Good day and welcome to the International General Insurance Holdings Ltd.’s Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2023 Financial Results Conference Call. All participants are in listen only mode. [Operator Instructions] After today’s presentation there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions] Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Robin Sidders, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning, and welcome to today's conference call. Today we'll be discussing our fourth quarter and full year 2023 results. You will have seen our press release, which we issued after the market closed yesterday. If you'd like a copy of the press release that's available in the Investor Section of our website at www.iginshore.com. We've also posted a supplementary investor presentation, which can be found on our website on the presentation page in the Investor Section. On today's call, our Executive Chairman of IGI, Wasef Jabsheh; CEO, Waleed Jabsheh; and Chief Financial Officer, Pervez Rizvi. Wasef will begin the call with some high-level comments before handing over to Waleed to talk you through the key drivers of our results for the fourth quarter and full year 2023, and also give some insight into current market conditions and our outlook for 2024. At that point, we'll open the call up for Q&A. I'll begin with the customary Safe Harbor language. Our speakers' remarks today may contain forward-looking statements. Some of the forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking words. We caution you that such forward-looking statements should not be regarded as a representation by us that the future plans, estimates or expectations contemplated by us will in fact be achieved. Forward-looking statements involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. Actual events or results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements due to a variety of factors, including the risk factors that are set forth in the company's annual report on Forms 20-F for the year ended December 31, 2022. The company's reports on forms 6-K and other filings with the SEC as well as our results press release issued yesterday evening. We undertake no obligation to update or revise publicly any forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date they are made. In addition, as you're aware, we voluntarily changed our basis of accounting from IFRS to U.S. GAAP effective January 1, 2023. During the conference call today, we'll use certain non-GAAP financial measures for a reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures to the nearest GAAP measure. Please see our earnings release, which has been filed with the SEC and is available on our website. With that, I'll turn the call over to our Executive Chairman, Wasef Jabsheh.

Thank you, Robin, and good day everyone. Thank you for joining us on today's call. I'll just make a few short remarks before handing the call over to Waleed. I'll just -- I'm very proud of our achievements in 2023, both financial and non-financial. It's very much the year where many things came together and we really demonstrated what IGI is capable of. During the year, we had our first CEO transition in our 22 years history, and I'm pleased with the seamless way in which this has occurred all around. Not just the leadership, but when it has displayed but the support given to a Waleed by all our people and the cultural integrity that has been maintained throughout. You saw from our press release last night that we had strong fourth quarter to finish a superb 2023, clearly demonstrating how our focus, discipline and consistency in education are paying off. Our results for the full year 2023 are the best in our 22 year history, and this is on the back of very strong results in recent prior years. Well, we recorded significant growth in all areas of our business, our underwriting portfolio, our investment portfolio and our shareholders equity, which is now comfortably less of $0.5 billion. We took advantage of the opportunities to capitalize on what we were growing with positive conditions across our business. We continued to actively and efficiently manage our capital, deploying it first to our underwriting operations and returning excess capital to shareholders in the form of share repurchase and dividends. During 2023, we bought back 3.4 million shares for $31.1 million. We purchased all outstanding grants at the total cost of $16.3 million and we paid $1.9 million in dividends. As you saw from our second announcement last night, I'm particularly…

Thank you. Good morning, Wassef. Thank you all for joining us today and thank you Wassef. Just going to follow the usual agenda. Start with a quick recap of the results for the fourth quarter and the full year of 2023, and then we'll move on to our markets and our outlook for the remainder of ‘24. As you saw from our press release last night and as Wassef highlighted, we produced exceptional results in both the fourth quarter and the full year. Before going through the financial highlights, I would first just like to echo Wassef’s comments and congratulate our people on the high quality and consistent focus on execution throughout the year. Our results in ‘23, as well as in recent years are differentiated in some of the best in the specialty insurance market and we're clearly out performing in the current industry tailwinds. More than this though is the execution behind the numbers, and that is all about our people. We're technical underwriters first and foremost that is what we do. Every team member understands our strategy, what their individual and collective responsibility is, and also how what they do impacts the end result. We’re details focused; we've got a deep understanding of our markets with people on the ground providing cultural compatibility. We communicate with transparency and we execute with precision. And to be perfectly honest, we're passionate about what about the business that we're in. Just moving on to some specific highlights, gross written premium growth in the fourth quarter was 6.5%, which is more muted than prior quarters and in line with the historical patterns.For the full year, which obviously is a better indicator, we recorded growth of just over 18%. Again, the growth in ‘23 is concentrated in the short tail on reinsurance…

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Scott Heleniak with RBC Capital Markets.

Just a couple quick questions on a few of the areas and across your business. First, just the growth trends you're seeing in U.S., ENS and Europe for short tail. It sounds like that's pretty promising. Wondering if you can talk about just kind of what sort of runway for growth you have there and whether you're seeing anything new on the competitive front? I know you mentioned some more challenging conditions in some of the -- in the long tail, but anything new there to talk about on the competitive front and then do you expect to see continued strong growth in that in the years ahead?

I mean, listen there's no doubt that, we're coming probably up to the tip of that hard market in a lot of these lines within the short tail segments. We're not getting the rate increases we got in ‘22 and ‘21 and ‘20, there are signs of more hungry competition in the market. The good sign is that it's not necessarily all new it's largely existing capacity that is getting hungrier rather than new capacity coming in, which tends to be the driver behind severe competition. So in ‘24, we don't expect to get the rate or achieve the rate increases in short tail that necessarily we've achieved in previous years. But again, it's all about rating adequacy rather than just rate movement. And I think we continue to see -- we will continue to see healthy opportunities throughout the year. I think growth in long tail will definitely be challenged. Growth in short tail will also be more challenging, but the opportunities definitely will be there. For U.S. and Europe specifically, our books are relatively young. So the runway for growth in those areas for us is I would say is more promising than the more established players in those markets. As we said, we're relatively underweight in Europe. Although we are growing, we are investing. So we continue to expect continued growth for us in the U.S. and Europe. So I hope that answers your question.

I wanted to follow up just real quick too on the long tail, where you sounds like you're pulling back a little bit and the pricing isn't quite as good. It's maybe down a little bit. Was there any particular area that you want to call out? Any areas or any lines that are specifically weaker? Or is it just kind of general a little bit weaker across the board? Or is anything kind of dragging that down more than any other line?

I mean, but definitely there's more competition on the financial institutions and DNO lines. The PI is a lot more flat really or was a lot more flat throughout 2023 than we saw in the FI and DNO lines. PI is definitely holding up better, which makes up the vast majority of our long tail book. So that's positive, but the trends, as we said throughout 2023, the trends on the PI side are in the same direction. So we will take a cautious approach. We've always said when terms are -- when conditions are healthy, we'll put our foot on the gas and when they're -- when they start to get more challenging then we'll take the necessary steps and scale back if we have to. I don't think we're necessarily quite there per se. I would also say that our renewable book is not necessarily a reflection of the market because there is a lot of business that we push away that is much more aggressively sought after.That obviously, does not get captured within our rate increases. So the rate increases we've mentioned are specifically to our portfolio and not necessarily a reflection of the market conditions themselves.

Just wanted to ask too about the -- I know you don't write U.S. casually, but can you just talk about what drove the accident year loss ratio improvement in the quarter year-over-year? I know probably some of that's mix driven just because you're writing more short tail but anything to comment on there specifically on the lost trend front across your book?

No, honestly, I mean, as you said, I mean, there's nothing specific that sticks out. I think we're just following it. We've always said we'll shift focus towards the areas where we believe margins are going to be highest. And reinsurance was definitely one of them this year. By and large it was a more benign loss year as a market as well. So we got benefit of that in line with other players.

And then just one final one just on the special dividend. That was a nice surprise not and something new for you guys. I wonder if you could talk about just some of the factors that you guys considered that led you to the special dividend versus other areas of capital return or growth. And I know you mentioned excess capital, but just anything more you can kind of comment on that, how you were thinking about that in terms of ultimately declaring special dividend?

As you know, I mean, a couple of years ago we announced a new capital management strategy where we had announced a new ordinary dividend. We saw the opportunities in the market, Scott, and as we've said, it's underwriting first for us -- first and foremost, we went towards growing the portfolio when the opportunities were there, which we have done. We announced the share buy program, which we felt would be most beneficial to shareholders and adding and creating value. We use those funds to buy back the warrants last year. But in all honesty, the returns that we've achieved over the last couple of years have exceeded our expectations. And the returns we've made are extremely healthy some of the best in the market allowing us with the financial flexibility to be able to declare dividend on top of all the actions that we took in 2023, and the recognition of the support that our shareholders have given us and the rewards they deserve. So capital wise we remain very adequate and with this dividend we are confident we've got the runway and the capital to -- for us to continue on that runway of growth.

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to management for any closing remarks.

Thank you all for joining us today and thank you for your continued support of IGI. If you have any additional questions, please contact Robin and she will be happy to assist. We look forward to speaking to you on next quarter's call. Have a good day everyone. Thank you.

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.