Assurant, Inc.

Hello, and good day. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the second quarter 2021 conference call and webcast. At this time, all participants have been placed in listen-only mode, and the floor will be open for questions in the following minutes to prepare remarks. If you'd like to ask a question at this time, please press star 1 on your telephone pushpad. If at any time your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing 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 Shepherd, Senior Vice President of Industrial Relations and Sustainability. You may begin.

Thank you, Operator, and good morning, everyone. We look forward to discussing our second quarter 2021 results with you today. Joining me for Assurance Conference call are Alan Kohlberg, our Chief Executive Officer, Keith Demings, our President, and Richard Jajo, our Chief Financial Officer. Yesterday, after the market closed, we issued a news release announcing our results for the second quarter of 2021. The release and corresponding financial supplement are available on Assurance.com. We'll start today's call with remarks from Alan, Keith, and Richard before moving into a Q&A session. Some of the statements made today are 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 report. 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 information 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. We are very pleased with our second quarter results. Our performance so far this year across our global lifestyle and global housing businesses demonstrates the power of our strategy to support consumers' connected lifestyle and continues to give us strong confidence in the future growth prospects for Assurant. Prior to reviewing our progress against our 2021 financial objectives, I wanted to take a moment to express my deep gratitude to our employees around the world. specifically for their continued dedication and support for all of Assurance stakeholders during my tenure as CAO and especially over the last 18 months of the pandemic. Our talent is a great enabler of our company's growth and progress, and Keith Demme's appointment as my successor is evidence of that. With a 25-year-long career at the company, Keith has a clear track record of success and personifies the values and integrity that are emblematic of assurance culture, and it's a natural choice as our next CEO. His deep operational experience and strong engagement with clients has been instrumental in guiding assurance growth across the enterprise. As CEO, Keith will drive innovation through our connected world and specialty P&C businesses. The completion of the sale of global pre-need to CUNA Mutual Group marks another important milestone for Assurant, as it enables our organization to further deepen our focus on our market-leading lifestyle and housing businesses. I would like to thank all of our former pre-need employees who have transitioned to CUNA Mutual Group for their tremendous support to Assurant and our clients and policyholders. As we look to the convergence of the connected mobile device, car, and home, we believe our connected living, global automotive, and multifamily housing businesses will continue their compelling history of strong growth into the future. Not only do our connected world businesses have a history of profitable growth, more than tripling earnings over the last five years, we're also characterized by partnerships with leading global brands. broad multi-channel distribution that provides consumers with choice value and exceptional service and a track record of innovative offerings that have become industry standards esg is core to our strategy ensuring we build a more sustainable assurance for all of our stakeholders focusing on talent products and climate During the quarter, we continue to advance our ESG efforts as we work to create an even more diverse, equitable, and inclusive culture that promotes innovation, enhances sustainability, and minimizes our carbon footprint. We recently completed our 2021 CDP Climate Survey, our sixth annual scoring submission, expanding this year to include scope-free greenhouse gas emissions across several categories. The CDP survey is an important climate change assessment, which many of our key stakeholders rely on each year. Our efforts have led to recognition that we're proud of. During the quarter, Assurant was recognized as a 2021 honoree of the Civic 50 by Points of Light, distinguishing Assurant as one of the 50 most community-minded companies in the U.S. We are proud of our progress and believe the future of Assurant is bright. Together, lifestyle and housing should continue to drive above-market growth and superior cash flow generation with the ability to outperform in a wide spectrum of economic scenarios and ultimately continue to create greater shareholder value over time. Year-to-date, excluding reportable catastrophes, net operating income per share was $6.02, up 14% from the first half of last year. and net operating income was $366 million, an increase of 13%. Adjusted EBITDA increased 12% to $600 million. These results support our full-year outlook of 10% to 14% growth in net operating income per share, excluding affordable catastrophes. While we expect earnings growth in the second half on a year-over-year basis, our outlook for the full year assumes a decline in earnings from the first half. Reflecting increased investments to support long-term growth in our connected world businesses, lower investment income, and increased corporate and other expenses due to timing of spending. Turning to capital, from 2019 through June of this year, we've returned to shareholders over 88% or almost $1.2 billion of our three-year $1.35 billion objective. In July, we were purchased an additional 737,000 shares for $115 million and declared our quarterly common stock dividend for the third quarter, essentially completing our objective when paid. In addition to completing this objective, we expect to return $900 million in net proceeds from the sale of global pre-need within the next 12 months, and therefore expect buybacks to continue at a higher than usual level throughout the remainder of the year and into 2022. I'll now turn the call over to Keith to review our key Connect to the World highlights for the quarter. Keith? Thank you, Alan, and good morning, everyone. I wanted to begin by expressing my thanks to Alan for his steadfast leadership and the successful transformation of Assurant since becoming CEO at the beginning of 2015. Through his strategic vision and intense focus on the evolving needs of our clients and end consumers, Alan and our team have solidified market-leading positions in our connected world and specialty P&C businesses, helped Assurant establish a strong growth, capital-light, service-oriented business model where our connected world offerings now comprise approximately two-thirds of our segment earnings, and ultimately work together to unlock the power of our Fortune 300 organization. prioritizing resources against initiatives with the highest growth potential and standing up key enterprise capabilities and functions, which we can now leverage across our growing client and customer base. As a result, Assurant is on track to deliver our fifth consecutive year of strong, profitable growth. As I continue to work closely with Allen over the coming months, I'm also engaging with many of our key stakeholders. including shareholders and analysts who have shared valuable perspectives as we define our multi-year plan. As I identify key focus areas, I will prioritize developing and recruiting top talent, investing strategically to sustain and accelerate growth through product innovation and new distribution models, differentiating us further from our competition through continuous improvement in our customer service delivery, and supporting the investment community in better understanding our portfolio as we look to drive further value creation. Our long-term goal will continue to be to deliver sustained growth and value to all of our stakeholders. Our ability to deliver on these ambitions will require additional innovation and investments to ultimately provide a superior customer experience and deepen our client relationships. Innovation will continue to be a key differentiator for Assurant, especially as we evolve with the convergence of the connected consumer. As part of our ongoing commitment to delivering a superior customer experience with a range of service delivery options, we'll be further building out our same-day service and repair capabilities for which there is growing demand. This requires upfront investments, which we expect to accelerate in the second half of this year as we look to provide additional choice and convenience for the end consumer. These investments are critical to sustain our competitive advantage in markets like the U.S. As we look to continue our culture of innovation, you may have seen we recently announced two key leadership changes to support those efforts. Manny Becerra, a 31-year veteran of Assurant who was instrumental in driving the growth of our mobile business, was appointed to the newly created role of Chief Innovation Officer. Given his many contributions to our success, including the development of our mobile protection and trade and upgrade business, he will bring dedicated resources to accelerate innovation across the enterprise to capitalize on the rapid convergence across our home, automotive, and mobile products. Bijou Mehra will now lead our connected living business as its president. His strong track record of delivering profitable growth and client service excellence combined with his depth of experience particularly as the former ceo of hyla mobile make him the perfect choice a prime example of how innovation has allowed us to deepen and expand client relationships as well as create new revenue streams is our long-standing partnership with t-mobile Over the past eight years, we have worked together to offer their customers innovative device protection, trade-in and upgrade programs, while further developing our supply chain services to support their mobile ecosystem. We are happy to announce that T-Mobile has extended our partnership as their device protection provider. While we are currently finalizing contract terms, we are excited about the multi-year extension of our relationship and our ability to continue to expand our services to deliver a superior customer experience. In addition to our innovation efforts, our investments over the past several years have supported our growth through the success of new and strengthened client relationships. After an initial investment in 2017, this quarter we purchased the remainder of Olivar, a provider of mobile device lifecycle management and asset disposition services in South Korea. While small in size, this acquisition enhances our global asset disposition capabilities and deepens our footprint in the Asia-Pacific region, while complementing the recent acquisitions of Allegra in Australia and Hyla Mobile. These investments have enhanced our technology, operational capabilities, and partnerships in the trade and an upgrade market, positioning us to capitalize on the 5G upgrade cycle over the next several years. Already this year, the growing availability of 5G smartphones, combined with trade and promotions, demonstrate increasing momentum for the upgrade cycle. For carriers, retailers, OEMs, and cable operators, 5G offers an opportunity to drive additional revenue and gain market share. Strong trade and upgrade promotions have also led to higher trade-in volumes for Assurant, as well as higher net promoter scores and net subscriber growth within our client base. Our focus on our client relationships combined with our willingness to innovate to enhance the end consumer experience continues to create momentum for our businesses. Over the last few months, we have delivered several new partnerships and renewals throughout the enterprise, including the renewal of two key European mobile clients representing 700,000 subscribers, renewal of eight global automotive partnerships, representing over 10 million policies across our distribution channels. Renewal of three multi-family housing property management companies, including two of the largest in the U.S., as we continue to grow the rollout of our Cover360 product. Renewal of three clients and two new partnerships in LenderPlace, as we provide critical support for the U.S. mortgage market. In summary, I am very excited to lead our 14,000 employees into the future and build on the tremendous momentum created under Allen's leadership. I'll now turn the call over to Richard to review the second quarter results and our 2021 outlook. Richard?