Assurant, Inc.

Welcome to Assurance third 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'd like to ask a question at that time, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. If at any point your question has been answered and you wish to remove yourself from the queue, please press 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, Jack, and good morning, everyone. We look forward to discussing our third quarter 2019 results with you today. Joining me for Assurance conference call are Alan Kohlberg, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Richard Jajo, our Chief Financial Officer. Yesterday, after the market closed, we issued a news release announcing our results for the third quarter 2019. The release and corresponding financial supplement are available on Assurant.com. We'll start today's call with brief remarks from Alan and Richard before moving on to 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 GAAP 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 third quarter results were strong, driven by continued momentum in our global lifestyle business, where earnings increased 35% year over year. Growth was mainly driven by mobile, which benefited from new and existing clients. We now support 52 million mobile subscribers, an increase of 18% year over year. At the same time, we invested in our business to support the launch of new offerings and client programs. while expanding our infrastructure to support future growth. These investments, which will continue into the fourth quarter, will help sustain double-digit earnings expansion and strong cash flows long term. In the third quarter within Global Lifestyle, we launched a new partnership in Japan with Rakuten, a large e-commerce retailer. We are now providing mobile device protection for their existing and expanding mobile networks. Given our shared commitment to provide a superior customer experience, our offering also includes a fully digital claims experience and a rapid four-hour mobile delivery service. In the US, we renewed our 13-year partnership with DISH Network to continue to provide extended service contract protection for satellite receivers and set-top boxes. These partnerships are a testament to our differentiated capabilities lessons we've made to drive more value to our partners and better experiences for their customers. Our market success with new and long-term clients positions us well to play a key role in the connected living ecosystem, supporting mobile carriers, OEMs, and cable and satellite operators. As we look to further enhance the customer experience, last week we announced our acquisition of CPR, a leading provider of local device repair services. With more than 700 franchise stores globally, this investment broadens our fulfillment options, providing customers increased choice through same-day repair options. Longer term, we believe we can drive incremental revenue growth and operational efficiencies as we cross-sell protection programs and other services. In global automotive, we remain focused on identifying opportunities to leverage our leadership position to scale in key global markets. In China, We recently refocused our operations to capitalize on the sizable auto opportunity, including the growing electric vehicle market. This includes a new partnership with the leading Chinese OEM focused solely on electric vehicles. This supports the expansion of our auto business globally while also gaining further insights into the evolving electric vehicle market. Overall, our offerings and new partnerships support our Investor Day objectives for Global Lifestyle. We believe that we can grow net operating income in the segment by at least 10% on average from 2019 to 2021 and continue to produce strong cash flows. Moving to global housing, I'd like to start by thanking all of our employees who supported our policyholders during Hurricane Dorian and Tropical Storm Imelda. As we pre-announced, we incurred $36 million of after-tax losses, mainly related to those events. Our relentless focus on customer service remains a competitive differentiator. This quarter within our lender place business, we renewed another three client partnerships accounting for 3 million track loans. Looking at the past year, we've now renewed client relationships representing more than half of our track loans, further solidifying the strength of our franchise. Overall for the segment, we are focused on continuing to deliver strong cash flows and better than market return on equity. targeting between 17% to 20% return on equity with an average CAT load. This will be supported by the expansion of our specialty property offerings, including multifamily housing. Turning to global pre-need, we produce strong earnings, excluding a one-time adjustment, which Richard will detail later. Pre-need assets are up 4% year over year, reflecting growth in phased sales. Additionally, we have seen a shift to a multi-pay mix of business, which will further strengthen our ability to sustain solid returns and cash flows. We remain confident that we can deliver above-market operating return on equity of 13% long-term. Looking at our key financial metrics of the first nine months of 2019, net operating income, excluding catastrophes, was up 17% to $435 million, mainly from TWG contributions, including realized synergies, as well as significant organic growth. We also reported net operating earnings per share, excluding catastrophes, of $6.96, an increase of 9% year over year. This was driven by strong earnings growth, partially offset by the impact of shares issued last year for the TWG acquisition. At the end of September, holding company liquidity totaled $385 million after returning $103 million to shareholders in the quarter. Through the end of the third quarter, we returned a total of $279 million to shareholders. Year to date, we're pleased with our progress against our 2019 commitments. For the full year, we still expect earnings per share growth between 6% to 10% compared to 2018. We remain confident in our ability to deliver on our Investor Day objectives, to expand earnings by double digits, drive strong cash flow, and return $1.35 billion to shareholders through 2021. To best ensure that we deliver on these commitments, we're focused on a few critical multi-year priorities, our people, customer experience, and innovation. Our people are and always will be central to our success, and we will stay focused on finding ways to attract, retain, and further develop our top talent and strengthen our culture around the world. Customer experience remains a key competitive differentiator for our organization. Our focus will be on finding new ways, whether through technology, new offerings, or other means, to raise the bar on the experience we create and deliver to end consumers. Doing so will also result in deeper relationships with our key clients, particularly in global mobile, auto, and multifamily housing. And lastly, innovation. We will put even greater emphasis on driving how we will innovate across our business to support the ever-connected lifestyle of consumers globally. I'll now turn the call over to Richard to review segment results in our 2019 outlook in greater detail. Richard?