Kemper Corporation

Good morning ladies and gentlemen and welcome to Kemper's second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. My name is Samantha and I will be your coordinator today. At this time all participants are in listen only mode. Later we will conduct a question and answer session and instructions will follow at that time. As a reminder this conference call is being recorded for replay purposes. I would now like to introduce your host for today's conference call, Michael Marinaccio, Kemper's Vice President of Corporate Development and Investor Relations. Mr. Marinaccio, you may begin.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Kemper's discussion of our second quarter 2026 results. This morning, you'll hear from Steve Macanena, Kemper's President and CEO, and Brad Camden, Kemper's Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. will make a few opening remarks to provide context around our second quarter results, followed by a Q&A session. During the interactive portion of our call, our presenters will be joined by Chris Flynn, Kemper's Executive Vice President and President of Kemper Life, and John Boschelli, Kemper's Executive Vice President and Chief Investment Officer. After the markets closed yesterday, we issued our earnings release, filed our form 10Q with the SEC, and published our earnings presentation and financial supplements. You can find these documents in the investor section of our website, Kemper.com. Our discussion today may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements include, but are not limited to, the company's outlook on its future results of operation and financial condition. Our actual future results and financial condition may differ materially from these statements. For information on additional risks that may impact these forward-looking statements, please refer to our 2025 Form 10-K and our second quarter earnings release. This morning's discussion also includes non-GAAP financial measures we believe are meaningful to investors. In our financial supplement earnings presentation and earnings release, we've defined and reconciled all non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP where required in accordance with SEC rules. You can find each of these documents in the investor section of our website, Kemper.com. All comparative references will be to the corresponding 2025 period unless otherwise stated. I'll now turn the call over to Steve.

Well, thanks, Michael, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Since joining Kemper two months ago, I've spent time with employees, agents, business partners, and members of the investment community. Those conversations combined with the work I've done to better understand the business have energized me about Kemper's future. I see a company with meaningful strengths, including the stability of life, the momentum within commercial auto, real potential for personal auto, and a talented team committed to improving results. Together, these strengths position us to deliver long-term shareholder value. At the same time, we have to be candid about where performance must improve. The clearest example of this is Personal Auto, where we are not delivering target returns, driven in large part by our concentration in California. We're addressing this, but the benefits of our actions will take time to flow to our results. These realities have shaped how I think about the business and the priorities that will drive success. Stepping back, there are three messages I want you to take away from this discussion. First, Restoring profitability is our most important priority. I want to be very clear on this point. We do not view profitability and growth as competing objectives. Profitability is a prerequisite for growth, and as such, growth will be earned, not chased. In commercial auto, that means despite strong top and bottom line performance, we're going to take a more disciplined stance given successive quarters of prior year adverse development. We're making intentional adjustments moving forward to ensure growth is profitable and sustainable. Second, Kemper has the foundational elements necessary for long-term growth. Our focus is on improving performance and delivering more consistent results. Unlocking that value requires clear accountability and more consistent execution. And that brings me to my third takeaway for stakeholders. We've realigned the PNC organization to improve accountability and execution. Underwriting, pricing, product, and claims are now under one PNC leader, Eric Kepler. We believe this structure will create sharper accountability, faster decision-making, and ultimately better execution. Eric's deep experience in non-standard auto makes him well-suited to lead this work, and we look forward to introducing him at our next earnings call. I also want to officially welcome Tony DeSantis to our board of directors. Tony brings over 40 years of experience in our industry, including 10 in non-standard auto. He's already been a great addition to the board, and I look forward to his counsel and contributions. Taken together, these three points define our path forward. Restore profitability, unlock the value in our business, and strengthen leadership and accountability to deliver more consistent results. Against that backdrop, this quarter shows encouraging progress while also highlighting the work still ahead. For the quarter, underlying results improved sequentially while reported gap results were adversely impacted by a goodwill impairment. Brad will cover the numbers in detail, but first I wanted to share my perspective on each of our businesses. Within personal auto, rate and non-rate actions improved our combined ratio while also reducing our concentration in California. This is great progress, but as I said, meaningful work remains. Commercial auto continues to generate strong underlying results, but the business is not without challenges. The prior year reserve strengthening reinforces the importance of maintaining discipline as the business grows. While we continue to see attractive opportunities ahead, we'll be placing greater emphasis on profitability by taking more rates and tightening our underwriting, even if that results in less growth in the near term. And finally, life continues to provide stable earnings, consistent cash flow and valuable diversification. Building on that foundation, we continue to advance our distribution and lapse management initiatives in support of profitable new business growth. In summary, our path is clear. Restoring profitability is our top priority and achieving that goal will earn us the right to grow. My confidence in our path forward is grounded in both the actions underway and the strength of our people. I feel incredibly fortunate to work alongside this management team and our talented employees across the country. I'm grateful for their commitment and I'm looking forward to working with them and building a stronger Kemper. Thank you and with that, I'll turn the call over to Brad.