International General Insurance Holdings Ltd.

Good day and welcome to the International General Insurance Holdings Limited fourth quarter and full year 2021 financial results conference call. All participants will be in a listen only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on a touch tone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Robin Sitters, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good morning and welcome to today's conference call. Today we'll be discussing our fourth quarter and full year 2021 financial results. You will have seen our results press release, which we issued last night after the market closed. If you'd like a copy of the press release, it's available on our website at www.iginsure.com. We've also posted a supplementary investor presentation, which can be found on our website on the Presentations page in the Investors section. On today's call are Wasif Jobche, Chairman and CEO, Waleed Jobche, President, and Pervez Rizvi, Chief Financial Officer. Wasif will begin the call with some high-level comments before handing over to Waleed to talk you through the results for the fourth quarter and full year 2021 in more detail, and also giving some insight into current market conditions and our outlook for the remainder of 2022. At this point, we'll open the call up for Q&A. I'll begin with the customary disclaimer language. Our speaker's remarks may contain forward-looking statements. Some of the forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking words. We caution you that such forward-looking statements should not be regarded as a representation by us that future plans, estimates, or expectations contemplated by us will in fact be achieved. Forward-looking statements involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. Actual events or results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements due to a variety of factors including the risk factors set out in the company's annual report on Form 20F for the year ended December 31st, 2020, the company's reports on Form 6K, and other filings with the SEC, as well as our earnings press release issued yesterday evening. We undertake no obligation to update or revise publicly any forward-looking statements which speak only as of the date they are made. In addition, we use some non-IFRS financial measures in this conference call. For a reconciliation of these measures to the nearest IFRS measures, please see our earnings release, which has been filed with the SEC and is available on our website. I'll now turn the call over to our Chairman and CEO, Wasif Jobche.

Thank you, Robin, and good day, everyone. Thank you for joining us on today's call. We ended 2021 with a very strong fourth quarter, making the year an excellent one on virtually all metrics, including record underwriting results and profit. We grew our growth premiums by more than 60% on the back of roughly 34% growth in 2020, and have now comfortably crossed the half billion dollar threshold. We generated a core operating earnings return on average equity of 13.7% for the fourth quarter and 13.6% for the year. And we grew our book value per share more than 5%. I would note that in the seven quarters of reporting as a public company, we have grown our book value per share by 19.2%. Stepping back for a moment, I want to comment on the track record we have built over the past two decades. 2021 marks 20 years since IGI was established in Amman, Jordan, with just three people and business dominantly centered around Middle East region, energy, and engineering markets. Today, we are close to 300 people across six offices, writing more than 20 specialty lines of business in every major market worldwide. And in March 2020, we became a US publicly traded company listed on NASDAQ. Though we are still relatively new to the public company and insurance.