Lancashire Holdings Limited

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Lancashire First Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. At this time, all lines are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. If anyone has any difficulties hearing the conference, please press star zero for operator assistance at any time. I would now like to turn the conference over to Alex Maloney. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining our call today. As always, I will give some brief highlights on the progress of the business so far. Paul will then focus on the underwriting trends. Natalie will cover the high-level financials, and then we will go to Q&A. There's no question that the broader macro and geopolitical environment is uncertain. The impact of these is relatively modest for Lancashire, but in some instances may create some opportunities. Against the backdrop, I'm pleased that we're in great shape to weather this environment and continue delivering against our core strategic objectives. Number one, the insurance market remains favourable. With slight softening from the peak of 2024, as I've said before, we leave with underwriting and we continue to grow whilst the cycle is supportive of strong returns for our investors. And that's what we did in Q1. growing ahead of rate with an underlying premium growth of around 7%. Paul will talk a bit more about this shortly. We continue to actively manage our capital and risk exposures in order to deliver attractive, less volatile returns through the cycle. You saw this with an active Q1 and California wildfires. Even if we assume a severe loss scenario for 2025 from this point on, we would still deliver healthy returns for our investors. We are a people business. We invest in our people and we promote internal talent when the opportunity arrives. To that end, in March 2025, we announced 45 promotions over the previous 12 months, demonstrating the breadth of talent across the business. Also, you will see us to continue to build out our US platform, looking to attract and retain the best talent that fits with our culture. As I've said before, I'm extremely pleased at this stage in the cycle that we have a healthy balance sheet which will allow us plenty of flexibility to underwrite the opportunities we see. The quality of the business we've built and the talent we have in the organisation together mean we'll continue to deliver on our strategy of delivering more sustainable returns for our shareholders. I will now hand over to Paul to talk through the underwriting trends.

Thanks, Alex. Good afternoon, everyone. Underwriting conditions in the first quarter have very much been in line with the expectations we described on our year-end call in March. We anticipated 2025 to be the first year since 2017 to see marginal rate softening from an exceptionally strong level. The RPI of 97% in Q1 is reflective of exactly this. Overall, we remain constructive on the underwriting outlook. As is always the case, each product line has its own specific dynamics. Some discrete segments did achieve rate increases in Q1, as did loss affected business, though we are seeing competitive pressures of varying degrees. Importantly, we are not seeing a major shift in terms and conditions. We fully expect these market conditions to continue through 2025, absent any significant market or macroeconomic events that limits the availability of capital or the willingness to deploy available capital. Most importantly, rate inadequacy remains healthy for the majority of product lines, given that we have been through seven years of positive rate momentum. This is why we are still prepared to grow our underwriting footprint, albeit at a slower rate than seen in recent years. For 2025, we have guided for low single digit growth for gross written premiums. This takes into account a marginally negative rating environment offset by continued build out of certain areas of our business, such as our new US platform. In Q1, underlying growth when excluding the impact of inward reinstatement premiums is approximately 6.6%. We're very pleased with this growth and have been successful in growing in segments such as specialty reinsurance and as already mentioned the further development of Lancashire US. Our plan is to continue to build out product lines of our US platform which thus far have been focused on excess and surplus property and energy casualty. We have recently hired an underwriter to start underwriting a general casualty insurance portfolio and this will commence later in the year. We continue to look to add additional product lines to the US platform as long as we can find the right underwriting talent, one that will align with our company and underwriting culture. Given the strong start to the year and current market conditions, we remain very comfortable with our guidance of low single-digit premium growth for the year. I'll now pass over to Natalie.