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.