Horace Mann Educators Corp /De/ Q2 FY2021 Earnings Call

Good day, and welcome to the Horace Mann Educators Q2 2021 Investor Call. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Heather Wietzel, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Horace Mann's discussion of our second quarter results. Yesterday, we issued our earnings release, investor supplement, and investor presentation. Copies of all three are available on the Investors page of our website. On today's call, Marita Zuraitis, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Bret Conklin, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, will give the formal remarks. With us for the Q&A, we have Matt Sharpe on business development and distribution, Mark Desrochers on P&C, Tyson Sanders on Supplemental, and Mike Weckenbrock from Life and Retirement with Ryan Greenier available on Investment. Before turning it over to Marita, I want to note that our presentation today includes forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The company cautions investors that any forward-looking statements include risks and uncertainties and are not guarantees of future performance. These forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and we assume no obligation to update them. Actual results may differ materially due to a variety of factors, which are described in our news release and SEC filings. In our prepared remarks, we use some non-GAAP measures. Reconciliations of these measures to the most comparable GAAP measures are available in our news release. Now I'll turn the call over to Marita.

Thanks, Heather, and good morning, everyone. Last night, we reported second quarter core earnings of $1.02, our highest second quarter result ever. We benefited from particularly strong investment income in our alternatives portfolio and lower than guided catastrophe losses. As previously announced, this led us to raise our full-year core EPS guidance to a range of $3.50 to $3.70, with an expected return on equity above 10%. We saw strong earnings growth in each segment in the second quarter and solid sales momentum in the retirement line. Annuity contract deposits increased by double digits over the prior year. Bret will go over the quarterly results in more detail later in the call. I want to focus on our progress towards our long-term objectives of a sustainable double-digit ROE and significant expansion in the education market. Over the past 1.5 years, through unprecedented disruption in all aspects of our day-to-day life, Horace Mann has continued to be successful. I attribute this success to two factors. First, our unwavering dedication to the deserving education market. We know our customers well, and we respond to the issues they face. Second, our multiline model. We have the premium and earnings risk diversification that enables us to remain focused on our long-term objectives throughout occurrences of weather volatility, market volatility, and mortality and morbidity trend changes. While the COVID-19 pandemic added an extra year to the transformational stage of our growth journey, it also gave us time to analyze and improve the ways we can fulfill our value proposition for the education market. Examples of the outcomes of this focus include an accelerated integration of NTA agents, initiating key improvements in infrastructure, and the expansion of our student loan solutions program nationwide. It also set the stage for the entry into the employer-paid benefits market with the planned acquisition of Madison National Life Insurance Company. This acquisition brings together two educator-centric companies with complementary strengths in product distribution and infrastructure. Horace Mann's most established channel for serving educators has always been individual products sold through our agency force of local trusted advisers. In recent years, we invested in upgrading our Section 125 benefit administration program, which enables school districts to offer voluntary worksite plans. Benefits, including our individual supplemental products, are provided or introduced through the school district but paid for by individual educators. In some cases, educators can fund these purchases with pretax dollars. Madison National represents a new third way for us to serve educators. In line with emerging workplace trends, school districts are increasingly adding and enhancing employee benefits to attract and retain educators for hard-to-fill positions. Madison National's employer-paid and sponsor group products will enable us to provide educators with solutions like short- and long-term disability, while helping school districts improve recruiting and retention efforts. Districts generally work with independent benefit brokers to purchase Madison National's group products, and educator staff are automatically enrolled. With this addition, Horace Mann will now have complementary distribution capabilities in each of the ways the country's 6.5 million public K-12 educators receive insurance solutions, dramatically increasing our addressable market. In terms of scope, Horace Mann has at least one educator household located in 75% of the roughly 12,000 K-12 school districts in our market footprint. When we bought NTA, we added approximately 120,000 educator households. With the acquisition of Madison National, we gained a solid base in this growth segment as they serve 1,200 districts that provide employer-paid and sponsored products to about 350,000 educators. There's some overlap between Horace Mann's presence and that of NTA and Madison National, but each of the transactions has clearly added to our market share. And with the Madison National transaction, our total addressable market expands to include a portion of the $160 billion that school districts spend annually on employer-paid benefits, a market sector that has grown more than 30% over the past 5 years. As we look at ways in which Madison National aligns with our business strategy from a product perspective, Madison National brings 60 years of experience designing and underwriting a portfolio of group products. These products can offer educators peace of mind that their families will be able to respond to unexpected events without depleting their savings. From a distribution perspective, independent brokers are key in the complex public sector benefit space, where districts, particularly large ones, rely on their assistance to design plans and offerings that are typically offered to every employee in the district. Working with independent brokers is completely complementary to our established distribution through local trusted advisers. We have already signed a long-term distribution agreement with National Insurance Services, an employee benefit brokerage subsidiary of AssuredPartners that has been a key distribution partner for Madison National for nearly 40 years. It will take effect concurrently with the acquisition, giving us immediate access to the employer-paid and sponsored portion of the market. After the transaction closes, we will be complementing Madison National's current group offerings, which includes supplemental products with enhanced offerings. Our product development team has been leveraging NTA's 50-plus years of success in the supplemental market to accelerate filings for group products customized for educators, such as cancer and hospitalization. These will allow us to work with Madison National and NIS to provide a comprehensive group product suite. In terms of infrastructure, Madison National brings an exceptional experienced team focused on delivering great educator customer experiences, supported by modern and scalable infrastructure. They're ready to add scale, and we're the right partner to help them do so. In 2022, we expect Madison National to add 50 basis points of ROE with upside potential in future years. We remain focused on three additional drivers of higher ROE across the entire business. First, driving higher net investment income by increasing the allocation to alternative investments. While our alternative portfolio returns can be volatile, recent performance clearly illustrates the value this asset class brings. Second, expense initiatives. We continue to realize savings from actions such as the full integration of the supplemental segment in 2020 as well as benefits from continued infrastructure improvements. Third, market share expansion through cross-sell and new sales through each of our distribution channels. Before I turn the call over to Bret, I want to add that as educators across the country prepare to return to in-person learning environments this fall, we have similarly prepared to support them during the back-to-school season. We bring the ability to combine the new virtual marketing approaches we tested and refined over the past 1.5 years with our traditional in-person activities. We look to build on the sales momentum we established in the first half of the year and are seeing a lot of optimism in the agency force around scheduling meetings and events in their schools this fall. The 2021-'22 school year will certainly be more normal than the previous one. However, there is concern about new COVID-19 variants. We believe most schools will avoid a return to a hybrid or remote environment. Notably, nearly 90% of educators are vaccinated against COVID-19, a far higher rate than the general population. Further, educators have overwhelmingly made the case that the best educational environment for students is in person. At Horace Mann, this past 1.5 years has provided us an ever-growing list of reasons and reminders of why we do what we do. It is an honor to serve the educators who have gone above and beyond to reach every student through the COVID-19 pandemic. Their dedication and selflessness to our country's children continues to inspire us to do more. And this year, we will. Thank you. And with that, I'll ask Bret to take you through the results.

Thanks, Marita, and good morning, everyone. Second quarter core EPS was $1.02, up 52% over last year and our third consecutive record quarter. Six-month core EPS was $2.12, more than halfway to the increased full-year EPS guidance of $3.50 to $3.70. And as we said last quarter, our outlook has always presumed a gradual recovery from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on results, and that's largely what we've seen so far this year. In that context, we're encouraged by the signs of momentum we are seeing with the vaccine rollout and continued strong performance across the business. As a result, on July 1, we brought guidance to a level that aligned with the strong second quarter net investment income returns and the lower than historical average level of second quarter catastrophe losses. As I talk through the segments, I will address the changes we've made to align full-year segment outlooks with the updated guidance. I'll finish up with a recap of how we continue to think about allocating capital to maximize value for our shareholders. When we raised EPS guidance, we also raised our expectation for 2021 core return on equity to greater than 10% for the year. Core return on equity for the second quarter was 11.7%, and it was 12.1% for the 12 months, up from 9% for the prior 12 months. Although the pandemic and other unusual factors continue to contribute to the improvement, our strategic initiatives are equally as important and we remain on track to our long-term target of a sustainable double-digit ROE. And as we look ahead, the Madison National transaction will be a strategic use of capital to accelerate our shareholder value creation. In addition to the strong fit of Madison National, this is another business with predictable and stable underwriting profitability as well as strong capital generation that serves to further diversify our business profile. In 2020, Madison National had net premiums of approximately $108 million and statutory income of approximately $14 million. Madison National's premiums have grown in the mid-single digits over the past 5 years with the trailing 5-year loss ratio below 50%. The transaction is expected to be accretive by mid-single digits to Horace Mann's earnings from the level we would anticipate for 2022, taking into account a normal catastrophe load. We'll see that benefit even though amortization of intangibles related to purchase accounting means that GAAP earnings will be somewhat lower than statutory income. The transaction also will deliver about 50 points of ROE improvement in the first 12 months after closing. We expect that contribution to grow over time as we leverage the new opportunities that Madison National and its independent distribution bring to Horace Mann. Turning to segment results for the quarter. In Property & Casualty, core earnings for the quarter were up about $8 million or 70.8% due to the strong contribution from net investment income, which was driven by the returns in the alternatives portfolio. Due to a higher underlying loss ratio, underwriting income was down by about $6 million despite significantly lower catastrophe losses and an improved expense ratio that reflected our continued focus on expense optimization. Premiums for the quarter were $156 million with new business volume remaining below historical levels as we work through the impact of the pandemic on sales. Auto average premiums were down slightly in the quarter, while property average premiums are starting to rise. In line with our July 1 announcement, catastrophe losses for the quarter were $17.5 million, contributing 11.3 points to the combined ratio, significantly below last year and below what we anticipated when the year started. The 17 events designated as catastrophes in the second quarter were generally less severe and not as widespread as the 20 declared cat events in last year's second quarter. Our revised full-year 2021 guidance reflects our assumption that second half catastrophe losses will be between $20 million and $25 million, which is unchanged from what we guided to at the beginning of the year and is in line with the 10-year average for second half catastrophe losses. Turning to the underlying loss ratios, our experience in the second quarter and the first half aligned with overall industry trends. Driving is returning to more normal patterns, while inflationary trends in labor and materials are driving costs higher across all businesses. Looking first at auto, where the loss ratio has been one of the most pandemic-impacted metrics for the entire P&C industry. Even as miles driven ramp back up through the first 6 months of 2021, our underwriting discipline is key to why we are reporting an underlying auto loss ratio below the 70.6% we reported for the full year 2019. However, because of the inflationary component of the increase in loss costs over 2020, we are initiating appropriate rate filings in selected geographies to help keep us at our targeted loss ratio. We're confident our agents will remain competitive on the business they quote, even as these filings begin to take effect. For property, not only is inflation a concern, but similar to others, we are seeing increased frequency of fire and non-weather water losses, in our case with several larger claims from those causes. To address, we're now planning to file for property rate increases in the mid-single digits in many geographies in the second half of the year, a bit above our original rate plan for this year. We're also making sure the insured values of covered properties remain in line with data on the rising value of homes across the country. Finally, we released $4.2 million in prior period reserves during the second quarter with approximately $3 million from 2019 and prior auto liability. With our 6-month combined ratio at 92.7%, we are still on track to achieve a full-year combined ratio in line with our longer-term target of 95% to 96%. Our updated guidance for 2021 core earnings of $66 million to $70 million reflects the strong contribution of net investment income in the first half. Turning to Supplemental. The segment contributed $31.6 million in premiums and $12 million to core earnings. Supplemental continues to experience favorable trends in reserves and is still seeing the benefit of changes in policyholder behavior due to the pandemic. Net investment income on the Supplemental portfolio reflects the solid progress we are making in improving the Supplemental investment yield. Supplemental sales were $1.2 million in the second quarter, up from both this year's first quarter and the year-ago period. As we've said, the individual Supplemental products that we currently offer have traditionally been sold through a consultative enrollment model that has been among the most affected by the worksite access limitations of the past 1.5 years. As we prepare for a more normal back-to-school season, Horace Mann agents continue to sell our individual Supplemental products with steady sales metrics in more open geographies. Premium persistency remains above 90%, a testament to the value educators place on these coverages with about 282,000 policies in force. Our revised outlook for Supplemental's 2021 core earnings of $41 million to $43 million reflects a higher contribution from net investment income. We are also seeing the return to historical policyholder claims behavior occur more slowly than we had anticipated in this business. We now expect a full-year 2021 pretax profit margin better than our longer-term target of mid-20s percent. In the Life segment, June was the highest month for Life sales since the pandemic began. Annualized sales for the second quarter were ahead of the first quarter with retention steady. We also saw an increase in single premium Life sales. These sales tend to be lumpy, but they are a reflection of improving access as these are more consultative sales, typically requiring multiple contacts with the customer. Core earnings more than doubled from last year to $5 million as mortality costs returned to within actuarial expectations, total benefits and expenses returned to targeted levels, and net investment income rose 26.9%. Nevertheless, because of the higher mortality costs in the first quarter, we've modestly lowered our outlook for full-year 2021 Life segment core earnings to the range of $14 million to $16 million. For the Retirement segment, second-quarter core earnings ex-DAC unlocking were up 88.3%, reflecting the strong net interest margin. DAC unlocking was favorable by about $200,000 compared with $3.7 million in last year's second quarter. The net interest spread improved 79 basis points over last year's second quarter to 265 basis points, in part due to strong returns on the alternatives portfolio. This is above our threshold to achieve a double-digit ROE in this business. Our solutions for augmenting retirement savings remain a core need for educators. Annuity contract deposits were ahead of last year's second quarter by 15.6%, with June beating out March, the previous record, as the highest month for deposits for several years. Our educator customers continue to see annuities as an important way to achieve their financial objectives, and these products are complemented by our suite of fee-based products. Based on the strong results through the first half, we increased our full-year 2021 outlook for retirement core earnings ex-DAC unlocking to the range of $43 million to $45 million. Turning to Investments. Total net investment income on the managed portfolio was up almost 50% to $84.1 million, with total net investment income up 35.8%. The increase in NII on the managed portfolio was largely because our alternatives portfolio generated outsized returns in the second quarter. As we've said, driving higher investment income through increasing our allocations to the alternative investments portfolio will be a strategic driver of a sustained double-digit return on equity. Year-to-date, private equity returns have been quite strong, given the relative strength of the equity markets and the active IPO window. As a result, second-quarter alternative results were significantly above expectations. In addition to the private equity returns, our other alternative strategies, such as private credit, infrastructure, and commercial mortgage loan funds, posted solid performance in the quarter. We expect to reach our targeted 15% allocation to alternative investments within the next 2 years and expect this diversified portfolio to generate high single-digit annual returns on average over time. The fixed-income portfolio had a yield of 4.3% in the second quarter compared with 4.39% a year ago. Second-quarter purchase activity was largely opportunistic and focused on BBB corporate and high-yield securities with attractive relative yields. The core new money rate was 3.35% in the second quarter. Based on current market conditions, we continue to anticipate a core new money rate of about 3% for the year. Our updated guidance reflects the higher assumption for total net investment income of $385 million to $405 million, including approximately $100 million of accreted investment income on the deposit asset on reinsurance. This expectation for investment income is captured in the segment-by-segment outlook I've summarized and in our core EPS guidance range of $3.50 to $3.70. In closing, we are very pleased with our business progress through the first half of 2021 and excited about the potential of this year's back-to-school as well as the progress we anticipate in 2022 and beyond. As we stated last quarter, our top priority for the use of excess capital remains growing our business at returns that meet or exceed our ROE targets. The acquisition of Madison National is an ideal use of capital to accelerate our path to sustained double-digit ROEs. Further, after the transaction, Horace Mann should generate more than $50 million in excess capital annually, assuming normalized Property & Casualty results. We're committed to prudently using that capital to create additional value for shareholders. Beyond growth initiatives, our capital generation provides scope for repurchase as well as maintaining our track record of annual increases in our cash dividend, which is currently generating yield slightly above 3%. Thank you. And with that, I'll turn it back to Heather.

Thanks, Bret, and operator, we're ready for questions.

Our first question comes from Gary Ransom with Dowling & Partners.

I wanted to dig a little deeper into the inflation topic and the labor material costs you're talking about that affect auto and home. And I just wondered if you could talk a little bit about how you've seen it emerge. I mean, is it still accelerating? Are we at a point where it seems more persistent as opposed to everyone talking about transitory or your views on that? And I guess I was also wondering if I could get a sense of how much your homeowners' automatic inflation increases. How much more of that has been ticked up versus what it might be over the long run?

Yes, Gary, it's Marita. You're right, there's been an awful lot of industry discussion on the topic. Lots of questions asked and answered, and I think it's clear that we're all seeing it because it's there. I'll turn the call over to Mark in a minute. But at a real high level to a degree, it's a reflection of a healthy economy and therefore, a shortage in supply that's somewhat likely to be temporary. And to the extent that it could drive interest rates up, that would obviously favorably impact our investment yields. But I assume you really want to hear more about its effect on P&C. And obviously, we've been spending an awful lot of time digging through the numbers and looking at this, not just this quarter but for many quarters. So I'll turn it over to Mark to talk about that as well as the effect on rate actions that we might take to address the inflation. So Mark?

Sure. As you noted, we have observed the effects of inflation in both the auto and property sectors, which aligns with trends seen across the industry. Focusing on auto first, the main factors have been rising labor costs and parts costs, along with a modest return to normalcy regarding social inflation and attorney involvement. Additionally, we have noticed a slight reduction in the impact of minor accidents, which continues to contribute to increased severity. Shifting to property, which I believe is more aligned with your question, we have again seen rising labor and material costs. Furthermore, losses are becoming more significant because customers are taking longer to address issues. This delay is often due to difficulties in finding contractors or mitigation companies. As a result, some losses are increasing. Regarding the temporary nature of some impacts, I doubt that lumber prices will stay at two to three times their usual levels indefinitely. However, we are witnessing steady increases in mid- to high single-digit and low double-digit ranges for various material and labor components. While some factors may be temporary, I anticipate that certain issues will persist longer. Additionally, once a cost rises, it is unclear how much it might decline, and we need to prepare for that. To address your question on inflation factors, we are currently working on adjustments. Typically, we make changes once a year, but we plan to implement a second adjustment in the coming weeks to months to raise coverage values in line with increased replacement costs. We will also evaluate rate adjustments in both sectors. For auto, we expected to reach our target combined run rate by the end of this year or early next year, and we are satisfied with our current progress. However, we are concerned about increasing severity alongside a gradual return to pre-pandemic frequency levels, so we will likely expedite rate actions in this area, which may include standard long-term inflationary increases. On the property side, we had intended to implement low single-digit rate increases but will likely adjust those to mid-single-digit levels as they arise.

Well said. And I think that thinking about the absolute loss ratios that we have as a starting point, the book has historically and continues to be very profitable. So when I think about our current auto loss ratios being even better than what they were in 2019 before the pandemic started, it's a good place to start, and our property book has been historically profitable. So as Mark said, we did anticipate, and this just means that the normal rate increase environment happens a little sooner.

Could you give me an idea of the increases in automatic homeowners insurance? I'm guessing it could be around 2% or 3%. Will it now be around 5% or 6%? How much is that changing?

Yes. So at the beginning of the year, we actually increased to about 5%. And now we're looking at potentially pushing into that 7% to 8% range is what we're seeing more recently in some of the replacement costs estimates we're seeing in claims.

Interesting. You mentioned social inflation and the increasing involvement of lawyers. Another auto company noted that lawyers are showing more interest in smaller limits and may be getting involved in more auto claims, despite the limits being lower than in other areas. Is that something you are also experiencing?

No, I wouldn't say that. I'd call it more of returning to close to what we saw pre-pandemic. So obviously during the pandemic course, we shut down, lawyers were anxious to settle things. There wasn't as much of that happening. That was a kind of positive phenomenon during the pandemic, and we've certainly seen things start to normalize this course of open and so forth. The other thing I'd point out is some of the states where this is more significant, like Florida, our market position has deliberately reduced over the last 4 to 5 years. I think it's a factor for us, but it's not a big factor. It's just something we are noticing that that's starting to return more towards normal.

Very true. I would also add that we maintain a fairly standard book. In terms of limits and coverages, I believe our homogeneous market segment is somewhat insulated, which is beneficial. As Mark mentioned, the underwriting actions we implemented before this point have been effective. We began from a strong position. Regarding Florida, we were very intentional and clear about our approach, and we anticipated that situation.

Just one last question on inflation. Is there any product within Supplemental where rising medical costs might have to be a factor? Or are those all controlled by the daily limits and other things you might have in place there?

Yes. I'll turn it over to Tyson to answer that question. Go ahead, Tyson.

Yes. I think it’s fair to say that while we’re not completely protected, we are somewhat insulated. We are not affected by the current inflationary pressures concerning the Supplemental products.

Yes. And I'd add to that as we said in the script and as we've said all along, the margin improvement that we're seeing in Supplemental is certainly aided by folks being a little more reluctant to seek treatment and to be out there in some of the places where we would see those expenses come through. We're not seeing them. We do expect that to begin to return. So we have an interesting offsetting maybe less propensity for our agents out there because of school closures, but we're getting the benefit of not seeing it on the claims side. We would expect that to begin to reverse a little bit where the claims would start to come through as sales begin to increase. And as we said in the script, we are seeing some nice momentum in Supplemental quarter-over-quarter and month-over-month. So we are starting to see sales increase and we would expect claims to begin to come back as the world opens up a little bit. So pretty much as we thought it would come through.

Our next question comes from Matt Carletti with JMP.

Just wanted to follow up on some of kind of Gary's questions there and Mark's commentary on particularly property. Can you help us in a quarter of the elevated losses you guys cited, both frequency and severity of fire and water losses? Was it particularly one or the other? I'm thinking the severity side is more of these loss cost issues, inflation you're talking about will be dealt with price, whereas frequency can bounce around a bit. Was it much more one or the other or fairly evenly both?

Yes. I'll start and then I'll turn it over to Mark. Starting with fire, remember this is very lumpy for us due to the size of the book. A few fire losses one way or another can have an unusually good quarter or an unusually lumpy quarter from a fire perspective. But from a water perspective, you obviously have people at home using their plumbing and their water more frequently. I don't know what you might want to add to that, Mark.

Yes, Marita is correct. The fire incidents exhibit the usual variability from quarter to quarter, where a few significant fires can greatly affect the results. However, water losses represent a new trend. As I mentioned earlier, we believe these issues are worsening because customers are taking longer to address them. If the response to mitigate these problems is delayed, the situation deteriorates further. This delay is partly influenced by the demand in the market and the availability of labor to handle the mitigation work, which includes engaging water mitigation companies to address the issues. It’s hard to say if one aspect is more significant than the other. However, I want to emphasize that while fire incidents are variable, water losses are a new issue that we are increasingly encountering.

Yes. And when you look at fire on an annual basis, and we do year-over-year, it's again very profitable for that portion of that line of business. But when we look at the water, you are seeing an uptick and I think it's similar to what the industry is seeing. And I think Mark explained it well.

Marita, I'd like to revisit your comments. You provided some solid figures regarding the growth in household relationships. I was wondering, since you have the PIF data by segment, I think that can create some distortions. For instance, when you examine property and casualty or auto insurance, we've seen a decline. However, I believe you have a partnership with Progressive that isn't reflected in that data, as it relates more to household levels. Could you share any insights on the organic growth in household relationships, excluding the acquisitions over a few years and especially from last year? I'm interested in the broader relationship Horace Mann has with educators, rather than focusing on specific lines of PIF.

Yes, Matt, it's a great question. We would love to be able to report on a household basis. And I'm looking at the team in the room smiling at me because they know how I feel about this. And eventually, we will be able to give you some decent household stats. What I know, and I think Gary actually said this in a question on the last call, the total addressable market for us has increased pretty substantially over the last 24 months. I mean I'm proud of the place when you think about our work site drill closed up pretty dramatically. Instead of having that affect our success as a company, it really propelled us to address the things we could address during that time period, and that was completing the integration of the NTA agents, working really hard on closing the agreement with Madison National. What that did for us is both the increase in households that we saw from NTA, and we had estimated that to be approximately 150,000 households with the additional districts from Madison National, which was 1,200 districts and 350,000 households, that's more folks under the umbrella where rather than just being leads, now they're customers. When we think about our cross-sell history, we think about our persistency and retention, getting them in the house and then cross-selling them, we tend to keep them. So I feel really good about what we did during this 1.5 years was increase the opportunity to do what we're really good at, which is cross-sell households and retain households. So for me, that addressable market really did change substantially during this time period. We do know we have an increase in households. For us, I think the work that we did to improve our profitability in P&C, some of that was sticking to our knitting, maybe using Progressive for some of the non-educators using Progressive for what they're good at in some of the nonstandard areas of our book, and that allowed us to come from a place of strength. So I think you're right. For us, it is about the households. It is about penetration of the household. I look at the significant increase in retirement deposits, we saw it again this quarter. I see the success in our Life business, and we're selling Life business through the pandemic, and I know that will translate to an increase in the other lines over time. So I feel very optimistic about where we are.

Great. I have one last question. Marita, I appreciate your comments on being hopeful with the delta variation and everything. It seems that the school systems aren't returning to a hybrid model, which I believe is likely the case. My question is, as we came out of the pandemic last year or at any point during the school year while dealing with the pandemic, did you observe school districts that continued in-person classes but still imposed restrictions on visitors, possibly allowing educators to be present while limiting access for outside agents? Or do you generally expect things to return to a more typical business model?

Yes, we noticed some of that during the lockdowns. For our business, there are certain districts we've never been able to enter because they restrict access. I expect that situation to persist, and in those areas, we will need to adapt how we operate. I'm enthusiastic about our back-to-school initiatives and the feedback from our agents. This is the time of year when we usually conduct our sales rallies. Our agents have been actively engaging with the school districts, and many have secured physical appointments that they lacked last year. We're receiving some very positive signals from our agents. One reason could be that educators have a higher vaccination rate than the general population. Recent reports indicate that 86% of NEA members and 89% of AFT members are vaccinated, compared to a lower figure in the 60s for the general population. The effectiveness of vaccines for children aged 12 and over, and the potential to vaccinate all elementary school kids this school year, will also be significant. There’s a lot of debate about masks but less so about whether or not to return to in-person classes. Most people seem to accept the studies that show in-classroom learning is the most effective approach. Therefore, the focus shifts to figuring out how to return, whether it's staggered, with masks, or with proper social distancing, depending on what the school districts can manage. Our agents perceive the situation as much closer to normal, although not entirely so. There will still be some access challenges, but we are confident in our back-to-school efforts, and our agents appear quite hopeful.

Our next question comes from John Barnidge with Piper Sandler.

You've had meaningfully better Supplemental claims utilization trends for probably longer than anticipated. It's not something that it's simply only Horace Mann, but have you been starting to think through maybe some of these claims trends? Could they be somewhat semi-permanent in nature that people's just behaviors are changing and how they use some of the products?

Yes. Potentially, I mean like all of this, who knows the psyche, who knows whether it's changed, what people will do, how they'll do it, how often they'll do it, are there lifestyle changes will return to the office, working from home versus being in the worksite? Will that change potentially some of accidents or those types of things? You might see some semi-permanency, but we are anticipating that the majority of this would come back. I don't know if you have anything to add, Tyson.

Yes. I think if you think about the different product lines, there are some where have been more drastically impacted in the pandemic environment. An accident is a really easy example. Folks have avoided those optional activities that they would have done in the pre-pandemic environment. I fully expect that those types of claims will come back in full force in a post-pandemic environment, but there is going to be a behavior change. I think that is indicative of the society that we're in right now.

Yes, John, this is Bret. I would also like to add that you saw in our guidance change page in the investor presentation that we increased our guidance for the year by about $8 million. To your point, the experience in the first half exceeded our expectations. In the second half of the year, we expected claims activity to rise, but not to the extent of our original plan for the year. So, there is some positive experience built into the second half that is below what we initially planned. I would also agree with Marita that there might be some lasting benefits.

It fits in with our conservative nature for sure.

I would add that the educators will return to the classrooms and will not have the option to work remotely. Therefore, the behavior we have observed over the last 18 months will not be a long-term trend for our niche.

That's a very good point. Within that vein, obviously, educators have spouses that are not educators. Is there any way to capture the size of the Supplemental PIF market that's actually ensuring people that are actually spouses of educators and not educators themselves?

It's not necessarily an easy thing to do. A lot of our products are built on covering the entire family. There are measures that we could get to there. I don't have it handy, but it's something that we could certainly present in the future.

Yes. I mean we would know that across our whole book for auto, for home, for life. We clearly quote it that way. So I mean if you're interested, we can get you that breakdown.

Yes, that would be interesting. And then my last question, on alternative investment income, it's been remarkably strong. Can you talk a little bit about real-time reporting versus 1-quarter lag within that $330 million of alternative investments you have?

Sure, John. This is Bret. To your question, almost all of our alternative investments report with a one-quarter delay. We've experienced significant performance in the first quarter with a return of nearly 11%. The second quarter showed a return just below 20%. Year-to-date, as noted in our investor presentation, we achieved a return of almost 15%, which is notably higher compared to the typical plan that generally sees high single digits. Regarding the second quarter, I'll hand it over to Ryan to explain what contributed to the strong performance for that period.

Sure, John. This is Ryan. As Bret mentioned, a lot of that outperformance was really episodic and tied to IPO realizations and a handful of private equity funds. A rising equity market does bode well for continued strong performance. But I'll flag that if we isolate for just the LP component of the alternatives, the return was over 30% on an annualized basis for the quarter. So we'll absolutely take it. But we certainly didn't reflect that level of continued performance into the updated guidance.

Our next question comes from Greg Peters with Raymond James.

I want to return to the Madison National acquisition. Looking at your slide deck on Page 6, one key point is your ability to leverage long-standing relationships with K-12 districts and effectively cross-sell this product through those connections. I also noted your remarks about AssuredPartners and the reaffirmation of that relationship. I have two questions. First, regarding your cross-selling efforts, is there a significant switching cost involved in replacing the current legacy provider with your product? Second, with Assured, are there additional distribution partners you believe you can engage with to establish similar agreements in the future?

Yes, that's a great question. Regarding the switching cost, the answer is no. However, I want to emphasize that our engagement with Madison National Life is entirely complementary. What's exciting about this is that it aligns with our PDI strategy, which focuses on developing products tailored for educators, enhancing our distribution, enabling educators to find us in various ways, and strengthening our infrastructure. Madison National meets all these criteria. The distribution model is interesting because whether educators access individual products from REAs or through benefits packages offered by their school district via Madison National, we can serve the entire educator community. Being the provider for the district and the superintendent builds credibility, reputation, and purpose. If educators receive Horace Mann products at school and then encounter a local trusted adviser offering more Horace Mann products at the point of sale, that connection and reputation significantly impact individual sales. We are very excited about this opportunity. Madison National has a long-standing collaboration with NIS, a division of AssuredPartners, spanning over 30 years. They have developed a robust relationship, working effectively in schools. Our goal is to leverage this established relationship with 1,200 districts while also introducing Madison National and NIS offerings to many additional districts we have relationships with. This ties back to our total addressable market and our specific focus on providing educators everything they need, whether purchased personally or received at work. We are enthusiastic about the potential for mutual success, and this collaboration is entirely complementary. At this point, we don't see a need to explore relationships beyond NIS. Their expertise and our strong partnership warrant our focus on maximizing this opportunity together, which we believe is quite powerful.

The other question I had is based off of Slide 31, and you spoke about the lift you had for net investment income from the alternative portfolio. I think you also mentioned that you plan to allocate more towards the alternatives going forward. So I'm looking at this slide in 14.97% return year-to-date and all I'm thinking is statistics and reversion to the mean. I look at the rest of the year or results are less profound. It seems like the setup for some headwinds just for less really strong performance certainly seems very real, but maybe you could comment there.

Sure. Let me start, Greg, this is Bret. If Ryan wants to chime in, he can do so. A couple of things. Certainly, that would not be our long-term yield assumption or return for that asset class. However, we are going to have a larger number of dollars invested. That contribution to net investment income, let's call it, between $25 million and $30 million prior to this year. That was kind of our plan from this asset class. So we're at 8% of our invested assets in this asset class as is contained on that slide, we are targeting to take that up to 15%. Yes, this asset class can be lumpy from time to time. But from a pure contribution standpoint, alts will be a larger contributor to the bottom line even though the yield may be less. As you saw on our ROE slide, this is a strategic lever of our growth in the ROE, not just today, but certainly in the future. Ryan, I don't know if you wanted to add anything there.

Yes. The only additional commentary I'd provide is that long-term target is in line with many of our other larger life peers. When I think about it, I'd break it into 2 pieces, 10% allocation to commercial mortgage loan and investment-grade infrastructure funds. Those have a much steadier, less volatile return, and we're targeting a mid-single-digit return for that asset class, performed well during the pandemic. It's a good source of cash flow. In addition to that, the other 5%, again, is in line with life peers, but that is more volatile, but that’s where you'll see more outsized returns in periods like we just saw this quarter. I'll point out, we have about $600 million in commitments in the pipeline right now, and we expect to put that capital to work over the next 12 to 24 months. So the contribution, the absolute dollar contribution of alternatives should ramp up meaningfully over the next few years. Most of that capital commitment is in the commercial mortgage loan space. We think it's a very attractive time to put money to work there.

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Heather Wietzel for any closing remarks.

Thank you, Sarah. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. We expect to be available to meet with investors ramping back up into the fall, looking forward to being at the KBW conference in particular. Feel free to reach out. Love to schedule a time to talk. And thank you all again.

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s session. You may now disconnect.