Seconds lobbyist man in the world, right . In the u. S. Today there are only 38 women serving as ceos of fortune 500 companies. One of those with the best track record is tricia griffin, the ceo of progressive insurance, one of the largest Automobile Insurance Companies in the u. S. She started off as a claim adjuster and worked her way to become the ceo. Than 175 . S up more my big mistake was i did not know her then, and did not buy the stock. If she goes anywhere else, i will buy that stock right away. Withhose not familiar progressive and probably if you watch television you would be familiar because you have a lot of television ads, i am curious, why is it Automobile Insurance Companies advertise a lot . I see your competitor advertising a lot. Will people be guided in their insurance decision by an advertisement . Tricia it is a very Competitive Industry which is odd, because it is something you are required to have. It is not like a different soft drink or beverage. It is so competitive, to be on the shortlist you have to be advertising. David you have a famous character in some of your ads a woman who plays an insurance person. Does she get a certain percentage of the business she brings in because she is so good, or she does not have that deal . Tricia she does not have that deal. She is paid per contract and she is doing fine. David lets talk about this year. A lot of the auto insurers are up in part because people are not driving as much. If you dont drive as much, it is hard to have an accident. I presume there are fewer people claiming they have had an accident, therefore you dont have to pay as much. Is that why your stock is up . Tricia we have also continued to grow not only market share, based on policies and if you march,bout it, yes, in vehicle travels have been reduced, but it continues to go up and we are still not precovid level of driving. We are 8 to 10 down. We are seeing more and more people driving more often. Many companies gave back a credit on a reduced rate. Rebate thatu get a is because you voluntarily thought it was a good idea, or the regulators said you had to give back money . Why did they give back money to policyholders . Tricia we did it because it is the right thing to do. Downw vehicle travel go 40 . It went back up quickly to 20 . We said, we dont want margins that bid, it is not the right thing to do. We want to be competitively correct price. We gave 20 credit for both april and may and subsequently, we went state by state, channel by channel, product by product. We had rate decreases in 35 states. David when people have an accident today, they are more expensive than they used to be. It is is that because cars are more expensive to repair . Tricia they absolutely are. Ice darted off as a claims representative. In 1988, bumper repair would be a couple hundred dollars. Now it could be upwards of 2000 because of the safety components. In addition, think of the inflation of medical costs. If you are injured in an accident, that is another component of the increased severity. Suppose i want to get automobile insurance. Amaya good risk, or would you rather have someone who is 25 and more alert . Tricia that is one variable. We look at hundreds of variables. It depends on where you live, congested area, rural area, what is your driving history, usagebased insurance, what time of day you drive, how many miles you drive . Do you have any violations . Theres so many things that go into it. Age is only one component. David when i was a teenager, i was told that teenagers are not good drivers and insurance is expensive. Insurance is more expensive for teenagers . Tricia i will say that having six people that drive in my family that weve added over the years, we call youthful drivers, the issue is that many are good but they do not have the maturity. They havent had the experience. I remember saying, because a lot of times you get rate increases, if you add on a youthful driver. I challenged that when i first got this job and then i realized, having six youthful drivers, there is a reason you pay more. David you are in Home Insurance now. You bought a company that helps you do that. Why do you want to be in the Home Insurance business . Tricia for us, it was access to more of the preferred customers. Especially on the independent agent side. We had a relationship with asi for years. We had a small ownership. Their values were very much aligned with us. And so we decided to go ahead and purchase them. It has been a really nice transition, a really great acquisition. Now, having the whole picture, for whatever you want auto, home, motorcycle, commercial, we are continuing to expand. Because i think it is really important to diversify. David is the Home Insurance business profitable now . Tricia it depends on what company you are talking about. We have struggled a little bit because of wind, hail, catastrophes, and we have been growing our model across the country. We were in five states for many years. We are learning a lot about the product model. If you look at our results, we will be profitable, but we are doing the same thing we did on the auto side. We are getting surgical in our segmentation to understand the right rate for each home. David are you thinking of getting into the life Insurance Business . Tricia right now we have a great relationship with an unaffiliated partner that we get a commission when we send them to the company. That has been working really well. We are considering that. We have a Life Insurance company filed in ohio. More to come on that. David people say eventually there will be driverless or Autonomous Cars and the theory is they will never have an accident because they are perfectly programmed. Is that something you worry about, cars that dont have back or you are not going to worry , about that now . Tricia i dont worry about it. From a society perspective, you want to have less accidents. It is good for society. Everyone has been affected by an auto accident. I dont put my head in the sand, but what i think about is timing realistic timing. That is also one of the reasons why i think about not just executing on our current plan, but expanding other possibilities, adjacencies for our business. I will tell you when you look , back at some of the headlines in 2012, this type of car is going to be fully autonomous by 2020 or 2015 it will take longer. And i know that. That said, we are preparing for a possible smaller Auto Insurance industry, but we have so many other opportunities with adjacent models, including home and other things weve talked about, all the things weve expanded to in the last couple years. David elon musk has said hes going to have an Autonomous Car out there at some point. And hes also said anybody that is an insurance agent, why dont you call me up, because we are going to be in the automobile Insurance Business is that something you are worried about . Tricia not really. David because . Tricia i think people love our culture and love working here and i think we have a huge future. The technology is absolutely there. I can see a car going from point a to b in an area, but theres a lot to be done. I think it will be longer than then most people have predicted even years ago. David when you were able to go into your office, you were well known for walking into the cafeteria and sitting down with the average person. Why did you do that . Why didnt you eat in your office with other executives . Tricia when you break bread with people, they open up to you. Not just about big things, but things they want to change. T to change. David lets talk about progressives background. Great name, progressive, that is a very positive word. Was that the original name of the company . When was the Company Started . Tricia it was the original name. The company was founded in 1937 by joe louis and jack green. They were two attorneys in cleveland. They wanted to serve the nonstandard customers in cleveland that needed insurance, so they borrowed 10,000 from joe lewis motherinlaw and that is how progressive was born. You might know peter lewis, who ran the company for a long time. He was the second ceo. David how did you get started at progressive and at the bottom, right . Tricia i went to university, got a marketing degree. All through high school and college, i worked in retail. Oddly, where i went to school is the home office of state farm. Everybody was doing internships there. I was like, who wants to work in insurance . I went to a retail company. It was like a lowes or home depot. I was like, what am i doing . I am mixing paints. Im actually forklift certified. I was driving home one day with my hard hat and said, i have to look for something different. I wanted to work somewhere for a couple years, pay off my loans, then go to get my mba. So i went home and i opened the classified ads. I had never heard of progressive. I thought, this sounds interesting. 19,000, that will help me pay off my debt. And made the call. David the job is a claim adjuster. Tricia correct. If i had your claim and you were injured, i would go out and talk to you about your injury and guide you through that. I would crawl under your car and let you know how much it took to get repaired. I also did special lines. I was a motorcycle rep. I basically handled the entire file. I was in body shops crawling under cars, in your house, talking to you about your injury. David you have obviously risen up from the lowest to the highest position and youve had many positions in between. One of them, which is very unusual to have, is the head of Human Resources. How did you go from being head of Human Resources to being ceo . Tricia for me to get the ceo job, having mostly claims experience, i had a little bit of sales and claims, and my predecessor interviewed me. It was actually an odd circumstance. I went for it. I was not going to. I dont have any hr experience. People kept calling me from around the company, saying, you have to go for this. You love diversity, metrics. We need this. Finally, i had a preinterview lunch with glenn to see if i could even go for it. He put my name in a hat and gave me the opportunity. I will always say it was a risk for him. He does not say that, but that was really the turning point in my career. Then he watched me and i did that for six years and made a lot of big changes that we still have now. The president of claims came up open and that was my dream job. I love claims, i love helping customers. That is . 75 of every dollar, the pay on the claims. That is a big business. Then he gave me all things customer facing. I had call centers and claims. Then i was coo before the ceo role. So i really credit glenn for guiding me, giving me opportunities coaching me, and , sponsoring me. David as head of Human Resources, you must have instituted some policies that changed the companys face. Your company has been voted the number one most Diverse Company in the United States in some surveys. Is that something you implemented . Tricia yes. We started our Diversity Inclusion initiatives in earnest when i was there. We started our first employee resource groups, africanamerican network and lgbt plus we really set forth a strategy of how we are going to make sure everyone can bring their whole self to work. It was a big piece of our culture. We started looking at the data. We continue to work on it. It is not something where you can ever get a check mark. If you look at senior leadership, we have opportunities there. We are working on some aggressive objectives the next five years with my team to change that. David your chairman of the board is a woman and you are a woman. Is there any other fortune 500 company where the chairman and ceo is a woman . There must be none. Tricia i dont think so. We have 12 members of our board and six are women and one is a female person of color. Id when you were cook, in line to be the ceo, did you think they were going to give the job for a woman or you thought they would find a nice white male to give it to . Tricia i was hoping they would give it to the person they thought was the best fit. I remember interviewing with the board for several years during the process. And one of the Board Members said to me, you want to be a ceo . I said, no, i want to be the ceo of progressive. That was what really was meaningful to me. Had i not gotten the role, i would still be here. There were lots of other opportunities to have a great ceo other than myself. David when you were able to go into your office, you were well known for walking into the cafeteria and sitting down with the average person. Why did you do that . Why didnt you just eat in your office with other executives . Tricia that is my way of getting to know people and really feeling what is going on with the company. When you break bread with people, they open up to you. Not just about great things but about things they want to change. Because of my roots as a claims rep trainee, i always wondered what the executives did. We dont have an executive cafeteria. We all eat in the same cafeteria. This is a very different type of company. Literally, it has motivated me to be a better leader. Every time i walked up to a table of people and said can i , join you and they give that no, i sat please down, i had five new friends. To me, it is an important part to be approachable. If you feel connected and trust your leader, you will run through the wall for them. David when you sit down with people at the cafeteria, do they ever say, i am underpaid . Or they never say that . Tricia they sometimes talk about how they wish they could make more. What can they do . How can they get there . David what would you say are david what would you say are people are pretty open and honest with me. The Leadership Qualities you brought to the table or you most admire . Tricia i dont always have to be the smartest person in the room. I know collectively what a team needs and i love having great debates. Es. David as i talk to you here in the imf headquarters, it is pretty quiet. Are you working remotely . March 13 we had the decision [indiscernible] and we sustained the decision because conditions are so bad for the safety of staff. To respectcontinue that modality of work. Amazinglyn successful. We are doing much more because of the crisis and we are doing it working remotely, but it does have some downsides. David, we would never go back to where we were. We would never have people sitting in these offices. We know we can be very productive working from home. We would be striving to have may be 5050 or 6040. Day telecommuting working from home. David how have you changed as a result of what you have gone through since march 13 . Kristalina what i have learned is that in crisis, the most important thing is to lean , help the most vulnerable. I reach out to people. I report record every week a short video to help staff. I never get tired to bring people to these virtual rooms where we have stayed together and we have purpose in this crisis. David as i talk to you, you are not in your office i presume, you are in your home . Tricia that is correct. I am in my Little Library off of our bedroom. David and have you been running progressive from your Little Office for a couple months now . Tricia ever since midmarch. I go in sometimes just to get my mail and check things out, but i dont see anyone. In fact, where im sitting here, my son, who is in film school, films me weekly so i can send a video to the progressive people. David has it been difficult to run the company remotely . Tricia it has not been difficult for me. It has been unusual. I dont love it because i love the interaction. The biggest part is the claims organization because that is facetoface. Especially when you are looking at vehicles but we immediately , were able to use videos and pictures to do the best job we could. To estimate vehicles. We are doing pretty well. Im very proud of the organization. David when the world comes back, which hopefully will be sometime when we have a vaccine, do you expect that all your employees will come back and work in the offices, or do you think you could have people working remotely and save money . How do you think about this in the future . Tricia prior to covid, we had about 25 of our people work from home because it works better for them. I imagine, and we are doing some surveying as we think about what about returning, what percentage that will still work for. I think in person, in the office, hallway conversations are so important. I think it might increase from that 25 . If you fastforward and theres a vaccine and people feel comfortable, i think a lot of people will come into the office. I think that is something that weve worked through and done a really good job with technology, but i know many people miss it. David you and your husband have six children, right . Tricia yes. His, hers, and ours. David when you have six children and you are running a company, isnt that kind of complicated . How do you have time in the day to do anything else . Tricia it was very complicated as i was going up through the ranks. My husband worked as well. When i was in hr for a couple of years, we met at progressive, we both had travel jobs, and at one point he said, when our oldest was going into high school, he said one of us probably needs to stay home. I think you have a longer runway. So he decided to stay home. But i think i treat it like everything else. Assume something might go wrong. When we were both traveling and i knew i had a presentation, i knew i would go into somebodys room and somebody would have an ear infection. And so i created a network of friends who stayed home and did an oldfashioned bartering system. So if you can take emma for a couple of hours while i do this presentation, i will babysit your kids on the weekend. D, just like you do in business. David what would you say are the Leadership Qualities that you brought to the table or most admire . Tricia i think the ones i brought to the table were being genuine, being authentic, communicating just all the time, painting the picture of where i want the company to go. I think people, you are only a leader if people want to follow you. So, do people want to follow you . Do you have a great attitude, but also a certain paranoia to make sure that we are always doing well . I think what i am most proud of and i think why i continued to get jobs after that hr job, i formed really great teams. I dont always have to be the smartest person in the room. I know collectively what a team needs and i love having great debates. The only thing better than those debates are the in are the power in the unity when you come out and you are solidified as a leadership team. David sometimes people say it is difficult for women to have it all, to have a family and a great professional career. It is obviously possible. Youve obviously done it. What would you say is a trick to having it all and getting it all done if you were to give advice , to some younger women . Tricia sometimes theres things you dont give up. Jack played high school and college football. It is important for me to go as many games as i could. And i worked my way around that. Sometimes that meant working at 10 00 at night to catch up on things, but it was worth it. My kids tell me, even now, you went to do more things than most stayathome moms. Because i was so obsessed with making sure i got to see everything. David if you would go to a Football Game or Something Like that, do people come up to you and say, you are the ceo of progressive, or do you avoid telling people you are the ceo of progressive . Tricia my husband says all the time, why do you play games with everyone . People say, where do you work . Insurance company. Where . Cleveland. What do you do . I am corporate. All these things until finally, ok, im the ceo. What i have found, if you are on a plane or somewhere, a good way to not get in a conversation is they say, what do you do, and i say, i sell insurance. Then no one talks to you. I live in a smaller town. My kids went to a small catholic school. Everybody knows me. When i got the job, the day that it was announced, i was headed to our sons school to go to his lacrosse game. Our Pr Department kept saying, the wall street journal wants to talk to you. This place wants to talk to you. I said i am headed to a lacrosse game. Let me call my mom. Let me call my sisters. Let me enjoy this. I finally said, stop calling me. I wanted to be present in the moment. I talked to my five other children. Jack was on the field. During halftime, i said, hi. I need to tell you some news. He said, i know, you are trending on twitter. David suppose somebody came to you from ohio and said, you run one of the best companies in ohio. You should be governor of ohio. Would you have any interest in running for office . Tricia i think government would frustrate me. I like to get things done. I like to move forward and im a big believer in compromise. I dont think government is in the future for me. I think i would love to do some philanthropy. Maybe a board or two. I am on a public board now. And do some things with my husband to help the country. David and the higher calling of private equity doesnt appeal to you . Tricia [laughter] i will let you do that. So youre a small business, or a big one. You were thriving, but then. Oh. Ah. Okay. Plan, pivot. How do you bounce back . You dont, you bounce forward, with serious and reliable internet. Powered by the largest gig Speed Network in america. But is it secure . Sure its secure. And even if the power goes down, your connection doesnt. So how do i do this . You dont do this. We do this, together. Bounce forward, with comcast business. To the show. E back just under a minute away from the open. Things are starting to come together as far as the yield story. We woke up with highs. This injection of liquidity coming out of the pboc, 500 billion, 200 of which coming due on friday. That might accelerate upward pressure on rates. And there is the bond story. The china 10 year, still above that 3. 2 level. We expected this injection. They kept that on hold. We are counting down to the inflation data for the month of september. It should come out any minute now. Checking on the open, a sour stimulusall street as negotiations appear to have hit a final impasse. That was from steve mnuchin, the treasury secretary. Csi 300 still around this 4800 level. Gains very modest. The shanghai comp is up 0. 1 . The chinext in similar territory. We can move