Consecutive Years of Member Dividends – 11

On 12/31/24, our CFO was busy that evening transmitting to our actuaries our entire claims history. That data included date of injury, what was paid so far, and our estimate of what remains to be paid on every claim since 2006. There is lots of detail to send. This data is then sorted by our actuary and trended to get an estimate on the final claims costs for claims that may have just happened in 2024. By getting that assessment of the past 18 years’ worth and applying it to the known and unknown data of 2024, they come up with a final estimate of claims cost for 2024. This actuarial process takes about three weeks and involves them sending it to a second actuary to do a peer review of the entire calculation and data. The net result of this three-week project is a 110-page report that gives MTM the most scientific basis of plugging numbers into our 2024 financial statement. As a mutual insurer, for 11 years it has been the Board of Directors position that profits get returned to our members.

Now, the good news is that while severity was up (we had a few large claims) frequency was down. With the actuarial report in hand on February 13th at 8:00 a.m., management met with the Board Finance Committee and after a lengthy discussion, a 2024 dividend recommendation was approved by the committee. The recommendation was for a member’s dividend of $3,750,000. This is a healthy 15% increase over the dividend amount for last year.

That afternoon February 13th, the MTM Board Marketing and Underwriting Committee met. Their job is to take the money that has been recommended by the finance department and determine the most efficient and effective way to spread that amongst the 960 MTM members. The system for the last couple of years was two dividends, one dividend for a loyalty or just being a member, and a second dividend for those members who had loss ratios better than the company for three years, has been well received. The Marketing Committee approved continuing that calculation process for the 2024 dividend.

The committee recommendations of the dollar amount from the Finance Committee and the methodology of individual calculation from the Marketing and Underwriting Committee now go to the full Board of Directors for their meeting on February 20th. The Board is presented with the recommendations and receives details from the chairperson from each committee and decided that both the dollar amount of $3,750,000 and the methodology for distribution are solid and gave the Board approval to proceed with the processing of these dividend checks.

I am delighted this will be the 11th annual member dividend. While the dividend for this year is $3.75 million, over the last 11 years, the divided has totaled more than $41 million. This is a very big number for a company with annual revenues of about $18 million. MTM staff now has their marching orders. We will begin the needed filings and individual member calculations. Like the last couple of years, the annual members meeting is coming up on March 20th. Handing dividend checks out at the annual members meeting is a great way to thank individual members in person and deliver checks. Our Marketing department has planned a couple excellent speakers that both have 20-minute time presentations. We will have a lunch and then we will hand out checks to members. If you are unable to attend the meeting, we will begin the delivery process of all other checks on Monday, March 24th. As I have said for 11 years, the best part of my job is delivering MTM checks to members and I am looking forward to that job again this year.

Congratulations to our members for the reduced frequency and helping us generate a profit and dividend for MTM members.