Beazley plc

Good morning and welcome to BASELY's 2025 Interim Results Presentation. If you would like to ask a question via the conference call, the signal number pressing star one on your telephone keypad. I will now hand over to Chief Executive Officer Adrian Cox. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the 2025 BASELY Interim Results Presentation and thank you for dialing in. I will begin with an overview of our performance for the half year. Paul Bantic, our CEO, will take us through the underwriting section. Barbara Plattner-Jensen, our CFO, the financials, and I will finish with some thoughts on the outlook for the rest of the year. So on to the performance overview. I'm very pleased with this year's half-year results. We've generated a profit of 503 million, which is significantly above consensus. an annualized return on equity of over 18%, and a combined revenue share of just under 85%. That stands up very well against the cohort of specialty insurers across the globe with whom we compare ourselves. Last year's profit was a record for us that still stands, but that reflected a very benign period for large and catastrophe losses, which wasn't the case this year, which so far is probably more normal in this period of elevated risk. So far we've seen wildfires in California, Canada and now Europe, a very high number of severe convective storms in the US, a number of airline disasters, large individual fires, cyber attacks across the globe and so forth. The 84.9% combined ratio then is a very strong result and demonstrates both our ability to maintain margin throughout the cycle and the quality of profits that we're producing from the recent years of strong growth. When we compare that to the DMP, the Dowling and Partners Composite Index of Spectrum Insurers, that puts us in the top quartile of retail and equity. And whilst large and catastrophic losses have been more prevalent in 2025 so far, what is pleasing is that our attritional losses have continued to run better than expected, as they have done for the last three years now, which is testament to the uprising in claims management of the business we have been building. As many of you know, we don't like U.S. casualty business, by which I mean general liability, auto liability, umbrella, and excess casualty, et cetera, which means we don't have the issues going around U.S. casualty reserving, both pre- and post-COVID, that are causing such concern in the market. This is deliberate from us, and it's showing its value. We are and always have been very careful about what products we use to write and what we do not. Our focus remains on business where expertise where there is decent margin across the cycle, in pools of risk that are naturally growing fast, and most importantly, where there is little latency. We like to know at the end of the policy period whether or not we have a claim. It makes reserving significantly easier. It's also the primary reason why our growth rate this year is relatively modest. Much of the premium growth across the insurance world has been driven by rate increases in casualty business. And as I said, we're not in that business. We grew by 2%, this half, which is a reflection both of the further increased competition across a lot of our products and the underwriting discipline which we always exercise. We guided at the end of 2024 to a mid-single-digit growth rate, commenting that the marketplace was competitive but unstable. and that there were many risks bubbling under the surface, and that we wouldn't be surprised if opportunities emerged. Well, nothing has happened so far this year that has been significant or unexpected enough to impact market sentiment. So, we've grown less than expected in the second quarter. However, we are seeing signs of change in some important segments. DNO rate decreases have slowed down materially. The Aon survey in June, for example, showed just under 2% decline in June, and that's encouraging. The cyber market in the US also flattened in the summer. We remarked that margins had been compressed over the last couple of years, driven by both rate decreases and a rise in both cyber crime and liability losses. And this is feeding its way into underwriting behavior, also encouraging. Our team deliberately went out with flat renewals at the 1-7 renewal season, and that stuck. And that gives us some optimism for the second half of the year. And in the U.S. property market, which has been very competitive for the last 12 months or so, we're also seeing signs of stabilization. So the market is behaving relatively rationally. And we're optimistic that there will be further opportunities in the second half. It is easier to grow when underwriting pricing is more consistent across the market. Paul will take you through the results by division. But I wanted to highlight the fastest-growing platform was our European one, in line with our strategy. And the fastest-growing division is M80, fueled by rising demand, particularly in contingency and political risks, terrorism, and war. The latter a reflection of the high levels of geopolitical risk that we've been narrating for a little while now. In other news, despite a quite volatile period in the investment world, our team have managed to gain an investment profit of just over $300 million. equivalent to 5.4% annualised return and we're just under halfway through our $500 million share buyback. And I'm trying to complete that programme by the end of the year at Strand. And with that, I'll hand over to Paul.

Thanks, Richard. Morning, everyone. I look forward to walking you through how our underlying trading teams are progressing, as well as a few other highlights and of course, a few extra cyber details. of the deliberate strategic decisions we make around our product set. And so we thought we'd show some additional granularity on our set. We typically show you our four main trading divisions, cyber, property, map, and specialty. When we refer to our product portfolio, today we're going to a level below that. And what you can see here is a chart that breaks down our distinct 18 lines of business within those divisions. This granularity is extremely important. It affects the true breadth of the business we write, and importantly the diversification that we have, which spans over 50 individual products and business bands that we work on each year. These are products and business lines that we have strategically selected because they align with our specialty expertise, but also are the best mix to drive long-term growth as well as profitability. Through the market cycles, we optimize our portfolios so that it includes a healthy mix of both short-tail and long-tail lines of business. which is spread across a wide range of geographies and products. This enables us to manage risk dynamically and respond to some of the market conditions Adrian's been talking about with agility. What we're really highlighting to you here is the optionality that we have with such a broad and balanced product we're rarely locked into any single market cycle. Instead, we have the flexibility, when we need to, to lead into areas where the risk reward meet our requirements. That's a key part of how we manage the cycle, how we deliver consistent performance and even in some volatile conditions. It's not just our product portfolio that provides strategic flexibility. Now I'm going to turn to how our platform position across key specialty markets enables us to deploy that optionality effectively in response to varying market conditions and cycles. It's not just about what we write, it's also where we write it. Different products can and do Europe, our newest platform, currently offers strong growing conditions, as Adrian mentioned, with great adequacy supporting disciplined expansion that we've been underway there on for a few years. North America, the largest specialty insurance market for the type of the risk we write, provides scale and diversity, with both our admitted and E&S carriers domiciled in the US, we're really well positioned to respond across the full spectrum of market conditions. And finally, global wholesale, predominantly by alloys, remains a consistent contributor to profitability. The greater our geographical reach, the more flexibility we have in order to respond to changing conditions, pivoting quickly when needed and maintaining discipline where required. This is really essential to our ability to manage the market cycles effectively. Moving on to property, so our most property risk continues to evolve in response to market conditions and the changing shape of our business. It's a business that the team grew fantastically well in recent times and there continues to be good opportunities. The global wholesale platform, particularly in London and Lloyds, has faced the most challenging competitive and rating environment. This is where we typically see larger, more complex risks and where we've been managing our exposures and thus premiums due to rating adequacy. This is something we've managed before and it's not unusual with market cycles in a wholesale platform. In contrast, we've seen 6% growth in North America where conditions remain more attractive. As the E&S carrier that originally accessed this market via Lloyds, we've historically worked closely with wholesale brokers in North America, but we've been rapidly expanding our engagement with retail brokers, which is broadening our access to risk and opening up a new distribution channel for us. That said, the risks we're running in North America tend to be smaller in scale and premium than those coming to London and the wholesale market, particularly during the recent harder market cycle. So while we're increasing opportunity and reach, the overall impact on group growth is more modest at this stage, driven by the lower average premiums. Importantly, our long-term view of the opportunity remains undimmed. We're building a more balanced and resilient property for photo, one that gives us more flexibility our underwriting performance. We've now fully established a team in Europe that will start to write more from the 1st of January next year. Shifting to cyber. Our cyber portfolio continues to reflect the varied marketing dynamics across chocolate business. Europe, UK, and Asia Pacific have continued growth drivers this year, supported by a stronger rate adequacy and discipline expansion. The book has been growing well. but it can't remain a smaller part of our overall cyber portfolio. So while the conditions are attractive, the impact on group-level growth is still modest, but the international book is rapidly becoming more significant in total. North America, which represents the largest portion of our cyber book, has faced the most challenging race environment for some time, so to say. It's a crowded marketplace with intense competition and elevated claims activities. Since 2023, the market has experienced a rise in frequency and severity, leading to sustained margin pressure. Many reports suggest the US cyber market shrank in total clearance size in the past year. While we can't pinpoint exactly when the broader market will react, but we recently focused on our July renewals for change, which is the biggest renewal period of the year. They showed early signs of this change, with rates beginning to tap in North America, and retention of accounts stayed within our normal acceptable range. And that's very encouraging after many quarters of negative rate since the late in 2022. We're going to continue to monitor these conditions closely as we move into September and October. The cyber team has still delivered a very strong combined ratio. The recent lower levels experienced were driven by the hard market rate we achieved in 2021 and 2022, combined with reduced frequency and severity of claims. We never anticipated combined ratios in the 70s would continue indefinitely, and we are now seeing a normalisation but 85.3 is a significantly strong result for the line, still well within our hurdle rates for cross-cycle ROE targets, and considering rate pressure, one we're very pleased with and we think demonstrates our discipline and expertise. What's clear from the high-profile events reported in the first half is that the claims environment is far from benign in cyber. These incidents have reinforced the need for cyber insurance and the importance of maintaining rate adequacy. Risk selection, discipline, and the cyber services ecosystem that we've been so hard building over the recent years to protect long-term profitability. And speaking about high-profile events, we wanted to dig into the threat environment a bit and provide a reminder of how we manage our cyber work in response to the evolving risk. What we've seen in the first half of 2025 is a different dynamic in the nature of cyber losses. In 2024, the most widely reported and picked up events were systemic in nature. Our exposure to the event was well managed and in total remain at low levels that I will detail shortly. In contrast, 2025, we have seen more attritional losses involving individual insureds affected by ransomware with the beta breaches. These on the right-hand side here are examples of the big public losses and does not mean we are the insurer. Another notable change is geographic. In 2025, we've initially seen more cyber attacks outside of North America. particularly in Europe and other international markets. This is as we predicted and our expert Cyber Council suggested to us at the start of the year. The cyber threat can shift reasonably quickly to the geophysical environment around the world, and given some recent changes, we do anticipate it may bring back to be more focused on North America in the coming months. Managing this evolving threat landscape requires deep expertise, It's not just about underwriting discipline, it's about understanding how different types of events behave, how they aggregate, how the thread is moving, agility in your underwriting, and how to structure and protect you accordingly. To help clarify, systemic losses can trigger multiple policies and accumulate quickly, but we've been managing exposures for years and have a well-established approach for these events. For example, if you look at the 2024 systemic events, our net loss This demonstrates our ability to manage potential aggregates effectively. Attritional losses, on the other hand, are typically one-limit losses. While headlines may reference policies with coverage in tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, the reality is that our net average line size is $1.7 million, and even our maximum net limits are below 10 million in 99% of cases. As Adrian said earlier, our attritional losses continues to perform well across the business, and this disciplined approach combined with expertise ensures that even in a more active claims environment, our exposures remain well managed. Moving on to talk about cyber protection a little bit. Our cyber protections are designed to respond to both systemic and attritional risks using a layered approach that reflects the evolving threat landscape. For attritional risks, frequent, insurance, which shares premium and losses with our partners, helping smooth volatility, cyber aggregate stock loss, which tracks the total cyber related losses over a period, protecting against cumulative attritional impacts. For systemic risk, events that impact multiple insurers simultaneously, we deploy excessive loss cover, which protects us above a set threshold, fast free insurance, which responds when multiple policies are triggered by a single event, Cyber catastrophe bonds, which has extreme risk to capital markets. We've spoken about these many times in our D&D days as well. Our industry loss warranties, which trigger based on market-wide loss events. Cyber aggregate stop loss, which also acts as a buffer against systemic accumulation. And man-made catastrophe loadings within our reserves, which feel resilient against human-driven systemic events, very similar to how you would in natural catastrophe of property. The systemic events described on the previous slide were relatively modest in impact, but it's important to recognise that systemic events have the potential to result in higher losses. Whether we're dealing with the modest events or something approaching a 1 in 250 like scenario, this is a risk we're constantly thinking about in our pricing, modelling and overall portfolio management. As we already showed at our Capital Markets Day, we built over a billion in systemic cap protections. whether it's a single ransomware attack or widespread platform faker. Moving on to specialty risks. Specialty risks have shown a variable growth profile over the past 12 months, closely tied to the broader market conditions that they've been experiencing. In half to 2024, the divisions surprised us with stronger than expected growth, given by a short-term surge in capital markets activity, particularly IPOs and M&A. However, the first quarter of 25 was notably challenged as volatility in capital markets were due, demand for many of the products in this division had the same impact. Q2 provided a window of opportunity with improved conditions supporting a rebounding activity. That said, we do expect the second half to moderate with four-year growth anticipated to be flat to very modest. It's important to know The starting point for the premium in half two is significantly higher than it was a year ago, which will naturally subdue year-on-year growth comparisons for the second half. On the profitability side, the half year 25 combined ratio has improved compared to last year, largely because we've seen the impact of adverse development as a result of some changes to our insurance contract, which was a one-off impact that we described last year. We remain extremely various to social inflation exposed parties and have continued to reduce our exposure further, and we have been doing this for some time now. Overall, this is a division that responds quickly to shifts in market sentiment. While the outlook for H2 is more muted, we remain confident in the long-term relevance of our specialty offerings and our ability to respond dynamically to the changes in demand and the increases to be anticipated to come. As Adrian already said, we're extremely pleased with the performance of our map division in the first half, and while the result is excellent, it's not entirely unexpected. We've been saying for some time that there is strong and sustained demand for the map policy, which includes cover for war, terrorism, political violence and continuity. Given the ongoing geopolitical uncertainty and global conflicts, this demand has intensified. What's different this year is that the underlying performance is now clearly visible in the group numbers. In recent years, MAP's results have been impacted by the re-platforming work we've been undertaking, which has masked the true performance of the team. This is the first time in a while that a reported result is fully aligned with the team's delivery, and as you can see, it's excellent. The combined ratio of 82.4% is a standout result, especially in a class of business that is built with such complex and potentially volatile risks. It again reflects our discipline in underwriting, our ability to manage aggregates and commitments to long-term profitability. It's also worth noting that last year's call was flattered by prior year releases, a legacy of the COVID years when claims activity was unusually low due to grounded aircraft, full shipping and cancelled events. That environment has since normalised, so this year's result is a much clearer reflection of the underlying strength of the MAP portfolio. I'll now hand over to Barbara to walk through the financial performance.

Thank you very much, Paul. Well, I'd like to take you through our financial performance in the first half year. And I'm pleased to say that the half year results reflect the strength of our underwriting discipline, combined with a very strong contribution from our investment portfolio, as Adrian also mentioned. We delivered a 2% top-line growth in the first half. The global underwriting environment is increasingly competitive, as you have heard today and seen in our results in the past. But as you've seen in our results in the past, we're maintaining a disciplined approach to rate adequacy and risk selection, which is deeply embedded in our DNA. Our net growth is impacted by reinsurance as part of our proactive approach to managing our tier risk and protecting the balance sheet. In the first half of 25, we decided to purchase additional property exits of lost cover, and hence our net growth ends up being slightly lower in the first half. All else being equal, we expect the difference between gross and net growth to narrow. With regards to claims, our ratio increased to 46.7%, up from 45.1% in the first half last year, in line with expectations. Attrition on claims experienced in the first half of 25 were better than expected, and the performance this year reflects a more normalized environment, as well as the world is experiencing a number of catastrophe events such as the Californian wildfires and the other events that both Adrian and Paul have been talking about. As we mentioned in our release, the IRA for 17 expense ratio has increased this year as a result of variable incentive awards. There are two main drivers for the year-on-year increase you see. First, we're now recognizing these awards within our accounts earlier in the year, so that's a tiny impact. But secondly, the very strong performance over the last three years has resulted in an increase in variable incentive payments. We have a very unique way of rewarding our underwriters. Variable award payments are based on the profitability of a particular year of account, with the first payment made after three years. As well as acting as a powerful talent retention tool, it encourages our underwriters to remain disciplined with a focus on long-term profitability. This ensures that their interests are completely aligned with those of our shareholders and further reflects the depth of our commitment to underwriting discipline. The total expense ratio, which includes un-attributable costs, has seen an increase as we continue to invest in technology and scalability to bring long-term efficiencies. I'm very pleased to see the undiscounted combined ratio of 84.9%, aligning well with our guidance of a mid-80s for the full year. I believe this is a strong performance given the current market conditions. As you can see, our investments deliver a positive contribution to earnings with the result of $308.5 million, equal to a return of 2.7% in the first half, up from 2.4% in the same period last year. Combined with a growing investment base, this resulted in a 22.6% year-on-year increase in the investment income. Net financing income has moved to an extended position this year, reflecting the falling yield curves, whereas we experienced increased interest rates in the first half of 2024. All in all, this is a very strong result. Profit before tax came in at 502.5 million. Last year was an exceptional year, and just as a reminder, it increased by 99 compared to the first half in 23. And what we consider is the first half of 25 remains a standout performance in a more normalized environment. It's a clear demonstration of strength of both our underwriting and investment agents working in tandem. I'll now take you through some of these areas in more detail over the following slides. On this chart, you can see that our reserve strength remains consistent, well within our preferred 80th to 90th range. As a reminder, what you see on this page is the risk adjustment percentile, which indicates the strength of reserves held across the best restaurant and risk adjustment. At half year 25, this is at 85%. Using the GMM accounting methodology under IFRS 17 means that our risk adjustment takes into account both the earned and the un-earned business. As a consequence, at half year, the risk adjustment also includes the business that will be earned in the second half of the year. and the allowance that is held in respect of the upcoming catastrophe season. As we progress through the second half of the year, we gain more certainty, and like in previous years, all things being equal, we expect the half-year percentile to reduce by year-end, and we absolutely expect to continue to remain within our preferred range. We provide detailed disclosures regarding the prior year claims development at year-end, However, in the first half of the year, inequitous reserve movements arising from prior periods have not had a material impact on the results. Despite very volatile financial markets in the first six months of the year, the investment portfolio made a positive contribution to earnings with a return of 2.7% for the half year or $308.5 million. The innovative fixed-income yield environment contributed positively to the performance of our portfolio, where a predominant part is placed in fixed income to match the liabilities of our business, and hence this was the primary driver given our large core allocation. The surplus portfolio performed really well in a period of elevated macroeconomic and geopolitical volatility, benefiting from the diversification by asset prices. Securitized and high-yield credits added value as threats fell in the second quarter, and our equity and hedge fund portfolios also added value. Here you can see that as of 30th of June, 25, the investment portfolio amounted to approximately 11 and a half billion, which is flat compared to year end 24, but up 8% from the same time last year. As mentioned, the majority of our portfolio is set up to match our insurance liabilities and ensure liquidity under all market conditions. To support this, we maintain a significant allocation to call fixed income, and this part of the portfolio continues to benefit from the elevated yield environment. In the first half of 2025, the current yield on the fixed income part was 4.1%, with a duration of 1.6 years. In 2024, we initiated an allocation to securitize credits, and we've added to that position in the first half of 2025. Our focus has been on the highest-quality tranches, AAA and AA, of collateralized loan obligations which offer attractive risk-adjusted returns. Within our surface or capital growth portfolio, we have applied a diversified asset allocation to generate additional returns while reducing risk where it's not adequately compensated. In the first half of the year, markets have been volatile, and our return of 2.7% is a testament to our strategy and we remain confident in the portfolio's positioning to meet our investment objectives while managing market rates effectively. I'd now like to go through some details regarding our insurance finance expense and income, or the IFE, as we call it. This reflects the impact of discounting over the period. For the first half of 25, the IFE is an expense of $95.8 million. Right fingers down, you can see that the first purple bar shows the unwind of this chart for the time value of money, essentially the expected cost of moving forward in time. This was an expense of 118.4 million. The second purple bar reflects the impact of changes in yield curves. As opposed to last year, yields fell during the first half year in 2025, resulting in an additional expense of 31.8 million. The first pink bar is then representing changes in other financial assumptions, and in the half year 25, it is an income of 54.4 million. This includes differences between actual and expected cash flows, as well as updates to payment patterns. Please remember that this can be a positive or a negative, and to provide greater clarity on this line of item, we introduced a supplementary disclosure in our Q1 trading statement to provide greater clarity And we will continue to provide this update in our quarterly statements going forward. We do acknowledge that it's a difficult line item, which is hard to project. If we then look at the next slide, we have a reminder of our capital strategy. Our staffing format for considering capital distribution is an ambition to maintain a minimum threshold for the SAR of 170%. And when deciding how much capital we should hold above that level, we consider a number of factors. First and foremost, we are a growth company. We seek to use our capital for sustainable, profitable growth, which can generate an ROE of 15% across the cycle, taking into consideration growth opportunities on a two- to three-year horizon. In a suddenly great environment where opportunities for organic growth are more limited, we would also look at ways to deploy capital in support of longer-term opportunities for example, by acquiring capability or access to risk. Secondly, as a specialist insurer, we also factor in capital to be able to manage peak tail risk and absorbing volatility. I'll provide some more details on this on the following page. However, overall, we take into account the considerations on the commercial agenda as well as risk management, and in the case we have exit capital available, we would anticipate capital distributions in the form of a share buyback, special dividends, or a combination of both. The decision around this is made on an annual basis, and as we have demonstrated this year, we are returning a total of $700 million, which demonstrates our commitment to distribute capital. Finally, at Fafir, we provide an estimated SDR to the market, which consists of the previous year in position, along with the own funds generated in the first six months of the year. At 30 June 2025, this produced an estimated 42 ratio of 287%, which includes the previously announced $500 share buyback. Typically, we would expect to see a lower SDR by year-end, reflecting increased capital requirements, either due to funding our planned growth or to account for reduction in owned funds generation. I wanted to highlight this point because last year was an exception to the rule. Our record profit meant that our SDR increased at year-end 2024 versus the half-year. However, we do not expect a repeat of this in 2025 and anticipate our capital position at year-end to be at a more normalized level or else be meaningful. Looking at the half-year position at this stage, you can see the resilience in our current position, which enables us to absorb volatility, an extremely important part of delivering long-term sustainability in our results. On this chart, you can see that even after allowing for one in 250 events, either cyber or net caps, together with a 50 basis points decrease in interest rates, the capital cover ratio remains well in excess of the 170% H4 floor. These sensitivities remain broadly consistent with those disclosed at year-end 24, with a small increase in the cyber 1 and 250 from 29 to 32%. The NASCAT scenario decreased from 31% to 27%, supported by the additional excess on loss purchase I referred to at the start of my section. The interest rate sensitivity remains at 12%, which is prudently calculated based on the pre-distribution capital cover ratio. This concludes my comments on financial performance, and I'd like to hand back to Adrian to conclude on our presentation, including the outlook for the remainder of the year.

Thank you, Barbara.

Thank you, Paul. Right, so outlook in the markets remain outstanding. We live in interesting times. Our mission is long-term underwriting profitability that will drive our behavior and we will manage the cycle prudently at all times. We've demonstrated this repeatedly over the decades that we know when to grow and when to not. We are positioned in areas of increasing demand and as I announced earlier, there are some signs that in some important segments for us, markets are getting much less profit and this will make it easier for us to grow a little faster in the second half. That growth will be focused on areas where range remains adequate and risk-reward best. Having said that, we do have to recognize that our growth in the first half was in the low rather than the mid-single digits, so we are updating our four-year guidance from mid-single to low to mid-single digits. Alongside that, though, we continue to see new products and new ways to access risk and have some investments in the pipeline. We will share some of this and our plans for the future at this year's Capital Markets Day in November. It's important that we don't sit on our hands or rest on our laurels and continue to innovate and to evolve. Please book your tickets early to avoid disappointment. Our guidance for the full year combined ratio remains at mid-80s. This assumes continued average large loss and catastrophe activity. If the attritional losses continue to perform better than expected, as they have done in recent years, then we will lower this to the lower 80s, but we'll update you on that at Q3. I thought I'd finish, if we move on to the last slide, with a one-pager about us for those who may be less familiar with the B3 story. We are a specialty insurer with a diversified portfolio of products, as Paul demonstrated, where expertise applied at the point of sale has value. whereas complexity risks are new or changing or volatile. Our long-term growth rates reflect a growing specialty insurance world, compound growth of over 10% over the last 10 years, and we were recognized last year as the number five globally by Time Magazine for sustainable growth. We're able to do this in a way that drives returns that are appropriate for the specialist nature of what we do, 15% over the last 10 years, and consistently profitable. Only once have we made a loss in our history during COVID. And also a way that allows us not only to grow the business and its value, but also returning excess capital consistently to our shareholders, over a billion dollars within the last two years alone. And with that, I will open up to Q&A. Thank you very much indeed.

Thank you, sir. As a reminder, to ask a question over the phone, please signal by pressing star 1. If you find that your question has already been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star 2. And please make sure the mute function on your phone is switched off to allow you to signal to reach . Again, it is star 1 to ask a question. We're going to take our first question from from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thank you for the opportunity. I have two questions, please. So the first one on reserves. Actually, can you give us a sense of how are your reserves developing? The context for this is just we've seen some of your peers release in reserves from past events. So just trying to understand is it conservatism at your end or are you seeing some development which makes you believe it's better to well or it's adequately reflected in reserves. And then also just in relation to this and probably this is a bit of lack of my understanding. is the fact that you've not released reserves related to your change in assumptions on IFI, basically where you've said that you expect a different payment pattern. So if you could just help unbox that, please. And then the second question on capital returns. So I fully appreciate the comments you've made and the fact that you have a CMD later in the year. But just trying to understand how does the lower growth that you have guided to in the half sort of impact your next year business plan and where do you expect soil to be by your end? So any sort of color comment on this could be really helpful. Thank you.

Well, thank you very much for those questions. On the reserves, you were asking whether we have releases helping our results in the first half year. I would say no. In aggregate, in the first half of the year, reserve movements arising from prior years have not had a material impact on our results. So we are very comfortable with our position and our approach to releasing and strengthening remains the same. On the capital returns, we have a CMV later in the year, and that will allow us to provide some more details in terms of how we see the future. You're alluding to the use of capital, and we'd like to invest this in future growth opportunities. So you can say one thing is the organic growth, and then, as we have alluded to, we will also give some updates in terms of what we're thinking in terms of new growing areas of risk that we would like to pursue, and also distribution capabilities. So we will give you a further update on how we plan to invest in the continued growth prospects of our company.

We tend to release more on the self-generating.

Yeah, on the reserving.

On the reserve side.

Yeah. I see. So that was my follow-up because I was a bit curious as to why are we not seeing reserve releases at Beazley given a lot of your peers have seen reserve releases. But I can wait until 2-H and hopefully we'll see something there. Thank you. Thank you.

We'll then move to our next question from Shanti Kang from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Hi, Mohini. Thank you for taking my question. So I just had to The first one is just on the top line growth guidance that you've trimmed to low single digits, sorry, low mid single digits. Could you just walk us through the key drivers of that change and which segments in particular you expect to pull back most on? And then the second one was just on the cyber combined ratio, which deteriorated quite substantially year on year. I can see that that's cited as a normalization towards an 80s, But what really drove that deterioration? Because it seems like quite a jump year on year. So just to understand that. And then does that really impact the full year core guidance that you've given, just given that there's been a change? Thank you.

Great. Thank you for those, Shanti. On the first, I think, as Paul said, Wix. especially risks to be flatter in the full year than the half year. I think Paul mentioned that earlier. We continue to expect growth in Europe and in MAP. And as we said, we'll expect, we're seeing signs of, encouraging signs of change in the U.S. cyber markets and in P&O, driven partly by more capital activity, capital market activity, but also in a sort of a change in underwriting sentiment. And so, we expect those segments to grow more in the second half of the year than in the first half of the year. And so, but we have to recognize the fact that our growth in the first half was 2%. We expect the second half to be more single digits or mid-single digits. And those two will average themselves out. I think the change in the size of the combined ratio is a reflection of the fact that we have some very strong reserve releases from prior years. this time last year in cyber. We have had less of that this year, but that's not surprising because we're releasing from the very hard market years of 2020 and 2021. But the accident year lost picks for cyber remained very, very strong. And so we expect a good full year performance from that team. And so our combined ratio guidance remains mid 80s overall. But as I mentioned earlier, if we have normal catastrophic activity in the second half of the year, or average CAS, and our attritional overall continues to be better than expected, which it has been for a few years now, we will be lowering that to low 80s in Q3.

Thank you.

We're going to move to our next question from Kamran Hussain from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

I have a few questions on the attritional, I think it's really good news that if you get to Key3 and attritional claims come in below that you'll kind of increase your guidance. I just really intrigued kind of, I think I've asked you this probably for the last two and a half years. Why are you not banking the attritional, you know, kind of better than expected performance? Because it's not just being the first half of 2020. I'm not sure my memory goes back that far, but I feel like you had some of that in 2022. Why are you not banking that? Because it seems like it's just a recurring thing that seems like you could count on. The second question is on the growth and solvency too. I just wanted to kind of clarify. I'm slightly confused. It sounds like you're very excited about some parts of growth You know, you're saying this, obviously, ratio will be impacted, you know, come down for the kind of growth, but you've changed the growth out of it today. Is the mid-single digits the right way to think about maybe H2? If H1 was, you know, kind of two, you'd get the uplift to mid-single digits, so you end up somewhere in between. And is that a reasonable run rate kind of going forward? And if I could sneak you like a half question in here. on the services revenue. What's the potential for that to kind of grow from this point onward? Thank you.

Great. So I'm not sure how to answer the first question, Cam, other than the same answers that we gave before, which is that, you know, we like to reserve prudently and don't bank on better than expected persisting. We do have a number of blows that we apply to our loss picks. to account for things like social inflation, higher than expected economic inflation, geopolitical uncertainty and all that kind of stuff. And so part of that is those things unwinding if they don't manifest themselves. I think it's prudent to maintain those specific loadings because we are in a period of heightened risk, I think. The way that you've articulated our growth is exactly right. We're expecting more single, more mid single-digit growth in the second half of the year, and that will kind of average itself out. I think what Barbara was referring to earlier, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that what happened in the second half of last year is not only did we have some very good results, but the model changes meant that our capital requirements also came down. And Paul, do you want to talk about cyber services revenue? Thanks.

You could see that for the first time. You've been asking for that one even longer than you've been asking any other question. But I think it's great to see it's now obviously more meaningful to us, which is fantastic, which is why you're seeing that for the first time. In terms of potential, just a reminder, this This was never about the revenue, this investment, right? This investment was about having a service, the company available to our ecosystem that supports the wider side of the business and all the insurers and clients and brokers that we have. What we are now showing them, we always said could be possible, was that there would be the ability to build a business around that and generate some risk-free revenue. It's great to see that happening. It's secondary to the cause of BZ Security. It continues to expand. It's a growing company. It has now. Over 75 people within the company. It has a management team that's relatively new that's been in place for a couple of years now, 18 to 24 months, that's shown all the success. It's had a lot of focus on partnering with our brokers, working with the underwriters to understand our distribution and our insurance. So we're extremely excited. Like I say, we'll know more on the potential in the coming years, but so far it's been a great start.

And it allows us with the insights end to end. Thanks very much.

Thanks. And our next question is from Will Hardcastle from UBS.

Good morning, everyone. First of all, just thinking about that mid-80s combined ratio, obviously, potential on nutritional or not. But let's assume nutritional doesn't move. I guess, how do we think about that negative rating impact? I know it's not one for one or anything like that, but is there a sufficient mid-shift here looking beyond 2025 that can allow us to hold on a sort of run rate level, or is just the natural market cycle dynamic putting a little bit of added pressure on that on a go-forward basis? And the second one is just thinking about those outlook comments that you make, that evolution of the business to stay flexible, to adapt to a changing risk environment. It's not that you're going to tell us what you're going to say at the same day or anything, but how do we need to think about this? Is it people, product, infrastructure? Should people step away today and think, is there potential for acquisitions here to be thought about?

Okay. Morning, Will. Thanks for those questions. So will the combined ratio in the future be impacted by rate decreases today? Yes, it will. I think our performance today is as insurance profits take time to earn. We are very confident in our prior year reserve releases. Barbara mentioned earlier that our average duration is only 1.6 years. That also is a relatively short tail book of business overall. And the fact that we don't have any accounts liability makes reserving much easier. And, you know, having just been through peer review, our past book is in great shape. I think what Paul was trying to articulate is that the optionality that we have across both platform and product will allow us to pivot to make sure that we protect that margin as best we possibly can. And we do target a 15% combined ratio across cycle, and that's our mission to be able to do that. And we'll have the cycle management as a core part of that strategy. So hopefully we'll be able to maintain that as long as we possibly can. You can't ignore the fact that, you know, rate will have an impact. But it tends to be when it's compounded over a period of years that it has more of an impact on future profitability. On the investment side, I think Barbara mentioned that we've always looked to bolt on things that create value for us either in capability or in reach. You know, we've bought a number of MGAs in the past, for example. And we are looking at some, as we always have. I think the bulk of our investments will always be in organic growth. And so what we'll be talking about in November is our thoughts on both of those.

Thank you. We will now move to our next question from Chris from . Please go ahead.

Good morning. Just a couple of very quick questions from me. First of all, on cyber, and apologies, Paul, I don't know whether you were talking faster than I could think, but I think you said that, obviously, the 70s combined ratios historically were not sustainable. I was just wondering, given that that is your peak peril, I mean, when you get to, I mean, what sort of combined ratio becomes, I guess, more marginal from a profitability perspective? So that's my first question. Second question, I was wondering just on the solvency, if you can give a little bit more color on the various components of the owned funds sort of walk and obviously appreciate the FCR doesn't move through the first half. But also, I think, Barbara, you said something around sort of your expected development in FCR through the second half. which sort of suggested to me that we would see a faster than expected, a faster decline in the solvency ratio through H2. So that's all I'll ask you, I guess. I wonder if you could just clarify that, please.

Thank you. So, Chris, great. I love those questions because I'm not answering either of them.

So I'll take the first one. Yeah, you're right. The cyber combined was absolutely amazing at the 73 previously. And as Adrian said, and I said earlier, there's a couple of things driving that. It is the unwinding of the very hard market we experienced in 2021 and 2022. We got over 300% compound rate over those couple of years, which is remarkable. But then you've got a factoring that was also combined with suppressed frequency and severity for quite a period of that time on the plain side with cyber due to things like the Ukraine and Russia war when it started. We saw threat actors moved the claims that we were seeing. Those two things will ultimately deliver that level of combined that we've experienced for a little while. It has moved to more normalised levels now, which is what we expected, which is a combination of it's been a little bit more of a competitive market to bring that rate down a little bit. And we did say that we thought we overshot the rate in certain parts and we would give that back. And also more normalisation of frequency and severity. We've seen from the slides I've shown To your question where does it 90 is really where you want to look at from the combined ratio into where would we look for it to sort of start to get to where we would see that we would need perhaps a little bit more action and where we would start to start to ask more questions.

And if I go to the solvency questions, Chris, I think what my point was to relate to the fact that last year we saw an increased solvency ratio at the end of the year as opposed to the half year. That was unusual, and it stems from three things. So basically we had an extraordinary high profitability last year, as you saw in the results. You also saw a number of releases in the more long tail part of our book in the second half, so that released the capital. And also you saw the interest rate moves that were favorable when it comes to supporting the requirements for capital in our business. So it was more to point to the fact that the dynamics you saw in 24 were different than what you should ordinarily expect in the business that we run. And then the dynamics around a half year, you should see that as the year-end calculated solvency capital ratio plus the own funds generated in the first half year. So that brings us to the 287. But ordinarily, you should also anticipate that you can say the requirement for capital will decrease the solvency ratio at the end of the year. because we also factor in the need for capital to invest in future growth and so forth at the end of the year.

So the NCR ratio currently does not concentrate the 2026 business plan.

Yeah, exactly.

Okay, understood. Thank you. We'll now move to our next question from Darius from KBW. Please go ahead.

Morning. Thank you for taking my questions. Two, please. So the first one is just coming back to sort of Will's question. So you're on this kind of combined ratio of 84.9, you know, in line with mid-80s guidance, but then you saw sort of close to 4% rate decline. I suppose, is there anything in your mid-80s guidance for the year on top of conservative European official that should help us think about the optionality you have in maintaining the guidance next year despite the rate decreases? So anything in terms of prudence or unused margins? Any comment on that would be helpful. The second question is, are there any lines that you write that are both adequate and are seeing headline risk-adjusted rate increases, or is the market softening across the board and the only premium rate increases are on lines that may not be price adequate? Thank you.

Okay. So on the first one, I think, as we've remarked, We are, as the reserve adequacy shows, we're very confident about our prior year book. And so, you know, we continue to expect reserve releases to be relatively consistent for a while yet. And the kind of tactical and strategic cycle management actions that Paul was talking about, combined with the new investments we're going to make should enable us keep the combined ratio at the levels that we need. And that's a combination of stuff that we've already done and stuff that we will continue to do. And that's the skill of running a specialty insurer. Do you want to take the second question, Barbara?

The second letter, that was around the headline.

What was the second question again, Therese?

So it's just a question of price added and headline adjusted rating, anything that sees both rather than.

So are we seeing areas where we've got more rates than we need and the rates are going up? And there are some niches where that's happening, but I think, you know, the overall rate decreases that we're seeing, reflect the fact that rates are pretty good. So although rates have gone down by 95% overall this year, the rating environment, the prices we're getting are still generally good enough, and whether or not we are shedding that business. I think the overall message is, and we've kind of said this at the year end, the competitive marketplace makes it harder to grow, not necessarily because prices are inadequate, but because if everyone's looking to grow, it's just harder to get that new business. So I think the rate decrease isn't necessarily a sign that rates are inadequate, it's just a sign that it's more difficult to get new business, because everyone's looking to do the same thing.

Yeah, there's no area right now where you'd say we're seeing market conditions like we've seen in the last few years on recent lines like flyover property and DIY, but as Adrian said, we feel

I suppose my question is more, are there any lines where our expectation of your underwriting profitability should be getting better rather than worse, irrespective of whether it's price adequate or not?

Thank you. I think conditions are relatively consistent across the book. So no, nothing of any size.

Okay, thank you.

And the next question is from Ivan Bookmark from Barclays. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. Thank you very much. My first question would be related, I think, to your large losses. You mentioned that the traditional performance remains very good and better than expected, but it's quite hard for us to see from the outside. Maybe you could share some color on the first half experience with large losses. I mean, whether that's the California wildfires, you could update us on the estimates. anything meaningful in the man-made or cyber side. I mean, how can we see that additional loss ratio strength from your side? And my second question would be on cyber. Just wondering what can we expect from growth in second half? Because I think it took you, if I adjust for pricing, the growth was negative, despite what could be considered an effect stalemate, I suppose. And maybe on the net insurance revenue side, I mean, considering the increased session rates Do we expect for, can we expect for 2025, the net revenue of cyber to be positive?

Thank you. Okay. Well, I'll take the first one. If you want to take the second one, Paul, can you hear the third one? Mm-hmm. Okay. I think if you look at our loss ratio year-on-year, Ivan, it's gone up by 1.70%. I think that's a, and if you think that attrition loss activity has been relatively consistent year-on-year, are you better than expected? The difference between the two years is the difference in our transactivity that we've seen. I think the bigger driver of the increase in supply ratio is the expense ratio, which is mostly us adjusting earlier for incentives than we usually do. So hopefully that allows you to unpick a little bit between the traditional and the cap losses.

And I think just to add to that, bear in mind even that last year in the first half, there were no large losses. So you can say from that component, we're more back to a normal level, you know, this year.

Yep. So the growth for H2, what you're seeing with the first half, there's two stories going on within those numbers. I think the first is, yes, we've taken some risks across the table in the U.S. cyber market. It's been very competitive. And as we said, we started to push for a flattening rate and achieved that at the half year, which is one of the biggest renewal periods, 1st of July. So that's extremely positive. For the US cyber, we'll see where that goes for the next six months. It's hard for us to predict when the market starts to recalibrate and sort of respond, but we are optimistic and we've always said at some point the cyber market in the US will need to show positive rate. So that will be interesting to see how that goes in the second half of the year. Although it looks like shrinking totality for the first half of the year, our international and non-US business has grown, particularly in Europe, particularly in Asia. We expect that to continue for the second half of the year. We're not experiencing the same pricing challenges and the same frequency and loss challenges that the US market has broadly been experiencing. So I think when we look at the cyber business for the second half of the year, it's very short-term in nature. We'll have to see how the U.S. flattening rate goes and whether that moves through and international growth continues to look promising.

This is the low end, actually, and so it has an offset that we've taken off the table in the U.S. If the U.S. starts to turn around, that motor can take into action quite quickly.

I'm sorry, then the last question you had, was that to net insurance growth or was it to the EFE?

No, the net insurance growth, please.

Yeah, okay. Well, bear in mind, for the net insurance growth, you have the impact of reinsurance, and as we mentioned in this half year, we have acquired some more, so that has a drag on the net insurance return premium compared to the gross return premium. And therefore, over time, if everything is the same, you would expect those two to be more equal than the one and a half percentage points difference that you see in this half year. Thank you.

Thank you. And we have a follow-up question from from J.B. Morgan. Please go ahead.

Hey, I just wanted to come back on the 2H mid-single digit piece. Sorry, I didn't get a chance to come back and follow up again on it when I was on. I was just really intrigued because I guess especially with the flagging, there's a slowdown in H2. We're talking about mid-single digits. The first half was quite a bit lower. What are the key areas that actually kind of will see growth again, that mid-single digit from H2?

Yeah. As I said, I think we expect continued growth in MAP and in Europe. We're more optimistic about cyber and DNO than we were. And we're also seeing signs of moderation on the property side. So we're expecting a more positive performance from a growth perspective from those divisions in the second half than we had in the first.

That's very clear. Thank you, Adrian.

Thanks, Ken. Thank you. And we have a follow-up question from Will Hardcastle from UBS. Please go ahead. Hey, Will. Will, your line is open. Please unmute your line on your side.

Oh, that might have been me. I might have muted. Sorry. You just saw us all this time. We get used to this. Hopefully, it's two quick ones. The first one, just if there's any verification on any moving part within the Russia-Ukraine aviation case reserve development, if you're able to say that. And the second one is just trying to exactly verify that capital management policy. You've given a really good, you know, helpful exercise there. But when we think, when you set that 170, and because that chart there sort of shows it post the stressors, should we really be thinking it? 170 plus the stress and then we think about the other things you've talked about or is that too punitive? Thank you.

Nice easy second question. Yes. So it's 170 plus the stresses and then whatever we need for growth. That is exactly how we think about capital management. Not much to say on the Russia-Ukraine thing. We are a line of following market in all this.

we are our participants and our claims team haven't heavily involved in it but it hasn't had a bearing on our coffee results now very helpful thank you thank you and we have a question from ben collins from rbc please go ahead uh yes sir thank you um good morning everyone um i just wanted to ask on the total expense ratio how quickly we should expect that to come down i guess from recent years actually presumably is still a couple of quite good years to learn through that is going to continue to impact that. And maybe could you say a bit more about structurally when you see leverage coming through on that on the overall expense ratio, because I guess that's been moving the other way.

Thank you. Thank you, Ben.

And nice to talk to you. That is a perfect question for a CFO.

Thank you, Ian. No, two different things to add to this question, and thank you for that. One is obviously the fact that we're acknowledging that we have had some really strong years, and therefore that the impact of the incentives is clearly visible in the expense ratio. But this year, in particular, you also have the timing impact, because in prior years, we have always taken that in in Q3. Whereas this year, it's been moved forward to the first half year, so we recognize it as early as we have visibility on it. So, from that point of view, it's more a timing issue within the year. But then, obviously, the strong performance in prior years, bearing in mind our programs that take into account several years, will have an impact as we've seen the last couple of years, really strong performance. Added to that, though, is the fact that we're investing in efficiencies that I also mentioned, and you can say in the coming years you should see a positive contribution because that will allow us to be more efficient in the way that we support the continued growth in our business. So a few moving bits, but definitely one where Incentives have a specific position, but all the work that's been done around strengthening the way that we work with technology and so forth should start having an impact in a couple of years.

And is there, sorry, just to follow up, is there an increasing geographical element, or are you now sort of really, do you have the offices where you need them and you have that office space and the people there, or is there still more to be done there?

Rules and speaking. Yes, I think we may open up one or two more offices in Europe or in the US, but essentially we have the footprint where we want it at the moment, yes.

I think the important part is that we have the three platforms and have the ability to access the markets where the demand is. Yep.

Thank you. And it appears this was the last question today. This would like to hand it all back over to Adrian Cox for closing remarks. Would you sir? Great, sir. Thank you very much indeed.

Thank you for all your questions. Thank you for dialing in again. If you happen to have feedback to follow up on, please contact Sarah. And have a great day. Thanks so much, everyone.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation, ladies and gentlemen. You may now disconnect.