All right. It is a pleasure to introduce our next speaker. It is Mr. Rowan Saunders, President and CEO from Definity Financial.
Hi there. Sorry, guys. [inaudible]
Welcome.
Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you.
Good to see you.
Great to see you.
Thanks for having me. Hello.
It has been a very active, and quite frankly, transformative year for Definity, right? Punctuated by, I think, strong and expected start to Travelers Canada integration, and obviously an increase in synergy targets. Maybe for those I will call less familiar, why do not we start off with a little bit of a recap of the transaction and some of the key milestones to date?
Sure. Absolutely, happy to do that. As we've entered 2026, one of the main priorities for us this year was the successful closing and then integration of the Travelers Canada acquisition, which really was a transformational acquisition for ourselves. This took some time to get to closing, so we had plenty of time to prepare and organize for the integration. Just to remind you, this is a company that has about CAD 1.5 billion of business. So for us, it was very strategic. We had this objective of getting into the top five. Through the path from our IPO, where we were number eight, then number six, this got us to number four. So the size and the scale is important for us.
We got about CAD 1 billion of personal lines business, which we are putting onto our modern Vine platform, so great synergies there. Also really important, about CAD 0.5 billion of commercial and specialty business. That comes along with significant IP, significant amount of scarce talent and resources, and really kind of accelerated our commercial strategy by about five years. So strategically, really important to us. I think it's a very financially compelling transaction as well, as we shared. One of the things we had coming in as a mutual was a significant amount of excess capital. So this was an ability for us to deploy that excess capital, as well as to introduce some leverage into the balance sheet. I think a generally low-risk transaction, given it's an in-market transaction. We were very pleased we closed a little earlier.
The transaction costs went well. The funding we put in place cost a little less than we had kind of modeled. So, a good start to that. The integration is going really well, and I must say, I think we're delighted that it's really running better than expectations, would be my take on it. What's really important here is that you retain the talent, you retain the business, and we get after the synergies that we had said that would be achievable. I think we wanted to make sure that this was a smooth transaction for our broker partners, that didn't distract the rest of the Definity core business. The conversion is well underway. Things are going quite nicely. I think you see that confidence coming through by us changing the synergy targets. We had indicated there's about CAD 100 million of cost synergies.
Two quarters in, we've raised that by 25% to CAD 125 million annualized cost synergies, and we're delighted with that. As I step back, this is the major initiative for us for the year, and it's going very well.
Yeah. Again, I think as you alluded, prior to closing, I think the expectation with gauging success in year one was really like, it was retention.
It was likely to be a transitional year and maybe some near-term pressure, I think on, I'll call it the loss ratio, simply from business mix as you're rebalancing retention and risk selection, price adjustments. Again, by all metrics, it feels like you've already exceeded expectations. So what do you attribute that to?
Well, it's a good point that you raise, and one of the things is when you acquire something like this, it's really important to be able to retain the talent and the business. So we've spent a lot of time making sure we were ready and making this as easy as we can for our customers and our brokers. What's interesting, and I think it gives you an illustration of the support we enjoy with our broker partners, that the retention ratio of the Travelers business as it moves to the Definity systems is actually higher than it was under the Travelers management. That is with us making some tweaks to pricing terms, conditions, et cetera. So I think that gives you a good sense of the support that we enjoy and the confidence we have in the revenue projections for the business.
Then the other one again, is the talent, which was really important. So when you step back, essentially we acquired a break-even business from an underwriting perspective, combined ratio. There's some pressure on the loss ratio in some segments more than others. I would say in the personal auto, they would have had an elevated loss ratio compared to ours, not as much in the commercial. Mostly that was an expense drag. They just didn't have the scale and the platform efficiencies that we had. So that's why as we get confident that we get this CAD 125 million of synergies, putting that into perspective, that's about eight or nine points of combined ratio of that business. So you could see how we get that business from a break-even down to a low 90s, which is really the place that Definity runs.
I think the slight pressure on loss ratio, there's an overall about two-point uplift to our combined ratio when you add that CAD 1.5 billion business at around break-even. That's temporary, and we're pretty comfortable that will come down. Mostly driven by the expenses, but also as we transfer the business and convert it onto the Definity systems. If you think about personal auto, for example, that then moves on to our Vine platform, which is different rates, different rules, different claims management teams. That again will give you a bit of an additional lift on the loss ratio.
Okay. Again, as we look into the back half of 2026, should investors be wary of that potential impact of that kind of mix on the loss ratio? Or do you think at this point there's sufficient offsets where maybe there's less risk from that pressure?
I think from what we can see, there's less risk. I think one of the things you acquire when you acquire an insurance company is it's easy to quantify the assets and more difficult to quantify the liabilities of the business until you really take full ownership. I think that we're in a position now, a few quarters in, we're really comfortable with the balance sheet of the business. It's actually better than we had anticipated. I don't think we see surprises there. The activity that the Travelers management team did prior to closing. As they had signed the deal before closing, they were in the process of putting through some late and needed price changes. We're actually seeing some of the earned impact from that coming in already.
I don't think we're expecting any surprises or concerns on the back half of the year.
Excellent. I think as you highlighted, after only six months, you raised the synergy target by 25%. Just talk about what gave the confidence to do that, and again, what are the remaining opportunities to potentially, I hate to say necessarily expand that even further?
Yeah. I think that a couple of things are driving that. One would be as we carve this out from the Travelers U.S. business, we're finding that what we had expected to pick up the services that were provided by the parent company are less than we require. Effectively, our platform synergies, we can pick up treasury, we can pick up technology, we can pick up management oversight more effectively or with less cost than we had anticipated. That's a big driver of the increased confidence, but the increased synergy target, I would say. I think the second one is really the platform that we've got, and this is the first major acquisition that Definity has made, and it is interesting to see how the systems, how efficient they were. We knew they would be scalable. We had confidence in them.
The reality is they're more scalable than we have thought. I think the other part of it is that the teams are really skilled and have had time to prepare for this integration, and we're finding that the costs to do the conversion are lower. In today's day and age, this is based on not just your own technology that you use to convert the business, but of things like AI as well, which is a bit of an accelerator here. You put that together, I think the costs to convert are lower than we would've been concerned about. That's what has given us on the cost saving side the ability to raise that target. What we've kind of said, that's really the main metric to drive the 200 basis points of ROE expansion.
We do think, to your previous question, over time, it will take a couple more years to fully convert and earn in, but that loss ratio improvement will also start to migrate closer to the Definity core loss ratios.
Okay. Listen, you've been preparing for a carrier acquisition for quite some time, and clearly Travelers are off to a very strong start. I wonder if you can share with us in terms of what have been the primary learnings here, and also what are the key priorities for that year ahead to keep things on track?
Well, I think a couple of learnings. One would be what we've been pleasantly surprised with is the focus we've put on culture. When you bring a business like this in that's an intermediated business, big commercial operations, the cultural shift and the time spent on onboarding the Travelers folks has been very helpful. I think what's helped is that this was a subsidiary of a very large and successful U.S. business, but they're joining a Canadian champion and somebody meaningful in the industry, one of the industry leaders. There was a lot of excitement from the Travelers employees to join Definity. We spent a lot of time on onboarding, coaching, organizational design, putting people in the right spots, being clear, upfront about that. I think that has been extremely helpful in certainly the talent retention.
I think the other one for us is clearly the technology, and so really being thoughtful and planning and putting top talent on our integration management office to ensure that the smooth and transition works to our platforms. Again, the learning is these platforms are really working extremely well. The other one would be brokers and communication. I think you realize you've got multiple stakeholders that you manage through a transition like this. Remember, what we're trying to do is not just do a transformational integration, but also keep the core business running, growing faster than the market, building out all the capabilities we've said, and not distract the business. I think that that stakeholder management, that communication with the brokers has been incredibly effective. In fact, brokers are telling us this is the best and easiest integration they've ever seen.
One of the measures that I look at there is, are we getting good support and retention? The answer is yes. As I mentioned, retention's better than it actually was under Travelers management. The other thing is, are we continuing to see a good flow of new business? Our underlying organic growth remains very, very strong. If you looked at the half year numbers, we're roughly growing at 35%, about 25% from adding the Travelers portfolio and another 10% underlying. Brokers would not be giving you underlying support if they weren't satisfied with the level of support that they were getting on the transition. I think those would be the three top learnings.
Okay. Travelers, clearly the current focus. That said, you have mentioned this was not likely to be Definity's last transaction.
Yeah.
You have got aspirations now to be a top three player in Canada. Based on the current footprint, what business lines would you look to prioritize for future M&A?
Yeah. I think, look, we have got this vision of being a top three player in Canada. We originally as top five, now it is top three and we are well on our way. This has been very successful. I go back to the thesis here. I think that there is a structural change going on in Canadian P&C. If you look at some of the other financial services, like the concentration in banking and maybe in life segments, I think we are still somewhat more fragmented, but that is the direction of travel. Our thesis is that structurally the industry is going to become more attractive than it is even today. We want to be a leader and a player in that. We have built this very strong and scalable foundation to allow us to organically grow ahead of the market, which is what we have been doing.
We have been basically growing about twice the organic rate of the industry, and then we supplement that with M&A. When you think about what is next for an M&A, we clearly would like more commercial business. It is not that we do not like personal lines, we do not like personal auto, but as we think about shaping the portfolio, the portfolio construction, commercial and commercial specialty would be where we would put the next CAD.
Because of the success we are having with Travelers, a scale multi-line business would also be on our target. I think priority would be commercial. Next would be the big kind of scale transaction that we may see coming in the years ahead. At the same time as that, as you know, we have already deployed about CAD 1 billion into vertical integration. We have a top 10 broker platform, and that is more programmatic.
We tend to spend a couple hundred million CAD a year, just in these tuck-ons that continue. We like that model. It's capital light, it's high margin, and we think we're going to continue with that.
Okay. Clearly there's multiple buyers, right? What do you think would give Definity a competitive edge as an acquirer here?
Yeah, maybe before I answer that, I think it's worth reminding people that not everything that comes to market is a full standard auction. Travelers is a good example of that. This is an organization that is a scarce and sizable Canadian asset that we sole sourced and there was no auction. I think that was very helpful not only just us in winning the deal the way we did, but also how effectively the integration is going. So, relationships, partnerships are meaningful as well. If I digress for a moment, what we see in the broker roll-up strategy, over 80% of the transactions, we've done 26 transactions, are all relationship non-auction deals. I think that's useful to put it in place. Outside of that, I think what we're seeing here is that we have access to capital, which is important, deal certainty.
We have an experienced management team that can run businesses better, and you see that in terms of the integration. The other one that is becoming even more apparent to us is the synergy opportunities we get from our scalable platforms. As I said a couple of minutes ago, that's one of the reasons why we're up the synergy targets on Travelers. I think that gives us a good ability to be a very competitive buyer. I think for us, we always look at this as is this going to advance our strategy and is this going to move us onto our path to the mid-teens? Those are the kind of two main criteria that we put in place. But I think the team to me has proven that they're good operators.
When you think from life from pre-IPO to beginning of this year, we've proven we can grow ahead of the market. We've proven we can run a business in the low 90s combined ratios. Now we're proving we've got good integrators as well. I think that gives us confidence to win more deals.
All right. Well, listen, given the progress in integration and some of the other metrics, when would you think Definity would have capacity for further larger scale M&A?
Yeah. Look, I think there's a couple elements to that. The first one would be, January 2nd of this year, we spent CAD 3.3 billion. We closed the first quarter with CAD 1.2 billion of financial capacity before issuing any equity. The good thing about us is that our CAGR of earnings growth has been pretty impressive, but the CAGR of equity growth is also not far behind that. So we are a capital generative business. I think that's one of the points we have there. It then gets really down to operational readiness and availability. I think from an operational readiness, we're not on the sidelines now, and I think that we feel comfortable with the nine months of integration.
Even if we were to announce a deal today, by the time you get through the regulatory process, you're another nine months, we would've broken the back of integrations, and I think operationally we'd be ready to do something else. So that's really not the barrier, and it really then goes back to availability and opportunity.
All right. Let's take a bit of a step back and then we'll look at the overall business. Overall business performing well. How's the back half of the year shaping up, and what can investors expect for the year ahead?
I think that our business is one where we've got a lot of confidence in the path we've got. We started the year by saying we've got, let's call it 35% growth rate when you include Travelers. That gets us to guidance of about CAD 6.5 billion of revenue. We don't see any change in that. We've said that we can run this business around 95 or just a bit better, including the Travelers. We don't see any change in that. I think we feel pretty good about this. There's always some lumpiness that you find in P&C. If you think about our H1 of the year, it was better than expectations. CATs typically in our industry, we budget about 5% of revenue for net CATs.
About 70% of the claims activity from natural disasters tends to happen in Q2, and it could be Q2 or Q3. It was a little lighter in Q2, and it's proving to be quite active in Q3. You see, we put out a note about weather losses in Q3, largely because they were coming in heavier than market consensus. When we look at it on a year-to-date basis, it's broadly in line with what we expect, so it's nothing dramatically unusual, but it was ahead of consensus, and it happened to be more in Q3 than Q2. But it goes back to we price for this. We buy reinsurance appropriately for these weather events, which are pretty expected, quite frankly. We've built really strong capabilities, not just pricing and accumulation, but claims management, supply chain influence.
We feel that that's part of our business, and this is why it's a growth story. You're going to find a little bit of lumpiness, and so clearly Q3 is going to be impacted by some pretty significant weather events. So that'll be a little suppressed from a normal earnings perspective, but it doesn't change the full-year outlook.
Okay. The company's advancing well, I think along that path, the mid-teen ROE. Can you give us a bit of a progress update against several of the organic levers to enhance ROE?
Yeah. One of the things we said is, look, there's a few organic levers we had. One of them was to get Sonnet scaled up and to get it to break even. The other one was to use the scale and the efficient systems to get some operational leverage and reduce our operating ROE. We had a 200 basis points target there. The third one is the transformation of our claims team and all the benefits that come out of the claims transformation. Sonnet's done. That is now a really sustained profitability. We need to grow it more, but it's now able to run at a profit. The expenses, we said 200 basis points. We've probably got another 50 basis points to go. That's a little faster than we had actually anticipated. We're very pleased with that.
I'd say on the claims transformation, we're about halfway into it, and so more to come there. That'll help that. That's why those three levers materially move the operating ROE. If you go back to what else happens? As we've invested in Travelers Canada, there's another 200 plus basis points there. I think you put that all together, by the end of the integration period, we'll have moved our run rate operating ROE into the mid-teens.
Okay. Changing gears again here. Pricing conditions remain a focus for investors, and probably likely to do so for the next 12 to 18 months. What's your assessment of some of the pricing and operating conditions across Definity's footprint?
Yeah. Our business is quite diversified by segment, by sub-segment, and by region, so it does vary a little bit. But if I give you kind of maybe a walkthrough of the main product lines. I think in personal auto, this is pretty stable at this stage. We have been one of the leaders in getting to rate adequacy, so we like the business. Our rates are adequate. We are making appropriate margins in most of our territories. There is always natural loss cost trend in automobile, which is kind of always in the mid-single digit. You would think when the industry is adequate, that should always run at about mid-single digit. What we have seen there is it varies a little bit by marketplace, by province. But on average, there are still people trying to get to their target returns.
We are in the area where we are recovering our loss cost. Let us call it mid-single digits. It is nice to see that as a bit stable. That has been one of those markets that has been up and down, and there were some cost drivers like FF&E for a while. That seems to have normalized. The inflation period from a few years ago, again, normalized. So we think auto is in a pretty good position, and we are growing both unit count, and still taking some price actions. Personal property is firm, and we do not see any reason why that. It has been firm for the last 10 years, and I do not think it is going to change. Part of that is there is just this ongoing net CAT climate change events. There is discipline in the industry in terms of pricing for that.
One of the catalysts has really been reinsurers, and I think reinsurers have said, "Look, we do not want to play in a one in five, one in 10-year return period." They have materially, about three years ago, moved up their attachment points. So for all primary underwriters, they are taking more to their net balance sheet, which I think has created more discipline. People pricing for the exposure. So we went through a couple of years where we were optimizing our personal property portfolio, and unit count was essentially flat as we were repopulating. We were reducing units in areas we felt were higher propensity in that CAT zones and increasing them in others, and then taking price. Now we are in the period where it is, again, pretty 50/50 between passing price along and taking some unit. That looks kind of stable.
Where there is a lot of attention is on the commercial marketplace. I think what we would say there is this is really a bifurcated market. You have got small business, you have got mid-market, and then you have got large. It is the large space that is very competitive. It has been like that for let us call it the last year. It seems pretty consistent to us.
So it is competitive in that area, which does mean that you are defending some accounts. It does mean that the ability to write and win new business is a little harder than it was, b ut to put that in perspective, for Definity, that is 20% of our commercial business. If you go back and you go 70% is personal lines, 20% of the 30% that is in commercial, so just 6% is really exposed. So at a company level, it is very manageable for ourselves.
What we are seeing, though, is disciplined trading by our underwriting teams and a bit of a mix of business shifts. What we are doing is we are winning unit count in aggregate, but we are winning more of the smaller business and less of the larger business. That is costing us about a point, 1.5 of growth, but no impact to margin. On the majority of our business, the 80%, we are able to keep putting through price product changes and certainly holding or maybe even adding to a little bit of margin there. I think there is the market and then also how it affects us. It seems to be pretty consistent. It has not really intensified or eased in the last couple of quarters.
Okay. You want to talk about the game plan in terms of navigating that environment?
Yeah, look, I think the main thing for us and what we tell our people is, look, this is underwriting discipline. The cycle management, we have built playbooks, we deploy them. If you look at the commercial business as a good example, there are segments that we defend. You have to remember that in some of the larger commercial, we had about five, six years of hard market, and there are some very well-priced and rate-adequate segments. Even with a price reduction, you are still wanting to retain that business. New business is always more expensive to win than existing. You balance how much new business you write as opposed to your retention ratio. You look at it by subsegment. That is why I think we feel comfortable that we are maintaining the margin. But you have seen the growth slow.
As opposed to the strong double-digit growth, that has come down a bit, and that is quite okay with us. What we are effectively doing, though, is gaining share and gaining unit count. The market will, in the large business, turn at some stage. As it does, we just have a bigger portfolio then to ultimately compete and ride more price increases up. I think in the personal lines, it is less of an issue. We do not see that as a soft or undisciplined marketplace there. Where we tend to win on both personal lines and on the SME side, the small commercial, is the technology interface. For brokers that are dealing with our small business, it is very easy for them. They can quote and bind within a couple of minutes, self-serve.
That kind of capability we built in personal lines, we have transferred it into the small commercial, and it is really helping us to win. I t is a service game there as opposed to just a pure low price wins game.
Okay. Our time is running down, so maybe in terms of parting thoughts here. You have guided Definity, I think, through a significant journey over the last decade. What is in store for investors over the next three to five years? Equally importantly, what do you expect that period to be defined by?
Well, I think I go back to when we came to the market. We had a story of becoming a leader in the Canadian business. We have broken into the top five. So I think in the next three to five years, we will be a top three player. We will also have delivered on our march up the operating ROE expansion. So I would like us to look like a top three player that has an ROE in the mid-teens. We have a 10-year strategic plan that we put in place with the board a little over a year ago. It is to triple the company, triple the value. We are well on track with that. So I think that is the longer-term direction of travel. I think the subcomponents of that is nice diversity of earnings. We have got a very solid and large investment portfolio.
We have got a growing broker distribution portfolio. So between the net investment income and the broker distribution income, which is very stable, that is a big component of our earnings. It reduces volatility. I think that broker business will continue to grow and become a more meaningful part of ours. The other part of this that I think is going to be quite exciting is it has taken us some time to build this market leading fully digital direct-to-consumer Sonnet business. That has now been sorted out. We have now found out a way to attract the customers, retain the customers, and do so at a profitable level. We think with this trend of generative AI, this could be quite helpful, and that should be another one of our billion-dollar businesses in that period of time, too. I think pretty exciting story for us-
but the main takeaway is I think we should be one of the Canadian leaders, top three in that period of time.
Excellent. Well, Rowan, it has been a great discussion. And again, like to thank you personally
You are welcome.
for taking the time to, again, talk with us in the chat, along with meeting with investors. A gain, like to thank you personally and the Definity team for your continued support. Thank you.
Thanks very much. Thank you. Take care. See you.