Axis Capital Holdings Limited

Hello, and welcome to the Q3 2022 Excess Capital Earnings 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 1 on your touch-tone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star, then 2. Please note, today's event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host today, Mei Zhang. Ms. Zhang, please go ahead.

Thank you, Keith. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm happy to welcome you to our conference call to discuss the financial results for Axis Capital. The third quarter ended September 30th. Our earnings press release and financial supplement were issued last night after the market closed. If you would like copies, please visit the investor information section of our website at axiscapital.com. We set aside an hour for today's call, which is also available as an audio webcast on our website. With me today are Albert Benjamal, our president and CEO, and Pete Vogt, our CFO. Before I turn the call over to Albert, I will remind everyone that the statements made during the call, including the questions and answer session, which are not historical facts, may be forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve risk, uncertainties, and assumptions. Actual events or results may differ materially from those projected in a forward-looking statement due to a variety of factors, including the risk factors set forth in a company's most recent report on Form 10-K and other reports the company files with the SEC. This includes the additional risk identified in a cautionary note regarding forward-looking statements in our earnings press release issue last night. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. In addition, this presentation may contain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations are included in our earnings press release and financial supplement. With that, I'll turn the call over to Albert. Albert?

Thank you, May. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our third quarter earnings call. Before we begin our review of results, I'd like to say that our foremost concern is with the welfare of the communities impacted by Hurricane Ian. and other catastrophic events across the globe, both natural and man-made. It's at times like these that our industry has an opportunity to fulfill its social purpose, to help people when they're down. And for Axis, we're committed to do our part to support the victims and aid in the recovery effort. Let's now begin our review of our quarter. We believe the events in the quarter have validated the actions that we've taken over the past few years to enhance our market positioning, and build a more balanced, resilient, and profitable portfolio. During the quarter, notwithstanding the impact of Ian and other CAT losses, our performance provided further evidence that the business we're building is one that will deliver positive results in both high and low CAT quarters. Indeed, even in a quarter where the industry is anticipating more than $70 billion of insured CAT claims, Axis is now generating positive operating income. And for the year to date, While our industry has already suffered aggregate CAT losses in excess of $100 billion, Axis has increased its underwriting income by 75%, and our operating income is up 30%. Recent third quarter CATs are a good illustration of our progress. We estimate Hurricane Ian will be a $60 billion event, and our $160 million charge represents less than 0.3% share of the industry loss. By comparison, in last year's third quarter, Hurricane Ida was a $35 billion event, and our $175 million loss estimate represented a market share of half of a percent. We're confident that our progress will continue, and every part of our company is executing on the actions that will add the most value to our business. Our specialty insurance business delivered 12% premium growth for the quarter and 16% for the year to date. And while doing so, we continue to see meaningful improvements in our underwriting performance with good underwriting profitability in both the quarter and year-to-date period. Our nine-month insurance combined ratio all-in came in at an attractive 91.2%, a one-and-a-half point improvement over the prior period. And our nine-month insurance underwriting income of $204 million is up more than 40% over the prior year for our insurance business. For our reinsurance business, we're encouraged by the early results from our efforts to reposition Access Re as a specialist player. The meaningful reductions that we've made to our CAD exposures have been rewarded this quarter with a significantly lower market share of industry CAD losses. Moreover, through the first nine months of the year, our reinsurance business is delivering an underwriting profit of $23 million with a combined ratio of 99.1%. And while we've seen decreases in our overall reinsurance growth and net premiums written, it's all due to our planned reduction of property and property CAD reinsurance. The rest of our reinsurance book is up 7% for both the third quarter and the year to date. Thus far, we're lowering CAD volatility and growing where we want to, which is exactly our plan. Peter will shortly be taking you through the highlights of our results. But stepping back to look more broadly at our transformation, we recognize that our substantial changes and business mix shift have led to challenges in comparing sequential results on a like-for-like basis and in establishing a foundation for projecting future performance. To help, in our third quarter financial supplement, we've provided additional pages where you can see what our company would look like without the reinsurance property and CAD book that we've discontinued. The highlights from the expanded supplement are highly encouraging. Excluding reinsurance property and property CAD business from all periods, on a pro forma basis, in 2021, access consolidated gross written premiums would have grown 16% with an ex-CAT current accidents year combined ratio of 92.6% which would be a four-point improvement over the prior year, and an all-in combined ratio of 97.4. And so far this year, on a pro forma basis, consolidated gross written premiums would have grown 13 percent. The XCAT current accident year combined ratio of 90.1 would be a two-and-a-half point improvement over the prior year, and the all-in combined ratio of 96.2 would be 1.2 percent better than the prior period. On that same basis, pro forma underwriting income would have been up more than 25%. Our industry will always have some quarterly volatility and noise, but the positive trends are evident. We've already taken all the actions necessary to deliver this new axis, and the remaining property CAT reinsurance exposures should have substantially run off by April of 2023, giving us confidence that we can deliver the kind of performance indicated by these pro forma results. And, as I'll share later when we talk about the rate environment, we're confident that access is very well positioned in the current market. The ongoing impact of high cat loss activity, financial and social inflation, economic and geopolitical uncertainty, and more limited reinsurance capacity are anticipated to drive favorable market conditions through 2023 and beyond. With anticipated growing demand for specialty coverages, and meaningful growth of interest income, AXA should have the wind at its back. Our focus now is to continue to build on the momentum, drive further profitable growth, and enhance the value that we provide to our customers and shareholders. And with that, I'll now pass the floor to Pete, who will walk us through the third quarter financials. Then I'll come back to discuss market trends, and we'll have our Q&A. Pete?