Conduit Holdings Limited

Good morning and good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Conduitry Q1 2024 Trading Update. Without further ado, I'll give the floor to our CEO, Trevor Carvey.

Thanks, Antonio. Through the first quarter, the trading environment continued to be attractive for us, and we increased our gross premiums written by 28.3% to $356.8 million when compared to the first quarter of 2023. All three of our divisions contributed to this outcome with property and specialty driving the numbers. And as we've said previously, those two classes are continuing to demonstrate very good fundamentals in the marketplace. On rate change, and that's on a risk-adjusted basis, we saw positive upticks again in property and specialty at plus 5% and plus 2% respectively. In casualty, On our renewing book we saw a negative 2% risk adjusted rate change, although on an overall basis through Q1 and having added some new casualty business to the account, we were very comfortable with the overall pricing achieved in the casualty division. With the underwriting combined ratios remaining stable year over year. As a side note. I would comment that we non-renewed or reduced shares on a small proportion of our Q1 casualty premium as we performed our standard portfolio optimisation measures around the book generally. Finally, on casualty, we continue to note the legacy back-year trends in the industry, and this is serving to support the ongoing forward pricing in the marketplace. You will hear more from Greg later on the details of the trading environment, But at a more general level, we really like the way that the market is continuing to present to us across a large range of classes. And as a result, the extent to which we continue to grow very specifically in those targeted business lines across the portfolio. In the property cat excel market, this plainly has more capacity sitting in the wings presently. And that will likely have a dampening effect on price over the coming weeks. and heading into the wind season renewals. But we take the view that the general property rating levels are still pretty good, and it makes total sense for us to continue to deploy capacity in our current style here with a balance between quota share and excessive loss. As regards large loss and cap loss activity for the industry in the quarter, it has been a relatively active period with convective storms and weather activity in the USA and Europe again making their mark. For us, our cap loss experience was light in the quarter, largely driven by both our geographical focus and general risk selection preferences. In the quarter, there was also the large loss event around the Baltimore Bridge, which collapsed following the impact of the Dali container ship. We note that the market loss is still very much developing here, and we will continue to monitor the situation for further information. At this stage, I can report that our exposure to an event such as this is tightly managed and is within expectations for a loss of this type. Finally, I would make the observation that in this, our fourth year of trading, the environment remains particularly attractive in areas such as the non-obmitted space in the USA, where we first established the partnership distribution channel back as early as 2021. This market is still active for us, and we continue to see a high generation of business flow over our platform. Since our inception for the 2021 underwriting year, we've cumulatively written gross premiums of over $2.2 billion, which on a quarter-over-quarter basis equates to an average growth rate of 32%. And that's taken up to the end of Q1 2024. Whilst in the last 12 months the growth in written premium has been more pronounced in specialty and property, the chart does show that all three divisions are playing their part well in producing a balanced multi-line portfolio. This is fundamental to us and remains how we think about structuring the business profile as we continue to grow and expand the business. On that note, I'll hand over to Greg.

Thank you, Trevor. The property opportunity remains very positive And accordingly, we have grown our written premiums by 37% to a total of £217.1 million. Our renewals with our partners had an overall plus 5% risk-adjusted rate change after the impact of inflation, confirming that in the whole, the property division continues to price and manage exposure for inflationary pressures which haven't gone away. The footprint we've established over the last 36 months in the non-admitted market continues to develop controlled exposures with disciplined pricing. This portfolio remains predominantly commercial and continues to respond well to the significant activity from non-attritional losses in Q1. This is best exampled here by the high level of industry SCS similar activity in the US through Q1, confirming the impact of appropriate primary deductibles and excess of loss attachment points. Essentially, these losses are largely being retained by the original insurers, promoting strong risk mitigation behaviours. Portfolio continues to grow in a balanced fashion with our continued focus on a non-catastrophe exposure base. This continued in April, where our previously established partnerships in the non-emitted segment confirmed attractive underwriting conditions. Our casualty portfolio has remained stable from a top-line perspective in Q1, with a plus 6.3% of growth in risen premiums. Our renewals delivered an overall negative 2% risk-adjusted rate change after the effect and the impact of inflation. As I mentioned in the property narrative, inflationary pressures certainly have not gone away, and this remains a key focus in the pricing analysis and methodology from our team. The liability market, contains a broad range of exposure types and they are varied approaches to their pricing inflationary pressures. This is in part a function, the different subclasses and the industry premium volumes. This is well-exampled when contrasting the attractive general third-party liability excess market showing continued use of reduced limit deployments and increasing attachment levels. This approach is proving more difficult in the professional liability sector in part due to it being a smaller market segment. This requires us to manage support at the contract level and vary authorisations accordingly. The reinsurance market as a whole is holding combined ratio positions stable on treaty pricing, so the impact of rates not staying ahead of inflation is shared between the buyer and the seller. We have further developed the specialty portfolio And accordingly, we've grown our written premiums by 31% to a total of 70.7 million in this positive rating environment. A risk-adjusted rate change after the impact of inflation is plus 2% in respects of our renewing contracts, reflecting the ability of the account to price and manage inflationary pressures. Our strategy for growing this segment remains the same, with focus on managing our planned appetite for offshore platforms, terror blast zones, natural catastrophe and other risk accumulations in balance, resulting us characterising the growth as being outside of these areas. This is a successful outcome and assists in the development of a balanced and diversified specialty portfolio. Recent loss activity in the specialty industry, such as the Baltimore Bridge, will again highlight the industry's need to balance premium and volatility. This clearly promotes further risk-adjusted rate increases, given the expected industry loss quantums. With this, I hand over to Elaine.

Thanks, Greg. As you've heard from Greg, our growth strategy continues into our fourth year of operations. We wrote $356.8 million of gross premiums written in the first quarter of the year, compared with $278 million in the first quarter of 2023, a 28.3% increase. Our reinsurance revenue was $181.1 million, compared with $134 million in the prior year, a 35.1% increase year on year. As a reminder, under IFRS 17 now, our reinsurance revenue is essentially IFRS 4 gross premiums earned, less Seeding Commission and a smaller adjustment for non-distinct investment components. It therefore tracks the same pattern as our gross premiums earned would have under IFRS 4, just a lower number after the Seeding Commission deduction. As Trevor noted, while it's been an active quarter for industry losses, we don't have anything to report that has had a material impact, either individually or collectively. We do have exposure to the Baltimore Bridge collapse, primarily from the marine related lines of business. But from what we know at this stage, there's nothing outside of our expectations for a loss of that size. And in year four, we now have a much larger earnings base to absorb losses. While yields increased in the quarter, our investment portfolio is generally yielding more and that protected against the rising yields. Our investment return was 0.5% for the quarter versus 1.8% for the first quarter of 2023 when we saw a reduction in yields. Our book yield is now 3.9% versus 3.7% at year end 2023 and 2.8% at the end of the first quarter of last year. We remain relatively short duration and our focus is on maintaining a high quality, highly liquid portfolio. Duration is currently 2.5 years versus 3.1 years on our net reserves. We've increased 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 the slide. Not much change from prior quarters there. With that, I'll hand back to Trevor for closing remarks.

Thanks, Elaine. In brief summary, then, these points here capture our key drivers and observations through Q1, with all of our divisions contributing to the momentum we are seeing. The landscape is very attractive, and there aren't many areas or classes where we feel we are having to maturity change our approach and to start playing heavy defence in the market. There are always areas that need focus, though, and we will watch the pure-cat excessive loss pricing trends this coming season in the USA. But this is not a product line that we have an over-reliance on, and I would expect us to be able to trade our way both around and through that this year. On business prospects, we have a maturing portfolio with a growing premium base, and an emerging low 80s undiscounted combined ratio remains our focus. And with a healthy deal pipeline, we're certainly looking forward to developing the business further into the year ahead. Thanks for your time. And we can now move to Q&A.

Thank you, Trevor. And before starting the Q&A, the usual reminder to keep it at two questions per person, please. Thank you.

Thank you. And 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 1 on your phone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. And as noted in the presentation, we do request a limit of two questions per person. And your first question comes from the line of Trifinus Spiro from Berenberg. Please go ahead.

Well, hi there. Good afternoon and good morning, guys. I've got two questions. I guess the first one is that in your release, you talk about this being an underwriter's market. Can you maybe... share some of your thoughts around this comment and how do you see the market evolving from here, even rates and terms have now been sort of stabilizing to the new higher level. How are you positioned to benefit from this type of market? And I guess maybe related to that, you talked about your well-established relationships in the U.S. market being the cornerstone of the strategy. Can you maybe share some additional thoughts on how do you plan to further bolster this part of the business going forward and how do you intend to drive new business I appreciate you guys have been very early in the States, but it now looks like more companies sort of deploying capital here. Reinsurance capacity is more readily available. So any thoughts around the sort of completion and outlook here going forward? Thank you.

Morning, Triv. It's Greg here. So we reference our partnerships we've built with If I think I'd characterize what's a good partner for us, it's observations on a disciplined approach to underwriting. It's kind of easy to say, but really it's about realistic business plans when they're presented to us and the ability to achieve those and execute those business plans and then execute them with the appropriate volumes. So what we're really thinking about there is our partner's approach to the risk appetite in that part of the cycle. So we talk about our footprint in the non-admitted market, and that's a very sort of US-driven comment. And that reflects back on the 36 months we've spent building that position, building those relationships with our partners, understanding the risks that they want to ride and the opportunity that they see in those markets. And we remain convinced that that opportunity remains. And so we're seeing very strong signals of the ability of these business plans to continue to be executed. And those come with growth. As I've referenced earlier, inflation clearly hasn't gone away. Exposure growth from average values alongside growth in risk counts is producing bigger books with bigger subject premiums. And I would say that on the whole, our partners are able to balance those increased premium bases with the appropriate risk deployment. And that sort of links back to that comment around discipline. The market is remaining disciplined in the limits that it's deploying. There is plenty of exposure to cover off, and I think it's a very healthy balance out there at the moment.

And your next question comes from the line of Derald Go from RBC. Please go ahead.

Hey guys, afternoon. So my two questions are the first one. It's on your combined ratio. So I get it, you know, low 80s emerging. Obviously there are reasons why you're managing it very conservatively. Could you maybe speak to how much flexibility you have in building up kind of reserve buffers? And is this something that you might consider reporting, or is there any way that we could see it externally? And secondly, it's on retention levels, so that's both inward and outward. On the inward side of things, can you say if your clients are feeding more or less businesses to reinsurers in general or to yourselves? And then on the outward side of things, could you say to what extent you're able to grow with your current retroarrangements while being, you know, while, while staying within your kind of risk limits or risk appetites, please. Thank you.

Hi, Daryl. Um, I'll take your, your first one. Um, I think it's more about how we approach reserving. I think, um, we've chatted about that a bit in the past, you know, um, nutritional is what it is, but we look at large losses and cat losses on an individual basis and come up with the best estimate on that. Um, We do try to be relatively prudent in that, but time will tell, obviously. I think reserve buffers isn't necessarily how we would think about it, but you are able to see the risk adjustment in our financial statements at the end of last year. So you can go and have a look at that for some guidance, if you like.

Morning, Daryl. Retention levels. Yeah, I think in this phase of the market, as I just said to Triff, actually, the The types of partnerships or the partners we've established, one of the most obvious characteristics that you see through all our partnerships across property, casualty and specialty is convincing business plans and the ability to execute them. So what they're doing is they're doing a good job in identifying growth in their own primary market and convincing us of how they can position in that to generate margins of which we can support them through the reinsurance vehicles and the provision of capital. So I would say, you know, I would summarise that by saying the absolute dollars are certainly increasing. If you think of that in either subject premium terms, which is obviously a function of rates over the top of exposure. But as I say, the inflationary pressures have certainly not gone away and exposure bases are continuing to grow. So even with a sedent or a partner of ours on the whole, at the industry level, maintaining the same percentage of seeded purchase on their credit share program, for example, the absolute dollars are still increasing. And linking back to the comment around discipline, the risk limits being deployed, where they're not increasing, of course, you're getting the same average risk line against a bigger premium base. So more balance is coming into that play as well. So a very positive observation.

Thanks. And any comments on your retro arrangements and how much flexibility you have to grow without having to buy more retro?

Hi, Daryl. It's Trevor here. On the retro side, a lot of the work we did there in putting that capacity in place was done at jam one. So it attaches at the start of the year. As you know, we've got the cap bond, which attaches mid-year. There's a bit of work we can probably still do around that in terms of exploring for opportunities and adding to that programme, but it wouldn't be material in the scale of things. I think we've set it up pretty well for the year and we're in pretty good shape, so I don't expect to be adding significant amounts to the core that we've already put in place.

Thanks for that. The next question comes from the line of Abid Hussain from Panmure Gordon. Please go ahead.

Oh, hi all. Just some IT questions. One on casualty. The second one is on the pricing outlook. So firstly on casualty, I'm just wondering why you would still choose to continue to write the business um if rates are coming down and if i look at the cumulative rates since 2021 i have been broadly flat can you just sort of point to anything that would highlight that the the pricing is still adequate and hence that's why you're looking to still um write that business so that's the first question and then the second one is um what's your expectations for pricing coming into the uh June, July funerals and beyond that over the rest of the year, is no single visit still possible.

Morning, Abbott. So answering the first question, casualty, obviously one's attention is drawn here to the effects of compound rates ahead of inflation movement over the period of time we've been writing the business. So even as we report a net after inflation, a relatively flat level, and bear in mind that's on our renewal book as well. So these are partners we've selected because, frankly, we think they do a good job. So stable rate after net of inflation. It's still a good place to be. It means that they're pricing for inflation. They're dynamically modifying the books of business they write to accommodate inflation. So because it's risk adjusted inside, that is things like deductibles, attachment points, limits deployed. They're all being used as tools and levers by the seeding primary writer to which we would be supporting to manage the appropriate level of risk being taken by them. So, you know, that's still a very positive thing. place to be. And then the growth is coming from, you know, some of these partners are still able to collect more premiums. So risk adjusted rate change, obviously, because we're taking to the effect of inflation, that's not the same as pure rate, which would be an indicator of premium volumes as well. And then the crystal ball piece for June and beyond. I think the market is, you know, the messaging is probably very similar to Q1. I think the mid-year reinsurance market tends to think very strongly around the excess of loss placements and the North Atlantic windstorm season in the U.S., for example. And I would say observations as an industry level are that the concept of hurdle rate remains. I think much like January, capacity was available, but it comes at a level and at a cost. Now, if the original seedants are executing strong business plans and growing their businesses and improving their own margins, then the ability to buy appropriately priced reinsurance, I suppose, works with that as well. So I think it's still a positive relationship between buyer and seller. The market is growing. Exposure is still there. So I imagine the specialists will find opportunities to grow their businesses.

Great. Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Joseph Teans from Autonomous. Please go ahead.

Hi, good afternoon and thank you for taking my questions. Firstly, I wanted to ask if you could elaborate on your comment around April renewals momentum. Was this around sort of growth in premiums or in rates? And if it's sort of focused around rates, does this sort of represent an acceleration in the rates that you posted today? And then following on from that, you made a comment earlier in the call about dampening price effect in property. Can you elaborate on that? Is that going to be across all layers or mostly in top layers? You made a reference in the presentation about how there was increased supply. Um, and then second question, um, sorry, there's a couple in, um, you know, many questions in the first one, but the second main question is on casualty. Um, the amount of sort of revenue recorded, um, Q1 this year relative to the gross premiums in, uh, in the casualty book was kind of meaningfully higher versus last year. Um, can you comment on that? Is that a result of the maturing book? Um, and you know, if so, will this then persist? Um, thanks again.

Morning, Joseph. April renewals, I think the first part of the question was around rate and premium observations. And I would link very closely observations in April to the 1st of January. So if we think of the market in primary terms, and I've talked about the impact of inflation, so partnerships that we've established are constantly aware of inflation and pricing for it and so that does that you know ultimately that creates premium volume growth on the primary side so very much well footprint via quota share follows that very cleanly the excess of loss market is rather more interesting in the fact that growth in underlying premium or subject premium doesn't doesn't necessarily flow through on a linear basis to these excessive loss contracts. So I suppose increased premium growth from a sedent, assuming it's carrying same margin, will increase their own risk appetite and probably changes the way they buy their excessive loss contract. And as the market, as the reinsurance market sells excessive loss contracts, obviously you have rather specialist risk appetites through the industry. And reinsurers have built their businesses to write a particular risk profile. So I think you are getting an interplay there of buyers and sellers having to agree on where they sit on an excess of loss tower. And probably to some of our comments at 1st of January, the upper end of that risk profile, think of that as the lower probability events being high excess. There is probably... more appetite there than at the lower end of the XOL programmes. And that's probably put a little bit more competitive pressure there than otherwise I would continue to observe.

On the casualty one, hi Joe, it's Trevor here. Yeah, it's an interesting observation. Casualty, we're still able to grow that. If you look at the function of how we've operated over the first three years, we've seen an enormous footprint of casualty business. It's really good. It's been a very wide kind of funnel of distribution. We picked our way through that, got a really good core book of business. What's happened is we've reviewed those at subsequent renewals, including this year. We really like what a number of those core clients are doing, and we've been able to increase our shares on those. And probably... Also, having been trading now to our fourth year, the market's understanding a bit more of what we like and what we don't like. So we're tending to see more of the business that's in our sweet spot. So I think it's a combination of those two factors why you're still seeing that growth in the certain parts of our cashier team.

I think also just in terms of how you see coming through the numbers, when you translate from ultimate through to written, to earned and to reinsurance revenue, the casualty book tends to be quite heavy quota shares. So there's more of a lag in terms of the way that that writes and that earns out. That has an impact on how you see the reported numbers as well.

Okay, thank you for that. And if I may just have one quick follow-up question on property. And, you know, just going back to your comment about sort of seeing more capacity in sort of the higher layers. Can you sort of maybe guess or give a reason why maybe there hasn't been this much sort of appetite in the lower layers? Is this something that you're seeing more of? Sort of any comments on the outlet there would be greatly appreciated. Obviously, heading into sort of the mid-year renewal periods. Thank you.

So, sure. I mean, my comments here, you know, we're not a big, big writer of Excessive Lost Cats, so I'm sort of making an observation here at a very industry level. But clearly, there were a period of years where, you know, XOL programs were probably looking a little bit too working generally across the industry. And I think there is a reluctance for reinsurers probably to move too low down in the risk profile because recent memories are that it perhaps didn't produce the margins expected. So the upper layers are obviously generally here, as a general comment, much higher industry losses, but are less probable to be activated by definition. And there is probably more off that limit to go around as well. So there are capacity placements as well. requiring more reinsurance to support them to complete those programs. So you probably get a more stable market dynamic in that area.

Okay. Thank you for your responses.

Your next question comes from the line of Andreas van Ebden from Peel Hunt. Please go ahead.

Yes, thank you. Good afternoon. Just two questions on the casualty book, if I may. You mentioned that the combined ratio, you expect that to remain stable, and you made a comment within your prepared remarks that rate is below inflation and you're sharing that spread between yourselves, the buyer and the seller are sharing that inflation risk. How is that being done? Are you referring to seeding commissions or something else? And then the second question on casualty is maybe for Elaine. Are there any changes in the prudence where you're setting your initial loss picks on the casualty book given the fact that inflation remains high? Are there any changes in the way you're viewing setting those loss picks this year? Thank you.

Good morning, Andreas. If I did question one, yes, in simple terms, yes. As the loss ratio remains stable, rate is still responding to inflation. So the rate per mil, the pure rate... can be pretty significant still, but this is our view of inflation on our renewal book. But the balancing item to a combined ratio, as you quite rightly point out, is most weighted by a seeding commission. And so a stable combined ratio, should a loss ratio pick increase at all, then yes, the balancing item would be a reduced seeding commission. But I would say as a whole, these combined ratios are very stable and i think the reinsurers view of an appropriate seeding commission they it's largely in line between buyer and seller it's sometimes probably misaligned by six to 18 months. So probably one renewal differential sometimes between the two. Both parties need time to adjust their plans accordingly. And if a reinsurer cites a need to move faster than the buyer, then you get a little bit of pressure for a period. But ultimately, everyone's making the same observations on the underlying performance and generally responds fairly well. So yes, I would suggest seeding commissions are more examples of them coming down to balance those combined ratios.

Yeah, I think we could have talked about our timing around the casualty and when we started writing that. So 2021, we were already in an inflationary environment and we've always kind of factored that into how we underwrite the casualty book and reserve it. We do monitor inflation, but it hasn't really driven any changes in terms of how we look at that in the casualty book. As yet, Trevor did talk a little bit earlier about how selective we are in casualties. That's a factor as well. I think, if anything, we've seen favourable trends in the casualty book and we're probably a bit more cautious in terms of realising those and taking account of those underlying trends that we think they were seeing, just given the environment that we're in.

Okay, thank you. And if I could follow up, is there any change in the timing on when you think you would release those favourable developments? Is that according to your previous sort of business plan from last year? Or is there an acceleration? Or are you waiting longer to realise those developments?

In terms of how we look at the duration of our reserves, that hasn't really changed. We've kind of talked in the past of the property being in that one to two year specialty being more kind of three to four ish. and casualties really that five to seven and we are only in year four. So that kind of duration expectation is probably the same.

All right. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of James Pierce from Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Yeah. Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my questions and congratulations on the update today. So pricing still posted in property. I may have historically written more quota share, but has the strong pricing in excess loss reinsurance made it more appealing to grow in XOL? I guess such that the mix arising from excess of loss might start to grow from a premium point of view. And maybe you could just kind of talk about how you're thinking about the relative attractiveness between quota share and excess of loss markets. And then second question, I guess just a follow-up on casualty. Have there been any indications in the market that conditions might start to improve in the near term, which might make it more appealing to deploy additional capital into growing that book? Or is this a little bit further from a pricing point of view? Thank you.

Good morning. Yeah, I mean, our approach to writing in a class-like property, which gives a lot of access to volatility, should you wish to support it, remains very, very stable and very similar to how we've started building the portfolio from day one. You know, the amount of excess of loss for insurance we write does grow as a function of the overall size of our book of business, but we aren't and haven't been looking to change the texture of our portfolio. And that's really key. We've sort of talked about managing volatility and the implications on capital, etc. So we keep a very stable approach to that. Our mix of QuedShare and XOL does remain very stable for that reason. And we're not seeing any significant change in the types of structures and quota shares that exist. A lot of the structured quota shares that we, uh, participated in up to 36 months ago, um, have continued largely to, to renew through. So very happy with the structure of the way we bring exposure in through quota share and XOL. I think the XOL market is probably going to, uh, show a bit more differentiation in risk and pricing by regions and territories around the world over the over the next part of the cycle um it's sort of a natural natural uh evolution um should i take the question yeah sure so yeah just on casualty thanks james um yeah it's interesting there's been uh

some kind of green shoots, if you like, in some of the press around this and some quotes around casualties starting to pick up in certain areas. We've seen some evidence of that in some of the data that's been supplied by clients and some of their narrative. I don't think it's enough to cause us to materially change our direction of travel on casualty. For us, it's a really good, solid, renewing book. We see that as being a strong third leg of the storm for us going forward. But I don't think there's a particular sign or indicator there that would cause us to materially change direction to suddenly start to increase into the casualty space. So it's good to know, it's good to see, it's good to hear. But it's not going to cause us to materially change direction at this stage.

Yeah, that's very clear. Thank you.

And this does conclude our Q&A session. I will now hand over to Trevor Carvey for closing remarks.

Thanks very much. Thanks to everybody for attending today. Just a few comments before we wind up. In our closing slide, we referred to the momentum that we'd seen through the April 1 renewals. Greg referred to that a number of times, and we've certainly seen that. through inter-Q2 and where we are now. So the market is set pretty fair. And I think it's an area where we're now seeing our three divisions all operating, becoming strongly relevant in the market and the impact of them is coming to bear. So we certainly see the market as a good place to be. Yes, we're seeing some signs of the markets. in casualty but it's still at very elevated heights if you consider where the market's come to over the last three to four years so it's still a good place to be and I think as we've referred to it pretty much an underwriter's market still so it's a good place to be and we certainly look forward to trading through this year ahead so thanks very much hopefully we'll see you again 31st of July for our half year results call and thanks again for darning in thanks