W. R. Berkley Corporation (WRB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Good afternoon, everybody. Happy lunch time, and thanks for joining us today. We've got our next presentation, our next fireside chat here. It gives me a great pleasure in welcoming Bill Berkley, the Chairman of W.R. Berkley and Rob Berkley, the CEO of W.R. Berkley for discussion here. What I'm going to do is I'll go through some questions that I have. We also got the ability for you, the audience to ask question yourself. You'll see a little spot at the bottom of your screen. Feel free to chat in a question and I will see it here and I will be sure to asked it.

Let me start off with kind of a broader based question here, Rob. So we have this kind of hard or called firming pricing environment, so let's called it 2019, right? Where do you think we are right now with respect to that pricing cycle and how much legs does this thing continue to have here in your view?

Well, Brian, first off, thank you very much for the invitation to participate and good day to all that are tuned in. As far as the P&C commercial lines market goes in particular, I think one needs to recognize a bit of a distinction that exists in the cycle today that may have not existed in the past. And that is that we have many major product lines within the universe we're discussing that are marching not necessarily and is much of a lockstep manner as they once did in the past. So at this stage, we have one of the larger parts of the commercial lines marketplace, that being workers' compensation that has been going through an extended period of rate erosion. On the other hand, we have, as you suggest, many parts of the balance of the commercial lines marketplace that have been in different stages of firming. So from my perspective, I think we are seeing professional liability march to the beat of somewhat of a different drum than workers' comp liability marching to the beat of its own drum. Excess versus primary, really not again in lockstep. And certainly, property is a different animal into itself. The fundamentals of the cycle regardless of the product line, in our opinion, are still very much intact. What drives the change in the cycle is fundamentally people being alarmed and certainly concerned by results and recognizing a need for change. And the history would suggest at some point, and I would -- to your question, suggests it's not for some period of time when you start to see people become enamored with the margins, and then you'll see an erosion in rate terms and conditions. More specifically to your question, from our perspective, workers' compensation, while I have been more optimistic than some as to when we're going to touch bottom, probably in all likelihood, at least another year to go. Commercial auto continues to firm, particularly on the auto liability front, both primary and excess. On the GL front, I think we're looking -- there is a rate that's being had likely to see more of that coming through. And to talk about professional liability for a moment, obviously, a very diverse space, and you're seeing pockets where rate increases are still very available. Others were perhaps it's slowing. And then finally, on the property front, it seems as though Mother Nature has been relatively active recently and continue to send us a reminder as to why rates need to continue to move up. Again, all not in lockstep, but we can with the exception of workers' comp, we think that there is still a fair amount of runway in front of us.

And Rob, why do you think workers' comp continues to be so depressed from a pricing perspective? Is just because loss costs are so good? Are margins compressing there? What's going to be the catalyst to get things getting better here?

Look, for some number of years now, as far as comp goes, frequency trend has been the friend of the industry, if you will, and we've seen frequency continue to come down. We saw it come down dramatically during the peak periods of COVID, though we are seeing it make its way towards more of a traditional normal. Again, this is as far as frequency goes. I think the big wild card out there that I'm not sure the industry is grappling with as actively as they might is questions around severity. And particularly in an environment such as what we're in today, where you see a very tight labor market. As a result of that, you have people in jobs that perhaps they're not as well framed for. You have people working significant amounts of overtime. And those 2 realities oftentimes can lead to, unfortunately, injuries in the workplace. So we'll see what happens with that. I guess the other piece worth noting is the developments on the medical front where science has taken us and continues to take us. They're able to do wonderful things for injured workers, but that is coming at a cost to a medical trend, particularly with some of the new developments should not be overlooked or underestimated.

Right, right, right. So severity is where we got to kind of keep thinking about it and just keep an eye on?

I think absolutely -- severity -- you got to keep an eye on severity. And the other piece is, I think it's important that the meaningful frequency break that was caught during COVID, when people were locked up at home, that the industry not lose sight of that, that was a temporary phenomenon and not be caught off guard when you see frequency return to a more traditional norm.

Makes sense. Makes sense. And I understand some of the rating bureaus are also reviewing COVID more as a cat loss, right? So even if you had some losses in comp related to it, they are kind of saying it's a cat loss. So is that a problem, too?

Well, I think, Brian, you may be aware whether it be nat cat or any type of cat, we struggle with the concept of [ but for ] as an organization philosophically because the [ but for ] does -- it's still the shareholders' money, right?

And I think there's another important thing to keep in mind, Brian, and that is, overall, you still have this rising inflation, and it hasn't yet reflected on the claims in any of these classes. So we've had social inflation and certain lines of business have been impacted by social inflation and prices have gone up. But the fact is that inflation per se is just beginning to impact the cost of your claims. So there's going to continue to be pressure on claims, and that will cause more pressure for increasing rate increases. So higher rates will continue certainly for the foreseeable future. And by the way, inflationary times have been excellent for the insurance industry.

Yes. And no question, and then I get the social inflation. There was another question I had. You talked about it a little bit, Rob, is how does general inflation kind of impact Commercial Lines insurance? Because I've heard others talk about, "Oh, we don't care about general inflation in commercial lines insurance." And -- but you obviously see, yes, it matters, right? How do I think about it?

Why would they -- well, from our perspective, that doesn't make a lot of sense. So obviously, putting aside social inflation, financial inflation, we think, is very real. And not only is it real is very much an issue that the industry needs to pay attention to across the board. But in particular, I mean, obviously, in lines such as property, without a doubt that the cost of goods are on the rise. And if you want to talk about -- even things such as business interruption, the cost as revenues are going up along with inflation, one needs to keep up with that. So Brian, I think the industry is forced to grapple with 2 realities, social -- or several, but 2 of them would be social inflation, which we've all been talking about for some extended period of time. And we think it very much is at least in the data that we see persisting. And number 2, a more recent event, but nevertheless, very consequential is financial inflation. And anyone who thinks that does not apply to commercial lines business, well, they would have a different view than we did.

Interesting. Okay. What about -- so obviously, you guys think that this inflationary environment is much more structural, right? Going forward rather than transitory like people are talking about. I'm curious also, though, with...

What's the definition of transitory?

This transitory means that it will be over here in the second quarter. Right? It's very different done, right? Social inflation. You've talked a lot about this, right? And you've been talking about it for a while. I guess the question I saw in inflation is what are we seeing? I mean we've seen a couple of pretty significant verdicts just recently, right? Are we starting to see some more evidence that this is kind of creeping back up again post COVID? And do you think that will kind of ultimately start showing up in industry loss picks and reserves and those types of things?

So my perspective on that, Brian, is that it is alive and well, and it was alive and well during COVID. It's just when you saw the legal system come to a screeching halt and as ever so gradually opening up and gaining momentum. It's just coming more into focus. I think much of what we're seeing driving social inflation is really just a reflection of society and its mindset and quite frankly, at this moment in time, where the world is not necessarily just focused on trying to right wrongs, but they're also focused on looking for ways to punish. And money and the awards that we're seeing coming out of the legal system that I think you may be referring to at least in part are not as a result of people trying to remedy a wrong as much as just trying to punish and perhaps inflict as much pain on someone that did something wrong as possible. And that's just the state of where the world is today. And yes, that absolutely is, and will more be taken into consideration how product is pricing. Or how the product is priced. I think a lot of the world loses sight of the fact that, ultimately, the insurance industry, we're just a mechanism to spread risk. And when all of a sudden society chooses to view things through a certain lens, while in the short run, it may cost clients pain and maybe it will cost carriers money. Ultimately, society is the one that pays the bill because everyone's insurance costs go up.

Yes, absolutely. So another one I've got here. I've been doing this for a long time. And I remember W. R. Berkley very well during the 1990s and the 2000s, following on you all and very well how much your combined ratios went down in the last cycle turn. So I guess my question is, how much more room do you think you have to improve your, call it, combined ratios in your business? Can we get down to those low 80s levels that we saw back in 2004, right? Do we had that -- is pricing and everything to the same extent we had back in that hard market?

I don't think we really know with any certainty other than to a little bit of hindsight, how good it actually is. What I would tell you is in 2003, we didn't really recognize how much margin with certainty there was in the business or with great precision. We know it was good. And I would suggest the same thing we applied to sort of 87, if you will. I think we are very confident that the margins that are in the business that we are writing today is very attractive. And it's one of the reasons you can see in our numbers, where the growth has been trending over the past couple of quarters. If you look back over maybe the past couple of years, you can see where our priority was rate versus unit or exposure growth. And what's happened as the rate accuracy has gotten to a point that we find it more attractive. We're still pushing on the rate, but our policy cap/exposure growth is starting to accelerate considerably. We believe that there is a very healthy margin in the business. Some number of years down the road, when we look back at the policy year for 2021, I think that there is a reasonable chance that it proves to be better than how we see it today. That is just a result of our philosophy that our original loss ratio estimates that we use from the start, they tend to be measured, if you will. And as those years season out, we will tighten those up. So given that we choose to take a measured approach, it is my expectation down the road when you look at the policy year '21 and '22, it will prove to be very attractive on a combined ratio -- loss ratio or whatever metric you choose to focus on.

So Brian, that really means wonders to my heart. Because whenever anyone asks me my worst mistake. It's that in 1986 and '87, I grossly underestimated the profitability, so I didn't expand enough in '88 and '89 because I underestimated the profitability. He at least has learned something from my worst mistake. He understands we may well be understanding our profitability, and he's starting to grow.

But one of the things to please keep in mind, just going back to an earlier comment, Brian. In sort of 2001, it really tail-ended 2002 and 2003, we saw product lines throughout the commercial lines market firming together. We saw something similar in '86. Here, at this moment in time, as we discussed earlier, we have product lines at different points in the cycle. So there are parts of the business right now where we find the margin very attractive and are truly leaning into it. There are other parts of the market that we participate in, where we are treading more lightly.

What are the areas that you're treading more lightly?

We are paying close attention to the workers' comp line. And if you look at -- if you engage with NCCI or any entity that has large quantities of industry data, and you look at where rates have gone for the comp line, clearly, the margin that is available today is not what it was available yesterday. And we are trying to make sure that we have a thoughtful and approach to that product line as you would expect us to. And we are prepared -- we are in the market every day. But to the extent that the market is willing to chase the business down the drain, we will be there, but we are not going to chase it to a place that we don't think makes sense.

Got you. Got you. And then what about commercial auto? I mean you talked commercial auto has better rates, but I mean, that's an area that I've heard others comment that some of the large, huge verdicts that we've been seeing will be coming out of the commercial auto space, right? So did that give you any pause with respect to what's going on with the society and social inflation stuff?

Yes, I think commercial auto is a great example of it. We want to focus on social inflation. Certainly, a great example of that, and you can see it every day in the claim’s activity. One of the -- the industry has been trying to address loss cost trends stemming from social inflation within the commercial auto space for, I don't know, probably a decade at this stage. And the mistake that's made oftentimes, in my opinion, by some market participants, and we've made the mistake by the way, in the past, where we're -- we make plenty of mistakes, is that you see what a rate need is based on historic results and you achieve that rate need with your pricing, and then you think you've arrived. And you don't recognize now that trend is continuing on. So you need to not just catch up, but you then need to keep up with it. So I think commercial auto is a great example of that, where the industry needs to be very careful with all of the efforts to get to rate adequacy and no pun intended, they don't take the foot off the pedal. That was a little bit of insurance humor, Brian.

Makes sense. Terrific. So going back to kind of what's going on, you talked a lot about 2021, '22, hopefully, 2021 could be a very profitable year. I guess -- there has been a lot of discussion, obviously, about the do the math comment, right? And when you do the math, it just seems like the underlying loss ratio improvement that you booked in 2021 kind of fell short of what I think a lot of people were expecting, right? And I get you that you want to be conservative and there's some inflation and a lot of things out there. So I guess my question to you is how overly conservative do you think you were? And if you were only conservative, what does that necessarily portend for 2022 when you think about it?

Yes, that so...

Does that sound like it can get you into the fourth quarter, you said you loss picks for casualty, right?

Okay. So let me take a half a pace back. First off, I think 2020 and is going to improve to probably a pretty good year for the industry less because of brilliance and discipline and more because of circumstance and frequency stemming from COVID. We move -- make our way to '21, I think you saw some rate momentum building in '20 for the industry, carried through to '21, and I think you're seeing some benefit. Now let's sort of put a little bit more of a magnifying glass or even a microscope on us as an organization. So we have -- so what do we know? We know there's a lot of things we don't know. We know that we have the pleasure of operating in one of the few industries where you don't really know with any degree of certainty, your cost of goods sold until oftentimes, several years after, you have actually entered the transaction. We know that we are in an environment where we are seeing more activity on the trend front than the industry has seen in years. And it's coming at us from a variety of different directions. One being, again, social inflation. And as we discussed earlier, more recently financial inflation. So when the day is all done, to your question, sorry, for the long way around the barn, but the long story short is, are we being measured, if you will? I think that sounds better than conservative. The answer is yes, absolutely. Why are we doing that? Well, we're doing that because we respect the fact that there is a lot of leverage in our model, particularly around loss trend assumptions. And given the level of sensitivity that stems from that, we don't need to be off by very much for it to have a meaningful impact on the business. So look, back of the envelope math, when you do it all, at least our math is we're probably -- when you adjust for some -- what I would define as property risk losses, we're probably being more than 1 point less than 2 points conservative in our picks or my word measured, if you will. I think over time, we will have clarity around that. And quite frankly, I think over time, one person's view, not the company's view, my unofficial view as an observer is that it is likely that the industry, ourselves included, we will end up doing better than what was anticipated.

In 2001, I argued with the actuaries for years about redundancy in our reserves. And it took me years to persuade them. And in fact, we were and ended up being substantially redundant. Finality in a business where it's so much easier to look in the rearview mirror that to try and look out ahead is a very difficult thing. So numbers don't lie, but they don't lie as long as you're looking at the right set of numbers. And that's the problem you face especially when you have situations like COVID and new information that changes the view. So we may well think that we're being conservative, but we're being conservative because while the rearview mirror tells us that's probably a conservative stand, we're not as certain as we'd like to be. And that uncertainty gives you pause, so you're cautious.

Makes sense. No, Rob, on the COVID question, I guess, on COVID, where is that coming out, you think relative to what you originally thought might happen back in 2000? Are we getting close to where we've got some more finality around? What do we think the BI situation is and general liability and professional liability?

Well, certainly, as far as this organization goes based on what we can see today, the pig is almost all the way through the python, if you will. As far as the industry goes, honestly, Brian, I've been shocked by the response or lack of response from some market participants. I mean I honestly, I've been blown away by the fact that there are some people that are still willing to write event cancellation without communicable disease exclusion. We won't touch it with a 10-foot pole without a CD exclusion. But there are some people that just jump back in. And it surprises me that some people -- if you pay the tuition, you better make sure you get the education.

Got you. And I guess going back to my other question, was the pig more digestible than you thought it was potentially?

You know what, the truth of the matter is we really don't like swallowing pigs at all. But with a more digestible, I'm not sure how exactly to read those tea leaves, but it certainly seems to be unfolding within sort of what our framework was and how it could have unfolded.

Great. That's helpful. Let's talk a little bit about your expense ratio. 500 basis points of improvement since 2018 that there's maybe 40 to 50 basis points of that was COVID related. So given the continued growth that we're seeing here, how low do you think we can get that expense ratio? And at what point does is the infrastructure not let you drive in any lower?

Well, I think that we still have plenty of runway in front of us to improve on it from here. Perhaps, what maybe caught people a little bit by surprise, and I'm not sure if we really understood why people are quite so surprised maybe it's because we're not as good at communicating as we think we are at times. But long story short, Brian, we have a lot of businesses that we have started, in particular, specialized niches, if you will. And we started them along the way. Oftentimes, when market conditions were not particularly conducive, but they were terrific people that have extraordinary expertise within an attractive niche within the industry. And the organization was willing to make the investment in these people and set them up accepting the fact that the business was going to be subscale for some period of time because of the discipline that group of people would have. What has happened as of late over the past couple of years and really coming into focus over the past several quarters is market conditions have changed. The opportunity for these businesses to scale has come through. And as a result of that, you're seeing businesses that had expense ratios that would start with a 4 or more, all of a sudden are having expense ratios that are dropping like a stone because, again, market conditions are allowing them to grow. So how much better is the expense ratio you're going to get? Look, I think that it's going to add, it's going to flow. A leading indicator is you can see where our written premium is going. It's going to tell you where the earned is going to go. You have a sense in our economic model of our expense ratio, how much is variable versus how much is fixed? And given those data points, you can kind of extrapolate. But putting aside the 40 or 50 basis points associated with the COVID period, as you referenced, there's still opportunity before us.

Got you. And I guess all of this could be based upon what your growth outlook looks like, too. And I guess that would be another question for you with respect to your insurance business. Do you think that you can sustain this kind of level of growth through 2022 that you're seeing right now given the market environment?

There's nothing that we see on the horizon other than just our general knowledge of the industry and the cycle. But there's nothing that we see through '22 that would lead us to believe that the train will get derailed or that the momentum will erode. We see, quite frankly, the flow of business into the specialty market. We see the overwhelming flow of business coming into our E&S operations. The parts of the marketplace that we're maybe starting to lose a little bit of momentum like, for example, in the property line, seems like there's some discipline that is returning as a result of ]. Now that will be short-lived. Property responds very quickly, and it has a very short memory. The liability lines take longer to respond but have a longer memory. We're seeing great opportunity in the professional space. I think the primary geo market has some catching up to do, and you're going to see momentum building from here on that front. But again, the amount of business that we're seeing coming out of the standard market into the specialty market, if anything, the momentum continues to build.

And on that top of Rob, maybe talk about not only the hard market, I understand when you're in a hard market that naturally happened, but are there any structural things also going on with the business that's causing more business to move to the E&S market? And how long do you think that will continue? I mean we've seen the E&S market basically double -- grow twice of the standard market for the last decade, right? So there's obviously other things going on within the commercial lines market that's caused that to happen.

Look, I think that the standard market -- A couple of things. First off, the standard market, I think, finds itself in different pockets of their portfolio, realizing that maybe they overreached, maybe they expanded, and the asset play too much. Maybe they got outside of their expertise, maybe the pricing isn't what it should have been or maybe quite frankly, the terms and conditions they use is just not really applicable to the nature of the exposure. I think in addition to that, part of what you're seeing driving some of the growth today is the standard market really does not have a great appetite for new ventures. And one of the things that's happened as of late, you saw a lot of businesses going out of business or getting somewhat mothballed as a result of COVID. And now you're seeing a resurgence or green shoots of new businesses coming back, if you will. And as a result of that, that's creating great opportunity for the specialty market as well. I think lastly, there are clearly new exposures that society is having to grapple with. Cyber being an extreme example of that, where the standard market really struggles with what its appetite should be along those lines. And I think there are others similar to that, but that would be an example.

Makes a lot of sense. As far as your other business -- or the reinsurance business, what do you think the reinsurance kind of market outlook is right now for 1/1 renewals? How do you kind of fit into that? Do you think there's opportunities you continue to see some good strong growth in your reinsurance business?

The 1/1 renewal season is notably late. It seems like it's just as an observer, it seems like it's turned into a little bit of a game of chicken, and we're waiting to see who's going to blink. And I don't think we're going to have real clarity until early January as to how that plays out. I think much of the reinsurance marketplace is licking its wounds from having grown at exactly the wrong moment and giving away ceding commissions just when it should have been going the other way. If you think about sort of, gosh, I would suggest, give or take, sort of '17 through '19, '17 through '20. And I think that, combined with some of the other issues that we've talked about, financial inflation, social inflation, and we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that there are a lot of players in the reinsurance space that really have taken some hits stemming from natural catastrophes, whether it be domestically or outside of the U.S. So when you put that all together, I think the reinsurance community has realized that they are, in many cases, not covering their true cost of capital and certainly not providing their various stakeholders, in particular, their shareholders with reasonable risk-adjusted returns. Are they -- would they like to do something about it? Yes. Are they prepared to draw a line in the sand and make rate a priority over market share or growth? We're going to find out. To the extent they do, you will see our reinsurance business grow. No different than any other part of this organization. We have a view as to what adequate rate is. If the market is there or better, you will see us actively participating. So we're there, we'll see where the market is.

Got you. Let's flip it the other way, then. So given how attractive the pricing is right now in a lot of your casualty business, why aren't you retaining more?

We are.

You are. So we expect that there'll be retention will continue as you kind of look towards...

There are a couple of things. You need to remember or just as a data point. This organization of our -- approximately 90% of our policies have a limit of $2 million or less. So we are not by nature, a hugely dependent on reinsurance. Much of what we buy are corporate covers like a cat cover. So are we insulated from the reinsurance pricing environment? No. Not completely, but are we affected by it less than many? Without a doubt. So look, we have a view as to where we think pricing should be. We have certain reinsurers that are truly our partners through thick and thin. And there are other reinsurers where, quite frankly, both they and we view it as more of a financial transaction that's revisited on an annual basis. But at this stage, I think that you will see likely our net growing faster than our gross over a year.

Got you. I got a couple of others, but I just got one that came in here. Somebody was asking with work from home is kind of probably being more prevalent here going forward, do you see that there's potentially a permanent kind of drop in frequency in workers' comp? And is that a reason that loss cost may be lower, frequency may be lower here going forward, severity may be lower?

Look, certainly, there are some industries, some jobs, some organizations that have embraced working from home more than others. In addition to that, I think if you look at the significant part of the premium associated with the workers' comp line, a disproportionate amount of it has to do with jobs that cannot be done very easily from your kitchen table. So I would suggest that in certain white-collar positions, could there be some kind of benefit? Yes. But when the day is all done, the white-collar positions that could be done from someone's kitchen or den or whatever, that's what -- not what's really driving the workers' comp line. Premium wise or, quite frankly, claims wise.

Great. We pivot over to the investment portfolio for a little bit here. Given where equity valuations are, given this low interest rate environment, I kind of struggle to see how can you guys continue to kind of generate these great capital gains you've been generating over the last decade kind of going forward? Where should we kind of think about that?

Well, by and large, we have a fairly diverse portfolio of assets outside of our standard bond portfolio. We have a few billion dollars of real estate. We continually have things we want to sell. We expect -- and what we said to people is -- We always expect to do $25 million of gains a quarter in our real estate portfolio. That was to give people a number. But we expect we'll continue to sell some real estate. And we have opportunities that we think are there still. We still have a good-sized private equity portfolio. We're a major factor in a few private equities. And then we have our own private equity investing, which has been quite rewarding. So on all of those things, we see really a continuation of where our status has been. It's been a small percentage of our portfolio. It's just been a high percentage of our return because we've been successful investors. We think we'll continue to find things and opportunities where we see the world in a different light, be it natural gas pipelines that we think are going to be harder and harder to rebuild. And for as far as we can see, natural gas is going to be needed to generate electricity or heat homes. And alternatives, new pipelines are going to be harder and harder to get approval for. So we think those give you good returns and probably pretty stable potential. So if you look hard enough, there continues to be opportunities, and we really feel like there's not going to be any problem with the kind of returns for our portfolio that we've had in the past.

Got you. And Will, you continue to have a lot of cash on your balance sheet, right?

Because we keep selling so much damn insurance. When you're generating $100-plus million a month of cash, you don't find that many good investments because it is a competitive investment market. And we do have a lot of cash. And we're looking for opportunities. This last weekend, we met with some people who had a particular niche in the market was really exciting. The niche in total, it was $250 million. It's nice, but it doesn't help us a lot. So we're actively looking for niches, but when you're looking for niches, you don't put the money used as quickly as possible. We do believe, however, in spite of what everyone else seems to be saying, as we said, inflation is here to stay for certainly a few years, and we think interest rates will move up, especially the intermediate term rates, which is where we want to invest. We've reduced our duration of our portfolio to where it's well below the duration we're shooting for. As we start to see interest rates move higher, we think we'll be able to find pretty standard market kinds of things in the fixed income area that we'll be able to invest in and get closer to our target.

Got you. Got you. And how long do you think that takes? I mean it sounds like the Fed is going to start tightening here.

We think that one of the things that is going to face the government is the Federal Reserve has effectively funded much of the government's increasing deficits. Both the Republicans and the Democrats have fallen in love with increasing deficits. So we'll see where those increasing spending deficits going to take us to. And eventually, they're going to result in increasing interest rates. And we think that that's probably something you'll see in the end of the first quarter of next year or early second quarter of next year.

Right. Let's talk a little bit also about capital management. If you take a look at the valuation of your guys' stock, I mean, to me, it doesn't reflect the hard market anymore, right, whereas some other ones out there to do. So does that at all lean you more towards share buyback versus special dividends, given where your stock is trading right now?

Every day, we look at the stock price, we look at opportunities. We look at our growth and you try and balance all those things. One of the things that we see is continuing to grow as rapidly as we are, makes us need to keep a little more capital than we might have thought. So we have to balance all those things. And as we have to be sure that we always have enough capital to write all the profitable business that comes our way. That's our #1 goal. And for the moment, we have a lot of that profitable business coming our way. And so it's a continuous judgment. And at some point, we make that decision to buy back stock or to pay a special dividend, but our first goal is to write all the good profitable business that's out there.

Got you. Makes sense. Let's see what else I have here for you. You know what's something we haven't talked about in a while, maybe briefly gets mentioned in the call, and then people ask about it is, is your high-net-worth personal lines business. How is that progressing? How competitive is that market? It seems like a lot of players wanted to get into it. Maybe it's less so today, just given what's happening with cat losses and stuff, maybe talk a little bit about that?

So Brian, we've been very pleased with the progress. I think as we've chatted about offline, I'm not sure if we fully appreciate it how significant the build-out of the platform is in order to play the game, which, again, it's not just about money, it took time. But we have -- actually, that's been achieved for some period of time. And the concept to build it and they will come, seems to apply here. So the business has grown very quickly. We're quite pleased with the margins. We participate in the states that you'd want to be, both from an opportunity perspective as well as avoiding those -- some of the states that are fairly problematic. We have chosen not to go into. And quite frankly, many of the leading players in the space seem to be terribly distracted by what I would define as internal issues, strategic issues, and that's creating real opportunity for us. So the business is exceeding expectations and building more momentum every day at this stage.

I guess I got another question that came in. Is this new kind of that the market right now creating opportunities to launch new businesses?

Certainly something where we are always paying attention. Number 1 is we need to make sure that we believe in the niche or segment of the market long term. Number 2, we need to make sure that we're able to find people with outstanding skills that are able to effectively manage capital within that space effectively and responsibly on behalf of the shareholders. If we're able to do that, then obviously, market conditions being what they are today, that creates a tailwind and allows you to grow quickly. So we've announced a couple of things over the past 12 months, and certainly, we are always looking for new opportunities, again, focused on parts of the market that we think offer long-term promise combined with people. So nothing to announce at your conference here today, Brian. But certainly, we are actively kissing frogs, and we'll see if anything turns into something.

Got you. All right. And we're almost at the end of our time. So last question here for you, both. So I'm a new investor. I'm looking at W.R. Berkley, why do I buy your stock today?

Because you get what you pay for. And I think the long story short, when the day is all done, presumably, it's all about value creation and risk-adjusted returns. And I think one of the things that some people don't fully appreciate is there are some businesses that maybe trade at book value and maybe you think in a hardening market or a rising tide, that's a better opportunity. But I think history would suggest that while as a multiple of book, maybe we seem more expensive as far as value goes and ability to create value for shareholders, I think the premium price is very worthwhile. I think the other piece that's not necessarily always considered is one of the reasons why we've been able to build book value for shareholders so much more quickly than most is because of how we have focused and fashioned the portfolio on the underwriting side. And when you compare our ability to build book value compared to most of our peers, why can we do a record, well, it's because we don't give money back when there's a cat event. There are many other market participants that will have fine results, and then there will be a cat event, and they will give a lot of it back. Because of how we manage volatility, we do not give it back the same way others too. Again, when the day is all done, from my perspective, it's about how well you can build book value over a period of time. And I think we have a long history of being able to do that reasonably successfully.

I want to add one thing. We are unique in that our company is run by owners. Every 1 of the top 70 people who work for us get granted stock and they keep it, and they have to keep it until they retire. Every single 1 of our top managers own substantially more securities in W.R. Berkley than any of our competitors. It gives a different mindset. So when you buy W.R. Berkley stock, you're buying a company whose managers own and believe in it. It's a very different culture and mindset and it's priceless.

Great. It's a great way to end it right there. Listen, Bill, Rob, that was terrific. I really enjoyed the discussion. Thanks again, and best of luck and we'll be in touch here soon.

Thanks, Brian. Appreciate you having us.

Thank you, Brian.

Thanks.