The benefit of this method is that it removes the impact of near term flucuations and accounts for the overarching direction of Travelers Companies's earnings trajectory over time, which may be more relevant for long term investors. To compute this rate, I put a line of best fit through the forecasted earnings by market analysts. The slope of this line is the rate of earnings growth, which in this case is 6.8%. This means, we can expect Travelers Companies will grow its earnings by 6.8% every year for the next couple of years.