Global Indemnity Group, LLC

the Global Indemnity Group First Quarter 2020 for Earnings Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press the star one again. We will also be taking questions from the webcast. If you'd like to submit a question, please use the Q&A button located at the bottom right of your webcast screen. Thank you. I would like to turn the call over to Steve Rees, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Kathleen. As a reminder, today's conference call is being recorded, as some remarks may contain forward-looking statements. Some of the forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking words. including without limitation, beliefs, expectations, or estimates. We caution you that such forward-looking statements should not be regarded as a representation by us that the future plans, estimates, or expectations contemplated by us will in fact be achieved. Please refer to our annual report on 4 and 10 and our other filings with the SEC for descriptions of the business environment in which we operate and important factors that may materially affect our results. Global Indemnity Group LLC is not under any obligation and expressly disclaims any such obligation to update or alter its forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Mr. Jay Brown, Chief Executive Officer of Global Indemnity.

Thank you, Steve. Good morning, and thank you all for joining us for our first quarter call. I will first provide a few overview comments, and then our new Chief Financial Officer, Brian Riley, will review the financial highlights for our insurance operations. What a difference a year makes. Twelve months ago, we were in the midst of a significant restructuring of our insurance activities. Our then-current results were a mix of ongoing and exited businesses, making it difficult to gauge performance. To assist investors on how to assess our progress, we had reaffirmed a simple set of objectives consisting of three long-term metrics as guidelines for measuring the performance of our ongoing insurance operations. Revenue growth, underwriting performance, and expense management. The metric goal for revenue growth was to achieve a long-term annual average for premium written of plus 10%. For underwriting performance, we want to see a combined ratio in the low 90s. And then to achieve our desired underwriting performance, we need to have a 36% to 37% expense ratio over time given our current mix. As Brian will highlight, We have made substantial progress against these goals, and the comparison to first quarter results from a year ago demonstrates real value creation for our shareholders. In terms of revenues, most of our insurance divisions are tracking against long-term double-digit growth. We expect that the combination of Pan America wholesale commercial, insure tech, and assumed reinsurance will achieve this target. by year end. However, the expansion of our program division remains a work in progress and will lag behind a bit in 2024. Looking at the underlying performance, I was extremely gratified to see a combined ratio of 94.0% for the PEN America segment in the first quarter. This performance was driven by a continuation of achievement of solid casualty loss ratios and a super quarter for property loss ratios. Offsetting this a bit was a higher than target expense ratio of 39.2%. While we have kept our internal costs in check from last year after the dramatic drop we experienced in premium from 2022 to 2023, It will take another couple of years for us to start hitting our long-term targets for expense ratio. This reflects a very conscious decision to maintain our PEN America staff this year at 2023 levels after the substantial reduction from 2022 in order to continue to meet the service needs of our customers. We are also investing heavily in a full digital transformation of our existing technology infrastructure to stay competitive in the markets we serve. We do continue to achieve rate increases that are modestly in excess of our assessment of underlying inflation trends. This should allow us to maintain the consistent long-term loss ratio results we are both currently achieving and having experienced historically. We also continue to deliver outstanding investment returns following the repositioning of our investment portfolio to take advantage of the dramatic increase that has taken place in short-term interest rates. Booked yields should continue to increase modestly throughout the year as roughly half of our existing investments will mature in the next 12 months. I was very pleased with the improved results we saw this quarter. And we'll now turn it over to Brian to provide a more detailed review of the numbers.