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 third 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 third 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 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 financial supplement dated October 27, 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 executives. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Craig Schmitty. Please go ahead, sir.

Okay. Thank you, Joe. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome again to Old Republic's third quarter earnings call. With me today, I have Frank Cedaro, our CFO of ORI, and Carolyn Monroe, president of our title insurance business. Well, as you've seen in this morning's release, ORI had another strong quarter with general insurance producing significantly greater pre-tax operating income. while our title insurance business pre-tax operating income was considerably less than the record setting 2021 results due, of course, to the effects of the increasing mortgage interest rate environment. Our reserve position remains very healthy in all three of our segments with a very high level of favorable reserve releases for general insurance in the quarter. Our balance sheet remains strong. We returned considerable amount of capital to shareholders during the quarter, which we'll talk about a little bit. And we've reduced balance sheet volatility by reducing our exposure to equities by nearly $2 billion since the beginning of the year, reinvesting in fixed income securities at yields, quite frankly, we haven't seen in over a decade. Consolidated net premiums and fees earned were just below $2 billion for the quarter and just below $6 billion year-to-date. Consolidated pre-tax operating income was $258 million for the quarter and stands at $758 million year-to-date. And our consolidated combined ratio came in at a healthy 91.4% for both the quarter and year-to-date periods. Both general insurance and title insurance continue to produce excellent underwriting results as demonstrated in their respective combined ratios. General insurance net premiums earned increased by over 7% for both the quarter and year-to-date periods, while in the third quarter, title insurance net premiums and fees earned decreased by 15% alongside a decrease of 7% year-to-date. As we've commented over the course of the last 12 months, our 2022 expectations for title insurance were considerably less than those expectations of the record-setting 2021 year. We think this downturn in title insurance and the continuing upturn in general insurance reinforces the benefits of our longstanding diversification strategy anchored in the non-correlated PNC and title insurance segments, which provides for steadier earnings and shareholder returns over the long run. So with those opening comments, I'll now turn the discussion over to Frank. And then Frank will turn things back to me to cover general insurance, followed by Carolyn, who will discuss title insurance. And then as always, we'll open up the conversation to Q&A. So Frank, you want to take it from here?