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Liability for Losses and Loss Expenses

The establishment of an appropriate liability for losses and loss expenses is an inherently uncertain process, and we can provide no assurance that our insurance subsidiaries’ ultimate liability for losses and loss expenses will not exceed their loss and loss expense reserves and have an adverse effect on our results of operations and financial condition. Furthermore, we cannot predict the timing, frequency and extent of adjustments to our insurance subsidiaries’ estimated future liabilities, because the historical conditions and events that serve as a basis for our insurance subsidiaries’ estimates of ultimate claim costs may change. As is the case for substantially all property and casualty insurance companies, our insurance subsidiaries have found it necessary in the past to increase their estimated future liabilities for losses and loss expenses in certain periods, and, in other periods, their estimated future liabilities for losses and loss expenses have exceeded their actual liabilities for losses and loss expenses. Changes in our insurance subsidiaries’ estimate of their liability for losses and loss expenses generally reflect actual payments and their evaluation of information received subsequent to the prior reporting period.

We summarize activity in our insurance subsidiaries’ liability for losses and loss expenses as follows:


	Three Months Ended March 31,
	2018			2017
	(in thousands)
Balance at January 1	$	676,672		$	606,665
Less reinsurance recoverable		(293,271	)		(259,147	)

Net balance at January 1		383,401			347,518

Incurred related to:
Current year		129,842			111,872
Prior years		26,741			2,561

Total incurred		156,583			114,433

Paid related to:
Current year		54,583			45,401
Prior years		67,117			60,759

Total paid		121,700			106,160

Net balance at end of period		418,284			355,791
Plus reinsurance recoverable		309,279			265,058

Balance at end of period	$	727,563		$	620,849

Our insurance subsidiaries recognized an increase in their liability for losses and loss expenses of prior years of $26.7 million and $2.6 million for the three months ended March 31, 2018 and 2017, respectively. Our insurance subsidiaries made no significant changes in their reserving philosophy or claims management personnel, and our insurance subsidiaries have made no significant offsetting changes in estimates that increased or decreased their loss and loss expense reserves in those periods. During the first quarter of 2018, our insurance subsidiaries received new information on previously-reported commercial automobile and personal automobile claims that led our insurance subsidiaries to conclude that their prior actuarial assumptions did not fully anticipate recent changes in severity and reporting trends. Our insurance subsidiaries have encountered increasing difficulties in projecting the ultimate severity of automobile losses over recent accident years, which our insurance subsidiaries attribute to worsening litigation trends and an increased delay in the reporting to our insurance subsidiaries of information with respect to the severity of claims. As a result, our insurance subsidiaries’ actuaries increased their projections of the ultimate cost of our insurance subsidiaries’ prior-year commercial automobile and personal automobile losses, and our insurance subsidiaries added $7.4 million to their reserves for personal automobile and $18.8 million to their reserves for commercial automobile for accident years prior to 2018. Modest adverse development related to higher-than-expected severity in the homeowners and commercial multi-peril lines of business was offset by lower-than-expected severity in the workers’ compensation line of business in accident years prior to 2018. The 2018 development represented 7.0% of the December 31, 2017 net carried reserves. The majority of the 2018 development related to increases in the liability for losses and loss expenses of prior years for Atlantic States and Southern. The 2017 development represented 0.7% of the December 31, 2016 net carried reserves and resulted primarily from higher-than-expected severity in the commercial multi-peril and commercial automobile liability lines of business, offset by lower-than-expected severity in the workers’ compensation line of business, in accident years prior to 2017. The majority of the 2017 development related to increases in the liability for losses and loss expenses of prior years for Atlantic States and Peninsula.

Short-duration contracts are contracts for which our insurance subsidiaries receive premiums that they recognize as revenue over the period of the contract in proportion to the amount of insurance protection our insurance subsidiaries provide. Our insurance subsidiaries consider the policies they issue to be short-duration contracts. We consider our insurance subsidiaries’ material lines of business to be personal automobile, homeowners, commercial automobile, commercial multi-peril and workers’ compensation.

Our insurance subsidiaries determine incurred but not reported (“IBNR”) reserves by subtracting the cumulative loss and loss expense amounts our insurance subsidiaries have paid and the case reserves our insurance subsidiaries have established at the balance sheet date from their actuaries’ estimate of the ultimate cost of losses and loss expenses. Accordingly, the IBNR reserves of our insurance subsidiaries include their actuaries’ projections of the cost of unreported claims as well as their actuaries’ projected development of case reserves on known claims and reopened claims. Our insurance subsidiaries’ methodology for estimating IBNR reserves has been in place for many years, and, other than the reserve strengthening actions we describe above, their actuaries made no significant changes to that methodology during the three months ended March 31, 2018.

The actuaries for our insurance subsidiaries generally prepare an initial estimate for ultimate losses and loss expenses for the current accident year by multiplying earned premium by an expected loss ratio for each line of business our insurance subsidiaries write. Expected loss ratios represent the actuaries’ expectation of losses at the time our insurance subsidiaries price and write their policies and before the emergence of any actual claims experience. The actuaries determine an expected loss ratio by analyzing historical experience and adjusting for loss cost trends, loss frequency and severity trends, premium rate level changes, reported and paid loss emergence patterns and other known or observed factors.

The actuaries use a variety of actuarial methods to estimate the ultimate cost of losses and loss expenses. These methods include paid loss development, incurred loss development and the Bornhuetter-Ferguson method. The actuaries base their selection of a point estimate on a judgmental weighting of the estimates each of these methods produce.

The actuaries consider loss frequency and severity trends when they develop expected loss ratios and point estimates. Loss frequency is a measure of the number of claims per unit of insured exposure, and loss severity is a measure of the average size of claims. Factors that affect loss frequency include changes in weather patterns and economic activity. Factors that affect loss severity include changes in policy limits, reinsurance retentions, inflation rates and judicial interpretations.

Our insurance subsidiaries create a claim file when they receive notice of an actual demand for payment, an event that may lead to a demand for payment or when they otherwise determine that a demand for payment could potentially lead to a future demand for payment on another coverage under the same policy or another policy they have issued. In recent years, our insurance subsidiaries have noted an increase in the period of time between the occurrence of a casualty loss event and the date at which they receive notice of a liability claim. Changes in the length of time between the loss occurrence date and the claim reporting date affect the actuaries’ ability to predict loss frequency accurately and the amount of IBNR reserves our insurance subsidiaries require.

Our insurance subsidiaries generally create a claim file for a policy at the claimant level by type of coverage and generally recognize one count for each claim event. In certain lines of business where it is common for multiple parties to claim damages arising from a single claim event, our insurance subsidiaries recognize one count for each claimant involved in the event. Atlantic States recognizes one count for each claim event, or claimant involved in a multiple-party claim event, related to losses Atlantic States assumes through its participation in its pooling agreement with Donegal Mutual. Our insurance subsidiaries accumulate the claim counts and report them by line of business.