QBE Insurance Group Limited (QBE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to QBE Half Year 2024 Results Briefing. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Group Chief Executive Officer, Andrew Horton. Please go ahead.

Good morning and thank you for joining us today. I'd like to start by acknowledging the traditional owners of the many lands on which we meet today. For me, this is the Gadigal lands of the Eora nation and recognize their continued connection to land, waters and culture. I pay my respects to the elders past, present and future and I extend this respect to any First Nations people joining us today. At the outset, I think we've had a good start to the year. These results highlight a continuation of improved and more consistent performance for QBE and we've implemented a series of actions in the period to ensure this continues. So let's move to Slide 5. The key messages from today's session are well summarized here. Our financial performance was strong and generally tracked in line with expectations for the year. While GWP growth of 2% did moderate from prior periods; on looking through the temporary impact from exited lines and crop, underlying growth was closer to 11%. We delivered a combined operating ratio of 93.8%, which is essentially in line with our full year outlook. Alongside favorable investment returns, our return on equity of 16.9% was excellent and improved significantly compared to the prior period. I feel good about the progress we're making against our strategic priorities. This period, we announced the closure of U.S. middle market business and this morning we've also announced important reserve transactions. Collectively, these actions lift our confidence in the outlook for North America's performance, will further reduce reserve volatility and ensure we build on the recent track record of better and more consistent performance. More broadly, we'll talk today about the balance and health of our underwriting portfolio, which is much improved and currently quite attractive. The key message today is that we feel we're drawing to a conclusion of a long, but lengthy period focused on remediating underperforming businesses. With the vast majority of our business performing well, we should be able to spend the majority of our time planning for the future rather than just seeing problems created in the past. So let's move on to Slide 6. Digging into our strategic priorities in a bit more detail. Pleasing progress continues and I'll speak to growth, modernization and people here. On sustainable growth, we continue to deliver against our strategy focusing on deepening core franchises, building profile in targeted lines and innovating around new risks and opportunities. In the period, we've added capability and adjacencies for our U.S. platform. In the U.K., we're making good traction in our regional business where we're looking to build capability beyond our traditional strengths. In AusPac, we continue to see good ex-rate growth in our largest commercial portfolios and finally, our reinsurance business continues to deliver high quality growth. I also want to call out the launch of QCyberProtect, our new global cyber product. We've spoken previously about the fact that we're underrepresented in this segment and our customers are increasingly looking for cyber coverage. This will be a truly global product, which has been designed with reference to industry developments and changes in terms and conditions over recent years. Moving to modernization. As we framed in February, our modernization program is a major focus this year. The program will support sustainable growth, ensuring our growth focus areas are well equipped to be competitive for many years to come. There is also a broader efficiency focus and we recently commenced a body of work to expedite this opportunity. We continue to roll out AI copilots for underwriters. These copilots are allowing us to be more responsive with brokers and focus on quoting the most desirable business. I'm excited about the AI opportunity in our U.S. Accident & Health business. The majority of the portfolio renews on the 1st of January and our underwriters work around the clock for weeks wading through submissions. Our copilot should make a real difference around these pinch points ensuring our underwriters focus their time on the most attractive submissions. I also want to flag the appointment of Julie Minor to our Group Executive Committee taking on the role of Group Head of Distribution. Julie joins us from Marsh having held a range of senior roles and led numerous key customer relationships. Julie will drive more aligned and strategic engagement with our distribution partners and ensure we're responsive to new opportunities in the market. To close out here, I think the engagement across the group is in a fantastic place. Our teams are engaged and motivated with a focus that's becoming more medium term. So let's unpack the results in a bit more detail. Markets remain attractive for us and we've entered the year with further top line momentum. Headline growth of 2% includes a drag from exited lines and crop. Excluding this, underlying growth was around 11% underpinned by premium rate increases around 7% and ex-rate growth around 5%. Being able to deliver further growth whilst exiting these underperforming lines highlights the breadth and diversification we enjoy. Our underwriting result continues to demonstrate improved resilience. 2024 to-date has been a highly complex landscape for a global insurer. First half industry catastrophe costs around $60 billion were meaningful. Large loss activity included the Baltimore bridge collapse, which we have material loss for the marine market. And finally, claims inflation remains dynamic and requires our teams to be well joined up and react quickly to new information. Against this backdrop, our catastrophe costs were below allowance. PYD was negligible and our ex-cat claims ratio continued to improve when excluding crop. Catastrophe costs in the period are underscored by our exposure to the New Caledonia civil unrest. Our loss estimate has remained broadly stable in recent weeks at around $200 million net of reinsurance. While there are many unusual aspects around how the local authorities responded to the unrest, it's an unacceptable level of loss for us to bear. In response, we've effectively stopped writing new business and are implementing new exclusions for existing customers. We're determined to work with our industry colleagues and the French government to arrive at a sensible path forward for our presence in the region. We produced another great investment result with an annualized return of almost 5%. We're pleased with our balance sheet metrics. Capital remains at the top end of our range with gearing comfortably around the middle of our target range. The interim dividend of $0.24 is up meaningfully from $0.14 in the prior period representing a payout ratio of 31%. In line with our usual approach, the first half payout ratio will tend to be on the lower side and then we'll pay a higher final dividend bringing the full year payout ratio into our target range. Turning now to our North American business. Following the middle-market closure, this slide highlights our go-forward platform. Before I delve in, a comment on our middle-market decision. As you're aware, the business has been loss making for a number of years and we found it challenging to make much progress. Delivering improved and more stable performance in North America is 1 of our highest priorities and we recognize the importance of this for shareholders. We spent many hours retesting our plans through the year and ultimately couldn't justify the business with what remained a reasonably uncertain pathway for performance. As we said in June, decision to exit middle market will have no incremental impact on our appetite or commitment across the remaining business and indeed, there is very little distribution overlap. We remain organized around these 3 segments: Specialty, Crop and Commercial; and over time would intend to achieve more equal balance. Having exited personal lines in middle market, which are product-led segments where systems and scale are important drivers of success, we'll focus on building our profile as a service-led specialist P&C insurer. As you're aware, we have some excellent specialty franchises, which I'm keen to broaden into other adjacencies. This slide highlights that the platform has a well-established track record of performance even through some tougher periods for crop. As you can see, the platform has accounted for only a small proportion of North America's reported catastrophe costs. This then accounts for those remaining wind and earthquake programs we support and importantly, there is very limited exposure to secondary perils across the go-forward business. Reserves have been very stable across these lines and having now reinsured all remaining long-tail noncore reserves, we have certainty that future earnings will be driven by the go-forward business. I think collectively, these numbers on the right somewhat speak for themselves. The track record combined with the supportive markets we enjoy leave us confident on better results for North America. Inder will give you some additional context on the platform of our core segments and the noncore runoff. Before I move on, I want to commend what Julie has achieved during a short time in role. She's acting with the decisiveness we need to push through this final innings and she's made a number of changes in the team that should be positive. So moving to Slide 9. This slide is a continuation of the last in a sense. Of our strategic priorities, we spent the most time at these sessions discussing portfolio optimization. This has been a body of work, which started well before I joined, framed around addressing underperforming cells, reducing volatility and striving for better balance. This slide gives you a helpful picture of the journey we've been on. Firstly, on portfolio balance. QBE has a unique global footprint and our diversification should be a key competitive advantage. At our core, we are a commercial and specialty insurer with a well-positioned global reinsurance business. These 3 segments effectively account for around 85% of our net revenues. We have leading market shares in 2 non-P&C lines being crop and LMI and maintain a small personal lines presence in our home market of Australia. A few comments on the change in portfolio mix evident here. Our commercial and specialty segments have achieved excellent growth in recent years. This has been led by rate and targeted growth, all whilst exiting a number of underperforming businesses and terminating around $1 billion of stand-alone property business. We're pleased with the traction in our reinsurance business. While the reset in markets has undoubtedly provided an attractive opportunity to deploy more capital below the few major reinsurers, the next tier of the industry can be quite inconsistent. With many carriers looking for more diversity on their programs, we're establishing relationships with more strategic long-term partners who are attracted by our A+ balance sheet, breadth of product expertise and presence in all major trading hubs. Despite significant growth in crop written premiums, we've carefully managed our net retention in this business while the majority of recent LMI underwriting years have been subject to a 50% quota share. Finally, our consumer presence has reduced as we remediated our domestic business and exited a number of Australian consumer portfolios. This year is we'll reduce -- will further upon fully exiting the Westwood homeowners portfolio in North America. With where we stand today, we feel comfortable with our portfolio mix and there are no obvious areas requiring attention. So moving to the chart on the right. I think this is a great picture. It demonstrates how much performance has improved across the organization and importantly that our underwriting profit is being driven by a much broader cohort of businesses. While the favorable markets we're enjoying are supporting this trend, internal initiatives have been just as important. We spent many years focused on remediation, more consistent underwriting, performance discipline and volatility; all of which under the remit of a well-established global Chief Underwriting Officer, a function, which is still relatively new to QBE. Through this process, we've also exited portfolios. Since Peter Burton took on the global CUO role, I think we've established a good process on addressing underperforming cells and having these discussions as an enterprise. This picture also holds some obvious messages on volatility. With the vast majority of our cells posting profits, we can better absorb the bumps, which I think is becoming more evident in recent years. To close here, we feel our portfolio is in great shape. Any high performing insurer will always have some underperforming cells even in supportive markets. Having closed middle market, underperforming sales discussions from here are likely be more focused on remediation rather than need to close another large business. This is exciting. As for my duration with QBE, a reasonable majority of our time has been focused on business exits and reshaping the portfolio. This means our portfolio optimization agenda is now becoming more future focused and we can spend more time supporting our performing businesses rather than addressing problems created in the past. So let's move to Slide 10. So how is our focus on portfolio optimization and performance translating into financial outcomes. We've grown premium while exiting loss making business, in turn building a high quality portfolio and benefiting from the scale that follows. We've reset our catastrophe allowance materially over recent years, taken down exposure for peak perils and worked hard to reduce all aspects of cat volatility. The outcome over the last few periods is encouraging in this regard. When you consider the exposure to Russia and Ukraine in 2022, we've been below or around allowance over a number of large catastrophe years for the industry. We've done a lot to mitigate reserve volatility. Including the transactions announced today, we've reinsured around $4 billion of our most volatile reserves. Reserves now subject to these transactions have effectively generated all of our adverse PYD over recent years. Together with more consistent underwriting, our reserves are now more stable, which is evident again this period. This is all contributing to consistent improvement in our underwriting performance, which is undoubtedly more resilient than in years past. Combined with higher interest rates, our returns are much improved. We're now into our fourth consecutive year of double-digit return on equity if you look through the accounting change for 2022. This is clearly driving favorable outcome for shareholders. We expect this will continue if we can drive improved performance in North America plus more broadly deliver against our ambition for measured and sustainable growth, more resilient underwriting performance and consistent shareholder distributions. With that, I will now pass to Inder.

Thank you, Andrew, and good morning all. As Andrew has noted, we are pleased with our performance in the first half with continued premium growth, a much improved and more resilient underwriting result and a strong mid-teens return on equity. In addition, we've taken some major steps to further derisk our earnings to ensure we can sustain strong performance over the medium term. I'll start with an overview of our result on Slide 12. Importantly, most elements of our result have tracked in line with our plan. GWP of $13.1 billion was up 2% over the prior period though closer to 11% excluding crop and business exits. The combined ratio improved to 93.8% on lower catastrophe costs and more stable reserve development. The investment portfolio delivered an annualized return of almost 5% supported by strong performance in both core fixed income and risk assets. You'll recall in June we flagged a restructure charge of around $100 million to account for the exit from our middle-market business. Around $75 million of this cost has been booked in the first half. Today, we're also announcing transactions to reinsure $1.6 billion of reserves with an upfront cost of $85 million. Pleasingly, within these transactions, we've been able to reinsure all middle-market reserves of around $800 million and given the direct link to the middle-market closure, we'll record roughly half the cost of these transactions within the restructuring charge. This will bring our full year middle-market restructuring charge to around $145 million. We'll absorb the remainder of the $40 million upfront cost related to these transactions within the underwriting result. Our tax rate for the half was 23%, slightly lower than the blend of corporate tax rates across our business as improved profitability in North America has allowed us to recognize additional tax assets. Adjusted net profit was $777 million, a strong increase on the prior period resulting in a group return on equity of around 17%. You'll note that within this number, we have not adjusted for the restructuring charge nor added back amortization. Going forward, we will no longer be adjusting for these items. Given the modest amortization cost in the P&L, this will result in marginally lower adjusted profit going forward though should ultimately be better aligned with shareholders. A brief comment on the balance sheet. This remains in a strong position with the PCA multiple at 1.77x, which is towards the top end of our 1.6x to 1.8x target range. The Board has declared an interim dividend of AUD 0.24 per share, which equates to a payout ratio of around 31% of adjusted profit for the first half. The dividend will be franked at 20%, an increase from 10% in recent periods and we expect to maintain this level of franking going forward. Turning now to Slide 13. We're now into our fifth consecutive period of premium growth and remain confident in our ability to drive a level of sustainable growth over the medium term. On balance, market conditions remain attractive and we have strong momentum across many of our franchises. Growth of 2% this period contained a drag from exited lines along with lower crop premium. Excluding the impact of crop, which has a heavy bias to the first half, group GWP was up 6% and on further excluding the impact of portfolio exits, growth was closer to 11%. This represents further compound rate increases of around 7% and ex-rate growth on the same basis of 5%. A brief comment on the portfolio exits. As we entered the year, we flagged a written premium drag of around $300 million associated with the recently terminated portfolios in North America and Australia. Following the decision to exit middle-market, we now expect a full year premium drag of around $550 million, of which around $350 million fell within the first half. Our organic growth in the period was concentrated across the Northern Hemisphere and underpinned by our strategy to deepen core franchises and expand our presence in reinsurance. Turning now to Slide 14 for some comments on our underwriting performance starting with premium rates. Premium rate increases were around 7% in the period and given seasonality in our business, our best compared to the same time last year. As expected, the level of rate increases has moderated from 2023 levels. This is most notable in international where in reinsurance and certain property lines, the considerable rate increases achieved in 2023 were not sustained. More broadly, key themes across the business remain quite similar to last year. Market conditions in financial lines remain challenging in most regions and we remain selective and disciplined around how we participate in this market. Across the majority of other classes, discipline remains in what are rational but competitive markets and as inflation moderates, rate will follow. Moving to our underwriting result on the right hand side of the slide. The combined operating ratio improved by almost 5 points on account of lower catastrophe costs and more stable reserve development. In terms of composition, the ex-cat claims were slightly higher than planned largely on account of crop and large loss activity and this was offset by lower catastrophe costs. Overall claims inflation is trending in line with expectations. Catastrophe costs of around $530 million were within our allowance for the half of $609 million and impacted by our exposure to civil unrest in New Caledonia and an active period for convective storms in North America. Our ex-cat claims ratio increased by just under 1 point though showed modest improvement if you exclude the current year strain from risk adjustment and the impact of crop. This represented the benefit of rate increases relative to inflation partially offset by exposure of around $70 million to the Baltimore bridge event and ongoing changes in mix as we exit property portfolios that carry lower ex-cat claims ratios. The central estimate of claims reserves were broadly stable in the period. This reflected strengthening in international related to the 2023 Italian hail event and certain liability lines and this was broadly offset by releases in North American short tail lines as well as in crop, in LMI and in CTP. A brief comment on some of the recent industry events making headlines. On both Hurricane Beryl and the recent CrowdStrike outage, we have limited exposure and expect these events will have no notable impact in the second half. Moving to expenses. As we alluded to in February, our expense ratio increased to 12% and we continue to expect a full year result in the 12% to 12.5% range. This reflects a level of elevated [ change ] spend to support our modernization program. Turning now to Slide 15 to add some divisional context. Underwriting performance across our 3 divisions was mixed for the period. Pleasingly, performance in North America was much improved and I'll touch on this shortly. International delivered a strong result. The combined ratio of 89.2% improved by around 4 points due to relatively benign catastrophe experience and a lower expense ratio. The ex-cat claims ratio was fairly stable in the period though it did include over 1 point impact for the Baltimore bridge event. The combined ratio in Australia-Pacific improved by around 3 points despite elevated catastrophe costs due to the New Caledonia event. Ex-cat claims in Australia-Pacific improved versus the prior period where the benefit of recent rate increases is driving some recovery from the inflation challenges experienced over the last 12 months. A brief comment on inflation more broadly. We entered the year expecting a gradual moderation in group-wide inflation to around 5% and at the halfway point of the year, we feel that remains appropriate. Inflation is moderating more notably in many short-tail lines in the Northern Hemisphere though it remains more nuanced domestically and quite sticky in a number of lines including motor. Turning now to Slide 16 to give you some additional color on North America. The core go-forward business delivered a strong result supported by good performance across each segment. Top line growth across this business was around 15% underpinned by ex-rate growth of 8% and double-digit rate increases across a number of lines including accident and health, property packages and specialty casualty. Underwriting results were also favorable. Within specialty, we had strong performance in financial lines and have seen improvement in accident and health following the inflation challenges we experienced last year. In crop, the season is tracking well with preventive planting claims in line with expectations and growing conditions better than the 5-year average. We have booked the current year combined ratio for crop at 95% and going forward, we'll maintain this slightly more conservative approach to booking our crop result at the halfway point of the year. In commercial, the result reflects solid performance in property programs, but it is important to note that the primary exposures in this business relate to the North Atlantic hurricane season in the second half. It is worth flagging that the first half combined ratio of 91% for the go-forward segment did benefit from favorable reserve development and the current year combined ratio of around 94% is a better guide to run rate performance. A brief comment on stranded costs. As we work through the middle-market closure, we expect there may be around $50 million of centrally allocated costs, which remain after premium unwinds. Whilst we'll work at reducing these in 2025, some level of cost will transition into the core business and be allocated across specialty and commercial. As you can see on the right hand side of the slide, performance across noncore lines has remained challenging. We have now moved middle-market into this segment, but have clearly split out the financials so you can track disclosure from the prior period. In terms of top line, we expect the middle-market net insurance revenue to be around $350 million in 2024 before dropping to around $150 million in 2025. The homeowners profile will be around $200 million in 2025. Importantly, the noncore property programs exposure has now rolled off ahead of the North Atlantic hurricane season. From an underwriting perspective, heavy convective storm activity across the first half contributed to a loss of around $125 million with middle-market contributing around $35 million to this. On current projections, we expect a total noncore underwriting loss of around $200 million for the full year 2024. Into 2025, our early view suggests that this should broadly halve and we'll provide a better view on this at the full year result. We acknowledge that we have had greater level of loss activity than we had anticipated in these runoff businesses, particularly around convective storms and there are some risks to the projections I have just referenced. As I touched on earlier, we've taken some important steps this period to completely derisk the back book for these noncore lines. Going forward, we are highly motivated to mitigate the residual cat risk in these businesses as they fully run down over the next 18 months. Moving on to Slide 17. This morning we've announced important reserve transactions with RiverStone and Enstar, which will derisk around $1.6 billion of reserves. Around half of these reserves relate to North American middle-market with coverage of all business written in this segment up to 30 June 2024. Other North American lines account for around 1/3 of the deal and primarily relate to those noncore reserves, which weren't subject to prior transactions. This effectively means all noncore long-tail reserves are now protected by reinsurance. The residual $400 million of reserves covered by the transactions relate to liability classes in international, which carried a high level of volatility and capital consumption. The mechanics of these transactions will work in the same way as a deal we completed last year. The upfront P&L impact of around $85 million represents the difference between the premium we pay and the release of the reserves, which we hold on a discounted basis plus the release of the related risk adjustment. The impact on earnings going forward is very limited. While we lose investment income associated with the $1.6 billion in assets backing these reserves; on the other hand, our underwriting earnings will improve by a similar amount as we no longer have the discount unwind associated with these reserves. In addition, these transactions will free up around $230 million of capital, which will improve our year-end PCA by around 3 basis points. The capital supporting these reserves is effectively generating a marginal return, which we can now improve on. Through a series of these transactions, we've now derisked a substantial proportion of our more problematic long-tail reserves. The chart on the bottom right highlights our adverse reserve development back over time and in essence it shows that the portfolios now subject to reinsurance have contributed around $1 billion in adverse reserve development over the last 5 years. Looking forward, we have no pressing concerns across the remainder of the portfolio and while securing full protection for North American noncore reserves was important to achieve, we are unlikely to keep pursuing additional transactions in this format in the near term. Moving to an update on our investment portfolio on Slide 18. We've had a good investment result for the half. Total investment income of around $730 million represented an annualized return of almost 5% and was supported by favorable returns from both our core fixed income and risk asset portfolios. The running yield was fairly stable through the period exiting the half at 4.7%, which is within 10 basis points to 20 basis points of where it remains today. I do want to call out a change in strategy for the core fixed income portfolio. To date, our asset and liability management strategy has been predominantly focused on hedging interest rate risk in our P&L. We do, however, have liabilities, which are rate sensitive for capital, but they're not for P&L, and these are not hedged under our prevailing approach. In a more normal rate environment, this was important for us to address. Accordingly, we have started building a portfolio of securities to help us better manage the interest rate sensitivity that exists within our regulatory capital. These securities will be held to maturity and become subject to fair value through other comprehensive income accounting or OCI. This differs from our current approach where the entire portfolio is under fair value through P&L or mark-to-market accounting. The change in strategy has started to extend portfolio duration and will result in a slightly more stable fixed income yield and reduce our earnings sensitivity to changes in credit spreads. Importantly, our P&L will remain fully matched and immunized from changes in risk free rates. Our capital sensitivity to changes in interest rates will decline meaningfully with where we are in the cycle. If risk-free rates were to fall from current levels, without this hedging, we could stand to give up a handful of points on the PCA ratio. This will now be limited to a much smaller impact. For reference, the end-of-period balance for the OCI portfolio is around $2.5 billion or 10% of the total core fixed income book. The average balance in the period was roughly half of that and it had no notable impact on first half performance. At a steady state, the OCI portfolio may grow by another $1 billion to $2 billion. There is a slide in the appendix, which has some helpful color and we can circle back with more information on this ahead of the full year result. We ultimately expect this to be a positive change for our business. Moving now to Slide 19. Our balance sheet remains strong giving us ample flexibility to support organic growth and the potential for higher distributions going forward. Our regulatory capital position reduced slightly over the half to 1.77x and remains at the upper end of our target range. Within this, core equity Tier 1 ratio was stable at 1.22x. And over the period, capital generation was supported by strong profitability and business exits though partially offset by investment portfolio mix changes. Following the payment of the interim dividend and including the expected capital release from the reserve transactions announced today, we entered the second half with a pro forma PCA position of around 1.76x. At present, markets are attractive across many of our franchises and we're focused on growing the business. As referenced earlier, at an underlying level, we've indeed seen a continuation of strong growth in this half. Debt to total capital continued to reduce to 21%, which is at the midpoint of our target gearing range. I'll pause here and hand back to Andrew.

Thanks, Inder. Our full year outlook holds just 1 change. We've shifted our growth outlook from the mid-single digits to around 3%. Unpacking this change, we entered the year expecting growth of around 5%. The decision to exit middle-market will represent a $200 million to $300 million drag. This is more than we expected in June as we're getting the state approvals needed to exit the book at a much faster pace. Beyond that, we originally expected crop GWP around $3.9 billion. This will now be around $3.8 billion and we're expecting marginally lower ex-rate growth in Australia-Pacific than previously planned. For our combined ratio, we remain at around 93.5% for 2024. The only change to note here is the 93.5% now includes or has absorbed half of the upfront cost of the reserve transactions, which is around $40 million. And finally, on investment returns, our running yield was 4.9%. These collective settings point to another year of mid-teen returns in 2024. We'll circle back to discuss how the second half is tracking at our third quarter update on November 27. With that, I wanted to thank you for joining us and I'll pass back to the operator for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Nigel Pittaway from Citi.

First question, just at the full year, Andrew, you said that you were setting full year guidance with more confidence that you could actually deliver on it. Obviously you have reiterated guidance today, but there's an extra thing in it in that half of the reinsurance cost now needs to be absorbed by it. So I just wanted to explore compared to the confidence you had at year-end, how is your confidence now sitting with respect to that full year level of guidance?

I think, Nigel, we're confident on the full year level of guidance because of the actions we've taken in the first half. Some of the underlying businesses are performing well and you could see how the performance of the U.S. was at the half year. So we're just comfortable with that. Now we're assuming the cat credit we've had in the first half remains in the second half so in other words, we're planning a budget for the rest of the year. So I think it's a combination of those factors which gives us comfort that we can absorb the $40 million within the combined ratio and still achieve around the 93.5%.

Okay. And then maybe just secondly, obviously the slide of the day is Slide 16 in terms of the North American business and you did say that the current accident year combined is 94.5%. I mean to what extent does that have any favorable cat in it? I was unclear of that. So is the 94.5% got any favorable cat in there? And then just secondly, in terms of looking at this go-forward North American business, how exposed do you think it is to market cycles and how do you feel this is in target range obviously just about in the current market conditions, but do you think there's resilience there for this to be delivered if the cycle were to turn against you?

So do you want to start on the cat or should I start on the cat.

The cats have been pretty straightforward, Nigel. If you look at, we've given you the breakdown of that 94.5% through the core segments. So you can see within the commercial segment, we include the property programs which are largely wind related, most of that wind exposure in the second half. But we feel when we look at the businesses in terms of current run rates, the 94.5% is probably a good proxy of where the business is running when you look at that on a full year basis. And you can see that even year-on-year if you look back, that's a relatively consistent trajectory there.

Sorry. Nigel, what was the second part of the question again?

Just in terms of the exposure to the cycle because obviously conditions are relatively favorable at the moment and 94.5% is just in the 90% to 95% range. Do you feel that the 90% to 95% range is still attainable if the cycle were to move against you?

Yes. I think the good news about the North American business now is it just contains profitable businesses and it doesn't have that many of them, does it? So it has a crop and it has financial lines, A&H, some aviation, the large commercial casualty, some commercial programs and that is it in there; and we've added adjacencies of cyber and health care, which is excellent. So things we can actually build on. So we start from a position of having 5 or 6 profitable businesses and then we can add adjacencies to that. So I feel pretty comfortable. And within that, there is the possibility of managing the cycle because those businesses do not necessarily go in line with each other. So crop obviously follows a completely different cycle from others, but A&H and financial lines, aviation, commercial casualty aren't necessarily following the same cycle. So I think we have a good balance in there, add further adjacencies give it more balance, try to grow some of the other lines that make specialty and commercial equal partners to the crop net premiums we have. So I think we do have a good stable set of businesses, which can deliver a consistent 90% to 95%.

Next we have Andrew Buncombe from Macquarie.

Just 2 from me. The first one is actually on the tax rate. How should we be thinking about that in the second half? Should we assume that the really low rate in the first half continues through?

As we said, the 23% is obviously benefiting from some recognition of off-balance sheet tax attributes as North America overall has delivered a level of profitability in the first half. There's not a huge amount of off-balance sheet tax attributes left, Andrew. So I'd say the 23% probably ticks a little higher. So our natural tax rate is probably closer to 27%. Hopefully, through the course of the year we'll still be somewhere between the 2 data points, but you should think about 27% as a natural rate. 23% is benefiting from some off-balance sheet and those are largely running out.

And then to follow up from the previous questions on Slide 16. You've obviously flagged that the core segment was 94.5% and you flagged the $200 million for the noncore. If we think over the longer term, what level of stranded costs you're expecting to be left behind from middle-market and the old noncore for us to be able to reach that 94.5%?

So overall, we've sort of said the stranded costs is roughly around $50 million, Andrew, and we are obviously working quite diligently to make sure we reduce that over the next 12, 18 months as these businesses run off. So ultimately, we should see the core business also growing a little bit. And so a combination of us going after that $50 million and a combination of the core businesses growing means that we feel pretty good all-in that absorbing those stranded costs, the core business has a profile of around that 95%, sub-95% range.

Next we have Julian Braganza from Goldman Sachs.

Just an initial question. In terms of your guidance for this year of 93.5%, does it -- understanding it absolves the $40 million upfront cost of the LPT. But just in terms of the losses on the noncore portfolio, which is now expected to be $200 million for this year. Is that also incremental to how you first thought about your guidance for this year?

No, I don't think so. I mean we had a view, didn't we, that the noncore losses were going to reduce. Of course when we started the year, we hadn't made the decision to close the mid-market business, but we knew it wasn't performing well because we had a view of what it was last year. So I don't think it's had a material impact on our guidance the fact that the losses in the noncore are going to be $200 million this year.

Okay. So what you're saying there is that that's running broadly in line with how you were thinking about it?

Yes, probably not. There obviously ups and downs. Within our guidance of 93.5%, certainly not everything is running to plan. So it's not as though every cell is. But I think because we've got the breadth of the book, we can absorb some of the unders and overs and overall reconfirm guidance today.

Yes, I mean just 1 thing. You'll note that many of the U.S. carriers are referencing this. I mean there's been a huge level of convective storm activity in the U.S. and you've seen a lot of that loss for us has landed in the noncore book because that's where the homeowners book is and now obviously that's where we're putting middle-market. So on a first half, second half basis, you could argue maybe we've had a bit more loss activity within that noncore book because of convective storms. But to Andrew's point, the guidance is all-in and so we've got to ride the bumps and bruises on that.

Which is what we saw last year. We saw more of the loss in the noncore in the first half than the second half.

Okay. That's clear. And just a follow-up on that question. In terms of just thinking about then if you exit from noncore and mid-market, how would that impact -- I mean just a high level, any comment on how that might impact your cat allowance into FY '25?

It should have a smallish impact on our cat allowance. As Inder mentioned and as we've mentioned, it doesn't have a lot of exposure to wind so it's mainly the convective storms. So the convective storms are included in the cat allowance and of course the noncore losses that we're showing here are included in our cat incurred in the first half. So as this runs off, it should have an impact on our cat allowance. Everything else in the organization being equal should lower our cat allowance for North America next year. But it doesn't runoff for a while because of course the Westwood book, we do the final underwriting in May 25 so it will still have exposure through in 2025. So it's the end of May '25 that we actually stop writing it and take a 90% quota share against it at that point in time. So it's got a while to go.

I understand. And then just a second question from me. In terms of your guidance through the cycle low to mid-90%s core, just interested any comments given where we are today, when do you see yourself getting there and then also any comments by division? International continues to perform well. I know previously you were flagging some moderation in underlying trends for international. So just any comments. One, when do you sort of expect to get there? Two, comments by division?

So we're still comfortable with the 95% outlook. I mean there's an interesting bounces in that because at this point in time, the rate of rate increase has definitely reduced in total and we showed that on our rating chart. But overall, rates across most lines of business are pretty good. We've talked about D&O and to some extent cyber although we'll see whether the CrowdStrike issue of a few weeks ago put the brakes on cyber reductions. So overall, most lines of business are rated pretty well. Our technical adequacy looks good. I guess the thing we're feeling a bit at this point in time is more competition in certain lines of business both in London book -- across the board, but in the Lloyd's London book and to some extent here in Australia, as the capital generated by the industry over the past 12 months to 2 years is being redeployed. So that capital is coming into certain markets. We're not seeing -- it's it having an impact on rates, but not a dramatic impact on rates. But there is more competition there, which means growth is that much tougher, but there are still opportunities for us to grow. Beauty about our portfolio, which we've talked about a number of times, is the diversity of it across geography and product. So our aim is to continue to look for growth opportunities in 2025. And within that balance of the book, taking some of the bumps every now and then in certain lines of business and compensate that with other lines that perform better than planned. So still very much focused on a 90% to 95% combined ratio as we go forward, still focusing on where we can actually grow is a bit more competition in the market. And I'd say that competition we probably felt a bit more internationally and here in Australia than we have in the U.S. probably because our U.S. business -- I mean the market in the U.S. is that much larger and we have opportunities to grow from the lines of business we actually have there.

Okay. And I mean through the cycle [indiscernible] you ought to be below that sort of level in the sort of lower end. So just any color given the fact that rates are sort of passing to the best of the cycle in terms of where rates have been. Just any color on that as well?

So it's a good question, isn't it? So as I say, the rates are falling away a bit so that means there's still some positivity in the cycle. So things could improve from here. But I think the focus we've been on is getting out of some of the businesses that don't actually perform and remediating some of our unprofitable cells. So we have this opportunity of continuing to focus on some of the cells which are unprofitable and making some of the ones that are now profitable even more profitable and growing those. So I do think we have an advantage of improving even if the cycle comes off a bit.

Next we have a Siddharth Parameswaran from JPMorgan.

If I could ask a question just on the reduction or what you mentioned before, the rates of increases coming off now down to about 6% in the second quarter. Inder, I think 6 months ago you'd been saying that you were still very confident that rates were covering inflation. Would always see numbers quoted by QBE, which were materially higher on rate versus inflation. Now those 2 numbers I think are very much near each other. Are you confident that you're actually able to cover inflation on an underlying basis across your portfolio? And maybe if you could just give some color particularly around that comment that you gave earlier around inflation of 5%. Maybe just geographically what you're seeing and maybe by line of business what you're seeing?

Sid, I appreciate your interest in the extra level of detail around rate inflation. I think overall, we've been relatively consistent with what we said, right? When you look at rate adequacy across the group, what we call technical rate adequacy, which is what's the rate we're getting today for the risk we're writing and what sort of return of capital does it generate. Overall, that equation remains favorable, right? And then we look at what's the overall rate for the half year which is, as you say, 6% at the company level and overall we feel comfortable with the inflation peg for the year across the portfolio of 5%. So in aggregate, that looks okay. I think in terms of lines of business, obviously here in Australia in short tail lines, we've continued to see some level of persistency around inflation. So the homeowners book and the motor book for example is probably more elevated still albeit coming off from some of the hires that we've seen. I do also feel that not just QBE as a company, but the industry overall over the last 12, 18 months probably wrestled down some of that inflation, the rate issue that we had particularly in homeowners and rate adequacy has improved in that book. So that's been a big area of focus. I think in short tail lines in the Northern Hemisphere, we've seen that level of inflation moderate. And you've seen again property rates across the world not be as strong in 2023 where they needed to be and so we've seen some of that rate come off in property although having said that, it's still relatively healthy positive. Casualty, it's always very hard to pick. We continue to -- when we look at the actual versus expected claims development, we're not seeing anything in our liability book that is causing us concern from an incurred inflation basis. We're continuing to hold our loss picks on the basis that we've originally planned. And so time will tell as to whether we get that right or not. But in aggregate, technical rate adequacy is good. rate is generally at or about inflation. There's no lines of business we'd call out where that is necessarily gone negative in the sense that rate is not covering inflation.

Okay. If I could just ask a clarification on the cost of your reinsurance transaction as well. I think you flagged there's an $85 million upfront cost. Is there any ongoing impact just from the loss of investment income with IFRS, et cetera? I just can't remember now whether how this will play out into the following periods. Obviously there's lots of substantial portion of investment assets. Just want to be clear that should we expect the running yield of investment income to be lower going forward or whether there's any offsets because of just the way discounting works?

Sid, a super question because it is a little bit of a mind bender to get around the financial impacts. So we've dealt with in these transactions $1.6 billion of undiscounted reserves and therefore, the premium that we're paying is just a shade under that in terms of the assets we are transferring so call it [ $1.5 billion-ish ]. And so we obviously hold the reserves on a discounted basis. So as we map out the financial impacts, the discount that we hold against those reserves unwinds into a P&L impact, right? So we in effect take that upfront, which is what drives the P&L impact. Offsetting that is the fact that we can release some of the risk adjustment we hold against the reserves. So those 2 offsetting numbers give you the $85 million upfront. And then as you go forward, yes, you do lose the investment income because those assets are gone, but we also get the benefit of not having the discount unwind come through the forward reporting period. So from a net income perspective, it's neutral. But obviously we have lower FUM going forward, lower investment income dollars going forward, but we also have lower drag from the discount unwind going forward.

Okay. But on the new business, there's a greater drag -- or maybe I'll just take it offline.

Yes. I mean on the new business you've got a book. I mean we sort of go around the houses on this. On the new business, you've got to hold risk. You've got to put up new risk adjustment against those, Sid. So that obviously is taken into account in all our planning.

Okay. Just 1 clarification. Maybe a question for you, Andrew. Just categorically, you seem to be saying you're over all the restructuring. So from your perspective, is this the last reinsurance transaction? These have been quite big drag for a number of years in terms of how shareholders have been actually receiving returns. Just from your perspective, this is the last one.

It's a never say never one because you don't know what's going to happen in insurance, but I think we've covered most things we want to cover with this second transaction. The second 2 transactions that are here, 1 with Enstar and 1with RiverStone. And of course 1 of the reasons why the second of these 2 transactions will happen is because of the mid-market decision and the beauty about these transactions is they're taking the reserves from the mid-market up to the 30th of June. So as we withdraw from mid-market, we're not going to be impacted by issues in the past mid-market from a reserving point of view. So that was 1 of the reasons we were looking at this second one having done the large one last year. And when we were looking at with the mid-market, we thought we may as well have a look around the rest of the group and seeing if there's anything else we should add to it to make the transactions attractive to Enstar and RiverStone having more balance than just purely mid-market. So I think we've covered the group over the past 2 years. So there isn't an expectation of doing more going forward at this point in time. But they're good from a capital point of view, they are good from giving us certainty about our reserving at this point in time. So it's not a never says it's never. I would be surprised if we're doing another one of this size in 2025 because it means we've created something in relatively short order and that's not the aim of what we're trying to do. So never say never. I think you're right. No expectation of doing another large transaction over the next 12 months at this point.

Our next question comes from Andrei Stadnik from Morgan Stanley.

Can I ask my first question, please, just around the U.S. noncore runoff? I think you mentioned that you're looking for a loss of roughly $200 million this year and then $150 million next year and it just seems like the reduction next year is a little bit slower than expected given where some of the losses have been in the earlier years. So is that being driven by the stranded costs? Are the stranded costs of $50 million including that $150 million and what else should we be thinking about?

Just to clarify, Andrei, I think the reference we said was $200 million for this year and then that should broadly halve. Now we're obviously working on making sure we get that number down as quickly as possible. But we can give you some further guidance on that. When we talk to you in February next year, we'll have much better line of sight in terms of the remaining exposure. We're obviously trying to do what we can to minimize the cat risk particularly around convective storms within that book of business. We're obviously trying to do everything we can to manage the stranded costs down and take out the cost relating to that business. So just work on the basis that, look, it's $200 million going to roughly $100 million, but we're hoping to do a bit better than that.

And just to [indiscernible] the stranded cost of $50 million are within that second $100 million?

Yes, effectively. And so as the business is running off, it's sort of a fluid situation and the other part of the business is growing. But yes, in effect.

And look, my second question. Can I ask around the around the reserving. So the $300 million favorable risk adjustment development in the first half seems quite large given last year the full year amount was $220 million. So is the booking position changing or are you signaling that you're lot more comfortable now with your reserving position? What are some of the drivers there?

So Andrei, we are not mucking around with assumptions. So the risk adjustment number, the percentage we're picking is 8% and it's stable. So really it comes down to mix. If you look at the unwind for risk adjustment, it's $300 million, but the actual risk adjustment strain for the business in the first half is $376 million. So we're actually putting on more risk adjustment than we are unwinding. So you got to look at both sides of the equation. There's no real change in assumptions. We're not trying to express in any way that reserves are less risky, more risky, et cetera, The confidence levels when we look at it are still the same.

Next we have Anthony Hoo from CLSA.

First question is just around coming back to your GWP outlook, the change in outlook down to 3%. I know you commented earlier that one of the drivers was the exit of the middle-market portfolio. But can you clarify was that really the only driver or is there any change to your outlook on top line in GWP besides the middle-market portfolio? Any further detail would be great.

I think we also outlined a bit more competition in our AusPac business. So we're seeing a bit more competition in AusPac business from both local players and London players coming in. So we've reduced the expected growth in AusPac a bit. I think on 1 of the earlier charts, it was virtually flat year-on-year, but 5% when you take out the exited lines. So it's mainly the impact of the mid-market, the extra $200 million, $300 million and some more competition in mid-market in the AusPac business.

So basically you're saying that that's changed in the last 2 months?

Well, I think just to sort of put this into context, Anthony. This is a very modest adjustment. So the $200 million to $250 million impact from middle-market is meaningful, which obviously is a decision we've only made in the last 6 to 8 weeks. The other element has been crop. Crop, we're not really necessarily pushing for a ton of volume growth so prices did come off and we obviously expected a part of that in our planning and our guidance. But the overall premium for crop came in a little lower than what we had in our plans and we're perfectly comfortable with that.

`You're right, Inder. Crop is the second largest element of the mid-market and the smallest element is the competition here in Australia.

Okay. Just a second question just coming back to the North America business. Like you said that you're expecting a loss of $200 million this year. Obviously that's little bit worse than 6 months ago when you were talking about halving from the $245 million of last year. Can you talk a bit more about what's driving that weaker outlook for that noncore? What's changed given that you had pretty good visibility already?

So I see it as not being that much different because it's mainly the fact we've added the mid-market in and it wasn't before. So I think when we shared 2023, we had $250 million of losses. We were going to halve that one so that's $125 million. But then we've added the mid-market which is $35 million in the first half and it's going to knock out a [indiscernible] loss in the second. So not that I'm the CFO and you should be doing the second question rather than me.

The point we were talking about earlier was if you started with $250 million and you say we're going to more than halve it, right? Now the problem is when you look at the $90 million, you think well, just on a like-for-like basis that feels a little heavy. And what we said in most of our remarks is that, that business has had some impacts from the convective storm activity in the U.S. So yes, there's probably been a little bit more loss activity than we had planned for, which is a big part of the reason why we're trying to exit it. But again that book doesn't have as much cat exposure in the second half. So you can't really take the $90 million and extrapolate that, right? So hence, now we're giving you guidance saying, look, assume $200 million for the full year for all of that including middle market. And the other thing we're saying is some of this has a bit of volatility which is why we're getting out of it, which means there's a level of imprecision and a range around that estimate.

I guess another way of putting it is are there any significant risk factors or is there significant risk to your expectation for $200 million loss this year or it could get worse?

Most of the reserve risk within that, we have dealt with. So we don't expect that to be a driver. Now could we see some weather-related losses again into the second half? Sure. But we think the risk is better managed second half versus the first half given the reserve derisking we've done.

Our last question comes from the line of Simon Fitzgerald from Jefferies.

Just 1 question. Inder, you mentioned your plans to decrease the sensitivity to interest rates on the liability side. Just in terms of the sensitivities that are in the investor pack, just note that they've gone up a little bit; and this is the cash and investments, fixed income, interest rate and credit spread risk; that has gone up a little bit from '23 to '24 from 3.37% to 3.92%. It doesn't look like it's just about the size of the portfolio. I was wondering if there are any other drivers I should be aware of and how should I be thinking about it for the reduction in the portfolio later after the reserve transactions?

I mean the reference to the establishment of the newer portfolio to manage some of the interest rate risk is really related to the interest rate risk embedded in the regulatory capital position, right? And so what you have within the regulatory capital is some elements such as premium liabilities that are still subject to risk-free rate movements. And what we're trying to do through this shift in the strategy is to really bring down the interest rate risk and the volatility embedded in the PCA multiple. So if you see, and we've shown this on Slide 24 I think in the appendix, that the movement in call it 100 basis points either way in risk-free rates now has a much smaller impact on our PCA going forward. We're not saying we're completely hedging it out, but we are definitely reducing it by at least 50%. So that's been the main piece. I think on the sensitivities you're referencing as well, happy to come back on that. But the only change we've had really is across our total investment portfolio as we've moved up the risk assets from 12% at the end of last year to 14%. Other than that, we've also got a bit more duration. So by ceding this new portfolio of OCI, we're still trying to match the P&L back to neutral, which means we can extend a little bit of extra duration in the P&L element of the fixed income book. Again we've shown that on Slide 24. If you look at the chart in the middle of that slide, it shows you that the core fixed income duration is around 2.2 years. So we've got a bit of additional duration in that book as well.

And just in terms of the movement with the reserve transaction, how should we think about that sensitivity after that?

With the reserve transaction, all you see is that $1.5 billion of assets come off the book and the rest of the mix of the book doesn't necessarily change. But clearly, we're trying to match back to the liabilities so the liability profile will be a little lower. Some of these liabilities we've dealt with are relatively long duration so you might see the liability duration come down a bit. But it's at the margin. I really wouldn't be reading too much into a big change in the asset risk sensitivity of the firm through the reserve transaction.

Thank you. This concludes the Q&A session. I will now hand the conference back to Andrew for closing remarks. Thank you.

Thank you for that. I'd like to thank you all for your questions and just thank you for joining us today.