Conduit Holdings Limited

Good morning and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Conduitory's full-year 2022 results call. Today's call will be covered by Neil Eckert, our Executive Chairman, Trevor Carvey, our CEO, Helen Whelan, our CFO, and Greg Roberts, Chief Underwriting Officer. The forward-looking disclaimer is now on the penultimate page of the deck, so I'm now pleased to give the floor to Neil Eckert.

Thanks, Antonia. You may remember that at Q3 we spoke of the perfect storm for reinsurance going into year end. I do not intend to go through all of these items, but I do believe there's now widespread agreement that we are seeing one of the best market environments of the last decade, largely driven by this equilibrium between supply and demand. Inflation has been a key driver of this. Everyone was talking about it before Monte Carlo and before Hurricane Ian. but inflation is still one of the biggest drivers. We're seeing significant reserve strengthening across the industry, and I don't think that this reserve strengthening is done yet. Clearly, conditions are better today than we envisaged at the IPO, and Conduit Re is in a perfect place to take advantage. So we're well positioned to scale our model. And this slide shows the three facets that gives us that fundamental belief. Our underwriting is a simple portfolio. It's pure reinsurance. Our balance sheet strength gives us ample capital to lean into this market. It's legacy-free, and we've seen the impact of inflation across the sector. Finally, operational excellence. We underwrite out of one location. The command chain is short, and we can respond to our customers' needs. With that, I'll leave it to Trevor to comment on the 2022 results.

Thanks, Neil. The growth in gross premium returns. a tremendous reflection of the continued development and broadening of the premium base in the business. We will talk later around the more specific details of the class by class evolution but showing a 68% to 637 million dollars over 2021 is a solid progression and actually it's also broadly in line with the rate of growth that we gave in our inaugural five-year plan In that regard, if we look at the ultimate estimated premiums for 2022, these are 659.9 million, and that's versus the original year two plan figure that we gave of 626 million. Looking at underwriting performance in 2022, as we all know, it was an incredibly large event losses with reportedly in excess of $120 billion in natural catastrophe losses, significant and ongoing Russia-Ukraine situation. As regards our underwriting performance, we've produced a small underwriting profit, effectively a break-even number. And given that the company's first underwriting year was in 2021, and we have no material prior impact in our numbers, it is in many sense a purer look through into the company's performance in this extreme industry loss year. Turning to the combined ratio of 107%, That includes a 7.1% operating expense component, which is a reduction from the 15.8% in the prior year and continues the downward trend in line with our expectations. Net investment loss was 52.8 million in the year, largely driven by the movement in yields. And Elaine will expand more on this later in the presentation. But suffice to say for now that on investment strategy, we maintain our approach of maintaining a high quality portfolio with the risk very much being taken on the underwriting account when we seek to minimise the risk on the asset side. On dividend, we have declared our standard dividend of 18 cents being the same as last year. Moving finally to the 2023 underwriting year and the activity seen through the January renewal season, we did provide a market trading update earlier in January where we reported a healthy 60% premium growth across our three combined divisions of property, casualty, and specialty. Coming out of the 22 year, we had around $260 million of business due to renew at January 1. With the consideration of increasing rates, increasing deal flow, and our ability to lean immediately into this market, the team grew the January attachments to $421 million on estimated ultimate basis. We think that's a great result to start in these slides later. A slide here on the makeup of the 2022 business and a reference to the original plan that we articulated. First point to note is the high level split and the property class being pretty much on the plan percentage with specialty being lower than the original plan. And that's a reference to our continued view that we had much of what we saw on specialty through 21-22. we're still pricing at less than what we refer to as the hurdle rate. We've spoken before of an often lack of transparency in the specialty deals being structured and presented in the market over the last few years. And this is a major explanation as to why we resisted deploying more into the space. As we've said, we plainly had no crystal ball around events and losses emerging from situations such as Ukraine-Russia. But it does underline the premise that unless you are getting paid adequately for the risks that you know you're taking on, it makes no sense to offer a blanket style cover for risks that you don't know are being covered also. Thankfully, the market has corrected significantly in this space now. And 2023 certainly presents a better or perhaps fairer playing field for reinsurers. On casualty. we gave that a larger allocation through 22 than the original plan as we were able to see an enormous volume of business from our brokers and clients and many thanks to them for their continued support we talk often of our risk triage or risk selection process in this class and our hit rate on casualty is between 10 and 15 percent of risk being presented through 2022 and being able to assimilate the data set and finally narrow down to select the contracts that sit us alongside really solid core casualty underwriters in the insurance space, seem to us the logical place to go. We really like the casualty book we have in place, and as a core base, it's what we are building off of for 2023. On the overall makeup of our underlying premium base, it's worth noting here that our book continued in 2022 to skew heavily towards the commercial sector rather than the personal lines. For instance, we are not a motor writer, and yes, whilst that class is now showing signs of correction, we think that the commercial pricing is a better place to be skewed towards. Finally, a word on cat versus non-cat. Across the total premium base that we write, we are broadly two-thirds non-cat versus one-third cat, and that is deliberate. In looking to build a balanced book that can withstand shocks, have shock absorbers actually built in, if you like, It's obvious that an over-reliance on CAT works against that goal with the increased volatility inherent. We like the way CAT pricing is moving, of course, and expect to see more of that class come into our pricing window, but also we are seeing extremely healthy margins still on the non-CAT or risk side of the account. We deployed my Heverly into the non-CAT space in 22 and really like the margins in place here as we go into 23. And with rates moving and conditions improving, it creates an engine that can earn through over time. And being non-cash in nature, actually there is much less requirement and dependency on retro-protection, which again puts us in a good position in the market in our view. In growing the book in 2022, it is useful to reference that in the context of the 21 year and the cumulative gross premiums written since inception. A powerful aspect of the region's treaty arena is always the renewing book for the previous year, especially in an environment of improving prospects and hardening terms. And this slide shows that with the impact of the prior year renewals acting as the base from which the prior year premium is incrementally added to, it puts us in a very strong position. Our growth has been measured, though, and whilst showing the billion dollar number here by Q4 2022 is in itself a testament to the team and the platform built, More importantly for me, it's the discipline followed in getting there. The book has been built in an environment through 21 and 22 where aspects of the market were in flux and also some classes just needed to be avoided, to be frank. But the book in place now, and that is renewing through to my mind, puts us in a great position to build on and add to for the coming year. And on that, I'll hand over to Elaine for the 2022 financial highlights.

Thanks, Trevor. We wrote $637.5 million of gross premiums written for the year compared to $378.8 million for the prior year. This year's gross premiums written includes $86.3 million of 2021 underwriting year premiums. Subject to any ongoing adjustments to estimates due to reported, the 2021 underwriting year is now essentially fully written and about 95% earned in line with expectations. At year end, the 2022 underwriting year was roughly 85% written and about 50% earned. We have approximately $355 million of remaining ultimate premiums written to earn out, most of which will come through in 2023. 2023, as our third year of underwriting, is really when we expect to see some maturity in our written and earnings. The differential that we have seen over the first two years between ultimate premiums written and gross premiums written really falls away in year three, with deferrals from prior years being more or less offset by deferrals from the current year. We will also be transitioning to the new IFRS 17 accounting standard, where gross premiums written will no longer exist. Although we expect to continue to report on our gross premium written in some form, we do intend to move on from the discussion and reporting around ultimates and quota share versus excessive loss. Our combined ratio for the year was 107% versus 119.4% for 2021. Similar to the prior year, 2022 was characterized by above average loss activity across the industry. The major events of the year for us were the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Hurricane Ian. While we recorded loss estimates for some of the other loss events that occurred in 2022, none were individually significant for us. For the Ukraine crisis, our net loss impact after reinsurance recoveries and reinstatement premiums was $24.6 million. That's unchanged from previous disclosure. The contribution to our loss and combined ratio was 5.1%. For Hurricane Ian, our net loss impact after reinsurance recoveries and reinstatement premiums was $40.9 million, in line with previous disclosure at the third quarter. The contribution to our loss and combined ratio was 8.8%. Our loss ratio, absent these two events, would have been 57.7% and our combined ratio 93%. Our acquisition ratio remains in the high 20s, given the continued proportion of quota share business we've written, as reduced relative to the prior year as the proportion of property and specialty earnings increased relative to casualty. With over $120 billion of natural catastrophe losses for the industry in 2022, and in only our second year of operations, we're pretty pleased to have been able to produce a small underwriting profit for the year. If it was a tough year for industry losses, it was also a tough year for investments in the face of the significant rise in interest rates. While we have a very plain vanilla conservative fixed maturity investment portfolio, it produced a negative 5% return for the year, largely driven by the impact of net unrealized losses in the year of $67.8 million. We do expect that to largely unwind over time, and we did see some benefit of the increase in rates in our investment income for the year with our book yield increasing from 0.9% at the end of 2021 to 2.4% at the end of 2022. Our market yield at the end of 2022 is 5.2%. All in, ROE for the year was negative 9.1%. Despite this, we're very happy with where we're positioned from both an underwriting and investment portfolio standpoint. Lastly, on results, we've declared a final dividend for the 2022 financial year of 18 cents per share, the same amount as last year, and in line with our dividend policy to provide between 5% and 6% of IPO capital raised. Our other operating expense ratio was 7.1% for the year compared to 15.8% in the prior year. As 2021 was our first year of underwriting, the other operating expense ratio was elevated due to the deferral of earnings from that year. This year's ratio reflects the impact of the loss events on our performance for the year, but also the fact that our earnings are still not at a mature level yet. We've added to our staff count over the course of this year as we continue to build our team. As a result, we expect the dollar amount of expense to continue to increase, but we do expect our other operating expense ratio to reduce as earnings mature and to be in the 5% to 6% range as we achieve that scale of maturity into year three and beyond. Moving on to investments in a bit more detail, you can see our average credit quality is AA and the allocation across different asset classes on the charts at the top of the page. No surprises in there and no change in strategy either. We intend to maintain a high quality, highly liquid portfolio and aim to limit downside risk and volatility as much as possible. We've deliberately been on the shorter end of duration relative to our liabilities through the recent interest rate hiking cycle. Duration is currently 2.2 years on our investment portfolio versus 3.1 years on our net reserves. As the hiking cycle begins to slow and our reserve duration begins to lengthen, we will push the average duration of our portfolio out moderately over the next six months or so. No major changes and no risk assets planned, just maintaining an eye on our liability duration as well as our asset duration and also taking some advantage of the better yields currently available. I'll hand back to Greg now for an underwriting update.

Thanks, Elaine. As stated by Trevor earlier in the presentation, the underwriting team has continued to build the portfolio and scale up into the hard market. We've grown our premium base by almost 70% with the planned business mix of property, specialty and casualty. This business mix is a strategic response to the market conditions in front of us whilst ensuring the business is not skewed inappropriately to one distinct division. This was and remains the plan. For 2022, gross premiums written increased to $637.5 million, with the renewing book providing a substantial base to build on. The renewal retention ratio by contract counts was in excess of approximately 84%. On the property side, we continue to blend the quoted share product with the XOL product. We continue to see healthy margins on the property quoted share writings, where we wrote a substantial volume of non-cap premium within areas such as commercial property risk, showing very healthy technical margins in our view. As we've underlined previously, CatXOL continued to improve later through the year, with tail risk being increasingly recognised in market pricing levels as capacity started to withdraw. We remain consistent in our view that property, and property cat in particular, forms a solid platform for the portfolio, but tail risk should always be a key focus of our risk management approach. Our casualty premium grew also, being largely as a result of increased underlying rating levels, along with strengthening shares on our renewing book. Having spent significant time establishing the core casualty classes in the book throughout 2021, we now see the benefits here, as increased premiums for treaties come through the pipeline from Sedans, who we view as very disciplined risk takers. This is especially relevant this time to be alongside such partners when discipline needs to be demonstrated in this higher inflationary environment that we continue to experience on specialty as trevor's mentioned already the level of growth through 2022 was lower although we did see some rating levels rise post the ukraine russia event however through the second half of 2022 that did continue in our view to be somewhat reluctance in the market to appreciate the extent to which structural changes and the unbundling of contracts was required. And in that regards, I surmise that I could say that we kept our powder dry in specialty through the second half of the year. And this was probably benefiting us in deploying more readily as the January 2023 renewal season unfolded. Here we see the quarter by quarter year on year net rate change after allowing for terms and conditions and inflation. The January 2023 numbers show the directional shift across the various classes. Property at 39% is heavily influenced by pure rating levels, and whilst tightening wordings and clauses contributed also, it is more about the absolute premium levels driving this number. Casualty net rate levels, as we've remarked previously, continue to stay ahead of underlying inflation and loss trends. As we mentioned previously, as our long-term and core clients continue to respond to these inflationary challenges, we continue to see good alignment, and this casualty book is a solid contributor to our portfolio composition over time. On specialty, it reflected a structural kick forwards in pricing, and this 14% increase compromises a blend of both pure premium, but with a very much improved set of terms and conditions. This is no surprise, and was due, as we've often remarked, that the reinsurance market had been providing for some time a series of somewhat overly broad coverage forms. Simply put, the correction in contract language was due. The result of this is that a number of specialty classes are now warranting our attention and have come into our risk appetite. January 1st placements were certainly late again, partly as a function of partial paralysis from the reinsurers. Prices were clearly rising, In fact, this was clear prior to Ian, and so the hurricane purely amplified the awareness and need for RAID. With this in mind, the Conduit Re team were at an advantage in being enabled to negotiate and secure terms due to not having uncertainty in our capital base. Terms and conditions were a significant part of the renewal negotiations. We communicate frequently about our view of tail risk, and the team were once again able to manage and match risk to return. It was most evident in property risk, particularly around the level of occurrence capping on the quota shares. I'm pleased to say that we obtained our requirements at the same time acquisitions were reduced. Effectively, more cents in the original premium dollar were passed on to us as the reinsurers. Clearly, this is important for our longer-term risk management. So given this, placements were slow due to uncertainty and appetite, in part caused by uncertain capital strategies. Third-party capital markets, as you know as heavy writers of retro, were generally with reduced risk appetite, causing a compounding effect for the leveraged capital players. The philosophy and approach to our underwriting and managing of tail risk remains unchanged. Tail risk and volatility assumed by all our divisions is a driving part of our original risk management. Our continued application of event and aggregate caps on property quota shares allows us to control the tail and in some cases therefore pass back excess tail to the seedlings. With regards to XOL placements, simply put, this is about identifying zonal accumulations outside of the pure modelled results and ensuring premium allocation is achievable. Our retro placement secured at the 1st of January was broadly as per our plan going into the January renewal season, albeit at a late and tighter market so it meant that we had to adjust the structure and realign limits to provide us more acutely. For 2023, currently we have a larger panel with new partners added to the existing list. We bought more limits and the spend was higher, but within our business plan range, so we were pleased with this. As a final commentary, Hurricane Ian, as a circa $55 billion industry event, was a recoverable claim from the programme in 2022. And our ultimate net loss is approximately $41 million after retro-recoveries and reinstatements. So at this point, I'll pass back to Neil for closing comments.

Thank you, Greg. So we're genuinely excited about prospects for 23. We crossed some milestones during 22. We saw our first underwriting profit. And I'm very excited about the business that Trevor and his team have built. We are perfectly positioned to take advantage of these conditions. We have a strong pipeline. Premiums coming through as the book matures. Our operating expense ratio continues to trend downwards. And during 22, we did see a reduction in acquisition costs. It is nice to have seen recovery in our stock price since September. So on a total shareholder return basis, we are back. to IPO territory. And if sell-side analysts are correct, then 23 will see our dividend payments covered. So thank you. With this, we'll conclude the presentation and hand back to Antonio for Q&A.

Thanks, Neil. Yes, let's move on to the Q&A, please. Let's keep it to two questions per person so that there is time for everyone to ask them.

Operator, please go ahead. Participants can submit questions in written format via the webcast page by clicking the Ask a Question button.

If you are dialed into the call and would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad.

We will pause for a moment to assemble the queue. Thank you. And our first question is coming from Trifonas from Brandberg.

Trifonas, please go ahead.

Oh, hi. Good morning and good afternoon, everybody. I have two questions. The first question is from Hurricane Ian. We've seen some of your Bermudian peers reduce some of their estimates for Ian losses. And it seems that industry loss figures that initially came out were probably somewhere higher than what recent claims experience has shown. So I just want to get a sense of how you think about your loss at this point, how much of this is still at BNR, and whether there's some conservatism still embedded in the original figure. So that's the first question. The second is a bit of a theoretical one, but I'll be interested to hear your thoughts on the scenario where we have a rerun of 2022 NatCal events and also Ukraine in light of the much higher insurance pricing attachment points and better terms and conditions you alluded to, What will be the impact of the accident-year loss ratio? I'm just trying to get a sense of the economic impact of renewals on your bottom line.

Thank you. OK, thanks for that. Greg, do you have a question?

Sure. Morning. So Hurricane Ian, there is still a lot of uncertainty in our view as to the ultimate industry loss. There are examples of large sedents showing deterioration in their loss peaks. That's been reported in the industry press. That's not to say those plants we're that familiar with, but we sort of make the same observation. Hurricane Irma in 2017, I suppose, wasn't that long ago, and the experiences from that, I think, are considered and thought about in the loss preserving for the best clients in that geography, being fully aware of the loss deterioration. So I think at this point, we obviously are remaining very comfortable with our loss estimate for Ian. I do make the observation that some of the industry losses are starting to drop and other carriers are revising their numbers. I still think it's a little bit early to see any significant movement around the industry loss figure of 55 billion that we continue to observe.

I think just in terms of how much of that's IBNR, most of it at this stage. And on the rerun of 22 events... We are in a higher pricing environment, so that is a benefit to us, and we do have more earnings to absorb CAT and call it more of a wild card, large losses like Ukraine. We do have a different reinsurance programme in 2023, so there's an impact from that as well. So we don't really comment in terms of what a rerun would look like, but hopefully that puts it into some context for you.

Yeah, thanks Elaine. I'll probably just add to that that uh just in the general kind of ability of portfolios to withstand shocks uh in 23 there's no doubt just a general pricing that's lifted up um the portfolio is in a stronger position that's true for us and probably true for other reinsurers um yes there are increased retentions which apply generally on reinsurance programs but that's you know i'll be more than offset by the underlying pricing and as elaine says the earning strength i suppose that um is there to resolve that so Yeah, so overall, nobody wishes for a RE1 of a 22, but I think the portfolio is in a stronger position than probably would have been a year ago.

That's very helpful. Thank you. Thank you.

The next question is coming from Abit Hussan from Penmure. Abit, please go ahead.

Oh, hello, hi there. Good morning and good afternoon. Two questions, if I can. Firstly, just on renewals, is there any signs or any early indications of how renewals might go on the 1st of April? Renewals, I know that's another key date. Any sort of chatting around that, any colour would be very helpful, just as you've used broadly as well, beyond the 1st of April as well, please. And then the second question is on capital. I might be jumping the gun here slightly, but I'm just wondering, given the favourable conditions across the reinsurance sector, are you focused on fully utilising your own capital base, or do you believe there will be a point when you need to consider raising further capital? And I'm just really thinking about the runway of your existing capital base versus the clearly favourable conditions in the sector and the growth opportunity that lays ahead of you.

Thank you. Josh, I'll take the renewals question. So the first point to make is that we have a lot of non-CAT premium-based renewal business to look at throughout the rest of the quarter. And as we've said before, attention on that is what's happening in those underlying markets original rate, inflation, and ultimately for us as the reinsurers, typically on the proportional quota share side, how many cents in the original risk dollar make their way through to us, the reinsurers. So that's about acquisition as well as original loss ratio. So ultimately that remains our focus. With regards to more sort of property cap, which I think is often more talked about, Japan comes up In the coming months, our team flew out to Japan, checked in with clients there to understand better some of the pressures there with inflation, underlying valuations, et cetera. So we are up to date there. With attachment points, I think the excess of loss markets talking often about what is the new sort of attachment point for a seed and 1-1-1. For instance, averaging of 10-year attachment points was deemed to be a minimum. How that flows through to other non-US markets will be really interesting, but the direction of travel there is increased attachments as well as increased rate of returns.

Hi, Abba. Just on the capital question, in terms of what we raised at the IPO, we raised for a five-year plan with buffers in there. So there isn't a need for us to raise any capital. We do want to maintain the balance within our book. So we are in a growth phase, which is what we had planned anyway. I think there'll be a bit more growth than expected into year three than was in the initial plan, but we've still got plenty of buffers in there to do what we need to do and what we want to do. If there were any opportunities that came our way, though, we would obviously assess them on their merits at the time.

Okay, I understand. So you're looking to eventually accelerate the growth plan, the business plan, if the opportunities present themselves this year and next year?

Yeah. Thank you. The next question is coming from Dharald Goh from RBC.

Dharald, please go ahead.

Hi, everyone. Good morning, good afternoon. Hope you're all well. Two questions, please. So the first one, I'm just trying to get a sense of the underlying full-year combined ratio and basically how that might bridge towards the mid-80s target. I know you gave some comments at the half-year stage last year, which was really helpful. I was just wondering if you could repeat that exercise because it seems to me as though on the loss ratio side of things, it's quite a bit, it's a bit higher than I expected. I know that there might be some premium earned through effects to consider as well. So I mean, any thoughts there, please? And then secondly, it's just going back to this mid 80s combined ratio ambition. So, I mean, when you first disclosed that rates were about plus 4%, now you're looking at, you know, plus 19%. And then that's obviously benefit from acquisition costs that you've called out. This is big changes as well. I guess, you know, my question is that I'm trying to get a sense of the conservatism behind maintaining the mid-80s at this stage. Please, thank you.

Hi, Daryl. In terms of that mid-80s, I think the way that we had described that was that we were beginning to see that emerging. And some of that is the maturity of earnings and getting to scale within the business. We do expect that operating expense ratio to come down as the earnings mature. We have been working on keeping the acquisition costs as low as we can there as well. I think around the loss ratio, and just to put that in context, it's $120 billion cat loss year. There are other smaller losses in our loss ratio that aren't significant individually for calling out, but there's been French hailstorms, Australian floods, lots of other little bits and pieces over time. And we do have a reserving process that we follow as well, which we would hope is prudent over time, but it will take some time for that to emerge and for us to really see that through there. And our overall view in terms of our loss ratio is given the business mix that we've followed and that we've put through, is that there's less risk around that loss ratio, given the quota share focus and the caps on quota shares there. But it will just take some time for that to come through, particularly on the likes of the casualty boot.

I think that probably addresses your question as well.

Yeah. So I, I guess, I mean, again, I'm not trying to pin you down to, to cat budget or anything like that, but you know, if I add in and Ukraine, it's about 40 points to combine ratio. Um, I mean, could you, could you say, you know, that 14 was kind of normal ish or because it's from your commentary sounds like, you know, that's quite a bit higher than what you expect.

I think it's fair to say that we've been an above average year in terms of the losses for the industry. So I'd put it in that context.

Yes, Derek, Trevor, just to add to that, and also what Elaine said, that the figure of north of 120 billion of cap losses that we saw globally there's several of those events which she said are not worthy of significant as you call out and disclosure within our own reporting but they all add up over time you know there's a series of kind of attritional cats probably for us that we're not major in the in the territories of Australia, France and New Zealand for instance but they all add up to form part of what we refer to as sort of cat bulk. You know, there's an element to our reserving process where those attritional cats get somewhat lumped together, and that's a provision that we put on, and also additional prudence that Elaine's referred to around some of the longer tail lines. So we really like our pricing. You know, what's emerging through 21 and 22. On the risk side, we say, or the non-cat side, as Greg refers to it, is in a great place really like that book of business that's earning through um so we know we're in the right space and we skewed the portfolio in the right direction um so um it's uh it's a book of business that currently we really like the look and feel but there's just that other noise around some of those other smaller events again yep got it and maybe um just a second question around leave the may 80s smithson ambition thanks

Sorry, I didn't catch that. Could you repeat that?

Yeah, sure. So when you first communicated at mid-80s at the half year, last year, rates were about plus 4. Now that plus 4 has gone to plus 19. Also calling out benefits to your acquisition costs, and there might be some benefits as well. So my question is really, you know, I'm trying to get a sense around the conservatism in that mid-80s. combined ratio, seeing that you're not changing that today?

No, I think we're still in the early stages of building our book and pricing is obviously significantly better than our initial plan, but we did have a view on that as we were putting together our business plan for 2023 anyway. I think things like Hurricane Eden's occurrence just gave us a bit more certainty on our view of the market at that time. We have just gone through a very successful one-on-one renewal, but there's quite a long way to go for the rest of the year, and we'll happily update you as we move through the year.

Okay, fair enough. Thank you.

Question is coming from Andreas from Emden, from Peer Hunt. Andreas, please go ahead.

Thank you. Good afternoon. First question is, if I look at the 39% rate increase across the property book, would you have a sort of give us a sense of what that rate increase would be post the retro protection you've been buying? So what is the rate increase on a property book on a net basis? And the second question is about the risk appetite. your PMLs have grown or your exposure has grown post the 1 Jan renewals. Are you now sort of happy with the risk appetite where you're sitting, or do you think you'll be growing your risk appetite further at the U.S. renewals in the middle of the year? Thank you.

Okay, thanks, Andreas. It's just around relative pricing, I guess, is what you're saying, between inwards property and outwards retro spend. They both moved, obviously. You've got here in the slide deck the degree to which the underlying property CAT and property CAT-related pricing moved. I'm really pleased with that. That's great. Retro prices are up as well, as we've said before. We budgeted for a higher spend through 23. A large volume of our programme is actually placed and we bought more limit at January. That's basically in place for the year now. So there isn't an explicit measure which I could give you where it's A minus B to produce the net, but writing a book of business now that has property CAT in there and that we are then protecting, it's a better dynamic this year than last. There's no doubt about that. There's a whole host of additional, let's call it margin or ability to absorb losses that's now within the portfolio. So there isn't an explicit measure I can give you, but it's definitely a better place to be. Around the CAT, PML and Appetite, I guess, you know, we remain flexible to that and how it looks mid-year. I think that's what you're referring to as regards Atlantic hurricane season. It's very much a cat that comes out through the air in the US. That sort of fights for capacity within our overall portfolio. There's a lot of other ways that we write business that has cat exposure, but is not explicit cats are through some of the risk business and also through specialty and also quota shares. So the number that we gave you in the in the slide deck is a forward looking number around our peak PMRs, 100 year Florida and 250 Calquait return periods. Those are a pretty good guide to where we see the year evolving. You know, I would treat those as pretty much kind of the upper bounds of where we expect it to be. And that's why we produced it on a forward-looking basis. But the way in which we get there may well change. You know, we may well see that, you know, parts of that U.S. wind, but doesn't exactly respond to the way that we expect it to on an Excel basis. There's other ways of us accessing that exposure and if we see pricing elsewhere, that moves. So, yeah, so it's a flexible feast, I suppose, and, you know, we remain open, but the numbers we've given you are pretty much a forward-looking peak.

Okay, perfect. Thank you very much.

The next question is coming from Barry Kors from Panmure Gordon. Barry, please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everybody, and good afternoon. A couple of questions from me. First of all, your Russia-Ukraine reserve at $24.6 million hasn't obviously moved. It's remained static. I'm just wondering, are you increasingly confident that that figure is right as, obviously, time goes by? And just wondered whether or not you're surprised that others within the sector have had to increase their reserves. That's the first question. The second one, just wondered if there's been any impact from any losses in 2023 so far, obviously thinking about the very tragic events following the earthquake, either that one or any other ones that may be perhaps below the radar, which we wouldn't be aware of. Thank you.

Okay. Thanks, Barry. Yeah, the first piece around Russia-Ukraine. Yeah, the loss pick we made is an ultimate loss pick. It includes all of our exposures from the class and from the scenario, from the event. We didn't see a whole host of updated results. movements or updated loss estimates from clients. There were some that gave specific information and granularity around their current loss picks. Where we got as a 24.6 is essentially a solid number because we have such a relative We weren't major aviation writers. We weren't particularly large political violence and terrorism writers at the time. The contracts we have have dollar caps around them, and that's just a function of the treaty world and the treaty business in those lines. So I would concede it makes it much easier for us to put an ultimate loss pick around the number and have a high degree of confidence there. So that's really what's driving our... our methodology, and if new information does emerge, then we keep it under review anyway, but we're very comfortable with where the pick is made. I can't comment on other entities in the market who have a direct insurance involvement. They're obviously closer to the events as they're emerging, and each company has to make their own judgment on how they project the ultimate position. um losses and turkey and syria perhaps quick okay quick comment around that uh we don't have any meaningful exposure in either of those regions obviously a terrible um event that's uh in unfolding as soon as we go um so so for us to watch it um it's a as a minimal exposure to us in the class and nail losses that would come through there we'd expect to be um pretty minimal to be honest

Great, thank you. Question is coming from Typhonus Pyro from Barenburg.

Typhonus, please go ahead.

Oh, hi, thank you. I just have a follow-up question. I think, Alain, you mentioned that your investment portfolio is shorter in duration than your liabilities and that it's expected to increase as your liabilities would increase. However, I was expecting maybe, forgive me if I'm wrong, And on the liability side, obviously, property and specialty are growing faster than casualty. So I would expect a 3.1 year duration to maybe slightly come down in the short term. And maybe as a follow up to that, maybe Greg, if you can help us with some more color on which specialty classes you said you're looking to expand into and which of this part of the classes coming within your hurdle rate, that would be really helpful. Thank you.

Hi, Trev. I didn't quite catch all of that, but I think the question was around the liability duration versus the assets. So jump in if I've got that wrong. I think given the high quota share nature of the casualty, we do expect that to continue to increase in terms of the building reserves there, they also sit around for a bit longer. The kind of counter side to that is if we get the kind of the cat and large losses that impact the property and the specials to go, then they tend to have shorter duration. So if there's reserves up on those kind of books, then they bring it back down. So where we don't expect our liability duration to get massively longer than where we are just now, it could just creep up a little bit and we want to just be mindful of that when we're looking at the asset duration as well and keep them within a reasonable band of each other. Well, that answers your question.

Yeah, no, that's exactly right. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Just a couple of just comments on specialty. So, yeah, I mean, it's a class of business that is very easy to identify CAT components in. So our desire there continues to be to identify non-CAT driven components. specialty business. Obviously, CAT has had a big influence on pricing, and that's driven a lot of the pricing. But clearly, the underlying factors with valuation changes, inflation, that affects a lot of those specialty classes like construction and engineering. which are of interest to us, but they are and have their margin requirements for us. So again, as we see some of these classes unbundling from these broader coverages, we look at them very closely, but our metrics and desires remain the same.

Thank you. There are no further questions on the confidence line. I will now hand over to Neil Eckert, Chairman, for closing remarks.

Thank you, everyone. Yeah, so in summary, we remain sort of extremely confident about conditions, what's going forward. We won't be contemplating raising capital in the near future. We don't need to. We have sufficient capital to grow within our current plans. And we look forward to reporting to you at