Account research from a 10-K, with a worked brief and account plan

A 10-K tells a seller how the company makes money by segment, what management is spending on, what it is worried about, and who owns technology and security. That sits in Item 1 (business), Item 1A (risk factors), Item 1C (cybersecurity), Item 7 (MD&A) and the segment tables. The 8-Ks filed since tell you what changed. Below: a one-hour reading order, a full account brief on one real mid-cap insurer cited to section, and the account-context half of a strategic account plan filled from it. The relationship half stays with the rep. Filings don’t tell you about people.

Vendors such as Autobound sell 10-K, 10-Q and 8-K signals that feed sales sequences as filings land. This page is the one-off version, read by hand.

Where the useful parts of a 10-K sit, and a one-hour reading order

A large company files its 10-K within 60 days of its fiscal year-end, so a calendar-year company files in late February. Open it from the company’s EDGAR filing list and read in this order:

Section	What a seller gets from it	Time
Cover page and Item 1, Business	Size, filer status, segments and their share of revenue, the strategy for each, headcount	10 min
Item 7, MD&A executive overview	The year in management’s words, usually the first two or three pages of Item 7	10 min
Segment results table	Which segment grew and which lost margin	5 min
Item 1A, Risk factors	Each opens with a one-sentence summary in bold or italics. Read those, open the ones on technology, operations, competition and regulation, and compare with last year’s 10-K	10 min
Item 1C, Cybersecurity	Frameworks, vendor assessment, who owns security. Required for fiscal years ending on or after December 15, 2023	5 min
Cash flow statement and Item 10	Capex, debt, buybacks, officer roles	5 min
8-Ks since the filing date	What changed. Filter on 5.02, 2.02, 1.01, 2.05 and 7.01 first	15 min

An 8-K reports an event within four business days, and the item number tells you the kind: 1.01 a material agreement, 1.05 a material cybersecurity incident, 2.02 quarterly results, 2.03 new debt, 2.05 restructuring costs, 5.02 an officer or director change, 7.01 and 8.01 other disclosures such as investor-day material. Earnings releases are usually furnished on an 8-K. Call transcripts and slides often live only on the investor site.

Search terms worth running: technology, platform, digital, artificial intelligence, cloud, vendor, third-party, operating model, efficiency, modernization, capital expenditures. EDGAR’s full-text search runs them across every filing a company has made since 2001.

Capex only means something for companies that buy physical assets. A bank, insurer or software company spends on technology through operating expenses and capitalised software, as the example shows.

The worked example: The Hanover Insurance Group

The account is The Hanover Insurance Group, Inc. (NYSE: THG), a property and casualty insurer in Worcester, Massachusetts. Every line below cites its 10-K for fiscal 2025, filed February 20, 2026, by item, or a later filing linked inline. Carriers buy a lot of software, data, security and claims services. Hanover is mid-cap (non-affiliate market value $6.05 billion at June 30, 2025, cover page): big enough to have a CISO and a formal vendor-risk program, small enough that one initiative shows up in the results. It is also partway through a CEO change.

Account brief: The Hanover Insurance Group

Snapshot

Item	Detail	Source
Business	Property and casualty insurance, sold through independent agents and brokers in the U.S.	10-K Item 1, Organization
Size	$6.64 billion total operating revenues and $6.32 billion net premiums written in 2025, up 3.9%	10-K Item 1; Item 7, Results of Operations, Segments
Profit	Net income $662.5 million in 2025, up from $426.0 million	10-K Item 7, Executive Overview
Segments	Personal Lines 40.6% of operating revenues, Core Commercial 36.4%, Specialty 22.7%	10-K Item 1, Lines of Business
Footprint	About 4,900 employees, all in the U.S.; 33 local offices in 23 states; processing centres in Worcester MA, Howell MI, Salem VA and Windsor CT	10-K Item 1, Employees; Marketing and Distribution
Concentration	Michigan 18.7% and Massachusetts 8.0% of 2025 premiums	10-K Item 1, Marketing and Distribution

Segment results for 2025. A combined ratio below 100% is an underwriting profit. The expense ratio is the part a technology or services seller usually touches.

Segment	Net premiums written	Expense ratio	Combined ratio 2025	Combined ratio 2024
Core Commercial	$2,273.7M	33.5%	97.4%	94.4%
Specialty	$1,441.5M	37.3%	85.7%	86.5%
Personal Lines	$2,606.9M	25.7%	90.0%	99.6%
Total	$6,322.1M	31.1%	91.6%	94.8%

Source: 10-K Item 7, Premium Production and Underwriting Results.

Strategic priorities

• Independent agents. Growth comes from “expansion of our agency footprint in underpenetrated geographies” and investments “designed to develop growth solutions for our agency distribution channel” (Item 7, Executive Overview).
• Core Commercial: more placements per agent. The company is improving its “products and technology platforms”, expanding its TAP Sales quote-and-issue platform for agents, and growing in selected middle-market segments (Item 1, Core Commercial).
• Specialty has the best underwriting margin. It had the best combined ratio in 2025 (Item 7), and its service centre is “a critical growth lever” (Item 1, Specialty).
• Personal Lines: account business and less weight on two states. About 89% of policies in force are account business, and about 50% of Personal Lines premium comes from Michigan and Massachusetts, which the company wants to reduce (Item 1, Personal Lines).
• Growth without matching expense. The company plans to keep making “significant investments” to “improve technology and our operating models”, and calls growing “without proportionate increases in expenses” part of its current strategy (Item 1A, growth risk factor).

Stated risks

From Item 1A unless noted:

• Falling behind: “If we are not able to keep pace with competitors’ digital offerings or advancements in the use of new technologies, such as AI tools, we may not be able to meet the demand from our agents or their customers.”
• Cyber threats growing “including due to the rapid advancement and use of AI by threat actors”.
• Vendor dependence, which the company says it “may increase” for “certain of our technology, data storage and business process functions”.
• New competitors: large technology companies, retailers and insurtechs using data, AI and direct access to customers, plus real-time comparative rating tools.
• State rules on AI in underwriting and pricing, which “may increase the complexity of our compliance and reporting obligations”.
• Loss costs: litigation trends, “legal system abuse” and social inflation (Item 1, Risks), and $276.3 million of pre-tax catastrophe losses in 2025 (Item 7).

Spend signals

• Capex is not the signal. Capital expenditures were $7.7 million in 2025 (Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows). Technology spend sits in other operating expenses, $692.9 million in 2025, $684.0 million in 2024 and $609.8 million in 2023 (Item 7, segment results table), and in capitalised software amortised over 5 to 7 years (Note 1).
• The software tax line jumped, probably because of the tax law. The deferred tax liability for software capitalisation rose from $1.7 million to $19.2 million (Note 6, Income Taxes). The same note says the July 2025 federal tax law mainly changed the timing of deductions. Don’t read it as new spend.
• Efficiency is showing up. In Q2 2026 the Core Commercial expense ratio fell 0.4 points to 32.5%, “reflecting fixed cost leverage and efficiency gains” (Q2 2026 release, 8-K Exhibit 99.1).
• Surplus capital goes to shareholders. The company bought back $130.1 million of stock in 2025 (Item 7, Liquidity), and on May 13, 2026 the board adopted a new $700 million repurchase program (8-K, Item 8.01). The $500 million of 5.50% debentures issued in August 2025 mostly went to retiring debt due in 2025 and 2026 (Note 5). Neither is an operating-budget signal.

Technology mentions

• Item 1: TAP Sales, agency analytics and a “full suite of digital self-service tools”; self-service claims apps and “photo analytics technology” for routine Personal Lines claims; a service centre for Specialty and small commercial.
• Items 1C and 1A: cloud providers and cloud data storage named as dependencies, and reliance on “a broad range of advanced technologies, including AI”.
• Item 1C: a security program aligned to the NIST Cybersecurity Framework and COBIT, with external penetration testing, annual third-party risk assessments, and a “security capability mapping process” used “to evaluate emerging technologies and to inform ongoing investment decisions”.

Org changes

• The CISO reports to the Chief Information and Innovation Officer, who reports to the Chief Operating Officer (Item 1C). The Audit Committee oversees cyber risk.
• The COO took the role in March 2025 after running Hanover Agency Markets since 2017 (Item 10).
• On July 15, 2026 the company announced that its CEO will retire on December 31, 2026 and named the COO as CEO-elect (8-K, Item 5.02). The executive who oversees technology is about to run the company.
• On May 13, 2026 the corporate controller became principal accounting officer, a role the CFO had held (8-K, Item 5.02).
• The Q2 release announced a strategic outlook and financial update for September 17, 2026, covering “the next chapter of The Hanover, its strategic priorities, and updated long-term financial targets” (Q2 2026 release). The materials were not filed on EDGAR. Get the new targets from the investor site before the meeting.

Likely buying triggers

My inferences from the filings, not statements by the company:

• A CEO-elect from operations and distribution takes over on January 1, 2027. New leaders often confirm or reset programs in their first planning cycle.
• The Core Commercial combined ratio worsened to 97.4% in 2025 on commercial auto and workers’ compensation losses (Item 7). Anything that improves underwriting selection, claims or litigation management in those lines maps to a stated problem.
• Agent platforms are a priority, and falling behind on digital and AI is a named risk.
• Moving Personal Lines into new states means new agents, rate filings and catastrophe exposure.
• State AI rules add compliance work, and the company already uses AI in operations.
• Every vendor goes through the Item 1C third-party risk program. Bring security documentation to the first meeting.

Questions to ask

• Which programs were confirmed at the September update, and how is the 2027 plan being built during the CEO transition?
• In Core Commercial, which lines come first for margin recovery, and where do underwriting tools or claims processes fall short?
• Where is AI in production today, and how are you handling the state rules on AI in underwriting and pricing?
• Which functions are you considering moving to third parties, and what does your vendor risk assessment require?

Strategic account plan example: the account-context half

Account context can be researched from public sources. The relationship half comes only from the rep and the CRM.

Account context (researched)

Plan field	Filled from the brief
Account	The Hanover Insurance Group (NYSE: THG), Worcester, MA. P&C insurer, independent agents only
Size and trajectory	$6.64B operating revenues 2025; premiums +3.9% in 2025 and +4.6% in Q2 2026; record second-quarter operating earnings per share
Where the money is	Personal Lines is the largest segment; Specialty has the best margin; Core Commercial has the weakest margin and the fastest Q2 2026 growth (+7.2%)
Priorities, risks, technology, triggers	As in the brief above
Decision structure (by role)	CISO reports to CIIO, CIIO to COO; COO is CEO-elect from January 1, 2027; Audit Committee oversees cyber
Timing	Calendar fiscal year; 10-K in late February; quarterly results late April, July and October; CEO transition December 31, 2026. Budget cycle dates are not disclosed
Hypothesis for your offer	[Rep: one sentence linking your product to one stated priority and one stated risk above]
Account’s competitors	Direct writers, other carriers, insurtechs and technology companies (Items 1 and 1A); none named

Relationship (left for the rep)

Current footprint and contract dates, executive sponsor, champion, economic buyer, decision process and procurement path, relationship map, open pipeline, competitors already in the account, and the mutual action plan. None of it can be filled responsibly from public research.

What a Hyperresearch run does here

This brief took one 10-K, three 8-Ks and one earnings release, read by hand. A Hyperresearch Light run ($9) does that reading for your account. It can search SEC EDGAR full text, fetches the filings and the company’s public pages, and writes a report of about 2,500 to 4,000 words from about 20 to 50 sources in about 30 to 40 minutes. Those are targets, not guarantees. Every sampled citation is checked against the source it cites. For a wider question, such as the account’s industry or its competitors’ filings, Deep ($49) targets about 150 to 200 sources over 3 to 5 hours.

It is a one-off report, not a monitor. It reads public pages only, logged out, so paywalled call transcripts, private-company databases and your CRM are out of reach. It does not find contacts or profile people.

See pricing, the sources a run can read, and the verification receipt for how citations are checked.