RenaissanceRe Holdings Ltd.

Thank you for standing by and welcome to Renaissance Re's Q4 and year-end earnings call. I'd now like to hand the conference over to Keith McHugh, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Mr. McHugh, please go ahead.

Good morning. Thank you for joining our fourth quarter and year-end financial results conference call. Yesterday, after the market closed, we issued our quarterly release. If you didn't receive a copy, please call me at 441-239-4830 or and we'll make sure to provide you with one. There will be an audio replay of the call available from about 2 p.m. Eastern time today through midnight on February 27th. The replay can be accessed by dialing 855-859-2056, U.S. toll-free, or 1-404-537-3406 internationally. The passcode you will need for both numbers is 427-7895. Today's call is also available through the investor information section of www.renry.com and will be archived on Renaissance Re's website through midnight on February 27, 2021. Before we begin, I'm obliged to caution that today's discussion may contain forward-looking statements and actual results may differ materially from those discussed. Additional information regarding the factors shaping these outcomes can be found in Renaissance Re's SEC filings to which we direct you. With us to discuss today's results are Kevin O'Donnell, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Bob Qutub, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. I'd now like to turn the call over to Kevin. Kevin?

Thanks, Keith. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining today's call. I wanted to begin today by giving you a quick summary of what we accomplished at January 1 and how 2021 is shaping up. First, I would like to thank everyone who supported last year's capital raise. I made several promises then, which I can now definitively say were kept. This January 1 was one of the most important renewals in our history, and I'm very pleased with the performance and the outcome we achieved. At January 1, we saw opportunities for profitable growth in both of our segments and across our platforms, resulting in the full deployment into our underwriting portfolio of the 1.1 billion raised last June. We also raised and deployed additional capital in our joint venture business. As a result, in 2021, we expect to grow our net premiums written by approximately 1 billion and believe that we have materially increased the profitability of our underwriting book. Importantly, we expect to achieve these outcomes while keeping our tail risk consistent with last year's on a percentage of equity basis, and due to the efficiency and diversity of our portfolio, continuing to have ample dry powder to deploy into new opportunities. Looking back at 2020, at the beginning of the year, I told you that with the TMR integration behind us, we were a more resilient company and a broader, deeper partner to our customers. In our business, you learn to expect the unexpected, but I don't think any of us envisioned the year would unfold in quite the way it did, or just how critical our resilience would prove to be. As the year progressed, we encountered a variety of challenges. I am proud of how our employees responded rapidly and effectively to each of these, enabling us to grow our business substantially and profitably. At the end of each year, I like to review our performance by responding to two questions. The first is, how did we do financially And the second is, have we executed our strategy effectively? Starting with the first question, how did we do financially? In a year impacted by the global COVID-19 pandemic and multiple weather-related catastrophic losses, we grew book value per share by 15% and tangible book value per share plus change in accumulated dividends by 18%. For the year, our return on equity was 11.7%. and our operating return on equity was 0.2%. Bob will walk you through our financial results in greater detail, but I believe we have done the hard work to recognize our losses early, build a fortress balance sheet, and enter 2021 financially and operationally stronger as a company than we have ever been. Moving to the second question, have we executed our strategy effectively? While our strategy continues to evolve, it remains focused on serving our customers. At its core, this strategy is to employ our integrated system to match desirable risk with efficient capital. While this may appear simple or even common sense, the difficulty lies in its long-term consistent application in all market cycles. You have witnessed this consistency in our execution over the years. As we have grown, we have broadened our access to risk, writing more lines of business on more platforms. We have also diversified our sources of capital through various owned and joint venture balance sheets, as well as equity, debt, and ILS markets. This has afforded us significant flexibility to react when the world changes, which it did quite drastically in March. As COVID-19 started developing, our confidence in understanding our potential exposure across all aspects of our business enabled us to pivot our focus on the needs of our customers and brokers. We were one of the first to raise capital with a highly successful common equity offering. To be clear, this capital raise was exclusively offensive and, as I mentioned, has now been fully deployed into our underwriting portfolio. Consistent with our message during the capital raise, We have deployed the capital through a combination of two main activities, growing into an improving market and retaining more risk. Starting with organic growth, we began planning for the January renewal early in the year with focused and coordinated approach across the company. This allowed us to expand our value proposition to our customers and brokers and in an evolving market providing a clear message around appetite and tolerance. Our fortress balance sheet permitted us to engage our customers early in the renewal cycle, understand their needs, and have productive conversations about how we could help solve their biggest problems. Heading into the renewal, we expected retro and U.S. property CAD markets to provide us with the greatest opportunities. While this was the case up until mid-December, Ultimately, the market dynamics in retro and property cat reinsurance were not as strong as the market initially expected. In part, I think this was because investment portfolios were disconnected from the financial reality of COVID-19 and the economic recession. The resulting boost to book values decreased relative reinsurance demand by giving many companies the confidence to retain more risk. Supply was also elevated as new capital entered the retro and property cat markets and increasing amounts of collateral were released and available for underwriting. Throughout the renewal, however, both casualty and specialty lines, as well as property and S, continued to experience extremely favorable pricing dynamics. In general, both outperformed our expectations with increased rates as well as improved terms and conditions. Because of our broad access to risk, we were able to emphasize growth into these areas. Several years ago, we began initiating small positions on desirable programs, which we used to build strong customer relationships over time. This year, as rates improved, we were positioned to grow on these programs at more profitable expected returns. So while the January 1 renewal may have been disappointing to those who approached it in a transactional manner, our focus on superior customer relationships and building efficient portfolios through risk allocation and sharing meant that we were once again able to select the best business at the strongest returns. The second opportunity for deploying capital was by retaining more risk. At January 1, we reduced the seeded protection that we purchased as a percentage of our gross premium by several percentage points. In line with retaining more risk, we increased our ownership in DaVinci and Medici and now have $1 billion co-invested in various joint ventures consistent with our strategy of strong alignment with our partners. As I mentioned already, the result of this diligent planning and strong execution is that we now believe that we will grow net written premiums in 2021 by about $1 billion with an increase in expected profit. I should caution you, however, that these estimates were derived from modeled predictions of future outcomes based on reasonable assumptions, and actual premiums may differ materially from those discussed. So when I look back on 2020, I think we had a number of accomplishments. Each of these would have been impressive under normal conditions. They are even more so in the context of working from home. In conclusion, I'm very pleased with the steps that we took to advance our strategy during the year. Finally, before I turn the call over to Bob, I would like to welcome Shannon Bender as our new general counsel. Shannon joined us in Bermuda at the beginning of January and is a strong addition to our leadership team. I'll provide more detailed update on the renewal in our segments at the end of the call, but first, Bob will discuss our financial performance for the quarter.