Unum Group (UNM)
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Bank of America Securities 2021 Virtual Insurance Conference
Feb 10, 2021
And we're live. If you've been with us all day, great. If you're just joining us now, that's good too. This is the Bank of America U.S. Insurance Conference, and it's been a long day with a lot of interesting companies presenting, and this one is no different. We're really pleased to have Rick McKenney here, CEO of Unum. I think you've been at Unum for a decade, CEO for five years. I think those are the right numbers. Maybe I'm wrong, but you'll tell me. Yep, that's about right. Okay, good. I'll take it. It's great. I have lots of questions, but everyone should remember who's online. We have this app called veracast. You can type your questions into me, and I will read them.
Unfortunately, we won't be able to see your beautiful faces and hear your charming voices, but I promise to relay your question in the best fashion possible. I'm just going to go right to the Q&A, and Rick, if you want to interrupt me and just have anything you want to say anytime, we don't stand on ceremony here. All right.
Okay. Thanks for having us, Josh. First of all, I would like to say thanks for having us. I appreciate BofA having us at this meeting. We've been here for a number of years, and so look forward to answering everybody's questions today.
Well, terrific. We'll hopefully get some more questions. I think I mentioned to you as we were just coming on, this is my, well, I said first, well, my second day in the office. Yesterday, I came here for a sound check, and today is my first real day in the office. I work just a couple miles from here, but they have me working out of my apartment. I would love to come to work. Can't wait for it. I think that a lot of people are not as excited as I am to come back to work. Work from home has created a great deal of flexibility for people. I think that people are lonely, and they would like to see some other human contact, but they really don't want to go back to work five days a week. I'm not one of those people.
Bank of America, when you are ready, you can send me back to work. In some cases, I think about stories from the past about recessionary economies and people in workers' comp or disability who maybe during those recessionary times, we have seen a spike in the number of claims. Maybe they are legitimate injuries and whatnot, or some more legitimate than others. The desire to actually claim on some sort of physical or mental injury might be higher at certain times than is on others. As we emerge from this period of the COVID dynamic to the post-vaccine period where people are going back to work, do we believe there is a risk that we might see a spike in claims from morbidity, we will call it, lack of motivation?
I do not want to put a negative spin on it, but I am just saying this is history a little bit. Do we need to be concerned?
Yeah. I think, Josh, let us just step back away from that a little bit. I, like you, want to see our world getting back to being a little bit more normal as people trend back to the office, and we start to see the safety that people have in the community when vaccines come in to see people back. Your question gets at the dynamic of as people return to the office and what is important. I do think there will be a number of people that will be looking to get back, perhaps with more flexibility, but will look back to being with their colleagues. When you think about our business today, it is important that you look at that connection between the employee and the employer. I think that will still be very much intact, whether it is in a remote basis or in the office.
Diving further into what you are saying around disability and a recessionary environment, one of the things that we have seen through the last couple of recessions, even going back to the financial crisis, is as people return to work in a recessionary environment, I think you will continue to see people that will come back in, and even as we saw going into this pandemic, maybe a little bit higher submitted incidents we saw, not that great, but people truly having a disability and that need to be supported, we will not see that number go up. I think that is our expectation as we go through this period of time as well. The remote aspect of everybody moving home and moving back will create different dynamics.
But we very much see our disability cases being in line with those that are truly disabled, which coming from things, the number one item that has caused disability over the last 10 years is cancer and then trending into back injury and then trending into joint and other injuries. That is why we are paying disability claims, and that is where we will be paying disability claims in the future.
When I think about the group business in general, it seems like there is a lot of consolidation going on. I should say, there is consolidation going on from time to time. Smaller companies combining their efforts. But it also seems there is an aspect of expanding the shelf in terms of what is offered on a group plate that has been a successful disability and life writer. Suddenly requires dental or vision, or we are seeing pet insurance. As this evolves, can the business stay competitive in a silo? Do people have to adapt and expand their shelves in order to be competitive? Or is just market share in one line of business going to be a successful area to go deeper rather than wider, I guess?
Yeah. I would tell you for Unum, it has been important to build out our product set. If you look over the last several years, we obviously have been a leader in the disability space and the life insurance and the group space as a period of time. But we have also been very active in the voluntary markets. You can think about different product lines there, from accident to hospital indemnity to the different product lines we have on the A&H side. And then even for ourselves in the last several years, we bought a dental and vision business that we are scaling up across our platform, which we think has been important. And then when you think about the employer and what they want, they are looking for somebody that can provide multiple of those services.
Having certainly a good core set, and I would tell you that Unum has a good core set of capabilities, is important. Some of the other areas that you get into, I think, are going to be more company dependent. One of the areas that we expanded into, which we think makes a lot of sense in the last several years, is also stop loss and how do we actually help employers to cover the loss, manage their healthcare plan, and some things like that. We will continue to evolve. Leave management has been one that has come up over the last several years to make sure we are helping companies. But when you think about why we are there at the workplace, we are there to take care of people.
We don't do the healthcare, we don't do the retirement plan, but we want to do everything else, making sure that we're helping the employer to do so.
Just sort of staying on stop loss, in my mind, and this can be completely wrong, it feels like the stop loss conversation is a risk management conversation versus the group benefits conversation is a human resources conversation. Is it the same point of sale? Is there a cross-sale? Are they different products?
No, they are different products. When you think about who we're talking to in that sales process, clearly over the last several years, there's two people you're having conversations a lot with in the group space. That's both the Chief Human Resource Officer, but as well, you're talking to the CFO because they're looking at the overall cost perspective of what they're supplying. It's those same two people you're going to be talking to as you talk about stop loss and helping them to manage their book. So the conversation is a little bit different in terms of what you're talking about. As you say, one's risk management and operating overall book. The other is how do they take care of their employees.
But usually, it's similar points of contact is where you're talking to, and that's where we can bring a lot of our relationships that we have as part of Unum to that broader picture.
Sure. Changing gears a little bit, and our questions come from all over the place here. Obviously, the big news the past quarter was, maybe I would characterize the big news as the reinsurance transaction with your individual disability book, the run-off book, that is. We didn't really get to see the impact on the financials in the fourth quarter. Obviously, we saw the balance sheet impact, but we really didn't see the income statement impact. Can you sort of walk through a little bit about how investors should be expecting the impact to go in terms of what it means, I guess, for net investment income going forward, in the closed block, we might see happen to a benefits ratio, maybe even premium a little bit, some guidance around how we should think about that?
Sure. When you think about this transaction, it was a reinsurance transaction. We took the majority of that risk is going to be off our balance sheet overall and flowing through the income statement. So we'll have a reinsurance element that we're still expecting as part of that transaction, but we'll be removing most of the elements to that. It's not 100% of the transaction, so you'll see a little bit that's left behind, but it'll be a very small piece. You talk about the investment income and those kind of things, those assets are being transferred to our counterparty. There'll be more on the income statement that will come through. We'll talk about that and put that out there as we go through that.
But really think of this as risk transfer that we've seen on our GAAP books for the majority of that asset, and as such, it'll be removed from our going forward talking about that book of business. We were very happy with that transaction. The team did a really good job in the midst of a pandemic to take a book of business that we had had in closed status for almost 20 years, do some good work with a good counterparty that we're happy with, and actually be able to, through risk reinsurance, be able to remove that in a risk transfer way from our book of business. So very happy about that. You talk about the capital being freed up. That's going to be, by the time we're done, about $650 million of capital. You saw some of that flowing through in the fourth quarter.
This is a good transaction at a good time that the team did a very nice job with, and we're very happy about taking a good section of our closed block and be able to move that through risk transfer.
When we get to the point in time where you fully move the free capital in a steady state, if we sort of made three different goals, they're not all independent, but one goal is, I guess, always companies want a higher ROE. If it's, number two, less volatile, and three, even regardless, it can be ROE accretive and volatility manageable, but still if the market doesn't like it, you want to get those things off your book so you get a higher valuation. In terms of thinking about, I guess, those three tensions, the deal does what for you overall in the simplest terms?
Yeah, I think it does all of the above. I think this is we had capital behind this business that was earning basically just a return on capital. The business was in loss recognition, and so it wasn't actually returning. It didn't have returns for the company. So you think about the return on equity of that business, very low compared to some of our other blocks. So actually freeing up the capital there that we're then able to bring to the rest of the company is probably the two things that I'd highlight there. Yes, it takes out some of the volatility, but I would tell you, we've managed that book of business very well for a long period of time.
So you really haven't seen volatility in that book of business, but it does actually get us focused on the things that we do very well and making sure we're putting capital behind those items.
In the context of the Maine resolution, does this accelerate your ability to make good with the regulator in terms of satisfying their demands on your support of the assets they want to see more capital behind?
Yeah, I'd look at them as two very different things. When you think about this book of business, a closed individual disability block that had been securitized through another vehicle, that securitization was paid off in the fourth quarter or third quarter. Being able to do that, freeing up that capital, a very different thing in terms of our expectations in dealing with our Maine regulator and the agreements that we've made with them, which will continue on the same path that it was on.
But I'm saying in terms of Maine, if you look at the Maine resolution, you have seven years to fortify what they view as the capital need. Here you've just generated a bunch of capital. Can you put that capital to work on behalf of the Maine resolution and therefore accelerate, I don't know, maybe the penalty box or whatever you want to call, can we get to the end of satisfying Maine's demands because you've generated the $650 million in capital sooner than you otherwise would have?
Well, when we look at the $650 million that we'll generate out of this transaction, I think we've got flexibility to do multiple things with that. I think that the path that you're suggesting is one of possibility, but it's not one that we're talking about pursuing at the current time.
Okay. Additionally, I guess I might have misunderstood this. Back with Maine resolution, one of the comments was in order to get the maximum return into the long-term care block, the allocation of limited partnership assets was put behind the closed LTC block and taken out of other areas of the business. Does that mean that it's harder to price the ongoing life and disability business competitively? Because when you're pricing, you're not considering an extra investment return on risk assets, which would otherwise go into your pricing, or am I sort of mixing apples and oranges in that sort of context?
Yeah, I think you're probably mixing a couple of things. One is this is something we've been doing with our long-term care block for multiple years. We've been putting behind it alternative assets and talked about that. It wasn't a new thing that happened in the last year. We think these assets are actually good in backing that type of liability. We'll continue to do that. We're very happy with the types of returns and the types of match and structure that it has for that. The other place that I'd mention is there is some high yield that we'll put behind that book of business. But when you think of the rest of the company and the types of business that we're in, the durations are normally shorter in terms of the assets that we want to put behind those lines.
And we feel very good about our allocation to the rest of the portfolio. So when we think about the returns we're generating, the competitiveness that we have in these lines of business, we still feel very good about that. And I think importantly, we feel good about the whole portfolio and how it all comes together and fits. So I don't think there's a leaning in one way or another that impacts any of our business. I think we can do each of those at the same time, and it's something we've been doing now for several years.
And so let's say that if in absent a long-term care portfolio, the existing business would already have a low content of private equity. You wouldn't invest the assets behind the ongoing businesses would not have much of a greater allocation to private equity, even if you didn't have the long-term care block positioned that way, I guess, is what you're saying.
Yeah. There's a couple things I'd say. One is it's hard to look at it that way. So when you think about the lines of business that we're in, those that require investments behind them, and you can think of a big one being our long-term disability block and the type of structure that requires, think of a duration that's around seven, fits very well with kind of 10-year corporate bonds, privates, publics, and then some high yield that we put in there. So that's a really good fit as we look at that line. And then you go to many of our other product lines across voluntary benefits, not very cash intensive. And so when you think about the match that we want to put there, it's going to be a similar type asset profile that we have.
These are the type of products that we allocate to. You also have to think about relative to perhaps our peers in the industry. When you think about how other allocations are done, there are other product lines that would actually see those type of alternative investments in other companies as well. They may not be seeing a larger share of those assets behind long-term disability there. We feel fine about what our portfolio allocation looks like, what's going behind long-term care, and our ability to source good assets that meet our hurdles behind our other product lines as well.
Okay. I have a question coming in from the audience. The question is, on cash flow requirements for the Maine long-term care resolution, the majority of the increased requirement announced last year was from lower interest rates. Since interest rates are lower from there as the year ended, and you take a 3-year rolling average to make your calculation, are we expecting that there could be a higher cash flow requirement from the dynamic required by the Maine resolution?
I'd actually take you back to last year in 2020, the first year which we did such a process, and actually our requirements as we got to the end of the year, at least what we had communicated as per our investor day, we actually contributed less. When you think about the overall cash requirements that we continue to put towards our long-term care business, that was kind of in the $450 million to $500 million range we saw at year-end last year. We'd expect a similar amount this year. There's more dynamics that happen as part of that. We feel fine about the cash that we contributed last year. We'll be looking at least where we sit today, a similar amount in 2021. That's all factored into our overall capital plan, which says we ended the year with a very strong RBC ratio.
We also ended with $1.5 billion of cash on the balance sheet that are available to us. We actually see ourselves at the end of 2021 in a very similar spot.
Before I continue, I just want to remind everyone that you can ask questions and send them to me through veracast, and I will be happy to take your questions. I do dislike sometimes focusing things on long-term care. I am sure you do too. But I do have a few more questions, and we will get through them. How widespread is the ownership of long-term care policies among the half million dead Americans from COVID? I know it is not included in your assumptions, but if we just sort of brainstorm, could there be a material impact from persistency being lower than expected among the people who have died, unfortunately, from COVID? That is clearly a positive in the long-term care story. I know no one is including their numbers, but how should we think about it?
Yeah. I think what we have reported to date, and the tragedy we saw last year was the impacted people that were in our disabled lives books, so the people that were actually on claim, and were impacted by COVID through that process, and that is what we have been reporting all throughout the year. I think what you are referencing is when you think about our active lives, people that have an active policy today and they are not on claim, how many have been impacted by COVID as well? The average age of particularly our individual long-term care block is a little bit older, and as the COVID has skewed more to older ages, how has that come through? I would tell you we have not seen that yet.
It does not mean that it will not exist and that it will not be a little bit of a lag to that, but as we look at our book of business, we just have not seen that many people that have terminated because of COVID has been impacted by them. Sometimes we do not know, because once again, we will know that they have stopped paying premium along the way, and so we do not necessarily get a specific report, and it may take some time for that to come through. But your supposition that there should be some of the people in our book that are included in that numbers is not unwarranted. We just have not seen it yet. It is something we will keep an eye on over the next year.
People want to know have received some material year-on-year rate increases in their long-term care policies. My hunch is the regulators want the long-term care carriers to stay as solvent as possible because they want them to continue to offer it. But two, they also want to do right by the policyholder. The two things together are sort of in tension with one another. But when I think about the size of the increase, I am wondering that some companies have probably very adeptly managed their long-term care portfolio, and some companies have probably done a poor job.
Are the companies that have done a good job at a disadvantage that the regulators are going to be granting pricing increases to those who've managed their long-term care policies more poorly in order to get them closer to breakeven or some sort of solvency, while companies that have been following the rules all along and playing correctly and thinking about this with conservative assumptions, because they've been conservative and done right, they can't get the same kind of rate increases?
Well, I think what you're talking about, Josh, has been an industry issue. A lot of people have been challenged by some of the dynamics that have affected that block of business, and I think we have been a company that has gone forward and increased prices as warranted in some of those blocks of business. I think as we approach states and look for rate increases that are justified, it's based on what we're seeing in the book of business, which I think has been consistent across the industry. I don't actually think that they're changing their tune towards carriers based on how they've done it. I think it's much more about what does the underlying book of business say, and are those rate increases justified? Then going through that process.
As we've said multiple times, this is a process we've gone through as well to make sure that we're adequately pricing. We've also given, over that period of time, the option for policyholders to adjust their benefit streams, which is where that tension that you mentioned actually works well because a customer can adjust their benefit stream, not just pay a higher price, and I think that works well for both parties.
I have a question coming through. It's a Colonial Life question, and the individual wants to know what has been the risks and benefits to Colonial Life going forward, and how has the COVID disintermediated the sales functions?
Yeah. Colonial Life obviously is a franchise that we love. I think it's a great opportunity for Americans to get protections at the workplace, or I should say, through the workplace to make sure they're covered and needs the voluntary benefits we provide there are very, very good. We think it's been a good avenue to get there. I'm not sure exactly you meant the risks associated with that. It was clearly impacted in a COVID world. When you think about how they have done their business historically for many years, oftentimes face-to-face enrollments, and as everybody was forced to go home back in the March timeframe of last year, those face-to-face enrollments couldn't happen. And they've slowly come back as people have come back to the office. But what's really happened that's been helpful is we've been able to enhance just those face-to-face enrollments to more digital enrollments.
The team has done a good job of adapting to that, even if it's a face-to-face through digital means. All those things are positive. When we get back to a world where we're able to have people get back together face-to-face, you combine that with a digital capability, we think Colonial Life will be as good and will likely be better than they were in the past because they will be a more digitized-enabled workforce or sales force that will get those benefits to the people that need them out there across America. Very excited about the business.
Has it been difficult for salespeople at Colonial Life to equal their compensation from a previous year? Has this year been a detriment to how they're compensated, given that they've not been able to sell in the same way, or at least they have to adapt their sales tactics? I mean, are their agents sort of saying that 2020 was a year that caused me to question my long-term association with Colonial Life?
Yeah. Actually, we've seen a little bit of the opposite. We've seen actually recruiting levels to Colonial Life have been good. When you think about why our Colonial Life teams are there, they are very much there to protect the customers. They love what they do. And yes, for many of them, given their business model was adjusted over the course of 2020, was something that will have impacted them because it is a commission-based sales force. I think very much the people there are focused on the purpose of the company. They understand the challenges we have, but I think they're also equally as excited about the digital tools that have been brought to them. And they, as we kicked off the year just a few weeks back, are very excited about what we can deliver in 2021.
In terms of cash flow, a year ago with the Maine resolution, it seemed like fortifying that capital need was a major use of cash. Obviously, supporting the dividend was a major use of cash. The stock, which arguably is very cheap right now, buying back stock became a less obvious thing that could be done given those schemes. Now you have this block of cash coming in. How free are you to utilize that cash for buybacks? Look, obviously, you guys want to grow your business as well, but maybe given where the stock price is, it just doesn't make sense given the two choices. How should we prioritize use of cash flow among the various needs?
Absolutely. When you think about our cash we have today, I mentioned $1.5 billion sitting on the balance sheet, about four times in excess of what we normally like to hold at our holding company. We have the capability, the ability to actually put that capital back to work. As you said, the first thing we want to do is put it back into our core business. It's a good, high-returning business. We want to make sure that we're putting as much investment and putting as much protection out there across America and the U.K. and Poland as we've seen in the past. That's first and foremost what we'll do. M&A is interesting to us, probably on a smaller scale, looking at infill of capabilities that we have out there.
We have the cash capital to be able to do that, to enhance our overall business as we've done over the last several years and the acquisitions that we've made. You mentioned the dividend, important to us to maintain that dividend, maintain the payout ratio that we've done for many years, and I think that that's important to our shareholders as well. Then what you said, mentioned the last piece, which is what do we want to do in terms of buying our own shares? I think that's something that can come. It's not something we're talking about doing today. We still are in the middle of COVID. We're optimistic we're coming towards the end, but until we are coming to the end, it's not something we want to commit to today.
With that and the fact that the ink is still drying on our reinsurance agreement and that cash continues to come in here through the course of the first quarter, it's something that we don't expect we're going to be doing right now. But that option is not precluded from us somewhere in the future.
There's a question we have here about whether or not COVID has impacted long-term mortality tables and whether the take-up concerns around the vaccine mean COVID is with us for a long time to come, and therefore we should consider that in the long-term pricing of life insurance.
Two very different questions. In terms of has it been factored into When we think about the mortality impacts that we suffered in 2020 and we've seen here in the first month and we expect to see here into the first quarter, we don't see them as long-term in terms of factoring that into pricing. That won't be true across every industry, across every area. It will get factored in, but it'll be on a more localized basis as opposed to our belief that mortality will be factored into our pricing across the board. The second thing you ask is somewhat of an unknowable in terms of how people get vaccinated, what does that look like? I don't think that's our belief.
I think as vaccines start to take hold and you look at the population that was most impacted with 80% of the people that lost their lives over the age of 65, the faster we bring vaccines to that population, which is what we're doing right now, the more important that it is. I think that that's our expectation that that continues. We're hopeful that the infection rates will slow down through the spring, and that we'll see a very different world as we get to the summer. Do we have perfect insight into that? No, but I think that that's the path that we expect to follow here over the next few months.
Can we talk a little bit about rating agency views? As you weigh all your constituents, rating agency requirements, NAIC requirements, and I guess shareholder demands. What are the guidelines on, you guys post obviously your RBC ratio, but we don't get much information about how the rating agencies view things at this point in time, and what you can do to satisfy them. When you get to the point where you're happily satisfying both of those constituencies, NAIC and the rating agencies, how much flexibility will you have to meet shareholders' demands?
Yeah. I'd put NAIC and the rating agencies and just pure capital levels that we continue to hold and how we're making sure we satisfy all of those constituents. We feel very good about our capitals. We have for some time, as we've dealt with both rating agencies and what we see out there from regulatory bodies and holding the amount of capital, and we've been able to flexibly deal with that given the strong cash flow generation that we have in the company. When you look at the last couple of years and the cash flows and where they've gone, and satisfying all those parties, one of the things as we talk to rating agencies, and as everyone talks to rating agencies, COVID is clearly a question mark that has been in their eyes, and that will work its way out.
Because I think if you look at how we were able to navigate the 2020 COVID environment, it was challenging. We saw our premium levels slow, but we still grew premiums by just over about 0.4% in the year. Premiums grew. We generated about $1 billion of earnings over the course of that year. Our capital level is strong and actually cash levels much stronger. So we feel like we're coming out of 2020 in a very good spot, and satisfying all of our stakeholders is something we're looking at doing and starting with our customers and working through all of those bodies that you talked about, and our shareholders obviously being a big part of that, continuing to pay our dividend.
Then when the opportunity is right, thinking about how we can change the capital structure in the company to make sure we're doing the best job for our shareholders as well.
And one more question from the audience. Following the individual disability transaction, are there other parts of the business that you think you could monetize through a transaction? I don't know, that's all it says, but what are blocks that might be attractive to some sort of reinsurer, private equity type business, I guess, at the right price?
Yeah. When you go through our portfolio of our core businesses, we like these businesses very much. They're strategic in how they add value to each other in helping consumers at the workplace continue to protect themselves. There's a very strategic linkage to all those businesses we have today. The one clear area that we would like to continue to free up capital or actually started to free up capital through risk transfer would be in our long-term care block. We think about that in terms of what are the pieces there that we could actually go through a process of risk transfer to help monetize that. It is challenging in today's environment given the perceptions around long-term care, given where interest rates are. But an area that clearly could use the ability to free up capital will be in long-term care.
When you think of the rest of the company, we like the returns. You go through and then all of our product lines we have out there have been generating double-digit, mid-teens type ROEs. Those are areas we want to invest in. We don't want to actually look to get out of. We're excited about the portfolio overall. The one area that we need to continue to work on is how do we free capital from behind our long-term care. I would just reiterate what you said, the one that we were looking to free up before that was the individual disability block. Team did a good job of monetizing that block of business, but there's more work to do.
Then I think about, I guess CNO was successful a few years back in doing a transaction around long-term care, but there haven't been so many, I guess. I guess that was done in a higher interest rate environment. Of course, there's more appetite in the market right now for these types of transactions. Do you expect that not just Unum, but in talking to bankers and investors, is there more appetite for proposing opportunities to do something with long-term care today?
Yeah, I think the thing you highlight that's important is there is more opportunity or more appetite for assets, asset-rich businesses that are out there. We're very happy with the transaction we did around IDI is a good example, whereas that business would've been one that if you went back five years ago, probably wouldn't have transacted. I think that's a representative of a desire in the market for these type of transactions. There are hurdles specific to long-term care, and you mentioned one, which is around interest rates and the level we have today, having a buyer and a seller meet around what we think will be longer-term views of interest rates versus a spot rate is a challenge today. But those are the kind of things that buyers and sellers can negotiate and look at.
Although that market is tough right now, I think there is activity and certainly we'll explore it, but interest rates being a little bit higher I think will facilitate that a lot more. It doesn't have to be a lot higher interest rates. If you go back a couple of years, it was not so long ago when we saw 30-year Treasuries up over 3%, and that's the kind of environment where those transactions can happen.
I'm just thinking about, and you have a lot of skill set in that. Maybe an acquirer wouldn't have the same kind of skill set. I guess, could you envision a quota share type deal where you free up a lot of capital, but you still have skin in the game and therefore your reinsurance partner relies on you to effectively manage the business? But it's giving you the capital adequacy to extract capital from the business at the same time?
Yeah, possibly. If you look at our individual disability reinsurance that we just did, we're still managing the block of business for them. We're administering the claims because we've got some of the deepest sets of knowledge, et cetera. Our reinsurance partner recognizes that, and so we're actually going to manage the claims on their behalf, which I think is great, leveraging that skill set. You might see something like that transfer to long-term care as we also have a skill set there combined with our disability claims management skill set. We also have that on the long-term care side. So you could definitely see that, but also still having the ability to free up capital through those types of transactions.
Well, I appreciate all the answers and it's obviously going to be an interesting year. Hopefully it gets interesting in a positive way in a couple of months. We're all hoping for that. Thank you for your time, Rick, and everyone in Chattanooga and all over the country who works for Unum. We're doing a great job under very unusual circumstances. May they find safety and good things, and thank you for giving us the time today.
We appreciate that. Team's doing a great job and continuing to operate through this COVID environment. We're obviously very proud of what we've been able to accomplish and take care of people in the time of need, and certainly appreciate the chance you provided to us today to talk to some of our shareholders, investors, and constituents which count on Unum. Thanks a lot and have a good rest of the afternoon.
Thank you very much. Take care, everybody.