Pelagos Insurance Capital Limited

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Fidelis Insurance Holdings first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. As a reminder, this call is being recorded for replay purposes. Following the conclusion of formal remarks, the management team will host a question and answer session, and instructions will be given at that time. With that, I will now turn the call over to Miranda Hunter, head of investor relations. Ms. Hunter, please go ahead.

Good morning, and welcome to the Fidelis Insurance Group's first quarter of 2024's earnings conference call. With me today are Dan Burrows, our CEO, and Alan DeClaire, our CFO. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that statements made during the call, including the question and answer section, may include forward-looking statements. These statements are based upon management's current assessments and assumptions and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties are described in our 2023 Annual Report on Form 20F, filed with the SEC on March 15th. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in forward-looking statements have a reasonable basis when made, we can give no assurance that these expectations will prove to be achieved. Consequently, actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied. For more information, including on the risks and other factors that may affect CUPE's performance, Investors should also review periodic reports that are filed by us with the SEC from time to time. Management will also make reference to certain non-GAAP measures of financial performance. Reconciliations to U.S. GAAP for each non-GAAP financial measure and our definition of RPI, which is our Renewal Pricing Index, can be found in our current report on Form 6K, Furnished to the SEC Yesterday, which contains our earnings press release and is available on our website at fidelisinsurance.com. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Dan.

Thank you, Miranda. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Fidelis Insurance Group's first quarter earnings call. I'm very pleased to report that we delivered a strong start to the year as we successfully capitalized on the continued mature hard market conditions, leaning into our core line, achieving sustained profitable growth, leveraging our lead position to generate alpha results, and broadening the footprint of our business. In the first quarter, we increased gross premiums written by 21.6% and delivered a combined ratio of 85.8%, both of which were in line with our expectations. These excellent results reflect our strong underwriting and risk selection capabilities across our growing and well-diversified book of business. We continue to see positive pricing across our portfolio with an RPI for the first quarter of 112%, demonstrating our ability to achieve preferential terms in a verticalized market. We delivered another strong force of return with an annualized operating ROAE of 14%, again in line with our expectations. We also grew book value per diluted common share to $21.22. For the full year, we remain on track to generate ROAE in the 14% to 16% range as we earn a greater portion of our catastrophe exposed premium in the second half of the year. As our results demonstrate, our strategy and structure are working exactly as intended. We have the flexibility, discipline and market access to deploy capital where we believe there are attractive risk reward opportunities in what continues to be the best market we have seen in decades. We are leveraging our scale, lead positioning and deep relationships with brokers and clients to grow our business and have constructed a diversified portfolio of short-held specialty risks. which we believe is well positioned to deliver combined VHOs in the mid to high 80s throughout the cycle. And as a reminder, would you not write casualty lines? A key strength of our strategy is the daily underwriting calls, which are attended by all underwriters, both the Fidelis Insurance Group and the Fidelis Partnership. These calls provide insight across our entire portfolio, giving a forum to discuss our offering on each individual risk. They enhance our ability to cross-sell across target lines and help us quickly respond to market dynamics and capitalise on areas of opportunity. We continue to see opportunities across our core lines, with property direct and facultative being a great example, where we delivered growth of 36.5% compared to prior periods, and we are capitalising on attractive pricing within our broader subsidy portfolio. In the first quarter, we announced our participation and investment in the new Lloyds Syndicate 3123 with the Fidelis Partnership, exercising our capital and underwriting strategies and broadening the footprint of our business. With a targeted launch date of July 1st, this vehicle is expected to add to our long-term growth by providing access to enhanced racing platforms, global licensing and Lloyds-only business. The syndicate will write business across multiple insurance and reinsurance classes and will be an extension of our strategy to leverage our expertise to take lead positions. Fidelis Insurance Group will be taking a variable credit share across the portfolio, which enables us to access additional business channels that align to our current risk appetite. This is a perfect example of why our underwriting relationship with the Fidelis partnership works so well. Our long-term agreement was designed to enable us to match the right risk with the right capital. Exercising our right of first refusal with this variable process share allows us to do just that, participating in the lines where we have more risk appetite. As we consider industry events in the quarter, we wanted to touch on the March 26 Baltimore Bridge collapse, which will impact the specialty insurance market. Given the complexities surrounding the event, it could take years to fully resolve. We continue to monitor developments and believe any lost resulting from the bridge collapse will be manageable within our diversified portfolio. So in summary, I'm very pleased with our first quarter performance, which positions us for another year of strong profitability growth and return. With that, I'll pass it over to Alan to walk through our financial results in more detail.