Employers Holdings Inc

Hello and welcome to the Employers Holdings Inc. second quarter 2023 earnings conference call and webcast. If anyone should require operator assistance, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. You may press star one at any time to be placed into question queue. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It's now my pleasure to turn the call over to your host, Lori Brown, Executive Vice President, CLO, General Counsel, and Secretary. Please go ahead, Lori.

Thank you, Kevin. Good morning and welcome, everyone, to the second quarter 2023 earnings call for employers. Today's call is being recorded and webcast from the investor section of our website, where a replay will be available following the call. Presenting today on the call will be Kathy Antonello, our chief executive officer, and Mike Paquette, our chief financial officer. Statements made during this conference call that are not based on historical facts are considered forward-looking statements. These statements are made in reliance on the safe harbor provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Although we believe the expectations expressed in our forward-looking statements are reasonable, risks and uncertainties could cause actual results to be materially different from our expectations, including the risks set forth in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. All remarks made during the call are current only at the time of the call and will not be updated to reflect subsequent developments. The company also uses its website as a means of disclosing material non-public information and for complying with disclosure obligations under SEC's Regulation FD. Such disclosures will be included in the investor section of the company's website. Accordingly, investors should monitor that portion of the company's website in addition to following the company's press releases, SEC filings, public conference calls, and webcasts. In our earnings press release and in our remarks or responses to questions, we may use non-GAAP financial metrics. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP metrics to our GAAP results are included in our financial supplement as an attachment to our earnings press release, our investor presentation, and any other materials available in the investor section on our website. Now I'll turn the call over to Kathy.

Thank you, Lori. Good morning to everyone, and thanks for joining us today. To start this morning, I'll provide some highlights of our second quarter 2023 financial results, and then I'll hand it over to Mike for further details on our financials. Prior to Q&A, I'll touch on some of our recent accomplishments that I'm particularly proud of. Our second quarter results were excellent. Significant premium growth, strong net investment income, and net investment gains drove a 59% increase in revenue year over year. Our net written and earned premiums were up 10% and 7% respectively. Wage increases, a strong labor market, our thoughtful appetite expansion program, and our new sales and underwriting operating model each contributed to this growth. As a result of these efforts, we ended the quarter with yet another record number of policies in force, And just last week, we celebrated achieving over 125,000 policies in force. Our net investment income was up 34%. The sharp increase was primarily due to higher market interest rates impacting bond yields and higher invested balances of fixed maturity securities. We earned $27 million of net investment income during the quarter, an amount highly consistent with that of the last quarter, with each being meaningfully higher than any other quarter in our history as a publicly traded company. Our income statement further benefited from 11 million of net investment gains, a welcome swing from the 50 million in losses we experienced a year ago. From an underwriting standpoint, our mid-year full reserve study led to the recognition of 20 million of net favorable prior year loss reserve development from our voluntary business. That action coupled with our continual focus on commissions and other underwriting expenses yielded a consolidated combined ratio of 92%, which is a terrific result. Lastly, we recently terminated the lease associated with our former corporate headquarters in Reno, Nevada, which Mike will speak to in more detail. This action will serve to continue our meaningful reduction in underwriting expenses. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Mike, and I'll return to provide my closing remarks. Mike?