Assurant, Inc.

welcome to assurance third quarter 2021 conference call and webcast at this time all participants have been placed in a lesson only mode and the floor will be open for questions following management's prepared remarks if you would like to ask a question at that time please press star 1 on your touchstone 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 Shepherd, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Sustainability. You may begin.

Thank you, Operator, and good morning, everyone. We look forward to discussing our third 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 third quarter 2021. The released 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 these statements made today are forward-looking. Forward-looking statements are subject to risk, 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 detail 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 double-digit operating earnings growth and global lifestyle the strength of our global automotive and connected living offerings continue to validate our long-term strategy of focusing on our higher growth fee-based and capital life businesses we continue to make progress in building a more sustainable company for all stakeholders during the quarter a few key highlights included For the first time, Assurant was awarded a bronze accreditation by Echobotis, one of the largest sustainability ratings companies, ranking Assurant among the top 50% of all 75,000 participating companies. In addition, this quarter we provided additional transparency to track our progress on our journey to build a more diverse and inclusive Assurant. With the recent disclosure of our EEO1 report, which provides gender, race, and ethnicity data by job category for our U.S.-based employees. We believe a diverse and inclusive workforce will best foster innovation, a key ingredient to sustaining our outperformance longer term. Looking at our financial performance year-to-date, net operating income per share, excluding reportable catastrophes, was $8.75, up 12% compared to the first nine months of last year. Net operating income and adjusted EBITDA, also excluding CATS, both increased by 10% to $528 million and $862 million, respectively. These results support our full-year outlook of 10% to 14% growth in net operating income per share, excluding reportable catastrophes, marking our fifth consecutive year of strong, profitable growth. Given year-to-date results and our expectations for the fourth quarter, we would expect to end the year closer to the top half of this range. We've also now completed our three-year $1.35 billion capital return objective from our 2019 investor day, a quarter ahead of schedule. Following the close on the sale of global pre-need in August, we've also made meaningful progress in returning an additional $900 million to shareholders. Our 2021 EPS outlook is driven by at least high single-digit net operating income growth, excluding caps, as well as share repurchases. Turning to our business performance and global lifestyle, we are on track to grow Adjusted EBITDA by double digits in 2021 from $637 million in 2020, driven by global automotive and connected living. we have benefited from the stable recurring revenue stream of our installed base of mobile subscribers and our success in launching additional offerings and capabilities for our mobile carrier, cable operator, OEM and retail clients globally. Additionally, our mobile trade in and upgrade business and expanded service delivery options are increasingly important to our profitability and also in providing a differentiated and superior customer experience. Within global automotive, we've benefited from increased scale, growing the number of vehicles we protect by 20%, over 52 million since the warranty group acquisition in 2018. We believe auto will continue to be one of our key growth businesses in the future. In global housing, we continue to be on track for another year of better than market returns, with an annualized operating ROE of nearly 15% for the first nine months of this year. This includes $113 million of catastrophe losses, which further demonstrates the superior returns of this differentiated business. Our counter-cyclical LenderPlace insurance business remains an integral part of the mortgage industry framework in the U.S. Within LenderPlace, as we renew existing clients and add new partners, we will continue to enhance the experience through the ongoing rollout of our single-source processing platform. Our multifamily housing business now supports over 2.5 million renters across the U.S., and has more than doubled earnings since 2015 through our strong partnerships with our Affinity and property management company clients. Our investments in digital capabilities, such as our Cover360 property management solution, continues to drive more value for our partners and an enhanced customer experience. Overall, we believe our portfolio of high-growth, fee-based, capital-light offerings and high-return specialty P&C businesses sets us apart as a long-term outperformer and sustained value creator for our shareholders. With my retirement at year-end, I wanted to take this opportunity to thank all of our stakeholders that have supported Assurance's strategic vision and path over the last seven years. Most of all, I'm humbled by our 15,000 employees who through their dedication to serve our clients and our 300 million customers worldwide have successfully transformed Assurant. Together, we have significantly strengthened our Fortune 300 company that should continue to deliver above-market growth and superior cash flow. With our president, Keith Deming, succeeding me as CEO in January, I'm confident Assurant will accelerate our strategy and continue to differentiate our superior customer experience while further deepening client relationships. I'll now turn the call over to Keith to review our key business highlights in greater detail for the quarter. Keith?