Assured Guaranty Ltd.

Good morning and welcome to the Assured Guaranty Limited second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. My name is Kelsey and I will be the operator for today's call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing star then zero on your telephone keypad. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then one again. Please note that this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to our host, Robert Tucker, Senior Managing Director, Investor Relations and Corporate Communications. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and thank you all for joining Assured Guaranty for our second quarter 2026 Financial Results Conference Call. Today's presentation is made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The presentation may contain forward-looking statements about our new business and credit outlooks, market conditions, credit spreads, financial ratings, loss reserves, financial results, or other items that may affect our future results. These statements are subject to change due to new information or future events. Therefore, you should not place undue reliance on them as we do not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise them except as required by law. If you are listening to a replay of this call or if you're reading the transcript of the call, please note that our statements made today may have been updated since this call. Please refer to the investor information section of our website for our most recent presentations and SCC filings, most current financial filings, and for the risk factors. This presentation also includes references to non-GAAP financial measures. We present the GAAP financial measures most directly comparable to the non-GAAP financial measures referenced in this presentation. along with a reconciliation between such GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures in our financial supplement and equity investor presentation which are on our website at AssuredGuaranty.com. Turning to the presentation, our speakers today are Dominic Frederico, President and Chief Executive Officer of Assured Guaranty Ltd., Rob Bailenson, our Chief Operating Officer, and Ben Rosenblum, our Chief Financial Officer. After their remarks, we will open the call to your questions. As the webcast is not enabled for Q&A, please dial into the call if you'd like to ask a question. I will now turn the call over to Dominic.

Thank you, Robert, and welcome to everyone joining today's call. Assured Guaranty had a strong first half of 2026. Additionally, our key valuation metrics of shareholders' equity, adjusted operating shareholders' equity, and adjusted book value per share reached record highs at quarter end. Our new business production continues to deliver solid results, generating $152 million of PVP in the first half, nearly 50% higher than in the first half of 2025, led by our activity in U.S. public finance and global structured finance. Rob will discuss the production details shortly. But briefly, it is worth noting that U.S. public finance and global structured finance produce $32 million and $20 million more, respectively, in PVP than in last year's first half. In our asset management segment, our 12% inception-to-date annualized internal rate of return for all of our alternative investments continues to support our strategic decision to allocate a portion of our investment portfolio to alternative investments. As for our annuity reinsurance platform, we are pleased with the progress we have made and the market reception of Assured Life Free. We are comfortable that we are on track to meet the production and income milestones we set when we launched our annuity reinsurance platform in January. In addition to our new annuity reinsurance business, we remain focused on further growing our financial guarantee business abroad, including Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. while also sustaining our leadership position in U.S. bond insurance. As we stated previously, we are also looking at opportunities that would further optimize our capital structure to reward shareholders, support business growth, and protect policyholders. Over the last few weeks, S&P, KBRA, and Moody's have all affirmed the financial strength ratings of our financial guarantee insurance subsidiaries with stable outlooks. While I won't go into all that was positively highlighted in these reports, it is worth noting that they again discussed our excellent capital and earnings, exceptional liquidity, strong competitive position, and our diversified approach to underwriting, offering us flexibility to pivot toward favorable markets as conditions shift. As we move into the second half of 2026, we expect demand to continue for our core products, and we see attractive prospects for our annuity reinsurance business. We have significant opportunities for substantial future growth and greater revenue diversification. As always, we will maintain disciplined underwriting and risk management to protect our policyholders and prudent competitive pricing for our obligors and for our clients looking to optimize their capital, while focusing on increasing value creation for our shareholders. I will now turn the caller to Rob to provide more details about our production results.