Old Republic International Corporation

Good afternoon. My name is Chris, and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I'd like to welcome everyone to the Old Republic International first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question during this time, simply press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star one again. Thank you, Joe Calabrese with the Financial Relations Board. You may begin.

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. And thank you for joining us for the Old Republic Conference Call to discuss first quarter 2022 results. This morning, we distributed a copy of the press release and posted a separate financial 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 this call may involve forward-looking statements as discussed in the press release and financial supplement dated April 28, 2022. 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 Corporation, and several other senior executive members as planned for this meeting. At this time, I'd like to turn the call to Craig Smitty. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Joe. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome again to Old Republic's first quarter earnings call. With me today, I have Frank Sedaro, the CFO of ORI, and Carolyn Monroe, the president of our title insurance business. Well, ORI produced another highly profitable quarter in both general insurance and title insurance, even though we saw increases in mortgage interest rates begin to influence our title insurance revenues and operating income. And we certainly will provide more insight on that as we go through our prepared remarks. Net premium and fees earned were $1.9 billion, while pre-tax operating income was at $237.5 million. And our consolidated combined ratio was a very profitable 91.9%. In general insurance, net premiums earned increased by 6%. And even though title insurance net premium and fees earned increased by 3%, We're not expecting revenues to come in higher the remainder of 2022 quarters relative to their respective 2021 quarters. We still expect both general insurance and title insurance to produce highly profitable underwriting results for the remainder of the year. So we think our broadly diversified portfolio of PNC and title business is well-positioned to continue to deliver long-term profitable growth. And with that, I will now turn the discussion over to Frank. Frank will then turn things back to me to provide more insights on our general insurance business. We'll follow that by Carolyn, who will discuss our title insurance business. And then, as always, we'll open up the conversation to Q&A. So Frank?