Q2 2021 Assurant Inc Earnings Call
<unk> Conference call are Alan Colberg, our Chief Executive Officer, Keith Jennings, our President and Richard <unk>, Our Chief Financial Officer.
Yesterday after the market closed we issued a news release announcing our results for the second quarter 2021 the.
And the relief and corresponding financial supplement are available on Assurant Dot com.
We will start today's call with remarks from Alan Keith and Richard before moving into a Q&A session.
On the other statements made today are forward looking forward looking statements are subject to risks uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated by these statements additional information regarding these factors can be found in yesterday's earnings release as well as in our SEC reports.
During today's call, we will refer to non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe are important and evaluating the companys performance.
For more information on these measures the most comparable GAAP measures and a reconciliation of the 2 please refer to yesterday's news release and financial supplement I will now turn the call over to Alan.
Thanks, Suzanne and good morning, everyone.
Very pleased with our second quarter results.
Our performance so far this year across our global lifestyle and global housing businesses demonstrates the power of our strategy to support consumers connected lifestyle and continues to give us strong confidence and the future growth prospects for Assurant.
Prior to reviewing our progress against our 2021 financial objectives I wanted to take a moment to express my deep gratitude to our employees around the world.
Specifically for their continued dedication and support for all of Assurant stakeholders. During my tenure as CEO and especially over the last 18 months of the pandemic.
Our talent is a great enabler of our company's growth and progress and kingdoms appointment as my successor is evidence of that.
And with a 25 year long career with the company <unk> has a clear track record of success and personifies the value and integrity, either emblematic of assurance culture, and it's a natural choice as our next CEO.
His deep operational experience and strong engagement with clients has been instrumental in guiding assurance growth across the enterprise.
And as CEO, Keith will drive innovation through our connected world and specialty P&C businesses.
The completion of the sale of global Preneed to CUNA mutual group marks another important milestone for Assurant as it enables the organization to further deepen our focus on our market, leading lifestyle and housing businesses.
I would like to thank all of our former premiums employees, who have transitioned acute on mutual group for their tremendous support to assurant and our clients and policyholders.
Thank you and look to the convergence of the connected mobile device car and home, we believe our connected living global automotive and multifamily housing businesses will continue their compelling history of strong growth into the future.
Not only do our connected world businesses have a history of profitable growth more than tripling earnings over the last 5 years. We're also characterized by.
Partnerships with leading global brands.
And our multichannel distribution and that provides consumers with choice value and exceptional service and.
And the track record of innovative offerings that have become industry standards.
ESG is core to our strategy, ensuring we build a more sustainable assurant for all of our stakeholders focusing on talent products and climate.
During the quarter, we continued to advance our ESG efforts as we work through creating even more diverse equitable and inclusive culture that promotes innovation and enhances sustainability and minimize our carbon footprint.
We recently completed our 2021 CDP climate survey, our sixth annual scoring submission expanding this year to include scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions across several categories.
The CDP survey is an important and climate change assessment, which many of our key stakeholders rely on each year.
Our efforts have led to a recognition that we're proud of.
During the quarter Assurant and was recognized as a 2021 on our Ria the civic 50 by points of light and.
Extinguishing Assurant I just wanted to 50, most community minded companies in the U S.
And we are proud of our progress and believe the future of Assurant is bright.
Together lifestyle and housing should continue to drive above market growth and superior cash flow generation, but the ability to outperform and a wide spectrum of economic scenarios and ultimately continue to create greater shareholder value over time.
Year to date, excluding reportable catastrophes net operating income per share was $6 and <unk> up 14% from the first half of last year and net operating income was $366 million and increase of 13%.
Adjusted EBITDA increased 12% to $600 million.
These results support our full year outlook of 10% to 14% growth and net operating income per share excluding affordable catastrophes.
And I would expect earnings growth and the second half on a year over year basis, our outlook for the full year assumes a decline in earnings from the first half.
Reflecting increased investment to support long term growth and our connector world businesses.
Lower investment income and.
And increased corporate and other expenses due to timing of spending.
Turning to capital from 2019 through June of this year, we've returned to shareholders over 88% or almost $1.2 billion of our 3 year 135 billion objective.
And July we repurchased an additional 737000 shares for $115 million.
And declared a quarterly common stock dividend for the third quarter essentially completing our objective on paid.
In addition to completing this objective we expect to returned $900 million and net proceeds from the sale of global Preneed within the next 12 months and.
And therefore, we expect buybacks to continue at a higher than usual level throughout the remainder of the year and into 2022.
I'll now turn the call over to Keith to review, our key connected world highlights for the quarter Keith.
Thank you Alan and good morning, everyone.
Wanted to begin by expressing my thanks to Alan for his steadfast leadership and the successful transformation of Assurant and becoming CEO at the beginning of 2015.
And strategic vision and intense focus on the evolving needs of our clients and and consumers Alan and her team have solidified market, leading positions and our connected world and specialty P&C businesses.
Helped assurant and establish a strong growth capital light service oriented business model, where our connected world offerings now comprise approximately 2 thirds of our segment earnings.
And ultimately work together to unlock the power of our Fortune 300 organization prioritizing resources against initiatives with the highest growth potential and standing of key enterprise capabilities and functions, which we can now leverage across our growing client and customer base.
As a result, Assurant is on track to deliver our fifth consecutive year of strong profitable growth.
As I continue to work closely with Alan and over the coming months Im also engaging with many of our key stakeholders, including shareholders and analysts who have shared valuable perspective, as we define our multiyear plan.
As I identified key focus areas I will prioritize developing and recruiting top talent and.
Investing strategically to sustain and accelerate growth through product innovation and new distribution models.
Differentiating us further from our competition through continuous improvement and our customer service delivery.
And supporting the investment community and better understanding our portfolio as we look to drive further value creation. Our long term global will continue to be to deliver sustained growth and value to all of our stakeholders.
Our ability to deliver on these ambitions will require additional innovation and investments to ultimately provide a superior customer experience and deepen our client relationships.
Innovation will continue to be a key differentiator for assurant, especially as we evolve with the convergence of the connected consumer.
As part of our ongoing commitment to delivering a superior customer experience with a range of service delivery options will be further building out our same day service and repair capabilities for which there is growing demand.
This requires upfront investments, which we expect to accelerate and the second half of this year as we look to provide additional choice and convenience for the end consumer.
These investments are critical to sustain our competitive advantage and markets like the U S.
As we look to continue our culture of innovation you may have seen we recently announced 2 key leadership changes to support those efforts.
Manny Bezerra, a 31 year veteran of Assurant, who was instrumental in driving the growth of our mobile business was appointed to the newly created role of Chief Innovation Officer.
Given his many contributions to our success, including the development of our mobile protection and trade and and upgrade business, who will bring dedicated resources to accelerate innovation across the enterprise to capitalize on the rapid convergence across our home automotive and mobile products.
<unk> will now lead our connected living business as its president.
His strong track record of delivering profitable growth and client service excellence combined with his depth of experience, particularly as the former CEO of Highland mobile, making the perfect choice.
A prime example of how innovation has allowed us to deepen and expand client relationships as well as create new revenue stream is our longstanding partnership with T mobile.
Over the past 8 years, we have worked together to offer their customers innovative device protection trade in and upgrade programs.
In addition through part of expenses are expected to increase due to acceleration and timing of investments.
For the full year 2021, we now expect the corporate net operating loss to be approximately $85 million the.
This compares to our previous estimate of $90 million.
Turning to holding company liquidity, we ended the second quarter with $353 million, which is $128 million above our current minimum target level.
This excludes both the $1.2 billion of net proceeds from the sale of preneed.
And the net proceeds from the second quarter debt offering.
Which were used for the July redemption of senior notes due in 2023.
And the second quarter dividends from our operating segments totaled $243 million and.
And to our quarterly corporate and interest expenses. We also had outflows from 3 main items.
$191 million of share repurchases $42 million and common stock dividends and $17 million, mainly related to mobile acquisitions, including all of our and Assurant venture investments.
For the overall year, we continue to expect dividends to approximate segment earnings.
Subject to the growth of the businesses rating agency and regulatory capital requirements and.
Investment portfolio performance and <unk>.
The impact on the potential change and corporate U S tax rates.
In summary, our strong performance for the first half of the year positions us nicely to meet our full year financial commitments, while continuing to invest and our long term growth.
And with that operator, please open the call for questions.
Thank you.
The floor is now open for questions. At this time, if you have question or comment Please press star 1.
And that's actually going for them.
And any point your question many of the answered you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing the balance sheet.
Again, we do that's the only post progression that you pick up on your handset to provide.
The most sound quality.
Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Brian.
Brian Meredith from UBS Your line is open.
And I gave you a plan and more.
And a couple of questions here for your first and I'm just curious the the L. P. On customer that you lost why did you lose that customer or is it.
<unk> of reasons I always thought that's kind of a pretty sticky business.
No I think it is actually very sticky business. If you look at that line of business over the last 2 or 3 years, we've renewed or early renewed almost all of the clients.
And on occasion business does move and as you saw on our prepared remarks, we did pick up 2 new clients that will begin to onboard as we move into Q3 and Q4 and the reason we've had such strong success has been our investments and both the customer experience as well of the client experience and making sure we're delivering a fully.
Net product, but no we feel good about OPI and are well positioned if and when the how.
And as the market does weekend.
Great and then the second question I'm, just curious how our conversions going on with respect to the T mobile and sprint customers and are you seeing a pickup and that at.
And at this point.
Yes.
Yes, and it's Keith maybe I'll jump in thanks for the question. Obviously, we continue to be pleased with the progress of the ramp of sprint customers as T. Mobile continues to ramp and migrate sprint T Mo products and rate plans, we continue to see additional enrollments into our programs I would say it's happened.
And as we would have expected largely on track and.
We talked about the renewal and extension of our relationship. We're clearly really excited about our long term opportunities with T. Mobile we've had a great track record working together for the last 8 years innovating the market, adding new products and services and certainly as we think about sprint and continuing to ramp over time, we're really.
Excited about working together to grow the overall business.
Great and then 1 last 1 just quickly here.
Richard.
As we look at the capital management, that's going to happen here over the next.
The 12.18 months on a lot of stock buyback.
The all considered.
ASR or accelerated share repurchase programs.
As a part of capital management.
Yes, thanks for the thanks for the question Brian.
Think of <unk>.
Couple of things first the as you heard in the remarks, we're really pleased to have put a check next to our $1.35 billion commitment with the third quarter dividend that will be issued we will the will meet that objective before time. So we're we're very pleased about that.
Did close on preneed.
And receive the proceeds of this week on that and as we said earlier, we will be buying back our shares at the.
At about <unk>.
Over the next 12 months I would say so that's that's going to be put in place of very quickly. We consider all options. We think share repurchases. This is the best way to go.
And Brian and this is Alan and the 1 thing I would add is we're also excited that we were able to complete our expectation and from the 2019 Investor day with what we did in July and then the announcement of the quarterly dividend and Q3, we're now effectively done with that expectation and we can move on to of returning the $900 million and premium.
And the orderly fashion as Richard just on.
Great. Thank you.
Yes.
And your next question is from Tom and Mark Jones from <unk>. Your line is open hey, good.
Morning, Tommy.
Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my question.
It's great to see the T mobile contract renewals underway any notable changes for the economics of the contract changes and anything else with that multi year extension that you would want cash available and testing.
And at the contact with all of the strength of well, which doesn't mean the separately negotiated.
Correct.
Yes, so it's for the totality of T Mobile's business as we move forward and we mentioned earlier, we're still negotiating the final details of the agreement.
So more to come as we as we locked down and some of the moving parts and.
In terms of economics that would probably make 2 points first I'd say that it's not uncommon for us to forgo some economics, when we re contract with major clients.
Re contract obviously quite regularly often think about the broader long term potential of the relationships the potential for additional volume and for offering new products and services over time.
Specifically with respect to T mobile and given that the relationship continues to scale with significant volume from sprint and we do expect to achieve lower per unit economics, but we expect that to be offset by significant volume growth and economies of scale within the overall programs.
I'd also say that we're well positioned as partners to help them introduce new products and services over time, we've had a great track record of and expanding the services. We provide over the last 8 years to continue to evolve to serve the consumer and finally.
From a mobile perspective, we really are excited about our overall long term potential to compete in this market across the value chain and from an efficiency point of view.
Okay.
Okay.
The strength.
And switching gears, a little bit when you characterize the the law and claim rates that we saw on <unk>.
The fully back to normal for should we still expect the kind of further normalization of the median can give the answer that with respect of the lifestyle and housing that would be the effect that would be helpful.
And actually if you want to take care of our lifestyle and then I can comment on house and maybe.
Sure and I think.
And we obviously saw favorability if we look back to Q2 of 2020.
And we've seen that normalize.
Quite a bit as we look at the results in this quarter. So for the most part losses of sort of come back to more normalized level. There is still some moving parts I would say within international.
As we look at.
Covid and various lockdowns and how things are progressing and different markets, but overall, we're at a much more normalized level from a loss ratio of point of view.
Yes, it's a set of effectively the same and how as we had a better Q1 loss experienced and we would have expected just some of the lingering impacts of the COVID-19 and the lockdowns of various parts of the economy.
But in Q2, we're more back to what we expected and we expect that will continue the rest of the year.
And.
And just.
Sneak on 1 here and with the <unk>.
The second quarter and the first half.
For the big surprising to see the full year NOI guidance the higher.
And you went through some of the puts and takes of why that actually lower on the first half anywhere of the season.
And where do you think it would be kind of whats part of it we do and the most likely to see upside.
What I would say is first of all we're very pleased obviously with the first half and the second quarter very strong impact probably of all better than we'd expected going into the year. If you think about what could.
Cause us to exceed our outlook and your first of all we're still confident that we're in that range.
But it would be things that are less within our control like what happens with the loss ratio and.
And the market or could there be some other impact from COVID-19 and the the Delta variant.
All of that said.
Really strong first half the second half of the year, even as we have guided to be lower than the first half we still expect to grow strongly versus second half of 2020, and the business is performing well and we continue to expect that looking to the future.
Yes.
And I appreciate the comments.
And your next question for Mark Hughes from <unk>. Your line is open.
Hey, good morning, Mark.
Good morning, Alan Good morning, all.
You had the particularly good results on the.
Automotive.
Could you maybe try to break out how much of that was just the.
Kind of strong rebounding economy versus new relationships higher attachment rates.
How much the momentum does that give you and the second half in terms of new business.
Sure and it's Keith maybe I'll take that I mean overall I would say, we've seen healthy double digit growth rates and car volumes.
From pre pandemic level, so, yes, youre correct of huge recovery in Q2 versus Q1 Q2 of last year. Obviously Q2 of last year was quite depressed. This year was an incredible rebound we saw net written premium up 68% over the same quarter last year, but a lot of that.
Is.
Of the depression last year, and then a really strong quarter of this year. If you look at it over 2019, which is sort of pre pandemic normal it was of 36% increase this year, so really really strong.
And yes, we're seeing strong attach rates and the business, we've seen a slight shift between new and used so our new and used mix is normally around 50, 50, where maybe 53% used today use tends to have slightly higher attach rates, obviously, it earns a little bit quicker and we've seen our client.
And taking share through consolidation.
The and clients expanding their used car operations rolling out of strong digital brands. So there's a lot of growth I would say within our core client base and then certainly we've added some new clients as well, but strong car sales.
Large clients that are gaining share and then winning some new deals and the market.
Yeah.
And the lender placed insurance business any issues around inflation and materials for labor.
Yes, it's an interesting and we kind of half of offsetting effects. There. So if you think about our premiums it's driven by average insured value.
As house prices rise and we issued new policies and those are going to naturally be at a higher premium rate. So we're getting some positive the benefit there.
All set as cost of claims will rise as well and ultimately we'll be able to reflect our experience and future rate filings, but if you put it all together, we don't think its particularly material to our business. It may not be perfectly aligned quarter to quarter of those effects, but overtime not material.
And the lender placed insurance.
Your placement rates as the.
Okay.
And of the foreclosure moratoriums and important or how important of triggers the for your placement rate and I know you are.
And <unk>.
<unk>.
The directly impacted but are there other drivers that are restraining her and placement rates.
And based on government action.
Talk a little bit about the.
Yes, I think you've seen over the last year or so has been on replacement rate is roughly flat at this point.
And what's really no significant trend up or down and the good news the sort of the actions we've taken over the years the businesses and a really strong position and we're delivering great customer and client experiences and if the market weakens, we will benefit and grow over time, so in terms of moratoriums and when they come off.
Sure.
And if and when they do come off we will see the impact with the lag. So even if they came off today Broadway, which is there is still lots of work through there and they'll be modifications and other things that will happen.
And we don't expect anything to happen and our placement rates this year, and where we could see an impact as and when you get into 2022 and beyond but I think the imports and takeaway on lender placed is we're still of clear market leader with a strong commitment to customer and client experience and we will be there to partner with the worlds.
And now with the U S is leading banks and wonder how.
As the market weakens.
Thank you.
And we have a question from Michael Phillips with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.
Hey, good morning, Mike.
The first question and on the investments you can talk about.
And the impact of that and the second half of the here, but really the question is.
We see the impact of that the benefits of those does that.
Is that more of you talk about growth potential or is that more top line benefits is it more margin benefits for both and then when you say long term and I'll kind of.
Can you kind of put a timeframe around it is that something will start to see benefits of those things and.
Next year or even longer than that.
Maybe ill take that 1 Alan So let me just clarify 1 the 2 buckets, where we are.
Making the investments.
And at least the most significant investment for the first we talked about is around the same day service and repair. This has been become a really important component of our value proposition, it's become more critical and the market.
Demanded by clients demanded by consumers and really improves the overall service experience. So we are going to be accelerating investment in the second half.
In terms of leadership personnel in terms of technology and equipment and we're also working very hard to integrate our service delivery options and seamlessly into the claims experience to really create a more dynamic claims process to give customers a better choice and options.
I think critically important strategically for us and I think we've got great advantages. There today. So we're trying to accelerate those advantages and the market that will drive revenue as we think about moving into 2022, we see this as the important opportunity to expand services with existing clients and also expand with new clients.
And in terms of the second bucket I would say operational investments that are focused on.
And really the entire enterprise between both housing and lifestyle investing more heavily and digital capabilities self service and automation and think about things like digital sales and self service portals.
Investing in our customer facing applications integrating our communication channels and <unk>.
<unk> decisions around claims to make the process more efficient and more repeatable and then automating back office tasks. We've got a fairly large project going across multiple lines of business and multiple geographies that will generate cost efficiency over time, but more than anything it will create a much.
More seamless customer experience and I think make us that much more competitive and the market.
Okay. Thanks, very much for the color there to more of I guess the quicker ones.
And what can you share about the cost of impact.
The impact on the cost of the reinsurance structure of that Richard talked about.
For sure. If you wanted to take me on maybe I can.
Yeah, maybe maybe I can take that the overall cost is going to be up.
This year from from last year, but not that much.
Essentially what we what we did is we bought a what we call of second and third cover so if ever we have an event that goes up into our retention and pass the retention on the second and third event, we actually go.
And reduce the retention down to 55 million from $80 million or if we didn't use that and there was a major than it would help us at the top of the at the top of the tower too. So that adds that will add a little bit, but its a modest and the modest increase and are in our overall.
<unk> net and we were actually pleased to see that every year. When we go to the market. We have of stable list of reinsurers that follow us think about 40 carriers being a minister are better and.
And we are able to place our reinsurance on.
And I kind of of like for like basis without this new feature I talked about at a little bit below where the market is so we're really proud of what we've done with cat and I guess and the last thing I would say is the cat exposure that we have today is less than we had in previous years, given how we've been measure of how we've been.
Working on our cat exposure overall, but also the growth and our other businesses multifamily housing global auto connected living so 1 of the things we mentioned in our press release earlier. This year debt for example, and the 150 year event back in 2017, we would've kept the 40% of our earnings.
And of 1 and 50 year event, we retained 70% of those earnings. So it will just show you. The big change that's been made and our and our management of our cat exposure and the growth of the company outside.
Okay. Thanks, Richard for the less of a quick 1 for me on the impact of rising home prices on all of the opioid premiums is that true just for new policies are also for prior issue policies as well.
So for the new policies, it's obviously immediate and replace them for existing policies and it's on the renewal date and these are annual policies. So it would happen on the renewal.
Okay perfect. Thanks, Thanks, guys. Good luck. Thanks.
Thanks.
Your next question is from Jeff Schmidt from William Blair. Your line is open.
Hey, good morning, good morning, everyone.
Good morning.
Could you discuss just how that legacy sprint customer transition works.
Thank you and an option to sort of switch over to the T. Mobile network, if they want when they sort of trade and our upgrades of phone.
Switching the mobile protection and plan to Assurant is out of separate decisions.
And do you have a sense on what that uptake rate is how many are coming over versus kind of staying with with what they have.
Yes, I would say that as theyre moving customers onto the T mobile product T mobile rate plans and the services at that point.
For operating the customer of the opportunity to enroll and insurance and effectively of re enrollments enrolled today and.
And thats automatically moving over to Assurant, and so I would say.
Very typically and as that happens and as T mobile pushes more and more customers on to T. Mobile product, we're seeing the increase sort of 1 for 1 come through.
Okay.
And then you'd mentioned that.
Covered mobile device growth should start moving up here and the second half for I think you said mid single digits.
And I know it takes a couple of years for kind of account to mature or are you kind of start starting at zero there, but what are some of the newer accounts there that would drive that ramp up is <unk>.
<unk> the cable operators, how far into those relationships how are you.
Yes, I would say the 1 thing to remember with the sub count is we did have a loss of <unk>.
Client in Europe of banking client for.
750000 subs, so that has moved down our sub count which is why it's flat as we sit here today year to date, but we do expect it to be mid single digits by the end of the year and I would say largely the U S and Japan are driving the majority of that growth and certainly I think all of.
Of our clients and in both markets are growing.
Okay. Thank you for the color.
Yeah.
Your next question is from <unk> from Bank of America. Your line is open.
Hey, good morning, Grace Alright.
Hi, good morning, and.
Just wondering with growth and.
On global financial services for the first time and a little bit does that have to do with the disruption last year. At this time or is this an inflection point and if we could just talk a little bit about the outlook for that segment.
Yes, I think it's more to do with the disruption last year.
Q2 was depressed we had some additional losses related to some travel products and a couple of our markets I would say as we look at the results today. There are more normalized which we think is and good jumping off point, we certainly have ambitions to grow that business over time, we're excited about the work that our teams are doing around the world.
But but it's mainly due to the depression and the results last year.
Okay. Thank you and then I was wondering with the lifestyle business.
Given the recent concerns about about the filter variant of y'all have seen any impact on your global supply chain and that business.
I think I think broadly our teams have done an incredible job, we operate physical depots and many markets around the world. So making sure that we're able to perform essential services is critical and keeping our employees safe.
And it has been a priority I think we've done a very good job of executing service. There is some parts of disruption due to the chip shortages as we think about repairing devices. Our teams have done a really good job working with manufacturers to procure and acquire parts.
Broadly speaking, we haven't seen much disruption to our business to date.
Hopefully that will continue as we move forward, but overall this is the strength of Assurant supply chain is 1 of our key differentiators and the connected living business and really proud of the work the team has done.
Thank you.
And your last question is from Gary Ransom from Dowling and partners. Your line is open.
Good morning, Gary.
Hey, good morning.
And a lot of my questions have been answered, but I wanted to ask the.
A little bit broader question on the opening economy of the recovering economy, you did respond a little bit on the auto market, but are there other parts of your business that you.
That will.
Show more growth or be influenced significantly by on the assumption that the economy continues to strengthen and reopened and this year.
Yes, maybe I'll start and talk a little bit about housing and then Keith maybe you can add any more color on lifestyle.
Look at housing our largest growth businesses multifamily housing or our renters business arguably and a market perspective that was 1 of the most disruptive markets 3 of Covid.
But with that we still see strong growth so even with the options.
The options, even with the impacts on Covid, we've had a very strong growth in line with our long term expectations and multifamily and driven in part by the strength of our partnerships also driven by the launch of our new product cover 360.
If you look at LTI now that business as I mentioned earlier is stable. We are of very strong base of customers and clients there and if the economy weakens and will grow so from the housing perspective, we've seen growth even sort of the disruption of Covid and we would expect on a weaker market economy, we will see growth and we will continue to some of <unk>.
Growth with the economy, just chugs, along but that's housing, but let's go to lifestyle Q.
And I'd, probably add that on the lifestyle side and particularly in connected living we see really strong positive impacts from <unk> and we talk a lot about our trade and business I would say trade and is a really important part of our value proposition something that our carrier partners.
And quite heavily on to drive promotions and the market to try to get additional dollars in the hands of consumers to allow them to be able to upgrade to the latest <unk> technology and.
We've seen obviously very aggressive promotions.
And in that space, and we're supporting our client and scaling our operations and I think doing an incredible job leveraging all of our acquisitions and think about high level of <unk> all of our we've made several investments around trading capabilities I think we've got a global market leading position and this continues to be more.
More important and we've seen dramatic increases in trade and in terms of volumes and promotional activity, but also the attach rates and point of sale and consumers' willingness and education about trade ins has increased dramatically. So expect that to continue as we move forward and the year, obviously hard to predict.
And what will happen with Covid, but there's some pretty strong trends on mobile.
Yeah, and if I, just elevate 2 and overall assurant level and I mentioned this in the prepared remarks, we are well positioned and expect to outperform no matter what the external environment is and the Covid really again demonstrated that resiliency of our business model driven by the great value that we're bringing to consumers around the world.
And with that I want to thank everyone for participating in today's call.
With the close of the sale of global Preneed, and our strong year to day performance. We believe we are well positioned for the future. We will update you on our progress on our third quarter earnings call and in November and the meantime, please reach out to the Suzanne Shepherd and Sean Moshier with any follow up questions. Thanks, everyone.
Thank you the simply today's conference. Please disconnect. Your line of at this time and have a wonderful day.
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