Employers Holdings Inc

Greetings and welcome to Employers Holdings Inc. Third Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Fall. At this time, all parts of the events are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Lori Brown, Chief Legal Officer. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, Doug. Good morning and welcome everyone to the third quarter 2023 earnings call for employers. Today's call is being recorded in 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 nonpublic information and for complying with disclosure obligation under SEC's Regulation FD. Such disclosures will be included on 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 third quarter 2023 financial results. Then I'll hand it over to Mike for more details on our financials. Prior to Q&A, I'll share some additional commentary. Our third quarter results were solid. Our net written and earned premiums were up 4% and 3% respectively. with wage increases, a strong labor market, our thoughtful appetite expansion program, and our new sales and underwriting operating model each contributing to this growth. As a result, we ended the quarter with more than 126,000 policies in force, a record level representing increases in each of the last 13 consecutive quarters. Our net investment income was up 9%. The increase was due to higher market interest rates impacting bond yields, partially offset by lower invested balances of fixed income investments. Mike will speak more about our net investment income later in the call. From an underwriting standpoint, we maintained our current accident year loss and LAE ratio on voluntary business at 63.3%, below the 64% we maintained throughout 2022. As was the case a year ago, we did not recognize any prior year loss reserve development in the quarter because the full actuarial study was not performed and the amount of indicated net prior year loss reserve development was consistent with our expectations. We will evaluate our prior year reserves in more detail at year end when we routinely perform a full reserve study. Our total commissions and associated commission expense ratio were higher this quarter due to an increase in agency incentive accruals, which are specific to individual contracts and vary with agency growth and profitability. Our total underwriting and general and administrative expenses were also up slightly, but the associated expense ratio remained consistent with that of a year ago when considering the increase in earned premium. With that, I'll turn the call over to Mike, and I'll return to provide my closing remarks. Mike?