Selective Insurance Group, Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Selective Insurance Group's third quarter 2026 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Brad Wilson, Senior Vice President. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thank you for joining Selective's third quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Yesterday, we posted our earnings press release, financial supplement, and investor presentation on the investor section of Selective.com. A replay of today's webcast will be available there shortly after this call. Joining me are John Marchioni, our Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, and Patrick Brennan, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. They will discuss our results and take your questions. During the call, we will reference non-GAAP measures used by insurance and investment professionals to evaluate financial and operating performance, including operating income, operating return on common equity, and adjusted book value per common share. Reconciliations to the most comparable gap measures are available in our press release and financial supplement on the investor section of Selective.com. We will also make forward-looking statements under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements and projections about future performance are subject to risks and uncertainties that we disclose in our SEC filings. We undertake no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements. Now, I'll turn the call over to John.

Thanks, Brad. We delivered a strong third quarter, highlighted by a 16.9% operating ROE, improved underwriting margins, and excellent net investment income, which increased 16% year-over-year. This was our ninth consecutive quarter of double-digit operating returns, bringing us a 14.3% year-to-date. Our combined ratio of 96.8 improved 1.8 points from a year ago, driven by improvement in standard commercial and personal lines, and E&S delivered an 86.5 combined ratio. Overall, the quarter demonstrated the earning strength of our underwriting and investment operations. We remain focused on generating profitable growth by applying greater pricing and underwriting granularity, improving retention on our best performing business, and increasing new business production in areas that meet our profitability objectives. While executing on these actions to further improve underwriting profitability going forward, we are also laying the foundation for our next phase of growth. In E&S, our retail access initiative has moved from build-out to execution, The structural investments are largely complete, agency appointments and our underwriting model are in place, and early indicators are encouraging. In addition, we are finding opportunities to thoughtfully expand our brokerage appetite to deepen our long-standing wholesale relationships. We believe this combination, strengthening our wholesale distribution while giving our retail partners access to our E&S capabilities, is a long-term growth lever and supports our diversification objectives across products, geographies and segments. In personal lines, profitability in our target mass affluent market continues to improve with our homeowners portfolio gaining traction. Average new business home values remain in excess of $1.1 million for the first nine months of the year and target market business now represents approximately 71% of our homeowners premium. We are focused on growth in our target market where we believe our rates are adequate. Year-to-date, target market homeowners' direct premiums written increased 8%, offset by a 12% decline in the more challenged auto line. Renewal pure price increased 8.1% in the quarter and 9.3% year-to-date with continued refinement of our segmentation strategy. As a result of these actions, the year-to-date underlying combined ratio in personal lines improved by 3.3 points. As we continue to validate our ability to effectively compete in the high net worth market, near-term geographic expansion presents a real opportunity for additional growth potential. In standard commercial lines, we continue to expand our geographic reach with early traction in Montana and Wyoming, where agency engagement has been encouraging. Year-to-date, we appointed 120 new agency locations across our footprint and will continue to identify new agency partners to support diversifying growth. With roughly a 1.5% share of a highly fragmented commercial lines market, our long-term growth potential remains significant, and we remain fully committed to meaningfully expanding our market share when and where margins warrant it. In this environment, with headline rate increases softening, It is imperative to execute with precision. In standard commercial lines, our liability pricing is generally holding up well, even as property pricing tempers. Importantly, the granularity and pace of mix improvement in our renewal portfolio accelerated in the third quarter. Retention in our best performing cohorts remained strong at 90%. while retention in our lowest-performing cohorts, which represented approximately 10% of premium, declined to 52%, down from 79% a year ago. In our lowest-performing cohorts, renewal pure price increased 17.2%, up from 12.8% in the year-ago period. Targeted retention actions in the cohorts expected to perform worse than average contributed five points of the 8% decline in net premiums written. The remaining decline was driven by lower new business. Taken together, we feel good about the combination of rate increases and mix improvement in standard commercial lines and where they stand relative to our view of expected loss trend. We believe these are the right actions to create long-term value. They have reduced near-term premium growth, but we are prioritizing improved underwriting returns over volume. Growth in our industry should be viewed over a longer-term horizon, especially in casualty-driven portfolios. Our commitment to underwriting and pricing discipline throughout the cycle underlies our long-term track record of growth and profitability. With commercial casualty margins across the industry under pressure and market pricing generally below elevated severity trends, we are at a point in the cycle where underwriting and pricing discipline are paramount. Our efforts in the current environment are positioning us to generate strong growth and profitability moving forward. Technology, including artificial intelligence, is an important enabler of both margin improvement and long-term growth. We are moving beyond individual tools towards integrating analytics and decision support directly into underwriting and claims workflows. Our objective is to improve the consistency and quality of decisions while increasing the capacity of our professionals. We are introducing these capabilities in stages, measuring their effectiveness and maintaining appropriate human oversight through our AI and model governance framework. We are also evaluating and deploying AI-assisted software development tools where they can improve productivity and the return on our technology investments. Before turning the call over to Patrick, I'll reinforce the priorities guiding us across the company. First, relentlessly improving the fundamentals across risk selection, individual policy pricing, and claim outcomes. Second, diversifying revenue and income within and across our three insurance segments. And finally, further leveraging data, analytics, and technology, including artificial intelligence, to drive operational efficiency and improved underwriting and claim outcomes. The actions we are taking today strengthen the earning power of our portfolio and position us to deliver long-term value for our policyholders, distribution partners, employees, and shareholders. Now I'll turn the call over to Patrick.