Good morning. Thanks for joining us. Before we begin, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the many lands on which we meet today and recognize their continuing connection to land, waters, and culture. I pay my respects to the elders past, present, and future, and extend this respect to any First Nations people joining us today. For today's briefing, I'll follow the usual format, providing an update on our strategic priorities and key features of the result, before handing over to Inder to talk through the details of the financials. Before Q&A, I'll circle back to provide some more detail around our recent North American performance and conclude with some comments on the outlook. Let's move to slide 4. I wanted to open with a handful of key messages on the result, our strategy, and outlook. Growth remains a real highlight, continuing in double digits. Further traction across target areas is driving greater confidence in our ambition for consistent and sustainable growth. Underwriting performance was impacted by catastrophe costs, both in the current and prior year, resulting in a combined operating ratio of 98.8% or 97.6%, excluding the upfront cost of the reserve transaction we announced in February. We've been able to better absorb some of these setbacks and still maintain a double-digit return on equity, I'm disappointed with the extent of the catastrophe volatility this half on our result in North America. Improving returns in North America remains our highest priority. Not clear in the headline, I do think we've made further progress. North American core returns are moving in the right direction, following what's been a prolonged effort to stabilize, rebalance, de-risk, and modernize. We completed a very significant reserve transaction. This de-risked around 15% of our long-tail reserves across lines which carried social inflation risk, thus helped to improve capital efficiency. Momentum across our strategic priorities continues. In the short time I've been here, I think the enterprise is collaborating more effectively, there's more alignment across our business leaders, and our people remain motivated and engaged. We have great people with great ideas. I'm really excited about the transformation I'm seeing in the business. Higher interest rates continue to support a more resilient and more diversified earnings base. We exited the half with a running yield of 4.9%, and we've maintained our full-year outlook. In 2023, we expect GWP growth around 10% and a combined ratio around 94.5%. Alongside current investment settings, this equation continues to support a mid-teens return on equity for the business this year. Let's move to our strategic priorities in a bit more detail. As a reminder, we've organized the business around these six focus areas, and we've had another productive six months. Under portfolio optimization, efforts to better manage volatility continue. Property catastrophe risk remains a major focus. I previously referenced the work we're doing around property cat appetite, mix, and underwriting, and this continues to consume much of our attention. Secondly, I'm pleased with the momentum we're building on modernization. We're seeing more benefit from recent investment to rationalize our IT estate, digitize, and better organize our data. This means we'll be better placed to leverage our unique data sets to support underwriting decisions and further automate process. Like many, we're excited about AI. As a business which spends many hours ingesting documents and data that come with broker submissions, claims filings, and legal documents, we see many meaningful contributions to QBE. On people, we continue to see encouraging results across our people surveys, particularly around engagement, wellbeing, and sense of belonging. I want to ensure QBE is an employer of choice with great career and development opportunities. Finally, I'm really pleased to announce the appointment of Peter Burton to the role of Group Chief Underwriting Officer. Peter has been with QBE for over 15 years, holding various senior underwriting roles in our international division. Peter currently heads up our International Markets or Lloyd's segment, and has a long and distinguished career as an underwriter and leader with experience across multiple lines of business. The CUO role is a critical one for me to ensure the consistency of our underwriting and to drive our growth and performance agenda. Let's turn to sustainability on slide six. We received a number of great accolades in the past six months, including Green Insurer of the Year for the fourth year running, and we continue to be recognized as a top company globally for our gender diversity. There remains a material amount of work underway as we continue to build the data and capability to track insured emissions. Some of you may have seen our recent withdrawal from the Net-Zero Insurance Alliance, or NZIA. As a reminder, this was the key insurance industry group working towards establishing a consistent framework to measure underwriting emissions. For various reasons, the NZIA has now largely disbanded. While this is disappointing, we do take comfort from the fact that the NZIA achieved its goal of developing an insured emissions measurement and accounting framework, which we expect will remain the standard for the industry. We remain committed to our sustainability focus areas, and we'll keep you informed on our plans and developments in this space. Shifting back to the result on slide 7. While I'm disappointed with the impacts from catastrophe costs this period, most other features of the result are all fairly encouraging. Growth remains a highlight. Gross Written Premium growth of 13% is consistent with the result we achieved for 2022, though much less reliant on crop. Premium rate increases of 10.2% were supported by a re-acceleration across property lines, alongside generally stable trends elsewhere. We continue to see good opportunities for selective growth and expect rating will remain firm for the foreseeable future. We generated more investment income this half than we did over the course of 2022, with an annualized return of almost 5%, markets seem positioned for interest rates to remain higher for longer. The strength of our balance sheet remains a consistent story. Our combined operating ratio was 98.8%, or 97.6%, excluding the reserve transaction costs. This includes the impact of catastrophe costs above allowance and what was largely catastrophe-related prior year strengthening. Collectively, these impacts accounted for around 4.5 points. Beneath this, I think the business is performing well. As Inder and I noted back at our first quarter update, we do see good momentum in the business, which is tracking a little better than our original plan. Rate is likely to be a little ahead of our original view, as is growth, while inflation is trending broadly in line with our assumptions. Turning to Slide 8. I'll spend a moment on growth. I think this chart speaks to the breadth and diversification in our business, plus the supportive markets we currently operate in. GWP growth is tracking slightly above our full year outlook for growth around 10%, and importantly, represents another year of compound rate increases for the group. Net insurance revenue growth was broadly in line with GWP growth on the same basis. X-rate growth of 7% includes strong new business growth and further inflation-related exposure growth, partially offset by changes in terms and reduced volume in property lines. At a divisional level, X-rate growth has been driven by International and Auspac, partially offset by some contraction in the North American P&C business. This reflects the run-off of non-core lines and more challenging markets in financial lines, a mix of both fewer opportunities due to less capital markets activity and the impact of more competition. Growth in crop GWP of 10% reflects more stable commodity prices alongside consistent organic growth. Turning now to Slide 9. Wanted to spend some time on the evolution of our portfolio, starting with our focus on property. We've spoken regularly about our focus on building a more resilient property portfolio, and our limited desire to grow property, despite what are currently very hard markets. Following another challenging year, half for catastrophes, half-year catastrophes, this continues to feel like a sensible strategy. At around 25%-30% of group premiums, property cat exposed lines are broadly in line with our group mix targets. Across our three sources of potential volatility, being current accident year, prior year, and investment returns, property lines continue to account for a material level of our historic and potential volatility. This period was again characterized by outsized impacts for a number of poorly modeled perils. Winter Storm Elliott in the US impacted almost 40 states. The New Zealand events in February both ran at upwards of 30 times the typical cost for a non-quake event in the region, and first half insured losses in North America ran well above long-run averages due to a large number of convective storms. As such, we entered this year with a property strategy organized around two pillars. Firstly, to drive further improvement in our property underwriting and terms, and secondly, leverage the turn in the market to improve rate and balance. Firstly, on underwriting and terms. We continue to focus on improving our tools, models, and capability to ensure we're pricing at a level which reflects the changing nature of property cat risk. We're raising deductibles and attachment points meaningfully, plus including more exclusions. We're also ensuring we leverage our in-demand cat capacity to gain access to ancillary lines. Moving to rate and balance. The chart here highlights the significant rate increases we've achieved across our property sales this half, which have ranged between 10%-20%-30% in many segments. In contrast, our X-rate growth is negative, which is a function of a few different items. In one direction, we continue to push for inflation-related exposure growth. In the other, the trend reflects some of the recent portfolio exits we've spoken about and the impact of terms and volume reduction elsewhere. Collectively, we think these actions should leave us with a more resilient property portfolio and in a position where we're less exposed to dynamics in the reinsurance marketplace. Moving now to growth. We're increasingly confident around a broad pipeline of multi-year growth opportunities, which underpin our sustainable growth strategic priority. We spent considerable time as an enterprise, reviewing our positioning and competitive advantage across various growth opportunities. As I said in the past, we have enough breadth by geography and product to support a healthy outlook for X-rate growth cross-cycle. Combined with some considered exploration and innovation in new lines and products, I'm sure we can build on recent momentum. We've organized these opportunities across three categories. The first being a focus on deepening our core franchises. We have incredibly strong SME and middle-market franchises in Australia and the UK, and are one of the leading corporate and specialty players in the Lloyd's market, plus have great crop and A&H franchises in North America. Across each, we're holding leading market shares in our focus markets and want to defend and build on these positions. Two opportunities I'll touch on here. In our UK regional business, we've invested in people, capability, and broader relationships to raise our profile in lines beyond commercial motor and financial lines. Domestically, here in Australia, we've commenced the modernization project aimed at improving our platforms, systems and process to support responsiveness and consistency.... Across the second category, expand footprint in focus areas, we've spoken about the opportunity we see to grow our reinsurance business in a more complementary way. While in Europe, we have a track record of consistent organic growth as we've leveraged our UK and Lloyd's capability into targeted niche specialty opportunities. Finally, in terms of newer opportunities, we've hired a new head of cyber and see an opportunity to grow in this area. Demand for cyber insurance is increasing at a material rate. If we maintain our peripheral role, it will increasingly limit our ability to retain customers and grow. Finally, in the renewable space, the investment required over the next few decades to reach net zero will be significant and give rise to numerous opportunities associated with financing and ensuring the transition. With that, I'll pass to Inder. Thank you, Andrew. Good morning, all. I'll start by reiterating some of Andrew's opening remarks. This has been a very challenging half for underwriting performance. The impact from catastrophes has been too large, and the returns in North America are not acceptable. As you're aware, we've made several decisions over recent periods to reposition portfolios, reduce property exposure, increase our catastrophe allowances, and sought to build resilience. Clearly, there is more to be done. We remain highly motivated to deliver on our revised combined ratio guidance for the full year, and continue to push hard in our ambition to build a more resilient and consistent QBE. Importantly, there is strong underlying momentum in the business, and this result highlights the continuation of encouraging trends for growth, premium rate increases, ex-cat claims ratio, operating leverage, and investment returns. Our balance sheet also remains in a very strong position. I'll move on to the financials and start with the P&L on slide 11. This is, of course, the first half, result under the new accounting standard, AASB 17. As you can see here, we've tried to preserve as much consistency around key metrics as possible. Premium growth remains a highlight. GWP of AUD 12.8 billion was up 13% of the prior period, and comfortably ahead of our guidance of around 10% growth. The combined ratio for the half was 98.8%, which includes the upfront cost of the AUD 1.9 billion reserve transaction we announced in February. Excluding this, the combined ratio was 97.6%. I'll now briefly provide some context around the full year combined ratio outlook, which we have reiterated around 94.5%. This outlook effectively implies a second half discrete combined ratio of around 92%. This is around 150 basis points better than our original plan. The three main drivers here are: rate and growth were higher in the first half than we had planned, and these will earn through in the second half. Two, we've lowered our assumptions for employee incentives, given expected miss versus the plan for the full year. Three, we've made some tactical expense decisions, including managing the pace of headcount growth in the second half. Moving on to investment income, the benefit from high interest rates is now very present in our result. Total investment income of around AUD 660 million was a marked improvement on the prior period. As a reminder, we now report the impact from changes in risk-free rates on insurance liabilities within the net insurance finance income line, and for investment assets within the fixed income losses line below this. The net impact from ALM activities in the period was a small loss of around AUD 30 million. Our tax rate was a little higher than usual this period, largely due to challenging profitability in North America. Going forward, we continue to see the group tax rate trending in the mid 20% range. Adjusted cash profit of AUD 405 million was substantially higher than the prior period, resulting in a group return on equity of 10%. Based on our 2023 combined ratio outlook, plus current investment settings, we expect to achieve a mid-teen ROE for the full year. In the context of our performance through recent history, this would be a very pleasing outcome for the group. Our capital position has strengthened over the period, with the PCA multiple moving up from 1.79x to 1.8x, and remains around the upper end of our target range of 1.6x-1.8x. The board has declared an interim dividend of AUD 0.14 per share, which equates to a payout ratio of around 35%. As most of you are aware, we tend to run a slightly lower payout ratio in the first half and true this up as we move through the second half. I'll now turn to slide 12 and make a few brief comments on AASB 17. This morning, we've published our new investor report, which is structured around the new management reporting framework that we outlined in May. Where possible, we have tried to simplify the presentation of our financial disclosures and provided some clear reconciliations to help you navigate your way through the changes associated with the new accounting standard. We've received some good positive feedback around the presentational direction we've chosen, but we'll continue to work with you to sharpen our disclosures as the market adjusts to the new standard. This slide serves as a brief reminder of some of the key changes to our numbers. Two key points to reference here. Firstly, our ex-cat claims ratio increases on the new basis. This is due to the inclusion of the risk adjustment strain associated with new business and the impact of onerous contract charges. Secondly, our prior year development now includes the unwind of risk adjustment. Our risk adjustment balance remains at around AUD 1.3 billion, and our reserves have a term to settlement of around 3.5 years. Therefore, you should expect just under one third of our risk adjustment balance to unwind per annum. For reference, given the ongoing focus on reserve adequacy, we will continue to provide disclosure on the movement relative to the central estimate of held reserves at period end. Turning to slide 13. Our top-line performance has been pleasing. We've continued to deliver double-digit premium growth this period, evenly balanced between rate and ex-rate growth. As Andrew outlined, we've got a broad set of opportunities to grow our core franchises. Moving forward, we'll be talking to you more regularly and in more detail on how we are executing against our sustainable growth priority. Group-wide premium rate increases re-accelerated over the period to 10.2%, roughly 2 points above what we achieved in 2022. This re-acceleration was led by property and reinsurance classes, where the impact of elevated inflation and cat activity continues to pressure loss ratios. Aside from property, premium rate trends were a continuation of what we saw through 2022. Markets are competitive. A number of our peers are pushing for growth, albeit discipline generally remains intact, given uncertainty regarding economic and social inflation, heightened weather-related losses, and constrained reinsurance capacity. Some moderation of premium rates continues in classes which have re-reached strong technical rate adequacy in recent periods, and this is most pronounced in financial lines. US management liability has been a focal point for the industry over the past year, where competition has become less rational. North America's management liability portfolio is relatively small, with US public D&O accounting for net insurance revenue of only around $50 million. Moving on to claims ratios, catastrophe activity had a meaningful impact on both the current and prior year. The net cost of catastrophe claims for the period was around $700 million, which exceeded our first half allowance of $535 million. This was underscored by the two New Zealand events in February, elevated convective storm activity in North America, and a series of storm and flood events domestically. As we flagged in July, we have incurred around AUD 180 million of adverse prior year development relative to the central estimate of reserves held at the end of 2022. Of this, AUD 140 million related to catastrophe events that occurred through the final few weeks of 2022. This central estimate strengthening was more than offset by around AUD 210 million of risk adjustment unwind, resulting in reported net PYD of positive AUD 30 million. Pleasingly, long-tail reserves were broadly stable through the period. The reserve transaction we announced in February is already proving favorable in this regard. Importantly, our ex-cat claims ratio improved by roughly one point during the first half. This included some mixed headwinds as we rebalanced away from property classes, as well as the benefit of compound premium rate increases relative to claims inflation. As referenced earlier, the impact of any movements relating to onerous contracts resides in this line. Over the period, we have had very limited change in our onerous contract provision, which remains at around AUD 100 million. This provision continues to be driven by Auspac Personal Lines and the North American sales we spoke about in May. Moving to expenses. Our expense ratio remained flat at 11.7%. While operating leverage remains a significant tailwind, we have continued to invest in the business this period and have seen some cost inflation. This was largely due to the out-of-cycle pay increases across the group in July last year, in addition to the normal increase which occurred at the beginning of this calendar year, and neither of these increases were reflected in the prior year comparative. Given some of the tactical expense initiatives I referenced earlier, in the context of our combined ratio guidance, we expect the expense ratio to be below 12% for the full year of 2023. Moving forward, as we have previously flagged, we are planning an elevated level of investment in our business through our strategic priority around modernization. These initiatives are primarily focused on improving connectivity and ease of doing business with our customers and partners, supporting the digitization and efficiency of our core underwriting and claims processes, better leveraging data across our organization, and providing better tools for our employees to meet customer needs. Ultimately, these initiatives will be critical to unlocking efficiency and revenue opportunities for our business. In this context, we expect the expense ratio to track in the low 12% range over the medium term to support these investments. Turning now to slide 12 to add some divisional context. Underwriting performance has been mixed, with the first half cat impacts most pronounced across North America and Auspac, and the majority of prior years central estimate reserve strengthening also incurred within North America. The overall North American combined ratio of 107% is clearly unsatisfactory, and Andrew will spend some time on our strategy shortly. In international, the combined ratio of 93.2 was a meaningful improvement on the prior period, where supportive ex-cat trends helped mitigate pressure on total acquisition costs. The Australia Pacific result was also disappointing. The combined ratio of 98.9% included the impact of higher than planned catastrophe costs and deterioration in the ex-cat claims ratio. I'll just provide some broader color on, on claims inflation. You may recall that we incurred claims inflation of around 7% in 2022. As we entered 2023, we were assuming a mild moderation from this level. At the half, at the halfway point, looking across the business as a whole, claims inflation is tracking broadly in line with this expectation. The exception here is in Auspac, where domestic short-tail inflation was higher and more persistent than we had expected. While rate increases have now caught up to the inflation we're observing, earned rate was lower than incurred inflation in the discrete first half. This resulted in the deterioration shown here in the ex-cat claims ratio. Across our key regions, economic inflation appears to be peaking or has peaked. We are seeing some very early signs to suggest inflation may be moderating in certain short-tail classes. While this is encouraging, the risk of persistency remains a key focus. Across long-tail lines, there remains limited evidence of a broad increase in inflation, though we remain attuned to the risks of lags, persistency, and social inflation. I'll now provide a bit more color on our crop and lenders' mortgage insurance businesses. In crop, the combined ratio of 99% was impacted by around AUD 40 million of prior year reserve strengthening. While crop development is generally a feature in the first half, this AUD 40 million number is too large and further reinforces our efforts to better manage variability of crop results. From a top-line perspective, we've continued to grow in target states and cede more to the federal fund in an effort to improve the balance of this book. To give you some context, for 2023, we expect crop GWP of around AUD 4 billion, up from AUD 3.5 billion last year. However, we expect net insurance revenue of around AUD 1.6 billion, which is only a small increase from AUD 1.5 billion last year. Growth remains challenging for our lenders' mortgage insurance business, where GWP was down by a further 50% in the period, given reduced housing activity and the impact of the government's first home buyer support. The impact of high interest rates has had some impact on delinquencies, though this has ultimately been limited, and credit quality continues to track quite favorably relative to our assumptions. Turning to the investment result on slide 15. We've had a strong first half with investment income of around AUD 660 million, representing an annualized return of around 4.8%. This is materially higher than the prior comparative period and indeed above the total investment result for the full year 2022. This result excludes the mark-to-market losses associated with higher risk-free rates over the period. As I referenced earlier, these impacts are now shown separately in a standalone P&L line item. The very recent step up in interest rates has driven our fixed income running yield to around 4.9% at the end of the first half. For context, having come from a sub 1% running yield just 18 months ago, we take a lot of comfort from the fact that interest rates will likely be higher for longer, which should support our returns moving forward. Across our risk asset portfolio, returns were generally supportive, where equities, infrastructure, and enhanced fixed income more than offset lower valuations in our unlisted property portfolio. Our funds under management declined slightly over the half to AUD 27.4 billion. This was predominantly driven by the AUD 1.9 billion reserve transaction, which was partially offset by underlying growth in the business. We saw opportunities to selectively reposition this portfolio in recent months to align it with our long-term strategic asset allocation of 85% fixed income and 15% in risk assets. At the end of the half, risk assets represented 13.3% of the portfolio on a deployed basis and 14.8% on a committed basis. Moving now to slide 16. Our balance sheet remains in good shape. Our regulatory capital position improved from 1.79 times to 1.8 times, and remains at the upper end of our target range. Within this, there were a few moving parts during the half, and I'll step you through these at a high level. The reserve transaction we announced in February generated around 6 points of capital, and we recently launched a domestic Tier 2 transaction, which added another 3 points. On the other hand, organic growth in the business absorbed around 2 points of capital, net of the earnings generated during the half, and the impact of the 2022 final dividend was around 5 points. It's worth noting that the balance of net outstanding claims increased by around AUD 1.3 billion during the half, reflecting the strength of organic growth during the period. Debt to total capital increased by around 1 point, which was due to the AUD 200 million Tier 2 note issuance I just referenced. I'll pause here and hand back to Andrew. Thanks, Inder. It's now 1 year since we outlined our strategy for North America and gave you some insight into its particular segments. Unfortunately, it's hard to see much progress in the North American combined ratio this half, as we've ultimately remained too exposed to property. Beneath these impacts, however, I do think we're making progress. To give some sense of business performance, we've provided some additional color here on the performance between core and non-core lines. These non-core lines used to constitute around a third of the division and will continue to reduce over the next 2 years. The remaining non-core net revenue, around $600 million, is largely related to recently terminated U.S. programs, which were predominantly property programs and the Westwood Personal Lines homeowners portfolio. As a reminder, we sold the Westwood agency last year, though as part of the transaction, agreed to continue providing capacity through to May 2025. Excluding these non-core lines, the revenue mix for our go-forward business is now in better balance. We're targeting broadly a third crop, a third specialty, and a third commercial. The table on the right-hand side highlights the recent combined operating ratios for these go-forward segments. The new accounting standard makes trend analysis a little difficult, so we've given you a few data points. Firstly, on crop, this should be a low 90s business for QBE. We're the number 2 player in the industry, have deep relationships, a track record of strong returns relative to the industry, and consistent organic growth. We continue to focus on diversification and resilience. We've grown in traditionally underweight states and continue to optimize how we use the federal scheme and external reinsurance to deliver more consistency. Turning to specialty, we should also be a low 90s business for QBE. We have a leading Accident & Health franchise, which has delivered consistent low 90s combined ratios for a number of years. In financial lines, with a team change in 2020, we changed our strategy and looked to build profile. Some years on, as the portfolio has grown and matured, returns have continued to improve and are currently quite attractive. As I referenced earlier, rate increases and growth opportunities in financial lines have become more challenging, though we have a 50% quota share across the portfolio and continue to debate whether this remains necessary. Turning finally to commercial. Many of our peers are able to achieve a low to mid-nineties combined ratio in this space. This segment includes those remaining property programs we write, workers' comp, our middle market business, and our large commercial casualty business. Our workers' comp book continues to perform very well with a consistent track record. We expect to maintain some property programs, which will be largely wind and quake related and complement our middle market property footprint. Finally, we've spoken a lot about the last 12 months about our middle market strategy. Our performance here has been more challenging. As we've grown, our mix has shifted a little more toward property than targeted, and we haven't achieved enough industry balance. In response, we've stopped writing new monoline property, made some personnel changes, and are working with our partners to get the balance we want. While we've achieved better scale, we expect growth in middle-market will slow somewhat, and we're confident that the portfolio mix is closer to target. We've moved now to slide 19. You can see here the extent to which North America's non-core lines have weighed on results, particularly in the current period. The first half combined ratio for the non-core segment was around 140%, which leaves our go-forward business at around 100%. As it stands, the non-core segment is heavily skewed to property and accounted for a significant portion of North America's current year Catastrophe costs. In particular, the homeowners book was quite impacted by the recent convective storms. Where do we go to from here? Non-core net revenues are expected to broadly halve in 2024 and halve again in 2025. Assuming second half Catastrophes at budget, the underwriting loss for non-core lines this year will be in the low AUD 200 million range. This should more than halve in 2024 and then improve further and conclude in 2025. We think reserve volatility from the segment should be well contained, given the majority of gross reserves have been reinsured through various loss portfolio transfers. Roughly half of the remaining net reserves relate to short tail lines. Looking out, what worries me most is the residual Catastrophe exposure that remains through the runoff and the need to manage our expenses sensibly. We're working with our partners to continue pushing rates and terms in these lines, and I think we have good governance in place to manage the operational impacts of the runoff. We near the end of the runoff, we expect our Southeast wind exposure will reduce by around 45%, with all peril exposure down around 30%. I'll conclude on the U.S. here. I said from the start, I want to be transparent and open about our journey in North America. We wouldn't be persisting in the region if we couldn't see a pathway to a combined operating ratio that can sustainably trend in our group 90%-95% target range. The successful runoff of the non-core segment should help us bridge much of this gap. Whilst we've had some setbacks this period, they have been concentrated in the parts of the business we're exiting, hopefully, these slides help shed some light on our performance. Let's move to outlook. We're re-reiterating our full-year outlook today. We expect group constant currency GWP growth of around 10% and net insurance revenue growth to track at a similar pace. We continue to expect a group combined operating ratio of around 94.5%, which excludes the upfront cost of the reserve transaction and includes a revised catastrophe budget of around AUD 1.3 billion. On investment returns, whilst we can't predict where financial markets will end the year, we've again provided you with a view of our exit running yield. Our combined ratio guidance, alongside current investment settings, should support a mid-teen return on equity this year. We'll circle back to discuss how the second half is tracking on November 27th for our third quarter update. I'll close on the outlook here. This has been a disappointing half for me in many regards, but I do think we're making progress on our key initiatives and have good momentum in the business. A mid-teens return on equity for the year would be great following the setbacks we've encountered this half, and we're all working hard to make that a reality. With that, I wanted to thank you for joining us, and I'll pass back to the operator for Q&A. Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask the questions on the phone, please press star one one and wait for your name to be announced. If you'd like to cancel your request, please press star one one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. One moment for the first question. First question comes from the line of Kieren Chidgey from Jarden. Please go ahead. Morning, guys. Couple of questions, maybe just starting on the US and some of the non-core portfolio there. Andrew, I think you mentioned sort of the Westwood contract having a maturity date of May 2025. I'm just wondering, what is your ability under that relationship to significantly reprice, to reduce some of these very elevated losses, ahead of that contract sort of rolling off in 2 years? It's a good question. It gave us some limited ability to actually look at the portfolio and reprice. But we have the straightforward view that in 2025, this business needs to attract another carrier. They need to ensure that when they hand it over to another carrier in 25, it is profitable. It also generates a reasonable amount of the commission revenue for Westwood, which was the business we sold. There is an alignment of interest to ensure this portfolio is working. Otherwise, in 2025, if no carrier wants to support it, it's gonna be a very challenged business on both the underwriting part and Westwood. There is alignment of interest, and that's what we went into the contract with. We worked together with them over what rates and terms, and how the portfolio balance actually works. Kieren, maybe if I could just add... Yeah. -to that. This business is actually written in the admitted markets, and there's clearly some constraints within the, those admitted markets, with the regulators as to what we can push on price and terms as well. You've seen some of that, you know, both, through some of our peers, and the back and forth with regulators in trying to make sure we get the pricing, the conditions, et cetera, reflecting the risk. Okay. The commercial business, I think you said, excluding that non-core book, is at a 100 combined ratio in the half. What, what would it have been on a more normalized Cat basis this, this half? Just wondering sort of where, where that is actually sitting? Yeah. It's a good question. relative to- I've got the number. Obviously, obviously lower than 100. I haven't got the number at my fingertips. I think the key with the commercial at 100 is getting the mid-market to a better combined ratio. Because within that 100, programs are below it, and the mid-market is above it. Our main focus is bringing the mid-market down, and the mid-market has had a reasonable amount of Catastrophe impact to it, which is above average, as you point out. Not surprising, the programs have had very limited Cat activity because they're mainly earthquake, of which there have been none, and the North Atlantic hurricane season exposed, so they are potentially going to be impacted in the second half if there are impacts for that. The main focus is getting that number down. I haven't actually got a number, obviously sub 100. I don't think it would be good enough, though. It still needs to be lower than what it would be, even if we did a normalized Cat activity. What is the timeframe you're expecting to get the overall US combined ratio down to either group of sub 95, either? I think it's a great question and one we debate internally. I think we should be looking at 2025 as a time for doing that, because we should be able to do most of the underwriting actions between now and then. Okay, thanks. I just had a second question on reinsurance. Andrew, I think at the start of the year, you signaled ex-crop, that the dollar spend on reinsurance should be fairly flat year-on-year, with rate on line up, up obviously, but sort of less coverage purchased. Can you just give us an update for how we should be thinking about your reinsurance expense moving through to full year? Yeah, Kieren, that trend should continue, you know, for the year of 2023. Obviously, we'll have a built-in step up into 2024, given, you know, we've got this 2-year phasing to part of the program. Some of the increases we saw will flow through into 2024. Obviously, as we get to the end of the year, we'll be providing you an update as to how things are progressing on the renewal for next year. No changes, kind of first half, second half, in terms of what we flagged for 2023. Okay, the only growth will be that prop reinsurance expense going up? Yes, largely. Yep. Okay, perfect. Thanks, guys. Thank you for the questions. One moment for the next question. Next from the line, we have the questions from Nigel Pittaway from Citi. Please go ahead. Good morning, guys. Just, just first of all, on the comment that you're expecting second half to be 92%, which is 150 basis points better than planned. You mentioned that was a combination of sort of rate and growth harder than planned and also tactical expense decisions. I'm wondering if you could sort of give us an idea of sort of the, the relative contribution of those two components. Is it more tactical expenses, or is, you know, the, the underlying result, the biggest contributor? Can you maybe just give us a flavor for how you're thinking about that? Yeah, look, Nigel, it's, we're getting into finer points of precision here. I think, you know, the takedown of incentives and some of the tactical expense decisions is probably somewhere between a half to two-thirds. We are assuming some improvement, given the rate and growth in the first half, earning through the second half. We are cautious on how much we're taking that into account, right? As we touched on, inflation, assumptions are tracking broadly in line at a group level, but there are some overs and unders, and there is some volatility in that. We're, we're a bit cautious in terms of what we're sort of assuming in the second half around that. You're not envisaging at this stage that come sort of full year, you'll be able to say, "Well, some of our inflation assumptions were conservative, we can unwind them?" You're sort of expecting that you'll be holding those still pretty firm come, come year end? I think it's a mixture of, you know, how, how you think about the short tail business versus long tail business. I think in short tail, we sort of end up booking the claims that we're seeing, so we tend to experience it. If it goes up, we have to book that. If it comes down, we have to book that. I think on long tail, it's just harder to see, so therefore, you know, it's unlikely, you know, we'll be looking to sort of meaningfully shift our long tail assumptions. On the short tail, to the extent inflation does moderate in some classes, you should actually see that come through. Okay, thanks for that. Secondly, was just on the I mean, I know there's a number of moving parts in this, but, I mean, obviously, you at the full year, you said you were happy with your Cat allowance for 23. Obviously, you know, have had to now lift it, but at the same time, you have been rationalizing the property exposure. How, how are you feeling about where that Cat allowance, you know, just in broad terms, might need to be in 24? I think, Nigel, I think that's one for us to think about as we end, what get towards the end of the year, when we look at what we've actually done to the gross property portfolio. The focus, and we were trying to convey that earlier on, is I'm really keen for the look at our gross property portfolio. Of course, once we've determined how we want to move that into 2024, that will determine what our reinsurance program, whether it needs to change at all in 2024, and what our cat allowance should be. I think it's hard to say at this point in time, because we're still in the analysis and determination through our 2024 plan of how much we're going to move property next year. Then you mentioned in terms of sort of, US business, that, you know, peers were sort of able to do the 90-95 combined. I mean, one of the striking things is that your distribution does seem to be, you know, quite, quite different to a number of those other players, and particularly sort of, your lack of use of the agency distribution channel. How much do you think that's sort of playing a part in your ability to deliver combined ratios that are similar to that? No, I don't, I don't think it's making a massive difference. I, I agree with you there. The ones where sort of Travelers and others, where they have offices in many places across the U.S. they can sort of go for much more local, smaller operations. There is so much of this mid-market business in the large brokers, the second tier brokers, and even the smaller brokers, so there's just so much of it in total, Nigel, that I don't think it's making a dramatic difference to us. I'm sure Travelers and others do benefit from decades of relationships with some small agents, but I'm, in terms of quantum of total premium in the mid-market in the U.S. I'm not sure that's a massive number. Okay, then maybe just finally, I mean, you did mention that you, you said that you don't want to keep cyber as a peripheral role. Just how significant do you think cyber could become for QBE? Obviously, with, with, with us realizing that, you know, at your previous job, it, it was pretty significant then. Yeah, I mean, again, that's a good question. We haven't, we haven't set a particular target, because I don't want us to go out and try and, try and write as much of it as possible. Peripheral is like slightly a hard word, I think, because we're writing probably $150 million of it successfully over a year or two or three, mainly in North America and out of our international business. I just think there was an opportunity to be consistent, more consistent in it, build on what we've actually got, and it would run into several hundred million. It's very hard, Nigel, at this point in time to determine actual number, the market itself is forecast to grow into the tens of billions of dollars over the next few years. It's been growing incredibly quickly, and if you don't have it as one of your products in your portfolio, then you have the possibility of being competed against by others who will offer it, and therefore will get the other lines of business on the back of it. I'm just a fundamental believer, we're a fundamental believer, you need cyber as an offering and need to ensure it's a consistent offering, get the pricing, aggregation, and claims right, because it does involve risk, like many insurance lines, and it involves the risk of aggregation relatively quickly, so you need to ensure you're managing that aggregation well. Okay, thank you very much. Thanks. Thank you for the questions. One moment of the next questions. Next up, we have the line from Andrew Buncombe, from Macquarie. Please go ahead. Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Just the first one is in relation to the dividends. This half, I understand that higher tax drove the lower dividends, but if that is supposed to be one-off and the capital position is strong, why wasn't the payout ratio higher this half? Because it does imply a pretty significant second half number, even to go to the midpoint of the full-year guidance. Just what am I missing there? Thanks. Hey, Andrew. No, you're not missing anything. The balance sheet is strong. We feel good about it. The growth, strain is meaningful when we look at year-on-year. The reserve balances are up significantly, which we're obviously pleased about, given we're looking to grow in the targeted areas, so we're comfortable with that. The dividend's also up in cents per share, quite meaningfully year-on-year, you know, over the last 2 comparative halves. You know, it's just about being thoughtful, first half, second half. You know, we've got, you know, peak periods for Cat. Obviously, got to land the crop result in the second half, nothing more to it than just simple math of trying to, you know, be cautious first half, second half. I think also the the underwriting. Fair enough. The underwriting performance not being as good as we'd like. Yeah weighed on our minds when setting the dividend for the first half. Yep, that makes sense. Then maybe a couple of questions on slide 18 for the non-core portfolios in North America, please. On the chart on the left-hand side, you've said 14% of NEP is non-core. Is that a fairly similar mix for GWP, or how does that look on that metric? Yeah, I mean, there's not a big difference, GWP, NEP, so it's really the programs business, most of which is short tail, and then the homeowners book again, which is short tail. There's no nuances in the earnings pattern of any of those businesses. I guess, I guess some of the programs are running off. In theory, the NEP should outperform the GWP at some point. Yeah. I guess. Yeah. You're right, it's, it's in the margin. Yeah, and then that dovetails with my final question, please. There's been questions on the Westwood part, but of the ex-Westwood part in that non-core pace, how long should we expect that to unwind? Thanks. We're going to be writing it until May 2025, and then it will earn out after that. We'll have another year's earnings after 2025. That will keep going till May 2026 before the earnings are finished on the whole, roughly. Yeah. Sorry, on the, on the ex-Westwood part- Oh, the ex-Westwood part. Most of that should really- Sorry, that was the Westwood part. Yeah. Most of that, ex-Westwood we should be done with by the end of next year, Andrew. We are progressively coming off those programs during the course of this year, so there'll be some, earnings lag, as Andrew was referencing, for some of that into next year, really, by the end of next year, we should be done. Yeah. Got it. The final one from me, can you just give us some color on how often you mark your valuations on your unlisted property? Thanks. It's a good question. We mark them quarterly. These are based on submissions from each of the fund managers that are managing these valuations. You know, we have been very cautious around the valuation of some of these unlisted properties, but we are largely following, you know, the data points we're getting from the fund managers. You know, the clear area of, of a bit of strain here is in the office side of commercial real estate, as we all know. We're relatively underweight when we think about the mix of business we have. It's broadly diversified by region and by, in a mix in terms of office, industrial, et cetera. We're feeling pretty comfortable with, with where we've marked it. We're probably going to see some further marks come through in the second half, but nothing, you know, that's going to have a meaningful impact in the aggregate. That's it for me. Thank you. Thank you for the questions. One moment for the next questions. Next up, we have the line from Julian Braganza from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Good morning, guys. Just the first question on the crop portfolio there. I imagine that'll be a reasonable chunk of the improvement in the North America combined ratio trajectory then. Just a couple of comments there. Firstly, interested in understanding just the 93%, just the split there between claims and expenses. Then secondly, just in terms of experience versus industry, I think you flag favorable trends versus industry historically. Just be interested in understanding exactly what you're seeing there. Thanks. On the claims ratio, you know, the claims ratio is probably the biggest component. This is not a heavy expense ratio business, and also, we get some favorable economics given the quota share we've got, with the seed commission that comes through. you know, the 93 is really anchored around a medium-term view on performance of that business as we've seen it. Clearly, the last 2 or 3 years have been higher than that. We think, you know, the efforts to balance the book, manage the volatility through the greater use of the federal fund, diversifying our book across different states, and having the external quota share is all geared towards, you know, supporting less volatility around that 93, but clearly, we've continued to experience that. That's in essence, how we anchor it. There is no differences in terms of what we're seeing in the claims ratio versus what the industry is seeing. You know, we are a number 2 player in the market, you know, our performance is broadly in line with the aggregate market as we look back over the last 2 or 3 years. I mean, if I look at just the, the last 4 years, the average of 96%, long-term target of 93, 99%, once you back, once you include the, the AUD 40 million deterioration into, into last year, is it, is it a function of the underlying pricing that the, the Federal Reserve is running, or is it, or is it, is it just more, more, more a function of timing and in terms of how long it takes to get there? To understand what can be done to get, get the 96% on it. Yeah. No, it's a good question. It's something we give some thought to as well. Clearly, I think what you're calling out, which is just factual, and that's why we've shown it on the slide, is that the last 2 or 3 years have run higher than what we see as the medium-term average for that business. Now, if the next 2 or 3 years continue to run at the same level, we'll obviously have to rethink, you know, what we think the, the target for that business is. You've got to remember that this is a relatively low capital business, so some level of underwriting margin actually translates to a decent return on capital. There are, you know, pricing lags in terms of, obviously, if the, if the, if the risk is changing, it does take some time for the Federal scheme to reprice to reflect that. We are not able to reprice business. We've got to effectively write the business that comes in the door at the prices stipulated by the federal government, albeit we have the flexibility to then cede that business into the Federal fund. You know, let's see how this year plays out, and, but, but you're calling out the fact that, you know, the 96 is higher in the last two or three years, and, and that's the fact. We've also sort of changed our view of what we're going to cede to the federal fund this year, based on what we've seen over the past three or four years, the, the most impacted states, and that seems to be okay so far, based on what we've, what we've seen in terms of weather patterns in the US. Okay, great. Thank you. Then in terms of, in terms of specialty there, obviously, clear, this 94% relatively better, better performing there. I think, I think the clear message, message you're giving us there is that uncertainty there in terms of just the outlook around social inflation and, and, and pricing in that market, which is, which is causing some, some caution around growth in that, in that segment. Is that, that's, that's basically the take in that, in that particular clause? Yeah, that, I mean, that's definitely the case, because within the financial lines, we've got D&O in there, where pricing started to turn, I think, beginning of last year, and is falling quite a lot. Therefore, we're not writing as much of it as we thought. Then we've got our transaction liability, which has been ensuring M&A transactions, and there haven't been that many M&A transactions this year, so the premium in that area is, is fallen away. Our aim is to focus on that combined ratio and profitability rather than maintaining our premiums. Yeah, premium growth in that, that business is going to be quite tough for the next year or two. Okay, fair comment. Then last, last question for me. Just on that 7% inflation number last year, in line with inflation, slightly off this year. I mean, in terms of your expectations and, just into, into the rest of the, the rest of the financial year, I presume you'd have some line of sight on, on where it is at a group level and where it's heading. Just be interested in any comments, whether it's by class or, or just at a group level, that would be appreciated. Thanks. Yeah. I mean, as I referenced, the actual at the half year, you know, is broadly in line at an aggregate level. There are some overs and unders. In Australia, it's run a little higher. In parts of our international business, it's run a little lower. Clearly, we are seeing slightly different patterns emerge in terms of economic, broader economic inflation across our regions. We're not really assuming any material change in a first half, second half. We're obviously seeing some of that short tail uptick we'd seen in Australia just moderate a little bit and, and rates start to catch up. But we're not necessarily projecting a significant deviation or improvement into the second half at this stage. Great. Thank you so much. Questions. One moment for the next questions. Next up, we have the line from Andrei Stadnik from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Good, good morning. Can I ask my first question around your de-risking in the property book? Like, which regions are in focus, and, how much, yeah, how much de-risking do you have remaining in terms of time frames? We're looking at property across the whole group, and what we're trying to see is whether we've got aggregations that we actually haven't actually seen before. We've obviously been impacted by some, the infamous unmodeled perils in the first half of this year, and I want to see whether we can look at our property book and ensure we've got good balance in terms of exposure we've got in the right geographies. If we have unusual events, such as the amount of convective storms or flooding that we've seen, or the Winter Storm Elliott we had last year, that we're not surprised by the outcome of it. I think we have been surprised by the size of those, and I want to ensure that we actually look at our property portfolio, and not be surprised going forward. That's what we're trying to do, is try and look for aggregations that we probably haven't looked for before, to see whether we have got too much property in certain areas on the planet that could be impacted by events that we haven't contemplated before. That's the main aim of it. Also, looking at how volatility is being driven, so the models keep changing on the modeled events, and are we picking up more volatility than we have? If we are deploying, as I mentioned earlier on, this property Cat capacity, which is in heavy demand at this point in time, we're also thinking of complementary lines, so we don't just grow property without thinking about what other lines of business we can sell to our customers through our broker network. Trying to think about property in a different way than we have done previously. And how far along are, are you in this process? Because I think you called out on the [segment] that you'd load your up $100 million GWP in the U.S. specifically. So how far along this journey are you? Yeah, I think, I think we're making good progress. We've, we've decided to change what we're doing in certain areas and stop underwriting certain programs, which is good. I just think there's more, more to be done, and this year has actually shown that. We've seen events that we haven't actually seen before. Want to actually look at those and see if we can actually learn more on it. I think we've got a group-wide initiative looking at it, so it's good. We're learning from each of the three divisions who we think is doing it better than others. Have we got better information in one division compared with others? If we have, how do we elevate everybody to be the best? It's a relatively straightforward program of work, and see what we can learn from it. Overall, we can see that property cap, and almost more than property cap, because it's in areas that we did not think were catastrophically exposed. Property generally is impacting the volatility of our earnings, and we want try, try to decrease that. One of the aims is to actually reduce what we've got in property cap, and one of the aims is to actually increase the other lines of business. We're seeing whether it's gonna be a combination of those two factors, and so far, it seems to be a combination of those two factors. We can't rely on the reinsurance program to take out volatility at the level we're feeling it. It'll take out volatility at a much more extreme level than we're being impacted by. Gotcha. Thank you. Can I ask around pricing? Pricing improved in the June half, but also even in the June quarter, it improved, and that's despite slowing pricing in financial lines you called out. What were the areas that actually saw better pricing, and what's driving that? Well, obviously, property I've just been talking about. On the, on the stuff we're keeping, we're really pushing, terms and conditions and pricing. We have done quite a lot in the property lines. I guess we've also seen it to some extent in motor, in parts of the book. Those be the main areas. In casualty, we're trying to hold our position. Yeah. Obviously, you've got areas like, you know, QBE Re, which obviously have a first half skew in terms of what business we write. It's predominantly property plus other short tail lines where we are seeing inflation persisting, and we're responding to that. Broadly across casualty, you know, it's sort of in the single digit, mid-single digit sort of area code, more broadly beyond some of the areas we've talked about, such as financial lines, where we have seen some rate actually go negative. Thank you. If I can ask final question, but maybe slightly hypothetical, but again, on crop. US crop pricing in two of the three largest crop areas are down substantially from February levels. If those levels persist, is there any chance of delivering a low nineties combined ratio, or is some sort of a high combined ratio inevitable if these current price levels persist? As things stand today, you have a series of overs and unders. Pricing on corn is probably down mid-teens from kind of the base level pricing. If that holds, Andre, for the rest of the year, that shouldn't be a problem. Obviously, if it starts to go further south from here, you know, that may have an impact, just depending on what happens on yields. Prevented planting this year has been a bit better than we had last year. Last year, we had some meaningful losses in the prevented planting, so crops gone into the ground. Growing conditions, you know, there's clearly some drought conditions across different parts of the U.S. but we are also seeing some level of rain more recently. We'll just have to see how all that plays out. It's not just prices, you know, there's a series of other moving parts, but if pricing conditions hold up where they are today, you know that, that shouldn't be a factor ultimately. Thank you. Thank you for the questions. One moment for the next questions. Next on the line, we have the questions from Simon Fitzgerald from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Hi there. Maybe first question for yourself, Inder Singh. I was just looking for some of the sort of drivers around the net insurance finance income of AUD 149 this time around. I was interested to know, you know, with the fixed income losses from changes in risk-free rates, I guess I was just looking for something more representative of the mismatch there, which you mentioned again, was AUD 30 million. Perhaps it's got a little bit to do with just my coming to terms with AASB 17, but maybe you can just give us some highlights there. No, it's a very good question. You've got a negative AUD 200 million in the investment losses. These are your risk-free rate impacts on the investment assets. The AUD 149 million is really the, mainly the, the gain on liabilities from higher risk-free rates. Clearly, AUD 200 million minus AUD 150 million is AUD 50 million, and we're talking to AUD 30 million. The other AUD 20 million is really to do with just some of the accounting for the Enstar transaction in terms of deferral of some investment income around that. That is your delta. The net ALM impact is, is AUD 30 million when you look through that. Okay. Normally we should see those two again, representative of that mismatch that you speak to? Yes. Under normal circumstances? Yes. Yeah. Okay, that's good. Yeah. Second Thank you. Second question for yourself, Andrew. At the first quarter 2023, you mentioned, you know, some of the issues around the delays and sufficiently being able to assess those claims, specifically related to Storm Elliott. You did mention that you'll need more people. I think you also talked a little bit about potentially lifting the assessor skill, but just wanting to know a little bit how you've gone with that, and, you know, obviously what sort of confidence you have that you're not gonna run into the same problems in the future. It's a, it's a great question, isn't it? I think, I think the challenge we have, to say, Storm Elliott was a very large storm, happened towards the end of the year, and I think the process we're going through now as we assessed the convective storms in June is better. We've got more people involved in it, using more data. I'm a great fan when you're assessing these, you get the actuaries, you get the claims managers, and you get the underwriters all looking at it together. You come to a number of views, 'cause they would never agree with each other. You look at those views, you come up with a reasonably conservative end of the position. Look at any market information anybody else has announced.... again, set your number on the back of that. I think we've done a more thorough process with the convective storms in June than we did with the numbers back in December with Winter Storm Elliott. I'm pretty comfortable about it. There's always gonna be a challenge of actually getting it right. Based on limited data, you're having these losses just before the end of the year, even a month in, few claims actually come in. It tends to be in month two and three, you start picking it up then. Everything we've seen so far, we feel pretty comfortable with the numbers we came up with in June. We've also, the Storm Elliott hasn't, hasn't deteriorated from where we were earlier on, which is also good. Excellent. Just one final question that sort of still stems from that issue. You did mention a little bit about AI technology. Do you think there can be a technology link here to help, you know, speaking with assessors and their link to actuaries and, and so forth? I think I'm really excited about AI because of the amount of information both underwriters and claims managers have to review to come to a conclusion. There's definitely gonna be something in it. Underwriters have to go through pages and pages of relatively unstructured data to try to assess the risk, and AI must be able to help that. Then picking up your point, similarly on the claims front, you're looking at a lot of unstructured data coming in to make your assessment of the claim. AI, I think, will be able to help in both of those areas. Quite excited about it. Want to ensure it's well controlled, but I do believe it could be a major changer for the insurance industry. Excellent. Thank you. Any other questions? We do have a few more questions on the line. The first one comes from Siddharth Parameswaran from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead. Good morning, gentlemen. Just a few questions, if I can. Just firstly, on rates and your and premium rates and what you're seeing on retention rates, it seems like, I mean, you obviously had very good premium rate growth, and rate outcomes this half, but it looks like your retention rates are starting to drop. Just wondering if you could comment, how much you would tolerate some of these numbers to, to continue to, to remain at these, at these levels, particularly in Australia, I think, where retention seems to have dropped. If you could just give some comments on, you know, longevity of the current trends. Actually, Sid, on that point, we're, we're pretty pleased with the way retention is holding up. If we look at Auspac, second quarter retention of 88%, I mean, that's a very healthy retention given the level of rate and term changes we're seeing. We think, you know, what we're trying to do is broadly align with where the market is at in terms of pricing for inflation, Cat costs, reinsurance costs, et cetera. The only area where we've got retention, you know, relatively low at 66% across North America is partly because we're not renewing, you know, significant amounts of business as we've just referenced. You know, we're trying to come off business, which obviously prints that number lower. Yeah. You're, you're comfortable that, I mean, so you're not worried about North America, obviously, because that's still going through remediation, but all the other portfolios you're very comfortable with? Yeah. Look, I think. All the rate. Mid-eighties, I think is a very good, healthy level for the industry. We're feeling that, you know, the market is absorbing, you know, the changes in price and terms, and we're not out of line. I mean, I think, I think if anything, we had a marginal concern, retention's been a bit high rather than too low, because if we are trying to put rate through to improve some portfolios and we're retaining too much of it, it means we're probably not moving enough. Yeah. Okay, understand. That's very clear. Thank you. Inder, if I could just ask a question on inflation, so particularly around, I think you mentioned that on short tail, you're seeing signs in certain areas, perhaps it might start to moderate down from the 7%, 8% that you saw at the end of last year. Just on long tail, I was hoping you could give us some comments on what you've seen so far, whether you have and what you've done with your inflation assumptions. Have you kept them the same? Any reason to worry about long tail inflation? No, no material changes in views, really, Sid. We are holding to the assumptions we've held, you know, which is in the low to mid single digits across casualty, more broadly. Clearly, in, you know, in the second half of last year, we did increase some of our inflation assumptions, you know, as we saw some of that inflation spike. We've also, you know, where it makes sense and where we've got specific drivers like average weekly earnings in areas like, you know, CTP and, and others, we have picked those higher. But nothing we're seeing in terms of emerging trends. The issue really is, you know, on a 2, 3, 4-year look forward basis, you know, the risks around social inflation, and we're seeing some of these, you know, verdicts, as courts reopen in the US come through. We've talked about how we've been de-risking our portfolio against some of those trends, but that's what we really worry about on a, on a 3, 4-year look forward basis, rather than anything in-year that we can react to on the long tail business. Okay. Are there other signs that those court awards are going higher? We haven't seen anything like that. Yeah, we haven't seen... We've seen one or two instances in our book, but, you know, broadly, as you've seen from the commentary in the US, you know, we are probably seeing activity around commercial auto, around general liability, umbrella classes, where there have been instances of verdicts coming through. You know, the business we're writing today is much more focused in terms of the smaller limit sizes, et cetera. We're very conscious of that risk, and some of the recent trends are probably going back to where we were pre-COVID. Okay, great. Thank you. Just one final question for me, just IFRS 17, I'm just trying to unpack your views on underlying performance in 1st half 23. Firstly, were there any impacts from things like onerous contract charges that might have been, you know, higher or lower this half versus the past? You know, my simple view on underlying might be just to start with that 97.6 and just subtract PYD and also just the adverse CAT trends, you know, which are worth about 4.4. That would suggest about 93.2 for the 1st half. It does suggest, you know, significant improvement is needed in the 2nd half to hit your guidance. Usually you've seen some adverse seasonality in the second half. That is what you guide to, particularly on Cats. I was just wondering, you know, it seems like you'd need significant improvement in the second half. Is there anything from IFRS 17 that is, you know, that is basically distorting the trends in the way I'm looking at those numbers? No, obviously, IFRS 17 plays through a number of line items, right? Whether it's onerous contracts or the movements around risk adjustment or the movements around discounting, I think it's really difficult to sort of put a line through all of that and say it's materially over or under. I think the second half improvement is really anchored around the things we've talked about. We're not assuming, you know, that there is a material leg down in current accident, year ex Cat. On the allowance, it's very simple. We've taken the actual for the first half, your AUD 700 million, and we've just added the allowance for the second half. You know, there is no more maths than, than that. We just caution that trying to get to an underlying, excluding the Cat overrun, you know, you've got to be cautious around that, because clearly we are seeing as we think about 23 into 24, there will be an increase in the planned allowance that we had at the start of this year versus what we're going to have in the plan for next year. Okay. Okay, thank you. Thank you for the questions. We have a last questions coming from the line of Anthony Ho of CLSA. Please go ahead. Thank you. Just 2 questions. Firstly, just on slide 18, on the left-hand side, you showed us the non-core portion of the North America business that you will look to run off over the next 2 years. I just want to check, are there any costs or, or, you know, capital impacts arising from that runoff? Yeah, I mean, we, we did talk about managing the When you say costs, you mean extra costs in running them off? No, there's no extra cost in running them off. Yeah. There'll just be our underlying expenses, and we need to manage our expenses as they run off and redeploy the people who are managing that runoff into other parts of the business, which should be easily achievable. There's no, there's no exceptional costs or extra costs in running off those lines. On capital, again, the same. I mean, you know, as Andrew referenced, there's about AUD 2 billion in reserves associated with that book, but that's heavily reinsured, so the net reserve's closer to AUD 800 million. A chunk of that's short tail, so no, no real material capital changes either. Okay, thanks. Second question is just around your ROE. You mentioned before that if you keep your full year guidance, you know, which includes a much stronger second half, then you achieve a mid-teens ROE. Now, if you, if you succeed in your initiatives around rebalancing the North America business, you know, what do you think is achievable in the ROE, once that takes shape over the next couple of years? That's a good one to commit to. Exactly. I think, I think based on interest rates at this level, I'd like to continue to achieve something like a mid-teens. You're right, it's a balance. It's really hard to say because interest rates are, or investment returns are so high at this point in time. Are they going to stay at 5% over the next few years? I think it's unlikely. You're coming down to 2% or 3% again, and then you're adding the underwriting profit of mid-nineties, whatever that works out from a ROE point of view. I guess it's hitting mid-teens when you drop the investment return to 2% to 3% and you add a better combined ratio. Yeah. I mean, just, just to give you, Anthony, a sense of how we think about this on a through the cycle basis, we're effectively targeting in our pricing, you know, a return framework that sort of is 10% plus risk-free. You've got to take a view of what the blended risk-free is going to be based on our duration and mix of currencies, and that's, in essence, our target return hurdle. Okay, thank you. For the questions. I would now like to hand the call back to Andrew for closing remarks. I'd just like to end by thanking everybody. Thank you for the questions, and thank everybody for joining us today. Thank you.