Assurant, Inc.

Welcome to Assurance Second Quarter 2019 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. At this time, all participants have been placed in a listen-only mode and the floor will be open for your questions following management's prepared remarks. If you would like to ask a question at that time, please press star 1 on your touchtone phone. If at any point your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing the pound key. We ask that you please pick up your handset to allow Optimal sound quality. Lastly, if you should require operator assistance, please press star zero. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to Suzanne Shepard, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Thank you, Christina, and good morning, everyone. We look forward to discussing our second quarter 2019 results with you today. Joining me for Assurance Conference Call are Alan Kohlberg, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Richard Jajjo, our Chief Financial Officer. Yesterday, after the market closed, we issued a news release announcing our results for the second quarter of 2019. The release and corresponding financial supplement are available on Assurance.com. We'll start today's call with brief remarks from Alan and Richard before moving into a Q&A session. Some of the statements made today may be forward-looking. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated by these statements. Additional information regarding these factors can be found in yesterday's earnings release as well as in our SEC reports. During today's call, we will refer to non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe are important in evaluating the company's performance. For more details on these measures, the most comparable gap measures, and a reconciliation of the two, please refer to yesterday's news release and financial supplement. I will now turn the call over to Alan.

Thanks, Suzanne. Good morning, everyone. Our second quarter results surpassed our expectations as mobile benefited from increasing customer demand for our differentiated offerings. Global Lifestyle's strong performance more than offset elevated non-catastrophe loss experience in global housing and modestly higher corporate expenses. This quarter, we continue to leverage our market-leading positions and deep consumer insights to deliver value for customers, along with double-digit earnings growth and strong cash flows. In Global Lifestyle, we were pleased to see earnings up 33% organically, as connected living earnings nearly doubled in the quarter. New programs and client partnerships implemented over the last two years continue to ramp up, driving an 11% increase in covered mobile devices year over year. We now support over 48 million mobile customers globally. Overall, mobile has been a strong performer. Since the fourth quarter of 2017, we've brought on eight new partners, accounting for almost 7 million covered mobile devices, and have expanded several relationships through additional offerings. We have multiple new opportunities on the horizon, which bodes well for our continued growth, but will require increased investments, which Richard will discuss later. Also within Connected Living, we officially launched Metro by T-Mobile's premium handset protection on July 1st. Starting in the third quarter, this will add several million subscribers to our mobile device count, and once fully implemented, will make us the exclusive provider of device protection to all T-Mobile customers. Turning to the warranty group, we're very pleased to have delivered on our operating synergy commitment of $60 million pre-tax on a run rate basis for the acquisition. This milestone comes two quarters ahead of schedule as we have moved swiftly to integrate the business over the last year, optimizing our global operations while strengthening our client relationships. In global housing, we saw continued success in multifamily housing as we grew within both our Affinity and PMC partners, and benefited from higher penetration rates through our new point of lease billing and tracking platform. The implementation of our enhanced integrators renters platform progressed with over 20 clients now active. We've also expanded existing relationships with several of the largest property management companies in the U.S. through our differentiated offerings. In the quarter, we further strengthened our leading lender place franchise by renewing several more partnerships, including three of the top 10 mortgage servicers in the US. With our focus on operational excellence and the customer experience, we made good progress on the rollout of our dynamic claims fulfillment across all global housing lines of business. This expedites claims adjudication by reducing time to review and pay claims, as well as simplifying the overall customer experience. The quarter was also characterized by higher non-catastrophe weather losses, a trend seen across the industry. In addition, these weather trends and overall elevated claims in our small commercial products lowered housing results. We believe these higher claims in small commercial could continue throughout 2019, and we've adjusted our outlook for housing accordingly. Our long-term view of the business remains unchanged. And we believe we will generate a 17% to 20% operating ROE, including an average expected catload. Turning to global pre-need, we produced strong earnings as we generated solid returns and cash flows. Face sales hit another all-time high of $273 million, benefiting from the expansion of new distribution partners. This gives us confidence that we can sustain an above-market operating ROE of 13% in global pre-need over the long term. Looking at overall assurance results for the first half of 2019, we reported net operating earnings per share, excluding catastrophes, of $4.62, an increase of 9% from the first half of 2018. This was driven by strong earnings growth, partially offset by the impact of shares issued last year related to our TWG acquisition. Net operating income, also excluding catastrophes, was up 25% to $293 million, mainly from TWG contributions, including realized synergies, as well as significant organic mobile growth. At the end of June, holding company liquidity totaled $386 million after returning $88 million to shareholders. For the full year of 2019, we continue to expect double-digit earnings growth, as well as operating earnings per share to increase 6% to 10%. This compares to the $8.65 we reported in 2018. Significant profitable growth in mobile, continued earnings expansion in auto and multifamily housing, as well as disciplined capital deployment will be key drivers. Strong performance in global lifestyle, even after including the increased investments to support growth, should help offset the higher non-CAC claims in global housing. Overall, we believe we will deliver strong results in 2019. with an attractive business portfolio that should continue to produce more diversified, higher-quality earnings. This will allow us to continue making investments to accelerate our innovation for the connected consumer, improve the customer experience, and sustain our track record of returning excess capital to shareholders over the long term. I'll now turn the call over to Richard to review segment results and our 2019 outlook in greater detail. Richard?