Art Raschbaum
Analyst · FBR. Your line is open
Good morning. Maiden continues to generate solid operating earnings and double-digit operating returns despite a continued challenging environment. During the third quarter and the first nine months of 2015, Maiden has reported operating return on common equity of 11.3% and 11.8%, respectively. Importantly, we continue to enjoy growth in invested assets and strong year-on-year growth in investment income. While comparative year-on-year earnings and underwriting results have been impacted by adverse commercial auto experience in the Diversified portfolio, we are confident that we are effectively responding to these issues and are well positioned to continue to profitably expand this segment. We remain committed to offering our clients highly differentiated customized products and a focus on exceptional service, our strong long-term relationships and customer-centric approach remains significant competitive advantages. For the first nine months of the year, gross premiums written were up 12% to $2.1 billion, with AmTrust increasing 28%, while the Diversified Reinsurance segment fell 13%. In the US, premiums from the Diversified segment were down, as we continue to feel the impact of the loss of one life client earlier in the year, as well as the impact of underwriting actions resulting in non-renewal of several underperforming accounts. As we have consistently communicated, we remain focused on maintaining underwriting discipline. Despite these challenges, we continue to believe that we are well positioned to expand our US business. We have added a number of new accounts this year, grown existing client portfolios and are actively working with a number of prospects which should enable us over time to offset the impact of underwriting actions and the loss of our large client relationship. Our focus continues to be on expanding our highest margin segments and on developing long-term capital solutions for regional insurers. We believe that demand for capital support in our target market is growing and on our unique highly-differentiated international insurance services business, which is focused on developing branded consumer insurance products for auto manufacturers and retailers, primarily in Europe; we continue to feel the negative influence of foreign exchange on premium volume due to the impact of a strong dollar on primarily euro-denominated revenues. Notwithstanding the influence of foreign currency, we expect this segment to grow in 2016 and beyond, as new OEM clients come online and as we begin to implement our payment-protection insurance joint venture with Allianz, which was announced in September. In our newest business activity, which is focused on providing capital solutions to companies in Europe in a post-Solvency II environment, we've made solid progress in expanding awareness and have developed a significant growing list of prospects. We are currently actively entertaining a number of submissions. In our AmTrust segment, while growth has moderated as compared to the third quarter of 2014, we continue to enjoy strong organic growth. You may recall that in the third quarter of 2014, we began to see the full impact of the Tower acquisition. The year-to-date combined ratio for the first nine months is 99.1%, compared to 97.8% in 2014. The main driver of the higher combined ratio is continued adverse development in our US commercial auto excess of loss business. Given an elevated level of loss activity experienced over the last several quarters, and as we mentioned during the last earnings call in August, we've now completed a review of our US excess commercial auto reinsurance portfolio. As a result of that review, we further strengthened reserves in the third quarter to recognize what we believe to be increased loss cost in the 2011, 2012 and 2013 underwriting years. It's important to note that much of the loss development in this quarter stems from our own analysis of our clients’ open claims and in many cases we've posted additional case reserves. From discussions with clients, and observing the commentary of others in the market, the issues we are seeing in our excess of loss commercial auto portfolio do not seem to be unique to Maiden, but we're taking the steps that we believe are necessary to mitigate a longer-term impact. As we've mentioned in the past, by responding quickly to adverse development, we can also ensure that our forward pricing reflects a realistic picture of loss cost. While we've responded with revised renewal terms and conditions, in several cases, we either non-renewed or have been unable to come to acceptable terms on some accounts. Investment income has been a solid and growing contributor to earnings and for the first nine months of 2015, net investment income has totaled $96 million, that's an increase of 13% from the same period last year. While interest rates continue to be low, we've remained true to our lower volatility strategy and have not reached for yield as sought greater returns through equities or other alternative investment strategies. We very methodically grown invested assets and we've been thoughtful about when to best deploy cash. The continued growth in invested assets is a clear driver of growing earnings power. Despite a challenging operating environment, Maiden results this year clearly demonstrates the strength of our lower volatility, highly efficient business model and strong balance sheet. Invested assets continue to grow and drive improving net investment income, while we work to improve underwriting results, which should further benefit operating returns and earnings over time. Notwithstanding our higher combined ratio, we remain confident in our ability to increase our operating returns. I'd like to now turn the call over to our Chief Financial Officer, Karen Schmitt, to review the third quarter results in greater detail. Karen?