Lancashire Holdings Limited

Hello and welcome to the Lancashire Holdings Limited first quarter 2026 earnings call. Throughout the call, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. And afterwards, there will be a question and answer session. The speakers today will be Alex Maloney, Group CEO, Natalie Kershaw, Group CFO, and Paul Gregory, Group CEO. I will now hand the call over to Alex.

Thank you, operator.

Good morning everyone. We will follow our usual process this morning. I'll keep it brief and give you my thoughts on the quarter. I'll then hand over to Paul for underwriting summaries and then Natalie for the finance part and then we will then take your questions. I want to start by saying that it's been another excellent quarter for Lancashire where we affirm our guidance for a high teens ROE for the 2026 year. Amidst elevated geopolitical tensions, our business continues to perform strongly, reflecting our prudent strategy. To remind you, we've set out to continue to grow ahead of rate and deliver more sustainable returns for our investors across the cycle. Our track record of delivery supports this, with three consecutive years above 20% ROEs and on average returning 100% of earnings to shareholders. and that's exactly what we're still doing. Firstly, adjusting for reinstatement premiums of last year, our premiums grew ahead of rate again. As we said at the last conference call, the market is getting more competitive, but it's still a profitable one. In that context, our excellent underwriting team worked hard to ensure we retained the business we wanted to retain and grew where appropriate. At the same time, we pulled back where appropriate reducing our retrocession book again as we flagged at our last conference call. The market has remained competitive, but our proven discipline management of the underwriting cycle continues to serve us well. Second, whilst there were no big sticker industry loss events in the quarter, the overall claims environment for the industry remains active. Our own loss experience has been benign. But this environment makes it all the more important to navigate this stage of the cycle with care. Turning to investments, our team navigated a tough market of their own. In light of the heightened uncertainty and volatility, our resilient investment portfolio delivered what it's designed to do in the quarter. And finally, our focus remains firmly on delivering sustainable returns across the cycle. Supported by active capital management, Disciplined underwriting and a conservative investment portfolio and a strong balance sheet all support our goals. To that end, our ROE guidance for this year remains in the high teens. I'll now hand over to Paul to take you through some of the details of our underwriting activities.