Conduit Holdings Limited

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the Conduitry Q3 update. I'm pleased to report that market conditions remain favourable, and we say the headline of this slide, among the best in decades. This is caused by a number of factors which we expect to continue. There's still the inflationary pressures causing more demand. The insurance carriers are are exhibiting the demand for new reinsurance business. We have observed a structural shift in US primary markets with the continued growth of E&S. Industry legacy. We're still seeing back year strengthening of reserves, which from our perspective at Conduit with our clean balance sheet is a competitive advantage. So, I mean, my takeaway here is Conduit Re is ideally positioned to capitalise. We've had a great quarter. And with that, I will hand over to Trevor Carvey.

Thanks, Neil. So as regards our broader trading update numbers for Q3, we've had another decent quarter. Ultimate premiums written year-to-date are now $909 million, which is up 56.4% over the nine months last year. On a gross premium written basis, the year-to-date figure is $764 million, up 50.3%, compared to the nine months ending 30 September 2022. We are really pleased with these numbers as we continue to grow and running ahead of the original IPO five-year plan. And essentially, we maintain our focus on diversification and growing various business classes in proportion as we scale. Greg can talk to this scaling later in the deck. On rate change, this stays positive for us across the book overall, at 15% risk adjusted, with property and specialty doing the heavy lifting currently in the weighted calculations across the overall portfolio. Our casualty book remains very healthy, with it skewed to what we view as a very disciplined client base and demonstrates that pricing is keeping pace with underlying loss trends, which is a must. We like the business bound in our portfolio, and it's worth mentioning that we continue to receive new offers to write casualty deals, where in our view, some insurers are not as disciplined or as focused as they need to be in our view. And it's always interesting to hold those up alongside our own book to compare and contrast. Benchmarking our book alongside others is always a very valuable exercise. On loss activity in the industry, whilst the quarter did not deliver a major landfalling hurricane event, there was certainly a continued higher frequency of wind events with severe convective storms hitting worldwide and in the USA in particular. At the end of the day, this has been an emerging pattern, and we continue to load the base model pricing assumptions for these circumstances, and thereby achieve an uplift across the broader property portfolio. This is in the knowledge that individual client performance is never a given, and some of them will surprise on the downside in circumstances like these, whilst others are an offset, surprising on the upside. That's the nature of a diversified book, and given the shape of our overall premium balance, where in general we carry a broad 70-30 premium split in favour of non-cap business, we can report that no caps event loss individually or in the aggregate has had a material impact during the nine months here today. Capital is a question that comes up from time to time, given that we've been able to grow faster than initially anticipated and given market conditions. Our current plans and stress tests do not contemplate any expected need to raise additional capital in our three to five year planning horizon. And by utilising current capital plus the earnings retention, we are in a position to fund the business ahead and maintain a healthy solvency position. My statement here takes into account stress tests, which are applied to a mean plan, but of course, extreme events, multiple large or catastrophe losses or a significant investment shock could of course provide uncertainty we carry headroom to buffer against such events and of course when we raised capital for the original plan there was headroom for other opportunities as they arose from the outset we have managed exposure and aggregations carefully whilst achieving valuable diversification writing the non-cap business is key for conduit we know that having a less pml hungry shape to the portfolio enables the business to grow volume significantly whilst also managing our capital needs. Scaling profitably, as we are experiencing this marketplace, strengthens our balance sheet and provides additional capacity for growth. As a final piece on this slide, we've stated several times over in the last few quarters, the man-made risk exposure part of our business, i.e. the non-natural catastrophe side of the industry, continues to look very attractive. Margins here are showing really well, and broadly speaking, we still report out on the base metric that around 70% of the premium we write is non-CAT exposed in nature, and will continue to generate a higher interest for some time yet. On the topic of CAT, this of course too has shown a significant uptick in pricing, and in the broader regions now, not just in the USA. Improving terms and conditions and wordings there are also moving margins, and Greg Roberts will speak to this and provide more colour in his part of the presentation. A slide we have shown before, and it demonstrates over time the evolution of the business and how we have continued to scale, is worth pointing out that the general trend and annual increases were broadly planned for, but true to say that volumes have grown faster than the original plan as market conditions have been in our favour. On a gross premium written basis, we've banged cumulatively over $1.7 billion since inception of the company, and that as a growth rate represents roughly 36% quarter on quarter over that timeframe. This is gross premium written with a significant unearned or yet to be earned piece and still due to flow through. Interestingly, over the last four quarters, the highest growth rate has been in specialty, with property close behind and followed by casualty. And that is broadly in line with our overall view of where the best opportunities and deal margins lie currently out there in the market. Greg will go into this in more detail in his slides next, and I'll pass over to him now. Thanks, Trevor.

Looking year on year, we've grown portfolio by around 56%. We really like the spread of business across our three major classes of property, specialty and casualty. And this can still be seen in our premium mix of 48% property, 30% casualty and 21% specialty. Now in proportional terms, we've increased specialty by 17% year on year and decreased casualty by 12% year on year when considering the mixed share of our portfolio with property remaining flat. This really demonstrates our prioritisation of growth and opportunities in property, specialty and then casualty in that order. We have eight core subclasses of business, but we monitor and trade in around 30. About 63% of our premium year to date is renewal premium, with the balance in 37% from new business. And this has expected contrast to our second year of about 69% of our premium coming from renewal contracts. Market trading environment remains highly attractive to us and is a great opportunity to grow in property and specialty. From the outset, we've managed very carefully tail risk within our portfolio, always willing to trade out the tail with caps and collars. Sometimes this can enable specialist capital to take this risk and sometimes it's simply retained by the seeders. I see this trend continuing and allowing us to grow further whilst maintaining the texture of our portfolio. As Trevor has mentioned, our total premium has sat at around 30% cap related and 70% non-cap related. This is an effective mix and remains suitable to our capital makeup and supports continued growth. Specialty is an exciting market with opportunities across multiple lines of interest to us. The bundled contracts of the past continue to provide new opportunity as unbundled options are now routinely considered upon renewal. This in turn has increased reinsurer focus on terms and conditions, particularly to coverage afforded in the contracts. This attention to wording creates an attractive market for us, and our underwriting team continues to pick their way through these. As I've outlined in the slide, the casualty market is one of varied seed and strategies. For us, our closest partners are actively managing the subclass cycles effectively and repositioning their portfolios accordingly. The management of public D&O risk varies considerably across the seed and base, and exposure to these classes have been visibly managed down at this point of the pricing cycle. Clearly, this is what we expect as a reinsurer. In the same fashion, we support the disciplined growth into the subclasses, delivering improving risk reward metrics. Our transparent and technical approach to the pricing of reinsurance contracts enables an effective dialogue with our seeders and is designed to assist both parties to be clear on the strategic alignment. As a reminder here, we continue to report our risk-adjusted portfolio metrics on a year-to-date basis after the application of our view of inflation. The underlying rates, or in other words, the quantum of premium exchange for risk cover, is growing in all classes. I think this is a really important message, as it tells us that the propensity for buyers of primary insurance contracts remains healthy and is in fact growing. This is not surprising when we think of the growing exposure as a result of both organic growth and the inflationary pressures. Our portfolio year-to-date overall rate change remains at 15%. The current texture of our casualty portfolio has resulted in flat risk-adjusted rate change net of inflation. whilst property and specialty show very strong risk-adjusted rate increases on a year-on-year basis. We expect to see demand increasing for reinsurance support from seedings as they tackle this exposure growth, both from an inflationary perspective and organic perspective, as population, commercial activity and investment continue to increase. On that note, I'll hand over to Elaine for her comments.

Thanks, Greg. We wrote $764.4 million of gross premiums written for the year to date versus $508.6 million in the prior year, an increase of 50.3%. As of September 30th, we have approximately $676 million of remaining ultimate premiums written to earn out, and most of that will come through by the end of 2024. While it's been an active quarter for industry losses, we don't have anything to report that has a material impact, either individually or in aggregate, on our numbers for the quarter. For the year to date, there's a similar theme. It has also been pretty active, with the industry on track for another greater than $100 billion loss year. We do, of course, pick up some losses from that activity, but generally nothing that material, given our diversification and the caps and event limits we include in our quota share agreements. While this isn't a quarter where we provide financial statements, we've included a couple of slides in the appendices giving some more detail on some of the half-year IFRS 17 disclosures and some policy choice reminders to help with the models. Book yield on the investment portfolio is now about 3.5%. The higher income generation of the portfolio served to offset the increase in yields in the quarter. We're essentially flat for the quarter and the year-to-date investment return is 2.1%. We remain relatively short duration and our focus is on maintaining a high quality, highly liquid portfolio. Duration is currently 2.3 years versus 3.2 years on our net reserves. We will increase our duration very slightly as the rate hiking cycle slows and to better match the duration of our liabilities, or at least to keep that within a reasonable range. Average credit quality is AA and you can see our asset allocation in the chart on this slide. Not much change from Farrick Waters there. With that, I'll hand back to Trevor for closing remarks.

Many thanks, Elaine. So a final slide before we move to Q&A. And inflation gets another mention, as you see. But it is warranted, as this is driving much of what we see around pricing, with rising asset values increasing the demand for reinsurance, whilst at the same time in the industry, the casualty back year loss trends are moving out. And this, in turn, is pushing pricing there to a much better place than where it was a few years ago. Key for us, though, is also watching the changing underwriting behaviour over time and the continued general discipline we detect around pricing. There are pockets, such as public D&O, for instance, where pricing has ameliorated, and also perhaps the higher tail-end property and retro cat arena, which are of interest to the cap bond space and the capital providers there. But these are limited areas and ones we can monitor and watch. Overall, in our view, though, the general sense is that the market and, crucially, management of underwriting businesses are aware of the need for discipline at the front line of underwriting. And we think that the inflationary pressures are serving to keep more underwriters now honest for longer. Also, a word here on the often passed over or glossed over topic of costs, and specifically, The efficiencies are increasing scale as we grow. Our Bermuda model as a reinsurer with one location puts us in a very good position cost-wise relative to the industry. And if one considers that based on current Q3 premium volumes, we are effectively writing around $13 million per employee, then that is not a bad place to be when looking to be growing the business further, again, going forward. The plan or goal is is there to keep on the trend to move the company from sub-7% to sub-6% other operating expenses. That's in old money IFRS4, and that's a great edge to have as the business grows. The business was formed in readiness for the 2021 underwriting year, and growth to date has been achieved by conscious focus on pushing ahead in certain classes where we saw the best margins being offered. I think that as a business, we are already known for bottom line focus when putting deals on the books. And our approach is skewing towards those business lines where margin is most attractive won't be changing going forward. Maximising our position is important. As a reinsurer, you need to be able to spot the opportunities being presented and crucially act on that information. It is no use after the event spotting in the rearview mirror a new trend or a cycle shift in a class of business. You need to see it coming and I think we have demonstrated the ability and willingness to shift our underwriting and strategic approach in the market and in that way change the portfolio skew as needed over the last two years or so. The business mix we have in place is doing the job right now and it's the position from where we are looking to grow from. Our mix will trend and change over time as one would expect, depending on relative pricing and expected margins between the classes. But we remain committed and convinced that the balanced diversification play we have and focusing on best margins available is key for a reinsurer and to be delivering on long-term earnings goals over time. This ends the presentation and we can move now into the Q&A piece.

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 press star and then 1 on your touch-tone phone or on the keypad on your screen. You will hear a confirmation tone that you have joined the queue. If you decide to withdraw the question, please press star and then 2 to remove yourself from the queue. The first question we have is from Trifon Esparo of Birenburg. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon. Good morning. Good morning to everybody. Congratulations on a good year so far. I guess I have a few questions. One is on top line growth. Obviously, premiums are, I think, coming up year three now, roughly expected to be somewhere along year four of your IPO plan, as you mentioned, you're ahead. Can you maybe comment on how successful you have been in fully deploying the capital you raised years ago? And I guess maybe, I guess, Trevor, you mentioned opportunities for deploying capital next year. The key spotting them before they present themselves not in hindsight. So where do you think most opportunities will lie for you to deploy in capital next year? So that was one question. And the second one is a more philosophical one on the market, I guess. we heard about demand um driven um uh for insurance which i think last year wasn't really met given yes supply constraints it looks like uh this year there should be a bit more capital to meet some demand but i guess you really need to see um i mean just something how the how demand can be fulfilled is it really much of attachment points coming down or uh in that case um um that could be a sort of negative impact on the market um or on the other hand demand again it will not be really met because um the the winters are taking a more disciplined stance and the third question is on um on cuts uh the 70 to 30 percent non-card cuts Uh, split you mentioned you just want to clarify whether things like severe convective storms and exposure to those secondary perils, as we call them, are coming within the 70% or the 30% and you consider them to be sort of cut. Um, so thank you.

Okay, thanks very much, Trev. Yeah, good questions. And ones which, you know, access from time to time as well. I'll have the first one around general premium growth and deploying the capital. I think Greg can probably pick up on the other aspects of your question. Yes, so premiums going forward. Obviously, we don't give explicit guidance on that, but have to put some colour around it. We've obviously had a very good run over a period of time since we came into being. be good, healthy growth quarter on quarter and year on year. The market's been in our favor. You know, when we set out the five-year plan, we were expecting to grow at reasonably aggressive rates. We've plenty done that, but where the market has been, it's just enabled us to grow that much quicker and really accelerate the plan. So in broad terms, without checking back to the exact dotted I's and crossed T's, the IPO plan had us growing over the five years. And I guess as we approach the end of year three, we're probably around about year four or five, four and a half, probably in the IPO terms. So it's been really good. But to be quite honest, When the market presents itself as it has done, I think it's beholden on a reinsurer to respond to that and grow into that. So in terms of where we are, very happy with the portfolio. Next year, you mentioned style of business, where we think we'll present you right more. We've kind of said this several times, but property, specialty, casualty in that order, generally the way we rank the opportunity out there. But what we are seeing is on what we refer to as our non-CAT piece, the risk piece, and particularly around parts of specialty. That's a really good margin that sits within some of those classes. We're naturally growing into that. So I think the risk part of property, not CAT, and also on the specialty side is an area that we see as becoming an increasing part of our portfolio as we go through for next year. Greg, you've got two and three.

Sure, thanks, Trevor. Morning, Trevor. So you mentioned demand driven reinsurance, and I think that's a very specific kind of thing of property around those comments. Demand driven reinsurance, clearly a reflection of exposure growth, whether that's, I think I mentioned organic or inflationary otherwise. Just the greater number of contracts being bought in the primary sector will create more reinsurance demand. think you asked about attachment points dropping would that cause an increase in in limit i suppose it would in the sort of isolated area of property xol but i think the growth in xol would more likely come from growing programs as premium bases are growing and reinsurance spends as proportions of income might maintain the same, but on a bigger income base, they'll be able to buy more limits. So I suppose that would produce additional growth in the ex-oils. I think some of the comments recently, particularly from Vest around their outlook on the ENS sector or non-admitted sectors, we've always from the beginning kind of referenced it, is really about the ability for insurers to grow premium to cover the risks that they are in some extent already covering. I think that's a very positive movement and that will as the non-emitting guys are able to actually price for the risk much faster. And so this sort of points slightly towards that fundamental of a repricing of risk, slightly away from just the pure supply-demand pressures. And to your last point on the question around SCS, we certainly see SCS as a cat barrel. That would be in our reference to the 30%, for sure.

That's great. Thank you.

The next question we have is from Daryl Goh of RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Hi, everyone. Hope you're well. A few questions, please, if I may. So first one is just on the underwriting experience. Excluding the CAD element, which you said was within budget, can you maybe give us a flavor of how it performed in Q3? Was it in line? Was it better than you expected? I'm just thinking about the second half and the full year combined ratio. Second one is just in rates and lost costs. Based on everything that you've seen this year so far, have you had to adjust any of your lost cost trends in any specific line? And on the back of that, what are kind of the risk-adjusted rate increase that you expect in 2024? um the third one um it's just just in the bermudan well the potential uh bermudan tax rate change i i know you have a slight independence there but i don't maybe give a bit a bit more color there um i know it's the early days there's still consultation but at the same time you know it feels to me anyway that it's a bit of an overhang on the shares so what would a worst case scenario look like to you thanks

Sure. Hi, Daryl. Just on the underwriting experience, I think for the year in general, it's been kind of a similar theme in terms of lots of smaller things, but nothing major. And Q3 was much the same. Not just about cap, we saw some risk losses in the quarter as well. So just to bear that in mind as well, I would say that generally in line with pricing expectations for the quarter and actually for the year to date as well would be a good way to think about it. I'll pick up on the tax one while I'm on as well before I hand over the other one. There isn't any legislation out yet. We are obviously monitoring that. We did put a slide in the appendix in our presentation for you to refer to. And I guess the high level note is that while we're monitoring it and there is an uncertainty around it, we don't expect to be impacted by it, given the deferrals that are available there. We're also in the fortunate position to be single balance sheet one location, really, you know, small outfit in London is all and we are probably more fortunate than some others who have a wider footprint.

If I pick up on the risk, I think your question was around risk adjusted rate change 24. I mean, just as a reminder, everyone's risk adjusted rate change is a function of how they look at risk. So if you difficult for me to comment on others, but I think at an industry level, we still have growth, insurance growth, which obviously creates reinsurance growth. I think the sensitivity to risk just a great change would be a function of where you sit in that risk transfer market, whether you're in the primary market, particularly like ourselves with a close share support versus a poor XOL dominant, right? So your experience is going to be very, very different. and where you take on risk. So I think the fundamentals are exposures are growing, premium volumes are growing, and whereas a heightened awareness of risk levels and data and exposure reporting is certainly improving even further. So I think that's all beneficial for understanding the risk environment going forward.

But very quickly on that, so you put the plus 15 at a nine month Are you expecting what to 5 to 10 to 24? Can you say.

So, could you repeat the question?

Yeah, just just in terms of the, the, the quantum of, um, we suggest the rate change for 24 itself. So you've done 15%, um, 23 so far. Uh, what what that number well, I guess what's your expectation of that number for 24 at this stage.

Yeah, I think that's a bit too crystal ball to the full market, but I don't see any reversal of the fundamentals that have occurred in 23 into 24. I think it's a very positive environment for an insurer. Thank you.

The next question we have is from Abid Hussain of Panmure Gordon. Please go ahead.

Hello, all. Three questions, if I can, please. First one is on margin guidance. Given that there's been no material losses over the first nine months, actually, firstly, can you confirm that that applies to year-to-date, so no material losses post-period end, so post-September as well? And then if it does, what does that mean for the combined ratio guidance for the full year? Any colour on that would be Thank you. And then the second question is on growth. I know you're not at scale at the moment, and you're sort of pointing to the expense ratio ticking down to around 6% when you reach scale. At what point do you sort of sit back and say that you reach scale in terms of GWP growth, GWP premiums, please? And then the final question, coming back to tax, What's the benefit of operating with a single balance sheet when it comes to the potential tax changes? Thank you.

Hi, Abed. Just on margin guidance, I think that we don't give any explicit guidance on that as such. I think what we've talked about in the past is that we are seeing the mid-80s combined old money, IFRS 4 money, emerging. I think what we mean by that is that we're seeing that in the online business, but you also have to bear in mind how we reserve and that there's a degree of prudence in that as well. We are also only in our third year and this is the year where we said that we would get a level of maturity with their earnings. So you're going to put all that together. I don't think it changes how we look at the underlying business. But again, bear in mind that there has been some activity this year and you can reference our half year combined ratio disclosure and make your assumptions around that. We will obviously be able to give you a bit more on that at year end. And just on the Excuse me, just on the tax question. There are certain deferrals and exemptions that are available and I guess in short, the more locations that you're in, the more you've got to manage around that. With us having a single balance sheet, we have much more flexibility and we don't have that many years of operation to deal with either in terms of looking at whether we qualify or not. So that's the main benefit. In terms of growth, again, I think this is the year where we reach a level of maturity in our earnings. I think we've talked previously about year one, obviously, everything's new business. Year two is kind of 50-50. Year three is kind of two-thirds, one-third. You can follow that trajectory in terms of where we think we are in terms of building on the renewing book there. I hope that answers the question.

Yeah, it does. On the first one, on the margin guidance, I was actually thinking in terms of half year and then sort of how that extrapolates to the full year. Obviously, I don't expect you to give me a particular combined ratio, but typically I would expect the coal to deteriorate in the second half just because this tends to be more cap heavy And I think you were, just from memory, you were already in the low 80s on an undiscounted combined ratio basis at a half year. I'm just trying to think, how should I think about that when I roll the model forward?

You can always think about the first half in the two quarters in terms of activity. First quarter was pretty active, second quarter less so, and that averaged into where we ended up at the half year. Q3 is typically more active. Q4, let's wait and see. There's been a couple of things out there already, but again, stuff that we would absorb in our pricing assumptions, but we still have a few months left to go in the year, so we can predict that one, but you can make those kind of assumptions off of how we performed in the first half and typically how the second half goes.

Yeah. Okay. Super.

The next question we have is from Andrea's Yes, thank you.

Good afternoon. I've got two questions, please. I just want to refer back to your slide six, Gregory. We should have spoke around the different business lines. Just on specialty, when you mentioned there's a larger and more diversifying submissions Which class of business are you referring here to? Or is this the package programs you were talking about? And is this sort of flow, is that diversifying in a sense that it's self-financing from a capital perspective? The second question tied to this is on the seeding commissions. You mentioned they need to be appropriate. Does that mean that there is sort of pressure on the seeding commissions, i.e., the reinsurance industry is putting pressure on seedings to lower them? And does that also apply to the casualty market, i.e., or sort of commissions on the pressure there as well? And then finally, on the E&S market. When you talk about this overflow from the admitted market, is this purely property classes or are there other classes of business that are flowing from the admitted into the E&S market?

Thank you. Good morning. So, diversifying specialty. So, what we're referencing there, what I'm referencing there really is if you think of on the excess of loss side of more unbundling, as we've described it in the past. That means more of those component parts are held by the sealant. So if we're able to consider a reinsurance relationship there on the quota share basis, by definition, we've got a wider spread of business to work with there. And depending on the type of seat and how they approach that, are able to manage those lines in a level that we find quite attractive. It enables us to access a diversified spread of business through a single reinsurance contract in that instance. So it's not really a reference to any new subclasses appearing that weren't already there. It's perhaps slightly more about how the nature of that reinsurance is constructed. Seating commissions. Yeah, I mean, major subject. To make the statement, I don't think reinsurers are inclined to accept any level of combined ratio deterioration, particularly around the placement of casualty quota shares. So should there be any review in an uptick of a reinsurer's loss pick on the loss ratio side, then to offset that, to maintain a combined ratio, a seeding commission would need to be reduced. But I think it speaks more fundamentally to why would the loss ratio be upticking? And is that a function of macro activity or is it a function of the sedents underwriting practices themselves? I think that's where you get to this very interesting spread of how sedents are approaching some of the underlying kind of moving parts of loss ratio picks. That's key. We work with some, I think, very good risk-taking partners who are moderating their risk appetites in elements of subclasses where they're not happy with the forecasted margins they're looking at. That's great for us. That's the concept of a partnership, that our partner is managing their cycle and their exposure in those local classes. And we certainly commend that. And on the ENS piece, yeah, we've spoken, I think, from the very beginning, actually, back to 2021, our observation of business flowing into the non-admitted markets from the admitted business. And that doesn't necessarily mean this is just new businesses being formed to write non-admitted business. This is often the case for admitted carriers, thinking more about how they provide the risk cover they're needed to to their incumbent clients. And the admitted paper or the admitted portions of their business allow them to respond much faster to the needs, in particular growing exposures, enabling them to issue a policy that is a function of their own risk appetite as opposed to a filed and admitted piece of business. So this is, you know, very much and very obvious and rather measurable on the property side. But it does apply to the other classes as well in the casualty area as well. We've seen E&S sort of non-omissive growth there. That's probably slightly more in the SME sector than the sort of more heavy commercial sector. and less so on the personal line side, which is not an area we focus on.

Okay, thank you very much. Just a quick follow-up on the Seating Commission. So if you're writing quota share casualty and the primary seed and seeing macro factors, you know, driving down rates and the low single digits as we're seeing with some of your peers, does that automatically mean you've got room to lower the Seating Commission? Or is that something you need to negotiate? Or is it already in the contract structure?

So that would be, the seating commission would be largely agreed, not in all cases, sometimes it could be floating, but largely it'd be agreed on the contract terms from the year in which it exists. I think that's clearly a part of negotiation. But I would draw attention to a lowering seeding commission, though maintaining a combined ratio isn't necessarily the appropriate fix for a loss ratio that might be showing deterioration. Again, it comes down to fundamental underwriting practices, and there is a spread of who is able to control those and who is less able to do so, and that makes a market.

Understood. Okay, thank you very much.

The next question we have is from Jonathan Sheehan of Tosca Fund. Please go ahead.

Morning. A couple of questions really follow up on what you've said and one I don't think has been asked. We've seen some settlements coming through in Ukraine on aviation. At what point do you think that gives you information to revise your reserve? set up on on that um and then just really a follow-up on a couple of comments um one on the lost cost trends i mean obviously you're seeing premium prices that are well ahead of lost cost trends and it's not really been reflected in your loss picks yet how should we think about how you might or when you might consider pricing enabling you to to be a bit more um to allow your loss pick trends to follow the pricing above lost cost trends more closely. And then I think in relation to Elaine's point about the maturing of the book, at what point in terms of your different blocks of business should I think in terms of you reviewing the reserves set up and the timing of when you might start considering releasing some of the prudence and maybe a bit of granularity between lines on that would be helpful. Thank you.

Okay, thanks for that. Yeah, I'll pick up on the first one, Ukraine. We pass to Elaine for the second piece. Yeah, interesting settlements or some away that's been found through the circumstance, if you like, between the leases, the insurers and potentially the reinsurers. So we're starting to see signs of it. Probably what we've seen publicly in the press and the broader audience is picking up on, is about as much information as has been shared with certainly reinsurers like ourselves. Where does that go from here? We've obviously got a busy January renewal season coming up. A number of those contracts, probably the majority actually for us, that are flagged where we're holding reserves against them, renew at Jan 1. those information and disclosures are coming in kind of as we speak and will certainly accelerate over the course of the next three or four weeks. So we're expecting a greater degree of clarity, greater degree of disclosure from those clients as we go through over the next month. I think having got to that stage, we can then review the position that we're holding on it at the moment. There isn't enough clarity and not enough disclosure that's for that cost of the renewal season. Elaine, do you want to pick up on that?

Sure. Hi, Jonathan. On the lost cost trends and pricing side of things, I'll let Greg pick up on that one. But in terms of how that impacts our reserving and how we think about that, I guess in terms of our lost picks, There's an element of tail risk management around that as well, which you don't necessarily see immediately. That takes longer to come through in our numbers. But also in terms of how we reserve, we do try and take a relatively conservative approach to reserving, we hope. And this is our third year. We still don't have that much history in terms of reserving. We've talked about maturity in terms of the earnings base into year three. But it does vary across the different divisions. You know, property... We see that emerging more quickly, mostly. I guess there are some aspects of property that take a bit longer. Specialty would tend to be more in the kind of three to four year timeframe for us to start seeing anything there really. And then casualty is probably further in the four to seven year timeframe. But in terms of how we approach reserving internally, it's a pretty active process. And we do look at things contract by contract and those reviews are ongoing and as we reach the end of our first set of reserves beginning to mature a little bit. We are looking at that pretty closely into year end. Casualty obviously takes a little bit longer for that to come through, so it does take a while.

Just a brief comment on lost cost. Lost cost is a function of both backward-looking information experience rating, as well as more forward-looking strategies of third element being opportunity cost. So those three go together to set the set the price at which we're willing to trade, but from a loss cost specifically around, you know, really exposure and experience driven, you know, other elements that have highly actuarial elements of that, the review of, you know, very detailed levels of information. And for us, that's always a kind of minimum data requirement, minimum minimum standard for us to work with an existing or a new partner really to understand those underlying trends and those underlying subclasses. And so that experience varies hugely across the sort of seedings we're able to trade with. Some do it very well and are very willing to share with us. We're a reinsurance-only vehicle. in the primary insurance business we haven't set up an insurance interest or intend to. So that's really, really beneficial at times and it often allows us to have a closer relationship with our trading partner to enable us to build loss picks.

Okay. So what I take, I guess, from that is whilst we're seeing some improvement in the loss picks, given your earlier comments about taking a prudent view on inflation and and not recognising all the pricing in excess of lost cost inflation you're seeing, we should see your loss pick improvement in earnings as probably still gaining in conservatism.

Yeah, and also, you know, we still do have a weighting towards quarter share and the writing and the earning pattern of that takes a bit longer as well. Thank you.

The next question we have is from Barry Corns of Premier Gordon. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everybody. I just had two questions. In fact, one follows on from your comment there, Elaine, about the proportion split between quota share and Excel. Just wondered if that's changed over the third quarter or if it's roughly the same as it was. And the second question I had was really just any early views on 1st of January renewals. both Monte Carlo and any discussions you've had thereafter. Thank you.

Hi, Barry. Greg can chip in here as well if he wants to. We are writing a little bit more excessive loss, but we still have a pretty heavy weighting towards quarter share. It's modified a little bit, but not excessively.

I would underline that. No significant shift in the deployment between co-share of XOL. It varies a little bit within the classes, PC and S. Traditionally, the US casualty is more co-share driven. Property, a much bigger market, greater number of contracts. Certainly, there are more XOL programs in existence. We keep largely the similar proportion, but as we grow, we grow the number of contracts we write as well. And to Jan 1, and yes, there's been lots of meeting of the great minds through Monte Carlo and other conferences, and some are ongoing now as well. We have our team hearing what is going on in Boston at PCI, for example. So I think that the themes certainly remain the same, growing exposures. Our industry, I think, benefits often from inflation as long as it's evaluated correctly. It grows our markets. and grows the need for risk transfer and insurance, and therefore reinsurance. So these are all positives as long as you evaluate risk appropriately. And the trends we see in the way in which people buy reinsurance continue to see that moving forward. The market is growing, I think, and we're a growing business, so I think that's a very appropriate place to be.

Great. Thanks very much.

We have no further questions at this time. And I would like to hand the floor back over to management for closing remarks.

Right. Thank you, everybody, for your questions. I hope we've been able to answer and give some clarity. We look forward to speaking to you after the renewal season. Our next update is in the third week of January. The date of that release will be on our website. We will be a few months wiser by then and we'll be able to give much closer indications as to what has happened at year end. But in summary, it's a really exciting time. We're starting to see maturity, starting to see the company's earnings. The first half was, we were very pleased with those results and we look forward to speaking to you after the year end and our finals in February. Thank you.