Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you very much for joining us today for Trisura's third annual Investor Day. I appreciate everyone coming out today. I know in the audience today we've got a lot of our partners, our investors, our reinsurers, and I just want to say thank you for your ongoing support and your partnership. It's exciting to be here today and reflect a little bit on where we've come from and talk about where we'd like to go. Before we get into the formal materials, I have our standard notice to the recipients of these materials. I encourage you to read it. I will not go through it with you, but it will be very typical to other versions of presentations like this you have seen.
Today we're going to talk a little bit about who we are, maybe a little bit about what specialty insurance is, where we've come from, as well as what sets us apart and where we're going, both in the medium term and in the long term. Trisura is a specialty P&C insurance company, and sometimes that can be difficult to define, especially for people who aren't directly in the insurance industry. What I want everyone today to take away from this presentation is a couple of simple conclusions from the presentation. One, we are operating in very, very attractive markets, and we're going to go through why they're attractive and how they're attractive in this presentation. I think, as importantly, within those attractive markets, we've demonstrated a very strong track record of operational excellence.
The combination of those two trends, a strong market presence and a strong team of operators, really sets you up well in any industry that you could play in. Finally, I think one of the items I do want people to take away from this presentation is that the success that we have achieved over the last six or seven years is repeatable, and we believe we have a formula to continue demonstrating that. We believe at Trisura, specialty insurance can be done better. This is a core tenet of our organization, mostly one that we focus on our brokers, partners, and our staff. I wanted to share it today with many of our investors because this almost cultural statement informs a lot of the ways we do business.
The ways we do business, the way that we interact with our partners, it informs all of the results that you've seen. I often get asked, what's the secret formula? How do you win at Trisura? This qualitative component of the aspects of what we do is very, very important. It's important for our people, and it's important for our brokers, and I think it's important for our investors to understand how we navigate the markets that we're in. Sometimes when we talk about specialty insurance, it's difficult for people to figure out exactly what that is. In some cases, it's almost easier to talk about what specialty insurance isn't. I often, when I'm meeting with people about our company, talk about specialty insurance as areas of the business that we don't write. We don't write personal lines insurance, for example.
You shouldn't think about us as a home or auto insurance company. We don't write life insurance. What Trisura does participate in, where we do focus, is specialty commercial P&C risks. Those risks are generally harder to underwrite. You need experience, you need expertise, you need very strong risk management. Because it's difficult to underwrite those lines, we generally anticipate and expect better returns, better underwriting margins in those lines. If our lines aren't difficult to underwrite, they are complex to structure. If you have both difficult to underwrite lines as well as complexity, you need real experience. What we're going to talk about a little bit today is the depth of that experience across our organization. Trisura has evolved a lot as a public company, but it's evolved even more since its genesis in 2006.
If you look at this map on the left side of the page, there really only used to be bullets or offices in the top half of that map. You can see we have six offices across Canada. We now have six offices in the U.S. More and more, as we build Trisura, this entity is becoming and reflecting a broader North American specialty vehicle, whereas historically the vehicle was either Canadian only or really separated between a unique specialty practice in Canada and an evolving specialty practice in the U.S. You can see that evolution and that investment has actually driven the development, I will say, of five pillars of underwriting income across Trisura. Many of you are familiar with these pillars: Surety, Corporate Insurance, Warranty, Canadian fronting, and U.S. programs.
What is really important to note here is the translation of top-line premium to contribution from a profitability standpoint is not always clear, especially for people who are newer to the business. Surety, for example, which you can see on that top left bucket, writing about CAD 33 million of net underwriting income last year, represents about 30% of our net underwriting income. Surety, from a gross premiums written perspective, represents only 6% of our premium. There is a really important nuance here to understand. As this business is growing, the contribution of each of these business lines to the bottom line is really what we care about. How are we going to build this business in the long term? Those top three, Surety, Corporate Insurance, and Warranty, really form the original three pillars of Trisura. That is where we started in Canada in 2006.
Those bottom two Canadian fronting and U.S. programs are de novo platforms in the last five or six years. What's really nice to see is, as those platforms have been stood up, as those platforms have developed, you've seen really significant contribution to the bottom line. That bottom line is interesting for a couple of reasons. One, we've diversified the ways that Trisura makes money. Two, we've found more areas to touch our brokers, to service our brokers, and provide solutions to the marketplace. We believe we have a history of really strong industry-leading results, and we believe the combination of those results and our focus in the specialty lines makes us a rare platform. I can say that with a lot of confidence. In Canada, there are not many listed P&C insurance companies. There are no pure-play specialty listed P&C insurance companies.
This platform, not only in the insurance industry, is rare, but especially as a listed vehicle. As we've grown, the strength of our platform has only increased, and the stability of the platform has increased a lot as well. I think we're going to talk a little bit about the margin of performance that both we've seen and we continue to expect, as well as the growth and the experience of our team. Where have we come from over the past couple of years? I know many of you have been with us for some time. I know some of you are newer to Trisura. What I want to recenter everyone on is the execution of our business plan since 2017. We anchor here because this is when we became a public company.
In 2017, you can see the top line of our business was about CAD 150 million. Over the course of the last few years, we've significantly expanded that premium, scaling ourselves up to over CAD 3 billion in premium. That's important for a couple of reasons. One, it's nice to see the team and the business is capable of originating premium alongside our distribution partners. Two, this enhances a lot of relevance with our distribution partners. One of the challenges as an insurance company, especially candidly a smaller one, is that we have a little bit less relevance with some of our partners because we do only so many things. We believe at Trisura, we do those few things very, very well.
As we can do more of those with our brokerage partners, it becomes a virtuous circle where we get to touch and provide more solutions to that community. Now, let's call a spade a spade. Premium in the insurance space is only one part of the equation. What's important is profitable premium. You can see, as we've scaled this platform, really importantly, we've taken ourselves from a 96% combined ratio to an 83% combined ratio. What you'll see later in this presentation is that combined ratio, both relative to our old performance and relative to peers, is very, very strong. This is the magic formula in the insurance space. If you can grow the platform and grow it profitably, you will provide really outstanding results in building book value and building opportunity.
That's translated for us into a larger platform, so a larger balance sheet, a larger investment portfolio, and a really, really strong trajectory of earnings growth. You can see that consistently over the past number of years. One of the items we're really proud of at Trisura is the evolution of our earnings. Our earnings, when we started, were relatively concentrated in a small number of lines in a single geography with relative reliance on one another. As we've grown, as I talked about those five pillars, the evolution of our operating return on equity has really changed. If you look at our last year's return on equity, we achieved about a 19% return on equity. It's a strong level by almost any metric.
What's interesting for me and what's exciting is the highest proportion in our history now is represented by really recurring, predictable pieces of the business. About 40 percentage points of this ROE is represented by investment income. For us, that's mostly investment-grade bonds, very, very conservative investment-grade bonds that are relatively short duration. You've got a lot of predictability in this set of earnings. If you look at the other component of our return on equity, that's our underwriting component. That component now is made up of those five pillars that we talked about. A much more diverse contribution from the underwriting platforms than we used to have. If we put all of those together, what we've seen over our trajectory, our history, is a really, really strong compounding of book value.
As an insurance company, as a balance sheet-focused business, this is the linchpin to current and future success. We will have more opportunities to provide solutions to brokers, more opportunities to build the business, as long as book value continues to grow. These metrics, 20% CAGR on our book value per share and a 31% CAGR on our absolute balance sheet, are rare metrics and ones we are very proud of. I would note we were approaching CAD 800 million at the end of 2024 from about CAD 100 million when we started out as a public company. We are now through that CAD 800 million level. As we continue building, those opportunities continue to show up. What sets us apart? It is nice that we have had this great history. It is nice that we have demonstrated we can operate. Why do we believe we can still win?
Why do people do business with us? Service is at the core of our origination capabilities. Being able to service our brokers, understanding how we provide them solutions and how we can help these groups originate premiums is the core of our business. There has been a lot of talk in the insurance industry about vertical integration, about brokers becoming parts of larger insurance companies, and a lot of the impact of technology on brokers. In our lines of business, in the specialty lines of business that we play in, brokers are a critical component of the value chain. We very definitively support those brokers through our independence and through our solutions-focused attitude. This is something we talk a lot about with our people. This continues to be a point of differentiation with our brokers. We want to encourage people to be creative and provide tailored solutions.
We think that builds trust, and we think that eventually drives exceptional experiences. You can see on this bottom piece who are the people that we look for. We want to combine intellect with emotional capabilities. We want people who are entrepreneurial, and we want people who are consistent. We empower those people with the ability to make decisions at the point of contact. That makes Trisura, even as we grow, hopefully nimble as a vehicle to do business with. What does this look like across Trisura from a distribution landscape? We have about 240, a little over 240 contracted brokers here in Canada. Really significantly, how are we measuring success with those brokers? We have about a five-year compound annual growth rate of 44% with our national brokers, so brokers who have a reach across the entire landscape in Canada.
We are growing the number of our brokers that we have with us that have over CAD 1 million in premium. Again, increasing the amount of people that we talk to, increasing the premiums that we originate with those people, and significantly accelerating growth with the largest groups among these brokers. In the U.S., it is a newer market for us. You can see we have about 60 contracted brokers. One of the items here that is a really nice narrative as we continue to build Trisura is some of these brokers are U.S. offices of Canadian brokers that we already work with. You are seeing an evolution of the platform that benefits from the established infrastructure that we have already built. In our Programs business, we have about 42 partners in the MGA space across 70 different programs.
What's interesting about that nuance is what it tells you is multiple partners of ours in this MGA community have multiple programs with Trisura. Why that's important is because people are coming back to us to keep building programs. They get comfortable with the execution of the platform. They get comfortable with what we've done, and they want to do more with us. That's a really great narrative. What we've done, I often get asked how do brokers think about us. "It's fine, Dave, you're saying all this great information." What do people actually say? We've gone out and done surveys of our brokers and our MGA partners to see how they talk about Trisura as a partner. I won't read all of these, but what I can pull out is some consistent themes across these quotes.
You see the words collaborative, solutions-oriented, looking out for the client, and a true partnership. Doing the right thing, that component of being known as a trusted partner is an incredibly valuable reputation to have. You can see that was from a leading North American broker. This is from an independent Canadian broker. Again, open communication, proactive collaboration. The same types of narratives are coming out here. This is a really great anecdote to show how the training that we're doing with our people is showing up in the interactions with our brokers. That's now being extended into the U.S. If you look at some of our U.S. MGA partners, this is a group that's actually worked with us for five years. There's a highlight here on the strength of our people. Again, unprompted, this collaboration narrative is coming up from these brokers in these quotes.
This is a really nice, consistent message that's happening across the platform. Now, why do we care about this? Because it's one thing to say people have nice things to say about us. It's one thing to say there's great sort of reputation in the business. What does that drive to in the long term? One, we think that our people are being trained well, staying at Trisura and representing Trisura well. You can see that in some of our statistics. We've got an average 30 years of experience across senior underwriters. We're winning awards for being a good place to work. In Canada, we've been one of Canada's top small and medium employers for eight years. We've also won similar awards in the U.S. Our attrition is relatively low. Our engagement is very high. If anyone follows those engagement statistics, 94% is a great stat.
This metric of ownership is one that really resonates with me because our people, our employees, are owners in the business. Although this says 90% of senior managers are owners of the business, the statistic is actually higher. 90% of senior managers have actually gone out and purchased shares beyond the shares that they are awarded as part of their ownership. This is people who are buying, investing, and building ownership in Trisura because they believe in the narrative. I think that is a culture we want to encourage. What does that drive? What do all these qualitative metrics drive? In time, it drives outperformance. When we look at our performance versus peers, this is a peer set that includes U.S. specialty insurers and includes some Canadian insurers.
You can see here that note that I talked about at the beginning, we're in really attractive markets. Peers are averaging 87% combined ratio. That includes specialty peers who are operating in very strong markets. This is a three-year average. We're not trying to pick any one year. Trisura has outperformed that peer set by about six points on a combined ratio basis. This is demonstrative of the value of some of those training mechanisms and focuses that we've put into place. What does that translate to for book value growth or for returns? We've also outperformed our peers on an ROE perspective. Again, this is a group of very high-performing companies across North America who are operating in our space. You've seen us outperform that group by about two points. This is over the last five years.
What you have seen is very consistent outperformance of our platform. The translation of those two metrics very clearly demonstrates outperformance from a book value perspective. Over the last five years, every year, Trisura has grown its book value faster than our peers. That metric of growing our book value above 20% every year is a very, very attractive one. It is one of the reasons you have seen our balance sheet expand so significantly. What do we take away from this? That focus on service, that experience in leading teams who are broker-focused, who are underwriting-focused, does drive differentiated returns. This is one of the items we talked about a little bit, those attractive markets, that strong operational skill. We think it is repeatable.
This is one of the reasons we do think it's repeatable because the people who are building this entity are training the next generation. Where are we going? Where will Trisura be in the coming years? It's important to acknowledge the industries that we play in. Trisura is definitively a participant in the specialty line space. That can mean different things depending on the jurisdiction you're in or depending on the lines of business that you're in. Broadly, we think these markets continue to be attractive for two reasons. We've talked a little bit about margin expansion. These markets generally perform better from a combined ratio perspective than the overall market. They're also growing faster. If you are an entity that can prove underwriting skill in these markets and also execute on growth, you're in a really interesting place.
You can see specialty markets in Canada have outperformed the broader markets. You can see in the U.S., we touch a few markets that I could qualify as differentiated. That MGA space in the U.S. has seen a secular trend of investment. There is a lot of capital flowing into that market. There is a lot of talent flowing into that market. There is a lot of people leaving traditional carriers and flowing into the MGA space. Our platform, I think, is really well positioned to benefit from that continued trend. The E&S markets, where the majority of our business is written, have also undergone a transformation in the last five years. You have seen about a 20% average level of growth over that period of time. You have got a market that is just a different scale than it used to be. We are a leader in those markets.
What does that mean for the lines of business that we write specifically? We talked about those five pillars earlier. I won't go through each of these positions, but what I do want to highlight, because we get a lot of questions on this, is how we navigate cycles. Often, when people are talking about insurance, they talk about a hard market cycle or a soft market cycle. Where are we and how does that impact how you operate the business? We are very focused and convicted in the lines of business that we play in. We are not going to be in and out of a market. We are not going to be in and out of a line of business because the market is moving up or down.
We have a lot of confidence that leaders of our business are going to be able to operate through the cycle. If you think about Surety today, it has been in a relatively competitive market for the last five years. That is a space we continue to grow and will continue to build. Corporate Insurance, it had a really strong hard market over the last three or four years. It is starting to balance. We have as much conviction in building that business today as we did five years ago, and probably more because we are launching a U.S. platform. These markets, these cycles that people reference in this business, it is important to note that specialty insurance should, on average, do better than the broader insurance market through these cycles. Proven operators should be able to navigate that well. We believe we have got both of those nuances.
Trisura is a business that has not rested on its laurels. What I mean by that is we've continued to launch new businesses. We've continued to try to build new pieces of our platform. What you can see from this entity or this chart is starting in 2006, we launched the platform. That was our Canadian primary business we referenced originally, Surety, Corporate Insurance, and Warranty. That has grown to a relatively significant, about CAD 500 million of premium in the Canadian markets. Over the last few years, we've launched other versions of business lines. You have seen us launch our U.S. Programs platform in both the E&S and admitted space.
We had to navigate acquisitions of a U.S. company to get into that admitted space. You have seen us take the learnings from our U.S. platform, launch a Canadian fronting business, and then take the expertise we have in underwriting and replicate that in the U.S. Surety market. It's interesting to see U.S. Surety is something we'll talk a bit about today. People are noticing a lot our U.S. Surety practice these days, and it feels like it's something that we've just started. This is an investment in a platform that's been being built for five years. Candidly, the expertise behind that platform has been built for 20 years at Trisura. Excitingly, we've now just started that same process of building a U.S. Corporate Insurance practice.
My hope is that in a few years, you see a very similar chart in developing the Surety platform that's transposed now onto the U.S. Corporate Insurance page. Let's zoom in a little bit on the Surety platform.
One thing I want to highlight is a lot of people think about our growth trajectory in Surety just in the context of our U.S. business. We are the fourth largest Surety company in Canada, but we are not happy with that. We want to be larger. Today, most of Trisura's focus in that Surety market is on the small and mid-sized contractor space. We have historically not played in that larger market, that up market space in the contractor space. We think that means we have access to about 60% of the market. What we have been doing over the last six months or so is building out the capabilities to access that entire marketplace. Let us take ourselves from a platform that can only access a portion of the market to a platform that can access the whole market.
You're going to hear us talk a little bit about the teams that we're building and the way that we're approaching this space. What I can say definitively is the only reason we're able to take this step up is that compounding of book value that I referenced earlier. As this platform gets bigger, this is a great example of opportunities that are now available to us that did not used to be opportunities. If we talk about Surety in the context of our U.S. launch, the opportunity here is material. If you think about our Canadian Surety market, it's about CAD 1.2 billion. That U.S. market is about 10 times larger than this Canadian space. In the past five years, we've developed about a 60 basis point market share in that market.
Candidly, we've been doing it without the infrastructure that you'd really expect us to have in the long term. This opportunity, based on the early successes that we've seen over the last couple of years, is really material. You should expect over time that this practice becomes larger than our Canadian practice. What you will see at Trisura is more and more of this business is run as a North American specialty player. The larger Surety companies in the world, that's how they navigate their businesses. We're expecting to be one of those markets in time. When we talk about growth, when we talk about the opportunities, it's really important to know that we've got the capabilities, the capital, and the willingness to deploy into those opportunities. We referenced our balance sheet. It's the largest it's ever been. We referenced our investment portfolio.
It's probably the most conservative it's ever been. Our size rating from AM Best is now the highest it's ever been. From a posture perspective, we're feeling really on the front foot today in pursuing a lot of these initiatives. Now, flexibility-wise, again, that growth and balance sheet, that success in profitability, that's driven a lot of flexibility. We have about CAD 107 million in excess capacity. You're going to see us deploy some of that capacity into that U.S. Surety build-out. We're going to talk a little bit about capitalizing that balance sheet soon. What you've also got as a tailwind is a very profitable business that we can reinvest into this platform. This is an entity that's benefited a lot from external capital raises in the past.
It's not one that's going to need as significant support from the markets to pursue our near-term goals. How do we think about capital allocation? First and foremost, it's organic growth. And we have a lot of organic opportunities. We still are, despite the growth that we've generated, relatively small in the markets that we play in. I think that's an exciting part about Trisura that gets a lot of our senior leaders out of bed every day. There's a lot of room for us to grow. There's a lot of room for us to grow in business lines that we know well. We do have appetite for strategic M&A. I would say that for us, inorganic growth could look different than some other entities. We talk about team lift-outs. We talk about license acquisitions. We talk about differentiated commission structures.
There are ways for us to grow this business inorganically that can add really materially to our top line that do not necessarily look like a company takeover. Finally, we talk about return of capital to shareholders. It is candidly, at this stage, the third priority because we think we have so many opportunities in those other two. How are we going to measure our success over the long term? This is a chart that we, a slide that we put up last year. We are targeting over the long term, 15% top line growth. That should translate, we think, to about 15% operating ROEs, 15% +, and book value per share growth of 15% +. You have seen us outperform these metrics recently. One item that now, I guess, two or three years ago, we set out was a goal of book value of CAD 1 billion by the end of 2027.
I'm going to reiterate today that that goal is achievable. We've got a lot of confidence in reaching that, so much confidence now that we're talking about what that goal should be for 2030. I think a lot of the themes you're hearing today in terms of expansion of our platform, in terms of integration of a North American vehicle, are going to inform where and how we grow this vehicle. I do want to reiterate what we told you we were going to do a few years ago. We believe even more firmly today that we're in good stead to achieve. How do we think we continue to deliver these items over the long term? Again, we're going back to our main touchstones. We are a diversified platform.
More and more of our income is coming from diverse sources, including investment income, including various underwriting pillars, and including fee income. We've got the experienced team to navigate this, and we've got industry-leading profitability. It's a really great setup to be pursuing growth and new opportunities. Finally, if we talk about our capital position and our risk management, we think this infrastructure is probably the best it's ever been. I'll finish on that same theme that I started in. We are definitively in attractive markets. Especially P&C space is a great place for us to operate. We've demonstrated a track record of very, very strong operators, and we believe we can replicate that success. What I'm hoping to do now as we move into the next part of the presentation is introduce you to some of those operators.
We're going to invite up onto the stage Terry Michalakos, Richard Grant, and David Scotland to talk to you a little bit about what's going on in the business today. Yep. Guys, I appreciate you coming through the formal part of the presentation. We're going to have this one be a little bit less formal. We are going to have questions at the end, both questions for me, questions for some of the people on the panel. Before we kicked off, I did want to acknowledge, I'll say, an evolution in Trisura's leadership team. We've got Richard Grant on the stage, who last year, many of you will know, stepped into the CEO position of Trisura Specialty. He's also the Chief Underwriting Officer of the group. That meant that our friend Chris Sekine, who's sitting in the front row here, he stepped out of that position.
Chris, who led that Trisura Specialty group for a long time as a Surety leader, about five years as a leader of the platform, is still with Trisura. I think this is something that demonstrates a little bit the evolution of our platform. Chris is actually the president of First Founders, which is our U.S. Surety organization. He's on the board now of Trisura Guarantee, which is our Canadian regulated entity. I would expect, pending Chris's enjoyment, he will continue to be on more boards across Trisura. This continuity, as we continue to build a platform, I think is a differentiated posture than we've had in the past. We're building a platform that now benefits from people moving through phases of their careers. Chris, thank you for everything you've done for the organization and your continued involvement.
Moving on, I think here we've got three people who many of you will know. David Scotland is our Chief Financial Officer. Richard Grant, as I said, is the CEO of Trisura Specialty, Chief Underwriting Officer of the entire group. Terry Michalakos is the leader of our North American Surety platform. So Dave, let me start with you. You were actually elevated pretty early in Trisura as a public company, and you've been with us for a long time. Can you talk a little bit about what stands out to you most about where the company is today versus a few years ago?
Yeah. So when I joined Trisura in 2010, our GPW that year was CAD 40 million, and we had CAD 40 million of equity. We wrote business in just three lines: Surety, Corporate Insurance, and Warranty. And our sole geography was Canada.
Over the last 15 years that I've been here, we've seen tremendous growth in the business. We ended last year with CAD 3 billion of gross written premium across the organization and capital of over CAD 820 million at the end of Q1 2025. Tremendous growth over that period of time. Over that time, we've really expanded and diversified our product mix, adding to adjacent lines and even new core lines of the business, as you mentioned, the fronting line, which has become one of our core pieces of business here at Trisura. We've expanded geographies as well, which is a big step for us. That was always part of the business plan ever since I joined, and I think had been ever since the company was incepted back in 2006.
With the restructuring of the organization in 2017 and the access to capital that the public markets afforded us, we were really able to execute on that. I think we've had a lot of success in doing so. All this has really allowed us to diversify even further our earnings streams and revenue mix so that now we have sort of three core earnings streams, which you mentioned, too, what we call our primary lines, which is our Surety, Corporate Insurance, Warranty, our fronting business, and then, of course, our investment income.
That's great.
One of the exciting parts still is that there's a lot of runway ahead of us. A lot of growth leading up until now, but still a lot more to come.
As you mentioned, in lines like Surety, where we are perhaps the fourth largest carrier in the country, we're still maybe only 10% of the market. Still a lot of opportunity to grow there. In Corporate Insurance and our D&O and E&O lines, I think, is a similar story. I'm sure Rich will mention that. That does not even include the additional growth opportunities that expansion to the U.S. affords us. A lot of opportunities still to come.
Yeah. That is actually a good point because I think a lot of people, we talk about the U.S. a lot as a really exciting growth opportunity. There is a lot of room, a lot of runway for us still in this Canadian marketplace that, despite maybe our more mature position here, we think there is a lot of runway to go. Richard, moving on to you.
First off, congratulations on the new role. Maybe let's start there. What's changed for you in this new capacity, and how are you approaching the position?
Yeah. Thanks very much. Yeah. With the new role, I've been spending a lot of time with the heads of the various underwriting departments, really just setting the tone and the direction for the risk acceptability that we will take. As we develop the business plans, it's not only taking into consideration our growth aspirations, but also being mindful of the risk positions we want to take on those accounts, and also just setting up the company for long-term resilience. I've been spending a lot of time on both collaboration and also consistency, making sure we're consistent across the business units in how we approach the business, how we underwrite each account, but also collaboration.
As we look at new opportunities, new deals, new geographies, new lines of business, it's getting the right people in the room to talk about the pros, cons, get the right data to make the informed decisions. If it's seed and re, legal, underwriting, actuarial support, getting them together, having those discussions for an informed decision to take place.
I think that's maybe something that's tough to understand from the outside in. Trisura can seem like a relatively siloed entity, but more and more the vehicle is operating as an integrated platform. That's reflective in your role now across the whole organization. Maybe, Rich, from there, I know you mentioned underwriting discipline. It's certainly something that we've had a lot of success in the past. How would you describe our philosophy of underwriting across those different business lines, and how are you focused on the consistency of that?
Yeah. So the underwriting discipline has always been the core tenet of Trisura. From the first day when we founded in 2006, the whole premise and the underwriting philosophy has been hire experts who know the business, who know the product, and really know the portfolio like the back of their hands. And so we talk about that a lot. And so that's something that even as we continue to grow, we still have that focus on underwriting excellence, really delivering that bottom line result that we're looking for. And as we continue to scale up, that'll still be the key focus. We will sacrifice growth to make sure that the bottom line hits our internal goals.
That's great. Speaking of underwriting experts, Terry, in Canada, we've historically focused again on that small and mid-market sized space. We have recently started moving up market. I talked a little bit about that in the presentation. What has enabled that shift for us?
Yeah. Great, David. The one thing I want to preface, I think we've always had Trisura has always had strong underwriting expertise. I think, like you alluded to, you talked about with the organization and the platform growing, discussions with brokers, a lot of that discussion was, hey, how do we, you guys are great in the small and mid-size. How do you entertain more of that larger account space? There was a lot of discussion happening. It was always probably in our strategic plan.
I think what has happened in the fall, we were presented with an opportunity to bring in a team of underwriters that came to us. We were able to move very, very quickly and take advantage of that opportunity. This was a team that has got underwriting expertise and the trading relationships in that space. That has definitely sped up that part of our business plan in Canada.
Is it fair to say, Terry, that a group like that maybe would look at Trisura differently today than they would have five years ago?
Oh, absolutely. I would say I am case in point. I have competed. I joined Trisura a couple of years ago, and prior to that, I competed against Trisura. That is why I said they have a great underwriting team, and now I am part of it. We are just trying to continue that on. Again, it's building on relationships that I think almost everybody at Trisura brings into this group, be it on both sides of the border.
How have you seen brokers responding to that? Do they now see Trisura as a credible alternative? Is that a build over a number of years?
Yeah. Great point, Dave. I mean, we hit the ground running in January. I would say the feedback and the support from the brokerage community has been very, very positive. I would say it's early days. We've had some success, which is fantastic, probably a little bit ahead of where I thought we would be. We still have ongoing conversation, and there's a journey ahead of us. We are actively writing premium in this space now, which is fantastic. I think that's just going to continue to grow.
The other thing I would say in this space is what's been interesting and unique, and I think a bit of a surprise and a bit unexpected as we've grown into this large account space, is we're actually seeing numerous opportunities, what I would call in the mid-market space, where I think in the past a broker would have turned to us and said, "I'm not so sure and whether you can grow with that client in that space." I think we've alleviated those concerns. We've seen tremendous growth in that mid-market space. That's kind of been a bit unexpected. I think it's going to propel our Canadian growth that David talked about earlier.
Maybe said a different way, the demonstration of appetite for that larger limit space has alleviated concerns that we would max out in that mid-market space.
Exactly.
I see. Maybe let's turn to the U.S. Sticking with you, Terry, on the Surety side, we've now got sort of mid-30s licenses in our Treasury listed balance sheet. What's been most important to get that platform off the ground, and where do you think we can take it?
Yeah. The big piece, and I think a lot of the hard work has been getting the critical mass of licenses, and we've done that, and then making sure we have a path to get to the rest of it. As you said in your remarks earlier, we've been kind of growing this operation a little bit with one hand tied behind our back. We definitely see the light at the end of the tunnel. I think what's been fantastic is we actually rolled out Treasury listed company at the beginning of Q2. It was well received.
We've seen an uptick in opportunities, which is great. One thing I would say is I don't think growth is going to be our issue. We're well ahead of last year. We're well ahead of where we thought we'd be this time of the year. I think what's really, really important for us is making sure that we meet our expectations on what we want this business to be. Things we always talk about, the underwriting discipline, ensuring we've got the right culture, and at the same time, just making sure we resource this operation as we scale it as we go.
Yeah. I think that that's been very consistent in the way Trisura has built businesses over time, is making sure we're growing and growing profitably because that in the long term is how we build things properly.
Absolutely.
When you look at, we referenced a little bit the size of that U.S. marketplace being 10 times larger than the Canadian space. Where do you think you want to be in the next few years in terms of market share? What kind of time frame? What are the key critical components to reach it?
Yeah. I think, Dave, you showed the chart. I think at 2024, the U.S. was roughly a $10.5 billion Surety market. We are number 37, roughly 0.6% of a market share. I think for us, what our focus is, there is tremendous opportunity ahead of us. We are focused on just building out our platform with resourcing underwriters and as well the operational side. I think throughout this year, we are definitely going to be in the West Coast where we traditionally have not been.
We're moving. We actually got some resourcing that will be stood up there in the later part of this year. I think the other positive thing is we're really, really close on some additional licensing that will come through in the later part of this year. That will allow us to execute on our strategy for the Southeast and the Southwest and put people in those local markets as well, which is, I think, fantastic. I'm excited about where this is headed and the opportunity in front of us. There's tremendous opportunity. When I look at success, what I would say is I don't think it's outside the realm of possibilities that we can get this. I would like to see us have 1.5%-2% market share in the next 3-4 years.
That's what I think it looks like. That puts us kind of top 20 Surety underwriter. I think we can easily take advantage and create opportunity to get there. That also, I think, makes probably the U.S. the same size, if not bigger than our Canadian operation as well. I am excited. Again, we have got to continue to invest in the operation capital for First Founders.
Yeah, and this is a great example, right? We have got this, I will not say excess, but debt capacity at the holding company. You should expect us to be dropping capital into this balance sheet, right? Because that Trisura listed balance sheet size really informs a lot of the opportunities that you can get.
Absolutely.
Maybe, Rich, we expand beyond Surety for a minute. What other parts of the business are you excited about?
Yeah. I am definitely excited about Terry and Terry's business. Terry as well. When you look at the broader business, all areas of the business are actually very exciting. There is lots of opportunity in all of our segments. When we look at U.S. programs, it is a $100 billion marketplace in terms of premium. Right now, we have 1.5%. We believe that there is a lot of runway for U.S. programs, working with our reinsurance brokers, working with our program administrators, finding out those opportunities that really fit our sweet spot and also contribute to the bottom line that we are looking for. When we look at U.S. Corporate Insurance, very much in its infancy, a lot of runway left.
I would almost say the plane is still on the taxiway getting to the runway as we continue licensing up the different licenses, and not only the licenses, but the rate filings for the form. As those continue to come in, we'll start to see some of that premium follow. Lots of runway left there on the U.S. Corporate Insurance side. If we look north of the border, our Warranty business, we have really strong relationships with our Warranty administrators, a lot of collaboration with them as we look at new opportunities. As those opportunities come into the underwriting group, how do we put them together to help not only our administrators, but help Trisura? When we look at Corporate Insurance in Canada, again, as the balance sheet continues to grow, the risk appetite grows along with it.
That is where we are constantly reviewing new products, expansion of underwriting, just to be able to meet the needs of our broker partners as we continue to scale the business as well. Right now, as Dave mentioned, we are a top 10 player in Canada in Corporate Insurance. I would like to think in the next few years, we can certainly be a top five player.
It is important to note that Warranty point that you talked about, there was striking growth in that practice in Q1. Just nice to see. I do want to touch on technology for a second because there has been a lot of focus in this space on technology, particular talk across industries around AI and automation. How do you think about the role of technology in our business and maybe talk to the opportunities you see?
Yeah, sure. Obviously, we're a very technology-heavy company in terms of the processes and the systems that we use. In terms of AI and automation, I think a lot of people think and tie those technologies to personal lines coverages or commodity-type products. On our side, being a specialty lines underwriter, we'll never replace underwriters for making underwriting decisions because there are complex risks that we're taking on. Where we definitely think we could use technology and AI is through harnessing all the data we're taking in on each account, each program that we're taking a look at, and how do we use technology to be able to help present that information better, quicker to the underwriter so they can make a better informed decision as they move forward. Definitely an area that we're keeping an eye on.
Yeah. Yeah. For us, maybe to summarize, and because I get a lot of questions from investors about this, I do not think you are going to see a differentiated outcome for Trisura in the next couple of years as a result of AI. I think you are going to see a real desire, as Richard talked about, for us to be finding ways to use this technology to enhance the processes that are already existing. We are not an entity that will automate our underwriting. That is not the approach that we will take. I think that is important to differentiate. Rich, one of the items we talk about a lot is risk appetite. You referenced it there. As our balance sheet grows, our risk appetite can grow. Talk to me a little bit about how that is evolving, especially as we continue to pursue growth.
Yeah. Our appetite has certainly grown. When I think back to 2006, when we started the company, we had a balance sheet of CAD 25 million, a very limited risk appetite. Right now, at the end of Q1, we were CAD 820 million or so of equity base. Just as that equity base has grown, it allows us to review different accounts, different size accounts, different lines of business, just to see how can we deploy capital and still make that return that we're looking for. It has certainly opened up that ability for us to broaden our underwriting box across the organization.
One of the key things that we still do, though, even with that expansion, is underwriting discipline, really making sure we have the right guardrails in place to make sure that we are still making the right decisions, the right calls on that capital we are putting to work to make sure that we are getting the returns that we are expecting.
It is effectively scaling up maybe the approach into larger parts of the market.
Correct.
Yeah. Dave, turning back to you, I do want to ask about the broader environment. We get a lot of questions about, I will say, macro noise. This can include things like interest rates, inflation, trade uncertainty, a lot of geopolitical volatility right now. You are our CFO. How do you think about how these items impact the business and how we manage it day to day?
Yeah. First and foremost, the most important thing for us is the underwriting. Both Richard and Terry have focused on that quite a bit. That is at the core of what we do. It is something that, particularly in an environment with a lot of macroeconomic uncertainty, we have to be very vigilant about always. From a capital perspective, thinking about our balance sheet, we need to be disciplined in terms of how we manage and deploy our capital in pursuit of our strategic objectives. When it comes to the investment portfolio, we want to be managing it in such a way that maximizes, sorry, that minimizes volatility to the extent we can and with a focus on capital preservation, not letting our equity allocation get too high or our duration get too long.
We need to be prudent in terms of how we're managing and monitoring the credit quality of our counterparties, which is very important to Trisura's balance sheet. From the liability side on the reserving, we need to make sure that we're reserving adequately and that that reserving is taking into account all of the macroeconomic uncertainty that we're seeing. I think something that's sort of unique about Trisura is that historically, times of economic uncertainty have yielded opportunities for us. We are committed to our lines of business and to our business strategy. Oftentimes, in periods of uncertainty, we've seen other markets pull back. We haven't. We've historically leaned in, remained committed to our lines and servicing our broker partners and business partners.
In the past, and I think COVID is an example that we've spoken about before, of an example when a lot of other markets pulled back, we leaned in and were rewarded with a lot of growth and deepening of a lot of relationships with some of our key partners during that time. Something I do feel very good about at this point in time is the size and strength of our equity base. We've mentioned it a few times. Our capital is at CAD 820 million at the end of Q1 2025. We are comfortably in excess of our regulatory minimums as well as our internal targets in both Canada and the U.S. from an MCT perspective in Canada and RBC perspective in the United States. Our debt to capital ratio at the end of Q1 was 10.7%.
What that does is allows us a lot of financial flexibility in terms of how we can deploy our capital to meet our business objectives. I think Terry has mentioned one very key example that is coming up. As we have spoken about, we will be contributing more capital into our new U.S. Surety balance sheet in the quarter. That is really an example of our capital allocation process in action. We are able to do so, funding from internal resources and debt capacity that we have available to us. That is how we look at it, staying focused on our long-run strategic objectives, just while being mindful of the uncertainty around us.
Yeah. Lots of noise right now in the market, lots of things going on, but a pretty focused continuation of the strategy here.
That is right. Yeah.
Richard, I talked a little bit about culture and people and what we try to build from a team perspective. Can you talk maybe a little bit about underwriting cultures and how you're focused on building that as the team expands?
Yeah. Culture is critical for the organization. The culture that we started back in 2006 was certainly a culture of openness, transparency, very flat organization, hiring experts of the areas at the underwriting, people, like I said, people who know the accounts like the back of their hands and everyone rowing in the same direction. As we continue to grow and expand, it's critical that we keep that same culture. It is very easy when you're two or three offices across Canada, a little bit more difficult when you have 12 offices across North America.
That is where the hiring process is super important, making sure we are getting the right people on board as we are bringing them in. Also, what do we do internally to make sure that those individuals understand what it is to be a Trisurian? What do we stand for? That is where last year we had a Trisura summit here in Toronto, bringing in underwriters and all staff from across Canada to be able to—
And the U.S.
Sorry, and the U.S., to hear the story, to hear the business plan, to hear where we are going. One of our strengths is that clarity in business plan, not only a five-year vision for where we are going, but also the annual plan and making sure that every employee from the junior employee who just started today to the 19-year veteran knows where we are going. How do we all contribute to be able to hit those goals? A critical part of the organization.
Terry, maybe cribbing on that, you've been at a few organizations, right? You've been in the industry now 25 years. You've been on the broker side. You've been on the carrier side, large carrier now with Trisura. Talk a little bit about what's different here.
Yeah. And Dave, I think what I think where we play in the special lines, it's a people business. People want to trade with people. I think culture is important. I think for me, what's great and I think what makes Trisura different is when we do make a decision and we do decide we want to do something, what's great is just the excitement of the team. Everybody's rallying behind it. Everybody's supportive of it. Everybody wants to lean in and help.
It's really a cooperative type approach to things. I think that's great, be it a new piece of business from a broker, be it we're expanding somewhere in the—it doesn't matter if you're in Calgary, we're going to move to the West Coast, into California. People are excited by that. They're like, "How can I help?" That's great. I think what's great as well is that it's a bit contagious. People see that enthusiasm and that excitement, and it's contagious both internally and externally. I think it's fantastic. Absolutely.
Yeah. That's great. Okay. We're getting close to wrapping up here. Maybe I'll do one question each for you guys. David, we did talk a lot about growth, expansion, opportunity. The natural question we always get is capital around that. I know you touched on our debt to capital ratio and some of the flexibility. Can you maybe talk about risk and capital as we pursue growth?
Yeah. Trisura's philosophy has always been to grow and to do so profitably. We do not do loss leaders and we do not sacrifice profitability for growth. I think you have seen that reflected in our historic return on equity and the compounding book value that we have seen over the last number of years. Those aspects of the business have always been true of Trisura even before we became a public company. We have a very long history of operating this way.
Our strategy is to seek out segments of the market in which we have expertise and in which we know we can achieve our targeted rates of return, and then to really grow and compound on that benefit by investing in adjacent lines, adjacent geographies, and really maximize the benefit we get out of those areas of the market where we're returning that we're getting that kind of return, and then invest in them, as we were talking about with our capital allocation towards the U.S. Surety expansion as well. I think that sort of summarizes our approach.
That's great. Terry, one more for you. When you think about our Surety business in the next five years, what does success look like?
Yeah. I think if we execute on our plan and we execute on resourcing the investment in the North American platform, we get this right, I'm very confident that I'm very confident sitting here and saying, "I think we can organically double this business and we can make this a CAD 500 million+ business in the next number of years." I think we can do that and continue to deliver the results that we've that the organization has been accustomed to.
That's great. That's across all of—
That's across North America.
Yeah. Richard, last one for you here. Maybe what's one thing about Trisura today you still might think is underestimated?
Yeah. I think what's probably underestimated is our people and just the opportunity in front of us. As I said, we have 450 people across North America that are excited, understand the mission at hand. When you look at the opportunity across all of our product lines, I think that special sauce that we have and how we work collaboratively with our brokers, our program administrators, our reinsurance brokers, reinsurers, like Terry said, people like dealing with people they like. We work hard on the relationship from the back end to the front end. I just believe that helps make us the sleepy winner at the end of the day. As we continue to build out the North American Specialty Lines platform, I just think w e have an edge.
That is great. Thank you. It is great to have all of your perspectives as we continue here. We are going to move into a Q&A. I am going to make these guys stay up with me because it is usually just me getting yelled at. To the extent, guys, there's any questions, feel free to come up. We do have two mics that are getting carried around. Put a hand up if you'd like to ask anything.
See if this is on. Oh, y eah. Afternoon. Hi.
Hi, Jeff.
Hi, guys. A couple of points in the presentation there mentioned the integration, managing the business on a more integrated basis and deriving benefits out of that. Just wondering if you could extrapolate a little beyond that or give us a little more detail. You mentioned a corporate or an enterprise view of risk, which is clearly important. When it comes to growth, maybe speak to Surety is the obvious example. What are you pulling from the different aspects of the business that might help you to grow there? There's knowledge and expertise clearly in Canada, but are you leveraging the U.S. infrastructure to help you do that? And how do you gain share and grow without necessarily just competing in terms of price adequacy and maybe giving up points on that?
Yeah. It's a great point. Maybe I'll start and I'll ask these guys to add in. First and foremost, Jeff, that component that maybe is underappreciated is the infrastructure one. If you think about finance, legal, actuarial risk, those functions now across all of Trisura are benefiting from expertise, infrastructure, resources across the platform, right? A legal department in our Oklahoma office is helping out our Corporate Insurance practice. Our finance team in Connecticut is helping build rate filings across the U.S. That's the nuts and bolts of building an insurance business, which I think people underestimate how much of a lift that is. We're going through that right now.
I think the other component, which is really interesting, is that risk selection underwriting piece. I'd almost flip it into the brokerage piece, right, which is the relationships. How are we taking some of the relationships we have in Canada, expanding them into the U.S.? Rich, maybe you can talk a little bit about how we take our underwriting appetites that we've established, that we've demonstrated expertise on, and expand them across the entity.
Yeah. We certainly have several examples within the company where there have been opportunities where in the past we would have declined them because we can't do the cross-border. We have two or three fronting partners from the States who were looking to expand into Canada and then working together with the Canadian underwriting team, the U.S.
Underwriting team to understand the exposures, the risks, what they're trying to achieve, and then coming up with a solution that's cross-border. Those are opportunities that three, four, five years ago we would not have taken on. We would not have entertained them. They're not only cross-border opportunities where we're working together. It's also within underwriting departments as well, where working with the program administrator or the broker, there's a portion of the risk that all of a sudden touches on multiple facets of the business. We get the right people in the room to be able to work on it. We gain traction from two departments. There's certainly a handful of examples of that happening that we've landed that are currently on the books. There are ones that are in the pipeline as well.
Yeah. I would say maybe a way to describe it is we punch above our weight a little bit in terms of the size of our balance sheet. That cross-border licensing capability is one that is, let's say, newer and benefiting us. It does not look like we have any questions online.
Thanks. Stephen Bolland , Raymond James, just a question on your goal for book value growth, going to book value going to CAD 1 billion. It seems very conservative now. You are at CAD 820 million. You are adding about CAD 150 million of book value per year, 2026- 2027. That gets you well over CAD 1 billion plus two, three more quarters of 2025. Is there extreme caution or extreme conservatism in that number, or is there something that you expect profitability to slow or a soft market? I am just trying to understand the conservatism. Thanks.
Yeah. It is a great question. We debated a lot whether we would present that goal. The reason we did is twofold. One, we want to remind people where we had set out these metrics, these sort of five-year goals when we first started this investor day. I think we can acknowledge that if the performance of the business continues as we expect it to, that 2027 goal is very achievable. We are not going to recast our five-year plans every time we have one of these investor days. I think one of the reasons we have presented it in the way that it is is to demonstrate that, listen, when we set these out and they sound optimistic or sound aggressive in the first year, this is an example of a time where we think we have got a really good trajectory of overachieving that goal.
I think as we set out our 2030 goals, which you'll start to hear us talk about in the next year or so, I want that to be an example, or at least in people's mind, as a credential of how we plan this business. Things that seem like a stretch goal when we set them out, you're sitting here now sort of a year and a half out from it telling me it's not far enough. That's an example of where the team is probably more successful than we thought we could be two or three years ago and something that, although we're not going to change that metric, we've got a lot of confidence in both achieving it and setting something that's exciting for 2030.
[crosstalk] . I just had a question overall about maybe private equity in terms of entering the insurance industry. It's been very profitable and obviously attracts competition. Do you have any thoughts on that long term?
Yeah. Most of where we've seen, so the question for people online was whether we have any observations on private equity or private capital joining or investing in the insurance space. Most of the activity we've seen from a private equity perspective has been on the distribution side of things. We've seen a lot of private equity investment in the MGA channel, the brokerage channel, less so, I would say, in balance sheet businesses or carriers. Certainly, there are some groups out there, especially in the U.S., who have some experience and expertise investing in carriers.
The vast majority of investment, I'd say, over the last decade from the private equity space into the insurance space has been through distribution. That is a trend that we see. That is actually a trend that drives some of the secular growth that we've observed in the MGA space over the last couple of years, that professional capital coming in, those resources coming into that space. We're a beneficiary of that because we service some of those markets. We have yet to see real appetite in the traditional carrier space. The maybe exception to that would be in the U.S. around something like a fronting model. You do see some private equity or private capital coming to that market where you've got sponsored balance sheets operating as a model line within sort of a fronting practice.
Those are smaller participants in the space and operating in a very specific part of the market. As a big carrier, I'll say, something with CAD 800 million of capital, you do not see as much private equity around that size of entity. Oh, we've got a question online. How do you think about the evolution of underwriting versus investment income contribution to return on equity as the entity continues to grow? How do you think about the impact of leverage given you are well below your 20% debt to capital target? The first portion of that question, that mix in our ROE, I think you have seen a gradual increase in our contribution from investment income. I think the big shifts in that are likely behind us. If you think about when Trisura has grown, we have grown a lot in an environment of rising interest rates.
We have been deploying capital and growing and building our investment portfolio as interest rates have gone up. We have seen a real step up in our interest and dividend income. We think that we can likely maintain that both as we continue to grow and as we see the environments, especially in the U.S., have a little bit higher interest rates. I do not think you are going to see that material change that you have seen over the last couple of years. If we think about leverage, given that we are well below our 20% debt to capital target, the way that I think about this from our perspective is our future organic growth initiatives are going to be funded with internal capital, which is naturally lower cost than external capital.
If you think about debt as a version of that capital, we've got a lot of capacity to access that leverage and candidly take our capital structure up to something that looks a lot more like our peers over the fullness of time. If we believe that those initiatives that are funded by this debt generate the same returns on equity or return on capital that we have across the rest of the organization, that's a more accretive way for us to grow. In the long term, I think one of the nice opportunities of Trisura is as we pursue these growth initiatives, if we normalize that capital structure in the pursuit of those initiatives, there's a natural better level of profitability if you fund it a little bit more efficiently.
In the meantime, we've got a lot of flexibility for growth opportunities.
That's it. Yeah. Candidly, I mean, Dave's point on macroeconomic volatility, the ability to lean in, this flexibility of the balance sheet, it's a really nice position to be in right now because what we can look at today is, are there people out there struggling? Are there teams that want to shift? Are there companies who maybe become available in this environment? We're coming into this part of the market with a lot more strength and optionality than we've had in the past.
When we see a part of the business, like for example, Surety, that's perhaps exceeding expectations, getting ahead faster than we might have thought it would be or expected it to be, we have the flexibility to support that growth too.
That's a much different posture. I don't know. There's a lot of investors in here who have been with us for a long time. We used to come out in a quarter where we beat top line. The natural next question is, when are you raising equity? We are not in that situation anymore. It is a much more comfortable situation for us to be in.
I think that is all the questions I see online. It does not look like any more in the room.
Thank you very much for joining, everyone. I would like to thank our directors here in the first row for joining as well. They are a huge part of our strategy and success. I am looking forward to talking to you all after Q2.