IRB-Brasil Resseguros S.A. (IRBR3) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

[Interpreted]If you're listening to the video conference in English, you can mute the original audio. We inform you that this video conference is being recorded and will be made available on the company's IR site, ri.irbre.com, where you will also be able to find the release material. You can download the presentation on the chat icon including in English. [Operator Instructions]. We would like to clarify that any forward-looking statements contained in this presentation and any statements that may be made during this video conference relating to the company's business outlook, projections, financial and operational targets are based on beliefs and assumptions on the part of the company's management and on information currently available. Forward-looking statements are no guarantee of performance. They involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions as they refer to future events and therefore, depend on circumstances that may or may not occur. Investors should understand that general economic conditions, market conditions and other operational factors may affect the future performance of IRB, thus conducting to results which differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking statements. Today with us are the following executives: Mr. Marcos Falcao, CEO, CFO and IRO, Mr. Daniel Castillo, VP of Reinsurance; Mrs. Thais Peters, Chief of Internal Controls, Risk and Compliance; Mr. Paulo Valle, General Director of IRB Assets; Mr. Daniel Volpe, Director of Underwriting; Mr. Ronaldo Pinelli, Director of Contracts; and Mr. Lucas Mello, Director of Optional. I'll now turn the floor over to Mr. Falcao, CEO, to start his presentation.

[Interpreted] Good morning, everyone, and welcome to one yet another results presentations for IRB. I would first like to start by expressing my heartfelt sympathy to all the population of Rio Grande do Sul and all the gauchos all over the world who have suffered the impact of the flooding. To pay claims is the main responsibility of the insurance market. And today, currently, we are in contact with our clients, and we are committed to analyzing payments the speediest way possible. Also last Sunday on the 12th May, our colleague, Willy Jordan, who was on medical leave. He passed away. Unfortunately, he did not manage to survive this terrible illness and he fought a lot, and we are also expressing our deepest sympathies to his family to all his dear ones. Today, you will meet 3 new officers who are reporting to Castillo to speak on the company's operation. This is what we are doing to bring businesses closer to you. You'll be meeting Lucas Mello, Ronaldo Pinelli and Dan Volpe. Going back to the presentation. On the first slide, you can see that during the first quarter of 2024, we had an important and significant development in line with what we've been saying since last year. We had in IFRS 4, which is the [Indiscernible] methodology and our methodology to manage the company. We had net income of BRL 79 million in this first quarter with a claims loss ratio of 58% and a combined rate of 99%. So we improved these 3 indicators compared to the first quarter of 2023. Also, we are presenting the figures for IFRS 17 in this ITR, which is the methodology that we are complying with CVM, totaling BRL 237 million compared to losses in IFRS 17 of BRL 25 million in the first quarter of '23. At the end of the presentation, we'll provide certain highlights of the concepts of IFRS 17. But in addition, I would like to mention some other highlights that have been taking place since the beginning of the year. On April 3, IRB celebrated its 85th anniversary, which is marked by a history of leadership in the Brazilian market and also because it is a hub of originating businesses in Latin America. We have people who have the technical capacity and financial capacity to enable us to be leaders in this sector. We were awarded at the same time, the certification of Great Place to Work. And we are very happy that in such a short time, we were able to recover our collaborators self-esteem and their pride in working for us. And we are already working for new leaders to come up and we have implementing and working on a cooperation and high-performance culture. We have also anticipated the payment of the ventures of the third issuance. We paid the debentures and received the court ordered payments. This is a subsequent event to the ITR. We had the payment of debentures in the end of April and the receiving of the court order on May 2, and we have a balance of BRL 100 million in cash. Another highlight that we have been working on since the beginning of January is capacitating our team to improve risk management and to make our models more sophisticated, bringing them in line with the best international practices. And our goal is to be able to allocate capital per line of business. We expect to achieve this by the end of the year. Another point, which everyone has been following, is the coverage rate for the adjusted net income totaling 69% in super added. And we are in June, disclosing our first sustainability report based on 2023. Even with the fall in the premiums in 2023, we still are holding the largest market share in the Brazilian market. This is a historical figure in IRB. In the next slide, you can see quarter-on-quarter; we have evolved in the net income and in underwriting results. As I have mentioned in other calls, between months and quarters, there will be certain volatility, but our trend is still positive and gradual. When we look to the chart on the right, we see a trend in the last 12 months that we have maintained consistency and discipline. We can ensure that we are committed to the profitability of the business and controlling everything that we are able to control such as pricing, expenses, costs, making reserves with responsibility and investing such reserves with adjusted risks. Events such as the catastrophe in Rio Grande do Sul may make this achieve a slower pace, but we are willing to turn this trend on its head and build a significant strategy. Now I give the floor to Castillo to talk about the reinsurance strategy.

[Interpreted] Going back to the Rio Grande do Sul flooding, our exposure is in housing, insurance, property, rural car and life insurance. I'd like to make a comment on each. Housing usually covers damage to the building and excludes content. Residential does not usually cover for flooding. And in rural, although 13% of our portfolio is concentrated in Rio Grande do Sul when the water started rising, 75% of the harvest had already taken place. And it is in automobiles and vehicles that we see our greatest exposure in the area of insurance and in reinsurance, we have a few reinsurance coverage. Considering [Indiscernible], patios which are the coverages of vehicles at the car dealerships? Finally, there is no doubt that we will also have exposures in life insurance. Our underwriting teams and claims teams have been working, analyzing our contracts, contacting our clients and trying to estimate our loss. And it's our opinion that unfortunately, the coverage of reinsurance is very, very low compared to the economic loss. But at the same time, that insurance companies protect themselves through reinsurance, we reinsurers also protect ourselves for possible catastrophe. This protection is called retrocession. I would like to comment that our retrocession program is the most robust, one of the best ones I have ever seen in a reinsurance company. Therefore, we will not be impacted by our businesses, negative factors. In the next slide, in our strategy of focusing businesses in Brazil, we can see that in the first quarter of '22 and '23 international businesses were reduced to 27% and then 20% in the first quarter of 2024. At the same time, we can see that in the same period in Brazil, we went from 62% to almost 74%. And that is our strategy to be able to concentrate 70% of our business in Brazil, 20% in Latin America and 10% for other international exposures. Please note that our premium percentage in Latin America is very low because the renewal of these businesses will only take place in the third quarter because in most part of the clients in Latin America renew their businesses on July 1, the reduction of premium by BRL 200 million results from the reduction of premiums in international business. The premium in Brazil has remained constant. When we did the change in the underwriting schedule, adopting international best practice, we separated optional reinsurance to contracted research. The first one is the one that has an individual risk, which means we reinsure a certain industry, a building, an oil platform and aircraft. Each risk is analyzed and priced according to the exposure and the amount contracted. Underwriters involved our specialized professionals in each one of these areas. We have civil engineers, mechanic engineers, oil engineers and agro professionals. On the other hand, the contract insurance is the reinsurance of a portfolio of risks. This analysis is more complex, and we have professionals that are very such as actuaries and mathematicians and economists. When we divided the sectors, we appointed 2 the officers, Lucas Mello, and Ronaldo Pinelli. I will now give the floor first to Ronaldo so he will comment on the businesses that took place in the first quarter in contracts. And following, Lucas will be speaking about the area of optional reinsurance. I would also like to say that our technical director will also have his comments to make. Ronaldo, you have the floor now.

[Interpreted] Thank you Castillo. It's a pleasure to be here to provide you with detail with on contracts, which is responsible for 70%. The first quarter is usually the most important for contracts, especially January, where we renew most of the largest global contracts. And our largest contract in Brazil in Agro was also renewed on this date. Before going on into detail on our portfolio, I would like to give you information on the global market, which also influences Brazil according to the top right-hand corner of the slide. The movement of hard market, which means prices and conditions, which are more aggravated and favors reinsurance, we also observed more stability in renewals in 2024 when compared to 2023. The increase of the retention mitigated claims and contributed to better results. And lastly, there was an increase in capacity for the market in general. In the first quarter, automatic contracts remained stable. The automatic contracts represented around 79% of the premiums issued versus 72% of the first quarter of last year. On a total basis, we had 90% renewed in the first quarter of 2024, whereas in the first quarter of last year, the renewal rate was 87%. On the top bottom right-hand corner, I would like to highlight 50% of the yearly premium, highlighting the displacement of our highest contract in Agro from April to January, which increased our participation in 10 points. We also increased our business in Brazil and expansion to Latin America. We are also monitoring new opportunities in Europe to diversify our portfolio. In this chart, we also show our underwriting discipline, focusing on results. We have 246 million versus 264 million on the same period of last year. However, we achieved more contracts, 174 versus 157, and we have reduced the businesses, but we think that were not accepted by the clients, which was 62% versus 78%. I would now like to give the floor to Lucas Mello, our Optional Reinsurance Director.

[Interpreted] Thank you, Ronaldo. The underwriting of optional of IRB represents today 30% of the volume of premiums of the company and offers today the most comprehensive set to mitigate and transfer risks in the country, supporting the analysis and the risks and the distribution of energy, great infrastructure and also oil and gas. We are leaders in the market. On this slide, you can see the income for Optional for the first quarter, we have shown that our defined strategy is being implemented, focusing with increasing and taking up again and pricing the risks, achieving new businesses with new underwritings and an increase in the participation of renewals where we were able to implement or keep our reference terms, which ensure profitability. We ended the first quarter of '24, growing by 6 percentage points, achieving 318 million in premiums, renewals and news compared to the last quarter. The difference between the numbers of Optional with the first quarter of last year is because of 3 features of optional that differs from automatic contracts. They are seasonality; Optional contracts do not have a lot of concentration such as the automatic contracts do. Therefore, the renewals are more spread out throughout the year. Number two; there are issuances of Optional where the risk is not renewed. And three, we have the term of the contract, which is higher than 12 months, which usually makes a mismatch take place in terms of the comparisons for the same period. Therefore, because of seasonality, we have BRL 116 million, which will be renewed other than the first quarter. To the right, you can see the evolution of our distribution of the total Optional issued premium per line of business, which has not been unaltered, and we have oil and gas the most representative for the IRB portfolio. I now give the floor to Daniel Volpe.

[Interpreted] Thank you, Lucas. Hello, everyone. I'm Daniel Volpe. I'm responsible for pricing and for all the re-recession part and also for business intelligence. Today, I would like to talk about the retrocession expenses and the quality of our partners. Retro expense is divided in 2 big groups. The first one corresponds to 14% of expenses were BRL 360 million in the last 12 months is the expense with the protection of the risks of the company. This operation has the goal of protecting the assets and the results of the company against significant claims, whether they take place because of one single risk or because of events that affects several risks at the same time as is the case in Rio Grande do Sul. The second, which corresponds to 86% of the expenses or BRL 2.2 billion in the last 12 months, corresponds to retrocessions that we have with strategic partners. In these operations, IRB keeps part of the risk and reach exceeds the remaining to the groups abroad. Concerning the expenses to protect the risk we can see to the right that the company has a policy of working with sound partners. These usually have ratings over on a global scale. This selection of partners also brings us safety to protecting our portfolio. I now give the floor to Daniel Castillo for his comments on claims.

[Interpreted] Thank you Volpe. No doubt in our activity, loss ratio is extremely relevant to allow us to achieve the expected results. On this slide, you can see a reduction in the loss ratio from 124% in 2022 to 58% in Q1 2024. Remember that loss ratio for reinsurance results from the contracts signed in previous periods, and it depends essentially on risk assessment at the moment that these risks are presented and also on appropriate pricing. On the lower part of the slide, you see the breakdown of the loss ratio by geography. And you see that in Brazil, there was a slight deterioration. Loss ratio abroad was reduced by 33 percentage points. Don't forget, that our business is subject to volatility, and it would be a mistake to look at one quarter only. We have to look at the trends presented on the upper part of the graph. On the next slide, you can see on the left-hand side, the evolution of the combined ratio, which in Q1 2024 was down by 12 percentage points. The combined index is the index that demonstrates the healthiness of the underwriting and has the effect of previous years. The reduction to levels lower than 100% tells us that we are on the right path. On the right-hand side of the slide, you see the combined index, which is loss ratio and commissioning. You can also see separately life and non-life. You can see that in our life portfolio, there has been more volatility because of the commissioning of a major account, which we have not renewed, but which is suffering because of the sale effect. The P&C or non-life is more stable. I'll now turn the floor over to Falcao for the analysis of provisions and expenses.

[Interpreted] Thank you, Daniel. On the next slide, we present the SG&A I would like to ask you to have a look at the right-hand side of the graph, which shows the administrative expenses with a bit of breakdown. The account I would like you to look at is the following: compare the expenses of Q1 2024 and deduct depreciation, so BRL 64 million with the first quarter of 2023 and BRL 77 million. So the discretionary expenses in the company were reduced by BRL 13 million. On the next slide, you see again the evolution of IBNR and PSL in relation to the earned premium. You see the same trend. We have been very prudent and disciplined in managing reserves and provisions. You see that they changed in line with the earned premiums, and there is a greater percentage than we had been presenting before. This trend started after 2020. On the next slide, we present a new concept. We are now going to report here the concept of float. Cash and financial investments, which was BRL 6.3 billion in March 2024, down from the BRL 7 billion in March 2023, but in line with the reduction in the volume of retained earnings. We use float here in the sense that the financial market uses. This is money from third parties, which we retain to cover any losses. And this is a very important part of our business. On the graph, you can see the cash position ever since 2020 and its stabilization in line with the movement of premiums. It is very important to see that this trend has been reversed. What we saw before between 2015 and 2020. In 2020, we reversed the trend, and it's now stabilized. I'll now turn the floor over to Paulo Valle, who invests our assets.

[Interpreted] Thank you, Falcao. Good morning to all. At the end of Q1 2024, the financial result was above the 125 million in Q4 2023 and slightly lower than the results of the first quarter 2023. Despite the lower levels of CTI and despite also the smaller volume of assets under management we obtained good results in the portfolio, especially in multi-market and credits with banks. We want to continue to have these favorable results, considering the higher level of interest rates by year-end, given the change in the interest rate scenario in the U.S. and Brazil. So instead of 9.25 in terms of Selic, we have 125 at the end of 2024. On this slide, you can see the breakout of our assets. Currently, 60% onshore, which means investments in the domestic market and 40% are broad. Of the 60% invested in Brazil, 35% are post fixed bonds, Selic-linked or committed operations and the orders are linked to inflation. This is for the hedging of our debentures and 7% are in private credit CDI plus inflation. In terms of the 40%, which are held offshore, approximately 15% are Brazilian treasury bonds, 15% of Canadian and U.S. bonds and 9% are time deposits and deposit certificates in different currencies to hedge our FX exposure. The company's policy is to be hedged in terms of foreign exchange. We don't speculate in dollar or in any other currency. The allocation of funds is exclusively to pay out the commitments we have to pay according to the technical provisions and also indexed according to currencies. On the next slide, you see the profitability of our assets. In the onshore, we have 2 parts. The first one is where we actively manage the funds, 74% of the onshore portfolio with a profitability of 102% of the CDI. And then the part of the portfolio, which we managed passively to manage our assets and liabilities, 26% of the portfolio, which includes assets linked to inflation for the hedging of the ventures. Currently, this portfolio has a profitability of approximately 70% of the CDI. The coupon plus inflation did not reach the CDI in the period. In terms of offshore, which also serves for hedging, the profitability of the assets is close to 4% a year. I now turn the floor to Thais Peters.

[Interpreted] Thank you, Paulo. Good morning to all. It's a pleasure again to be here to talk about regulatory ratios and capital management. First of all, we are going to talk about the adjusted net income sufficiency relative to the minimum capital requirements. According to the left-hand side of the graph, you see that this ratio reached BRL 697 million, an increase by 3.5% relative to the end of last year. This means a sufficiency of 169%. This result has to do with the lower minimum capital required. This in comparison with the first quarter of 2023 totaled BRL 572 million. This reduction had to do with the minimum capital required for the risk of underwriting in view of the decrease in retained losses in rural and our international exposure. All the parts of the capital requirements remained flat in the period. On the next slide, we see the second regulatory indicator, which assesses the amount of assets qualified by SUSEP to meet our actuarial commitments. The indicator for coverage of technical positions at the end of the first quarter of 2024 had a sufficiency ratio of BRL 370 million. The drop in the ratio had to do with the cash flow in the company, which is very seasonal in the first quarter. Going forward, the receipt of court order payments will have a positive impact on this indicator. I now turn the floor over to Falcao, who is going to talk about our results, considering IFRS 17.

[Interpreted] On this slide, I will make some comments about our results under IFRS 17. According to this method, in Q1, net income was BRL 237 million vis-a-vis a loss of BRL 25 million in Q1 2023. The main effects were the drop in loss ratio, the drop in the revenue of reinsurance in view of the smaller volume of premiums and an increase in the financial results of reinsurance. Under IFRS 17, the financial results of reinsurance is the financial result of operational accounts and not investment accounts. Therefore, we had an increase in the financial result of insurance because of the variation in discount rates and a lengthening of the payment curve of those losses that had been provisioned for. When this happens, we have a better financial results from operations. But again, the company is managed based on IFRS 4, which is adopted by SUSEP. On the next slide and to wrap up our presentation, I would like to make some comments. The first one is about the protection gap. The event in Rio Grande do Sul is going to give rise to a lot of thinking. Unfortunately, Brazilian society is not protected enough. And we have to think hard about that. The insurance market has to grow to protect society's assets. I'm very concerned because the economic losses in Rio Grande do Sul are going to be substantial. But the percentage of protection is going to be insignificant. The insurance market is not protecting society. We have to get together with the regulatory authority, the authorities, the market, and we have to change the culture of insurance to be able to protect our society. We want to have a major role in this discussion. And we are here to discuss this with anybody who is interested. So to end, I would just like to show you our new events. Some of them are part of our IR schedule. All the parts of the underwriting people, the operation. We have the annual renewal of contracts. We also have high-performance training for a new group of associates, 120 in total. And this is under our new guidelines, which had staff development as one of its pillars. We are going to start the process of budgeting for 2025 in July. And with this, we are going to open for the Q&A session. Thank you very much.