The Allstate Management

The Allstate (ALL) Q4 2012 Earnings Call February 7, 2013 9:00 AM ET

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to The Allstate Corporation Fourth Quarter 2012 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's conference, Mr. Robert Block, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Sir, you may begin.

Robert Block
Thanks, Matt. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking the time today to be part of our Fourth Quarter 2012 Earnings Conference Call. We'll begin with some brief commentary on our results from Tom Wilson, Steve Shebik and me, followed by a question-and-answer period. On the call with us today are Don Bailey, Head of Emerging Businesses and Encompass; Don Civgin, Head of Allstate Financial and Insurance; Judy Greffin, our Chief Investment Officer; Sam Pilch, our Controller; and Matt Winter, Head of Auto, Home and Agencies.

Last night, we issued our press release and investor supplement, as well as posted a slide presentation to be used in conjunction with our prepared remarks. These are available on our website. We plan to file our 10-K for 2012 by the end of February.

Beginning with the first slide, this discussion may contain forward-looking statements regarding Allstate’s operations. Actual results may differ materially from those statements, so please refer to our 10-K for 2011, our 10-Q for the third quarter of 2012 and our most recent press release for information on potential risks.

Also, this discussion will contain some non-GAAP measures, which there are reconciliations in our press release and on our website. Recording of this call and a replay will be available following its conclusion. I'll be available to answer any follow-up questions you may have once this call is completed.

Now, let's begin with Tom.

Thomas J. Wilson - Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, President, Chairman of Executive Committee, Member of Equity Award Committee, Chairman of The Allstate Insurance Company, Chief Executive Officer of The Allstate Insurance Company and President of The Allstate Insurance Company
Well, good morning, and thanks again for your interest in Allstate. Today, I'll cover our results in relationship to our strategy in 2012 priorities, then I'll cover our priorities for 2013. Bob will cover our business unit results and Steve will cover investment performance and capital management.

But before we go through 2012, let me just update everybody on Sandy and the progress we've made in helping our customers restore their lives. So as you know, Sandy was a huge storm, affected an enormous heavily populated area and of course, many of you, personally. We're one of the first insurance companies on the scene to help our customers. With our mobile units, we often got to customers' homes before they even called us. Now we received about 170,000 claims to date and we've closed 98% of the claims reported. We paid about 95% of our expected net losses. Now we did update our initial loss estimate, which was, as you'll remember, $1,075,000,000 to $1,117,000,000. That's $42 million increase. And our losses, of course, would have been significantly higher had we not taken the actions we did due to catastrophic exposures over the prior 6 years.

And of course, while the numbers are large, the real significance is the fabulous work that the Allstaters had done for our customers, whether that's our claim professionals, our local agency owners or the thousands of other key members across the country that sort of rose to the occasion, helping those people rebuild their lives. We're very proud of what we've gotten accomplished, and we know our customers are happy as well.

Our customer-focused strategy is to provide unique products and services to distinct customer segments, which is based on their preferences for price, service and delivery channel. That's shown on Slide 2. You can -- there's the 4 segments we have there.