Old Republic International Corporation

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Old Republic International fourth quarter 2020 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Joe Calabrese with MWWPR. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for the Old Republic Conference Call to discuss fourth quarter 2020 results. This morning, we distributed a copy of the press release and posted a separate statistical supplement, which we assume you've seen and or otherwise have access to during the call. Both of the documents are available at Old Republic's website, which is www.oldrepublic.com. Please be advised this call may involve forward-looking statements as discussed in the press release and statistical supplements dated January 28, 2021. Risks associated with these statements can be found in the company's latest SEC filings. This afternoon's conference call will be led by Craig Schmitty, President and CEO of Old Republic International Corporations, and several other senior executive members as planned for this meeting. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Craig Schmidte. Please go ahead, sir.

Craig Schmidte Okay. Well, thank you, Joe, and good afternoon, everyone, again, and welcome to Old Republic's fourth quarter and full year 2020 earnings call. With me today, we have our CFO, Carl Miller, and Carolyn Monroe, the president of our title and insurance group. So we're obviously very happy with the strong results we posted for the fourth quarter and the full year with record-setting performance on a consolidated basis as well as individually in the general insurance and title insurance groups. Overall, a very pleasing quarter with 75 cents of operating income per share, an ending book value per share of $20.75. and a consolidated combined ratio of 90.3% for the quarter and 93.3% for the full year. Growth in net written premiums continued from the third quarter into the fourth quarter in general insurance, although the effects of the pandemic have been slightly lower. net earned premiums for the quarter and the year in general insurance. On the other hand, title insurance grew net premiums and fees earned by just over 30% for the quarter and 20% for the year. As demonstrated in these strong results, our diverse portfolio of specialty products combined with our exceptional customer service in general insurance and title insurance has again delivered value. Our specialty strategy continues to contribute to our track record of more consistent growth and profitability over the long run. So with these brief opening comments, I think at this point I'll turn it over to Carl to review in greater detail our overall consolidated financial results. And then he'll turn things back to me to cover general insurance, followed by Carolyn, who'll discuss title insurance. And then, of course, we'll open up our discussion to Q&A. So, Carl?