Old Republic International Corporation

good day and thank you for standing by welcome to the old republic international first quarter 2021 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 1 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 MWW Group. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for the Old Republic Conference Call to discuss first quarter 2021 results. This morning, we distributed a copy of the press release and posted a separate statistical supplement, which we assume you have 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 that this call may involve forward-looking statements as discussed in the press release and statistical supplements dated April 22, 2021. Risk associated with these statements can be found in the company's latest SEC filings. This afternoon's conference call will be led by Craig Smitty, 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 to McCracken Smith. Please go ahead, sir.

Okay. Thank you, Joe. Well, good afternoon, everyone, and welcome again to Old Republic's first quarter 2021 earnings call. With me today, we have our CFO, Carl Miller, and we have Carolyn Monroe, the president of our title insurance group. So we're here again with another great quarter that we're very happy with. Exceptional performance in both general insurance and title insurance drove the strong consolidated results we posted for the first quarter. Total net premium and fees increased to $1.84 billion in the quarter, up 18%. with consolidated pre-tax operating income of $255 million, up 47%, and a consolidated combined ratio that was 4.2 percentage points lower for the quarter, coming in at a 90.9%. In general insurance, we saw a slight growth in premium relative to the first quarter of 2020 when premiums were not yet impacted by the effects of the pandemic. And in title insurance, we grew premiums and fees by 40%, and that was on top of a record-setting first quarter in 2020. As demonstrated in these strong results, our specialty strategy continues to produce growth and profitability, and our diverse portfolio of specialty products in both general insurance and title insurance has again delivered value to our shareholders. So with that, I'll turn the discussion over to Carl to discuss some of the per share figures along with some added color on our investment portfolio. Then he'll turn things back to me to cover general insurance. And that will follow by Carolyn, who will discuss title insurance. And then, of course, we'll open up to Q&A. So Carl, would you go ahead and take it from here?