The Progressive Corporation (NYSE:PGR) Q4 2019 Earnings Conference Call March 4, 2020 9:30 AM ET
Company Participants
Julia Hornack - Investor Relations
Tricia Griffith - Chief Executive Officer
John Sauerland - Chief Financial Officer
Jonathan Bauer - Chief Investment Officer
Heather Day - Head of Agency and Sales Distribution
Dave Pratt - General Manager, Home
Gary Traicoff - Chief Actuary
Conference Call Participants
Mike Zaremski - Credit Suisse
Elyse Greenspan - Wells Fargo Securities
Michael Phillips - Morgan Stanley
Yaron Kinar - Goldman Sachs
Gary Ransom - Dowling & Partners
Meyer Shields - KBW
Operator
Welcome to The Progressive Corporation's Fourth Quarter Investor Event. The Company will not make detailed comments related to quarterly results in addition to those provided in its annual report on Form 10-K and the letter to shareholders, which have been posted to the Company's website. And we'll use this event to respond to questions after a prepared presentation by the Company.
欢迎参加The Progressive Corporation的第四季度投资者活动。公司不会在本次活动中就季度业绩做出除年报Form 10-K和致股东信之外的详细评论，这些文件已在公司网站上发布。本次活动将用于在公司做完简报后回答提问。
The event is available via a moderated conference call line and a live webcast with a brief delay. Webcast participants will be able to view the presentation slides live or download them from the webcast site. Participants on the phone can access the slides from the Event page at investors.progressive.com.
本次活动通过电话会议和稍有延迟的网络直播进行。观看网络直播的参与者可以实时查看演示幻灯片，或从直播页面下载。通过电话参会的人员可通过investors.progressive.com上的活动页面访问幻灯片。
In the event, we encounter any technical difficulties with the webcast transmission, webcast participants can connect through the conference call line. The dial-in information and passcode are available on the Events page at investors.progressive.com.
如遇网络直播技术故障，参与者可转而通过电话会议收听。拨入信息和密码已列在investors.progressive.com的活动页面上。
Acting as moderator for the event will be Julia Hornack. At this time, I will turn the event over to Ms. Hornack.
本次活动的主持人为Julia Hornack。现在，我将时间交给Hornack女士。
Julia Hornack
Thank you, Jason, and good morning. Today, we will begin with a presentation about Progressive Home business. Our presentation will be followed by Q&A with our CEO, Tricia Griffith; and our CFO, John Sauerland. Our Chief Investment Officer, Jonathan Bauer will also join us for Q&A by phone.
谢谢你，Jason，大家早上好。今天我们将首先介绍Progressive的住房保险业务。之后将进入问答环节，由我们的首席执行官Tricia Griffith和首席财务官John Sauerland参与。我们的首席投资官Jonathan Bauer也将通过电话加入问答。
This event is scheduled to last 90 minutes. As always, discussions in this event may include forward-looking statements. These statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to many risks and uncertainties that could cause actual events and results to differ materially from those discussed during the event.
本次活动预计将持续90分钟。如同以往，讨论内容可能包含前瞻性陈述。这些陈述基于管理层当前的预期，受到诸多风险和不确定性影响，实际结果可能与活动中所述情况存在重大差异。
Additional information concerning those risks and uncertainties is available on our 2018 annual report on Form 10-K, where you will find discussions of the risk factors affecting our businesses, safe harbor statements related to forward-looking statements and other discussions of the challenges we face. These documents can be found via the Investors page of our website, investors.progressive.com.
有关这些风险和不确定性的更多信息，可参见我们2018年Form 10-K年度报告。报告中包括影响我们业务的风险因素、有关前瞻性声明的安全港条款，以及其他关于我们面临挑战的讨论。这些文件可在公司官网investors.progressive.com的投资者页面上找到。
It is now my pleasure to introduce our CEO, Tricia Griffith.
现在，请允许我介绍我们的首席执行官Tricia Griffith。
Tricia Griffith
Good morning and welcome to Progressive's fourth quarter webcast. We wrapped up 2019 with another banner quarter and banner year. We're very excited to start 2020 and obviously you've seen in January's results. So, we continue to be really excited about our opportunities around growth and profitability.
大家早上好，欢迎参加Progressive的第四季度网络直播。我们以又一个卓越的季度和卓越的年度结束了2019年。我们对2020年的开始感到非常兴奋，显然大家也已经看到了1月的业绩表现。因此，我们对未来在增长与盈利方面的机会依然充满期待。
As Julia said, today is about property. And so, we're very excited to tell our story both where we're come from and where we're going. Before I get into that about three quick items. The first one, we heard you. Many of you asked for us against the loss ratios associated with catastrophes.
正如Julia所说，今天的主题是住房保险。我们非常高兴能讲述我们的故事——包括我们来自哪里、又将前往何处。在进入正题之前，我先快速提三件事。第一，我们听到了你们的声音。很多人希望我们披露与灾难性事件相关的赔付率。
And as you'll see the January earnings, we started to do that for each line coverage, so hopefully that will be more transparent for all of you to understand the effect of our underlying loss ratios on any given month with any given catastrophe, especially in the more volatile lines hover just like properties.
正如你们在1月的财报中看到的那样，我们已开始针对各险种分别披露数据。我们希望这样能让大家更清楚地看到，在某一月份遭遇特定灾害时，我们的基础赔付率受到了怎样的影响——尤其是像房屋保险这样波动性较大的险种。
Second, as you likely read in the 10-K, Progressive and minority stakeholders an ARX decided to conclude the acquisition a year early. So we're spending 242 million to acquire the remaining shares of ARX. And we will close that, if all things go well, which we expect that to happen in 2020, April of 2020 versus 2021.
第二件事，正如你们在10-K年报中看到的，Progressive和ARX的少数股东决定提前一年完成收购。因此我们将出资2.42亿美元收购ARX剩余股份。如果一切顺利，我们预计将在2020年4月完成交易，比原计划的2021年提早一年。
I was talking to Jay Pratt right before this, and he said, he had so many e-mails from people at Progressive Home saying didn't this already happen. So, this is really something where we've been dating forever. People assumed we're married let's just get it done early and we're really excited to move forward and really execute on our plans.
就在刚才，我还跟Jay Pratt聊这个话题。他说他收到了很多来自Progressive Home员工的邮件，问这件事不是早就完成了吗？这确实是个“我们约会已久、大家以为早就结婚了”的案例，所以我们决定干脆早点“成婚”，全力推进后续计划。
And then the third item, which I'm sad about, but happy for her and happy for Progressive is Julia Hornack has decided to take her talents down to St. Pete with Progressive Home. All of you gotten to know her very well over the years. She is really our Investor Relations Guru and she's filled a lot of your questions over the years, and we're going to miss her.
第三件事，我既感到难过，又替她和Progressive感到高兴，那就是Julia Hornack将前往St. Pete，加入Progressive Home团队。这些年来，大家都非常熟悉她。她是我们真正的投资者关系专家，一直以来耐心解答了大家无数问题，我们会非常想念她。
But we're excited for her in her next stage of her career. She's been a controller. She's been a product manager. And now she's moving on to work on specialty products. Vendor management and some process management. Again, we're sorry to lose her from here, but so excited for Progressive. Congratulations, Julia.
但我们也为她职业生涯进入新阶段而感到高兴。她曾担任过财务主管，也做过产品经理，而现在她将投身于特殊产品、供应商管理以及流程管理等领域。再次强调，虽然她的离开令我们不舍，但我们为Progressive感到欣慰。祝贺你，Julia。
Julia Hornack
Thanks, Tricia. Thanks a lot. And to all of our shareholders, portfolio managers and analysts, it's really been a pleasure getting to know you. And to do my best to represent Progressive in this and the facts that we provide in all of our public disclosures. It's been a pleasure serving our executive team. It's truly extraordinary and a wonderful partner, our wonderful partners.
谢谢你，Tricia，非常感谢。也感谢我们所有的股东、投资组合经理和分析师，能够认识大家我感到非常荣幸。能够在各类公共披露中尽我所能代表Progressive，传达我们的数据与事实，我一直以此为傲。为我们的管理团队服务是一种荣幸，这是一支非凡的团队，也是极具合作精神的优秀伙伴。
And I'm really excited to take my talent to St. Pete. Hopefully, I'm travelling back to Cleveland quite a bit to see my friends here, but I look forward to making friends with all my extraordinary colleagues founded on in St. Petersburg. So thank you.
我非常期待把我的能力带到St. Pete。当然，我也希望能经常回到克利夫兰看望这里的朋友，同时也期待能在圣彼得堡认识一群优秀的同事。谢谢大家。
Tricia Griffith
I imagine you will be very diligent when you come to Cleveland versus what you say and in Saint Pete.
我猜每次你回克利夫兰时都会特别勤快，和你在圣彼得堡说的一样。
Julia Hornack
Yes, same thing.
对，完全一样。
Tricia Griffith
So I'll visit you in the winter.
那我冬天去看你好了。
Julia Hornack
Exactly, exactly. Yes, great.
太好了，太好了，非常欢迎。
Tricia Griffith
Let's get started. So, we changed the vision statement last year, and usually when you change the statement two words doesn't really make a difference. This really did make a difference. And as we started to think about a new vision statement, we started to think about how many bundle customers we had and so home fit right in there.
那我们开始正题吧。我们在去年修改了公司的愿景声明。通常来说，变两个词不会产生太大影响，但这次真的不一样。当我们着手思考新的愿景声明时，我们意识到我们拥有大量打包投保的客户，而住房险正好是其中的一部分。
But as we stepped back and thought about being consumer's number one choice, we really thought about why don't we have the word agents in there and this actually came from Heather Day because our collective consumers go into agencies and we want our agents to think of us first in each of their agencies.
但当我们进一步思考如何成为消费者的首选时，我们开始意识到，为什么我们在声明中没有加入“代理人”这个词？其实这个建议是来自Heather Day，因为我们许多客户都是通过代理机构投保的，而我们希望每一家代理机构里的代理人首先想到的就是我们。
In fact, 60% of our business when you look at commercial lines and personal lines come from the agency channel. I'm the agency customer myself, I wrote in one of the quarterly letters last year about, how important this channel has been for us, and especially going forward. So for us, this key door is one change is really significant for our growth. In fact, recently I have the opportunity to do a fireside chat at the Big "I" with the CEO, Bob Rusbuldt.
事实上，无论是商业险还是个人险，我们有60%的业务是来自代理渠道。我本人也是代理渠道的客户。我在去年的一封季度信中就写过，这个渠道对我们而言至关重要，尤其是对未来而言。因此，在愿景中加入这个关键的“入口”，对我们的增长具有重大意义。事实上，我最近有机会在Big “I”的一场炉边对谈中，与其CEO Bob Rusbuldt进行了一场交流。
The Big "I" is national alliance of about a 0.25 million businesses to sell auto insurance products or insurance products, I should say. And I talked with his board, which have representatives for each day. And really, I told them about how important they are to us and really wanted to solidify our relationship and know that we want to get inside the hearts and minds of all of our agents and invest in them, and think about the future of our collective customer. So that word is very important.
Big “I”是一个全国性的联盟，旗下大约有25万家销售汽车保险或其他保险产品的企业。我与该组织的董事会进行了沟通，该董事会由各州代表组成。我明确表示他们对我们来说多么重要，我们非常希望巩固与他们的关系，并让他们知道我们想要真正走进每位代理人的内心世界，对他们进行投入，同时共同思考我们的客户未来的发展方向。因此，“代理人”这个词对我们来说非常重要。
The Home word made sense because we believe in a dual channel strategy one of our pillars is to have broad covers. So, we want to be where when and how customers want to shop for home insurance as well as auto insurance and others. So whether it's any agency channel through our Progressive advantage agency or HQX, we want to be there. So, the vision statement changes two words that pretty significant.
加入“Home”一词也非常合理，因为我们相信双渠道战略，其中一个支柱就是提供广泛覆盖。我们希望无论客户在何地、何时、以何种方式购买住房保险、汽车保险或其他产品时，我们都能出现在那里。无论是通过Progressive Advantage Agency，还是HQX等代理渠道，我们都希望参与其中。因此，这一愿景声明虽然仅改了两个词，但意义非常重大。
I shared this chart with you last quarter really to talk about the return on equity, and we looked at a 5, 10 and 20 year time frame with Progressive compared to the S&P 500 and the S&P P&C index. And we outpaced in all of those years, both of those industries, and we're really proud of that fact. What I also said was that under leveraged capital, we would return to shareholders, either in stock purchases or dividends, and 2019 was no different.
我在上一季度已经分享过这张图，是关于股本回报率的。我们以5年、10年和20年时间维度，将Progressive与标普500和标普财产与意外险指数进行了对比，我们在所有时间段内都表现优于这两个指数，这一点我们感到非常自豪。我也曾说过，对于未被杠杆化的资本，我们会通过股票回购或分红返还给股东，2019年也是如此。
This was the first year of our new dividend policy, and our board declared a variable dividend of $2.25 per common share which equated over $1.3 billion returning to shareholders. In fact, if you add in the four of quarterly $0.10 per common share fixed dividends equated to over $1.5 billion, we're returning to shareholders. And although we don't have comparisons, I'm pretty proud, very proud to say that our return on equity for 2019 was over 31% that is phenomenal. I'll obviously update you once we have a more than comparison. So, we're very proud of this.
这是我们新股息政策实施的第一年，董事会宣布派发每股2.25美元的可变股息，累计返还超过13亿美元给股东。再加上四次每股0.10美元的固定季度股息，总共返还超过15亿美元。虽然我们目前还没有同行对比数据，但我非常自豪地说，2019年我们的股本回报率超过31%，这非常惊人。一旦有更全面的比较数据，我会继续向大家汇报，我们对此感到非常骄傲。
So the question I would ask if I were an analyst or an investor would be, if given the recent struggle with profitability. Are you still glad that you had the ARX transaction? A couple of words very easily, yes, absolutely, unequivocally, all those things. I'm going to give you a couple of data points and then Heather Day will really talk about our plans. So, we're really excited about that.
如果我是分析师或投资者，我会问这样一个问题：考虑到最近在盈利能力方面的一些挑战，你们是否仍然庆幸当初完成了对ARX的收购？我的回答很简单：是的，绝对是，毫无疑问。接下来我会提供一些数据，然后由Heather Day来介绍我们的战略规划，我们对此感到非常振奋。
So first of all, over the inception to-date period, we've grown 11% at a 96 combined ratio. So we've made money and we've grown. Do we want to grow more and have wider margins? Absolutely, but the key part of this acquisition was for us to have access to those preferred customers and the agency channel.
首先，从收购至今，我们实现了11%的增长，综合赔付率为96%。也就是说，我们实现了盈利并且在持续增长。当然，我们希望有更快的增长和更高的利润率，但这笔收购的核心意义在于让我们能够接触到更多优质客户和代理渠道。
In 2019, we believe that 715 million of our auto premium and the agency channel we would not have had, but for having the partner home products to have that bundle preferred customer. We equate that to the nearly 5 billion in life time earn premium, a level low our 95 combined ratio. So, those are few data points to say absolutely this was meant to be.
2019年，我们认为公司在代理渠道中获得的7.15亿美元汽车保费，是因为我们有了与ARX合作的住房保险产品，使我们能吸引那些打包购买保险的优质客户。如果按客户生命周期来计算，这相当于近50亿美元的累计保费，且维持在95的低综合赔付率水平。所以这些数据充分说明——我们当初的这笔交易完全值得。
On the more softer side which I think sometimes is lost when you have an acquisition is the culture and the people and being able to really run as fast as we can collectively together to gain market share.
我想谈谈并购中经常被忽略的一面——也就是文化和人才。并购完成后，真正能够让双方齐心协力、加速发展、共同争夺市场份额的，是文化的融合和人们的协作能力。
As you know I want to give credit to John Auer, the former CEO of ASI -- or ARX I should say, and Glenn Renwick, the former CEO of Progressive, really starting that relationship. We have fits and starts along the way of buy, build, partner and nothing quite words. And that relationship started, we started with a 5% interest. And right away, we saw that these companies were alive.
大家知道，我要特别感谢John Auer——ASI（或应该说ARX）的前CEO，以及Progressive的前CEO Glenn Renwick，是他们真正开启了这段合作关系。我们当时在“收购、内部打造、合作”之间不断尝试，但都不够理想。然后我们建立了这段关系，从一开始只持有5%的股权，我们立刻就看出这家公司充满活力。
In fact, I always smile when I got on the same team because in their first year of business, they had a plaque on their wall that said, we want to be the Progressive of homeowners insurance. And to me that just meant something was almost a foreshadowing.
事实上，每当我们合作时我总会微笑，因为他们成立第一年就在墙上挂了一块牌子，上面写着：“我们要成为住房保险领域的Progressive。” 对我来说，这几乎是一种命中注定的暗示。
In addition, we knew that we wanted with this preferred customer base to be able to lengthen our auto PLEs and that has worked.
此外，我们知道，如果拥有这类优质客户群体，我们就能够延长我们的汽车保单生命周期（auto PLE），而事实也证明这点奏效了。
We have comparison products we both built Umbrella as an example, where we would say, Eric, this process is superior to ours. So we'll merge those together and have even a better product.
我们开发了一些对比型产品，例如Umbrella险种，我们会说：“Eric，你们的流程比我们的更好。”于是我们就整合两边的优势，打造出更强的产品。
I think, more importantly, and as in January, Dave Pratt started reporting into Pat Callahan, we're really starting to share resources R&D pricing to get that depth of segmentation in property like we have an auto.
更重要的是，从今年1月起，Dave Pratt 已开始向 Pat Callahan 汇报工作，这标志着我们真正开始在资源共享、研发、定价等方面协同，以便在住房险领域实现与我们汽车险一样深度的细分能力。
I do want to thank John Sauerland for getting us to the final acquisition because he really was working on that for the last couple of years, and we're so excited to be able to wrap that up in April. But again, the values the people and the ability to really search for the great customers that we want and be able to achieve our ultimate vision is really exciting to us.
我也要特别感谢John Sauerland，是他过去几年推动我们走向这笔最终的收购。我们非常高兴能在4月完成整个交易。但归根结底，让我们真正兴奋的是，这家公司的人、他们的价值观，以及我们共同寻找优质客户、实现终极愿景的能力。
I'm going to end by just talking about something that's probably the softer side as well. But I think it's key to our culture and as a formula that I talked about in my annual letter to shareholders.
最后，我想再谈一个相对“柔性”的话题——但我认为它是我们文化的核心，我也在致股东的年度信中提到过，它是一种“公式”。
The first part of the formula is, question everything. I think when you have a high tenure company like Progressive, especially at the senior levels. Sometimes you can be just surgically focused in growing. And my goodness, we could -- we've been doing that incredibly.
这条公式的第一部分是：质疑一切。在像Progressive这样资深的公司，尤其是在高层，大家有时会像外科手术般专注于增长。天哪，我们的确在这方面做得非常出色。
But partly you have to sit back and say, why do we do this? Why do we invest in this? And question things that you said we may never do. And great example is to create a homeowner's company. After we, for lack of a better word fail to do that. A decade ago, we said we would never be in the homeowners business. Well never say never because things around us changed. And we knew we wanted to evolve as a preferred company and we needed to do that. And so this is perfect.
但有时候我们也必须冷静下来问：我们为什么这么做？我们为什么要在这个领域投资？我们是否应该质疑那些我们曾说“永远不会做”的事？一个很好的例子就是成立一家住房保险公司。说得直接些，十年前我们曾尝试却未成功，并宣称“我们永远不会做住房险”。但后来我们学到“永远不要说永远”，因为周围的一切都在变，而我们知道，为了成为一家真正的优选保险公司，我们必须进入这一领域。现在看来，这一步再正确不过了。
So what I asked really everyone for about some to do, with my team does all the time is we always question and have really incredible debates to make sure that we're always thinking as this environment changes so rapidly.
因此，我对大家的期望，也是我们团队一直在做的，就是不断提问、展开激烈而富有成效的辩论，确保在这个瞬息万变的环境中，我们始终保持思考。
The second part of the formula is to always grow mindset. And I talk about this being sort of a double entendre. For me is everyone can share about their personal growth? I actually had an interview take place last week, and the woman said to me, what do you do when you get bored? And I said, if I get bored, shame on me because there's so much out there to read to listen to podcast to do look at TED Talks to get an outside event.
公式的第二部分是“始终保持成长心态”（always grow mindset）。我认为这是一种双关语。对我来说，它既指个人成长，也指企业成长。上周我接受了一场采访，采访者问我：“当你感到无聊时怎么办？”我回答说：“如果我感到无聊，那只能怪我自己。”因为外面的世界有太多可以学习的东西——可以阅读的内容、可以收听的播客、可以观看的TED演讲、可以参加的外部活动等等。
And we really want all 14,000 plus Progressive people to continue to be curious and things differently because a lot of the best ideas come from the grassroots efforts. We think if we always grow ensuring the Company will grow and that said double entendre. So question everything, always grow mindset equals an enduring business.
我们希望Progressive的所有一万四千多名员工都能始终保持好奇心、以不同的方式思考问题。因为很多最好的想法往往来自基层的努力。如果我们每个人都在成长，公司自然也会持续成长——这正是这句双关语的含义。因此，“质疑一切”加上“始终成长的心态”，就等于一项持久的事业。
And for us, this is going to be our legacy for all of our senior leaders for the people who come after us. And that is our job to make sure we have an enduring business for decades and decades and decades to come.
对我们来说，这将是我们所有高管留给后人的文化遗产。这是我们的职责——要确保Progressive在未来几十年里都能持续发展下去。
Speaking of always growth mindset, let's talk about property, both growth and profitability. So two guests today, both of whom I think you've met, Dave Pratt, who is our Property GM down in St. Pete, has been here for quite a while. His undergraduate degree from Duke is in electrical engineering and has a Harvard MBA. He came to Progressive in 1991 as the Product Manager for New York.
既然提到“始终成长的心态”，那我们就来谈谈财产险业务的发展与盈利能力。今天我们请来了两位嘉宾，你们可能都已经认识了。第一位是Dave Pratt，他是我们位于圣彼得堡的财产险总经理，加入公司已有一段时间。他本科毕业于杜克大学，主修电气工程，后来又获得了哈佛MBA学位。1991年他加入Progressive，担任纽约地区的产品经理。
I can't go over to his whole resume, but he's ran marketing, product development and many, many products along the way. And we asked him to take over as a Property GM right after Hurricane Irma in 2017. And he's been down there since doing a fantastic job. He has a great story to tell.
我无法一一列举他的完整履历，但他曾负责过市场营销、产品开发等多个领域，也主导过许多产品。在2017年飓风Irma过后，我们请他担任财产险业务总经理，从那以后他一直在那边做得非常出色。他有很多精彩的故事要分享。
Before that, I'd like to introduce you Heather Day. Heather has her bachelor's degree in economics from Miami. Her master's in international relations from USC. And if that wasn't enough for the always growth mindset, she got her MBA from Wharton. She also has an extensive resume started as a product manager, has worked in recreational lines.
在此之前，我还想介绍另一位嘉宾——Heather Day。Heather在迈阿密大学获得经济学学士学位，在南加州大学获得国际关系硕士学位。还不止于此，作为“始终成长心态”的践行者，她还获得了沃顿商学院的MBA。她的履历也非常丰富，从产品经理做起，后来还涉足娱乐险业务。
She was our marketing leader for snapshots and most recently our preferred marketing leader rolling out our Platinum for agents, which we'll talk about a lot today. Most recently, a couple of years ago, she was part of that swap that we arranged and she is the Head of Agency and Sales Distribution.
她曾是我们Snapshot产品的市场负责人，最近则主导我们代理人渠道的“Platinum”（白金计划）推广工作，今天我们会重点讲到这块。再往前一点，在几年前的高管轮岗中她也是其中一员，目前担任代理和销售分销的负责人。
So Heather, why don't you tell us what you've been working on?
所以，Heather，请你来和大家分享一下你最近在做什么吧。
Heather Day
Thanks, Tricia. So I will echo Tricia and reinforce that Progressive continues to invest in the independent agent channel. We recognized the value that agents provide to consumers that are looking for both products depth, and local professional advice. So our commitment to working with independent agents has been long standing, but it lines up well with recent market research and trends.
谢谢你，Tricia。我想呼应Tricia的观点，并强调Progressive一直在持续投资独立代理人渠道。我们认识到，代理人对那些希望获得产品多样性和本地专业建议的消费者有着巨大的价值。我们与独立代理人的合作关系由来已久，而且这一方向也与近期的市场调研和趋势高度契合。
The graph that you see on the left is from J.D. Power, and shows that over the last 5 years, independent agents have made steady gains in purchase satisfaction compared to captive agents, or exclusive agencies J.D. Power would call them. The satisfaction levels today are 20 points higher and what they found when they were digging deeper it was the preference for flexible product offers that really drove the largest performance gap amongst these channels. And this area of successful product offers is a place where independent agents thrive based on their ability to place clients among several different brands, compared to a captivate agents that simply lacks that flexibility.
你们左边看到的图表来自J.D. Power，显示在过去五年中，独立代理人在客户购买满意度方面持续领先于专属代理（J.D. Power将其称为“exclusive agencies”）。目前的满意度水平高出20个百分点。深入研究后发现，推动这种显著差距的最大原因在于消费者更偏好灵活的产品选择。而这正是独立代理人擅长的领域——他们可以将客户推荐到多个品牌中选择合适的产品，而专属代理人则缺乏这种灵活性。
So this change in purchase satisfaction correlates to market trends. There was a parallel shift in market share beginning in 2015, 2016. A time when most major carriers were taking rate increases. Consumers started purchasing more in the independent agent and captive channels where price comparisons could be made most easily. Direct carriers may gain in personalized market share, independent agents carriers held steady while captive carriers gave up share.
这种购买满意度的变化与市场趋势密切相关。从2015到2016年开始，市场份额也出现了相应的转移。当时大多数主要保险公司都在加价，消费者开始更多地通过独立代理人或专属代理渠道购买保险，因为这两个渠道更方便进行价格比较。虽然直销渠道可能在个性化市场中有所增长，但独立代理渠道的市场份额保持稳定，而专属代理渠道则失去了部分份额。
Now Progressive has steadily grown our own share in the independent agent channel. And that's accelerating in recent years as we have had the home to the lineup. And if we look back at our recent growth, we were clearly well positioned heading into a hard market. And our overall agency results were boosted by our product segmentation and pricing. Progressive was steady. We were profitable and competitive during the period where many other carriers were taking larger rate increases.
如今，Progressive在独立代理渠道中的市场份额稳步增长。近年来，随着我们将房屋保险纳入产品阵容，这一增长趋势正在加速。回顾我们的近期发展，我们在进入硬性市场（hard market）时的定位非常理想。我们的产品细分和定价策略提升了整个代理渠道的业绩。在其他保险公司大幅提价的时期，Progressive始终保持稳定、盈利且具有竞争力。
So this provided an excellent opportunity to make headway on those auto and home bundles. The compelling auto position maybe overall bundle more competitive, and the demonstrated commitment to property with the purchase of ARX in 2015 and then the subsequent launch of our Platinum program really gave our agents a reason to believe that they could partner with Progressive as a preferred bundle carrier. And indeed as a sure of our new business, bundles have grown fivefold over this period.
因此，这为我们推动汽车与房屋保险捆绑销售提供了极好的机会。我们在汽车险方面的强势地位提升了整体捆绑产品的竞争力；而我们在2015年收购ARX以及随后推出的Platinum计划，则展现了我们对房屋保险业务的长期承诺，给了代理人足够的信心，让他们相信Progressive是一个值得首选的捆绑保险合作伙伴。事实上，在此期间，我们的新业务中捆绑产品的数量已经增长了五倍。
Looking at our independent agent share across these two products. In private passenger auto, we have gained two market points each year in 2016, 2017 and 2018, which could afford a 20 point share in 2018. And then on the home side Progressive has moved into the number 6 spot with 3.5% of the market in 2018. Now despite the strong market position, we continue to see upside and the whole product is key to that. Expansion of our addressable markets was really core to the destination era strategy. And I want to reinforce how critical that expansion is for our platinum agency.
从汽车险和房屋险这两项业务来看我们的独立代理市场份额：在个人乘用车险方面，2016、2017、2018年我们每年都增加了2个市场点，2018年达到20%的市场份额。在房屋险方面，Progressive在2018年进入第六位，市场份额为3.5%。尽管我们已经具备了强劲的市场地位，但我们仍然看到进一步增长的空间，而房屋险是其中的关键。可服务市场的扩展是“目的地时代”（destination era）战略的核心。我想再次强调，这种市场扩展对我们Platinum代理人渠道的重要性。
The table you see breaks down auto and home market premiums across channels by our market segments. So for a quick refresher on these market segments, you've got Sam's looking for auto insurance as needed, very price sensitive, they tend to be more nonstandard. Your Dianes come to us with prior insurance, more financially responsible, but not homeowners. Wright, these are homeowners that purchase home or auto insurance from us, but they do not bundle and then finally we have the Robinsons. These are typically the most preferred customers, they bundle home and auto and they tend to look to agents for ease and confidence.
您所看到的表格是按照市场细分，将汽车险和房屋险的市场保费按渠道划分的。快速回顾一下这些细分市场：第一类是“Sam”，他们只在有需要时才购买汽车保险，对价格极为敏感，通常属于非标准客户；第二类是“Diane”，他们拥有之前的保险记录，财务上更负责任，但不是房主；第三类是“Wright”，他们是房主，会从我们这里购买房屋或汽车保险，但不会捆绑购买；最后是“Robinsons”，通常是最理想的客户，会捆绑购买房屋和汽车保险，并倾向于通过代理人来获得便捷性和信任感。
So not surprisingly, due to our legacy isn't bottom line auto carrier, we tend to over index on the Sam, the Diane, and the Wrights. And despite our steady growth and bundles, we still have just about 2% of the independent agent Robinson market. So this is lots of room to grow in a $59 billion market, and disruption in the captive market is putting more of that 97 billion of captive bundle in play as well.
所以不足为奇的是，由于我们本身起家是专注于利润驱动的汽车保险公司，我们在“Sam”、“Diane”和“Wright”这三类客户中占比偏高。尽管我们在捆绑产品方面持续增长，但在独立代理渠道的“Robinson”客户市场中，我们的份额仍仅约为2%。这意味着在这个价值590亿美元的市场中还有巨大增长空间，而专属代理市场的动荡也让970亿美元的捆绑市场部分变得可争夺。
And while there is still lots of upside and work ahead of us, we are pleased with our results today. We have continued our momentum in writing bundles with agents with 27% growth in 2019. A part of that growth comes from the expansion of our platinum program, which at year-end 2019 was at 3,700 agents. However, platinum will continue to be exclusive going forward. It is available only to those agents that have strong potential to write preferred bundles, and strong commitment to writing those bundles with Progressive.
虽然前路仍有许多增长空间和工作要做，但我们对目前的成果感到满意。2019年，我们与代理人合作销售的捆绑保单继续保持增长势头，增长率达到27%。这部分增长有一部分归因于我们Platinum计划的扩展，截至2019年末，该计划涵盖了3,700位代理人。但今后Platinum计划仍将保持排他性，仅向那些具备高潜力销售优质捆绑产品并愿意与Progressive深度合作的代理人开放。
So scarcity will remain part of the platinum appeal. And we currently have less than 10% of Progressive agents that are platinum. So we're going to manage that number carefully as we go forward with continued emphasis on profitable growth as key to an appointment. And we also see platinum working as it drives consideration of the home and auto bundle and our preferred auto more generally.
因此，稀缺性仍将是Platinum吸引力的一部分。目前，加入Platinum计划的Progressive代理人不到10%。我们将继续谨慎管理这一比例，把“盈利性增长”作为决定是否授予资格的关键标准。同时，我们也看到Platinum计划在推动客户考虑房屋与汽车保险的捆绑销售、以及提升对我们优选汽车保险产品关注度方面起到了积极作用。
So I'm going to reprise the graph that we share during prior Investor Relations calls updated year through 2019. This graph compares two cohorts of agents, one group and both of these agents -- both of these groups of agents had Progressive Home back in 2015. One group was selected for platinum and the other remained in the more general Progressive Home programs.
接下来我将重现我们在此前投资者关系电话会议中分享过的一张图，并更新至2019年。这张图对比了两个代理人群体——两组代理人在2015年都已经在销售Progressive的房屋保险产品。其中一组后来被选入Platinum计划，而另一组则仍然处于Progressive Home的一般项目中。
Of course, if we go back to the start of 2015, the more productive agents were ultimately invited to join platinum. So there is that initial Delta that we see. However, after the launch of platinum, that gap starts to widen. The momentum was initially slow as we integrated the sales teams. And we looked for Platinum program infrastructure to get built out.
当然，回到2015年初，更高产的代理人最终被邀请加入Platinum计划，因此最初我们看到两组之间就有差距。但在Platinum计划推出后，这一差距开始扩大。最初由于销售团队的整合，该计划推进较为缓慢，我们也在同步构建Platinum计划的基础设施。
But what we're now seeing is that in that multiplier effect of various initiatives that are starting to come together. So maintaining that original cohort of agents, so that we can actually compare the same-store sales, what we see with the solid orange line for platinum, versus the solid blue line for those non-platinum property agents, is that platinum agents are now 4.5 times more likely to bundle their home and auto.
而我们现在所看到的，是各种举措开始协同发力带来的倍增效应。通过保留这批原始代理人群体，我们得以对比“同店销售”情况。从图中可以看到，Platinum代理人（实线橙色）与非Platinum房险代理人（实线蓝色）相比，如今捆绑销售房屋和汽车保险的可能性高出4.5倍。
And then if I had preferred auto growth, these are the dashed lines that are now on the graph. You'll notice that both sets of agents have increased their preferred auto volume overtime. However, once again, those Platinum agents are again producing about four times more volume per agency. So the gap between these platinum and non-Platinum lines is really that time difference. And what we see when we're looking back from 2019, is that this list has held over time.
如果我们再加入优选汽车保险的增长（即图中的虚线），可以看到两组代理人的优选车险销量随时间都有所增长。然而，Platinum代理人每家机构创造的销量仍然是非Platinum代理人的约四倍。因此，这两条线之间的差距正是时间带来的变化。而从2019年回看，这一趋势始终得以保持。
And the platinum program itself is really about a comprehensive approach. So I'll speak a little bit more about partnering with agents both in terms of enhanced compensation, as well as making it easy for them to write bundles, and to leverage a strong brand. And then I'll hand off to Dave, who will share how we are positioning property for long-term success with a stable competitive offering. All of this comes together and builds our agents' confidence in our ability to serve your customers.
Platinum计划本身是一个全面性的方案。我会稍后详细讲讲我们如何在更优的佣金激励机制和简化捆绑销售流程上与代理人建立合作，并借助我们强大的品牌实力赋能代理人。接下来我会把时间交给Dave，他将介绍我们是如何通过稳定而具竞争力的产品定位，为房险业务实现长期成功打下基础。所有这些举措共同增强了代理人对我们服务客户能力的信心。
So on the compensation front, we recognize that we would have to think differently, and increase compensation in order to offer a compelling alternative to preferred carriers in this space. We laid out what we call past a partnership. It allows us to compensate agents for their increased commitment while maintaining our overall low-cost position.
在代理人佣金方面，我们意识到要在这个市场上成为优选保险公司的有力竞争者，就必须改变思路、提高佣金。因此我们推出了“Path to Partnership”（通往合作之路）计划，该计划允许我们在保持整体低成本优势的同时，向投入更多资源和承诺的代理人提供更有吸引力的回报。
So as an example of how this works, I'd like to share the story of G&G Independent Insurance. This is an agency with a smart leadership team that I had the opportunity to get to know last year. G&G joined Progressive in 2014. This was the same year that this agency opened their office in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and in the beginning, they wrote mostly non-standard auto with Progressive and when we rolled out our national commission schedule as part of past the partnership, they started off in the growth tier.
举一个例子说明这个机制的运作，我想分享一下G&G独立保险代理公司的故事。我去年有机会与这家具有前瞻领导力的公司深入交流。G&G于2014年加入Progressive，同年在阿肯色州费耶特维尔开设了办公室。起初，他们主要与Progressive合作销售非标准汽车保险产品。当我们推出“Path to Partnership”全国佣金体系时，他们从“成长层级”起步——这是我们为新加入的代理人设立的起点，帮助他们开始扩大与Progressive的业务往来。
A tier that we provide agents with an opportunity to getting started to really start growing your books with Progressive. However G&G's is overall agency strategy was more bundle focus, and they had a lot of preferred customers. So they were able to earn higher commissions as they wrote more preferred auto with us. Our Progressive sales representative Ben Burleson developed a strong relationship with a team at G&G. Ben recognized that this agency had a larger bundle opportunity and was a good fit for the platinum program.
该层级为代理人提供了一个起点，帮助他们逐步扩大与Progressive的业务往来。然而，G&G的整体代理战略更加专注于捆绑销售，而且他们拥有大量优选客户。因此，随着他们为我们销售更多优选汽车保险，也获得了更高的佣金。我们在Progressive的销售代表Ben Burleson与G&G团队建立了良好的合作关系。他意识到该公司具备更大的捆绑销售潜力，非常适合加入Platinum计划。
They moved to platinum by May of 2018, making them one of the first 12 platinum agents that we had in Arkansas. With this new level of partnership G&G was at the investment tier, earning higher personal auto Commission's especially for that more preferred auto, unlocking the opportunity to earn some of our highest commissions available in the bundle say write, and they also gained access to annual policies and other marketing benefits. And because they had moved on to the Platinum path, they were also eligible to earn a performance bonus that rewards profitable growth in bundles, as well as on their entire personalized book.
他们在2018年5月晋升为Platinum代理人，成为我们在阿肯色州首批12家Platinum代理人之一。随着合作关系的升级，G&G进入了“投资层级”，在销售优选车险产品方面可获得更高的佣金，并有机会享受我们针对捆绑销售提供的最高佣金之一；他们还获得了年单政策和其他市场营销支持。由于他们已步入Platinum发展路径，也具备资格获得业绩奖金，以奖励他们在捆绑业务和整个个险组合上的盈利性增长。
G&G quickly moved up a level with platinum, earning higher renewal commission on their bundles and a cash reward. And then by 2019 G&G was had Progressive as their number two carrier within their offices, gaining share quickly. So the agency see qualified for that Platinum Blue level, which earned it yet another cash award for reaching that goal in less than three years. And this May we will celebrate G&G's Platinum blue level achievement with a VIP trip. And they now have their sights set on becoming one of our Platinum 25 agents.
G&G很快在Platinum体系中再上一级，不仅获得了更高的捆绑续保佣金，还获得了现金奖励。到了2019年，Progressive已成为G&G办公室内的第二大保险合作品牌，份额迅速上升。因此，该机构获得了Platinum Blue等级资格，并因在不到三年内达成目标再度获得一笔现金奖励。今年5月，我们将通过一场VIP旅行庆祝G&G达成Platinum Blue级成就。而他们现在的目标是跻身我们最顶级的Platinum 25代理人行列。
So G&G moved from being a largely non-standard book with Progressive to becoming a platinum blue level partner with a pervert book, a bundle business and written premium that has grown tenfold. With this story highlights is an outstanding agency. But the scenes here play out again and again across our agents. It really underscores the power of providing different levels of partnership with compensation that reflects their commitment, as well as transparent and clear goals.
G&G从一家主要销售非标准车险业务的代理人，成长为拥有优选产品组合、捆绑销售业务，并实现保费增长十倍的Platinum Blue级合作伙伴。这一故事体现了G&G的卓越表现，但类似场景在我们代理人体系中不断上演。它充分说明了通过多层次合作机制，结合反映代理人投入程度的差异化佣金体系和清晰透明的目标设定，所带来的巨大推动力。
So these programs that we have in place now allow us to maintain our cost advantage as a broad distribution carrier, while still using targeted compensation to ensure that we encourage and that we recognize increase consideration with partner agents. So in other part of the Platinum promises ease of use which is really part of our core value proposition for agents. We have carried that over to the preferred bundle space to our portfolio quoting platform. Portfolio allows agents to select multiple products to quote whether simultaneously or to add product during the interview.
我们目前实施的这些计划，使我们在保持作为广覆盖分销型保险商的成本优势的同时，能够通过定向的佣金激励机制，鼓励并认可与合作代理人之间更深层次的合作关系。Platinum计划的另一承诺就是“便捷性”，这也是我们对代理人核心价值主张的一部分。我们已将这一理念拓展至优选捆绑产品领域，并推出了Portfolio报价平台。该平台允许代理人一次性选择多个产品进行报价，也可以在客户访谈过程中逐步添加报价项目。
There's prefilled available for customer, vehicle and property information across the products that are being quoted. In the portfolio summary page provides agents in their customers with an overview of their premium, their bundled savings and applied discounts. So agents can add or remove a product with the click, really speeding up that sales process. Portfolio is also a win for us internally, as it was an early example of strong teamwork and deepening integration across our auto and property businesses.
在报价过程中，系统会自动预填客户、车辆和房产的相关信息。在Portfolio的汇总页面中，代理人和客户可以一目了然地查看保费总览、捆绑优惠和折扣详情。代理人只需轻点几下即可增减产品，大大加快销售流程。对我们而言，Portfolio同样是一次内部的成功，它是车险与房险业务深度融合和团队高效协作的早期典范。
We launched portfolio in September of 2018 and at the end of last year, we were live in 27 states representing 73% of quote volume, as well as almost 120,000 users. We are seeing the expected list in our auto conversion. The list in our properties conversion actually surpassing expectations, which seems to be a result of both better representation at discounts, as well as easier access to the property products through this new interface.
我们在2018年9月推出Portfolio，截至去年年底，该平台已覆盖27个州，占我们报价总量的73%，用户接近12万人。在车险转化率方面，我们达到了预期；而在房险转化方面，实际效果甚至超出预期，原因可能是折扣展示更清晰、以及通过这个新界面获取房险产品更加便捷。
And what I personally find most encouraging is that the upgrades to the underlying architecture of the platform really allow us to better test and learn our way to continuous improvements as we respond to our agents evolving needs and their feedback. Now, being a brand with a national presence that customers want or ask for is cited in our internal research as a top reason that agents look to Progressive to help grow their business.
让我个人最感到振奋的是，该平台底层架构的升级极大地提升了我们的测试与学习能力，使我们能够持续改进，以回应代理人不断演变的需求和反馈。在我们的内部调研中，Progressive作为一个在全国范围内具有知名度、且深受消费者青睐的品牌，是代理人选择与Progressive合作以助力其业务增长的首要原因之一。
So we want to ensure that agents can leverage that brand for both our home and their bundle offerings. We know the power of the Progressive brand extensor homeowners. Research confirms readiness to consider purchasing for Progressive Homeowners product, especially amongst those younger homeowners. And we find that featuring home is the message performs well. Our media has shifted to a greater emphasis on home as part of the overall message mix. That in turn drives increased consumer awareness of the Progressive Home product, which makes the brand and even more powerful tool for our agents.
因此，我们希望确保代理人能将这一品牌优势充分延伸至我们的房险和捆绑产品。我们深知Progressive品牌在房险市场的影响力。研究显示，消费者特别是年轻屋主，对于购买Progressive房主保险产品持开放态度。我们还发现，突出房险内容的宣传效果优异。因此，我们的媒体传播策略也做出调整，在整体宣传中更加强调房险内容。这一转变有效提升了消费者对Progressive房险产品的认知度，从而也使该品牌成为代理人手中更有力的工具。
So we're leveraging that Progressive brand and our Platinum agent marketing collateral, making it easier for them to showcase both Brexit product with our co-branded materials across print, digital as well as mass media. And when we look at the overall program, Platinum is emerging as a driver for future commitment. So in a blind survey that was administered by a third-party agents indicated that Progressive is one of the companies where they placed their best customers 72% of the time, but when we put that data to focus in on agents that have access to our home product, that response jumped by 10 points.
因此，我们充分利用Progressive品牌，并在Platinum代理人营销材料中加以体现，使他们能更轻松地通过联合品牌素材，在印刷品、数字平台和大众媒体中全面展示我们的捆绑产品。当我们审视整个计划时，Platinum正逐步成为代理人未来持续合作的重要推动力。在一项由第三方进行的盲测调查中，有72%的代理人表示，他们会将最优质的客户投放给Progressive。而当我们聚焦于那些可以销售我们房险产品的代理人时，这一比例跃升了10个百分点。
Now, we have room to improve. We are still coming up short against two of the largest long standing preferred carriers in the market. But when we look at this from another angle, and we asked agents where they are planning to increase business, Progressive outperforms, even when compared to those long standing preferred carriers. And once again, there is a stronger result with agents that have our home product coming in at almost 80% intent to increase placement.
当然，我们仍有提升空间。相较于市场上两家历史悠久的优选保险公司，我们尚有差距。但从另一个角度看，当我们询问代理人未来计划增加业务投放的保险商时，Progressive表现优于这两家老牌公司。而且在可以销售我们房险产品的代理人中，近80%表示有意增加对Progressive的业务投放，表现更为强劲。
So, we feel good about things early years out, but we continue to learn and to look for opportunities to improve. Listening to our agents to understand their expectations and their customer's needs is critical. We do so through our agency council and an ongoing conversation with partner agents across the country. Guidance from our agents has also informed this deepening conversation across the home and the auto product teams as we evolved the bundle offering and our property product.
因此，对于当前的初步成果我们感到满意，但我们仍将不断学习，并寻找持续改进的机会。倾听代理人声音，了解他们的期待与客户需求，是我们工作的关键。我们通过代理人顾问团以及与全国合作代理人的持续交流来实现这一点。正是这些代理人的反馈推动了我们房险与车险团队的深度对话，从而不断优化我们的捆绑产品和房险产品。
And I'll hand off to Dave to share more on that front.
接下来我将交给Dave，由他进一步分享相关内容。
Dave Pratt
Good morning. I'll begin with a very brief overview of our financial results, and then dive into some of the details. Our growth is meeting our expectations. You see, last year, our direct written premium and property grew to just over $2 billion. And we're leveraging not only the Platinum agency program that Heather just described, but Progressive brand and marketing strength in the directional.
大家早上好。我将简要概述我们的财务业绩，然后再深入一些细节。我们的增长符合预期。去年，我们房险业务的直接承保保费增长至略高于20亿美元。我们不仅借助了Heather刚才提到的Platinum代理人计划，也在通过Progressive品牌和营销能力来推动直销渠道的增长。
The combined ratio improved by about four points last year, but it's still not meeting our goals and we'll talk in a lot more detail about that. So, I start with growth. I'm showing here growth in our new business deals over the last three years. The blue bar at the bottom is sales from local independent agents, and all of the growth that you see there is coming from bundles from auto and home bundles that we're writing largely through the Platinum program.
综合赔付率去年改善了大约4个百分点，但仍未达到我们的目标，稍后我们会详细说明。现在我先谈增长。这里展示的是过去三年我们新增业务的增长情况。图中蓝色柱状表示本地独立代理人的销售，增长部分全部来自于车险与房险捆绑销售，主要通过Platinum计划完成。
The orange bar is our direct to consumer business. That's pretty new to ARX until we're seeing very high percentage growth in the direct channel. We've almost completed the conversion from the ASI brand to Progressive Home. So those of you who ensure your home was Progressive on your most recent deck page, you saw the Progressive Home logo.
橙色柱状代表我们的直销业务，这对于ARX来说是相对新兴的渠道，但我们在该渠道上实现了非常高的增长率。我们几乎完成了从ASI品牌到Progressive Home的转换。各位如果最近查看房屋保单首页，应该已经看到Progressive Home的标识。
We've made investments in the quoting channels. So the portfolio program for agents that Heather described is now in 29 states. On the direct side, we're part of the home called explorer quoting platform. And we've actually built the capability to go all the way from quote to buy the policy without having to talk to an agent in 14 states as of the end of the year. And we'll continue to roll out both of those platforms in 2020.
我们在报价渠道方面也进行了投资。Heather提到的Portfolio计划目前已经覆盖了29个州。对于直销渠道，我们加入了名为HomeQuote Explorer的房险报价平台。截至去年底，在14个州我们已实现从报价到购买整个流程的在线化，客户无需与代理人沟通即可完成交易。2020年我们将继续扩展这两个平台的覆盖范围。
And then the light blue bar at the top, mostly in 2018 was a fairly large book role. So one of Progressive partners in the Progressive news agency decided to opt out of that program, we worked with them to roll that book over to Progressive Home. So when you combine all of those sources of growth, we had 61% growth in 2018. Looking at 2019 without that book role in the denominator, it looks like our new sales are pretty flat. But we continue to have strong underlying growth in both agency and the direct to consumer channel.
最上方浅蓝色柱状主要出现在2018年，代表一次规模较大的保单转移。当时，Progressive旗下的一家新闻代理合作伙伴决定退出合作项目，我们与其合作将其保单业务转入Progressive Home。因此，如果把所有增长来源合并计算，2018年的新业务增长率为61%。而2019年，在不计算这部分转入保单作为基数的前提下，整体新增销售看起来较为平稳。但实际上，无论在代理人渠道还是直销渠道，我们的内生增长势头依然强劲。
Now as we grow outside of ASI's original things, the mix of our businesses shifting. So ASI was founded as a Florida property insurer expanded fairly quickly into the other Gulf States. So if you go back to 2006, here, Florida was about 80% of ASI's business and Texas and Louisiana made up the rest. And the light blue part of this graph is all other states. So we've -- the expansion into the rest of the country has come to the point where Florida now only accounts for about 20% of our exposures. And those expansion states now are more than half.
随着我们在ASI最初的基础之外不断扩张，业务结构正在发生转变。ASI最初成立是作为佛罗里达州的房险公司，随后迅速扩展到其他墨西哥湾沿岸州。如果回溯到2006年，佛州业务约占ASI总量的80%，德克萨斯州和路易斯安那州构成了剩余部分。图中浅蓝色部分代表其他各州。随着我们向全国扩展，如今佛州仅占我们风险暴露的约20%，而扩展州已占据一半以上。
Now, that expansion also means that we are now exposed in a bigger way to new perils, especially winds and hail. If you look at the components of our loss ratio over the last few years, the orange part of these bars is wind and hail. The great part of the top is hurricane losses. And then the blue part at the bottom is all other perils with the property policy coverage.
这种扩张也意味着我们面临更广泛的新风险，尤其是风灾和冰雹。从过去几年我们赔付率的组成看，柱状图中橙色部分是风灾与冰雹，顶端灰色部分是飓风造成的损失，底部蓝色部分则是保单覆盖的其他所有风险。
So you see that all other peril section has been stable and predictable. We've been very close to our pricing expectations on the all other peril selection. Wind and hail though has gone from 10% to 15% of premium to more than 30% last year. So, really getting our hands around what our expectations would be for wind and hail costs and pricing appropriately is an important part of meeting our profit goals.
可以看到，其他风险部分始终保持稳定、可预测，我们在该部分的定价与实际表现非常接近。而风灾与冰雹所占比重则从过去的10%-15%上升至去年的30%以上。因此，准确掌握风灾与冰雹的成本预期并制定合适的定价，是实现我们盈利目标的重要一环。
Now I'll talk in more detail later about a reinsurance program. Just sort of highlight here, how that results in differences between our direct and net results. So the lower line here shows the direct combined ratio for ASI in our Progressive Home over the years. The blue line at the top is the net result. So in the early years, ASI was seeding lot of premiums to our reinsurance partners.
稍后我会更详细地讲解我们的再保险计划。现在我想先强调一下它对我们直接与净结果之间的影响。图中较低的曲线显示了多年来ASI及Progressive Home的直接综合赔付率，上方蓝线则是净综合赔付率。在早期，ASI将大量保费分出给再保合作伙伴。
We didn't have any hurricanes making landfall in those years, so we weren't seeding any losses. And so our net loss or net combined ratio was higher than the direct. In the last few years the reinsurance program has been working as intended. And in years where we've had some big hurricane losses with hurricanes Irma and Michael, the reinsurance has kept the combined ratio near 100.
那些年份没有飓风登陆，因此我们没有分出任何赔付损失，净赔付率因此高于直接赔付率。而在过去几年，再保险计划开始发挥预期作用。比如Irma和Michael飓风发生的年份，通过再保险安排，我们的综合赔付率得以保持在100%左右。
Now, it's worth noting that even in these recent years where we haven't been satisfied with our results, we've been consistent with the industry. So the chart here the blue line shows our direct loss ratio each year. The gray line shows the industry but with the industry premium --state premium weighted based on the ASI and Progressive Home mix.
值得指出的是，即便是在近几年我们对自身表现不太满意的年份，我们的结果仍与行业保持一致。图中蓝线显示了我们每年的直接赔付率，灰线则是按ASI与Progressive Home各州业务比重加权后的行业平均赔付率。
So, in the early years, there you see with mostly Florida premium and no hurricanes very little loss ratios, as we've expanded into other states, we should expect to see the loss ratio be higher than no storms here in Florida though it's still been, at or a little bit below the industry result.
因此，早期我们主要在佛州，且没有飓风灾害，赔付率非常低。随着业务扩展到其他州，赔付率有所上升是预期之内。但即便如此，我们的赔付率依然处于行业平均水平附近，甚至略低于行业。
So let me talk for a minute about what we did last year to improve profitability. And then we'll transition to our plans for this year and beyond. On the map here, the blue states as called the hail states. And so the chart on the right shows our rate increases last year. So in those hail states, we took rates up almost 9% compared to the 4% in the rest of the country. And then we also implemented some covers changes.
接下来我想简要讲讲我们去年为提升盈利能力所做的工作，然后再谈谈我们今年及以后的计划。图中蓝色的州被我们称作冰雹州，右边图表展示了去年各州的费率调整。在这些冰雹州，我们的费率平均上调了近9%，而全国其他地区的平均涨幅为4%。此外，我们还对部分保障责任进行了调整。
So the states that have the stars on them, we did two things. We started to require new customers to buy higher wind and hail deductibles and the issue there's the when fairly small hail falls on a new or well-maintained roof it really shouldn't do any damage. But that doesn't prevent roofers from aggressively marketing to our customers, suggesting that the roofer could help them get a free roof from their insurance company.
图上带星号的州，我们做了两项改动。第一，我们要求新客户在投保时选择更高的风灾和冰雹免赔额。因为通常情况下，小冰雹落在新建或维护良好的屋顶上并不会造成实质性损害。但这并不妨碍屋顶维修商主动推销服务，向我们的客户暗示可以通过保险免费更换屋顶。
Now, it's clear that if our customer's roof is damaged, we want them to report that claim and we want to pay it as quickly as possible so we can help the customer get the repair made. But we have found that in cases where the customer's deductible is a little higher, they're less likely to submit a claim, when there's no visible damage in response to the marketing pitch from the roofer.
当然，如果客户的屋顶确实受损，我们希望他们尽快报案，我们也会迅速理赔，协助他们完成修复。但我们的观察是，当客户的免赔额较高时，如果屋顶没有明显损伤，他们在面对屋顶商人的推销时更不容易冲动报案。
The other change we've made is it for roofs where the shingles are nearing the end of their useful life. We're requiring actual cash value covers for the roof. That seemed fairly small hail, if it hits a shingle that's been out in the sun for 15 or 20 years, is much more likely to crack this shingle and then that needs to be repaired or replaced. But it just doesn't make sense for us to offer full replacement cost coverage for a maintenance item on something that needs to be replaced.
第二项改动是，对于使用年限接近尾声的屋顶瓦片，我们要求屋顶部分采用“实际现金价值”保险责任。因为对于已在日晒下使用了15至20年的瓦片来说，即使是小冰雹也容易造成碎裂，从而必须维修或更换。但显然，我们不应为一个本就该更换的维护项目提供全额更换成本的保障。
And so it as the roof reaches sort of nears the end of its life, I asking people to have actual cash value coverage. And we see evidence that both of those changes will bring the loss ratio down and mitigate the need for further rate increases. Now, despite those actions in the blue states last year, we ran at 115 combined ratio compared to an 89.5 combined ratio in the rest of the country.
因此，对于这些寿命临近终点的屋顶，我们要求采用实际现金价值保障。我们已有证据表明，这两项变动都有助于降低赔付率，从而减少进一步调高保费的必要。尽管我们去年已在蓝色州采取了这些措施，综合赔付率仍达到115%，而全国其他地区则为89.5%。
So, I think a natural question would be will, how can you feel confident that you have addressed this problem and you can make money consistently throughout the country? So let me talk a little bit about the tools that we use to price for these parallels. Because weather is very volatile, we can't use last year's experience as a good predictor for next year's claims, wouldn't make any sense to say, we haven't had a hurricane for 3 years, so we don't have to price anything for hurricane.
这就引出一个合理的问题：你们如何有信心已经解决这个问题，并能在全国范围持续实现盈利？让我先介绍一下我们用来给这些风险定价的工具。由于天气波动极大，不能仅凭去年的经验来预测下一年的赔付。例如，如果连续三年没有飓风，并不意味着我们可以不为飓风风险计价。
We have pretty good models for to help us understand what are likely hurricane losses will be, until recently, we only had 2 models available to predict severe convective storms. So those are the big thunderstorms that caused wind and hail. And I'm showing here the modeled prediction for what our annual average loss should be from wind and hail from those models over a 5-year period.
我们目前已有相当不错的模型来帮助我们预估飓风带来的潜在损失。而直到最近，我们只有两个模型可用于预测强对流风暴——即那些造成风灾和冰雹的大雷暴。此处展示的是这些模型对未来5年风灾与冰雹带来年均损失的预测结果。
Here's what our actual losses look like. So, the model which is not doing a good job of helping us predicts what we should expect in terms of claims from wind and hail. Fortunately, there's a new model that has become available in the last couple of years. And as we back test at against our broker business, we feel much more comfortable with that models going to do a good job of helping us to predict what our future loss costs will be.
以下是我们实际发生的损失情况。显然，旧模型在预测风灾和冰雹导致的理赔率方面表现不佳。幸运的是，过去几年我们获得了一个新的模型，并用它对我们过往的业务进行回测后，我们更有信心它能准确预测未来的赔付成本。
So model see here in the orange shows the models prediction of what our losses has been compared to that light blue bar, which is the actual that we paid. So we're now using that new model in our pricing decisions for wind and hail. So we feel much more comfortable that we will be priced accurately going forward.
图中橙色部分是新模型对损失的预测值，浅蓝色则是我们实际赔付的金额。现在我们已经在风灾和冰雹风险的定价中采用这个新模型，因此对未来能更准确定价感到更有信心。
Now, we also want to continue to grow this business, while we work to improve the profitability. And so we are in the process of rolling out what we're calling the 4.0 version of our property product.
在提升盈利能力的同时，我们仍希望持续扩大业务规模。为此，我们正在推出代号为“4.0版本”的房屋保险产品。
As we've grown outside of the gulf states, we're collecting a lot more data in the rest of the country. And we've been able to collaborate with progress this auto product R&D team and Cleveland to use their most sophisticated tools to help us get the price segmentation, where needs to be. Heather mentioned the feedback we've gotten from our Platinum agents, so that's been very helpful as well.
随着我们业务向墨西哥湾沿岸各州以外扩展，我们在全国范围收集了更多数据。我们还与Progressive的汽车产品研发团队（位于克利夫兰）合作，利用他们最先进的工具来实现更精准的价格细分。Heather提到的白金代理人的反馈对我们也非常有帮助。
So, we've been able to expand eligibility in some cases, our underwriting appetite was much more restrictive than their other preferred markets. We've removed some exclusions from the contracts that were unusual in the market. And we've brought in coverage through endorsements, and so this gives me an excuse to put the picture of the German Shepherd puppy here because we used to have a fairly long list of dog breeds that were ineligible. And as we studied further, we were able to pay that back. So this little guy would now be eligible for insurance Progressive Home.
我们在部分领域扩大了可保范围；此前我们的承保偏好比其他优选市场更为严格。我们还删除了一些在市场上不常见的免责条款，并通过附加条款引入了更多保障。借此机会，我放了一张德国牧羊犬幼犬的照片——因为过去我们有一长串不予承保的犬种名单。现在经过进一步研究，我们已缩短这份名单，这位小朋友如今就可以在Progressive Home投保了。
Let me talk for a minute about our reinsurance program. We maintain a very conservative reinsurance program and intend to continue that. On the catastrophe side, it's designed to provide coverage for three major hurricanes in the single year. So, on the far left, you see the coverage available for our first event in Florida.
接下来我想简要讲一下我们的再保险计划。我们一直保持非常保守的再保险策略，并计划继续维持下去。在灾难类风险方面，该计划旨在为一年内可能发生的三次重大飓风提供保障。图中最左侧展示了我们在佛罗里达首个灾害事件中所拥有的保险覆盖范围。
So the way the program is structured today, we retain the first $16 million of losses from a single event. The gray part in the middle there is the Florida hurricane catastrophe fund, that's a state reinsurance farms that were required to participate in and do. And then the blue section is voluntary market reinsurance that we buy.
目前该再保险计划的结构是：每次灾害事件发生时，我们自留首笔1600万美元的损失。中间灰色部分代表佛罗里达州飓风灾害基金，这是我们依法必须参与的州政府再保险项目。而蓝色部分则是我们在市场上购买的自愿再保险覆盖。
And then finally at the top, we have a catastrophe bonds so insurance links security. Altogether, we have coverage for an event of almost $1.8 billion in losses. Now, most of the blue section is reinstated, automatically. So if there's a big claim, we get a reinstatement. And so the middle bar there shows what our coverage look like after $1 billion event, we would still have about $1.34 billion in coverage.
最后，在最顶层我们还有巨灾债券，也就是保险相关证券。总的来说，我们的保险计划可以覆盖最高接近18亿美元的单次灾害损失。蓝色部分大多数会自动恢复，也就是说如果发生大额赔付，我们会获得再保恢复。图中间那栏展示了在发生10亿美元损失事件后的覆盖情况，我们仍将拥有大约13.4亿美元的保障额度。
And then we would even have this as a second $700 million event. As a second event, we would have remaining $640 million in coverage for a third event. And to put that in context, Hurricane Irma is the most expensive storm we've ever encountered. And our estimate of ultimate losses for Irma is less than $400 million.
如果之后再发生一场损失为7亿美元的第二次灾害事件，我们仍可在第三次灾害中获得6.4亿美元的剩余保险保障。对比来看，飓风伊尔玛是我们迄今遭遇的最昂贵的风暴，我们对其最终损失的估计也不到4亿美元。
So we feel good about the structure of the catastrophe program. As the business continues to grow, we expect to increase our retention at the bottom slowly, and we expect to buy even more limited at the top of the program. And we also have an aggregate reinsurance program. That's to cover the volatility in wind and hail that I described earlier. So no individual hailstorm is likely to reach that $60 million retention. But if we have a year with a lot of hailstorms, that could put pressure on our loss ratio.
所以我们对当前巨灾再保险计划的结构感到满意。随着业务的不断增长，我们预计将在底层逐步提高自留额，同时在顶部增购更多的保护层。此外，我们还设有一项总额型再保险计划，用于对冲前面提到的风灾和冰雹造成的损失波动。虽然单一冰雹灾害不太可能达到6000万美元的自留额门槛，但若当年出现多起冰雹事件，将对我们的赔付率构成压力。
In previous years, we had a program that was based on a loss ratio attachment so far loss ratio reached the attachment point we get ahead of recovery from the reinsurance. We switch that this year to an aggregate catastrophe excess of loss program. So in this year's program, we retain the first $375 million of catastrophe losses, and then we have coverage for up to $200 million above that. So if you have a really bad wind and hail year with lots of activity, that aggregate program would kick in and we have a recovery.
前几年，我们采用的是基于赔付率附加点的再保机制——一旦年度赔付率达到设定门槛，我们就可以开始从再保方获得赔偿。而今年我们改为总额型巨灾超额损失再保险计划。今年的安排是：我们自留前3.75亿美元的灾难损失，之后可以获得最多2亿美元的再保覆盖。因此如果那一年风灾和冰雹活动频繁，这项总额再保计划就会启动，帮助我们获得补偿。
It's important to note that that change may result in a change to the monthly volatility that you see in our property results. So what we're showing here, the blue line shows the property combined ratio that Progressive reported each month in 2019. The orange line shows what we would have reported, if we didn't have that loss ratio based aggregate reinsurance. So you see in January, it was a very like weather month, the combined ratio was below 80. So there's no need for aggregate recovery.
需要指出的是，这种变更可能会导致我们月度房产险财务结果的波动方式发生改变。我们这里展示的图表中，蓝色线条表示Progressive在2019年每月报告的房产综合赔付率，橙色线条表示如果当时没有基于赔付率的总额再保险，我们会报告的结果。例如1月天气较为平稳，综合赔付率低于80%，因此无需动用再保险。
In February was as a busier weather month. The combined ratio approached 120, but we hadn't yet hit that year-to-date the attachment point for the reinsurance. That changed in March. So March was, again, a busy weather month, but now we had a recovery on the reinsurance and so our reported combined ratio in March was about 100.
到了2月，天气活跃度升高，综合赔付率接近120%，但尚未达到全年至今的再保险启动点。而到了3月，尽管天气依旧频繁，我们触发了再保险理赔，因此3月的报告综合赔付率回落到约100%。
And then each month through the rest of the year, the recovery would go up or down based on the weather. So you see in April, relatively quiet. We actually reversed some of that recovery, but then in May and June busier months. So again, we -- recovery we had in the reinsurance increase, but our reported combined ratio was pretty stable.
随后，在年内的每个月份中，再保险的赔付回收金额会根据天气情况上下波动。例如4月天气较为平静，我们实际上回冲了一部分已确认的再保赔付。而到了5月和6月，天气活跃，再保回收金额随之增加，但我们的报告综合赔付率保持相对稳定。
With this year's program, we won't have a recovery on that aggregate unless we get to $375 million in total catastrophe losses. So in the early months of the years, we have a month where there's a lot of weather will report a higher combined ratio, but we expect the reinsurance to be available if needed the full year results are difficult.
而在今年的再保安排下，只有当全年的灾害总损失达到3.75亿美元时，总额再保才会启动并提供赔付。因此，如果年初某个月天气较为恶劣，我们将报告较高的综合赔付率。但我们预期全年若确有必要，仍可动用再保险。不过这也使得全年业绩的预测变得更具挑战性。
So, looking in with just a very brief description of our priorities for the property business for the year, job number one is improving profitability. We've talked a lot about that. The second is a focus on our people and culture. Because of the fast growth in this business over the last three years, we've gone from less than 600 people working in the property business to more than 1200 people. So it's really important that we spent a lot of effort on coaching and career development so that those people are effective in their jobs, enjoy their jobs and want to stay with Progressive for a long time.
展望全年，我们对房产保险业务的重点工作也有简要概括。首要任务是提升盈利能力，这部分我们已详细阐述。第二个重点是关注我们的员工和企业文化。由于过去三年的快速扩张，房产险业务团队已从不到600人增长到超过1200人，因此我们必须大力投入于员工的辅导与职业发展，确保员工胜任岗位、乐在其中，并愿意长期留在Progressive。
We have opportunities to improve processes as we grow to become more efficient and reduce cost per policy. I don't know if you noticed that on the first page, our expense ratio was down by more than 2 points in 2019. And we've seen some further opportunity for efficiency gains. We wouldn't continue to make it easy for agents and customers to quote and buy our policies and the investments in portfolio quoting and home quote explorer by or can be there.
随着业务增长，我们还有机会持续优化流程，从而提高效率、降低每张保单的成本。不知道大家是否注意到，在第一页的数据中，我们的费用率在2019年下降了超过2个百分点，我们仍看到了进一步提高效率的空间。我们也将继续通过投资Portfolio报价平台和Home Quote Explorer等工具，使代理人和客户能更轻松地进行报价和投保操作。
And then finally, we want to work to improve the customer experience. And the focus here is on those bundled customers. So there are instances today where, for example, the billing experience is different on your auto policy compared to your home policy. And we want to align those experiences so that the bundled customer has the same experience across all of our products. And we think that'll result in even better customer retention will keep those bundled customers for a long time.
最后，我们还致力于提升客户体验，重点是关注那些同时购买了车险和房险的打包客户。目前在一些情况下，客户在车险与房险之间的账单体验还存在差异。我们希望统一这种体验，让打包客户在所有产品中的体验保持一致。我们相信这样做将进一步提升客户留存率，使这类客户能长期续保。
So with that, we will pause just briefly and we'll give Tricia and John an opportunity to come up for questions. Thank you.
以上就是我们的分享，我们将稍作停顿，接下来由Tricia和John上台接受提问。谢谢大家。
Question-and-Answer Session
问答环节
A - Julia Hornack
Thanks Dave. [Operator Instructions] And before I kick it over to Jason to take our first question from the conference call line, there's been a lot of discussion in the property casualty industry about the effects of this concept of social inflation. And so, Tricia and John, I thought you might want to start off by talking about how that concept of social inflation can affect, particularly bodily injury, severity and in PIP trends.
谢谢你，Dave。[操作说明]在我们请Jason接入电话会议线路上的第一个问题之前，近期在财产与意外险行业中，关于“社会通胀”（social inflation）这一概念的影响有很多讨论。因此，Tricia 和 John，我想你们也许可以先谈谈这个概念是如何影响人身伤害（bodily injury）赔付严重程度，以及个人伤害保护（PIP）赔付趋势的。
Tricia Griffith
It's a great. I'll take a stab at that on both the personal auto side and commercial line side, and then John, if you can weigh in on anything you forgot or anything that that's important to note. And then why don't I have Gary Traicoff, our Chief Actuary, let come up and talk about the reserve part of it, I think that's a really important part.
这是个很好的问题。我先从个人汽车保险和商用险两个方面来谈谈，然后请John补充一下我是否遗漏了什么，或者是否还有值得指出的重要事项。之后，我也会请我们的首席精算师Gary Traicoff上来说说准备金方面的内容，我认为这是个非常关键的部分。
So, first and foremost, in the personal auto side, frequency is down about 3% and if you compare it to the last data point, we have for the competition, it sound lower because it's flattening out. It's was about zero for the competition in quarter three. That is the 12th consecutive quarter that our frequency has been down. Again, we talked about trying to attribute certain things to frequency, it's really difficult. And we would say that our mix shift to more preferred customers seems to be a part of it. But again, it's really hard to attribute any one particular thing we'll watch that very closely.
首先在个人汽车保险方面，事故发生频率同比下降了大约3%。如果与我们掌握的竞争对手的最新数据相比，我们的频率下降幅度更大，因为对方的频率已经趋于持平，在第三季度约为零。这是我们连续第12个季度实现频率下降。当然，关于如何归因于这一趋势，我们此前也讨论过，这其实非常难以界定。但我们认为，客户结构向偏好型客户转变，可能是造成频率下降的一部分原因。不过再强调一次，很难归因于单一因素，我们会持续密切关注这一变化。
On the severity side, we're about a point different from the industry at this juncture. The typical reasons in collision and property damage component parts, actually labor rates have been increasing and total losses. We're having more frequent total loss. So those are continuing the trends we've talked about for several quarters. On the BI severity part, which we take more seriously because they have a slightly longer tails and I talked a lot internally about injuries are not like fine line, they do not to get better with age. So, we really tried to make sure we have the right file at the right rep at the right time.
在损失严重程度方面，目前我们与行业的差异大约在一个百分点左右。主要原因仍然包括碰撞赔付、财产损失零部件成本、劳工费率上升，以及全损案件更为频繁。这些趋势我们已在过去几个季度持续观察并指出。至于人身伤害（BI）的赔付严重程度，我们尤为重视，因为这类案件具有“长尾特性”。我在内部经常强调，受伤不是葡萄酒，不会随着时间变得更好。因此，我们非常注重案件在第一时间被分派到合适的理赔代表和团队手中。
So here's what I would say at this point. We see the BI trends, flattening out somewhat. At this point in time again, this is changing and if you're talking to some of our competition, I think we're all watching this very closely. So it is flattening out. But our BI trends are up and if you compare our incurred trends to the paid of industry, we're about a 0.5 difference, which we would assess to actuarial increases or reserve increases.
因此我现在可以说的是，我们观察到人身伤害赔付趋势目前正在趋于平稳。当然，情况依然在变化，如果你与其他竞争对手沟通，相信大家都在密切监控这一趋势。虽然目前趋于平稳，但我们的BI赔付趋势依旧呈上升趋势。如果将我们的发生赔付趋势与行业的实际支付趋势相比，大约有0.5个百分点的差距，我们认为这主要反映了精算假设和准备金评估的变化。
We're seeing the same aggressiveness. We think about the social installation, buzzword that Julie talked about. We're seeing aggressive attorneys. We're seeing aggressive attorneys early on in the files. And so that's really an important piece. We call it like day zero before or right after we get the claim reported. We see attorney evaporate up about 2% year-over-year in the personal auto side. And we're looking at different cohorts of coverage limits. And we're seeing about mid-single-digits in every cohort and they're slightly different depending on it. So think of 5,100, 2,550 et cetera.
我们也看到了类似的激进行为。在考虑Julia提到的“社会通胀”这个流行术语时，我们确实发现了律师行为的愈加激进。我们在案件早期阶段就看到了律师的积极介入，这一点非常关键。我们把这个阶段称为“第零天”——也就是在理赔报案前后。我们观察到，在个人车险方面，涉案律师的出现率同比上升了约2%。我们还在分析不同保险限额群体的情况，几乎每个群体的涉案律师比例都有中单位数百分比的上升，尽管在不同限额下略有差异，比如5/100、25/50等保额层次。
And this is an anecdotal piece, but some of our CRM reps and said that they are getting calls from someone other than the names insured to assess what the limits are. And I remember being in a claims range for 15 years and getting those calls oftentimes they were from plaintiffs attorneys. Again, this is anecdotal, but am I going to take my more interested take a file that says 5,100, then in 2,555. So again, those are just some things are anecdotal.
虽然以下是轶事性质的信息，但我们的部分客户关系代表（CRM）提到，他们接到了不是保单上被保险人的来电，询问保额是多少。我自己曾经在理赔一线工作了15年，也经常接到类似电话，而这些电话往往来自原告律师。虽然这是个案，但如果我是他们，我肯定更愿意接手一份保额为5/100的案件，而不是2.5/55的。这些都是一些值得关注的线索，虽然目前还只是个别观察。
A new piece of information that we have from a vendor that we work with shows that attorney media spend is up 10% and when you compare the fourth quarter of 2019 to the fourth quarter 2018. Again, I could have anecdotally told you that from my travels and you turn on the TV in any state you go to look at billboards. So we think that that's getting more aggressive. So we have to watch that really carefully. I assume that many of you will ask, because I referenced a handful of states a couple of quarters ago that we're watching closely.
我们最近从一个合作的外部供应商那里得到一项新数据，显示律师的媒体投放费用同比增长了10%，这是将2019年第四季度与2018年同期相比的数据。当然，即便没有这个数据，从我各地出差的观察来看，打开电视或者看看路边广告牌，也能直观感受到这一点。所以我们判断，律师的宣传攻势确实在变得更激进，因此我们必须非常警惕。我想很多人可能会问，因为在前几个季度我曾提到过我们正在密切关注的一些州。
So, there's about 5 states that we've been watching from BI severities trend. 4 out of 5 of those have shown a decline in severity in the fourth quarter compared to full year 2019. But again, 3 out of 5 of those states are still higher than countrywide. So we're watching closely right now and it appears to be flattening but again, that can change at any given time. We are very surgical in pricing each line coverage each day channel product, all those things will keep on top of that, clearly our margins we believe are really strong and we believe we're conservative from the reserving side.
我们目前在关注大约5个州的人身伤害赔付严重程度趋势。在2019年第四季度，这5个州中有4个州的严重程度呈现下降趋势，相较于全年水平有所改善。但其中仍有3个州高于全国平均水平。因此，我们目前仍在密切观察。虽然目前似乎趋于平稳，但情况随时可能变化。在定价方面，我们在每一条保障责任、每一天、每个渠道和产品维度上都采取非常精细化的策略。我们相信，目前的利润率非常健康，而在准备金方面我们也保持相对保守的立场。
So on the commercial side, we are down 4% from a frequency perspective, up about 19% from a severity perspective and about a couple of those points are reserving because it's actuarial strengthening. Here's what I would step back and say one thing. Every BMT in our commercial lines organization was at or below our targets. So very successful 2019 and into January, we were sub 90 combined ratio. So we are very strong on the commercial side.
在商业险方面，事故频率下降了4%，而赔付严重程度上升了约19%，其中有几个百分点来自于准备金加强，也就是精算加强。从更宏观的角度看，我们商业险组织中的每一个业务管理团队（BMT）都达成或优于目标。因此，2019年是非常成功的一年，进入2020年1月时，我们的综合赔付率低于90，显示我们在商业险领域的表现依然非常稳健。
We also are no stranger to being able to react a trend. So if you recall, in 2016, we bumped up against our 96 and we immediately when you part of that was commercial, we immediately increased rates, knowing it takes a little bit longer because the majority of those policies are annual, still continue to take rate in 2017 and 2018. 2019, we saw the competition was also taking rate during those time frames, but in the first half, that started to diminish a little bit, it's picked up at the latter half of 2019.
我们在应对趋势变化方面也并不陌生。大家还记得在2016年，我们的综合赔付率接近96时——部分原因来自商业险——我们立即开始调高费率。我们知道商业险大多数是年单，所以费率调整见效较慢，但我们在2017年和2018年仍持续进行了提价。2019年，我们观察到竞争对手在上述时段也开始调高费率，不过上半年调价力度有所减弱，而到了2019年下半年又有所增强。
I would say for Progressive we took less than a point of 1.5% rate increase in 2019. We will likely be a little bit more aggressive in 2020 as we see specific things and last trends increase. And part of our, in terms of the 17% or 19% on BI trend. Part of that, too, we are having a mix shift to our four higher transportations, which are higher severity. So it's one of the keys.
就Progressive而言，我们在2019年的整体费率涨幅不到1.5%。而2020年我们可能会更为积极一些，因为我们观察到一些特定因素和损失趋势在上升。就人身伤害（BI）赔付趋势而言，17%到19%的上升中也有一部分原因是我们的业务结构向更高运输风险的方向倾斜，而这类业务通常伴随更高的损失严重程度，这是关键之一。
I talked to John Barbagallo. He sees three states very specifically where we see loss trends accelerating. And so we either already have smiled or in slaves rate increases and in addition to that we have three states, those things three states, we have multiple variations of underwriting restrictions.
我与John Barbagallo交流过。他特别指出了三个州，在这些州我们确实看到损失趋势正在加速。因此，我们已经在这些州实施了或正在推动费率上涨。此外，在这三个州中，我们还采取了多种承保限制措施。
So as an example, we have a 9.6% rate increase going in May in California, we'll watch those closely. And again, when we think growth and profitability, if you have to make a choice which we never want to, it's always going to be profit. So want to show really, really great at our solid results in commercial, especially compared to the industry. We will get on anything we don't see quickly, and make sure that we meet our profit targets. Do you want to add anything?
举个例子，在加州我们将在5月实施9.6%的费率上调，我们会密切关注这些调整的效果。再次强调，在考虑增长与盈利之间的权衡时，如果必须做出选择——尽管我们并不希望如此——我们始终优先保障盈利能力。我们希望能展现出我们在商业险方面非常稳健的成绩，尤其是相对于整个行业而言。如果我们看到任何趋势不利的信号，会立即采取行动，确保达成我们的利润目标。你有没有什么要补充的？
John Sauerland
We're going to ask Gary to come on and talk about reserves. I'll fill in well he makes his way with two thoughts. So one, it's important to take a little step back when you're thinking about trends, frequency and severity, and look at the longer term trends. We think in aggregate our severity trends are normally very consistent with the industry and frequency trends, we actually have been enjoying bigger drops in frequency more recently over the past three years actually, than the competition.
我们请Gary来谈谈准备金问题。我在他上台前先补充两个观点。首先，在讨论趋势、事故频率和损失严重程度（severity）时，有必要退一步看更长期的走势。从整体来看，我们的损失严重程度趋势通常与行业保持一致。而在事故频率方面，实际上在过去三年中，我们的下降幅度要大于竞争对手。
Tricia mentioned some of that is due to writing more preferred mix of business. I would offer we also believe that is due to more robust underwriting we put in our upfront process in binding new business. We think that's had a lot of great outcomes in terms of avoiding risks whose intent is not to ensure but to prefer.
Tricia提到部分原因是我们承保了更多优质客户。我想补充一点，我们认为另一部分原因是我们在新业务承保流程中强化了前端的风险筛查。这一做法带来了非常好的结果，让我们更有效地规避了那些并不是真正想要保险保障的风险客户。
So longer term severity sort of where the industry is frequency better than the industry is it also offer where Tricia was mentioning on the commercial side matching price risk, we are also very agile in the personalized side and was certainly continue to make sure we are matching prices that we perceive should rise and at least on the liability side due to the trends with risk as fast we can.
所以从长期来看，我们在损失严重程度方面基本与行业一致，在事故频率方面则优于行业。正如Tricia在商业险方面提到的“风险匹配定价”，我们在个人险领域也同样保持高度灵活性，并且会继续确保将费率与我们所判断出的风险趋势相匹配，尤其是在责任险方面，面对风险上升的趋势，我们会尽可能迅速地做出调整。
Julia Hornack
Okay. What are your thoughts?
好的，你有什么想法？
Gary Traicoff
Well, I think this is Gary Traicoff, Chief Actuary. Hello, everybody. Tricia and John gave a great overview and description. With respect to reserves, as you know, we developed unfavorably last year, about $232 million, which was six tenths of a point on the combined ratio. And that development was primarily related to the increasing injury severity trends that we were seeing and led to unfavorable case development.
大家好，我是首席精算师Gary Traicoff。Tricia和John刚才已经做了很好的概述。关于准备金，正如你们所知，我们在去年出现了不利的准备金发展，约为2.32亿美元，相当于综合赔付率的0.6个百分点。这一不利的发展主要与我们观察到的伤害损失严重程度（injury severity）上升趋势有关，导致了个案赔付准备金的增加。
We recognized that early in 2019. And over the course of the last three quarters, we increased reserves from actuarial changes, roughly about $60 million. So we ended up going up about $186 million during 2019. And in addition to that, our claims adjusters continue to strengthen reserves, through natural movements as well. So when we look at overall, with some the changes that we took, we know in an accident year basis are up about 12% for commercial auto year-over-year , and 6%, or personal auto that would be lost and LAE for liability, which you probably noted in the annual report. Of course, LAE is a little bit flatter. So on an indemnity side, we're a little bit north of that.
我们在2019年初就注意到了这个趋势，并在接下来的三个季度中因精算调整增加了大约6000万美元的准备金。全年我们一共增加了约1.86亿美元的准备金。此外，我们的理赔员也通过正常流程持续加强了准备金水平。整体来看，若以事故年度口径来观察，商用车方面的责任赔付及理赔费用（loss and LAE）同比上升了约12%；个人车险则上升了约6%。这些数字你们可能已经在年报中注意到了。当然，LAE的增幅相对较平稳，从纯赔付角度看，增幅略高于6%。
And when we think about how development is occurring recently, last year, over the last two quarters, we did develop slightly unfavorably about $20 million, of that $230 million that we saw come through two tenth of it was in the first half of the year, and a much smaller amount during the second half of the year. In January, we ended up developing unfavorably about $78 million, which was a little over two points on a combined ratio. In January, though the development was really related to some other areas.
再看近期的准备金发展情况，在去年的下半年，我们出现了约2000万美元的小幅不利发展，全年2.32亿美元中的大部分是在上半年形成的，下半年相对较少。而在今年1月，我们出现了约7800万美元的不利发展，相当于综合赔付率的两个百分点多一些。但需要说明的是，1月的不利发展主要来自其他领域，并不全是伤害类准备金的变化。
We primarily developed unfavorably due to December claims that were reported in January. When we look at our injury case reserved development between personal and commercial auto combined, we actually developed slightly favorably in January. Now that's just one month. So it's hard to say that how the future will go. And I definitely can predict how we see development and for the year of the changes that we take during the year. But as you know, as the year plays out, primarily, the development we see on the injury case reserves are a main driver of what we end up seeing.
我们1月的大部分不利发展其实是由于12月发生的案件在1月报案造成的。如果仅看人伤类的准备金变化，无论是个人车险还是商用车险，我们在1月其实是略有利的。不过这只是一个月的数据，还不能说明长期趋势。我当然无法预测今年全年准备金的发展情况，但正如大家所知道的，伤害类案件的准备金发展仍是决定全年结果的主要因素。
Julia Hornack
Great, thanks, Gary.
太好了，谢谢你，Gary。
Gary Traicoff
Okay. Thank you.
好的，谢谢大家。
Julia Hornack
So, Jason, now, can you please take the first question from the conference call line?
那么Jason，现在请接入电话会议线上的第一个问题。
Operator
Certainly, your first question comes from the line of Mike Zaremski from Credit Suisse. Your line is open.
当然，第一个问题来自瑞士信贷的Mike Zaremski，您的线路已经打开。
Mike Zaremski
Hey, thank you for all the details. My first question is on any potential impact from the current situation with a coronavirus. The New York Times has come out and said that they're seeing just recently ad spend fall fairly materially across the brand with [indiscernible]. Curious if you think Progressive should in the near term is or is this at this part of that? And also, are you seeing any impact maybe from your [indiscernible] drivers on lower frequencies, if people are maybe working from home? Thanks.
你好，谢谢你们分享了这么多细节。我的第一个问题是关于当前新冠病毒疫情可能带来的影响。《纽约时报》最近提到，很多品牌的广告支出都有明显下降。请问你们认为Progressive近期是否会受到这方面的影响？另外，随着人们在家办公，是否也在你们的UBI（使用行为保险）数据中看到了车行驶频率下降的趋势？谢谢。
Tricia Griffith
Mike, that's a great question. So I'll start with ad spend. Right now, we're going to continue to spend -- this as a prime time of the year when people are buying insurance we're getting into that season. So, we'll continue to spend. That we have some flexibility in. But again, whether you drive a little bit or a lot, you still are required to have auto insurance. And so, our intentions will be to spend as long as we feel sufficient.
Mike，这是一个很好的问题。先说广告支出。我们目前会继续投放广告——现在正是消费者购买保险的旺季，我们正进入这个季节。因此我们会继续投放广告，当然我们在这方面是有一定灵活性的。但不管你开车多还是少，汽车保险仍然是必须的。所以只要我们认为有必要，我们就会继续支出。
So again, we'll have to be nimble because all of this, as you know, is ever changing. The great question on the UBI, so with the recent death in Washington, we asked the UBI team just to take a look at UBI, vehicle miles driven or traveled by week in January and February this year, compared to the prior 2 years. We are not quite seeing a difference. And again, there's very little data, but that tells us we haven't seen it yet.
当然我们也会保持灵活性，因为你知道，这一切都在不断变化。关于UBI，这是个很好的问题。因为华盛顿州近期报告了一例死亡病例，我们让UBI团队查看了今年一二月份每周的车辆行驶里程，并与过去两年同期进行了对比。目前我们还没有看到明显的差异。当然数据还比较少，但就目前而言，我们尚未观察到实际变化。
Again, now then we'll look at it weekly, we can start to see that we'll look at it across the country where we can. So we'll be able to understand pretty quickly. If you go back to something like the financial crisis, I was running planes to time and we saw frequency need drop really quickly. And so we'll have some good insight, we get our frequency data on a daily basis. So we'll under very quickly where we're at.
接下来我们会每周持续观察，并在全国范围内进行比较，以便能尽早发现趋势。回顾类似金融危机那样的事件，我当时正负责理赔，我们看到事故频率下降得非常快。所以我们会很快获得洞察，我们每天都会收到频率数据，因此可以快速判断趋势。
From a vendor perspective, we always think of the concerns around auto parts that are possibly made in China. So we got our property process team talked to all of our vendors, the percentage of always that we use on our vehicles, the percentage they get from China, et cetera. For the most part with the exception of one OE, we feel like there's low risk at this time. And even with that partner, they have inventory.
从供应商的角度来说，我们也在关注汽车零部件是否依赖中国。我们的财产业务团队已经联系了所有供应商，了解我们所使用零件中有多少来自中国等信息。总体而言，除了一个原始设备制造商（OE）外，我们目前认为风险较低。即使是那一家，他们目前也有库存。
I guarantee it's always so it's like first and second order effects. So it could be that more cars are told, because you can get parts and then there's used car parts. So if we're going to keep watching that. From an internal perspective, we already have over 25% of our people working from home. We have had many team meetings. We're having a table top pandemic exercise tomorrow, I believe and then our Chief HR leader, Lori Niederst had a meeting yesterday with our Chief Medical Officer talking about the same things that most companies are talking about in terms of non essential travel and what to do if you're coming from a country that's been affected.
这类情况有可能会产生一阶和二阶效应。比如说，如果新零件短缺，会导致更多车辆报废，然后二手零件的市场可能受影响。所以我们会持续关注这方面。从公司内部看，我们已经有超过25%的员工在家办公。我们进行了很多团队会议，明天我们将进行一次桌面演练，模拟疫情影响的情境。同时我们的人力资源主管Lori Niederst昨天也与我们的首席医疗官进行了会议，讨论的内容和大多数公司一样，比如限制非必要出差、从疫情国家返回后应采取的措施等。
So, right now, we aren't seeing any effect. But again, this is such a moving target that we have a lot of data points that we're going to be looking at literally on a daily basis to understand how will it affect possibly our frequency?
所以目前我们还未看到具体影响。但因为这件事每天都在变化，我们将持续以每天的频率监测多个数据点，以便及时了解是否对我们的事故频率造成了影响。
Mike Zaremski
And lastly, just a follow-up to the actuarial comments at the end of the prepared remarks. I believe, you said that January's reserved problem was worse than I expected, it was fairly material. And are you saying that, that was mostly due to December flames? And maybe people just to make due to the holidays. And then you said in January exit was actually favorable, and for that just implies that just last year's loss ratio was worse and then forward-looking basis things looks a little bit better?
最后我想就你们准备发言中关于精算方面的评论做一个跟进。我记得你们提到1月的准备金问题比我预期的要严重，影响也相当明显。你们是不是说这主要是由于12月的赔案滞后报告造成的？可能是假期导致的延误？你们也提到1月当月的出清情况其实是利好的——这是不是意味着去年损失率确实较高，但从前瞻角度看，趋势正在好转？
Tricia Griffith
Gary, talking about that, but partly was the December loss is like reported.
Gary会来详细说明，但确实有一部分是12月的赔案延后报告造成的。
Gary Traicoff
Sure, sure, great question. So in January, we were about up to 78 million pretty much all of that really related to December claims that were reported in January. And we look at it throughout the year. So when we look at January claims, they come in February claims that come into March, et cetera. Some months were high, some months were low. It's really noticeable in the first month, because it's prior year coming in.
当然，这是个好问题。我们在1月份的不利发展大概有7800万美元，其中几乎全部都与12月发生、但在1月才报告的赔案有关。我们会全年追踪这种情况，比如1月的赔案在2月上报，2月的赔案在3月上报等等。有些月份偏高，有些则偏低。而1月份特别明显，因为这时候是前一年的赔案在流入。
If we exclude that those late reports that came through, our development pretty much was rated right at zero. In addition to that, if we looked at just injury case reserves, which was the primary driver of the unfavorable development last year, we actually were slightly very close, but slightly favorable in January. So those claims as they paid out came in a little bit below the initial reserves we had. Again, that an indicator that that's how the year-ends up, but that's what we had in January.
如果我们把这些延后报告的赔案剔除，我们的准备金发展基本上是持平的。另外，如果我们只看伤害类赔案准备金——这是去年不利发展最主要的驱动因素——我们在1月份其实是略微有利的。也就是说这些赔案在赔付时略低于我们最初的预估准备金。这当然不能说明全年情况，但这是我们在1月观察到的情况。
Tricia Griffith
Well, Gary, over the years you've shown us that that one data point in January, and how it evolves is very different, in every year you show us a comparison of three years or four years, and so what I would say Mike is, one data point strengthen it we have sort of -- oftentimes the December late reports, but I would say we are all over this and feel good about where we're at, of course we'll react quickly or should we need to strengthen.
Gary，多年来你一直向我们展示1月这个数据点以及它之后的发展情况，而且每一年都不一样——你通常会展示三年或四年的对比数据。所以我想说的是，Mike，单个数据点不能代表什么，通常我们都会有一些12月的滞后赔案报告。但我可以说我们对当前的情况掌握非常清楚，也很有信心。当然，如果有需要补强的地方，我们会迅速做出反应。
John Barbagallo
I can put it in perhaps simpler terms in combined ratio points. So, simply because we're turning the page what Gary was saying, we're going to see some losses we categorized as prior year every January. We are 2.2 points of prior year losses in January this year, last year we started out the year with 4.8 points, that was a lot higher than we normally see but as Trisha was mentioning generally speaking in January you're going to see some prior year development and the 2.2 doesn't concern us at all.
我可以用更直白的方式说，就是用综合比率点数来看。就像Gary提到的，每年1月我们都会看到一些被归类为前一年度的赔案损失。今年1月我们记录了2.2个点的前期损失，而去年同期是4.8个点，远高于我们的常态水平。但正如Tricia说的，1月通常会出现前一年赔案的延后发展，而今年的2.2个点并不让我们感到担忧。
Mike Zaremski
Thank you.
谢谢。
Tricia Griffith
Okay, great. So, again maybe possibly.
好的，很好。那么，也许可能——
Julia Hornack
Jason, we'll take the next caller from the conference call line, please.
Jason，请接入下一位电话会议的提问者。
Operator
Certainly, your next question comes from the line of Elyse Greenspan from Wells Fargo. Your line is open.
接下来提问的是来自富国银行的Elyse Greenspan，您的线路已打开。
Elyse Greenspan
Hi, yes. I was hoping, Tricia, you could provide a little bit more info on your outlook on the personal auto rating environment. It sounds like from some introductory comments that you continue having to expect on pretty modest rate movements I guess throughout the majority of your book for 2020. But has anything changed or maybe in some specific states where you're taking a little bit more rate?
你好，Tricia。我想请你多谈谈你对个人汽车保险定价环境的展望。从你前面的发言来看，你似乎预计2020年你们的大部分保单定价只会有比较温和的调整。不过是否有发生什么变化？或者说在某些特定州，你们是不是提高了费率？
Tricia Griffith
Great question, Elyse, we'll continue to look at that as it evolves. It's really hard to kind of have that crystal ball. So, we last year and most of the industry knows, some took some overarching rate decreases. People were taking a little bit of decreases. People want to start to grow a little bit. We're seeing less of that the industry is getting closer to 1% at this juncture.
这个问题问得很好，Elyse。我们会继续关注形势的变化，这方面真的很难完全预见。去年，包括我们在内的整个行业都有所了解，一些公司采取了比较普遍的降价策略。有些公司小幅降价，想推动一些增长。现在这种情况少了，整个行业的平均涨幅目前大概在1%左右。
We are very surgical in each stage, like we study each channel, each product, and we'll react to that as necessary. We feel really good where we're at in terms of our profit margin. But I talked to Pat Callahan, our Personal Lines leader all the time on specific states and what we need to do to strengthen it.
我们在定价调整方面采取非常精细化的策略，会逐州、逐渠道、逐产品地进行研究，并在必要时做出调整。目前我们对自己的利润率状况感到很满意。但我经常和我们个人险业务负责人Pat Callahan沟通具体州的情况，讨论我们是否需要在某些地方加强措施。
Again, we don't want to get behind. It's really important for us to have stable rates for our consumers. And so, we're going to take that 1% or 2% to make sure we reach our target margins. But we feel really good specifically on the direct side of the new business coming in, we have new business targets as well, and we feel really good about it at this juncture.
我们不希望落后于形势，对我们来说保持费率稳定对客户非常重要。所以我们可能会上调1%到2%，以确保达到我们的目标利润率。不过在直销渠道方面，新业务的表现我们也感到非常满意，我们也设定了新业务的增长目标，目前这一块我们感到非常乐观。
Again, I feel like we are really nimble when we need to be, should we need rate. But we feel good at this point and again point here point there depending on what we're seeing in specific states.
总的来说，我们在需要调整费率时是非常灵活的。目前我们的整体状况良好，未来是否上调，就看具体州的具体情况而定，可能会上调一个百分点，或几个基点。
Elyse Greenspan
Okay. And then, my second question, could you just provide an update on the small commercial side of things, you guys were kind of rolling out some products in one state and then the expectation was to maybe expand into more states. Can you just provide an update on where those initiatives stand today and then how that's -- how you're thinking about additional steps and rollouts throughout the rest of 2020?
好的，我的第二个问题是，能否更新一下小型商业险业务的进展？你们之前在一个州推出了一些产品，当时预计会扩展到更多州。现在这些计划进行到哪一步了？你们打算在2020年剩下的时间里进一步如何推进这项业务？
Tricia Griffith
Absolutely. So, in mid-2019, we rolled out Ohio, like, literally small -- five agents, trying to figure out was the product ease of use, etc., got the thumbs up, got some feedback on pricing, rolled out to Ohio and three more states in 2019. Since then we've rolled out two additional states in January, two more in February. We expect to roll out two more in March. And so total for 2020 should be in 15 states. We've got 2,000 agents selling small business, and we are really excited about the momentum.
当然可以。在2019年年中，我们在俄亥俄州小范围试点推出了小型商业险，起初只是在5个代理人中测试产品的易用性等，得到了积极反馈，并收集了一些定价意见。随后我们将产品扩展到俄亥俄州及另外三个州。自那以后，我们在2020年1月又扩展到两个州，2月再增加两个州，预计3月还会再增加两个州。所以我们2020年计划总共推广到15个州。目前已有2,000名代理人销售小型商业险产品，我们对目前的增长势头感到非常兴奋。
And so, this was something, as we thought about the three horizons, think about investing before you need to, to make sure you have that enduring business -- we started thinking about this a couple of years ago, and we're really excited actually about small business, both in the agency side and through our BusinessQuote Explorer. And we'll have the Progressive product hopefully on the BusinessQuote Explorer some time in 2020. We have many different unaffiliated carriers, partners that we work with and we continue to be able to give the small business owners what they need.
这件事是我们在思考“三阶段投资”战略时决定提前布局的项目——也就是在需要之前就开始投入，以确保建立可持续的业务。我们几年前就开始筹划小型商业险的扩展，对这个市场机会非常看好，包括代理渠道和我们的在线平台BusinessQuote Explorer。我们希望在2020年能把Progressive的小型商业险产品上线到BusinessQuote Explorer平台上。目前我们与许多独立保险公司合作，能够持续满足小型企业主的保险需求。
So I would say the one word about small business would be momentum. I feel really good about where we are. And actually really good about where we are with a lot of the topics that John Barbagallo and Karen Bailo went over a couple of quarters ago. We rolled out our small fleet program to 49 states, and the conversion has increased fourfold. Obviously, our relationship with both Uber and Lyft in the TNC has increased.
所以如果用一个词来形容我们的小型商业险业务，那就是“势头强劲”。我对我们的现状感到非常满意。事实上，我们在John Barbagallo和Karen Bailo几个月前提到的很多项目上也都取得了很大进展。比如我们已经把小型车队项目推广到49个州，转化率提升了四倍。很明显，我们与Uber和Lyft在网约车领域的合作也在不断深化。
So we're excited about that. Just like across the board, I feel great. Our Smart Haul program is showing great conversion -- great take rate, I should say. So that's our UBI. In commercial, and in fact on the agency side, where the customer is eligible, the take rate is 25%. So I would say commercials firing on all cylinders, small business and everywhere. Do you agree?
我们对此感到非常振奋。整体来看，我觉得我们的各项业务都进展良好。我们的Smart Haul计划（即商业险领域的UBI项目）表现也非常出色，采用率非常高——准确地说，在代理渠道中，如果客户符合条件，UBI的采用率达到25%。所以我可以说，我们的商业险业务在所有方面都全面发力，小型商业险尤其如此。你同意吗？
John Barbagallo
Yes, absolutely. And I share that excitement. Just for clarification, for all viewers, when we're talking about the rollout here, we're talking about business owners' policies in general liability. So, as Tricia mentioned, we got in the four states in 2019, we've elevated two year-to-date, and we expect to actually add about 15 states for this year, so ending the year maybe around a little over 20 states.
是的，当然。我对这个进展也感到非常兴奋。为了让大家更清楚，我们这里所说的“推出”是指为小企业主提供的商业主保单（BOP）和一般责任险（GL）。正如Tricia提到的，我们在2019年进入了4个州，今年已经新增了2个州，并计划在今年内再新增约15个州，也就是说，到年底我们可能会覆盖20多个州。
And again, this is intended to vastly broaden our addressable market for commercial lines. We've been number one in commercial auto for a number of years now, and this opens up a marketplace that is probably 2 times, perhaps even 3 times the size of commercial auto for us. So very excited about that growth, as well as the plethora of other great things we have going on in commercial lines.
我们这样做的目的是为了大幅扩大我们在商业险领域的可服务市场。我们已经连续多年在商业汽车险市场排名第一，而这项业务（小企业主保单和一般责任险）将为我们打开一个可能是商用车险两倍、甚至三倍规模的新市场。因此，我们对这个增长机会感到非常兴奋，也对我们商业险领域其他一系列良性发展的项目感到振奋。
Tricia Griffith
Yes. When you think about bundle customer with BOP NGL, and then you think across our channels as well, there are many small business owners that actually also have our auto and home. So as we think about that we really think about the household economics going forward. That's really what's exciting as well. Thanks, Elyse.
是的。当你想到捆绑客户，比如同时购买小企业主保单（BOP）和一般责任险（GL），再考虑到我们在多个渠道的触达能力，就会发现其实很多小企业主也是我们汽车险和房屋险的客户。所以我们从长远看重的是整个家庭单位的经济价值，这也是我们感到非常振奋的一点。谢谢你，Elyse。
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Michael Phillips from Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.
接下来提问的是Morgan Stanley的Michael Phillips，请开始。
Michael Phillips
Thank you. Good morning. I guess, as sort of a continuation from that last question in a different angle. A large part of your earlier comments on the slide presentation this morning was on the agency channel and that's where the Robinsons lived. So with the focus there because of that, can you talk about any maybe incremental help that that does more -- more focused on the agency channel that that helps you with your commercial lines offerings?
谢谢，早上好。我想从另一个角度继续刚才的问题。你们今天早上幻灯片中有很大一部分内容聚焦在代理渠道上，那也是“Robinsons”（中产阶级家庭）所在的领域。鉴于你们对此的关注，你能谈谈是否会有额外的助力？即你们对代理渠道的更多聚焦，是否也会对你们的商业险产品起到帮助？
Tricia Griffith
Yes. So many commercial -- whether it's small business or commercial auto, actually go through the agency channel. So a little bit more of a complicated product, so that's actually a much higher percentage than would go on the direct side, although we believe at some point we want broad coverage -- or actually now we want broad coverage for everything.
是的。很多商业险——无论是小企业险还是商用车险——实际上都是通过代理渠道销售的。这些产品稍微复杂一些，因此通过代理销售的比例远高于直销渠道。尽管我们相信未来的某个时点我们希望在所有渠道都能全面覆盖，事实上，我们现在就希望能够全面覆盖所有产品。
So, I believe, as I talk to agents there are some agents that are only personal lines, some are more commercial. But there's many especially large agencies we work with that are both. And for them to have access to all the products they need for that customer whether they have a small business and they're auto and home is really a great umbrella for all of them to serve their customers.
在我与代理人沟通时发现，有一些代理专注于个人险产品，有些则专注商业险，但我们合作的很多大型代理机构是两者兼顾的。对于这些代理来说，能够为客户提供所需的所有产品——不论是小企业主，还是他们的汽车险与房屋险——就是一种很好的全方位服务方式。
And that's what they want to be able to do. And so I think it's really important in the agency channel because it is still a little bit more complicated. So if you think a person who is opening their first business, they want to make sure they're protected, they want to be educated, that is nicely done through the agents. So we're very bullish on that as well.
这也是他们想要做到的事情。因此，我认为代理渠道非常重要，因为业务本身还具有一定复杂性。想象一下一个人刚刚开设第一家企业，他们会希望自己受到充分保障，并获得相关知识教育，而通过代理人可以很好地实现这些需求。所以我们对这一领域也非常看好。
Michael Phillips
Okay. Great. Thanks. And then I guess back to frequency on the personal auto side, how does that vary by, I guess, age of car and model year? And maybe the reason to think about that is, is there a continuation of continued frequency to the extent that it's maybe more of the recent car years versus the prior ones?
好的，非常感谢。那我想回到个人车险中事故频率的问题，这方面是否会随着汽车的车龄和年份而有所不同？我这么问的原因是，是否有可能近期的车款发生事故的频率更高，从而带来某种持续性的趋势？
Tricia Griffith
We can't really assess that based on -- we look at it mostly based on customer. So from a preferred to a non-standard who are more likely to have accidents or we look at it in terms of the demographics of, are you a mature driver or are you just learning to drive, so that's how we look at frequency rather than types of car. And what I said is, it's really hard to attribute very specifically to frequency, but we do believe a piece of it is more of our preferred customer who likely have less accidents.
我们并不太从车型或车龄的角度来评估事故频率，而是更关注客户本身的情况。比如从优质客户到非标准客户之间的差异，后者更可能发生事故，或者从客户的年龄段来分析，是成熟驾驶人还是刚开始学车的人。所以我们评估事故频率主要是基于这些维度而非车辆本身。我刚才也提到过，很难将事故频率具体归因于某一个因素，但我们确实认为频率下降部分是由于我们吸引了更多的优质客户，他们发生事故的概率更低。
John Barbagallo
Yes. And as Tricia was saying, diagnosing exactly where the frequency is driven, meaning, by the driver of the vehicle, the environment, all that it is very difficult. That said, if you're focusing on model year vehicles, certainly newer model years are driven more miles than older vehicles, and we've been growing a lot and we've actually been increasing our share of those newer models as we write more and more preferred business. So the fact that our frequency is down in the same time period, the trends that I just described there, makes us pretty confident that we're writing the right preferred business.
是的，正如Tricia说的，要精确判断事故频率的驱动因素——比如驾驶人、行驶环境等等——其实是非常困难的。不过，如果你特别关注车型年份的话，确实，更新的车型通常行驶的里程更长，而我们在持续增长的过程中，写入了越来越多的优质业务，也就是这些更新的车型在我们整体中占比越来越高。所以，在这个背景下，我们的事故频率却在下降，这让我们对目前承保的优质客户群体非常有信心。
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Yaron Kinar from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.
接下来是来自高盛的Yaron Kinar提问，您的线路已接通。
Yaron Kinar
Good morning, everybody. My first question goes to the partnership with the ridesharing companies. Is it fair to think of the incentives as not necessarily fully aligned, namely, the ridesharing companies I would think are very focused on growth, would probably be interested in settling claims as quickly as possible, maybe not necessarily pushing back as much when you guys may think it is necessary. And if it is, if that line of thinking is correct, I guess how do you manage that risk for that misalignment of incentives?
大家早上好。我的第一个问题是关于你们与网约车公司的合作。我们是否可以认为你们之间的激励机制并不完全一致？因为我认为这些网约车公司非常注重增长，可能更希望尽快处理理赔，而在你们认为需要进一步审查时，他们未必会坚持。因此，如果这种思路是对的，你们如何管理这种激励不一致所带来的风险？
Tricia Griffith
Yes. So we -- actually that hasn't been an issue. We fully handle the claims. They're completely done in-house. And the great part about Progressive that I've always felt, especially having my upbringing in claims is we really haven't ever even differentiated between an insured and claimant. Every customer is a -- every consumers, possible customer, etc., and so we settle fair and accurately. So we don't get pushed back from them. I haven't heard anything about that.
是的，其实这并不是一个问题。所有理赔都由我们完全内部处理。这也是我一直以来认为Progressive的一大优势，尤其是我从理赔岗位起步——我们从来不会刻意区分被保险人和索赔人。每一位消费者都是潜在客户，因此我们始终坚持公平、准确地处理理赔。我们没有受到他们的压力，我也没有听说过这方面的问题。
What they want is somebody out there getting their drivers car back on the road so they can make a living, and if there's injuries, making sure we're fair and settle those. So we haven't had that issue. I think they look for partners that have a world-renowned claims organization like we do.
他们真正需要的是一家能帮助司机尽快将车修好、恢复工作收入的公司，如果发生伤害，也希望我们能够公平地处理理赔。所以我们在这方面没有遇到问题。我认为他们之所以选择我们，是因为我们拥有全球知名的理赔体系。
We have feet on the street because we have local presence and so it's really worked for both Uber and Lyft. And all the feedback has been that we do a really great job in that. And that's how I see it in terms of -- they want to have the claims handled by somebody who has a history of doing the right thing from indemnity perspective and that are also cost conscious from an LAE perspective.
我们在本地设有团队，也就是“脚踏实地”地开展服务，这使我们能够很好地服务于Uber和Lyft。所有反馈都表明我们在理赔方面表现出色。从我的角度看，他们之所以信任我们，是因为我们在赔付责任方面一贯秉持正道，同时在处理损失调整费用（LAE）方面也注重成本控制。
John Barbagallo
And from a financial perspective, I'll point out that in both of our ridesharing relationships, there's quota share agreement. So in both of those cases, those companies have captive reinsurers that are part of their organization, and we are ceding premiums losses. So they are sharing in the financial results that we are experiencing with the other drivers.
从财务角度补充一点，在我们与这两家网约车公司的合作中，都设有配额分保协议。在这两个合作中，他们各自拥有内部关联的再保险公司，我们将部分保费和损失出让给他们。因此，他们也在与我们一同承担这部分司机的财务结果。
Yaron Kinar
Okay. And then my second question just goes to bodily injury severity, maybe broader terms. So can you maybe talk about what accident years you saw the increase in bodily severity coming from both in personal lines and in commercial?
好的。我的第二个问题是关于人身伤害赔付严重程度（bodily injury severity）的，更广义一点。你们能否谈谈是哪些事故年度推动了人身伤害赔付严重程度的上升，无论是在个人险还是商险业务中？
Tricia Griffith
Oh, you probably have to help me on this. I would say if I need to guess, well, he is looking it up or you can’t – more like 2017, ‘18, where we’re starting to see it develop. I can’t say for certain without looking that up. But again, those trends do develop a little bit more over time. And I know – off the top of my head, that’s what I would say.
哦，这个你可能得帮我一下。如果让我猜的话——当然他正在查——我会说大概是2017年、2018年开始，我们看到这类赔付程度开始上升。没有查数据我不敢肯定，但这类趋势往往是逐步显现的。凭我印象，我会这么说。
John Barbagallo
Of the $232 million of prior year development, approximately $131 million was from 2018, $73 million from 2017 and the remainder from 2016 and prior. We detail all of that in our annual report.
在那2.32亿美元的上年赔付准备金发展额中，大约1.31亿美元来自2018年，7300万美元来自2017年，剩余部分来自2016年及更早年份。我们在年度报告中对此都有详细说明。
Tricia Griffith
Like I guessed, that’s what I guessed and luckily I was right. Great.
就像我猜的一样，我的猜测果然没错，太好了。
Yaron Kinar
Okay. And those ratios are relatively – distribution between those accident years is similar in commercial lines and personal lines?
好的。那么这些年份之间的分布，在商险和个人险之间大致也是类似的吗？
John Barbagallo
I think it’s safe to assume that. Actually, don’t have those numbers to quote for you. But generally speaking, older accident years have already developed previously, and by a large part, they have settled. So we also provide in the Annual Report loss triangles where you can see where we picked, if you will, the loss reserves at the end of the respective year and how that develops over time.
我认为可以合理地做出这样的假设。实际上我手头没有这些具体数字可以引用。但一般来说，较早的事故年度的赔付发展已经基本完成，大部分已经结案。因此我们在年度报告中也提供了损失三角表（loss triangles），你可以看到我们在每个对应年度年末设定的准备金水平，以及其随时间的发展情况。
You can also see the percent of those claims that have been paid, and obviously on physical damage claims, those get paid very quickly in a bodily injury. You can see that development. But especially on the personal side, those bodily injury claims will certainly take longer to settle than fixing a car, they developed fairly rapidly. Commercial lines a little longer. But you can see all that in the annual report. It is safe to assume that prior year development is predominantly from the most recent year.
你还可以看到这些索赔中已支付的比例。显然，在车损类索赔中，赔付非常迅速，而人身伤害类就慢很多。你可以看到这种发展趋势。尤其是在个人险中，人伤类索赔比修车要花更长时间，但赔付发展相对较快。商险方面则更慢一些。这些信息在我们的年度报告中都有体现。总体而言，可以合理地认为上年的赔付发展主要来自最近的事故年度。
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Gary Ransom from Dowling & Partners. Your line is open.
接下来是来自Dowling & Partners的Gary Ransom的提问。您的线路已经接通。
Gary Ransom
Yes. Good morning. You mentioned briefly during the presentation about the direct side of the homeowners business. Can you talk a little bit more about why that’s growing more rapidly, what kind of customers, whether it’s bundled customers that are coming in on that side as well, or any other comments you might have on the direct growth?
早上好。您在演示中简要提到了房主保险业务中直销渠道的情况。您能否多谈谈为什么这部分增长更快？是哪些类型的客户在推动增长？是否也包括购买捆绑产品的客户？另外还有什么关于直销增长的观察可以分享的吗？
Tricia Griffith
And so we’ve grown – I think I’ve talked previously – and we’re going to have one of the upcoming quarterly webcasts sort of a spotlight on our Progressive Advantage Agency. So in our Progressive Advantage Agency, we have Progressive Home, along with many other unaffiliated carriers. And that we were able to really have broad coverage for the customers that come in.
我们的业务确实有所增长——我之前也提到过——我们会在即将举行的季度网络直播中重点介绍我们的Progressive Advantage代理平台。在这个平台上，我们既有Progressive Home，也合作了很多非关联保险公司。因此我们能够为进入平台的客户提供非常广泛的保障选择。
So maybe Progressive Home doesn’t want that risk, but another company does. So we’re able to really – we have a very low D&Q rate in there. So we’re able to bring that in-house. We’ve grown our Progressive Advantage Agency substantially in the last three or four years, and that is one way where customers want to come in.
也许Progressive Home不愿意承保某一类风险，但其他公司愿意。所以我们实际操作中拒保率（D&Q rate）非常低，很多客户都能在我们平台内部获得承保。这几年来，Progressive Advantage代理业务大幅增长，这正是吸引客户的一种方式。
In addition, we have HomeQuote Explorer that we developed a couple of years ago where you can go online, and we also have Progressive Home as well as several other unaffiliated carriers. And we have a buy button with that in 14 states. So when you’re able to go on and actually purchase, I think it’s really important, and we’ll continue to roll out more and more states with that.
此外，我们还开发了HomeQuote Explorer这个在线报价工具，这是在几年前推出的。在这个平台上，客户可以看到Progressive Home和若干其他非关联承保方的报价，并且在14个州实现了“购买”按钮功能。也就是说，客户可以在线完成购买流程。我认为这是非常重要的功能，我们计划持续在更多州上线这一功能。
So I think it really is customer preference, and that goes to our strategic pillar of broad coverage.
我认为这主要取决于客户偏好，这也与我们“广泛覆盖”的战略支柱一致。
And if you feel comfortable – and the great part about HomeQuote Explorer is that we’re able to gather a lot of information from publicly available data to make the quote really easy, and especially if it’s a pretty simple basic home with things that we are able to get, they can get it done really quickly, and some people don’t necessarily want to go through an agent. So we’ve got both areas growing rapidly, but it’s really great in the direct cycle because a lot of people want to go either on the phone or online.
HomeQuote Explorer的一大优势是我们能够从公开渠道获取大量数据，使得报价过程非常简单。特别是对于结构相对简单、资料齐全的住宅，我们可以实现非常快速的报价。有些人不想通过代理人，因此我们的代理渠道和直销渠道都在快速增长。但直销增长尤其亮眼，因为越来越多客户希望通过电话或在线完成购买流程。
Gary Ransom
Can you just expand on that question on the – moving it into commercial as well? On the commercial side, it also – you’re growing more rapidly on the direct side as it says in your K than in the Agency side. Is there any characteristics of the customers there that are bringing that growth stronger?
您能否就这个问题再延伸一下，谈谈商业险的情况？根据你们的年报数据，在商业险方面，你们的直销渠道增长也快于代理渠道。是不是这些客户有某些特征，推动了直销的更快增长？
Tricia Griffith
Yes. It’s also on the base. So BQX is fairly new as well. The customers are – the similar type customers. It is more complicated. I wrote in my letter that I sat with a BQX rep and it gets really complicated when they start adding different coverages that they want. So we feel like right now that we can accommodate about 70% of the small businesses. And that’s why we’re going to continue to have more and more partners and then ultimately have the Progressive BOP GL in our BQX.
是的，这也与基数有关。BQX（BusinessQuote Explorer）本身也是一个相对较新的平台。客户类型与其他渠道相似，但业务更复杂一些。我在致股东信中提到过，我曾与一位BQX代表一起参与流程，当客户开始添加各种不同保障需求时，情况会变得非常复杂。目前我们认为BQX平台可以满足大约70%的小型企业需求，这也是为什么我们将持续扩展合作伙伴，最终在BQX平台上加入Progressive自己的BOP（商户综合险）和GL（一般责任险）产品。
I would say BQX is less mature than HQX, HomeQuote Explorer, but they’re doing similar things that we did several years ago in the personal auto side, and that is build in-house agency, utilize partners so we can cover many different types of small business owners with different products that we may or may not write on our paper. So I think that’s a really important part. It’s the similar thing. We want that bundle. So where we believe will have longer tenure commercial auto partners is if we have more of their commercial needs. Same thing on the personal line side.
我认为BQX目前还不如HQX（HomeQuote Explorer）成熟，但他们在做的事情类似于我们几年前在个人车险方面的策略：建立内部代理渠道、利用合作伙伴资源，以便我们能够为各种不同类型的小企业主提供覆盖，即使有些产品我们不是在自有保单纸上承保。这是一个非常重要的方向。目标同样是“捆绑式”产品，我们认为要想和商用车险客户建立更长期的合作关系，就需要满足他们更多的商业保险需求。这个逻辑在个人险产品线中同样适用。
John Barbagallo
Now, one thing I’d offer to add to that, Gary, when you’re looking at the premium mix numbers, direct versus agency for commercial lines, you should be aware that we categorize the rideshare partners business as direct. So those obviously are pretty significant premium relationships, and as we add those in that states, you’re going to see that growth.
Gary，我还想补充一点：在您查看商业险直销与代理的保费结构时，需要注意，我们把网约车平台合作业务划归为直销渠道。这部分业务在保费规模上非常显著，因此随着我们在更多州推出相关合作，您会在直销业务中看到显著增长。
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Meyer Shields from KBW. Your line is open.
接下来是来自KBW的Meyer Shields的提问。请开始。
Meyer Shields
Great. I just want to start by thanking you for the enhanced catastrophe disclosure and maybe more importantly for the responsiveness. Tremendously welcome.
太好了。首先我想感谢你们在灾难信息披露方面的加强，更重要的是对投资者反馈的快速响应，这非常受欢迎。
Tricia Griffith
Our pleasure.
不客气。
Meyer Shields
This is a bit of a leading question for Gary. When I look at the triangles in the 10-K, the age-to-age factors for auto liability, agency, direct and commercial, they are all speeding up, and I was wondering what that actually reflects.
这个问题可能有点引导性，是给Gary的。当我查看10-K报告中的三角图时，我注意到车险责任险（无论是代理渠道、直销渠道还是商业险）的age-to-age因子都有所加快。我想了解这具体说明了什么？
Tricia Griffith
Yes, sure. Gary would be up in a second, Meyer.
好的，Meyer，Gary 马上来回答你。
Gary Traicoff
Hi, Meyer. Now, when you are relating to that, are you looking at the paid or the incurred?
你好，Meyer。你说的是已付（paid）数据，还是已发生（incurred）数据？
Meyer Shields
Paid.
是已付数据。
Gary Traicoff
On the paid side? Yes, so on the paid side, there is a couple of things going on, right. There are definitely some states where we are seeing a speed-up in closure rates, particularly 30 days, 60 day, 90 days coming in as well. And then on the incurred side, you may noticed some changes.
是说已付数据？是的，这方面有几个原因。确实有一些州我们看到案件结案率在加快，特别是在30天、60天、90天等早期时点。此外，在已发生数据方面你可能也注意到了一些变化。
What we have seen is our adjusters we feel are recognizing larger claims quicker and so they are recognizing those claims and we’re seeing the numbers come up quicker, which would mean theoretically then we would see lower development factors on the paid and incurred later in the triangle, right. And so that’s some of the subjectivity that’s coming through now where we’re seeing that speed up early. And then the question is, how much of that do we think will materialize later on where it backs off as it develops to ultimates.
我们观察到的是，理赔员现在更快地识别出了大额赔案，因此这些赔案被更早地记录入账，从而导致数字在较早期就上涨。从理论上讲，这将意味着在三角图的后期，已付和已发生的development factor会更低。换句话说，目前的这种早期加速存在一定的主观性，关键的问题在于，我们认为这种加速中有多少是真实将会兑现的，多少会在最终发展中被回调。
Meyer Shields
Okay. No, that’s very helpful. All right. Thanks. And then second question. This is completely unrelated. I want to understand the thought process of raising deductibles in the health space and changing the coverage instead of pricing for the specific option that the customer would want.
好的，非常有帮助。谢谢。第二个问题完全无关，我想了解你们在健康险领域提高免赔额、修改保障范围而不是直接为客户希望的具体保障选项定价，这背后的思路是什么？
Tricia Griffith
Well, part of it is, if you have a 20-year-old roof, you couldn’t have rates enough to cover that if someone has a hailstorm and we replace that fully. So we tried to create different coverages that put skin in the game. It’s been really difficult with vendors out there. We’ll go through the storm process and you can see it as they develop, they’ll go through, and you’re knocking on the door and you’re making sure don’t you need new roof, your insurance company should pay for that.
这部分原因是，比如你有一个使用了20年的屋顶，如果发生冰雹灾害要全额更换屋顶，根本无法通过提高保费来覆盖这部分风险。所以我们尝试设计一些新的保障形式，让被保人“有所承担”。现在有些供应商会借着风暴灾后走访推销，你能看到他们一个接一个上门敲门，说服你更换屋顶、由保险公司买单。
So we’re trying to always pay fairly, always do the right thing for our insurers but have some skin in the game that you don’t just replace your roof every single time there’s a hailstorm when there isn’t damage. Or when there is slight damage that isn’t actually changing the structure of the roof product. So we’ll see how it goes. To price to a health state would be no growth, I believe. So we’re trying to be creative in our product development.
我们始终坚持公平理赔、为客户做正确的事，但也希望客户能负起一定责任，避免每次冰雹来袭就申请更换屋顶，即使实际上没有损坏，或者只是轻微损伤、没有影响屋顶结构。未来我们还会继续观察市场表现。如果要按健康状态精细定价，我认为会导致增长停滞。所以我们正在努力在产品开发上寻求创新。
Meyer Shields
Okay. Great. Thank you so much.
好的，明白了，非常感谢。
Tricia Griffith
Thanks.
谢谢你。
Julia Hornack
Great. I’m actually going to take a question from the webcast. So it’s about policy life expectancy, an important topic we haven’t really talked about yet, and I got a couple of questions about it. So particularly in direct, what is causing the decline in policy life expectancy both on a 12 month and three month basis?
很好。接下来我将从网络提问中选一个问题。这是关于保单预期寿命（policy life expectancy）的，这是一个我们尚未深入讨论但非常重要的话题。我收到了几个相关问题。特别是在直销渠道方面，是什么导致了保单在12个月和3个月维度上的预期寿命下降？
Tricia Griffith
Well, a couple of things. We had gone over a process that we changed a while back, and occasionally we have that happen. There is another one that we’re doing that I don’t want to talk about for competitive reasons that will actually negatively affect PLE but we think it’s the right thing to do to have the right customers on the book that are actually we can make money on. And also, it’s been very competitive.
有几个原因。我们之前调整过一项流程，这类调整偶尔会发生。目前我们正在推进的另一项举措（出于竞争考虑我不便透露细节）会对保单寿命（PLE）造成一定的负面影响，但我们认为这对确保客户质量、实现盈利是正确的做法。此外，目前市场竞争非常激烈。
So rates have been really stable and there’s a lot of advertising out there, and it’s really easy to change. And there is a lot of consumers that are just price sensitive, and they shop all the time. So they’re going to shop the likelihood they can find a lower rate with us or some of our competition.
当前的保费很稳定，广告很多，消费者更容易在各家之间切换。很多客户对价格极其敏感，频繁比较不同公司的报价，所以他们可能会因为找到更低的保费而选择我们或竞争对手。
I will say – and of course this is one data point, that – and PLE has lagged. The December development has actually increased in both the trailing – the appeal in the three month and the 12 month. Again, I don’t want to say that that’s the future. We look at that as a possibility. We look at PLE very specifically with nature, nurture and price. So nature is our mix of business, obviously we want more of the preferred business.
当然这只是一个数据点，不过从最近的数据看，12月的保单寿命在过去3个月和12个月维度上都有所提升。我们不敢说这一定代表未来趋势，但我们视其为一个积极信号。我们分析PLE时，会从三个方面入手：一是“天性”（nature），即客户结构，我们自然希望拥有更多优质客户；
Nurture is how can we take care of our customers? We are investing a lot in the CRM organization around sort of N=1 personalization; how can we be there for you, you particular – communicate with you in the way you want. And then of course price is the competitive landscape and the ease of going back and forth. So those three things we look at from PLE. We continue to have a team that works on PLE. I mean, the executive sponsor for that and we’ve – we’ve changed leadership to make sure we look at all different angles.
二是“养育”（nurture），即我们如何照顾客户。我们正在对CRM组织进行大量投资，推动“N=1”的个性化服务，思考如何以客户期望的方式与之沟通、满足其需求。三是“价格”（price）—当前行业竞争格局及客户切换的便利性。这三方面是我们评估PLE的核心。我们有专门团队持续研究PLE，我本人就是这个项目的执行赞助人，我们也调整了团队架构，以便从更多维度开展工作。
And in the spirit of question everything, we look at PLE and we’ll continue to look at that externally overall. But I think there are some cohorts that we believe that we can increase PLE more substantially than others. An example would be, there are some Sams that we call – some, not all, that are just inconsistently insured, and we love them. That’s how Progressive was born and as long as we can make our target margin, we’re great.
秉持“质疑一切”的精神，我们会继续从内部和外部角度评估PLE表现。我认为，有些客户群体的PLE改善空间比其他群体更大。举个例子，我们有一类客户叫“Sams”——他们的投保行为不太稳定，但我们依然欢迎这类客户，因为Progressive的初衷就是服务这些人群。只要我们能维持目标利润率，这部分业务我们依然乐意承保。
But they might go. And will we ever really make that go from X to Y. But we’ll always treat them nicely and occasionally they become Robinsons. But there are the other cohorts that we say what are other things – why are you leaving, what are other things that you need from us on the nature, nurture or price. And so that’s what we’re working on. And internally looking at PLE from very different cohorts, so PLE ex Sam, PLE when you have auto home umbrella, all those things, and we’re starting to really gain some traction on how we think about household PLE.
当然，Sams也可能流失，而我们也未必总能将这类客户从“X”转变为“Y”（即更高价值客户）。但我们始终尊重他们，有时他们也会成长为“Robinsons”型客户（即稳定、长期优质客户）。对于其他群体，我们在持续思考：他们为什么流失？我们在哪些方面没能满足他们的需求——是“天性”、是“养育”还是“价格”？因此我们开始从不同群体的维度来研究PLE，比如排除Sams群体的PLE、拥有车房和伞险组合的客户的PLE等等。我们正在逐渐在“家庭整体PLE”的理念上取得进展。
Julia Hornack
Great, and unfortunately, we’ve run out of time today. So I’m going to kick it back to Jason for the closing scripts. Thanks for joining us.
好的，很精彩。可惜我们今天的时间已经用完了。现在我将时间交还给Jason做结束发言。感谢大家的参与。
Operator
That concludes the Progressive Corporation’s Fourth Quarter Investor Event. Information about the replay of the event will be available on the Investor Relations section of Progressive’s website for the next year. You may now disconnect.
以上就是Progressive公司第四季度投资者电话会议的全部内容。会议回放将在公司官网的投资者关系页面保留一年。您现在可以断开连接了。