Axis Capital Holdings Limited

Good morning and welcome to the fourth quarter 2019 Access Capital Earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. 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 two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Matt Rorman, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Andrew. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm happy to welcome you to our conference call to discuss our financial results for Axis Capital for the fourth quarter and year ended December 31st, 2019. Our earnings press release and financial supplement were issued yesterday evening after the market closed. If you'd like copies, please visit the information section of our website. We set aside an hour for today's call, which is also available as an audio webcast through the investor information section of our website. With me today are Albert Benchemal, our president and CEO, and Peter Vogt, our CFO. Before I turn the call over to Albert, I'll remind everyone that the statements made during this call, including the question and answer session, which are not historical facts, may be forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. Actual events or results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements due to a variety of factors, including risk factors set forth in ACTS' most recent report on Form 10-K, as well as the additional risks identified in the cautionary note regarding forward-looking statements on our earnings press release issued yesterday evening. We undertake no obligation to update or revise publicly any forward-looking statements. In addition, this presentation may contain non-GAAP financial measures. For the purposes of this call, we believe the best way to discuss our operating results is on an XPGAP basis, which is a better representation of the run rate performance of our business. Reconciliations are included in our earnings press release and financial supplement. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Albert. Thank you, Matt.

Good morning, and thank you for joining our fourth quarter earnings call. Getting right down to it, we did not deliver the financial results that we planned for this year. But at the same time, we remain confident that the extensive repositioning of our portfolios and investments in our talent, organization, and digital capabilities will shortly deliver the performance and value creation our team and our shareholders expect of us. In a few minutes, Pete will speak about the quarter, but my opening comments will focus on our full-year performance and year-over-year trends. Our performance this year suffered from a busy Japanese typhoon season and poor crop conditions in the United States. We also received increased loss notices from prior period catastrophes throughout the year from both Typhoon Jebi as well as the Florida hurricanes. Additionally, we saw higher than planned losses in our aviation and property lines. The various loss events were entirely consistent with normal industry volatility for these lines and our market shares. Although we recognize that the growth of our business in Japan while a good decision for the long term came at a bad time, just before the beginning of a record Japanese typhoon season. Nevertheless, even with all of these headwinds, our portfolio actions have still delivered meaningful progress, with a reduction of 1.1 points to our current year XCAT loss ratio, including 1.5 point reduction in insurance and a bit below a point in reinsurance. This brings the reduction in our consolidated ex-cap loss ratio to more than three points over a two-year period. We've also continued to grow our highly attractive fee business with our strategic capital partners, generating more than $80 million in fees this year, a 65% increase over the $48 million that we collected in 2018. Our teams have been diligently managing and repositioning our portfolios to deliver a stronger, more stable underwriting result, and the XCAT accident-year combined ratio trends are coming down year over year with lower intra-year volatility. Across our portfolio, we've been reducing limits, increasing attachment points where appropriate, canceling unprofitable business, and changing mix to focus on the more attractive subsectors of risk classes, as well as reducing PMLs. Where we felt that we could not make sufficient improvement to our performance quickly enough, we exited businesses. We're confident that this will lead to lower loss ratios in 2020 and beyond. We were able to replace most of the premium volume lost in canceled or exited business with growth in lines with pricing that met or exceeded our target requirements. However, even with the strong rate increases observed this year, many lines still are not priced at adequate levels, and we prefer to wait for sufficient pricing before pursuing growth in those markets. Thus, earned premiums were down modestly this year, and that put some pressure on our G and A ratio. Although we were able to meet our G and A ratio targets with good expense control, and we continue to look for additional opportunities for cost savings. We will nevertheless sustain our investments in digital and analytics capabilities. Our digital capabilities have been much appreciated by our top distribution partners leading to new business growth in the desirable small accounts that we're looking to grow. With all of this work to further remediate our portfolio, we enter 2020 with a stronger book that is less volatile than in prior years. We are leaner and more digitally enabled, and we continue to be well positioned in the markets that are seeing the most significant pricing corrections. While we are disappointed in our 2019 financial results, we have a clear line of sight to stronger earnings, Our teams are aligned, committed, and determined to sustain the improving trends in our portfolio. I'll now turn the call over to Pete, who will take us through the financials, and I'll return with the review of market conditions before opening the call to Q&A. Pete?