Earnings Labs

RenaissanceRe Holdings Ltd. (RNR)

Q3 2016 Earnings Call· Wed, Nov 2, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day. My name is Jack, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I like to welcome everyone to the RenaissanceRe Third Quarter 2016 Financial Results Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. Peter Hill, you may begin your conference.

Peter Hill

Analyst

Thanks, Jack, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our third quarter 2016 financial results conference call. Yesterday, after the market closed, we issued our quarterly release. If you didn't get a copy, please call me at 212-521-4800 and we will make sure to provide you with one. There will be an audio replay of the call available from about 1:00 p.m. Eastern time today through midnight on December 2nd. The replay can be accessed by dialing 855-859-2056 U.S. toll free or +1-404-537-3406. The passcode you'll need for both numbers is 95393243. Today's call is also available through the investor information section of www.renren.com and will be archived on RenaissanceRe's website through midnight on January 11th. Before we begin, I am 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 RenaissanceRe'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 like to the call over to Kevin. Kevin?

Kevin O'Donnell

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is open

Thanks, Peter, and thank you all for joining today’s call. Let me being by first welcoming Bob Qutub, our new CFO. Bob joined us in August and has gotten opt to a great start. He has a long carrier of demonstrated leadership and I look forward to working with him as a member of the RenaissanceRe team. Moving on to discuss our results, I am pleased with our execution so far in 2016. We maintained our Cat leadership, grew our Lloyd operation by 20% and grew our Specialty segment by close to 70%. We’ve also increased our organizational efficiency as our run rate operational expenses are essentially flat for the year-to-date. With a strong third quarter on many fronts, despite the recent end to the land falling hurricane drought in the U.S., the third quarter storm Hurricane Hermine did not cause material losses or effect many reinsurance programs. And consequently BCAR property portfolios performed well. We will discuss the impacts of Hurricane Matthew, which occurred in the fourth quarter later on this call. Looking ahead, we anticipate that 2017 may prove to an even tougher year than 2016. Despite this, we are optimistic about our opportunities for profitable growth for many reasons. These include the investments we have made in our platforms, our people and our capabilities and the strong relationships we have developed with our client. We will look to maintain our current leadership position in property Cat which seeks to grow in other areas such as mortgage insurance and also with our U.S. and Lloyd’s platforms. Additional sources of future growth will come from several discrete corners of the business. In property Cat, we’re first call market for the Cat solutions. Our Cat leadership here should continue to provide attractive opportunities. Unfortunately, I do not expect that these…

Robert Qutub

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is open

Thanks for the kind words Kevin, and good morning, everyone. I’d like to start by saying how pleased I am to be a part of the RenaissanceRe team. I am excited to continue executing the company’s strategy, building on the great work already taking place. Jeff has let the organization in great financial condition with a strong balance sheet and the team has successfully executed a number of strategically important initiatives. I look forward to working with all of you as well going forward. With that let’s discuss our results for the third quarter and year-to-date. I’ll begin with some highlights from the quarter. Our top line growth continued to be strong where we’re able to grow the top line in our Specialty and Lloyd segments. We also saw abundant opportunities in mortgage reinsurance within the specialty credit lines. We generated strong underwriting income of $112.9 million and reported a solid combined ratio of 67%. Our investment portfolio generated strong returns driven by our equity investments and our tangible book value per share grew by 3.9% after adjusting for dividend. For the year-to-date, tangible book value per share has grown by 9.5%. Moving on to our third quarter financial results, we’ve reported net income of $147 million or $3.56 per diluted share. Our operating income was $87 million or $2.09 per diluted share. We generated an annualized ROE for the quarter of 13.5% in annualized operating ROE of 8%. Our book value per share increased 3.3% and our tangible book value per share including accumulated dividends increased by 3.9%. On a year-to-date basis, our ROE was 12.6% and our operating ROE was 6.7% with book value per share increasing 8% and tangible book value per share including accumulated dividends increasing 9.5%. Let me now shift to our segment results beginning…

Kevin O'Donnell

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is open

Thanks, Bob. I’ll divide my comments between Catastrophe, Specialty and Lloyd's and then comment on our venture unit before taking questions. Our Cat segment performed well this quarter, despite a relatively large number of events. In addition to the Atlantic hurricanes, we had an active typhoon season with eight tropical systems affecting Japan, six typhoons making landfall in China or Taiwan. We also saw historic flooding in the Louisiana, destructive hail storms in Colorado, devastating earthquakes in Italy and South Korea, and a wildfire loss in Los Angeles. Despite this activity, the property Cat market remains challenging. The good news is that federal insurance companies appeared to be more focused on consolidating the reinsurance panels with high quality companies. Seasons are tearing the reinsurers with the best reinsurers getting most of the new opportunities. To many companies, Hurricane Matthew drove home the value of working with a long term and seasoned partner with a strongest claim playing record when it seems poised to make landfall as a major hurricane. At this point as worth expanding on Hurricane Matthew, even though this event took place in the fourth quarter, Matthew made landfall in South Carolina in early October and cause losses as it passed through the Caribbean and from Florida to North Carolina within the U.S. Matthew maintained hurricane strength while creating damaging winds along about 750 miles of the U.S. coastline. Hurricane Matthew was the first category type hurricane in the Atlantic since Hurricane Felix in 2007 and looks likely to be the costliest Atlantic Strom since Sandy in 2012. Has Matthew formed and was developing further in the Atlantic, our underwriters with their team of scientists of weather predict closely monitoring the storm, its potential for strengthening and the most likely track it would take. The range of potential…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Kai Pan with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Kai Pan

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is open

Good morning and thank you. And first congratulations to Bob as well as good luck and best wishes to Mark. Kevin, you mention in the past that you’ve spent a long period time, we haven’t seen land falling storm in Florida, now we have two. I just wonder, does that change the dynamics in term pricing and January 1 renewals. Even before this event, we see some sort of decelerating in term of pricing decline, while those events actually helping the pricing moving to the possible territory and how do you plan to fulfill your business? Kevin O’Donnell: Thanks, Kai. I think I agree with your assessment generally about the direction of pricing for property Cat at the January 1 renewals. I’m not sure whether these hurricanes are going to change that, but I still feel reasonably optimistic that whatever reduction there may be in January if any, it will be smaller than what we’ve seen in the past. I think one thing that’ll be very interesting and something I am curious about watching with these storms is how the Florida market response, as you mentioned, there hasn’t been a loss there in quite a long time. One of the emerging issues in the Florida market is the assignment the benefits issue where Matthew hit really isn’t the geographic region where that activity has been most prevalent. But it will be interesting to see whether AOP issues emerge and how much for claim activity there actually is in Florida market. Well, that said, I wouldn’t change my pricing expectations for the January 1 renewal based on these storms.

Kai Pan

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is open

Okay. Just a little bit follow-up on that, is that the pricing stay at the same or maybe slightly decline. Do you expect you grow in that business in the property cat business? Kevin O’Donnell: So I don’t expect that we will grow in the property cat business in 2017. If you look last year, I think our reduction over is around 3%. Looking at 2017, I think rate reductions are less. We anticipate lower rate reductions that we had in 2016 and are optimistic that our book is well positioned to respond well to small reproductions.

Kai Pan

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is open

Okay, that’s great. My second question is just stepping back on the overall ROE for this year. For the third quarter, is no cat quarter and if you take out this one-off items like foreign exchange, your ROE is approaching about 10%. I just wonder is that in this current environment given your mix change towards more specialty and casualty, is that a kind of ROE profile for your company going forward? Kevin O’Donnell: I think - when I think about our portfolio, I think focusing on a quarter granted there’s always unique thing in a quarter, isn’t the way that we think about it. We try to build the best portfolio over the full set of outcomes. One of the actions that we’re taking in part of our strategy is managing our net risk pretty aggressively. So I mentioned we’re keeping less than 50% of the gross risk premium property cat. That obviously suppresses our returns in light cat quarters, but will serve to protect us in large cat quarters. I think there’s a cost to the strategy that we have there’s a cost to what I believe to be doing the right thing and that is something that is a trade across light cat quarters and heavy cat quarters to provide what we think is a good return. But I think the way you’re thinking about it makes some sense.

Kai Pan

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is open

Okay. It’s great. Well, thank you so much. Kevin O’Donnell: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Michael Nannizzi from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Michael Nannizzi

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is open

Thanks so much. Couple of numbers questions if I could, the expense ratios in specialty, so the operational expense ratio in specialty sort of pick down in the quarter but the notional dollar amount was also smaller year-over-year sequentially and also Lloyd’s, it was a bit more of a pronounced difference same line item. Is there anything specific that happened in the quarter there that explains that.

Robert Qutub

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is open

Yeah, it’s a good question. We’re overall very pleased with the work that we’ve done our expenses and our core run rate remains relatively even as we significantly grown our book of business. In Q3 decline operating expenses comes in part from those efficiencies but in Q3 remain some reclassifications in operating and acquisition, mainly as you point out in Specialty and Lloyd’s up into acquisition which is really to conform to how we reflect some of our seeding overrides that we have in the book for the year of 2016. The conformity has no impact on the overall expense ratio or the combined ratio. It’s just as a better reflection on what’s driving these costs going forward.

Michael Nannizzi

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is open

Okay. Got it. Okay and then in specialty, you mean notwithstanding that the acquisition or the overall expense ratio was a bit was a bit higher, is that a function of the higher written premiums that maybe just a small proportion of those earned through in the quarter?

Robert Qutub

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is open

Just to make sure I got your question, you’re focused on the combined ratio being driven by the higher gross written premium, Mike, sorry.

Michael Nannizzi

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is open

So in the specialty segment, the acquisition ratio picked up a bit sequentially, I mean year-over-year, it’s relatively flat. I was just curious as the year progresses, I mean is that - was that more of a function of the fact that you saw a lift in gross written premiums, net written premiums in terms of the mortgage business or maybe your - you have acquisition expenses associated with the written premium as opposed to the earned dollars or was that as you expected it to be?

Robert Qutub

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is open

I got that, Mike. What this really is the offset toward I was talking about on the operating expenses, the reclassification and moving those on the override up into acquisition costs, you see that bump up there. That we’ve seen an underlying turn of cost reductions that I spoke across all expenses but that’s the really the principle driver there. Kevin O’Donnell: One thing I add to Bob’s comments, which are exactly right is that, the acquisition cost for book of business on the gross basis is reasonably steady, expense of reclassification is what you’re saying.

Robert Qutub

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is open

And get no impact as a net expense ratio or the combined ratio.

Michael Nannizzi

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is open

Okay. I’ll switch and then just within that specialty segment just thinking about the mortgage book that’s clearly become a bigger piece of the pie. Just how should we be thinking about gross to net written, net written and net earned with the longer sort of earning timeframe for that specialty business. So guess it’s going to be different than it was in the past, obviously?

Robert Qutub

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is open

Yeah, what I would say is starting with just this the gross number, I think - if I think of a three year lock 2016, 2017 and 2018, we definitely wrote more than we expected in 2016, because looking forward, we think the economic support in 2016 are going to be better than the economics offered in 2017 and 2018. With that, our sessions are set to the 2016 book. Most of them are proportional so that will run through a straight on an earned basis.

Michael Nannizzi

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is open

Okay. And then the earnings pattern sort of in the seven year range-ish for the mortgage specialty business?

Robert Qutub

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is open

I think that’s a reasonable estimate, I think if the high ending price stretched out to ten, that’s a good estimate.

Michael Nannizzi

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is open

Okay, okay great. And then just last real quick on the investment portfolio, the yield sort of kicked up, I noticed that non-rated securities kicked up a little bit as a percentage of the total, was that just sort of positioning or was there something else within maybe one of the buckets that created the difference in the yield, I'm talking specifically about the fixed maturity investments?

Kevin O'Donnell

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is open

Right, overall we’ve maintained a relatively short duration book of just over two years. We have done some movements within there, but they're small and the sort of credit side of it, but we kept the duration really about the same, so some of dynamics would be in the credit side.

Michael Nannizzi

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is open

Okay, great. Thank you.

Kevin O'Donnell

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is open

Thanks Mike.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Quentin McMillan with KBW. Your line is open.

Quentin McMillan

Analyst · Quentin McMillan with KBW. Your line is open

Hi, thanks guys. I just wanted to touch on the net to growth strategy that you guys have whether it be in specialty and Lloyd's to the overall book of business, but you’ve said you sort of and then the Cat book, I’m sorry. So you sort of keep in less than 50% of the premiums, can you help us to understand what benefit you're getting from the fee income that you're taking in whether it be an offset the expense ratio, how big is that or what should we sort of be expecting going forward?

Kevin O'Donnell

Analyst · Quentin McMillan with KBW. Your line is open

I think the broader - let us start more broadly, thinking about our growth to net, one of it is certainly is taking in third party capital and managing it, other it is more of what I would consider quoted shares or specialized quoted share that we call CPP and then there's traditional excess of loss business. So it's a combination of things, we don't necessarily focused specifically on what the fees are. We focused on the difference between the expected profit and the required capital between our gross portfolios and our net portfolios, and we think that's a better way for us to think about it. The fee is specifically for cat are in the 10Q so you can take a look at that and that you'll be up, you’ll see the number I guess publish later today. But that's not necessarily the focus that we have and thinking about constructing the portfolio, it’s purely a portfolio basis on the delta between profit and required capital.

Quentin McMillan

Analyst · Quentin McMillan with KBW. Your line is open

Okay, that's helpful. And then shifting to our specialty specifically, if I look at the axe in your loss ratio x cat, I mean it was up about 680 bps year-over-year from what was a pretty strong number last year at 60.9 to 67.7. I just I'm curious kind of as the portfolio mix shift is changing, I would have expected that number should actually be improving despite the pricing headwinds, because my expectation would be that mortgage insurance is actually a lower loss ratio business, particularly what you've written in 2016. So I guess am I my thinking about that correctly and was there any sort of one off losses in 3Q 2016 within the specialty book in particular that may have elevated that that we should be thinking about for 3Q 2017?

Kevin O'Donnell

Analyst · Quentin McMillan with KBW. Your line is open

So, I look much more at the longer term loss ratios within the book of business. And I think what we're going to have quarterly fluctuations in that book, what I focus much more on is whether we are seeing trends that are causing us to have less profitability and more profitability in the book of business. But it's not one that I focus on a quarter-to-quarter basis. At this point in time there's no trend in the book that I would point to as being significant or further commented on a year-to-date basis, is reasonably stable.

Quentin McMillan

Analyst · Quentin McMillan with KBW. Your line is open

Okay thanks. And then just one last one snick in is and you guys don't give guidance in terms of buybacks I know you’re opportunistic, but is net income target for the year a good way for us to think about how much you guys might expect to repurchase to shareholders never given you.

Mark Wilcox

Analyst · Quentin McMillan with KBW. Your line is open

Well, thanks. As I mentioned in my prepared comments nothing is really changed regarding our philosophy or approach to capital management and we remain committed to returning capital overtime. And timing depends on really a number of factors which includes our view to opportunities, the profile of our risk portfolio as well as well as our liquidity profile. And so for this year we've returned $350 million in the form of buybacks and dividends to our shareholders, and historically the third quarter contend to be like for buybacks due to hurricane season. If you look at our history you’ll see that we've demonstrated that we're good stewards of our shareholders' capital and turned over a billion dollars in the past three years.

Quentin McMillan

Analyst · Quentin McMillan with KBW. Your line is open

Perfect. Thank you very much guys.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from line of Elyse Greenspan with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Elyse Greenspan

Analyst · Elyse Greenspan with Wells Fargo. Your line is open

Hi good morning. Just a couple of questions, one quick one, I know you did say that you are not providing premium guidance due to the new segments that you're going to put forth. Are you then going to be providing some level of premium guidance on a segment basis or is it just we're shifting away, I guess from premium guidance on a go forward basis?

Kevin O'Donnell

Analyst · Elyse Greenspan with Wells Fargo. Your line is open

I think everything you said is correct, we didn't guidance now and knowing segments are changing doesn't make sense, but we're taking this opportunity to look at the transparency that were providing across all of our disclosures. And we feel that we can continue to provide great transparency and great understanding of the way in which we're going to deploy capital and where we're going to deploy our resources without giving specific guidance going forward.

Elyse Greenspan

Analyst · Elyse Greenspan with Wells Fargo. Your line is open

Okay. And then in terms of the capital return I noticed that you guys didn't call out a level for the Q4 to date in the press release. I guess where you guys I guess still may be on the lower side due to the fact that we're still on hurricane season or any kind of number you want to call up for Q4 repurchases that we've seen so far?

Kevin O'Donnell

Analyst · Elyse Greenspan with Wells Fargo. Your line is open

We - In my prepared comments, I said year-to-date and then through the caller here and that number will be in the 10Q when we file today that we have really not purchased any up to this call right now, but again it's a matter of timing and opportunities that I’ve talked about at least that would reflect when we return share - when we do perform buybacks out there.

Elyse Greenspan

Analyst · Elyse Greenspan with Wells Fargo. Your line is open

Okay that's great. And I know we talk, I mean the expense ratio just on an overall basis as we think about the business makes kind of shifting you know way from cat in more into the specialty and Lloyd's. Any kind of I know it's kind of kicked around a bit on a quarterly basis any kind of high level views as we kind of think about the Q3 was the highest quarter this year, as you think about the expense ratio on a go forward basis.

Mark Wilcox

Analyst · Elyse Greenspan with Wells Fargo. Your line is open

I think look at our pick up part of just on my observations and where I've seen and Kevin you can add anything here, but I think it's a great question. I've only been here a short while and decisions around expense management can’t be divorced from the strategy or the overall business mix in any industry, in our industry running a business gross versus net asset being an impact as those excess over loss or quite assuring. So these play an important part of how to manage your expenses more importantly our capital. And overall, we're really pleased with what has been done in keeping our overall expense as flat well at the same time growing our book of business, and the team has been executing in delivering these efficiencies across the platform focused on helping to drive and improve ROE.

Kevin O'Donnell

Analyst · Elyse Greenspan with Wells Fargo. Your line is open

I think the area that probably just more focused on this is the casualty and specialty thinking about the combined ratio they're obviously the first thing I look at it is the loss ratio which looks good. Acquisition costs are higher in that book of business than they are for property or cat book. The good news is though that they are stabilizing. So we’ve seen that over the last few quarters and looking into 2017 we don't anticipate higher acquisition cost. And then finally a component of what you're saying is the fact that we're purchasing more seated in the specialty which is I think in a fact as well.

Elyse Greenspan

Analyst · Elyse Greenspan with Wells Fargo. Your line is open

Okay. And one question in terms of the seated in the retro purchases, I know that something on you’ve purchased more coverage about the book this year and your commentary implies you guys want to do the same next year. You also did make a comment in terms of some opportunities within your ventures unit to on the retro side. I'm just trying to - try to get kind of tied together those comments kind of re through expecting in the retro market at one-one, and how you might see I guess growth opportunities to right the business and how the pricing there will impact your kind of seated strategy in 2017?

Kevin O'Donnell

Analyst · Elyse Greenspan with Wells Fargo. Your line is open

Investors play an important role and the way we think about our gross demand strategy. What I was mentioning specifically as we actually already have a retro it's a broader than retrofit facility that provides retro risk to third party capital. And we might have an opportunity to deploy a little bit more of that, it's fluctuated massively in size of the last several years based on the opportunity. So I wouldn't read too much into it. I think interestingly our ventures team has been active thinking about ways to build contingent capital structures around our third party capital vehicles as well as well. We're not actively looking to build materially into the vehicles that we have now, but the more flexibility we have around those services as well as opportunities to emerge.

Elyse Greenspan

Analyst · Elyse Greenspan with Wells Fargo. Your line is open

Okay, well thank you. And welcome and I am looking forward to working with you and I just want to echo comments in the call and wish on the Mark the best of luck. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Joshua Shanker with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.

Joshua Shanker

Analyst · Joshua Shanker with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open

Thank you, good morning, everybody.

Kevin O'Donnell

Analyst · Joshua Shanker with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open

Good morning.

Joshua Shanker

Analyst · Joshua Shanker with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open

When we talk about budgeting for repurchases, you’ve said you plan in this type of environment to return all your income to shareholders in the form of dividends repurchases. Is that operating income, net income, net income less unrealized gains, how - from budgeting perspective how do you think about that?

Mark Wilcox

Analyst · Joshua Shanker with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open

That’s good question Josh. I think that you don't target a level or return in capital is can be lose guideline and you may follow, but we really look at it as timing. We're committed to returning the capital back to our shareholders, but it's also a function of what we have out there in terms of opportunities for the businesses, the profile our risk portfolio as well as our capital and liquidity position that we out there. Again you can call it a lose guideline, but I would really say its timing and I wouldn't be contained confined to discrete quarters or discrete years.

Joshua Shanker

Analyst · Joshua Shanker with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open

Absolutely.

Kevin O'Donnell

Analyst · Joshua Shanker with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open

The other thing I add is just saying Bob coming on board has given us great ways to think about this, but really nothing has changed and the way we're thinking about managing capital and returning capital to shareholders.

Joshua Shanker

Analyst · Joshua Shanker with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open

Is that loose guideline, I assume doesn't refer to time is that net income, is that operating income or is that net income less on realized gains?

Mark Wilcox

Analyst · Joshua Shanker with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open

Would be net income.

Joshua Shanker

Analyst · Joshua Shanker with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open

Net income. Okay.

Mark Wilcox

Analyst · Joshua Shanker with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open

Again it’s low double underscore.

Joshua Shanker

Analyst · Joshua Shanker with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open

It can be very loose and in terms is it budgeting process, is that a multi-year process or is that a one year process?

Robert Qutub

Analyst · Joshua Shanker with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open

Just coming in and what we're doing is at some multi-year process you can see our strategies unfolding overtime and building out what we think our investments going forward and focusing in on key opportunities of the process is underway right now. And I know Kevin you might want to have a few words on just sort of a higher level view on the budgeting process?

Kevin O'Donnell

Analyst · Joshua Shanker with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open

Yes, we’ve always look at it across the multi-year basis obviously with increasing uncertainty as we move out to after years. Really going back to the original question that that is very much, how we look at our capital management strategy, and specifically share repurchasing is we look at it over the long term. And we're not particularly concerned as to whether we're above or below net income in any given quarter or any given year.

Joshua Shanker

Analyst · Joshua Shanker with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open

Can the Lloyd's business continue to grow if property cap pricing is broadly flat while specialty pricing continues to stick down?

Kevin O'Donnell

Analyst · Joshua Shanker with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open

Yes, we the Lloyd’s business is actually a mix of the other businesses that we ride plus there's a component of insurance business that we're writing within the Lloyd's platform as well, and we believe that we've invested appropriately in the platform to the right people and increasingly have the right access to the business that we want to add. So even with weight pressure on property cap we anticipate we can continue to cut Lloyd’s platform. But as I said in the comments I think the growth is we're becoming of a size and the opportunity is challenging. So I think the growth will achieve in 2017 is less than the growth we achieved in 2016.

Joshua Shanker

Analyst · Joshua Shanker with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open

That's very fair. Good luck with that. Thank you.

Kevin O'Donnell

Analyst · Joshua Shanker with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open

Thanks.

Robert Qutub

Analyst · Joshua Shanker with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Jay Cohen with Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is open.

Jay Cohen

Analyst · Jay Cohen with Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is open

Thank you. Just a follow-up on the expense ratio issue, you obviously kind of change the geography a little bit between operating expenses and acquisition expenses. What we're looking in the third quarter. We're looking at in the third quarter, is this a reasonable starting point for our model is going forward, I assume that there were no sort of catch ups from previous quarters in there?

Robert Qutub

Analyst · Jay Cohen with Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is open

What you're looking at is going back to overall the net expense ratio really didn’t change - no impact on it. And it is a re-class on a year-to-date basis from between the operating and the acquisition. So you’ll slightly see an uptick going forward about 10% more given what we pull back from the first two quarters. But overall again it doesn't affect the net.

Jay Cohen

Analyst · Jay Cohen with Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is open

So the way maybe to look at it, because we do model obviously those separately to look at maybe the nine month run rate for both and kind of use that as a starting point?

Robert Qutub

Analyst · Jay Cohen with Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is open

As starting point for you to look at.

Jay Cohen

Analyst · Jay Cohen with Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is open

Great, thanks Bob.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Brian Meredith with UBS. Your line is open.

Brian Meredith

Analyst · Brian Meredith with UBS. Your line is open

Yes, thanks, just a couple of questions here first. Kevin, you made a comment earlier that you think that the economics of the M.I. business would be better in 2016 and they will be in 2017 and 2018. I'm curious why that is?

Kevin O'Donnell

Analyst · Brian Meredith with UBS. Your line is open

It’s a combination of factors including we were - it’s our belief that some of the underwriting criteria actually tightened up to on sustainably type levels. We were able to execute into some of the deals that we think have the best underlying underwriting associated with them. We think going forward, the underwriting criteria at the banks although loser is still actually quite sound and robust. So we think there's still opportunity. But we leveraged into the deals which we think are the highest credit quality.

Brian Meredith

Analyst · Brian Meredith with UBS. Your line is open

Gotcha. Okay. And then one of the just a quick question with respect to capital management looking into capital base, do you look at kind of your required capital which you need to have on a gross basis or in net basis? So in case the retro goes away do you want to make sure you've got plenty of capital to withstand that?

Kevin O'Donnell

Analyst · Brian Meredith with UBS. Your line is open

I think that’s one of the important things we look at. We spend a ton of time looking at a capital portfolio levels at balance sheet levels by geography both on a gross and net basis including in our ultimately - our ultimate risk roll out are substantial haircuts against our seated recoveries as events become larger just making sure that we continue to stress the system and are not overly rolling on a retro purchasing.

Brian Meredith

Analyst · Brian Meredith with UBS. Your line is open

Makes sense. Thank you.

Kevin O'Donnell

Analyst · Brian Meredith with UBS. Your line is open

Sure.

Operator

Operator

Your final question comes from the line of Ryan Byrnes with Janney. Your line is open. Mr. Burns your line is open.

Kevin O'Donnell

Analyst · Janney. Your line is open. Mr. Burns your line is open

.:

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions - your final question comes from line of Kai Pan with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Kai Pan

Analyst · Kai Pan with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open

Thanks, just follow-up on the reserve releases, if you look at year-to-date, the reserve releases about seven points, last year was about 12 points, I just wonder because recently we've seen some on the primary companies take a reserve releases starting slowing down and some that actually shows some reserve adverse pavement, I just wonder what your underlying trend in your specialty book in particular, because that's where you see the most in term of reduction in term of reserve releases?

Robert Qutub

Analyst · Kai Pan with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open

Yes, if you're referring to the specialty book Q3 this year versus the comparative quarter last year. This year it was only about $20 million of favorable development and was somewhat early granular. And there wouldn't have been any large items looking back to Q3 three last year there were several large items that came through, then one with the restructure on the mortgage side that resulted in $56 million favorable development it really reflects the change and that's the biggest change we've seen on a year-over-year basis.

Kai Pan

Analyst · Kai Pan with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open

Okay so excess some large develop in last year, so that the underlying you don’t see any sort of meaningful trend in term of loss inflation or from your seeded any sort of meaningful trend?

Kevin O'Donnell

Analyst · Kai Pan with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open

I think the way I think about it is exactly as you're thinking about it which is whether we're seeing a trend or not on a favorable side. At this point, we're not seeing any trends what you're saying is really kind of idiosyncratic movement of reserves between quarters and years.

Kai Pan

Analyst · Kai Pan with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open

Great, thank you so much.

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. I would like to now turn the call back to Kevin O'Donnell.

Kevin O'Donnell

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is open

Thank you. Before I close I also want to say thank you to Mark Wilcox, our Chief Accounting Officer, who will be leaving us at the end of the year. Mark is a good friend of mine and I've had the pleasure of working with him for many years. As equate, we contributed to his success of RenRe and making RenRe really what it is today. I wish Mark continued happiness, continued health and continued success as he begins his new life back in the U.S. Thank you, Mark. With that that concludes our third quarter call. I'd like to thank everybody for participating. And we look forward to speaking to you after the fourth quarter.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today's conference call. Participants you may now disconnect.