Travelers 2003 Annual Report Download - page 5

St. Paul Travelers Companies 2003 Annual Report 3
• The key to delivering effective coverage, risk management and claims handling solutions is
our people. One of the many reasons we are so excited about the merger is the opportunity
it offers to bring together two terrific groups of insurance professionals. St. Paul Travelers is
fortunate to have the best talent from many predecessor companies, in addition to Travelers
Property Casualty and The St. Paul Companies. These include individuals from Aetna’s
property-casualty operations and USF&G, as well as some recent additions from Kemper,
Atlantic Mutual and Royal & SunAlliance. This melting pot of talent has created a team of
professionals with a wealth of experience and diversity of perspective.
We believe in the corporate philosophy of meritocracy — by which we mean recognizing and
rewarding superior performance from our people. Independently, both companies employed
detailed metrics to assess the results of each operation, and this performance measurement
system will continue to be a fundamental tool for our new company. We believe this
commitment to recognizing and rewarding profitable performance will continue to attract the
best and brightest talent in our industry and will contribute to our bottom-line performance.
• Disciplined execution is central to our company’s strategy. Our business leaders pride
themselves on employing a series of unique, home-grown tools to identify business that is
likely to deliver appropriate returns over the long term. We believe in pricing products at
sound levels, understanding that in the short term, this may mean passing up business that
does not meet our guidelines. An important part of our commitment to being a growth
partner for our agents and brokers is ensuring that we position ourselves to remain a
healthy market, which our agents can count on consistently over the long term. In addition,
we believe that maintaining a low expense ratio helps position us to compete in the
marketplace while delivering attractive returns to shareholders. We will continue to cultivate
a culture of expense discipline among our employees, most of whom are also shareholders,
and encourage them to always “spend money as if it were your own.”
• We believe in always doing more, and delivering more than expected. This commitment
extends to all those we touch through our work – our shareholders, our customers, our
agents and brokers, our colleagues and the communities in which we do business. We have
expanded our commitment to investing in the quality of life in the communities in which we
do business, and our overall corporate giving will exceed $15 million in 2004. In addition to
our corporate giving program, we encourage and enable employees to make volunteerism
and charitable giving a part of their work life. As a result, in 2003 our employees contributed
substantially of their own resources and volunteered thousands of hours in support of non-
profit organizations that invest in human potential and help make our communities better
places in which to live and work.
Outlook
Looking ahead, we enjoy an unprecedented opportunity to focus on expanding our company’s
business. We expect our increased size and expert underwriting, claims handling and risk
management resources to enable St. Paul Travelers to grow profitably. Overall, our goal remains
to deliver top-tier returns on our shareholders’ equity over the long term.
We expect market conditions to remain favorable for the remainder of 2004. While we expect
a moderation of 2003’s double-digit premium growth, the combination of current rate levels
and anticipated loss trends should continue to generate attractive margins in our businesses.