RLI Corp.

Good morning and welcome to the RLI Corp. Second Quarter Earnings Teleconference. After management's prepared remarks, we will open the conference up for questions and answers. Before we get started, let me remind everyone that through the course of the teleconference, RLI management may make comments that reflect their intentions, beliefs, and expectations for the future. As always, these forward-looking statements are subject to certain factors and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially. Please refer to the risk factors described in the company's various SEC filings, including the annual report on Form 10-K, as supplemented in Forms 10-Q, all of which should be reviewed carefully. The company has filed a Form 8-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission that contains the press release announcing third quarter results. During the call, RLI management may refer to operating earnings and earnings per share from operations, which are non-gap measures of financial results. RLI's operating earnings and earnings per share from operations consist of net earnings after the elimination of after-tax realized gains or losses and after-tax unrealized gains or losses on equity securities. Additionally, equity and earnings of Maui GEM and the related taxes were excluded from operating earnings and operating EPS for 2022 due to the sale of RLI's investment in the third quarter of 2022. RLI's management believes that these measures are useful in gauging core operating performance across reporting periods. but may not be comparable to other companies' definition of operating earnings. The Form 8K contains a reconciliation between operating earnings and net earnings. The Form 8K and press release are available at the company's website at www.rlicorp.com. I will now turn the conference over to RLI's Chief Investment Officer and Treasurer, Mr. Aaron Dieffenthaler. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thank you for joining us to review RLI's results for the second quarter and first half of 2023. As usual, we are joined by Craig Cleathermus, President and CEO, Jen Klobnoch, Chief Operating Officer, and Todd Bryant, Chief Financial Officer. Craig is going to start us off with some introductory remarks. Todd will offer a play-by-play of the financial results. Jen will then comment on market conditions and further details on our product portfolio. We can then open things up for questions, and Craig will close with some final thoughts.

Craig? Well, thank you, Aaron, and good morning, everyone. I'm very proud of the efforts of all of our associate owners as they delivered again with significant top-line growth, an outstanding combined ratio across all segments, and overall book value growth for the quarter. I'm very pleased with where we stand at mid-year. At ROI, we come to work each day knowing that we can and must be better than the day before. Perfection may not be attainable, but we're striving for, and we are successful because we focus on making decisions that will best serve our customers and our shareholders over the long term. The good decisions we make today may not be realized in the next quarter, but will benefit us over the next decade. We have no control over the competitive landscape, but we can decide when and how we grow. We have a broad and diversified portfolio with underwriting expertise that know where the opportunities exist and the willingness and courage to let our portfolio evolve with current market conditions to optimize profitable growth. We have the confidence to execute because we don't let problems go unattended and instead exert more effort on the products and services where we can be most successful in providing differentiated services to our customers. That is what we have done to create a solid track record of success and is what we continue to do this past quarter. I will let Todd and Jen go into more detail on the financials and the market in general. Todd, take it away.