All right. We'll go ahead and get it started, particularly for those who join us on the broadcast, but wait for some more folks who filter in. All right. Thanks. First off, thanks, Ken, for being with us. Ken Anderson, the Chief Financial Officer of Intact Financial. Happy to have you with us. I wanted to start with just sort of a general strategy update sort of question. As you're looking out over the next few years, what are some of the most important priorities for you, and where are you allocating the most time and resources?
Yeah, sure. Well, firstly, thanks, Alex, for hosting the event, and thanks to those who are here in person and those watching in via webcast. When I think about Intact today and the performance of the business, and indeed the track record that's got us here, it's been centered on delivering against the two core financial objectives of the organization, which haven't changed for the last 15 years. They are, ROE outperformance of at least 500 basis points against the industry in the markets that we operate in, and compounding net operating income per share at at least a 10% level annually over time. When you look at our track record over the last five, 10, and 15 years against both of those, you essentially see delivery over and above those objectives.
On the ROE side, across five, 10, and 15 years, it's been 700 basis points or thereabouts of outperformance on average every year. In terms of growing the net operating income per share, we've delivered over the last 10 and 15 years a 12% compounding, and over the last five years, it's been 14%. So solid delivery against, I would say, reasonably lofty financial objectives. To be clear, those objectives remain and are the focus in the decade ahead. I think with where the ROE is positioned today, which is beyond a mid-teens level, we're well-positioned to continue to deliver against that 500 basis points outperformance. The harder, I think, of the two objectives is the compounding of the operating earnings per share, and that's the one where we again are shooting to outperform the 10 points of compounding that we're aiming for.
I think we laid out last year a roadmap to deliver that, and that's where the energy of the organization is going. If I break down where that growth in operating earnings per share will come from, I would focus on three main areas. The first is top-line growth, continuing to grow the business organically in Canada, where we can take about a CAD 17 billion premium base to the zone of CAD 25 billion, in our view, by 2030. We have a CAD 7 billion sub-90 combined ratio specialty franchise now that's outperforming its peer group. We're looking to bring that organically in the zone of CAD 10 billion by 2030, whilst maintaining that sub-90 combined ratio.
In the UK&I, which comprises some of that specialty business, but also the domestic commercial business, we see an opportunity to bring that in the GBP 5 billion zone by 2030. That is top-line growth and a lot of energy going into driving that top-line growth, not at the expense of the fundamental performance and combined ratio of those businesses. The second component of driving that operating per share growth is doubling down on the core competencies of pricing and risk selection and claims management. AI is a big opportunity for us in the context of margin expansion of the loss ratio. We will talk maybe a bit later about that in more detail. Clearly, we have been at it for 10 years.
We have 600 people operating in our Data Lab, driving improvements in loss ratio and leveraging Quant AI to do it. We see a big opportunity to deploy that more fully across the platform in the coming years. On the claims handling side, again, internalization and a do-it-yourself approach to claims management will drive margin expansion. Together, the improvement in margin that can come from doubling down on the core competencies, coupled with the top-line growth that we can drive, we estimate we can get eight points of growth in operating earnings per share through those two components. The third lever is the opportunity to deploy capital in line with our track record of the past decade, where we have deployed north of CAD 10 billion in capital on M&A that has driven a 20%+ IRR on that capital deployed.
That will fuel and push us, and is what has pushed us past that 10% compounded earnings growth objective. A fair bit of energy given where the balance sheet is positioned today, in looking for opportunities that can bolster, in particular, the Canadian platform, but also the global specialty lines platform with a particular focus, I would say, on the U.S. specialty market, where we are underrepresented and where we are outperforming on combined ratio by seven to eight points today. A big opportunity there. Those are the main three areas. As I say, top-line growth, margin expansion through the core competencies, and then accretive use of our capital resources from an M&A point of view. That is what is keeping us busy on a day-to-day basis in pursuit of delivery against those financial objectives.
Oh, very helpful. Thanks for all that. As you can imagine, one of the questions we get about many of the P&C companies we cover is exposure to the softer pricing environment. It is, I think, not as uniform exactly where it is affecting things, and particularly across geographies. I think Canada is a little bit of a different story than many U.S. investors are, I guess, how they are kind of focused on with the market here. Can you talk about where do you have exposure to the P&C pricing cycle? Where are you more insulated? Are there any areas where you do have to make tough decisions around growth versus profitability?
Sure. If you think of the profile of the business today, just under 50% is Canadian personal lines. On a total Intact Financial basis, just under 50% of premiums are personal lines in Canada. There, you are in hard market conditions, both in personal auto and in personal property for slightly different reasons. Personal auto, you have an industry where there has been inflation post-COVID. Peers are only recently seeing that and pricing for it. We were ahead of the market in terms of identifying that inflation pricing for it, running our business in a sub- 95 combined ratio zone, and content to grow in that environment. So very well-positioned relative to an industry that still needs to take rate over and above inflation to get back to reasonable profitability in personal auto.
Personal property, you have the dynamic of two severe weather years in Canada in 2023 and 2024 that hardened the market significantly. A more benign environment in 2025, but nonetheless, coming on the back of two very severe years have led to a hardening of the personal property market. You will have seen in the second quarter, we did have cat losses, and you will have seen some of the reports in relation to July and August, which in our view, will sustain the hard market in personal property for at least 12 months in our view. So that is the backdrop to half of our business, which is performing very well, and we are content to grow. We are growing above mid-single digits, in fact, in the double digit zone, and adding units as we do so. So well-positioned in personal lines.
When it comes to commercial lines and specialty, if you think about the other 50%-55% of our business, there the pressure is in the large account space and in select specialty verticals. If you think of our total commercial and specialty portfolio globally, about 70% of that commercial specialty business is in the SME and mid-market space. There it is much more rational and constructive conditions, I would say. We see much less rate pressure in those segments. It is a slightly different competitor set that we are competing against in that SME and mid-market space, where service level to brokers, light touch technology, all really matter, and an efficient and effective claims proposition is also critical. That is where we are excelling, and that is, as I said, 70% of our commercial franchise, commercial and specialty businesses across the globe are in that space.
Where we see the pressure from a competitive point of view is as you move up in the average premium size into the large account space. That is where competition is more challenging, but that is also an environment that plays to our strengths. What I mean by that is we have equipped and equip our underwriters with risk-by-risk information that tells them where their risk is priced relative to a mid-teens or better ROE. Which allows them to navigate at renewal when pressure comes in certain areas, when they can compete to retain risks, and when they will not compete to let go of the risk because in keeping it, you would be essentially writing the business at a substandard return on equity. That is an important differentiator in our view of how we navigate the upper end of commercial, which is quite competitive.
But in the exercise of navigating that, it shows up with a little bit of impact on the overall top line, but it is not coming at the expense of compromising the strength in the combined ratio. The proof points, I guess, on that are a Canadian commercial business that in 2025 was in a sub-80 combined ratio zone, and a U.S. business, where over the last 12 quarters we printed a sub-90 combined ratio. That is how we are navigating that market. We see lots of opportunity to grow, I would say, using non-rate levers. That is where leveraging the distribution capabilities that we have across brokers, exporting profitable verticals into new geographies, and leveraging the MGA opportunity, not necessarily doing business directly with MGAs, but through investment in MGAs, we get a window into an understanding of the pricing dynamics that those MGAs are operating with.
Once we have comfort with the profile of the risks that the MGA is writing, we have optionality to take and become the balance sheet for those MGAs. So plenty of non-rate levers to spur and fuel growth in the coming quarters, in our view. In the meantime, navigating the market very well, in my view.
Great. I wanted to circle back on the tech conversation. I think you mentioned it some here or there in your first few responses. Can you talk about what are the ways that you guys are implementing artificial intelligence in the business? Is that something that you look to as a potential efficiency that can drive bottom line? Is it something that can help you drive top line? How do you think about investment and where you get the return?
Yeah. We have been at the forefront of investing in AI for over a decade. That started 10 years ago with the establishment of what we call the Intact Lab, which today is 600 + individuals who get up every day and build AI-based models that are embedded in production. There are 600 models in production across the business today. 2/3 of those are pricing. 1/3 is in other areas like claims and customer experience. But that investment in machine learning, as it was back then, started a decade ago. We are now in the third and fourth generation of those models in personal lines in Canada. We have largely deployed also across commercial in Canada. We still have some opportunity and runway to deploy across all verticals in the U.S. and the UK&I, where we are in the 30% deployment zone today.
That is the first focus of a four-pillared AI strategy. It has been going on, as I said, for a decade. That is focused on the loss ratio component of the combined ratio. You think about a 90 combined ratio, you can think about 50-55 points of loss ratio. That is the big opportunity, and that is why we are putting most of our AI investment and energy into pushing the frontier and deployment of AI-based pricing models and the latest generation of them across the entirety of the platform. The second pillar is now more recent in terms of integrating the agentic and generative AI capabilities to improve customer experience, broker experience, and the claims journey. That will help, in our view, fuel the top-line component. There we see a lot of opportunity. We have already deployed in Canada.
As I said, we are in the fourth generation in personal lines.
In commercial lines and in terms of the interface into the brokers, we now have extremely leading-edge technology that makes the ability for brokers in the SME and mid-market space in commercial to get quotes very rapidly, bind policies with little or no touch from us or from them, and essentially speed the number of quotes that we are making and also the bind rate from those quotes. That is driving a significant lift in quote volumes and bind volumes over the last 12 months. That, I would say, is the second pillar, we call it customer experience, but it also includes broker experience. The third pillar is in service, if you like, of those first two areas, and that is software development, where we have 1,500 developers approximately across the organization that are utilizing AI-based code writing techniques.
That is leading what we have seen over the last two years, is a 10% lift in output per dollar of spend on software development. We see that continuing to compound at that 10% productivity improvement, if you like, in the years to come. That essentially means we are able to do more with the same dollar. The last pillar is general operational efficiency, which will, in time, emerge through the expense ratio. In our view, not a big source of outperformance, but certainly an area that we are paying attention to ensure that as processes can be automated and run more efficiently, that we are capturing those opportunities and that we are not, certainly do not want to have any underperformance in terms of our expense base. Altogether, we have talked about delivering CAD 500 million of recurring annual benefits. A year ago, we positioned that by 2030.
A few months ago, we revised that estimate in terms of what we have actually seen over the last 12 months, gave us confidence that we were going to get there sooner. We have about CAD 220 million of recurring benefits in the performance today, and we now believe we can get to that CAD 500 million by 2028, which is two years earlier than we had originally spoke about. I have no doubt that it will not stop at the CAD 500 million , that we will be moving that number higher over time as we assess the full scale of opportunities that we have. So a fairly focused plan on those four pillars, and one, I would say, that is certainly biased towards the loss ratio improvement and really pushing the science on the Quant AI side of the house.
Yeah. Let me ask one on Canadian auto insurance then. I think a lot of the industry is still largely unprofitable. You guys certainly are still. But where are we with that recovery, and how are you viewing the potential impact of tariffs and how that plays into if we have enough price over loss trend to really be causing the whole industry to recover?
Yeah. So maybe firstly just on the tariff component. About 13% of the personal auto loss cost is exposed to tariffs. Today, we are not seeing that have any meaningful impact on inflation, and I am talking about the direct impact here. I think maybe what is a little less clear is indirect impacts on how they may play out. But in terms of direct impact today, it is pretty small and not a needle mover in our view in terms of loss cost trend and the evolution of the overall loss cost. But we pay attention to it.
Some of our AI energy is put into trend evaluation, and with the database we have in personal auto, we are well equipped to spot trends, and it has been the hallmark of our business over the last 10 or 15 years, is that ability to spot trends earlier if they emerge.
But in relation to tariffs, from a direct point of view, nothing significant to cause us concern at this point. In terms of the broader industry, I think as I may have said earlier, you have had a 2025 industry combined ratio at about 101%. Even the first two quarters of 2026, you have seen that still hover in the 100 combined ratio zone. So you have an industry in Canada that is not making money in personal auto. We are in a different place. We are outperforming the industry by about seven points. We ran in 2025 with a combined ratio at 93.3%. And once we are running our auto business in a sub- 95 zone, we are comfortable growing it at that combined ratio. That is satisfactory from our point of view, and that is the space we are in today.
We are growing the business in an upper single digit zone, including adding units in the 2% zone in doing that. So very well-positioned in the context of the broader industry. And clearly, with an industry running at 100 combined ratio, that is going to require rate in excess of, think of a mid-single digit loss cost trend to restore some of that profitability. And that is why we talk about those hard market conditions in personal auto, likely sustaining for another 12-18 months. So we feel very well-positioned. We keep an eye on the trends across the entirety of the portfolio, but from what we see, very well-positioned, growing at a nice clip, and continuing to do so.
Great. Specialty growth is the next topic I wanted to cover. Intact's talked about, I think it's CAD 10 billion by 2030. You've got some lofty growth expectations that you'd like to hit. Can you talk a bit about how you're looking to achieve that? Does that come through organic, inorganic geographies, expanding products? Is it a little of everything? Can you walk us through how you get there, and does the environment being a little softer and maybe rate adequacy becomes a little trickier over the next few years, does that change the way you would approach it at all?
Yeah, sure. You're exactly right, Alex. Today we have a global specialty lines business that comprises about CAD 7 billion of premium. Our view is taking that to 10 billion by 2030. I think in some respects, in many respects, we'll be disappointed if that's all we can do. That business is performing in aggregate sub- 90 combined ratio. Over time has been honed into a set of verticals that are very well-positioned and each helping contribute to that sub- 90 combined ratio. There'll always be one or two in the different geographies that need a little more attention, and that's part of managing a portfolio of 20 or so verticals across the globe. But fundamentally, with a sub- 90 combined ratio, our objective, to be clear, is to maintain that sub- 90 combined ratio whilst growing the top line.
We have a number of levers, and you mentioned some of them there, that will help drive that. When we look at the capabilities we have in North America in certain verticals, we don't have, and we haven't mobilized some of those in Europe and in the UK&I. We're now beginning to do that. Examples would be surety and trade credit. Now we've started to launch writing surety business in the London market, writing trade credit business in the European market. So that's a big opportunity which we call exporting profitable verticals. I think the second area of opportunity is around distribution. We've invested actually about CAD 600 million since 2020 in MGAs, where, as I talked about, where you have an ownership position in the MGA, you get to control and understand the pricing, and you get to understand and control the claims more directly.
As you get comfort with the underwriting and the underlying risk, you can then put your balance sheet to work and assume the risk. That is an opportunity as we look out in the coming quarters. To give you some context, the MGAs that we've invested in since 2020 are writing north of CAD 1.5 billion of premium volume today. Of that, we're a balance sheet for just a little over 60% of that. So that's a big upside opportunity. As I say, we're very careful about getting familiar and understanding the underlying risk before we put our balance sheet to work with the MGAs. But clearly an opportunity as we evolve our comfort level to incrementally fuel the organic growth of the business.
And then there's just broader distribution management where with the different verticals having their own unique distribution relationships, we've probably not fully taken the opportunity to leverage cross-selling opportunities between specialty verticals and the distribution of each individual one. That's something that we're starting to mobilize on now, and again, will be a driver of top-line growth as we move forward. To your point around the softer lines of business, it is important to say that our focus is on protecting that sub-90 combined ratio. You take a line, a vertical in specialty like specialty property, where there's no doubt you're in negative rate territory. We're shrinking in that line of business, and we're shrinking because we're letting go of certain risks that we view as no longer being adequately priced to deliver a mid-teens ROE.
That's a risk-by-risk evaluation, and that's where the technology and the pricing sophistication comes into play, where we're equipping the underwriters with that capability to make those calls on a risk-by-risk basis as in those lines where the competition is most fierce. In doing that, whilst it may compromise temporarily the top-line growth, it is not compromising the ability to continue to deliver the sub-90 combined ratio.
That all makes sense. I guess just to expand on the potential for an inorganic component, you guys have talked about, I think, CAD 6 billion that's dry powder for M&A if you find something. What is it you're looking for? Could you walk us through, is it capabilities? What kind of capabilities, what kind of geographies could help you expand on some of the things you're doing in global specialty in particular? How do you navigate that in a soft market?
Yeah.
What do you got to be careful of?
Sure. You are exactly right. Today, with the excess and the deployable component of the capital margin coupled with the leverage capacity that we have, we could deploy in the zone of CAD 6 billion before raising equity. To be clear, that is not a ceiling on the size of M&A opportunities we are looking at. It just sort of, I think, frames the balance sheet positioning that we have today. We believe, given our track record on capital deployment, that equity markets would be there to support us for any larger size transaction that we would look at, and there is lots of opportunities in a much bigger scale than CAD 6 billion, just to be clear. I will not spend too much time, but maybe worth noting, Canada remains an opportunity to scale up. We have just under 20% market share in Canada.
We believe we can grow by 50% from where we are today. We keep an eye on the market and how it is evolving, and we are ready to deploy capital in Canada to continue to consolidate our leading position in Canada. You are right, global specialty lines now present a real opportunity and runway for decades ahead. That is where with CAD 7 billion running comfortably sub- 90 combined ratio, we are playing in a marketplace that is in the zone of CAD 400 billion. So we are talking less than 2% market share today. So big opportunity in our view to scale up there. Add to existing capabilities. Obviously, the U.S. is an obvious place of interest. That is where we have the track record now with the U.S. operation running 12 quarters sub- 90, outperforming in the U.S. market by six, seven points of combined ratio.
So a big opportunity to bolster that platform through inorganic opportunities. We like opportunities that fit with existing verticals. We like where it adds new capabilities to our platform. So there is a range, I think, of ideas that we keep an eye on in the context of bolstering the specialty platform. A bias, I would say, to the U.S., but in the context of bigger opportunities that have UK&I, Europe capability. We think, as I say, the entirety of that specialty platform is in the sub- 90 zone. So we would be quite comfortable to grow across the specialty platform.
Great.
I'm sorry, I don't think I answered. Your question also talked about, was it the environment or in the context of the pricing cycle? I would just say that our core measure as we evaluate opportunities is delivery of at least a 15% IRR on our target capital structure, which is 70% equity, 20% debt, and 10% preferred shares. We would evaluate opportunities and assess how market conditions would play into that, and stress test essentially—
Sure.
—for taking a little if we felt that there was a risk that it would take a little longer to get combined ratios where we needed to be. We would look to ensure that we have room in our model to deal with the market not exactly playing out as we anticipated. And that's how we think about evaluating that in the context of M&A opportunities.
That makes a lot of sense. Maybe to the last one. We only have a minute left, but I'd be interested, what do you think is being missed? When you look at your valuation, how strong your ROE is, and where you've sort of been trading recently relative to where you've traded in the past, not really maybe reflecting the higher ROE that you're currently generating. What do you think the market's missing? Is there anything that you'd compel us to look harder at as part of this story?
Yeah, look, it's disappointing, quite frankly, where we're sitting from a valuation point of view, no question. We've demonstrated delivery against those financial objectives over five, 10, and 15 years. We're committed to delivering on them in the decade ahead. We think we're better positioned now than we were a decade ago to deliver against them. Why? Well, firstly, the sandbox we're operating in today is 10 times bigger than it was a decade ago when we were solely a Canadian operation. And that's a huge opportunity. We've doubled down on our core competencies, and we think there's a lot of runway that remains in relation to pricing sophistication and claims internalization to drive and fuel the ROE going forward.
I think that our track record on capital deployment, the excess capital that we're generating, and the ability to deploy that can fuel the earnings growth in the decade ahead. There's a lot of confidence in our ability to deliver on the financial objectives. Maybe the last thing is just that distribution component to the earnings, which coupled with the investment income interest and dividend income, means that we're starting out with a 10% zone ROE before we start to underwrite and deliver on the combined ratio objectives that we have. A lot of structural advantages there to our platform that we can continue to deliver on those financial objectives for the decade ahead. On that basis, we don't think the valuation is reflecting that capability into the future.
Got it. Okay. We will leave it there. Thanks everybody for being here.
Thank you.
Thank you for being here.
Thank you very much.