Okay, we hopefully have a lot of information to get to you, so we're going to get started at this point in time. I want to welcome Peter Zaffino, CEO of AIG, Sabra Purtill, who is the CFO of AIG. So, I'm feeling a little more intimidated than normal up here. But I want to start off with some opening comments from Peter, and then I'll lead in with some questions, and if you have questions in the audience, please raise your hand, and if we have time, we will definitely get to those as well. And with that, Peter, thank you so much for coming.
Meyer, thank you very much. I was not really prepared to sit here and read to you at the beginning of this, but I just wanted to just have a few opening comments, if you don't mind, just to, you know, sort of level set. It's great to be here today at the KBW Insurance Conference. I appreciate you inviting AIG to participate. Similar to last year, and before we begin Q&A, I just want to spend a few minutes highlighting, you know, some of the progress we've made since last year's conference, which I think is significant. I'm going to begin with some of the more meaningful highlights and accomplishments of 2022.
We achieved an accident year combined ratio, excluding catastrophes, of 88.7%, with $2 billion of underwriting income, and for us, that was a $1 billion increase of underwriting income from the prior year. We concluded AIG 200, which had an exit run rate savings for AIG of $1 billion, six months ahead of schedule. We completed the IPO of Corebridge Financial, the largest U.S. IPO of 2022, despite a very challenging market, as everyone knows. We returned over $6 billion of capital through share repurchases and dividends, and reduced net debt by over $700 million for consolidated AIG, and we reconstituted the operating structure for our investment management operations through partnerships with Blackstone and BlackRock.
Pivoting to this year for the first six months of 2023, we built on that momentum and continued to deliver outstanding financial results. We achieved an accident year combined ratio, excluding catastrophes, of 88.3%, which was an 80 basis point improvement year-over-year, and delivered overall net premium written growth of 10% on an FX and lag-adjusted basis, and driven by 12% growth in our commercial business. We delivered these results through re-underwriting the portfolio over many years. Since 2018, we reduced our gross limits deployed in our General Insurance commercial business by over $1.4 trillion, which approximately 70% of that is coming from our property portfolio.
A major highlight, I talk about it all the time, of 2023 has been Lexington, which has seen net premiums written growth for four consecutive years. And if you look at where we started with that book of business, of that growth, like, none of it's really where we started. We've turned over the entire portfolio. This has been driven by strong retention, new business, double-digit rate increases for 17 consecutive quarters, including approximately 20% rate increase for the first half of 2023. But the big part of the 2023 story has been the repositioning of AIG for the future. In the second quarter, we executed on several transactions to simplify the company.
In May, we announced the sale of Validus Re to RenaissanceRe for $3 billion, which is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2023, subject to regulatory approvals. The sale of Validus Re represents a key milestone for AIG. The transaction allows us to significantly reduce our volatility and our PMLs, and will generate additional liquidity and capital efficiencies to accelerate our capital management strategy. In connection with the sale of Validus Re, this week, it was announced that we entered into an adverse development cover with Enstar to provide protection on 95% of the reserves post the close of transaction. While we have significant confidence in our reserve position, we believe it's prudent to mitigate any possible downside. In July, we completed the sale of AIG's Crop Risk Services business to American Financial Group for approximately $240 million.
Also, in July, we launched Private Client Select together with Stone Point Capital as a managing general agency that will serve as an independent platform for the highly and ultra-high-net-worth market. In August, Corebridge entered into a definitive agreement to sell Laya Healthcare to AXA for EUR 650 million, which is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2023, subject to customary approvals. We anticipate the proceeds will largely be used for a special dividend to shareholders. We also announced that Corebridge intends to divest its UK Life business. Advisors have been analyzing strategic alternatives, and we expect to have a further announcement by the third quarter earnings call. So as you can see, we've been very busy at the start of the year for AIG. I'm going to briefly comment on the cat activity year to date.
It continues the record-setting trend we've seen in the last five years. The first half of this year produced insured losses of over $50 billion, and nearly 70% of that coming from secondary perils, a trend we've also seen. This activity is continuing throughout the third quarter. Some of the most notable events in the last few months include the tragic fire in Hawaii, which destroyed over 2,200 structures. Canadian wildfires burned over 12 million acres. Southern California saw its first tropical storm impact with Hilary since 1997. Hurricane Idalia made landfall in Florida as a powerful Category 3 storm, and Asia Pacific has already seen a number of events reaching typhoon and super typhoon status. We remain well-positioned as we overlay the conservative risk appetite.
We talked about the limit deployment and reduction, a very comprehensive reinsurance program, and we believe it's a strategic advantage for AIG in this marketplace and as we look to the future. Turning to our balance sheet, we've been executing on a thoughtful capital management strategy that balances investing in profitable growth, reducing leverage, and returning capital to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. Starting the second quarter, we increased our quarterly common stock dividend by 12.5%. In August, the AIG Board of Directors increased our share buyback authorization to $7.5 billion. Once completed, that should help us achieve our 600 million-650 million target share count.
That's the range we provided, and believe we can get to the lower end of that based on today's share price, and the debt to total capital leverage should be in the low twenties. As I mentioned on the second quarter earnings call, we likely will accelerate share repurchases beginning in the fourth quarter, when we expect to receive proceeds from the Validus Re transaction, subject to blackout periods and market conditions. Additionally, we continue to evaluate options to further decrease our ownership in Corebridge before the end of the year. These actions are poised to deliver additional liquidity on top of the strong parent liquidity of $4.3 billion that we had and reported at the end of the second quarter.
This liquidity, along with the successful transformation of our core businesses, provides us with financial flexibility and bolsters the confidence we have in the future earnings power of AIG. Lastly, as we look ahead, AIG's next chapter will be focused on growing attractive businesses and continuing to shift our portfolio to deliver the best solutions we can for clients, while achieving improved risk-adjusted returns. Our top priority in the near term continues to be reaching a sustainable 10%+ ROCE, which we will achieve through the four components I've mentioned several times on earnings calls.
As I've always said, the sequencing of each of these components has been very important to our journey, and I'm extremely proud of all that we've accomplished and our growing reputation as a company that can be reliably, considered, a high quality, consistent deliverer of results while managing multiple complex, strategic priorities all at the same time. So I just wanted to provide those overview. It's a lot, before we get into Q&A, so thanks.
It is a lot. But it's a lot of, hopefully useful information. I want to hone in on one comment that you made, and that's with regard to reinsurance protections, because right now you're in the unique position of, one, being a major reinsurance buyer-
Yeah.
but also having insight into the reinsurer mindset because you own Validus Re. When we look forward, I guess, how should we think about how much of the protection you have remains with you once Validus Re is gone, and your overall expectations for the next phase as a reinsurance buyer, what the reinsurance market will look like?
Yes, so let me start with what I think happened at 1/1, and then I'll talk about specifically with AIG. But, you know, we heard last year, we always start, you know, beginning of September, talking about the 1/1 renewal season. And quite frankly, it tipped on its head, once there was more catastrophe activity. And the retro market contracted, the aggregate retro market disappeared, and the occurrence retro market was there. It really drove reinsurance pricing up. But when reinsurance companies talk about risk-adjusted returns and risk-adjusted, you know, looking at PMLs and how they actually look at exposure, they moved away from risk.
All perils became named perils, and the return periods of where they attached all moved up, which translated, you see it happening all over the place this year, is that insurance companies are just forced to either buy a lot more or take a lot more net. You can see it through the net losses that have happened through the first six months. They've been substantially more than what would have been typical for some of the companies in the past. AIG did not do that. I mean, we kept our, you know, attachment points largely the same, in some cases, even lowered them. In our international business, aggregate disappeared. We still were able to buy aggregate cover, so we dealt with the severity and frequency.
You know, some of it was back to the future, where you saw a lot more occurrence covers in the industry, and I think it gave us a competitive edge, because that's largely priced into our business today. We increased the frequency in terms of how we fund for cat as well as the reinsurance costs. So I think that really does, you know, help us, and you see a lot of companies out, you know, buying mid-year, have a lot more, you know, retention. And quite frankly, even if the market is benign for the rest of the year, there's still going to be a lot of demand because it just wasn't placed, and that supply will be limited.
I mean, you'll see a little bit more in the ILS space, but I think reinsurers have really sort of flipped the switch in terms of where they sit in terms of the demand for reinsurance. So I think we're in a great place, and we're able to control volatility, primarily through underwriting, but having a very strong reinsurance program and not riding up the market, but staying, you know, committed to the retentions and, and the nets that we're comfortable with.
Okay, fantastic. As you mentioned, there's been a tremendous amount of change at AIG, and I think last year when you came, there was also an incredibly impressive list of accomplishments in the preceding 12 months. So I'm not going to ask you what you're going to do next. But I was hoping you'd take us through maybe a little bit more detail on the thought process for some of the businesses you sold, and just in Validus Re, because there is inherent volatility associated with that. The crop business we would think might be otherwise, Life, UK Life. Can you take us through the thought process that you sure... in terms of what you want to be when that's done?
Yeah. So each of them have a different reason why. And, you know, when you look at structuring the portfolio, you mentioned Validus Re first. You know, cat reinsurers, or even if you have, you know, reinsurance that is more balanced, is inherently volatile... And so you have a choice. Either you take the volatility, or you end up buying dilutive, you know, retro or reinsurance that cuts into margin. And so, like, as we, you know, talk on one side that we reduced $1.4 trillion of gross limit, and yet taking more, you know, cat risk in a reinsurer wasn't optimal.
Quite frankly, we'll have a lot more flexibility going forward in terms of how we buy reinsurance, because if the retro isn't available, we end up buying more on the AIG, you know, retention side, so we control volatility for the group. Validus wasn't a business that we were out looking to sell. It wasn't a business that was marketed. It was just a, you know, conversation with Kevin O'Donnell, RenaissanceRe. They have a different capital structure, and they saw opportunity for scale. I mean, Kevin can speak for himself, but I think he thought it was very opportunistic in terms of how he can actually build his business. For us, it really wasn't going to be core.
If there was an opportunity to divest it and just focus on the insurance business and, of course, get the appropriate economics for it, that was something that we were interested in doing. We only spoke to Ren, didn't have to go beyond that, and wouldn't have if we couldn't have reached a deal. On Crop Risk Services, you know, again, I think you need scale in the ag business. You know, it is based off commodity pricing and farmers' yield, and you know, it was a good business, but I think it was better with Great American. And so, you know, getting more scale for that business was going to be important.
It didn't really fit in the portfolio, and you know, so that's something that we had been talking about for the better part of you know, last year and felt that that was a very good outcome. In terms of Laya and UK Life, I mean, we've been really focused, you know, Corebridge has, on its core business. It has great shelf space on its products in the United States. A lot of people didn't even know we had, you know, a you know, MGA that wrote healthcare in Ireland. You know, people knew a little bit about the UK business, but it just wasn't core. And so we wanted to be very transparent and visible that, you know, we plan to divest the businesses.
If we could get the right partner and the, you know, the right economics, you know, we were going to do that. So I think in Laya's case, you know, we ran a process and ended up being very successful. AXA will be a great owner, and we expect to have a similar outcome, you know, with UK Life as we proceed through the rest of, in the next 60 days.
Fantastic. That's helpful. I do remember when AIG bought Laya, and I think at the time there was an unrealistic argument about AIG getting out of the life insurance, and it was taken as moving in the other direction. But again, that was-
Yes.
-several lifetimes ago. Can you take us through the upside and maybe downsides of the MGA structure for high net worth? And this is a broad question, and maybe it's been sharpened a little bit with, you know, Florida's very recent decision yesterday saying, excess and surplus lines, maybe not. And just to clarify that, so I'm not being too cryptic, they're basically saying that some of the freedoms that non-admitted companies typically have in Florida have been suspended under an emergency order. So with that, what should we expect from AIG high net worth or private client services?
Well, there's several different, you know, key areas of focus when you talk about the high net worth space. One is it's a... Forget about AIG for a second. It's just, it's just a model, you know, that has come under pressure in terms of all the, you know, whether it's inflation, supply chain, cat risk, secondary perils, and now this density of risk, is exacerbated because of, you know, COVID, you know, where you have, you know, home prices increasing, you have more density, all in cat zones. So it, it's a business model that's been under pressure, which means you have to control aggregate, and you have to be able to price, appropriately. And so, yes, Florida.
You know, E&S, I don't know why that is viewed by a lot of states as like the, you know, second choice. It's a great choice. It's a, it's a way in which you can solve risk issues with limits, structures, price, terms and conditions, and enable capacity to be able to, you know, grow the business. So that is something that will evolve over time. You know, for us, we had too much aggregation. That was AIG's story. I mean, on the commercial, the personal, and as you started to see, you know, cat costs, you know, you can't really generalize it because what happened in the high net worth space was much more at the lower return periods.
Even though it had massive exposure, if you had a big quake or if you had a massive windstorm, you know, hurricane in the southeast, that was challenged. And so you can't keep up a little bit with the loss costs, and so you need to really have more spread of risk. And so that's what we've been, you know, doing at AIG over the course of several years. One is reducing aggregate, buying dilutive reinsurance, quite frankly, to reduce volatility. We set up a syndicate, which worked really well in terms of out, as we were re-underwriting, to take volatility out of the results in terms of the low return period cat. And then we felt that, you know, we have... The barrier to entry in high net worth is a service business. It's really valued by customers.
and so you have an infrastructure, whether it's through claims, you know, capabilities of, you know, file forms, expertise in terms of multiple products, whether it's umbrella, obviously auto, homeowners, fine arts. There's a lot of other products that are very important to our customers. and we already had the infrastructure. And so instead of just, like, downsizing the business and staying in the space that we like, which is ultrahigh net worth, where we can control, you know, density and aggregation better, and think that the attritional loss ratios are more attractive, we decided to work with Stone Point to set up an MGA, where other capital will be attracted to be able to serve a wider range in the high net worth space that AIG may not have the risk appetite for.
So I think we're going to stay in the ultrahigh net worth. We're going to have the infrastructure be part of the MGA, and we'll be bringing on, the MGA will, other insurance companies and other capital providers to, fulfill their risk appetite and allow the MGA to grow in an area where I think most companies are not looking to necessarily, if they already have a portfolio, grow significantly in that space. So there's a bunch of different variables that led us to the conclusion, but, you know, we are really pleased with, the progress that we've made and expect to see, you know, other capital providers on the MGA in the coming quarters.
Should we think of this Florida move as maybe an impediment to new capacity coming in?
I don't, because when we look at, I believe it's the way the business has to start to transform. You know, right now, I would think with us, we're, you know, probably 10% excess and surplus lines. I don't know what that should be. It's gotta be more than 10%. Will it be half the book? Don't know. But I do think the new capital providers will likely be more admitted, with non-admitted being secondary. So we're not attracting in capital to come in just non-admitted because there's an opportunity. I think it's going to be having multiple capabilities in order to be able to responsible, you know, I think, the clients' needs.
It's a long-winded way of saying I think the capital coming in on an admitted basis, but non-admitted should be, you know, opportunities for them to add things that they want to put in excess and surplus lines for more customization.
Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Certainly, one of our concerns is. We're getting a little bit closer to an availability crisis in California and Florida.
Well, that's the problem with Florida, without making it, is like, if you're not going to do E&S, and there's no more capacity admitted, reinsurance costs are going up. I think you're just going to have more people withdraw.
Yeah, that's... It seems [short-sighted] to me, to be perfectly honest. A couple more questions if I can on the simplification side. I don't know if this is a question for Sabra, but obviously, you've got the actual secondary offerings to come. Besides that, what steps are there in the separation from Corebridge?
You want me to do the one, the ambiguity of, not answering it? So,
Write that down, please.
That's my specialty. But, the base case remains a secondary. We've always said we're going to be prepared as soon as we have the lockup periods expire, but that doesn't mean we go when the lockup periods expire. You know, we're looking at all the alternatives that would exist for this business. Want to be very disciplined. You know, we think it's undervalued relative to just the fundamentals. If you look at its peer group, the strength of the balance sheet, cash flow, liquidity, it's just a very good business. Again, getting rid of the non-core assets will be advantageous for them. And look at AIG wants to be focused on sell downs, again, with the secondary being the base case.
But we can look at other alternatives, as we get to year one, the anniversary of the IPO. I would expect the next trade down not to get us below 50, but put us in a position where the trade after that will allow us to deconsolidate, and then, you know, both companies will be independently ready to perform on their own.
Okay. Operationally... I'm sorry, go ahead.
Yeah, and I was just going to say, and then operationally, the work streams have been, you know, going hard at it for really the last three years as we seek to stand up Corebridge operationally, including cyber, IT, corporate, infrastructure systems. So we're about a good piece of the way there, but that operational processes isn't an impediment to doing the secondaries.
Okay, that makes sense. And then this is my final question on simplification, and that is, when I think of specialty, and the agility that's necessary to succeed in specialty, I don't necessarily think of Japanese personal lines in that context, because the regulatory environment there seems to place an emphasis on stability. I'm not questioning the appropriateness of that. I'm trying to see how that fits in with the rest of what will be AIG going forward.
If you think of AIG, really, I would look at it in three components, where you have specialty businesses that have real competitive advantages, whether it's in the excess surplus lines, the syndicate or global specialty platforms. You have commercial businesses at scale, that we have real underwriting expertise that are globally balanced. You know, think of financial lines, property, what we have in casualty, you know, some of the areas like Glatfelter, real specialized businesses that I think really compete well in the markets that they trade. And then the last piece is really personal insurance businesses that are at scale, that have real opportunities for growth. And I put Japan in that category. I mean, there's a couple of pieces of business, in particular in Japan, or segments.
Accident health is one across international that we can grow, scale, but investing in the digital capabilities and product, and so expect to see more organic growth there. But Japan is a unique country to have an insurance company. I'm very committed to it. We're the largest non-domestic insurance company in Japan. But you've got to remember, like, the distribution is very different than the United States or even in Europe. A lot of the agents, I mean, if you look at the middle market, you are going in to grow organically in the United States, you'd have to take it from carriers that are well-established, and have tremendous relationships with their agency distribution.
You should not apply that in terms of how you think of Japan, because a lot of times, the independent agents or more captive agents are already aligned, you know, with the insurance company that they're already trading with. So we have an enormous distribution within, you know, AIG Japan that doesn't need to take market share from Tokio or Mitsui Sumitomo or Sompo in order to grow more product, more capabilities. And so we've been investing in digital workflow, which is going to be very helpful in terms of servicing, and that's really cycle time on how quick can you get quotes out, how quickly can you get policies out, and then also, digital capabilities for quoting for our agents. And we've been investing a lot on that.
We spend a lot of time in terms of our focus and believe that, you know, like the last, I think, eight months is the first time we've had consecutive growth in Japan in a decade. So, starting to see organic growth, more product, more capabilities, and believe, yes, it is regulated, but you got to remember, a lot of times, Japan market is very different. And if you take auto as an example, the core file product is marginal, but a lot of auto policies have, you know, 50-60 endorsements, which have different economics. And, again, it makes it harder to standardize workflow. But it's not just an ISO form that, you know, you file the loss cost, and that's your price.
You do have something similar to that, but it's got a very common adoption of different endorsements to actually complete the full product. So there's a lot of opportunities. There's not a lot of cyber that's sold, and I think being a global company with a ton of insight on how to do that at SME through already an established distribution capability will give us real, you know, opportunity. So I think that market presence, size, scale, and investment, you know, makes Japan a very attractive market for us to grow and improve profitability.
Okay. That's tremendously helpful. Thank you. I want to switch gears briefly to talk about loss reserves. I do get questions a lot, not necessarily 2020 and subsequent, because the overall premise of the industry is that hard market years have better reserving. 2015 and prior, you've got the ADC, but in between, you've got, like, some soft market years, where even... I think it's fair to say that the underwriting improvement hadn't necessarily been intact. So how do you, how should investors think about, I'm thinking particularly casualty professional lines, reserves from those accident years?
You want to take that?
Sure. Yeah, I'll take that. And as you noted, we do have the ADC for the North American commercial lines book for 2015 and prior. And also to note, you know, the 2016 to the 2019 accident years are years where, you know, the new management team was here. We were going through an extensive change in underwriting and the rest. So we do pay intense attention to those years. Now, to note, they are getting more seasoned. I think we've got 7 years on the 2016, and each year that goes by, we have a better understanding of what the frequency of the loss trend would be. As you note, social inflation and these nuclear verdicts are the risks that we look for.
But our basic philosophy is to react to the adverse news quickly and to wait to see if good news actually develops. I, I talked a little bit about this on the last earnings call, as we think about adjustments that we've made to our loss development factors for 2020 and subsequent because of the impact of COVID, the shutdown, the courts, all that on, on the loss reserve. So, you know, you can never say never. Third quarter is when we do our deep dive on a significant portion of our casualty reserves, including international. But we, like I said, we've been watching the ten- the trends intently, and, and we're obviously aware of what's going on in the market with respect to the inflationary trends.
The other factor I'd like to add in, and again, it's really more towards as we started 17, 18 and then, you know, beyond. You have to remember that one is the portfolio, it was totally re-underwritten. And again, it took a couple of years to get to that. But AIG used to take $100 million net each and every casualty risk.
Yep.
That was their risk appetite. And so anything, as Sabra said, that went vertical or had, you know, development in, in those particular accident years was going to be adverse, you know, depending on how they reserved for, for excess. But like, we right away, bought a lot of reinsurance in casualty. So as you start to have these years age out, I, you know, I'd have to go back and look at 2018 and 2019 precisely, but I think our maximum net, if we issued a $100 million policy, would be around $10 million.
Yeah.
You know, so you're not going to have the same type of volatility in the results. You know, we have to watch it. We have to look at the inflation and all the implications with that, but just don't look at the portfolio the same way, because it's totally different on the underwriting side, but also, we've protected it and have never gotten rid of, you know, the reinsurance. I mean, look, we may get rid of some of the pro rata over time, but, you know, the excess of loss is, you know, something that is a core principle in terms of our strategic purpose.
Right. And then that would be like the risk you're keeping is kind of frequency, and that should diminish faster than severity for lines.
Correct.
Okay, that makes a lot of sense. I have to preface this by saying that a lot of times when I ask questions, it's to understand the thought process and not to suggest an alternative.
Mm-hmm.
I want to be very clear.
Mm-hmm.
You've been very clear that AIG's capital priority is capital return, dividends, share repurchases, and those will be accelerating. What's the thought process for that?
Well, we look at, you know, the four components, you know, all the time, Sabra and I, and the team, and making sure, you know, the first is making sure we have plenty of capital, and that means excess capital as of our writings today, to be able to grow, in what we think is a very profitable market and have, you know, the ability to do that, without any constraints or restrictions. So that's one. And that's been done, over the course of the last,
Mm-hmm
... 12-24 months and feel very good about where we are there. The other was, as we were getting Corebridge stood up as, as a public company, making sure that we were very focused on, you can't really see it on the consolidated results, but, you know, what is AIG's leverage going to look like, you know, post, deconsolidation, and making sure we're very focused on, on debt, maturities, and, I think we've done a very good job there. We're not totally done, but, but we are, as of today, I mean, if we deconsolidated at the lower end of the range of where we want to be in terms of that 20%-25% of, which I outlined, you know, total capital, to debt, and then-...
Focusing on a dividend, we haven't really increased the dividend in any meaningful or credible way since the financial crisis. Shows a lot of confidence in our liquidity, our earnings. And so that was, you know, really important to us. And then we become, with the excess liquidity, really focused on getting to that, you know, share count of 600 million-650 million. I mean, you get to the lower end, depending on share price, based on what you know is liquidity coming in and the liquidity we have today and what we will generate in the future. So I just want to make sure we focus on, it's not an either/or. I mean, we just got a lot of the other, you know, components of the capital where we want them to be.
You know, there may be other opportunities to deploy capital if something's compelling, but our primary focus now is on share repurchases and continuing to keep the leverage at the low twenties, upon deconsolidation.
Okay, fantastic. So now I'm going to ask questions that I would ask, like, a company that hasn't gone through as much, the last few times. Like, North American Commercial, you're still a major player. What are the growth opportunities that you think about now? Maybe the backdrop to this question is we've been in a hard market for three, four, five years, and it, it's lasting longer than I ever thought, but what do you expect going forward? But maybe let's take a step back and answer it however you think is most useful.
Not every answer is Lexington. But I can't avoid it because, you know, I haven't seen really in my career, you know, a business with more momentum, and all the fundamentals of, you know, when you look at, you know, you start with what, you know, type of retention. Typically in excess and surplus lines, you don't really have strong retention because, you know, the books churn a little bit more. But we've had really strong retention well over. You know, if it typically runs in the low- to mid-60s, it's in the low- to mid-70s. New business has been phenomenal, and when you look at the growth, it doesn't really tell the story because we've got to churn the whole portfolio. It was largely, you know, I don't want to gobble up.
I have a shot clock here, but I don't want to gobble the shot clock in terms of what happened with excess and surplus lines. But you have, you know, wholesale brokers coming in. Before AIG declared, with Lexington that it was going to be a wholesale-only market, there was less than 10 wholesale-only insurance companies that accepted business from wholesale only. Ask Tim Turner, ask Pat Ryan. I'm taking it from them. They think there's over 80 today after Lexington, you know, made its choice, and so, like, that business is just different. If you look at the strength of wholesale, they are grabbing market share. They won't tell you that. They are. I mean, there was no one that had north of $10 billion of premium placed in the market on a wholesale basis 10, 15 years ago.
The top three are now over $30 billion. That's not going back into the admitted market if the market starts to soften. Maybe some of it will. You know, maybe some of it gets tempered. We saw some Financial Lines go out, maybe some casualty. But if you look at where we're growing or where the market's growing, it's not all on property cat or cat-exposed risk. We're growing as much in casualty as we are in property. So I just think that that market is more here to stay, and I think that we are incredibly well positioned to continue to drive, you know, growth there as we've gone into some of the middle market. Wholesale distribution has done three things. One is it's created enormous expertise in the E&S space itself and broadened what is actually underwritten in E&S.
They become a placement mechanism for the 40,000 [audio distortion] agents that exist within the U.S. They have no market. You know, they go to the typical admitted markets, but they had no market, and all of a sudden, Amwins, Ryan, CRC, build these enormous placement capabilities that they become so reliable for independent agents. And then all of this MGA and delegated authority, it's not the old MGAs. It's professional. They have premium that's going to be in the market, you know, irrespective of, of the market conditions, and companies positioned to match up to that are going to be rewarded. And I think, again, Lexington is going to be, just terrific. There's other pockets where, again, financial lines gets blemished because of, you know, the overcapacity that's come into the excess, which is, you know, basically 5% of our financial lines book. Yes, that's under pressure.
It's competitive. You have companies coming in that don't have the expertise, in my opinion, don't have the track record. That'll find its natural course, but if we ride it all the way down, it's going to be immaterial to, you know, the overall Financial Lines results. When you are lead underwriting, and you can do, you know, have to put on massive limits. When you have that expertise, you have, the ability to position yourself in the market well. There's things like property. We can accordion up or down based on the market conditions. We have program business, and we have, you know, primary and excess casualty that's performed very well. We watch casualty to make sure it doesn't have the same dynamics as, you know, Financial Lines on the, you know, high excess. We've seen some signs of that, not a lot.
And then also just think about, you asked about North America, but on Financial Lines, it's mostly a phenomenon in the United States. You're not seeing the same issues in international and Financial Lines as you are in the U.S. Not seeing the price pressure. You're not seeing as much capacity come in, and so therefore, you know, we're not seeing the rate reductions that we are in North America. But that's a moment in time. I think we're a really balanced portfolio, and we can accordion based on, you know, market conditions. But I think, you know, certainly the Lexington is going to continue to be, you know, the area where we have the biggest focus.
Okay. If I can play on that, there's no Lexington on the international front.
No, I mean, you can try to think about Talbot that way, you know, as, as a syndicate, where it has not the same, you know, E&S. It's not doing, you know, non-admitted property, non-admitted casualty, but does have specialty classes that actually benefits from our global specialty platform. So we have, you know, significant presence across the globe and global specialty. Talbot gets it both ways. They can either take a, you know, sideline through the underwriting of, you know, our global specialty businesses and follow, or they can do it on their own. And, you know, quite frankly, Lloyd's has gone back to the way it was 30 years ago, too. I mean, like, if you look back 10, 15 years ago, everybody wanted more syndicates. There's 30 in China. We're going to go to Latin America. We're going to go everywhere. It didn't work.
Everything's been pulled back. Everything comes to London. It either comes through Singapore, you know, maybe there's some hubs in Miami, but by and large, it's back to the way it was, which is everything's finding its way back to London, the specialty classes, and I think we're incredibly well positioned to take advantage of that.
It's funny, we talk about this as a cyclical industry, and mostly we mean pricing, but there's so many other aspects of it-
Yeah.
that, that come and go.
I looked at reinsurance structures. I thought it was like 28 again. I mean, I was like, which is a lot of years ago. But, you know, a lot of the occurrence stuff that Talbot has sold, that's the way it was structured 20 years ago. So you're right, it is a little bit going back to the way it was.
You touched on AIG 200 being done, and that it's scheduled. I remember when you first introduced the concept, you talked about the savings, and you talked about, maybe more importantly, how it would make AIG easier to work with. So now that it's done, can you give us a summary? Like, what are the changes that you've seen besides the expense savings?
Well, it was always going to be an improvement of the core capabilities in the company. Now, AIG didn't have a lot of capabilities, so some of it was core, like, you know, workflow and making sure that we had the right underwriting systems. We were very bold in IT, going from 15% public cloud to 80%, investing huge in data infrastructure. We're a much better company from AIG 200. The outcome was the expense savings, but the original plan in terms of making us better has all been, you know, really enhancing the company in terms of our capabilities.
We would not be able to do, you know, what we do in Lexington and other commercial parts of our portfolio without having data ingestion, workflow, and the ability to get quotes out, you know, in an hour, in Lexington's case. So it's really just improved the organization. The commitment to workflow and straight-through processing is going to allow us in this new, you know, sort of AI world, and digital workflow, to not have to make dramatic changes, but to put, you know, new workflow together. That's just going to make us much more efficient. So I think there was a lot of hard work, a lot of foundational work that's going to position us. It's already improved our capabilities, but I think, we'll have a lot of opportunities in the future to invest that.
Okay, fantastic. And then we've gotten a ton of information ahead of time. I think for one more question. So I'm going to ask about that, the next $500 million, and I recognize this is a delicate question, so, there's obviously some discussion there. But how should we think about those savings emerging and the categories they spend?
Deconsolidation, leaner operating model, a lot of overlap in areas that, you know, happen in the conglomerate. That's not going to be... I mean, it will improve the organization, but it's going to take out, you know, costs that are just not necessary. You know, it's not going to be us outlining on earnings calls, "Oh, we need to invest, you know, in a platform that will eventually get this through digital enhancement." That was more AIG 200.
Mm-hmm.
This is going to be, you know, bringing the company together, and you don't need as much in terms of, you know, overhead operations, because we built it in every country and you don't need it, and we're going to get after it. And so I think the identification's easier. A lot of the work's been done. We don't want to create risk by doing it too early, but as soon as we, you know, hit 2024, we'll probably outline a lot more detail, the fourth quarter call, as to specifically, you know, where it's coming from and what quarter we expect to get it out. I think that's reasonable and one that we are already prepared to work through, but I think it's going to be faster, it'll be more efficient, and it'll make the company leaner.
We're going to hit 2024 a lot sooner than I would have thought.
Yeah.
But with that, this has been another phenomenal session. Thank you so much, Peter.
All right. Thank you.
Thank you, Sabra.