. Does that make you kind of reconsider, rethink your strategy with respect to getting rate in California?

Joe Lacher
President, CEO, and Chairman, Kemper

I'm gonna answer it in sort of two ways, and then I'll let Matt go off for some comments too. That's not making us rethink our strategy because you haven't put, you know, outlined our entire set of tactics at this point. We filed for that 6.9 that was approved some time ago.

We have since filed for additional rate in those programs, and that's in at roughly 30 points. It'll show up on the state's filing, I think, at roughly a 37 because it combines the two. The state's actively working those with us. We're aware of what's going on in the marketplace, we're aware of what's moving, and, you know, we're several months past that being, you know, filed and working, so it's not new.

I'll let Matt comment on sort of where we are.

Matthew Hunton
EVP and President, Kemper Auto

Hey, this is Matt. Just a couple of quick thoughts on our ongoing conversations with the California Department of Insurance. We have a great relationship with them. We have good conversation flow back and forth. As we navigate through the filings, one thought I would add is, you know, we file generally what our experience supports.

We're confident in the data, right, as we submit that to the California Department. As we go back and forth, we'll work it as expeditiously as possible. Our expectation is that, you know, the current filings that we have, we'll work them through the funnel, and hopefully we'll get them through and effective, you know, sometime in the near future.

Brian Meredith
Managing Director, UBS

Great. Thank you.

Joe Lacher
President, CEO, and Chairman, Kemper

The discussion to this point has been productive and active. They're not sitting dormant, and they're not moving. I would maybe just make the general comment that the larger filing you referenced, you know, gives us confidence as an industry, I think, that, you know, things are moving.

Brian Meredith
Managing Director, UBS

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Our next question is from Paul Newsome with Piper Sandler. Your line is now open.

Jon Paul Newsome
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler

Good afternoon. Thanks for the call. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about auto claim frequency. I would imagine, please tell me if I'm wrong, that a lot of your non-rate effects would've had a beneficial effect on that frequency. I just wondering if there's any way that you can think about, or we can tease out how the frequency you're seeing might vary depending upon if you sort of adjust for all of the pretty significant non-rate actions that you're taking.

Joe Lacher
President, CEO, and Chairman, Kemper

Yeah. Matt, maybe you start taking a shot at specialty autos. I think that's the biggest place, Paul, on that. Dwayne, you can add some color to it.

Matthew Hunton
EVP and President, Kemper Auto

Yeah. Just quick comments on frequency. As a function of our underwriting actions and our pricing actions in the marketplace on a year-over-year basis, on the PPA side, we're seeing sort of pretty significant negative frequencies come through.

You know, they're as expected in the negative sort of 10 range. On the commercial vehicle side, we're seeing a slight elevation, but that's also a function of our mix that we're pushing through. It's a plus, +2, +3 in that range on the frequency side as we shift towards a more preferred segment on the commercial space. Again, generally in line with our expectations and nothing's out of pattern for us.

Joe Lacher
President, CEO, and Chairman, Kemper

I think, Paul, when you think about the story, I know at one point in time you had, you know, a question in terms of, you know, from an underwriting perspective. I think the key element of what we take away from this is we continue to see, you know, frequency down from the pre-pandemic levels that we had. Certainly it returned in certain pockets or came up.

As a whole, frequency down, the real outcome that's come through our financial statements is the severity factors that we've referenced before. Again, we're working our way through that. I think the positive thing is the environment, at least at this point in time, while there's still increasing trend, it is moderating and returning more to normalized levels.

The early kind of visibility that we might have to where those trends are going continue to kind of pace in that direction. If something changes, obviously, you know, we'll take note of it and react accordingly. Right now, if you're thinking about trends, think about us continue to make further enhancements on the underwriting front, frequency gains or maintaining what we have here.

Then, you know, hopefully a continued normalization of the severity environment with, again, the significant rate that we've taken to match up to this severity environment, earning in an accelerated way here, to kind of return us to the traditional target profitability levels that are appropriate for the business.

Jon Paul Newsome
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler

Well, that makes a lot of sense. I just what I was trying to think about was, you know, you're obviously trying to significantly improve the quality of the book, not just put through pure rate, and whether or not that decline in the frequency is primarily because of the mix change to a better book than versus sort of an environmental change.

Joe Lacher
President, CEO, and Chairman, Kemper

I think, Paul, I think Matt gave you know, a roughly 10%, 11% decline in private passenger auto. I don't think you've heard anywhere a suggestion that frequencies are down 10% or 11% environmentally. I'm trying to be careful not to be exactly precise on which one is which, but if you add up all the conversations you've heard about frequencies in other spots, you'd have to assume it was something other than an environmental issue working under there, wouldn't you?

Jon Paul Newsome
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler

I would imagine so. That would be my guess, but just trying to confirm.

Joe Lacher
President, CEO, and Chairman, Kemper

Yes. Ve ry material number.

Jon Paul Newsome
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler

Yeah, indeed. No question. Just any thoughts of further on sort of the competitive environment and how that works into your thinking about profit expectations next year? I would guess that we're still in an environment where people are doing basically the same kind of things that you are, just any, anything on you're seeing more recently from what your competitors are doing versus you guys?

Joe Lacher
President, CEO, and Chairman, Kemper

Sure, Paul. I'll make a comment overall, and I'm pretty sure it covers all of PI and our specialty auto business. The bulk of the industry is still dealing with profit challenges. In some cases, they're still recognizing that they have them and responding to them.

We expect this will be the commercial equivalent of a hard market for a while. It's not factoring into our calculus at this point to do anything other than be driving to restore the profitability. I don't see anything that impedes in the near term, our ability to make that focus. There's not anything wonky going on from a competitive perspective that would restrict it.

Jon Paul Newsome
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler

Great. Thanks, guys. Appreciate the help as always.

Operator

Our next question is from Andrew Kligerman with Credit Suisse. Your line is now open.

Andrew Kligerman
Managing Director, Credit Suisse

Hey, thanks a lot. I'd like to drill down a little bit more on Paul's frequency question because I'm thinking about Progressive's call last quarter, and they talked about frequency potentially being down as much as 20% at that operation. The question for you is, gas prices. Is that potentially the reason for lower frequencies, or is it just a permanent change in driving behaviors?

Joe Lacher
President, CEO, and Chairman, Kemper

I think I wanna separate a couple of things. One, I wanna be careful about our internalization of Progressive items. I think they were maybe referencing coverages or other elements in between. The number that we're providing, just to avoid confusion, is the sum total in terms of the impact on our book. When we think about that, there's probably a, I wouldn't say that we don't, when we look across, you see people driving at a different, you know, periods potentially in the day or, but you don't really see miles driven from a perspective down material. In fact, in many cases, it's up from the pre-pandemic norms.

Associated with that, I think, you know, on a baseline component, if you're just comparing, trying to compare as much apples to apples, I think the benefits from frequency from a pandemic perspective have largely been neutralized or gone away. I think you're actually at a really normalized kind of environment from a frequency perspective.

Differences from a frequency perspective from there are underwriting actions and other things that we've done, both from a mixed perspective and a segmentation perspective, to continue to enhance the potential outcomes that we have and refine the book. I think the way to think about this is that this is us moving it forward. We think that we're gonna continue to build off of these elements. We're always looking to enhance those, and that might be the way to kind of think about where at least we're at and how we're thinking about them.

Andrew Kligerman
Managing Director, Credit Suisse

Gas prices, you know, the element there, anything to add about that?

Joe Lacher
President, CEO, and Chairman, Kemper

Look, the gas prices are there. I think what Jim was trying to say, and I'll echo it, you had a big, big movement of frequency down relative to the pandemic lockdowns. You had a big year-over-year relative movement of frequency up as people started going out. Depending on your book, you continue to sort of gradually see that get back to a pre-pandemic level. We never, in our book, saw as much of a drop as many folks saw with our specialty auto focus, and we popped back up to pre-pandemic levels earlier. We have continued for several quarters to report that our frequency is below our pre-pandemic level and has been declining.

I think what you would see from a pattern is that most folks have been saying that theirs was going up a little bit as they were returning to that pre-pandemic level, so they've been directionally different. We're a little bit, you know, again, that pattern was not exactly the same for us because of the specialty auto nature of our book and the geographic concentrations, but we're watching those big issues. Yes, if you're looking at elevated gas prices from one quarter to the next or, you know, one year to year, they can have some impact. I think the other forces at play of the pandemic shutdown and reopening and the underwriting pieces are bigger.

If we're matching from today, say for the next nine, you know, nine months, we might see that elevated gas prices for a longer period of time and the inflationary offset and pressure on disposable income might cause people to drive less.

I would be watching that if I were you, I would be watching miles driven, because if miles driven are flat, it's not like because gas prices are higher, people are driving safer. If they're still driving the car miles driven, you're still gonna see losses. I think that would be a good thing to match if you're trying to use that as a proxy, is track gas prices and track miles driven, and that'll give you a forward thought process.

When you get to an individual company, you're gonna find different issues that may be a function of their underwriting, or geographic mix. Does that help?

Andrew Kligerman
Managing Director, Credit Suisse

Very helpful. I'm good. Thank you.

Operator

There are no further questions, so I'll pass the call back over to the management team for closing remarks.

Joe Lacher
President, CEO, and Chairman, Kemper

Thank you, operator, thank you everybody for joining the call today. I'll just leave you with two final thoughts. One, just another quick reminder, we'll be holding an investor day in New York on Thursday, March ninth. We're excited about that opportunity to spend some more time with you, let some of our leaders get a little bit deeper into our core businesses, and talk about our opportunities going forward. We look forward to seeing you there. Details on attendance will follow. Just a reminder of the key takeaways that we had on slide 15.

We're bullish about where we are and our opportunities going forward and the fact that a lot of hard work going back into enhancing and restoring the company to target profitability and executing our strategic initiatives will really bear fruit over the course of 2023. Thank you for your time and attention, and look forward to talking to you in March.

Operator

That concludes the conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.

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