Axis Capital Holdings Limited

Good morning and welcome to the first quarter 2024 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 Cliff Gallant with Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning and welcome to our first quarter 2024 conference call. Our earnings press release and financial supplement were issued last night. If you'd like copies, please visit the investor information section of our website at accesscapital.com. We set aside an hour for today's call, which is also available as an audio webcast on our website. Before we begin, I would like to invite you all to attend our Investor Day, being held the morning of May 30th in New York City, and also webcast. If you would like an invitation to the call, please email me at cliff.gallant at accesscapital.com. Joining me on today's call are Vince Tizio, our President and CEO, and Pete Vogt, our CFO. In addition, I would like to remind everyone that the statements made during this call, including the question and answer section, 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 the risk factors set forth in the company's most recent report on the Form 10-K or our quarterly report on the Form 10-Q and other reports the company files to the SEC. This includes the additional risks identified in the cautionary note regarding the forward-looking statements in our earnings press release issued last night. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. In addition, non-GAAP financial measures may be discussed during this conference call. Reconciliations are included in our earnings press release and financial supplement. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Vince.

Thank you, Cliff, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our call. We had a very good start to the year, with Q1 marking another strong underwriting quarter of profits and growth for Axis. We continue to generate consistent double-digit ROE, combined ratios in the low 90s, profitable growth, and book value per share growth. Indeed, our team is playing offense, and the positive momentum that we generated last year has continued into 2024 as we further elevated our financial performance across a number of indices. I'm very appreciative of my colleagues for their deep commitment to delivering consistent value creation while providing excellent service to our partners and customers. Now I'd like to share some of the headlines for the quarter. In a quarter where industry catastrophe losses totaled nearly 20 billion, we produced an annualized ROE of 18.2, a combined ratio of 91.1. Importantly, our reserve position at the end of the quarter remained strong, and we feel very good about the actions we took in the fourth quarter. We continue to achieve double-digit growth by capitalizing on favorable conditions across our chosen markets while exhibiting underwriting discipline and strong cycle management. In the quarter, we generated $2.7 billion in gross premiums written, an 11% increase over the prior year. This included $669 million in new business premiums, a 27% increase as we continue to grow in our targeted markets while tapping into new sources of revenue. Lastly, we reduced our GA ratio by six-tenths of a point compared to 1Q23. These results evidence the strengthened path that Axis is on. Throughout Axis, there is a clear focus on advancing our strategy and achieving our financial objectives. I'll briefly speak to several of the core elements that are underpinning our strategy. First, We continue to operate in attractive markets, making decisive choices on where and how to compete, and we're nimbly allocating our resources and capital. We live in an uncertain world where the risks our customers are facing are growing considerably, and they're more complex. Our customers increasingly need tailored risk solutions in managing these exposures. As an example, in the quarter, our U.S. wholesale business saw a 31% increase in submission count with a broad range of exposures that require the technical know-how of our access team and our resourcefulness in meeting our customer needs. As respects pricing, in short tail lines, which comprise 58% of our insurance business, during the quarter we continued to enjoy good margins and are achieving rate in excess of trend. And as respects long tail classes, in particular primary and excess casualty, We are achieving rate that is comfortably ahead of trend. I'd note that these two classes have seen an acceleration of rate increases in our insurance business that were 12% during the quarter. Reflecting the current dynamic market conditions, we are continually cycle managing our business. Examples of steps we've taken include placing an increased focus on growing our short tail lines, whereas noted earlier, We see strong premium adequacy in both new and renewal business, rate over trend, and where we have the deep subject matter expertise to address our brokers' and customers' needs. In property insurance, one of our key growth drivers, premium volume grew 28%, excluding terrorism, as compared to the prior year period, with new business growing 54%. We recently repositioned our U.S. liability book through the refreshed leadership strategy and by exiting a number of underperforming segments and risks. As we've discussed in past calls, within our Professional Lines book, we continue to view pricing as inadequate in public D&O, and we're focused on growing premium adequate lines, such as our London Small D&O and E&O book and our U.S. Private D&O business, which both produced double-digit increases during the quarter. In cyber, We continue the strategic path of pivoting away from small and select delegated business where rates aren't acceptable and risk mitigation is varied in favor of growing our book of large accounts. In the quarter, we grew U.S. large cyber by 34% and reduced our small and delegated book by 31%. Leveraging our reinsurance book, we continue to grow cyber by well over 100%, albeit over a small expiring base. In short, we are focused on driving smart growth and a diversified book that produces strong underwriting income. I'll now briefly speak to the progress that we're seeing within our underwriting segments. Our specialty insurance book continues to perform very well, achieving a combined ratio of 86.6, record first quarter premium production of 1.6 billion, and record first quarter new business premiums of 481 million. Moreover, our underwriting income of $123 million was the highest ever reported on an accident year basis. This growth was fueled by double-digit premium increases across both our North America and London-based global market specialty insurance divisions. Within North America, where Axis is a leading player in the U.S. wholesale marketplace, key drivers of growth included U.S. property and U.S. excess casualty. To just name two examples, these lines were up 43% and 23% respectively over the prior year period. In our global markets business, where we're both a top 10 leader at Lloyds by capacity and are ranked as an outperforming syndicate, we continue to see year-over-year premium growth across a number of our lines. To name a few, global property, 32%, renewable energy, 16%, We're also tapping into new sources of revenue and moving with agility to capitalize on smart growth opportunities. This includes our April 1 launch of the first ever Lloyd Syndicate to exclusively write energy transition risks. As the world continues to transition to cleaner energy forms, we're anticipating customers' emerging needs in a complex and shifting risk landscape. Within the U.S., we are seeing clear results of our concerted efforts to grow our dedicated wholesale lower middle market unit, which produced a 28% increase in premium volume year over year. And we're growing our recently launched inland marine, U.S. marine cargo, and U.S. construction business units. And we see plenty of opportunities on the horizon in adjacent geographies where we don't currently play. With respect to our reinsurance business, we continue to advance our strategy. Demand for our specialty solutions remains high, as our 1-1 renewal showed. This included generating $114 million or 12% year-over-year premium growth during the quarter across targeted specialty lines, including credit and surety, workers' comp, marine, and cyber. We continue to navigate a competitive casualty market, and our approach remains one of disciplined underwriting. We have continued this trend into the April renewals. Pete will unpack our reinsurance results further. The results that we're generating across both our insurance and reinsurance businesses are grounded in the strength and depth of our distribution relationships. Access is being increasingly called upon by our customers for our tailored products, the expertise and acumen of our underwriters, and the high-caliber service that we provide. We continue to rigorously improve how we operate to become a more integrated, efficient company. As I've previously shared through our How We Work program, over the next several years, we are implementing operating model improvements focused on enhancing organizational efficiency, making investments that empower our colleagues and optimize their productivity while improving service quality, accelerating growth, and ensuring more consistent profitable returns are delivered. We're starting to see clear signs of the positive impact of how we work on our expense base. As an example, in the first quarter, we saw a reduction of six-tenths of a percentage point in our G&A ratio compared to the first quarter of 23. Indeed, we're becoming faster, smarter, and more efficient, a theme that we'll discuss at our upcoming investor day on May 30th. We are continuing to invest in building strong capabilities in underwriting, claims, and operations. In the past, I've discussed the work we are leaning into to enhance our operating models for claims and operations to more closely align with our underwriting business priorities, and these efforts are continuing to generate positive traction. In claims, this work includes recruiting top talent to newly created positions, to enhance our existing teammates while further optimizing our processes and enhancing our data and analytic capabilities. We're also continuing to strengthen the connectivity between claims, operations, and our underwriting business teammates alongside the actuarial team. Within operations, we are streamlining the organization structure, deepening our digital and automation capabilities, and partnering ever more closely with our brokers and our underwriting teams to facilitate the faster intake of submissions and improve response time while in keeping with our risk appetite and ultimate profit objectives. With respect to people, we are continuing to attract great talent to complement our existing team. This includes the recent announcements of new leaders for our wholesale casualty, North American environmental team, North American E&O, and US construction units. In addition, Earlier this quarter, we onboarded a new Global Chief Information Officer, who is helping lead our internal efforts to drive business-enabling technology capabilities. We're also growing from within, including recent promotions in our global markets executive leadership team and the advancement of a new Chief Commercial Officer. Lastly, we manage our capital efficiently. This involves our continued focus on maintaining a strong capital position and balance sheet, enabling us to fund profitable growth as well as by returning capital to our shareholders through common dividends and share repurchases. Pete will provide more details on this shortly. In summary, 2024 is off to a very good start for Axis. Our team is committed and energized. We look forward to speaking with you at our upcoming Investor Day on May 30th in New York and going into greater detail on many of these subjects. I'll now turn the call over to Pete to discuss our financials.