Travelers 2023 Annual Report
In 2023, Travelers debuted a new brand manifesto and ad campaign around a simple yet powerful idea: "Remarkable things happen when people care." You can find the manifesto at the QR code above.
Through our work, Travelers demonstrates the power of common cause to unite people across distance and differences. The manifesto reflects Travelers employees' extraordinary dedication to the people we are privileged to serve.
These values are the cornerstone of our brand manifesto - and they are at the heart of everything we do.
Days after a hurricane, two Travelers employees faced miles of debris to help tuone small store into a beacon of hope for the community.
Given the competitive advantages that will come from deploying AI across the insurance value chain, and the expertise, resources and data required to get there, scale will increasingly be a differentiator in our industry, as will the ability to execute complex initiatives effectively and efficiently. Expertise, resources, data, scale and execution excellence all favor Travelers.
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
To My Fellow Shareholders
In 2023, we were very pleased to deliver strong bottom- line results and excellent top-line production. We generated
We again benefited meaningfully from having a diversified set of businesses. Our
Our underwriting and investment results, together with our strong balance sheet, enabled us to retunearly
At the same time, we meaningfully grew both book value and adjusted book value per share and made important investments in our business.
We also continued to successfully execute on our ambitious innovation agenda - motivated by the idea that tomorrow's success is built today. In a world of unprecedented change, we have been hard at work for several years ensuring that our competitive advantages remain relevant and differentiating into the future. With this in mind, in this year's letter I will also discuss an important area for us, artificial intelligence (AI), and how we are leveraging the power of AI across our three innovation priorities: extending our lead in risk expertise; providing great experiences for our customers, agents, brokers and employees; and optimizing productivity and efficiency.
First, however, let me tuto a more detailed discussion of our 2023 performance and how we are positioning Travelers for continued success.
* See "Additional information" for a discussion and calculation of non-GAAP financial measures.
1
Financial Highlights
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Core Income |
Record Net Written Premiums |
|
11.5% |
|
|
Core Retuon Equity |
Capital Returned to Shareholders |
|
At and for the year ended |
||||
|
2023 |
2022 |
2021 |
2020 |
2019 |
|
Earned Premiums |
$ |
37,761 |
$ |
33,763 |
$ |
30,855 |
$ |
29,044 |
$ |
28,272 |
|
Total Revenues |
$ |
41,364 |
$ |
36,884 |
$ |
34,816 |
$ |
31,981 |
$ |
31,581 |
|
Core Income |
$ |
3,072 |
$ |
2,998 |
$ |
3,522 |
$ |
2,686 |
$ |
2,537 |
|
Net Income |
$ |
2,991 |
$ |
2,842 |
$ |
3,662 |
$ |
2,697 |
$ |
2,622 |
|
Net Income per Diluted Share |
$ |
12.79 |
$ |
11.77 |
$ |
14.49 |
$ |
10.52 |
$ |
9.92 |
|
Total Investments |
$ |
88,810 |
$ |
80,454 |
$ |
87,375 |
$ |
84,423 |
$ |
77,884 |
|
Total Assets |
$ |
125,978 |
$ |
115,717 |
$ |
120,466 |
$ |
116,764 |
$ |
110,122 |
|
Shareholders' Equity |
$ |
24,921 |
$ |
21,560 |
$ |
28,887 |
$ |
29,201 |
$ |
25,943 |
|
Retuon Equity |
13.6% |
12.2% |
12.7% |
10.0% |
10.5% |
|||||
|
Core Retuon Equity |
11.5% |
11.3% |
13.7% |
11.3% |
10.9% |
|||||
|
Book Value per Share |
$ |
109.19 |
$ |
92.90 |
$ |
119.77 |
$ |
115.68 |
$ |
101.55 |
|
Dividends per Share |
$ |
3.93 |
$ |
3.67 |
$ |
3.49 |
$ |
3.37 |
$ |
3.23 |
2
A component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Travelers has more than 30,000 employees and generated revenues of more than
Our 2023 Results - Excellence in Execution
Travelers delivered core income of
We delivered a record
Turning to the top line, today's production generates tomorrow's earned premiums. In 2023, we delivered record net written premiums of
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Underlying Underwriting Income1 |
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(in billions, after-tax) |
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Average |
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Average |
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2014 |
2015 |
2016 |
2017 |
2018 |
2019 |
2020 |
2021 |
2022 |
2023 |
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- Excludes the impact of net prior year reserve development and catastrophe losses.
3
Our Investment Expertise
We strive to be thoughtful underwriters on both sides of our balance sheet, and we have always managed our investment portfolio to support our insurance operations, not the reverse. Accordingly, our investment portfolio is positioned to meet our obligations to policyholders under almost every foreseeable circumstance - anything from a global pandemic to a significant natural disaster to a financial crisis.
With this in mind, we are focused on risk-adjusted returns and credit quality rather than reaching for yield that is not commensurate with the underlying risk. Our well-defined and consistent investment portfolio has been a meaningful and reliable contributor to our results, year in and year out.
This is exactly what we saw in 2023. Net investment income increased by more than 12% to a very strong
Our Data-Driven Underwriting Culture and Expertise Set Us Apart
Underwriting excellence is of course key to our success, and there is nothing more critical to underwriting excellence than a culture that values strong performance over time and understands how to balance the art and science of decision making based on data and analytics. In other words, evaluating risk and reward is at the heart of what we do.
Our culture alone is a significant competitive advantage, and one that we believe is very hard to replicate. A critical component of this culture is our granular approach to underwriting. In our commercial businesses, that means execution on an account-by-account or class-by-class basis. In personal lines, it means a very high degree of segmentation by risk profile, product and geography. With that and our advanced data and analytics, we thoughtfully select the risks we write and price our products deliberately with our target retuin mind.
Like every aspect of our business, our focus on performance over time is core to how we manage our catastrophe exposure. Although we are unable to predict what the next event will be or where it will occur, we are taking steps every day to ensure that our portfolio of risk properly contemplates the potential for loss and that we maintain the right balance of risk and reward. While the impact of the risk-based decisions we are making today is not always immediately evident, they will continue to drive our performance over time.
As a result of our thoughtful risk and reward approach to catastrophe management, our share of catastrophe losses over time has been significantly below our market share. This outperformance is the result of our prudent and integrated approach to managing our catastrophe exposures through portfolio, underwriting and pricing actions.
We continue to make significant investments in advanced capabilities to ensure that our underwriters have the tools and insights necessary to develop a comprehensive view of catastrophe risk. As just a few examples, in 2023, we:
- Introduced new, internally developed storm surge underwriting capabilities, providing a granular view of storm surge risk to inform underwriting decisions at the point of sale;
- Invested in new climate research to deepen our understanding of changing climate conditions related to peak catastrophe perils; and
- Enhanced our view of the risks related to tornado/hail to align with the latest science and implemented a new tornado/hail catastrophe model that includes new variables to improve risk segmentation and better reflect current weather trends.
While weather and catastrophe losses continue to be a major challenge for the industry, we are confident that we are making the necessary investments to maintain our underwriting excellence and achieve target returns over time.
4
Deliberate and Disciplined Execution Over Time
Roughly seven years ago, just after I began my tenure as CEO, we laid out a focused innovation strategy and shared that if we were successful in its execution, we would expect to grow our business at attractive returns - a reflection of our belief that any strategy to achieve industry-leading returns over time requires a strategy to grow over time. The graphs below demonstrate our successful execution of this strategy.
|
Accelerating Net Written Premium Growth |
Consistently Strong Underlying Profitability3 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
93.0% |
AVG=91.4% |
89.5% |
|||||||||||||||||||||||
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2 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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CAGR |
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.0% |
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|
7 |
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1 |
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2.7% |
CAGR |
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|
2012 |
2013 |
2014 |
2015 |
2016 |
2017 |
2018 |
2019 |
2020 |
2021 |
2022 |
2023 |
2012 |
2013 |
2014 |
2015 |
2016 |
2017 |
2018 |
2019 |
2020 |
2021 |
2022 |
2023 |
Improving Expense Ratio
AVG=31.7%
|
Improved 3. |
|
|
6 |
pts |
28.1%
2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023
Higher Underlying Underwriting Income4
(after-tax)
+146%
|
Avg. |
2017 |
2018 |
2019 |
2020 |
2021 |
2022 |
2023 |
2012-2016
|
Higher Cash Flows from Operations |
Growing Invested Assets5 |
|
|
|
|
+108% |
+33% |
|
|
|
|
Avg. |
2017 |
2018 |
2019 |
2020 |
2021 |
2022 |
2023 |
Avg. |
2017 |
2018 |
2019 |
2020 |
2021 |
2022 |
2023 |
|
|
2012-2016 |
2012-2016 |
|||||||||||||||
- Represents growth from 2012 through 2016.
2 Represents growth from 2016 through 2023.
3 Underlying underwriting combined ratio, which excludes the impact of net prior year reserve development and catastrophe losses. 4 Underlying underwriting income, which excludes the impact of net prior year reserve development and catastrophe losses.
- Invested assets excludes net unrealized investment gains (losses).
5
Accelerating Net Written Premium Growth
Starting with the top line, we have grown net written premiums at a compound annual growth rate of 7% over the past seven years. That is 2 1/2 times our rate of growth from 2012 to 2016. The growth rate in each of the past two years was double digits, the result of a deliberate and tailored strategy: We achieved unit growth where we liked the opportunity and stronger pricing where we needed it.
The growth rate in each of the past two years was double digits, the result of a deliberate and tailored strategy: We achieved unit growth where we liked the opportunity and stronger pricing where we needed it.
In
In
Across both of our commercial segments, since 2021, we have about doubled our excess and surplus (E&S) writings to around
In
our strong and loyal customer base while achieving meaningful pricing gains.
At the same time, they have also done a great job with product management. Our advanced peril-by-peril Quantum Home 2.0® offering now represents more than 60% of the total property portfolio, and the adoption of our telematics product, IntelliDrive®, among new customers has been strong. With pricing gains and enhanced product sophistication, the book should contribute to our earnings power going forward as we move toward target returns.
Also important, across all three segments, our growth is concentrated in products, classes of business and geographies, and through distribution partners, that we know well. That gives us a lot of confidence in the quality of the business we are adding to the books.
Consistently Strong Underlying Profitability
At the same time as we have meaningfully increased our rate of growth, we have also maintained very strong and consistent underlying profitability. This demonstrates that we are not growing by underpricing the business or compromising our underwriting discipline. We have grown by investing in the products, services and experiences that our customers want to buy and our distribution partners want to sell. We have also grown through excellent execution and hard work on the part of our outstanding field organization.
Improving Expense Ratio
One of the clear strategic objectives of our innovation strategy has been to optimize productivity and efficiency. As you can see in the chart on the previous page, over the last seven years, we have reduced our expense ratio by
3.6 points to just over 28% for 2023, which is more than a 10% improvement relative to the average of our expense ratio from 2012 through 2016 of around 32%. Enhanced operating leverage gives us the flexibility to let the benefit fall to the bottom line and/or invest further in our strategic priorities.
Case in point, since 2017, we have nearly doubled our investment in strategic technology initiatives. Over that same period, we have carefully managed growth in routine but necessary technology expenditures. In other words, over a seven-year period, we have simultaneously and meaningfully increased our technology spend, improved the strategic mix of that spend and lowered our expense ratio.
6
The upshot of higher growth at strong underlying margins is record levels of underlying underwriting income, cash flows from operations and invested assets.
Technology Investments
2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023
|
Strategic Investments |
Routine but Necessary Expenditures |
Higher Underlying Underwriting Income
From 2012 through 2019, underlying underwriting income averaged
Higher Cash Flows from Operations
Our cash flows from operations increased to more than
Growing Invested Assets
We meaningfully grew our investment portfolio to nearly
Tomorrow's Success Is Built Today:
Artificial Intelligence
For a number of years now, our employees have rallied around our Perform and Transform call to action. Perform is about delivering on our objective of industry- leading returns over time, and Transform is about innovating to ensure that our competitive advantages are as relevant and differentiating tomorrow as they are today.
With this in mind, we have been hard at work positioning Travelers as a leader in the property casualty industry as it relates to leveraging the power of AI. We subscribe to the view that over time, the impact of AI across the economy will be profound. So is the opportunity for Travelers. With our Perform and Transform mindset and our disciplined framework for assessing our investment priorities, we have been focused for years on responsibly developing differentiating AI capabilities across our three innovation priorities: extending our lead in risk expertise; providing great experiences for our customers, agents, brokers and employees; and optimizing productivity and efficiency.
Top Talent,
Powering all of our AI efforts are industry-leading experts, meaningful strategic investments and a significant, hard-to-replicate data advantage.
Between our colleagues who are dedicated to AI specifically and others in enabling disciplines, we have a very significant number of our employees engaged in the objective of making sure that we are leading when it comes to AI.
These efforts are supported by significant and strategic investments. As discussed above, for some time, we have been steadily increasing, and improving the strategic mix of, our technology spend. That includes a meaningful increase in investments to develop or acquire cutting- edge AI capabilities built on modecloud technology.
7
The Power of Our Diversified Businesses
Our results this year and over time demonstrate the benefits of the diversification of our business across core commercial, specialty and personal lines coverages. We engage broadly across nine major lines of insurance through our three business segments. Our portfolio is balanced across these lines of business and further diversified by geography and customer size and type. The depth and breadth of our business is a significant competitive advantage and one that would be very difficult to replicate.
Our commercial business segments demonstrated exceptional performance in 2023, delivering excellent bottom- line results and strong top-line production, which positions us well for 2024. In the
Another highlight for
25%
17%
17%
16%
16%
9%
56%
30%
14%
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reflecting a historically high level of industrywide catastrophe |
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losses and inflationary pressures. Despite challenging market |
50% |
Homeowners and Other |
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dynamics, we were steadfast in our disciplined approach |
|
46% |
Automobile |
|
|
to execution and took significant pricing actions to improve |
4% |
International |
||
|
profitability throughout the year. In terms of the top line, these |
pricing actions were the primary driver of a record
in net written premiums, a 13% year-over-year increase. The average renewal premium change for the year was 17.1% in Domestic Automobile and 19.8% in Domestic Homeowners and Other - both at record levels.
In
8
Attachments
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