Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Conduit Re January 2024 Renewals Trading Update. I'm joined this morning by Trevor Carvey, CEO of Conduit Re, and Greg Roberts, Chief Underwriting Officer of Conduit Re. With this, I give the floor to Trevor Carvey.
Thanks, Antonio. Good morning, and welcome to this, our first January trading update. This is now our fourth renewal season, having commenced underwriting for the 2021 year, and the business has continued to push on with very good growth, again, into what is a continuing favorable underwriting environment. Ultimate premiums this first of January were $582.4 million, which is up 38% over last year. And while this figure is running ahead of our original five-year IPO plan, it is in fact very much in line with our expectations going into this January 2024 renewal season.
As regards how we saw the individual parts of the market, if we go all the way back to 2021, we called publicly then the early signs of the emerging trend in the non-admitted market and the strong skew in premium rating that we expected to see in these ground-up quota share classes. It was the start of a structural shift that has made itself clear since then, in our view. Over the course of the last three years of trading, we have saw significant volumes of quota share submissions in this non-admitted space, and parts of that book are again renewing through this January, and to which we've added new premium as well.
As we say, having repeat business with key partners in this ground-up space, some since 2021, helps us stay on top of the curve, we feel, in terms of springboarding the portfolio again in 2024. As regards rate change, Greg will go into further details later on the class-by-class makeup.
But at a high level, we saw +3% risk-adjusted rate change across the portfolio, with variations across the different segments. Over the last year, we were calling our portfolio preference to skew more to property and specialty, and our rate change measures this January 1 seemed to vindicate this. On casualty, we have played more defensive, and Greg will explain more shortly on that.
Overall rate change for us is a healthy number in our view, being positive on a risk-adjusted basis, and on top of the uplifts seen over the last couple of years, it puts the trading environment still in a very good place. As regards our outwards retrocession program, we secured renewal with fundamentally the same main partners, and in the round, we would observe we were able to renew actually with some additional broader coverages included this year. But fundamentally, we purchased the program at pricing levels which were in line with our planned costs. As a reminder, we do have purchases slated for later in the year and the rollover of the cat bond in June.
On the topic of cat exposure, whilst we have indeed grown the property segment at January 1, we can report that for the Net PMLs, or Net Probable Maximum Loss, there was no material increase in these at January 1 from what we reported to the market at the end of July. Finally, before handing over to Greg, I'd make the observation that when we set out to create a business with a genuinely diversified foot, footprint, we did so in the knowledge that a key component was to ensure that the business always had strong channels available for the origination of business. As a reinsurer, you accept that you don't control the chain in the purest sense of the word, but you certainly can ensure that you have a long reach out through a host of channels.
In that aim, I think we've done a solid job in expanding the flow, and Greg and the underwriting team have certainly been able to capture a broad range of new risks to satisfy our appetite across all three segments. On that, I'll hand over to Greg to explain more.
Thanks, Trevor. From a premium perspective, we have premium growth of 38% when compared to the same period in 2023. Property has grown by 58% to $311 million. Casualty has reduced by 10% to $101 million, and specialty has grown by 52% to $170 million. The resultant of this, when measured at the first of January, is that the portfolio has further weighted towards property and specialty segments. This is clearly an active portfolio management response to where we see more attractive risk/reward conditions in the classes, but also reflects the nature of the typical inception dates of the underlying classes. Casualty is a fairly linear series of inception dates throughout the year, whereas specialty is much more focused around the first of January.
That said, it remains that our approach to portfolio management is one of balancing property, casualty, and specialty risk accordingly, recognizing the benefits of breadth of exposure where appropriate, but always sensitive to volatility and the management of the tail. Next slide, please. The first of January portfolio has resulted in a 3%+ risk-adjusted rate change, net after the application of claims inflation. We continue to apply a heightened claims inflation view into our pricing process across property, casualty, and specialty. Now, this portfolio result breaks down as follows: with property at +5%, casualty at -2%, and specialty at +2%. As I will describe later in the presentation, the business segment results have some very broad rate change variations within them, dependent on the subclass, the loss activity, or the risk profile....
We use the description of a ground-up approach to portfolio management to emphasize the underwriting culture at Conduit. It is the case that we've built a fantastic portfolio of risks from our partners, which provides us with significant renewing premium. The ground-up approach simply means that the team evaluates and underwrites every risk, renewal or not, as a new risk. This ensures thorough portfolio management and ensuring that we are supporting and consequently taking risk in the appropriate classes and subclasses for our target margin returns. Talking of property, our property footprint remains firmly in the primary market, taking on risk from the excess and surplus lines and the direct and FAC markets as a ground-up reinsurer.
The emerging signs from the 2023 industry performance of these portfolios underlines the underwriting discipline that has occurred over the last 36 months, which is further enhanced by a year without major peak zone cat losses. From the excess of loss perspective, loss activity was broadly the driver here. The European treaties can be thought of as +5% to +10% risk-adjusted rate change for the European-wide loss-free structures, which also looked broadly as expiring and maintained their separation of perils. The regional European treaties, where there was indeed more loss activity from events such as the French hail, the Turkish earthquakes or German flooding, risk-adjusted rate changes were in the range of 20% to +50% risk-adjusted after inflation.
Beyond the loss-affected treaty differentiation, it was noticeable that the market was able to deliver sufficient supply of risk appetite to satisfy the demand of, in particular, the high excess U.S. nationwide layers. The U.S. loss-free nationwide layer contracts were largely flat to, at times, small positive risk-adjusted improvements, but in some cases had a broadening of coverage from the inclusion of perils such as SRCC and domestic terror. The regional loss-free treaties were around +5% risk-adjusted net of inflation, with loss-affected regionals and aggregates +20%-+40%, again, risk-adjusted net of inflation. Moving to casualty. Our casualty risk appetite remains characterized by U.S. primary business, and so we broadly observed combined ratio stability across the portfolio. We further refined this by actively managing those accounts we view to have less demonstrable cycle management.
The general third-party liability market continues to evidence underwriting discipline, with cedants actively balancing line size and risk appetite with the rate levels they are achieving on premium bases they attach. Our cedants continue to demonstrate to us their approach to managing a higher-than-normal claims inflationary environment, and so increased attachment points from the excess rises remains necessary to manage risk levels, yet maintaining a view that rate levels are above underlying loss trends. Our partners continue to share granular data and, more importantly, their approaches with us, and this transparency enables us to support them with confidence. The professional lines market does show negative risk-adjusted rate change after inflation, and although still benefiting from many courses of compound rate improvement, our partners are managing their exposures down.
With both economic and social inflation accounting for increases in prior year loss reserves for the industry, we will be looking to the market to adjust for this in the coming months in their approach to pricing these lines. Our international Casualty treaties are broadly on an Excess of Loss placement basis. The team observed a number of treaty structure changes, and generally speaking, the levels of risk being transferred to the sellers was in the same proportions to the underlying exposure base as per the expiring treaty. What this means is that the buyers were adjusting their treaty purchase by way of increasing Attachment Points to seek a stable renewal outcome. This is a sensible approach and sits very well with us.
With regards to specialty, we continue to observe an increased willingness of cedants to take on more risk for certain specialty subclasses, defined here as political risk, including civil unrest, war and terror. There is a really varied approach to exposure management here from the primary market, and through the process of client meetings and ultimately the provision of submission data, we are able to support those who outperform here. Granularity and quality of data, as presented when managing and articulating an underwriting plan in these most specialist classes, is critical for a reinsurer to understand the risks they are in fact assuming. This is in great contrast to, for example, the property class, where it's been fairly standard and now certainly expected to be shared extremely detailed and granular ground-up exposure data.
This obviously presents challenges to us, and so we are not willing to grow our exposure either by breadth of footprint or the volatility afforded from them when such data is not available. Other niche subclasses, such as aviation, provide evidence of improving margins for excess of loss treaty writers, while the primary market continues to lag more with increasing claims activity. In our view, the aviation industry remains relatively weak, perhaps a consequence of excess capacity. On specialty more generally, we had great success in converting some strategic partner relationships, which have been worked on outside of the typical renewal season activity. These sorts of deals are really appealing to us, as they have low embedded volatility-
... whilst strong margins. Now I hand back to Trevor.
Thank you, Greg. Just a couple more slides from me, and we can go to Q&A. This slide is really just highlighting the key drivers in the broader reinsurance marketplace currently as we see it, and importantly, how it presents to us at Conduit. Some of these drivers you would have seen us mention before and are largely unchanged, but there are some new factors at play now worth highlighting.
Firstly, on new capital coming into the market, we've definitely seen an increase this year ending capacity being offered for the higher attaching, more binary property cats and property retro products. On the whole, we saw rating levels generally holding, but the collateralized market saw an increase in assets under management for these binary property products. And that trend fits equally with the increased capacity for index properties seen in the cat bond market since mid-2023.
I referred to this in my opening remarks in the context of our own retro purchasing for this January, and we definitely saw this in effect in our pricing there as a buyer. Turning to terms and conditions, these were an interesting space this year across the different segments. In property cat, there were signs of some buyers looking for a broadening in coverage.
For example, rolling in terror and political violence cover into the natural perils programs. While it was not something we encouraged or significantly supported, it was an area we very much kept under watch through the renewals of U.S. property cat, excess of loss, and actually caused us to modify our alignment to some programs. In specialty likewise, it had similar moments with coverage discussions this renewal season, involving more negotiations around more definitions and event coverage issues.
Although in the main, these were resolved in the final analysis and were really a continued tidy up required from a year ago. On the general level of demand for cat, that continues to be high, and whether that's down to the embedded general protection gap or the impact of regulatory and cat model change coming down the pipe, it certainly is keeping the demand high in our view.
Lastly, on inflation. While we have seen the headline numbers start to drop in the broader economic environment, there is no doubt that it is still the main topic of debate between reinsurance buyers and sellers. And if we add in the underlying legacy reserving challenges, then this is generally underpinning the market now and producing a healthy treaty reinsurance environment as we see it stretching ahead.
Premiums and pricing in the various casualty classes are, of course, moving at different speeds, but we observe the main thread running through it all is the background inflation number, and that serves to keep underwriters and the actuaries focused on the task at hand.
So to summarize briefly where we are, firstly, on premiums, the growth we have shown this January 1 was very much in line with our expectations, and with the property and specialty risk delivering, we took the opportunity to skew growth deliberately in those disciplines, with casualty more under watch by the two. On business flow, I would describe that as very much coming to us. We pushed on an open door quite often, and the distribution chains we have built are very much delivering year-over-year in our target classes.
Both brokers and key partners alike are combining here for us, and the attention we started paying to the non-admitted space three years ago was a call we are very comfortable with. Next, on capital, we continue to deploy, and we've remarked previously, and it's worth reiterating, that our five-year forward business plan from here does not involve any requirement for an additional capital raise through equity or debt.
Our goal is to continue to grow and build the business, the current capital base and retained earnings, doing the work over time. Lastly, on market outlook, this remains positive, and we expect to continue to actively manage across the cycles between different classes and, of course, optimize the portfolio year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter. We have done that at the first of January, and you've seen us grow in certain classes and shrink in others.
To our minds, this is a genuinely normal behavior for a business where cycle management is a key driver of long-term performance and management. On that, I will finish. Thank you all for your time, and I'll hand back to Antonio.
Thanks, Trevor. Before we move to the Q&A, I would like to remind everyone that this call is dedicated to the 1/1 renewals. Therefore, any questions you may have on the full year results will be answered on the twenty-first of February. So let's move on to Q&A, and let's keep it to two questions per person. Thank you.
Thank you. Participants can submit questions in written format via the webcast page by clicking the Ask a Question button. If you are dialed in to the call and would like to ask a question, please press the star followed by the one on your telephone. We will pause for a moment to assemble the queue. We'll take our first question from Tryfonas Spyrou from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Two questions from my side. If you can maybe talk a little bit more about the E&S opportunity you seem to have now begun to capitalize on, and how long do you see the runway for growth here? And do you expect sort of the market conditions to be more prolonged than perhaps in the traditional XOL, Nat Cat programs, when pricing seems to have nearly peaked?
And maybe a side question to that is, how does the increase in your exposure in property here change your overall Nat Cat footprint? I appreciate, Trevor, I think you mentioned PMLs are sort of flat, but is there more traditional cat sort of exposure coming onto the book? The second question is on casualty. I was just wondering in your thoughts on why there isn't more pressure...
On rates here, given clearly this sort of loss, loss trends emerging from prior underwriting years, which obviously you don't have any exposure to, but a lot of the industry players do. Is it a high interest rate environment, or is it players looking to deploy capital here to balance out the property cat exposure? So any thoughts around that would be appreciated. Thank you.
Greg?
Yeah, sure.
Want some of this?
Morning, Trip. So your first question on the sort of non-admitted property space, I think as Trevor outlined, it's an area of the business that we invested in from the outset. The sort of partnerships we established there have been writing business, and we have been therefore assuming business over those, well, 36 months to this point of our existence.
So what we're also seeing here is the compound effect of the rate that has been flowing through that segment of the market. So as a reminder, we obviously talk about risk-adjusted rate change net after inflation. The actual absolute rate, and therefore premium growth, associated with that is generally larger. So some of that premium growth we show in absolute terms is just pure rate coming through on that existing business.
With regards to to runway, I mean, I don't have a crystal ball on that, but I would say that that market is still growing. And if we kind of recap on some of the comments we made in prior quarters and in fact years, was that a lot of that business is from the admitted sector moving into the non-admitted sector. And that was initiated due to the need for repricing and the change in way in which the product's sold, the coverages, et cetera. I mean, I don't see a reversal of that. I think we are. We've talked about fundamental shifts and changes in the in the sector, and I still believe that's that's largely the case.
And of course, just one last comment there on the exposure side that comes with that premium growth is we continue to structure all our deals, and we spend a lot of time building those with caps and collars and, you know, that's business as usual for us, on that side of things. So that obviously is ultimately the controller of exposure.
With casualty, yeah, you're, you're quite right. There are growing observations of losses affecting back years, nominal claims coming through. These will be feeding through into actuarial analysis across the industry. And I suppose there are always differing reactions to that, from the reinsurance community, dependent on whether this was business you were already on, or if you're looking at it as new business, or, or purely moderating your position from prior years.
So I can't really comment on how everybody behaves around that. All I can say is that our ground-up approach to evaluating that business means that, you know, our partners who are able to articulate and help us understand the behaviors of the underlying business and how that relates now compared to prior years, particularly in the way in which they deploy their risk appetite, is ultimately the how we find confidence in supporting and managing those positions.
That's very helpful. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Andreas van Embden of Peel Hunt. Please go ahead with your question.
Yes, thank you. Good afternoon. Two questions, please. First one on the renewal book. You mentioned that, you know, increasing share on programs is increasing the, or fueling your exposure growth. I just wondered, is this broad-based across all the panels you sit on? Are you taking share of those panels and growing exposures across your book, or is it very much concentrated on a number of larger accounts? And the second question is on Europe. I just wondered, where are you expanding in Europe? Is this with the larger sort of the larger insurance companies in Europe or the regionals, or is it actually within Lloyd's here in London, where you're increasing your European exposures? Thank you.
Morning, Andreas. So on the renewal book, so part of that is increasing shares of treaties, but part of that growth is simply growth in the books of business that the underlying quota shares produce from our partners.
So, you know, if you think that we've spent a lot of time evaluating and opting to support a partner, we're happy to see them grow their business at the right margins and, you know, consequently share data with us in an environment where we understand the risks that we're being ceded. You know, that's really great news. And so a big part of that is actually continued growth from existing partners. We did find some opportunities to write some new business.
Some of that came from existing partnerships, where we found the ability to expand our footprint with them into other niche sectors, and some was with some absolutely new partners. So, a little bit of a mix of all of the above, I'm afraid. When it comes to Europe, you know, I would say that our interest in Europe is much like last year, no significant change in our risk appetite or approach. Where we saw the market sort of move in the bigger, heavier capacity programs, the sort of multi-country European cat excess of loss, there was probably more opportunity there, in my opinion, than on the regional side.
Much as a part, the inflation is well understood by the larger European-wide companies, and in fact, they saw this as an opportunity to perhaps further protect their balance sheet with increased demand for reinsurance capacity. And it was sought to be bought on a very similar basis to last year, with sensible separation of peril and otherwise, meaning that the structures were sensible. And, you know, we found positions of to be there and exist. So, yeah, it was a good result, but I'd say skewed more towards the larger European big capacity programs than the regional side.
Just a follow-up on that, what was the demand within Lloyd's? You wrote part of your specialty book at Lloyd's, and that's grown quite quickly. Are you seeing a ramp-up in demand for cover, reinsurance cover from the Lloyd's syndicates?
Yeah. So it was interesting if you think of more the specialty side of the business, a lot of the marine and energy business, obviously, that flows through Lloyd's. We observed some interesting approaches there to the original line size and risk accumulations that were being absorbed by the syndicates. There's definitely some variation there. There were some examples of syndicates, you know, holding their exposures back and driving price. But there were equally others who were willing to put bigger accumulations out there for similar monies. So as a reinsurer of books, we had to certainly do the ground-up work there and evaluate the moves we make as to controlling our own accumulation. So a few varied approaches, I have to say.
Probably just one other comment to add to that, Andreas. Over my many years in the industry, Lloyd's has been a consistent buyer and a regularly renewing buyer of cover year on year on the nature of the neutralization and the way in which cover is bought. So, we've seen it again this year that the renewals to Lloyd's entities generally seem to be more reliable in coming through than perhaps other larger capitalized entities. And that's just the nature of Lloyd's and the way that it manages its own sort of neutralized risk, demand.
Okay, perfect. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Darius Satkauskas of RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Hey, everyone. Good morning. My two questions. So the first one is just in your portfolio composition. Could you remind us what was the quota share in excess of loss split that you had in 2023, and how has that changed in 2024 at this renewal? And kind of the second question related to portfolio composition as well. If I heard correctly in your opening remarks, you said that you've written a range of new risks that satisfy your risk appetite. What are those, please?
Portfolio composition.
Yeah, sure. No, I actually didn't catch the second question, probably. But the first question, portfolio composition, we're not articulating a split between quota share and XL at this point. I think the question was actually around 2023, and bearing in mind, this is a January 1 update, Darius. So, you know, I would just say that the composition of the portfolio is broadly similar to prior year. So, the focus here is the non-admitted business is largely driven from that proportional support through the reinsurance product delivery, and very similar to last year. No changes there. So, same as before, I'm afraid.
On the second point, I think, Darius, your question was around a new range of risks. Is that right?
We couldn't hear you properly. Would you mind repeating it louder, Darius?
Yep, yep. Yeah. So if I heard correctly in your opening remarks, you were saying that you've written a range of new risks that satisfy your appetite. Maybe you could elaborate on what those risks were.
Okay. I think probably the reference there was around some of the specialty contracts. So we've been able to... I think we use the expression, partner with, a number of entities around the specialty space, where a number of specialty classes have been brought to us as a group from them. We're able to work with them very closely, going through those kind of line by line and, if you like, data set by data set. Clients have been very open in the way that those individual lines are working, and we've been able to write that as a block. That's probably the way to think around it, but it's been a very good way for us to access a broad range of diversifying specialty business with clients that have been very open-
Yeah
I n the way that the, the business has been priced and managed over a period of years. So probably that's the, the reference I would make to sort of new range of risk. We were doing it before, but there's been an increased, demand for that.
Right. Sorry, just a quick follow-up, if I may. So how much of that $170 million for specialty you reported today came from that, the new partnership?
It's a proportion of it. We don't disclose the individual breakdown within that, but it's a proportion of that. But the individual classes that make up those deals, we're writing them already. There's no new lines of business that we're adding to the overall portfolio. It's just a way of scaling in those, and we've seen the opportunities. So it's not new classes-
Yeah
of business for us. It's just a broader remit within any one contract.
And I guess if you could comment on, you know, the potential to onboard new partnerships for the rest of the year or in coming years?
So, yeah. I mean, that's what we do all day, Darius. I mean, like, we're always working on and understanding blocks of business through the year, and sometimes these line up with a sort of strike date for a transaction, and a lot of them don't, actually. But we're constantly evaluating blocks of business on that basis and trying to find ways where we can structure a deal that is, you know, appealing to both parties. That's often the stumbling block, finding a deal that works for both parties. But, you know, we put the work in, we do that ground-up work. We offer a lot of solutions, and, you know, that's our underwriter culture.
Yeah, that, that's really happening all the time, for sure.
Next question, please.
Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Abid Hussain from Panmure Gordon. Please go ahead.
Hi, everyone. I think I still have three questions left, if I may. The first one is just on market color. If you could give us just some, any additional color on how you felt the, the current renewal season compared to, to last year's, and how easy was it to secure that 3%, rate increase on average across the portfolio? So just a bit of color around, around that. The second question is on margins. Does the 3% increase in rate that you've secured, does it, does it ultimately translate to better margins for 2024? I hope it does. And I guess I'm asking that sort of, in the, with the caveat of all else equal, as usual.
And I'm also sort of thinking in the context of the business is now approaching scale, and so therefore, that, that, that sort of better rate should drop down to the bottom line and, and to the margin. That's the second question. And then, then the third question is on the outward reinsurance retro program. Just sort of any more color, any more detail on how the-- how your costs evolved? I know they were within budgets, but just any more color would be great. Thank you.
Okay. Thanks, Abid. Yeah, just in terms of, you know, market color on the renewal season, I guess the way you described that this year versus last year, it was more ordered and orderly this year. There was very much a kind of last-minute feel to the renewal season a year ago, with clients, particularly on the property side, looking for large limits, and the market, in a way, kind of wasn't prepared, particularly in the way that some of the wordings were being changed. This year, the markets had a year to kinda get to the bottom of some of those wordings issues, exclusions, and coverage, should we say, so discussions that were 12 months ago, this year was more orderly. Certainly, it was completed more quickly, should we say?
I think there was a sense this year that if the hurdle rate was achieved on a contract, there was greater certainty of it being completed. The market kind of fell in more behind, whereas last year it was, more discussions going on, as I said, around sort of wording, differentiation. So this year, more orderly. In terms of margins and, you know, increase in, rate we've achieved, yeah, it's a better place to be. Obviously, you know, we'll always take more risk-adjusted rate, and it flows through to the bottom line. But the key is over time. You know, so you're familiar, with the earning nature of our business and the way it earns through raw reinsurance.
So you see that benefit coming through over time, particularly on a portfolio like ours, where we're always looking at the embedded margin in the ground-up business. A lot of part of what we do is not short-tail cat or short-term cat, so that earns through over time. So yes, there is a benefit. And as we scale, you're right, you know, that will flow through.
And outwards cost, I can pick that up, Greg. Yeah, for us, we don't disclose the absolute cost, but that we made reference in the presentation to the reinsurance that we purchased, the outwards retrocession that we purchased, was pretty much in line with our plan. Limits that we purchased were broadly similar to a year ago.
So we've grown the property book inwards, but at the same time, that's been done by Greg, without stressing materially our peak zone PMLs. So the program for us was renewed through the market. I'd say with property, there's more capacity that we could talk to, to expand some of the relationships. There was definitely more capacity in that retro space, but we're very pleased with what we've achieved. And broadly, I think, as I've said in the presentation, it's broadly within our planned budget, but we don't disclose, obviously, absolute numbers. But hopefully, it gives you some color.
That does. No, thank you. I appreciate you going into the details.
Mm-hmm.
Thank you. Our next question comes on the line of Tryfonas Spyrou from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Hi, thank you. Just opportunity for two follow-ups. One is, do you expect there'll be more sort of demand for reinsurance coming into June, sort of mid-year renewals, or was enough for the January, given the orderly market, that there won't be a huge rush to buy more cover at the half year over and above the normal sort of level?
And the second one may be a slightly more peaky question. Should we expect any sort of faster earn-out of premiums over the next twelve months, given the rebalance or more balance towards shorter lines, and the trimming of casualty exposure, and considering whether that that's coming from prior years, prior years as well, which I'm not sure in further. Thank you.
Okay. So demand going forward, obviously, I'm speculating, but I think as a general comment, you know, I made the point earlier on that we're still in a high inflationary environment, and we're still pricing risk in that environment. So that's, you know, raising exposures are growing organically and otherwise. So insurance companies are clearly absorbing larger exposures than they did the prior years, of which they're collecting premium for as well.
So it would be reasonable for them to be buying more limit, perhaps than they did the year before to protect those balance sheets. We have already sort of got some decent data points and understanding what might be happening in Florida, for example, with some significant growth in demand from some of the more regional carriers.
So I suggest, yes, I think probably demand will continue to increase on the basis that underlying exposures are certainly increasing. But the healthiness there is that there is additional premium being collected for that exposure. So as long as the balance is right, I still think that's a very positive trend. So to your second question, the point there is on stability, and that relationship remains stable on premium earn-out. I'd go to that comment again that the overall mix of our portfolio still broadly remains very similar without any change in the direction of it into any one particular line. So, you know, the historic understanding of our book remains the same.
Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah, in terms of, yeah, there's no material change in the, the nature of the business that's being bound inwards. Obviously, scale has grown, but, the underlying patterns, and I think your question referenced to the earning patterns, you know, essentially, that, that stays in place, for the portfolio. Overall, we've still got the same look and shape to the portfolio.
Thank you.
Our next question comes on the line of Darius Satkauskas of RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
A few follow-ups, if that's okay. Just going back to the portfolio composition, I mean, it sounds like in casualty, rating conditions are still gonna stay tough for a bit. So on that basis, assuming that if you have to cut more casualty business, how much more scope can you do so while still staying sufficiently diversified?
Or will it, at some point, very quickly impact your ability to write more property and specialty risk? And then my second question, I think you mentioned earlier about potential regulatory and cat model changes coming down the pipe that might impact demand later in the year. Maybe you could elaborate on what those changes are, please. Thanks.
Okay. Thanks, Darius. Yeah, I'll pick up the first one with Greg. He lives and breathes the exciting world of cat modeling, and pick up on that. Yeah, on casualty, yeah, it's that was actually, we obviously took a year-end to trim exposures, I think is probably the way to think about it. It's fresh, it's particularly around the professional, the D&O piece, and that was, you know, margin-led.
And for us, I think it was a good example of taking action, preemptive action, where certain contracts we thought were, you know, we were more comfortable taking a reduced share in it, so that was kind of natural behavior. Does that impact us in terms of growing the overall portfolio in the round?
I think the point I always make to this is, I think people look at it in terms of, particularly in terms of property. Property for us is a very, very broad canvas that we write. It's, you know, often when you think of a Bermuda reinsurer, the words Florida and California are immediately tacked onto the next sentence. And as Greg regularly reminds me, and our portfolio is like this, there are 48 other states, and by writing the business that we do, that is inherently designed to be diversified on an inwards basis.
And you've seen that really at this year-end. You know, we have growing specialty, which is generally a lower cat demanding series of classes, but also property. We've grown that as well. Yet, you know, our PMLs have remained relatively stable year-over-year.
So provided you work hard at it, and you look at that diversified play in property, you can still go a long way. Casualty obviously is there as the leg of the stool, and it's always useful to have. But that's only to the extent that it contributes to the bottom line margin overall. So it's a balancing act, but there's a lot you can do in the other classes by subdividing and ensuring that they don't always correlate as much as perhaps is always perceived as a mutual insurer. Greg, do you want to pick up the second piece?
Yeah, sure. So, I mean, it's a big question, Darius, but I would say if I were to say there are clearly some model changes coming through the year. Both the... I mean, the two major vendors, AIR and RMS, have some amendments coming to their models. I think a big part of the updates are actually around their recognition of the industry exposure, and a sort of true up of some of the inflationary activity that's occurred, particularly in the U.S., in recent quarters.
So, you know, reinsurers are already working with their partners' exposure data, which has largely been adjusted for exposure increases driven from inflation. So there's some element of shielding there from the absolute changes that you would otherwise see when you're looking at pure industry dollars.
I understand there are some changes, and I think recent changes to the perils of winter weather and convective storm, for example, in the U.S., have been quite significant. Those are generally absorbed by the market, but I think part of that's reflected in pricing, part of that's reflected in the shift to the admitted market, the acceleration of pricing, the restructuring of the way in which contracts are sold.
So the impact of that has already been flowing through. I think one of the big changes coming in some of the model upgrades is more technology-driven as well, in fact. Integrating, sort of bringing up the minimum standard of quality of exposure capture and the movement of data, which I think is really positive for the industry.
You know, various reinsurers, like ourselves, have our own technologies that, you know, might already be doing a better job than that. But as they bring up the sort of, the index vendors, I think that's good for the industry, and it promotes better quality of information being shared. So I see it as a positivity.
Yep, that's very comprehensive. Maybe one last follow-up, if I can. So you speak about your rate change net as a risk adjustment, risk adjustment, which might include things like, you know, economic and social inflation, et cetera. But can you comment on the level of risk adjustment that you've assumed for 2024 versus 2023? Is it kind of flat, or has it gone down slightly, just given that we are seeing a bit of disinflation in certain areas?
So, yeah, so quite right. Our risk-adjusted rate changes are always referenced after our view of inflation, social and otherwise. It's certainly we're still in an environment, as you can see, where we believe we're in a level of high inflationary impact, so that's still being put into our pricing.
So our view of inflation on claims inflation is obviously not necessarily reflected in some of the more macro metrics like interest rate environments, et cetera, so they are very separate. So the underlying exposures, we still see and observe that inflationary impact coming through the way in which claims are presented from prior years, obviously, in years prior to us rising risk, but particularly in the liability sides, for example. We're not really recognizing any changes in that at the moment. We still see it as a prudent approach to build that into your pricing without any changes.
Yep, but what about for some of the shorter tail classes, like, you know, in property and specialty? Has that stayed flat as well versus 2023, or did the deals come down slightly?
Yeah, I think what I would say there is on the property side, you've got sort of macro inflation pressure, you know, on the service side. So the ability for securing labor for rebuilding, et cetera, that's still not changed very much, I would say. But I'd say some of the other input inflationary pressures on a more regional basis, there's definitely been some variability there. If you think back to Texas in prior years, post URI, big pressure on localized supply of materials, for example. And this is a bit of a minutiae example, but, you know, if you think of that, that sort of over time does resolve itself at the regional basis, subject to there not being a very large event there again.
So it's more on the regional basis, has probably stabilized, but I'd say more at the national and macro level, that still remains relatively similar to prior years.
Great. Thank you.
There are no further questions. I will now hand the call back over to the management team for closing remarks. Okay, thanks very much to everybody for attending today. Market is plainly still a good place to be trading, and we're very much looking forward to the year ahead. The renewal season is just one part of it, obviously, and there's a long way to go, but still a good place to be trading. I think next time we meet is twenty-first of February, for our year-end results and presentation. So I look forward to talking again then. Thanks very much.