International General Insurance Holdings Ltd.

Long-term success in our business depends heavily on consistency and discipline. No matter what is going on in the world around us, this is particularly true for IGI, given the scope of our portfolio, the high severity lines of business we are writing, and our global footprint. value proposition and promise is to provide peace of mind in times of uncertainty, to maximize shareholders' returns over time while being a stable, reliable, and fair partner to our customers. The first quarter of 2026 has certainly seen its fair share of uncertainty with the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. socially, politically, and economically. It is not just impacting the region, but is having global ramifications as well. Already we are hearing insured market loss estimate out upwards of the 3 billion mark. When we established the IGI in Amman, Jordan, almost 25 years ago, Our initial focus was almost exclusively on the Middle East region. It's a region we know and understand well and where our relationships are some of the longest in our history. I'll leave it to Walid to talk more about our Middle East exposures and the dynamics of what is happening in the region. But before I do, I want to reiterate how pleased I am with our performance in the first quarter, notwithstanding the tragic consequences of the war. As we look ahead to our 25th anniversary year in 27, I'm immensely proud of all that we have accomplished at IGI. We are a relatively small player in the global insurance landscape, yet we are definitely punching well above our weight in terms of expertise and execution. This is clearly demonstrated in our financial performance and the significant value that we generate for our shareholders consistently year after year. I will now hand over to Walid to discuss the numbers in more detail and talk about market conditions and our outlook. And I'll remain on the call for any questions at the end.

Good morning. Thank you, Wasif, and thank you all for joining us today. Like Wasif, I'm very pleased with our performance in the first quarter. In the face of increasing competitive pressures and heightened global uncertainty, our results are a clear demonstration of our resilience and also stability. Our diversified platform and strong and consistent execution provide us with a lot of optionality, as we've said in the past, and I truly commend all of our people for their focus and skill in capitalizing on the opportunities that are coming out of this uncertainty. Just turning specifically to the results for the first quarter, I'm going to focus on the key points, the drivers behind the numbers, and then we'll open it up for any questions you may have at the end. And I'll start with some key highlights for the first quarter. We recorded gross written premiums of $197.2 million. That's a 4.5% decline to Q125. reflects our cycle management actions in the face of increasingly tough market conditions we recorded new business across across the poor our portfolio um but it was this was offset somewhat by the non-renewable of some two reinsurance programs um one uh non-renewed which was our decision and the other one where the seed and decided uh to retain and not buy the reinsurance anymore Underwriting income came in at $37.7 million. That's an increase of 35.1% over the first quarter of 2025. And that resulted in a combined ratio of 89.1% for the quarter. That's 5.3 points better than Q1 of last year and in line with our long-term averages. Combined ratio for Q1 includes about $15 million of net losses related to the Middle East conflict, and I'll talk about that more in a moment. Return on average equity was 12.7%, and the core ROE was 14.3%, both also in line with our long-term averages. Book value per share was $15.60. That's a slight decline from year-end 2025. But that includes total capital returned to shareholders of almost $65 million. That made up of $51.5 million in dividends. That includes the special dividend of $1.15 that we paid out in April. And then further share repurchases amounting to just over $13 million. Net premiums earned were $111.2 million, relatively flat with the same period of last year. Combined ratio of 89.1% for the first quarter. That includes 19.2 points of CAAT losses, primarily related to the Middle East war losses, and 29 points of favorable prior year reserve development. That compares to Q1 of last year, where the combined ratio was 94.4%, which included 25 points of accident year CAAT losses, and just under 23 points of favorable reserve development. One thing to point out is that during the first quarter of this year, currency revaluation movements were much less of a feature than some prior quarters, and especially compared to the first quarter of last year. All in, we delivered core operating income of $24.4 million or 56 cents per share for Q1, of this year versus $19.5 million or 42 cents per share for the first quarter of last year. Specifically on our segment results, we'll start off with the short tail segment where conditions continue to be quite mixed. And that's evident in our results for the first quarter. Rates are still adequate overall, but there's a lot of variation in the level of adequacy from one line to another. And I'll expand on this in a few minutes. Top line was down just by 4%. Underwriting income was down considerably year over year, but still in very positive territory at $9.5 million. This in spite of the level of losses related to the war, again amounting to about 15 million, mainly recorded in the political violence line, as well as an energy loss in the Persian Gulf. This ultimately really speaks to how we manage risk and the resilience we've built in our portfolio. In the reinsurance segment, where conditions are becoming more competitive in the business we write, underwriting income was up just under 6% for the first quarter. That's on a lower level of gross within premium and net-earned premiums. As I said, there were two programs we non-renewed. But on the flip side, we're starting to see some decent opportunities in the specialty treaty lines. I'll also talk about that in a moment. Long-tail segment was a bright spot in our segment results. We posted 22% increase in top line driven by new business in most lines, but most notably within the professional indemnity and marine liability lines. You'll recall that this has been the more challenging area of our portfolio for the past two, three years, and where we took the decision to non-renew business with the expectation that in doing so, the overall profitability profile of the segment would improve. Ultimately, underwriting income was up significantly by about $25 million, and that's on a slightly higher net earned premiums due to the higher volume of premiums written. Just quickly to the balance sheet, total assets were $2.1 billion. Total investments in cash, $1.3 billion. Allocation to fixed income securities generated just over 14 million investment income in the first quarter. That's a yield of 4.3%. And the average duration came down very slightly to three and a half years. During Q1, we repurchased a little over 545,000 common shares. Average price per share was $24.11. At the end of the quarter, we had about 4.1 million shares still outstanding under our existing 5 million common share repurchase authorization. Total equity was 653.6 million at the end of the quarter, and that includes the almost 65 million share repurchases, the common share dividend mentioned earlier, including the special that was paid in April. Now, that compares to a total equity of just over $710 million at the end of 2025. Ultimately, we record a return on average equity of 12.7%. And a core operating ROA of 14.3%. So very strong results, especially considering the overall market softening and the heightened level of uncertainty around the globe. Now, before I turn to our market outlook, I'd just like to expand on some of Wasip's comments about the Middle East, as it continues to be an important region for us. And I think that in some pockets, there's still a bit of a perception that IGI is predominantly a Middle Eastern company. Now, in reality, we're a truly global company with a strong presence and understanding of all our markets. Now, that's particularly true in the Middle East through our offices in Amman and Dubai, where we've been serving clients for decades now. Specific losses incurred in the first quarter of the year were primarily in the political violence book and predominantly in the UAE and Bahrain relating to physical damage, as well as the energy loss I mentioned earlier on the upstream side relating to damage to an oil facility in the Persian Gulf. Now, this provides a good pivot for me to turn to our view of the market. the world is clearly a lot more uncertain today than even a year ago. I mean, we're seeing instability in many regions around the world, and this is leading to an interesting dynamic in that we're seeing some decent opportunities come out of this uncertainty and dislocation. Now, it's an unfortunate fact, but the reality of our business, that market corrections and improving conditions only happen after significant loss and tragedy. So what this represents really is a little short-term pain for a longer-term gain. The elevated level of competitive pressure across the market that we talked about on last quarter's call is still very much prevalent, but our vast diversification, broad product offering, global footprint, and the local knowledge that we have provides us with a level of resilience we always say optionality now turning a bit to our geographic markets and the opportunities we're seeing um i'll start with the middle east as i mentioned earlier we've got teams in amman and dubai they work closely with our london teams to capitalize on the opportunities arising from the current dynamic where we're seeing the most opportunity here is obviously in the pb line because that is where the bulk of the losses are, and that's in a market also which is long overdue for a risk-adjusted pricing correction. Pricing is now many, many multiples of where it was before the war. And when I say that, I mean, In some cases, the rate increases we're achieving are amounting to in the thousands of percentage point increases. Policy structures are improving. Limits are shrinking significantly. And where there's historically been an overabundance of Middle East PV capacity, it's now much, much less ample. There's very clearly a changing perception of war risk in the region, and we can capitalize on that effectively and efficiently because we already have the experience, significant experience. We already have the relationships and we have the presence in the region. Now, in other geographic regions like the US, Europe, Asia-Pac, the story is fairly similar to what we've said on prior calls. I'm not going to spend too much time on this, but we're continuing as always to look at these markets in a bigger way and look at new markets at the same time. Now, turning to specific lines of business, I'll start with our reinsurance segment, our treaty portfolio. Margins here are still healthy, but competitive pressures are becoming increasingly prevalent as we've been hearing from everybody else. The opportunities here are more concentrated in specialty treaty lines. And that's where there have been significant losses. So basically marine, energy and terror and political violence. You recall that we added a new senior specialty treaty reinsurance underwriter last October. So we're well positioned at the right time to develop and diversify um this part of the portfolio in our in our long tail segment we continue to be cautiously optimistic as we've been saying for the last couple of quarters um we're seeing some new opportunities and good deal flow and you saw that in our first quarter results especially in the more niche segments like uh uh marine liability uh specifically relating to the baltimore bridge collapse Back in 2024, we've all seen in the news reports that losses are now estimated to be as high, if not excess, $2.8 billion. And that makes it the single largest loss in the history of the marine market. This is upending marine markets globally, particularly the liability side. I want to be clear that IGI doesn't expect any material change in our loss estimates related to this event. that we recorded two years ago. Instead, I think this is very clearly an opportunity for us to capitalize on improved pricing and demand for capital to grow and expand that direct liability book. We've already seen some of that in 2026, and it's widely expected that renewal rates for the remainder of this year and into 2027 will continue to improve. Now turning to our short-tail portfolio, Already spoken about PV, short tail marine lines like cargo and specifically cargo war and war on land. We're seeing some positive traction coming out of the war in the Middle East in these areas. Our energy book and certain areas of our property book, two of our largest lines are clearly tougher than a year ago. And even since the beginning of this year, we've seen those competitive pressures further increase to the point of honestly being quite irrational in some cases. Having said that, we continue to see relatively healthy conditions in the more specialist lines like construction and engineering, a continued excellent deal flow, and contingency also continues to be a bright spot. And that's a book that continues to grow for us. So definitely some very good opportunities in the pipeline for us. And this is in spite of the competitive pressures in some of the pockets we spoke about. I mean, but that of course is the nature of our business in the context of our size, breadth of offering, global footprint, financial strength, and ultimately the expertise of our people. it is a little easier for us to move the dial and write new healthy margin business. We've got a lot of levers to work with, and we're in the position we need to be in right now to take advantage of the opportunities in front of us. Now, the underpinning of our strategy and what our track record is built upon, as we've always said, is our disciplined execution. This is embedded in our DNA. We're a resilient company with an almost a quarter of a century history of consistency and stability. Our position in the market is much stronger today, and we've shown that we won't compromise on our principles or values under pressure. We've demonstrated clearly that we're not afraid to say no when business doesn't meet our terms or profitability thresholds, and we won't, under any circumstances, sacrifice the bottom line to benefit the top line. Our focus is on intelligence risk selection, paying attention to the small print and being aware of what's going on around us. It's embedded in our corporate culture. So we will continue to do what we do best, and that is to deliver on our promise of being a fair partner to all our stakeholders while generating superior value for our shareholders. So I'm going to pause here and we will turn it over for questions. Operator, we're ready to take the first question, please.

Thank you. We'll now begin the question and answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. And if you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, press star one again. We will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question comes from the line of Roland Mayer with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.