Our next Southwest IDEAS Conference Presentation, hosted by Three Part Advisors. Our next company is International General Insurance Holdings, trading on NASDAQ under the symbol IGIC, and here, speaking on behalf of the company today, is President and CEO Waleed Jabsheh. Apologies, and Waleed has actually been with the company since it was founded in 2001, and since then, the company has grown into over a $1 billion market cap. Waleed?
Thank you, William. The correct pronunciation is Jabsheh, by the way, but you're not the first one to make that mistake, and thank you all for joining us today, as William said, here to present International General Insurance Holdings. I'll take you through the story, the background. I mean, we're a relatively new public company. We're just coming on five years, but we have a longer, much longer track record of 23 years. We're a Bermuda-domiciled insurance group writing a diversified portfolio of specialty risks. As I said, 23 years in the business as a company, coming up on five years public. Strong ratings, A by AM Best and A minus by S&P.
Capital base at the moment is at $650 million, with a market cap, as William mentioned, that just recently surpassed the $1 billion mark, something we're really proud of. You're going to hear me say a lot of messages repeatedly. First and foremost, we're a profitability-driven business. We are not a. We work in the business of taking risk. That requires a lot of discipline. That requires a lot of patience. We are not a top-line-driven company. I try to send this message as clearly as possible to our existing investors as well as any new investors. So we're all on the same page. No false pretenses. The most important measure of our success is and will always be value creation, growth in book value, growth in book value per share.
So let me take you through some of the history of the business. The founder of the company is a gentleman by the name of Wasef Jabsheh, who happens to be my father. He's been in the industry for his entire career, industry veteran, coming up on 60 years in the business. In his early years, he built, helped build companies for other people, and then in 1989 decided, I'm done working for others, and decided to start building companies for himself. Based out of Jordan, he set up an insurance company back in 1989 alongside an insurance brokerage firm, which a few years later he sold to a company called Houston Casualty Company, which is now owned by the Japanese conglomerate, Tokio Marine. That was, he spent a few years with them, sat on the board of directors, at one point was the biggest shareholder.
They had acquired his businesses as their entry into the Middle East, changing strategy towards the Middle East market. They decided to go in a different direction. He decided to go in a different direction as well. So he decided after a very long non-compete, "I want to do this again at the prime age of 61." In 2001, we established IGI. A bit of my background, I started my career here in the U.S. I'm a Canadian graduate, moved to Boston in 1998 to my first real job at the reinsurance MGA called LDG, which was part of the HCC group. When Wasef decided to set up IGI, I asked him if I could join from the beginning. Reluctantly, he said yes, for my own beneficial reasons. But I moved back to Jordan in 2002 to help set up IGI.
We started with a very small capital base, $25 million, writing a handful of business lines, our biggest being energy, which was what we really built the company on the back of in the formative years, followed by property, construction, and marine. So I don't want to bore you with the gory details, but fast forward 23 years. We are now a company with a capital base of $650 million from $25 million on day one. That capital evolution has been by and large organic. We had two capital raises throughout the history of the business. Back in 2007, we raised $75 million of capital through a private placement in the Middle East. And then when we went public in March 2020, we added $40 million to the balance sheet. So about $110-$120 million in capital raises, but the rest has all been organic.
We started, as I mentioned, writing a handful of classes of business. We now write almost 25 different lines of business, dissected into three separate segments, which I'll go into a little bit later. We started with a handful of employees. We now have 460 employees across the group. We started in year one, right, writing $10 million of premium. Last year, we rolled just under $700 million in GWP. And we started in the formative years focusing on Middle East, Africa, Asia. We are truly a global company, diversified in both business line and geography. The story and we started with our one office in Jordan. We now have a network of offices across the globe of eight different operations.
The story has been one of a slow, steady, methodical, and by and large organic growth, all of this underpinned by capital preservation, capital growth, building resilience, focusing purely and entirely on the bottom line, and managing the cycle, which is critical. And I'll go into the cycle management bit a little bit more, later. Again, it's all about patience. I mentioned it before. It's all about discipline. It's about understanding who we are as a business. We operate in a very cyclical environment. We go up against companies that are much bigger than us, much more complex than us, operating under different dynamics, and at the end of the day, in the business of taking risk, you have to understand what risk you are able to take on, understand who you are, what your capabilities are, whether they be intellectual capabilities, financial capabilities, operational capabilities.
Set your risk tolerances, set your risk appetite, and stick within it. Discipline, discipline, discipline. Stick to what you understand. Number one, the number one lesson I learned coming into this is, and not just in insurance, but in life, anything you don't understand, stay completely away from. Through that philosophy, through that approach, we have been able to build a track record of consistent top-tier results. A company of our size being able to stay, operate and deliver results in the top echelon of the industry. Our approach to the business, we're an underwriting shop, plain and simple. Our focus is on generating returns where we know how to generate them, and that is on the underwriting side. That is where we make most of our money, and that is where we flourish.
Again, discipline, cycle management, the ability to shift focus quickly, being nimble enough to be able to pounce on opportunities as they present themselves. The ability to say no when you have to, the ability to shrink when you need to, the ability to scale back when you have to, and then the ability to pounce and really take advantage of opportunities within the cyclical environment that we operate in. A key, we 70% of what we do is what we call facultative business, which is individually underwritten. We have three segments: long tail, short tail, and reinsurance. Reinsurance historically has made up 5% of what we do, now about 10%.
And within the other 30%, or the 20% of the 30%, is what we call MGA-driven business, where we delegate authority to other underwriters outside of the business to underwrite on our behalf. Historically, we've built a company. We're a facultative business. We're an individually underwriting company, individual underwriting company. Why? What? And I think that's a big differentiator of how we are able to deliver the results that we do. By individually underwriting business, we literally are the ones closest to the clients, closest to our markets, and are able to make decisions on individual. It gives us close, it puts us closer access to our exposures as well. So if I talk about our business lines, our segments, if we start off with the long tail segment, we've got various product lines within that.
And that all part and parcel with the diversity that we talk about. Within long tail, we have our biggest line is professional indemnity, which is more commonly known in this part of the world as E&O, errors and omissions. In addition, we write directors and officers business, financial institutions, and legal expenses. We entered the U.S. markets coincidentally at the same time as we became a public company. But long tail business is the long tail segment is an area where we don't write any U.S. business, and that's purposely so. The differentiator, and when you think about long tail and liability business, it's always the red flag that is raised. The differentiator between our book of long tail business and what you may commonly be used to as long tail business.
Number one, we don't do any business here in the U.S., have no appetite for it, have no, we don't have the proper expertise, understanding, and as I mentioned earlier, stay away from what you don't understand. The majority, the vast majority, and we within the long tail business also, we stay away from your third-party liability or public liability, business. Our liability business is all professional. So we stay, we, and outside of a small portfolio that we write in the Middle East, all of our liability business is written on what is called a claims-made basis. Claims-made, meaning the claim is made during the policy period, it's covered. If it's not made during the policy period, it's not. So we stay away from that losses-occurring business that everybody is afraid of, that haunts everybody at some point down the road.
You know, and the way that we write the business and the coverage that we provide it under eliminates, you know, examples, situations such as asbestosis when it happened and when, you know, you avoid having written a policy 20, 30, 40 years ago and it coming back and haunting you today. And that's where claims-made comes to fruition. We call the segment long tail, but in reality, it's more of a medium tail book because within six to eight years, we know exactly pretty much where we stand within that portfolio. And so the way we write it, you know, mitigates the possibility of something haunting you from decades past. Within the short tail segment, our biggest lines continue to be energy. Within energy, we write offshore energy, onshore energy, power, and renewable energy.
Commercial property is one of our bigger lines as well. Construction, general aviation, ports and terminals, marine cargo, contingency, and then finally, you've got the reinsurance segment, which is your standard sort of portfolio-driven business, what we call, treaty. Geographically, we've evolved and built a network over the years now that focuses on the local markets. Domestic markets have become stronger, especially over the last couple of decades. Our philosophy, we believe in boots on the ground, being there locally within your markets and attacking that business from within. By having that network and by having that presence, you open yourself, you get to see a lot more business that you wouldn't see sitting in London, sitting in New York, sitting in Paris. So it's that boots on the ground mentality that we have.
It's a combination. Our recipe is a combination of technical expertise alongside local knowledge, understanding our markets individually. All our, you know, one thing, one common mistake some of these larger international companies do is they think they can pick an underwriter out of London, put them in, you know, Casablanca, for example, and think, you know, yeah, just try, just do what you did in London in Casablanca and it's going to work. That is not the case. You have to adapt to the way the local markets operate and you have to adapt. You have to understand how they, how they work within, and of each other. Every market has different characteristics, whether they be cultural, social, political, economic, and you have to be able to, you know, work within those and not dictate how they're supposed to operate.
As I said, they've gained strength, a lot of strength over the last couple of decades, and it's that recipe of technical expertise, local knowledge that I think benefits us the most and taps us into an element of the market that, again, somebody afar is not going to tap into. One important thing about our network of offices, okay, we operate under what we call a single hub approach. It's one P&L, okay? There is no separation between our offices, no separation in the capacity that the business is written on, the paper that is written on. The underwriting appetite is the same across the piece. And at the end of the day, whilst we have eight operations worldwide, okay, ultimately it's the parent and the group's results that dictate the success of the business or lack of it.
When we underwrite, we operate under what we call a Four Eyes Underwriting Approach, which means at least two underwriters within the business have to sign off on an account before it's accepted, or a line is offered. And that maintains, you know, collaboration, communication. In many of our smaller offices, we only have an individual underwriter, writing a specific line of business. So it ensures that constant communication. And our offices work together as one unit, as one family, as one company to ensure that we tackle and attack the business and solidify the business in the best and most beneficial way to the company. You'll see the same business out of Dubai as you will see in London, but you might be able to charge more in London, funnily, than you would in Dubai.
So at the end of the day, it's about what's best for the group, and not for individual offices. At the end of the day, our heads of business lines, class underwriters, we call them, are responsible for the performance of their portfolios across the group, not from where they're sitting or where they're based. That single hub approach is absolutely key to ensuring common goal, common objective, what do you call it, individual priorities. I just want to touch back on the cycle management bit. This next slide, and apologies, we're jumping from slide to slide. I'm just trying to have a conversation with you guys and sell the story. I meant to say that at the beginning of the presentation, but this slide to me is my favorite slide within the deck.
I think it's the most powerful slide, and it presents the story and tells and shows you the in essence what IGI is all about. Now, one thing we say, we are a long term from an investor perspective, you got to look at us as a long term intrinsic value type of investment. We are not your quarter to quarter company. We are not your year to year company. We do not give guidance on what we can achieve next quarter or next year or the year after. We give guidance as to what we think we can achieve over a long term period. Our business is cyclical. Our returns are going to fluctuate up and down depending on where you are within a market cycle.
And so 10 years is usually, you know, enough to cover an entire, you know, cycle, soft phases along with hard. Okay. And so this is essentially. This slide tells the story. So if you look back to the beginning, 2013, 2014, if you look between 2014 and 2016, very, very challenging market conditions, you know, very, very soft market. And it goes back to the discipline. It goes back to the ability to say no that we mentioned, I mentioned at the beginning of the presentation. And again, managing the cycle, understanding what bets you can and cannot take and working within those. 2014 to 2016, horrible years. I mean, unfortunately, our industry has a very, very short memory. And the cycle goes up and down for pretty much the same reasons every time.
People forget the mistakes that they did and they continue, and then they have a couple of good years and they do the same mistakes all over again. Those conditions were very tough. We simply could not take the bets that others, others were taking. Remember, understand who you are, work within those capabilities. Other people were taking bets we weren't able to take. Other people were taking bets we weren't willing to take. And that's the most important thing. We maintained our discipline. We said, fine, if we have to scale back, scale back. We shrank in size. Again, not top line oriented. We shrank in size. We bought our time. We know it's a cycle. We know the opportunity is going to come. Wait for it. And that's what happened. 2014, 2016 into 2017, toughest years.
The reason you saw growth in 2017 is because that's when we really started pushing on the long tail business. 2018, blood on the streets. Okay. Everybody was suffering. That's when Lloyd's, if you're familiar with Lloyd's, they came out with their Decile 10, you know, underperforming business lines, underperforming syndicates. Everybody, you know, was feeling the pain. So 2018, again, you know, managing the cycle, pulling the right levers at the right time, understanding, knowing when to put your foot on the gas, when to take your foot off the gas. 2014 to 2016, foot off the gas. 2017, 2018 onwards, big time foot on the gas. You saw a changing shift in the market dynamics.
But that shift, and you saw that growth come, starting from 2018, that shift, when you're writing different segments, different lines of business, all these, our business lines, the markets, our geographic markets operate in different dynamics, move in different directions at different times. So 2018 to 2021, we saw the long tail lines and you can see how much they represented in the green. You saw 2018, 31%, 41% in 2019, a trending upward, taking advantage of that opportunity, shifting focus to where the best returns are perceived and expected to be. 2020 to 2021, it was a different shift in the long tail lines. Stabilization in the short tail lines, stabilization in the long tail lines, upward trend in the short tail lines. You started seeing short tail increase.
Then you go into 2022 and then 2023 and the current year where the reinsurance market tail end of 2022 pretty much returned upside down. You know, complete dislocation, and then within the investor community, there was a lot of lost faith within the reinsurance space because of the continuous poor results within the market. Literally, the reinsurance market was turned upside down. That's when you saw a reinsurance segment grow significantly 5% in 2022. Historically, before that, it's always been at 5%, doubled in size in 2023, up around 30% so far this year. This, I mean, all represents basically your management of the cycle, understanding where the opportunities are, pulling back as we have in the long tail lines.
Now we've seen rate reductions for the last seven, eight quarters, and not being driven by top line, okay, and just focusing and shifting focus to the areas that we perceive to be the highest generating returns. And that this is essentially the story. This is the biggest reflection of who we are as a business and our approach to the industry, our approach to the business. Our focus will always be on value creation, on profitability. There's no sense in getting out of bed in the morning, writing businesses that are going to make you money. All right. And this is why we always say we are not a top line company. We are all bottom line driven.
Just to touch on reserving, I mean, as I mentioned earlier, I mean, we've always been with everything that we do, we exercise caution. As risk takers, we exercise caution in reserving, setting our reserves, we exercise caution. We have a big actuarial team, a reserving committee that sets reserves. We get them validated by two external actuarial specialists. And you know, our philosophy is to be cautious. You know, if we need to have more than we ultimately may end up at, fine. And you see this chart, we've got a track record of consistent reserve releases that reflect the you know, mindset.
We never want to be in a position, not to say that we're never going to be in a position or we never have been, but we never want to be in a position where our liabilities are not sufficient enough. And so we want to set them at levels where we know we're comfortable within our tolerances, and we can release reserves rather than, you know, good surprises rather than negative ones. Just to touch a little bit on the investment side, you know, our philosophy towards investments is, or in general, we are risk takers on the underwriting side every single day. Not the same on the investment side. Our investment portfolio is, and our investment approach philosophy is conservative. It's cautious. It's quite boring, actually.
Plain vanilla fixed income bond portfolio, average rating of A, average duration of about three and a half years, very, very tiny small equity portfolio, little bit of real estate in there, which pretty much represents our operational headquarters offices in Jordan. That's it. You know, for us, investment income is icing on the cake. Our underwriters do not get any benefit for investment income and their results, nor are they factored into their pricing or of the business. Their assessment of performance is based purely on underwriting results and only that. All of that, that's it. It's that performance-based culture that we have nourished, that we have established, that we have grown, that I think has allowed us to generate that track record of top-tier results consistently year in, year out.
You know, over a 10-year period, we say we average a combined ratio in the mid to high 80s, an ROE in the low to mid-teens. You know, in more recent years, performance has been unbelievable. And we've averaged combined ratios in the mid-70s over the last, you know, two and a half, three years, and an ROE in the low to mid-20s. I'll make it clear to you guys, that is not normal, and that is not an indication of what the future is always going to look like, because it's cyclical, it's managing the cycle, long term, investor focused. This is who we are. Just like to touch on the capital management strategy a bit.
You know, before we became a public company, we had this unofficial dividend policy where we used to distribute 40% of net profits to dividend to shareholders every year. We maintained that in the first couple of years as a public company, but then announced a new capital management strategy about almost three years ago. Our mantra is underwriting first. So capital is used for the business to deploy into the business. When the opportunities are there, that's the number one priority, growth, and to capitalizing on opportunities. And when the opportunities are not there, then you can give it back; we give it back to shareholders. So three years ago, almost three years ago, we announced a new capital management strategy. We amended our official dividend policy, ordinary dividend policy, $0.01 per share per quarter.
At that time, we were trading at below book value, you know, $0.75, $0.80 to the dollar. We announced a share buyback program up to 5 million shares, which we've pretty much exhausted by now. Recently, the board approved an increase in that program to 7.5 million shares, and we said, you know, we'll continue to deploy the capital in the business and give it back when we can. Many of you may be aware, we went public via SPAC in 2020. I'm pleased to say we're fully de-SPAC now. As part of the capital management strategy, we've bought all the warrants. We bought all the warrants back just over a year ago. All our now shares have vested. So we are pretty much a public company as any other, so we're fully de-SPAC.
Staying true to our promise, in all honesty, I mean, the last two, three years, the returns and the profits that we've been generating, and I've admitted this to many I've spoken to, including some in this room, we've exceeded our expectations in terms of the performance of the business. I mean, these last few years have been unbelievable. So far this year, you know, first nine months, we've seen, you know, continuation of those healthy returns. And we expect that hopefully to continue. We continue to see opportunities in a lot of the segments, you know, long tail lines, we're seeing pressure, you've seen reduction in premiums. That's part of that cycle management. That's part of that ability to say, you know what, I don't mind shrinking in size. It's not just about top line growth. It's about profitability always.
Long tail, short tail lines are mixed and, but the opportunities, generally speaking, there are positive and reinsurance is by far the brightest and most attractive space that we operate in now. And so we expect continued growth in that segment. All this put together has allowed us, you know, to stay true to our word. We've generated those best results. We announced a $0.50 special dividend at the beginning of this year. We increased that dividend, the ordinary dividend from $0.01 per share to $0.025 per share. And given the continuation of the continued performance of the business, healthy performance of the business, I wouldn't be, you know, I wouldn't hesitate to say that these types of actions are not going to be one-offs. So this is who IGI is.
Ultimately, you know, I just, I'll keep harping on this. I mean, you know, we were always going to focus on the profitability of the underwriting portfolio, continued diversification. To us, diversification is strength, strength in the diversity of our business lines, strength in the diversity of our territories, and very, very importantly, strength in the diversity of our people. We will continue to build resilience. You know, we've practically doubled in size as a business over the last five years.
You see the progression in the presentation. And we will continue to create value. We will continue to build value. And that is the utmost measure of success, success in our opinion, for this type of business. And cycle management will always be key. That has always been a top focus for us. So, with that, I thank you all for your time and happy to take any questions from anyone. Yes.
Talk about like how big the U.S. E&S opportunity is, how like great opportunity there?
I mean, the opportunity is huge. I mean, we as a business write, you know, five or six business lines in the U.S. We started in, you know, March or April of 2020. Combined, we write around $120 million-$130 million of gross written premium, which for the largest market in the world and one that represents a third of the world's premiums is nothing, but I think the way we've done it is the way we do it, you know, everywhere we go, whatever, whether it's a new business line, new territory, you know, it's a cautious step-by-step methodical approach.
We're not the type of company that goes in, wants to make a splash, you know, we will write the business and our entry into the US has been one where we thought the timing was right. We had looked, as an example, at going into the US for many years, a lot more competitive before 2020. Then when we saw the market turn and we see many examples in other business lines as well for us, when we saw the market turn, we came in. We've done it cautiously, step by step, you know, with the right business, with where we felt as a company was acceptable. I think we haven't even scratched the surface for us as a company in the US. We will continue to grow. We expect to continue to grow. Market conditions permitting, of course, and I think there's a lot more we can achieve. Yes.
Assuming we have a similar climate in 2017, how would you guys stress your combined ratio?
There's no guarantees our combined ratio will ever be below, will ever stay below 100% in every single year. You know, 2017 was the year that Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Maria, you had a couple of Mexican earthquakes. We were a lot smaller as a business, a lot less resilient as a business back then. And we still managed to generate a combined ratio of 105% when the industry averaged 130%.
You know, so, you know, part of your management of your business is not just the way you underwrite it, but the way you manage your portfolio, the way you manage your exposures, and the way you protect them. And that changes throughout different stages within the cycle. And 2017 was pretty much the low of the low, you know, within the cycle. And the reinsurance that we had bought back then had benefited us significantly. So the rule is hard market, hard rates, retain more. Soft market, soft rates, you know, they're inadequate. Try to, you know, offload as much as you can. Yes. Was it $0.96? Yeah. $0.96. Yeah. It was a good deal. Yeah. And we, I mean, we've bought back a lot of shares at well below book as well.
Yeah, I mean, it's been. I think we're running out of time. We've run out of time, but thank you very much, everybody. And.