First Half of 2022 Results call. Please note the disclaimer on page two. Today, after a brief introduction by our Chairman, Neil Eckert, our CEO, Trevor Carvey, will present the first half of 2022 highlights. Followed by Greg Roberts, CUO, providing an update on the underwriting side of the business. Elaine Whelan, our CFO, will then cover our key financials before some final key remarks from Neil.
Thanks, Antonio. Yeah, before the rest of the team is gonna tell you about the results for the first six months, I'd like to spend a couple of minutes giving you some thoughts. Conduit is now beyond the start-up phase, and that's visible from the maturity of the operation we've built, the skills in our team, and most of all, the support that we've received from brokers and clients. Since we started in December 2020, we have now passed the billion-dollar mark of ultimate written premiums. As they now increasingly earn through the quality of our results will start to surface. Beyond this excellent start to our journey, I'm pleased with the way that we've handled the Ukraine numbers. We've been transparent in that and disclosed the full loss, including, and I would stress, including our aviation.
The beauty of our business is the simplicity. We're a pure play reinsurer, low policy count, which enables us to assess exposures to events such as this. With that, I'll pass on to Trevor.
Thanks very much, Neil. Yes, the first six months of 2022 demonstrated, I think, that the business we've put together has become a real engine for growth. You know, it's our commitment to produce a portfolio that's got lower volatility, but within it, when we blend and write the overall portfolio, we're not over-reliant on any one specific class or category of business. I think we view that as a significant strength, and it's something that we're firmly wedded to. Year-on-year, our gross premiums written have increased by more than 70%. The gross premiums written of $359 million. On an ultimate basis, we've written almost $500 million of premiums, which is up 49% on the first half year 2021, and it's actually pretty close to the total figure for the whole of last year.
Real commendation, I think, to the team there and the work that they've done. Greg Roberts will talk shortly on makeup of the portfolio generally, but it remains broadly 70/30 in terms of non-cat versus cat. I think that's a clue to where it's wise to be skewed towards in this market. The health industry, just a general comment, is really offering up great value and really good value in that space, and it's something that we can take advantage of as pricing continues to improve. As regards to cat, though, first half of 2022 has been reasonably active. The frequency of cat losses around the globe, ranging from LatAm crop losses to Australian floods, has been prevalent.
We're pleased to report that we had generally minimal exposure to those non-cat events in the first half year. Moving on to page four, which is the next slide. On slide here, just a few words around the operating expense and the trend that, you know, is in place in a start-up business such as ourselves. From a premium growth standpoint, I think it shows the tremendous work, which, as I mentioned, the team has done over the last 18 months and has generated almost $750 million of cumulative written premiums. This of course means now that we're seeing the benefits from an expense viewpoint. An operating expense ratio, as expected, has been solidly trending downwards quarter by quarter to around, currently the 8% mark.
The operating expense generally is a key advantage to what I call the Bermuda-based treaty model, and was part of the design process when we put the plan together originally. The start-up and build-up costs were a big feature in year one and creating the new brand entity and bringing that to the market. It's now great to see the more normalized state of the business emerging through. On that, I'll pass to Greg, and he can talk through more details on the underlying divisional and segmental business and the overall market.
Mm-hmm.
Thanks, Trevor. Moving on to slide five. Across the portfolio, we're showing a 70% growth, which has been built on our reputation for underwriting discipline as well as focus and great service. I'm not gonna read all the comments here, but you know, as you can see, we've seen significant growth in each of the segments, all driven by specific characteristics, especially from the perils and territories in which we target and operate in. Capacity certainly remains a constraint in the current market, and we're seeing opportunities driven by some of our peers, reducing their reinsurance supply and interest and ability to deploy in some of these sectors. Additionally, the current inflationary environment impact on casualty and the discipline which leads specialty risk to be unbundled, is leading to better priced risk, again, starting to meet our targets. Next slide.
First of all, just need to stress that our pricing figures are all net of inflation here. These represent in excess of inflationary loads, and these are obviously the reference points that flow through our pricing models.
Year to date, portfolio has seen a risk-adjusted rate change, net of inflation, weighted across the portfolio of 4%, with particularly strong increases on the property side. Now during the January renewals, we executed the approach we told you we would do from the Q1 trading update, and that's took advantage of the existing capacity crunch, primarily on the property market. As for the rest of the year, we're continuing to execute our plans to build a well-balanced and highly diversified portfolio. We'll opportunistically provide capacity to geographies and perils which may experience further supply shortage, and or as a consequence of seeing this first half loss experiences. Slide six is a quick and familiar reminder of the strong pricing environment in which we're operating in.
The chart here is from Marsh and provides an aggregated view at a global level. It shows that albeit the pace of price increases slowed down since 2020, at the global pricing levels, it's still increasing by a healthy 9% in the last quarter measure. I stress here that, you know, this is a global level index, and bear in mind that rates here have been rising on a compound basis over the last three years. Our information is interesting in that some pockets are starting to re-accelerate. As for example, specialty catastrophe, especially post Ukraine, and capacity withdrawing from areas such as the property cat market. Moving to page eight. We remain cognizant of inflation through our pricing and risk selection, and most appropriately, the impact on company profitability is a hot topic today.
We believe it's important to distinguish between the effect of inflation on prior years and reserves, and also how inflation is taken into account into forward-looking pricing for current and future businesses. With regards to prior years and reserves, Conduit benefits from being a young company which started writing business in January 2021. We clearly benefit from not having multiple back years of reserves, which must be viewed through the lens of a, of at times, a significantly different inflationary environment as to the point in which risks were written. As we've been operating for only 18 months, we've built our portfolio in a relatively high inflationary environment, which is embedded in our pricing tools and our approach to risk selection. As for pricing, our approach is to build inflation into our pricing estimates on a very detailed basis, case-by-case basis, and class-by-class basis.
As an example, our capacity treaty portfolio, we have the lowest hit ratio here amongst our classes of business. One of the main reasons we find it difficult to accept risks is some of the presented industry assumptions on inflation. We do find that generally, we run higher. I'd also like to repeat that as a strategic choice from the start, Conduit doesn't write auto, trade credit or mortgage products often thought about significantly in these inflationary environments. With this, I'll pass to Elaine to run through the financial highlights.
Thanks, Greg. Hi, everyone. I'd like to take a run through a few of our half year numbers on this slide. As you heard, we've had significant growth in our gross premiums written for the half year compared to prior year, although that growth is entirely in line with our plan. Also, with the bias we currently have to quota share, there's premium from the 2021 underwriting year writing and earning through to this financial year. Around 95% of the 2021 underwriting year ultimate premium is now written, with about 80% of that earned in line with our previous guidance on that. We expect 2021 ultimate premium to be almost fully written by the end of this year and about 95% earned.
For the 2022 underwriting year, we've continued to see more opportunities in quota share versus excess, so we currently expect it will follow a similar writing and earning pattern, but that's obviously impacted by how much business we put on the books in the second half of the year. Our earned to written percentage is also increasing relative to the same time last year as our book matures. That's also bringing down our other operating expense ratio. We expect that to come down further as we grow the book and as earnings continue to mature. Our net loss ratio was 67.8% for the half year, 56% excluding the impact of our bookings for Ukraine. Loss estimates for 2020-2021 loss events remain relatively stable. As we mentioned, a bit more quota share written than initially expected this year.
That's meant our acquisition cost ratio has remained at a similar level to the prior year. We do expect potentially more XoL opportunities in the second half of this year, but given the timing of that, our acquisition cost ratio will likely remain at these higher levels for the rest of this year. We've declared an interim dividend for the 2022 financial year of $0.18 per share, the same amount as last year, and in line with our dividend policy to provide between 5% and 6% of IPO capital raised. I'll flip to the next slide to talk about investments. No real changes in strategy. We're keeping duration fairly low relative to our liabilities in the current environment. Duration is currently 2.4 years versus around three years now on our reserves.
We're comfortable with that for now, although may look to increase duration a little bit, a bit further down the line. Our unrealized loss, $54.3 million for the half year, is clearly mostly driven by rising rates and rising rate expectations. It's aided by being low duration, and we also don't have any risk assets in our portfolio. Our portfolio remains high quality and again, no risk assets, so we don't have any concerns about defaults or impairments.
Thanks, Elaine. A few final thoughts before the Q&A session. After 18 months of activity, Conduit Re remains on a positive trajectory for growth, profitability, and we enjoy good support from our clients and brokers. We think that is to some extent due to our pure play reinsurance status. We've built a quality underwriting operation, which in July passed the $1 billion mark of ultimate premiums written since the IPO. That's sort of a landmark for us. We're perfectly positioned at the time where there is a shortage of reinsurance capacity. We are still in a phase of significant growth, and as our business is normalizing, our combined ratio will trend towards our target of mid-80s in steady-state.
Our first half results have been affected by the Ukraine conflict, but the forthright approach we've taken to assess and communicate our exposure is part of what Conduit stands for, transparent and data-driven. Last but not least, the continuing hardening of the market is providing us with a substantial opportunity for profitable growth and to build out our pure play reinsurance business. That ends the presentation. Let's go to Q&A, with analysts and investors asking questions.
Thanks, Neil. Please raise your hand for a question. You have to go onto the reactions at the top of the screen, raise your hand, and then once I notify you will need to unmute your mic. Thank you. Do you want to ask a question? No worries. Wait one second, Ben. Yeah, you need to-
Yeah. Got it.
Okay.
Right. Thanks very much. Now I can unmute. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks very much. I had two questions. Firstly I was wondering if you could unpick the sort of mid-80s combined ratio that you're targeting in a steady state, maybe with a particular focus on where you see the sort of cat loss load going. The second question I had was, could you give us an update as to the moving parts in your capital position in the first half, how that has evolved, maybe also allowing for the dividend, the uncovered dividend that you've paid. Thanks very much.
I think, hi, Ben. I think if you look at where we are for the half year in terms of what we've produced as a combined ratio, that 105 there's just under 12 points of that is from the Ukraine losses. We have a little bit in there of cat losses, which I'd say are a bit above average, so you can knock off a few points for that as well. I think when we get to more of a steady state, there's also a couple of points which come off the extension sort of through business mix is kind of the last part of that.
The acquisition cost that we see coming through from on the portfolio shares, once we get into more of a steady state, we'd expect that to come down two or three points as well. That gets us into that kind of mid-80s underlying trend of the book that we're seeing coming through. That's kind of where we're heading to. On the capital position, what was it specifically that you were looking for?
Well, just how available capital against required capital has developed from the point of view, I guess, of any binding constraints that you might have as the business has grown and obviously as you've incurred a loss in the first half?
I think, the binding constraint is, I'll call it self-inflicted in terms of how we look at where we want to keep our PMLs relative to capital. The business plan was put together with a five-year time horizon, and we're clearly building into that so that we're in a position of significant excess capital at the moment.
Okay. Sorry, could I just come back on the sort of cat load as you see it, how significant you see that would be? 'Cause obviously, you know, the exact amount of catastrophe business that you're writing, I think you've indicated that that's probably a little bit below where it was against the original plan. Thank you.
Yeah.
In terms of, you know, the way that the loss ratio is made up, Ben, which you know, we've discussed this before. It's a combination of attrition and large and then cat. For us, because we are very broadly 70% non-cat business, majority of our loss ratio is non-cat. It's in the attrition and the large component. You know, that kind of 70/30 blend is not a bad guide to the way that we think about cat versus attrition and large within the component. The interesting thing for us obviously is we're emerging through the first two quarters, and it really is a story of two quarters for us. Q2 has been a great position for us to be in, absent, you know, a significant cat involvement in our own portfolio and obviously absent Ukraine.
We can see the underlying portfolio emerging through. That's really, we feel, now in Q2. It's really validating the approach that we've taken, which is about putting a portfolio together that has reduced volatility.
You know, we position ourselves in the value chain where we believe the risk value is, and that's really coming through now in Q2. We're very pleased with that.
Okay. Thanks very much.
Yeah.
Steve, do you want to ask a question?
Yes. Hi. Good afternoon, everybody. I just have two questions. The first one is on premiums. Obviously these have grown nicely year-on-year. I was just hoping to get a sense for what is the growth you would anticipate for the second half. Maybe as a rough guide you can give us sort of some expectations how much the second half premiums will be as a percentage of the total, maybe. Another question is on the specialist lines. Premiums seem to be sort of flat for just the second quarter. Any comments as to why you haven't grown here? I was wondering if this is mainly due to the renewals across specialist lines coming up in the second half.
I guess more broadly, in what areas are you getting the most excited about when we look forward to 2023? Thank you.
Yeah. Hi there. On second half guidance, I think fair to say that we would expect to see growth at a lower rate than we've seen in the first half. On an ultimate premium basis, we expect to be ahead of the ultimate premium that was in the IPO plan. I think on a written basis, we expect to be kind of in and around that level, you know, plus or minus whatever, wherever we end up on that, depending what the what opportunities are there. I think in and around that kind of level of quantum.
Okay.
On the specialty piece in particular, that second quarter is quite an interesting period in the specialty arena, particularly the classes of subclasses that we target. We certainly saw opportunity, or greater opportunity coming on the back of renewals of contracts that, you know, were starting to be effective for some of the loss activity. We don't think that's fully materialized yet, so we expect some of those contracts to provide opportunity perhaps later on in the year as well. You're in a kind of world of here of backups and other sort of interesting processes that go on there. We think that's some of the experience we'd expect to see in Q2. We think that's still gonna come later on in the year as well.
Yeah, just to add a couple of points to that. It's been reported sort of in the press and the word unbundling has been mentioned quite a bit with specialty. You know, this is a feature which we're all aware of, you know, several years ago, that the specialty market started to bundle and become less transparent. I think what we see emerging, and the early signs are certainly for renewals in 1/1/2023, is that that transparency has got to improve. You know, we're comfortable looking at the underlying classes, providing we can price them. The issue is that we've seen in the last few years as that's been bundled, in our view, it hasn't been possible to get a clear line of sight through to the underlying risk and the underlying loss expectancy.
Specialty generally for us, I think we say is one that will improve at an increasing rate in the market. Really, the key for that is I'd say probably Q1 next year when that largely renews through.
Yeah. I think we've had the last question about which areas you're most excited about 2023.
Crystal ball moment. I mean, you know, obviously we have a plan to continue to build our diversified portfolio out, and it is progressive across all lines of business. Pockets of interest, I mean, Trevor just mentioned again specialty. You know, we associate sort of the unbundling concept with better discipline, frankly. You know, from the risk-taking side, we're always. It's our DNA to allocate premium to risk. The concept of unbundling starts to allow us to do that, where we can isolate premium to the underlying risks and allocate it accordingly. That's what effectively describing how a portfolio is built. You know, specialty certainly, we're interested in seeing how that develops. You know, the obvious one is property.
Property spans a broad range of, you know, subclasses, cats being one of them. You know, we have built and we execute a plan of diversified risk-taking. That means we don't run and don't intend to run any new peaks or accumulations that otherwise were in our original plan. Obviously as we grow our business, we're able to take more risk in line with our plan. Frankly those markets are coming towards us. There's certainly opportunity there. You know, as we've talked about in prior presentations, we're very keen to see that market continue to trend towards a point where if you think of property cat, you can sell, for example, capacity on a named peril or regionalized basis.
That's quite exciting for us, again, with that concept of being able to build a portfolio.
That's very helpful. Thank you.
Thank you, Steve.
Barry, do you want to go ahead with your questions?
Yes. Apologies. Thank you. I just have a couple of questions, if I may. First of all, I think the proportion of quota share excess of loss has fallen, while you've increased the proportion of just normal excess of loss. I wondered if you could give the, perhaps, the background to that. The second question I had was a more general one. You talk about the business emerging, if you like, from a startup phase. Now, I get that in terms of the financials as the proportion of expenses start lowering compared to revenue. What other benefits are you starting to see as a result of the maturing of the business? Thank you.
Hi, Barry. On the quota share versus excess of loss, you know, as we've sort of talked through this and sort of walked through this concept, you know, previously, we still see greater advantage in the primary markets, and as a pure play reinsurer, the quota share is a mechanism for us to get closer to that primary market, and to absorb the sort of repricing of risk at those levels. We also noticed that, you know, we do know, you know, volatility is starting to price better. You know, by definition, that is the product of excess of loss.
As our quota share develops, you know, the earned premium is coming through our base, and our exposures are broadening still. We're able to write more volatile products like the excess of loss product into our portfolio, as planned. It's a simple function of just the development of the portfolio. There's an element of cyclical behavior to that as well, when you think of the reinsurance market, at which point treaties are typically incepted. If you take U.S. casualty, for example, you know, for us, that's a quota share dominated portfolio which is quite consistent through the year, whereas the property account is more quarterly.
Okay. Yeah. Just, Barry, on the second part, business emerging, you know, from a startup phase, you know, the benefits accrue. A couple of areas spring to mind there. Obvious one is on the literally the breadth of the contract count and classes that we see. You know, just renewing a book of business a year on gives us the opportunity to scale into that, adjust lines, and grow into it where we think the opportunities are there. There's additional touch points with those clients, with the full team in place. It means there's, if you like, an exponential add on to that in that other opportunities arise. You know, what's probably surprised me, I'll be honest with that, is the number of contracts that we've seen in the course of our first 18 months.
You know, when we relate that in conversations to clients, I think they've been surprised at the degree to which you can make an impact in the market from, you know, a relatively early phase, an early stage. That's been good. The other one is on what I call benchmarking. Just collection of data. Greg is a great one for this. A great advocate of it, and it's what we've been able to do in collating areas like casualty triangles from vast amounts of submissions. It gives us a really good window on the emerging patterns there. It informs our view of things like inflation. I think we have a very solid and robust view around that. On the property side, I forget how many millions of locations have we trapped in Orchestra. Greg?
1.6 billion.
1.6 billion. There we are. Within our cat and property monitoring software and system, that's the number of locations that we are covering and tracking. It gives us a good insight. Maturity of data, I guess, Barry, is kind of one of the key benefits as we grow.
Yeah. Barry, going back to your first question. The quota share XoL percentage is down because the rest of the account has grown. In effect, that part of the account is static, but we're seeing growth elsewhere in the portfolio.
Okay. That's great. Thank you very much for the answers. Thank you.
Thanks, Barry.
Andreas, may I ask you a question? We can't hear you.
Yeah.
Okay, now it's gone. Yes.
I think I'm live now. Hi. Hi, good afternoon. Just two questions. One on the attritional loss ratio and one on acquisition costs. If you just strip out Ukraine, maybe a couple of points for sort of medium-sized cats from the first half loss ratio, I get an attritional somewhere in the mid-50s. Has there been any surge in attritional losses during the first half, or is this a normal pattern? If I break down those attritional losses, are they really coming through the property book, or is it more driven by casualty attritional claims? The second question on acquisition costs. Elaine, you mentioned these would remain high in the second half of the year, but I think you also commented that you would be expanding your XoL treaty book.
How long does it take for these acquisition costs to sort of come down as you grow your XoL portfolio? Maybe could you comment on the casualty ceding commissions, whether these are coming down or not? Thank you.
Okay. Breaking out the loss ratio, we backed out Ukraine for you there to get to 56%. Within that 56%, there is an element of cat in there, what we'd probably call more traditional type cat, small cat that we do reserve for, so that there is a little bit in there. But also, an element of large losses in there. Small or large losses, we don't strip out and disclose separately. The other thing that we are also doing is making sure that we are taking a fairly prudent approach to reserving in our early stages as well. There's a little bit of an overlay for that.
One of the other down drivers of the loss ratio in an acquisition in Q1 is the XoL cost. Ceding costs obviously are earned all in Q1 as well.
Yeah. On the acquisition costs, I mean, we had talked about our acquisition cost ratio coming down a little bit this year 'cause we expected our quota share to XoL blend to move from, you know, call it 75/25 to 65/35. We're probably gonna be closer to 70/30 and maybe a little bit over that for this year. We have also seen some of our 2021 larger treaties exceed expectations on a premium basis. That's bumped things up a little bit, too. I think in general terms on the 2022 treaties, we have had some benefit from being able to negotiate on those commissions and bring them down a little bit. On the quota share, there's obviously a deferral of the benefit of that as those contracts earn out.
Second half of this year, we do expect to see a little bit more in terms of XoL opportunity, and that will bring things down as well. I think we would expect it to come down a few points, but I think a lot of that will depend on what we see running into 1/1 renewals as well in terms of where we think that the blend of our business is gonna be and how successful we are in negotiating those commissions.
If I might offer comments on the question around casualty ceding commissions. You know, really hot topic for us. We sort of referenced in the past that, you know, one of the sort of, ultimate sort of, impacts to whether we write a risk or not has often been the fact that we can't get there on the ceding commissions and deductions in the risk transfer chain. You know, there were certainly transactions that were issued with increased cedes. As Trevor just mentioned, you know, we make sure we're aware of what's out in the market, but that's not necessarily the same as what we're writing. You know, our experience was very stable.
We do know there are certainly deals out there that pushed very hard on cede rates and perhaps, you know, perhaps at times got those increased cede rates, but ours was very stable.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Andreas.
Gerald, do you want to ask your questions? Gerald, maybe you need to unmute your mic.
Can you hear me okay now?
Yeah. Perfect. Thank you.
Yep, yeah. Perfect. Good afternoon. Good morning, everyone. Just a few questions, please. The first one, I'm interested to get some high-level thoughts right. How do you see the current cycle evolving? I mean, how is it different to what we've seen in the last three years or so? Then the second one, a bit more numerical. What is the rating level you've assumed within the mid-80s combined ratio guidance? For example, are you assuming rates to stay strong, you know, at where they are until the end of 2023, or are you assuming some changes there? The third one, just a short one. The PML level you have to hurricanes, that's 3.3% of tangible capital at the half year.
Could you remind me how has that changed from the year-end level and what is the maximum limit that you would be comfortable writing at? Thank you.
Okay. Just in terms of current cycle and perhaps the rating levels. You know, the current cycle, how does that compare now to the last three years? You know, what are the differences within that? I think obviously what we're seeing is an increasing awareness, shall we say, in the market of the weaknesses of writing very large cat towers and catastrophe exposures and an over-reliance on the models. I think that's emerging now more and more. It's a consensus which seems to be building out there. We've seen obviously a number of entities who have declined to continue involvement in the cat space by writing those types of products.
Now, to be honest, it's not a surprise to us. We kind of had a pretty much a fixed view that the models at the tail were at best unreliable and probably, you know, unrepresentative of emerging risks within the industry, including climate change. I think now what's happening is the way the market's evolving is we're seeing that cat space not being sufficiently supplied. There are opportunities there now for us to trade into. You know, we're open for cat business, provided we can get the structures that we deem fair. I think there isn't the weight of alternative money, should we say, that's sitting there to fill the gaps that they have done in previous cycles. On the casualty side, obviously, inflation is the big topic.
You know, as the world comes to realize, and the insurance industry, reinsurance industry needs to price in the effect of claims inflation at that increase, at an increasing rate. That is just it runs through all the conversations. I'm sure you know, in boardrooms and in risk meetings with clients, all the way through the industry, the presence of inflation is a key part of how reinsurance is bought and how we price it. I think that awareness is here to stay. In that respect, it gives a kind of robustness to rating levels. You know, it's probably often said that it's bottom-up, and I think it is a ground-up led rating change. I think that's just an awareness that the world has changed both on a climate standpoint and from an inflationary aspect.
Neil, do you want to add to that?
Yeah, Gerald, it's Neil here. The hard market is changing. It was a market that was technically repricing, and it's now, in our view, a market that is moving towards being capacity constrained. Where brokers could previously overplace business, some of the big placements are, they are struggling to complete those placements. We would describe it and have described it as part of our presentations as moving towards a capacity crunch. I think we also expect to see further hardening of the first of January, irrespective of how the rest of the year pans out. The other thing I'd say is that the mid-80s combined is based on today's pricing. That's my comment.
On the topic of the PML. You know, when comparing to last year, obviously we had a smaller portfolio with a different combination of property, casualty, and specialty across the portfolio. That continues to move to plan for year two. You know, our plan remains not to accumulate large build-ups of you know, collections of PML in any one territory. We remain largely under our tolerances as set in the business plans. As Trevor just said, it's a really interesting area for us when you think about inflation and tail risk. Our plan is, as a reminder, to be very thoughtful about tail risk. In fact, most of the way in which we deploy our risk appetite, we give back the tail risk.
It's a measure that enables us to look at risk. It's a function of pricing still as well, and those markets are still moving towards us. I'd still use the phrase keeping some powder dry, which is comments around being able to take opportunity going forward.
Great. Thanks for that, guys. Very, very interesting. Thank you.
Stan, if you want to go ahead with your question.
Yeah. Hi, thanks. Thanks for the question. Just a quick one on reinsurance. You noted the ceded premium went up in the half-year year-on-year. It looked to have had a premium growth. I was wondering, I mean, could you comment on any changes in structure year-on-year that might be worth noting? Thanks.
I'll take that. You know, our reinsurance purchasing is per plan, as per budgets and design. As a reminder, our portfolio is growing, so our purchase of reinsurance products to support our portfolio will flow as the business grows as well. You know, as a reminder, again, with quota share deployed versus excess of loss, we have a sort of progressive buildup of exposure as opposed to a you know, heavier excess of loss book where you sort of sit on that exposure, you know, on an in-force basis instantly. Our sort of way in which we buy reinsurance is perhaps different to that of a much heavier excess of loss writer.
Yeah. Probably just add a couple other points to that. Economies of scale, what we saw this year. Obviously it was a relatively tight retrocessional market at January 1 on the back of some of the storms last year.
The limits that we buy are manageable. You know, we're not buying in the hundreds of millions. You know, we're a manageable client, I think, for our partners. We did increase our limits. We bought that through the existing partners and added a couple of new. For us, it was just about growing into our skin by more limit, but getting some economies of scale. Really happy with what the team achieved. I think as a couple of our carriers described us at year-end, we weren't one of their problem children. They had other problems, and they seemed very happy to sort of continue the relationship. Yeah. Yeah, no, I think the team did well with that in general.
Yes. Stan, there's no real change in structure to the program. The program we purchased is roughly in line with what we said at the time of the IPO, and we've just bought slightly more cover.
Okay, great. Thanks.
Ben, I can see you have a follow-up question. Do you want to go ahead? We can't hear you. I don't know if you have a mute on your mic. Okay. Go ahead.
Okay. Thanks. Sorry. Yeah, just to follow up. I just wondered if you could be a bit more explicit about your inflation assumptions in the second half of the year, maybe how they changed over the course of the half year and also some color by the three different lines and maybe also by geography to give us some sense in terms of how conservative you're being. Thank you.
I'll take it. Our view of inflation is a continual iteration, I suppose the best way to describe it. As Trevor mentioned earlier, our understanding of inflation and the effect of underlying exposure is aided by the amount of data we collect and the more we understand about the risk. If you think about it, you know, we don't pick an inflation figure at the beginning of the year and kind of, you know, crystal ball it. We effectively moderate it as we collect more data. You know, casualty, as an example, you know, we clearly think of sort of 7%-9% as an inflationary impact on a book like that.
Property, you know, is slightly more interesting because there are techniques at the primary level to revalue the underlying risk more transparently, I suppose. Then over that, we'll overlay our own views of sort of claims inflationary pressures, you know, the, you know, the old adages of demand surge and disruption, supply chains, et cetera. A revaluation of original risk on a property book can happen quite quickly. Specialty, much more bespoke is the best way to describe it. Has subclasses of business in there that, you know, as mentioned in the slide when we talk about, you know, class by class and transaction by transaction.
They can vary significantly, and a number of factors in there, whether it be energy-related, and/or, you know, geography-related with, supply chain and logistics disruption. Very important to work those through, largely from a ground-up basis.
Ben, I mean to be candid on this, we don't disclose specific inflation numbers because it's part of the client contract negotiation. I mean, basically, you know, we know what our own inflation assumptions are, and we think we are being prudent and conservative.
Right. Okay. Thanks very much.
Yeah. I don't see any other raised hands, so I think we can conclude the call now. Obviously, if you have any follow-up questions, please get in touch and we'll try to answer them as soon as possible. Thanks, everyone.
Cheers.