Good morning and welcome to Beazley's 2024 Q3 Trading Update. I will now hand over to Chief Executive Officer Adrian Cox. Please go ahead. Thank you very much, indeed. Good morning, everyone. I'm Adrian Cox, the Group CEO of Beazley. I'm here with Barbara Jensen, the Group CFO, and Sarah Booth, Head of Investor Relations. Thank you for dialing into the Q3 call. I'll give a few highlights, and then we'll go into Q&A, and Barbara and I will both be in that session, so I'm very pleased with how our business has navigated the claims environment we have had this year. Our commitment to disciplined underwriting and risk selection has meant that despite an active hurricane season and lots going on in the cyber world, we are on track to deliver the guidance we provided at our interim results in August. That guidance was for growth in the high single digits, rate change in the low single digits, and a discounted combined ratio of around 80%, a yield on our fixed income investments of 5%. So where are we at the end of nine months? Well, gross and net growth are both 7%. The reason for that is we've spent more on reinsurance than originally planned. We spotted in the summer an opportunity to increase significantly the amount of cyber catastrophe bonds and ILWs that we purchase. As we've been saying for a while, we are actively encouraging the development of this catastrophe market in order to be able to hedge our at-scale cyber systemic risk. This is in line with our strategy. We see the ability to use cat bonds and ILW as part of the toolkit we need for that systemic exposure. This was a subject that we discussed at the Capital Markets Day in October, where we did a deep dive into cyber. The slides remain available on the website if anyone is interested to dive into that. The hurricane season has been more active this year than it was in 2023, but despite floods in Europe, hail in Canada, and a number of storms, and indeed tornadoes in the U.S., we're able to maintain our full year combined ratio guidance of around 80%. We have provided a little more detail on the two largest events, Hurricanes Helene and Milton, between the two of them, noting that it is still early and losses will take a while to develop fully. We've given an estimate of between $125-$175 million. Our investment performance through the third quarter was very pleasing at $513 million, or 4.7%. The average yield of our fixed income investments at the end of September is 4.3%, which I think supports a good outlook for investment returns. Our rate change for the nine months is flat, which I think is consistent with the commentary that we gave at the half year. Looking at the divisions in a little more detail, cyber risk growth is down a tad from the first half, but we continue to grow well, particularly outside North America, although our new business is up generally. The market continues to be relatively competitive, particularly in Europe, despite the increasing levels of cybercrime and some severity issues on large businesses and CrowdStrike, which have not changed the market in quite the way it might have done had it been a more significant event than it has turned out to be. Rate change for the year has remained unchanged from the interim, and we continue to be very bullish about the short and long-term prospects for this class. Moving on to MAP, the team continues to grow well, but given the increased cession to our third-party Syndicate, 623, income for the Beazley Group is still down a little, 5%, compared to 3% at the half. On a total managed basis, though, so including the premiums that we cede to the third-party Syndicate, that team has grown 6% year to date. Rate change is steady at 2%, and I think the heightened geopolitical uncertainty and generally good economic prospects mean we think demand for the products within MAP remains strong, and we feel quite confident about the continuing growth prospects in this division. On property risks, from a premium perspective, the third quarter is the lightest quarter for the property division, but both growth and rate change have remained relatively stable from the half year. On specialty, we continue in the same vein as we have mentioned for about seven quarters now, navigating the challenging conditions in the D&O market while growing in other smaller niche areas that have less exposure to social inflation. Internationally, our environmental book, our white labeling business, M&A, and so on and so forth. That is beginning to pay off, and year to date, the division has caught up a little bit, so down 1% for the nine months as opposed to 3% over the half year. Rate change is at 1%. Lastly, I thought I'd give an update on the progress of our share buyback program. It completed at the end of September this year. As we get to the end of the year, we'll have a final view of prospects for growth in 2025, as well as the amount of capital available, and we will assess whether we have excess capital to distribute and, if so, whether to renew the share buyback program or perform other capital management actions. Finally, I will note, as also mentioned at the interim results, it's likely that our growth next year will be slightly lower than this. So to conclude, again, we've delivered a strong quarter with contribution from both our underwriting teams and our investment teams on track to deliver our guidance for the full year. And with that, I will open up to Q&A. Thank you very much indeed for your time. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. We'll pause for just a moment while waiting for them to queue for questions. Thank you. We will now take our first question from Kamran Hossain of J.P. Morgan. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Hey, good morning. A couple of questions for me. The first one is just on the, I guess it's the Milton and Helene number combined. I was just interested in, like, when you think about the development of the business, you know, in comparison to maybe Ian, where you had a smaller property cat footprint, are you surprised at the size of the loss? Maybe could you help us think about how to scale one versus the other and whether actually this was surprisingly large or kind of in line with what you'd expected, you know, given the growth in the book, you know, given the relative size of the two, or sorry, the one versus the two events this year? Second question is on the cyber environment. I think, you know, if we look at last year, the US was quite competitive, international maybe less. So can you maybe help us understand what that environment looks like at the moment, where the opportunities are in cyber? Because I think at the CMD, you laid out some pretty exciting kind of market growth assumptions over the next couple of years. Thanks. Thank you, Kamran. Good morning. So if you compare the loss activity of those two versus Ian, if you look at the mid-range of the losses, which is about $150 million, that's about 2.5% of net insurance revenue. Our loss from Ian was just over 3% of net insurance revenue. And the reason for that is that the book has roughly doubled between Ian and now. So I think that shows what we've managed to successfully grow our property business insurance and reinsurance without affecting the risk profile of the group overall. So we're relatively satisfied with the relative performance in those two sets of events. From a cyber perspective, you know, we're encouraged that we're seeing more new business generally, as I mentioned. I think brokers are more actively selling this year than perhaps they had last year. You mentioned the Capital Markets Day. We, you know, we do believe that over the next 5 to 10 years, the cyber market will have prospects to grow, you know, up to $35 or $40 billion. That is unchanged. I think Europe has got a bit more competitive this year as the opportunity has become, you know, more obvious to more carriers, but we're relatively comfortable with where rates are overall at about minus 6%. And I think the results that we produced at the half year show that we're producing a sort of margin on that business that we should be able to do, so I think we're quite bullish about the opportunity to grow next year. If one separates the U.S. and international opportunity, I think the U.S. is the greenfield territory is more in the SME environment. Outside, it's probably more mid-market and large risk. So the growth will look a bit different. But we are quite bullish about the prospects overall. Thanks, Adrian. Thank you. And we will now take our next question from Will Hardcastle of UBS. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Hey, thanks for doing the call. The first one is just any additional color that you can give on CrowdStrike. I know you didn't give an estimate, but do we read into that that that's a relatively immaterial loss on a group level overall? And secondly, I'll give it a go, just thinking about the capital distribution potential. In the context, I guess just framing it, you know, thinking about the context of potentially similar earnings year on year, given you reiterating those numbers today, and the quantum of last year's buyback and the gross proposition year on year, I guess just any framing would be helpful. Thank you. Great. Super. Thank you, Will. Thanks for the questions. Yes, I think the, you know, our estimation of where CrowdStrike losses will end up is relatively immaterial for the group now. And we didn't mention it specifically, really, because there was not much to say. Thinking about capital distribution, you may note that the wording we used to talk about capital was relatively similar to the wording we used to talk about capital this time last year. And I think it's because, you know, the situations are relatively similar. We have had a good year. We like to think about what to do about capital at the end of the year. The growth prospects, you know, with the market flattening out at this point in time, you know, look a little bit more modest than they have been for the past few years. And so if nothing happens between now and then, we'll likely be having the same sorts of conversations about, you know, capital requirements and capital availability that we did this time last year. But so we kind of wanted to point out the preconditions this year are pretty much the same as the preconditions last year, but there's still a bit of a way to go between now and the year end. And we're in a very volatile world at the moment. And so the prospects for growth could change quite quickly. So we're just kind of laying out the context, noting that the real discussions will start in about two, three months' time. Brilliant. Thank you. Super. Thank you, Will. Thank you. Once again, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. And we will now move on to our next question from Ivan Bokhmat of Barclays. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Good morning. Thank you very much for the call. My first question would be about the outlook for next year. Maybe you could try to quantify a little bit more this appetite for growth in 2025. Should we be thinking about still high single digits on an earned basis? Anything that would be different within the composition of that growth? The second question I've had about the D&O and whether you are seeing any changes in that market. Do you anticipate any rate turn or any other drivers there? And the third one, perhaps a smaller question. I think it was reported in the press that you have stopped writing new business in the healthcare segment around hospitals. Maybe you could try to give a little more color around that. How material is that for your top line and the business overall? Thank you. Great. Thanks, Ivan. Good. Thank you for the questions. So I'll go through those in turn. What we said at the half year about prospects for growth for next year as we saw it then was that, you know, in sort of broad terms, instead of growth, expected growth being in the high single digits, they're more likely to be in the mid single digits. I don't think anything has happened between then and now to change that. And I think the fact that rates are flat year to date is a proof point of that or a data point for that. As I said a couple of minutes ago, though, we do live in a very volatile era, so things can change quite quickly. But, you know, as we sit here today, there's nothing that has happened that sort of changes that macro perspective. D&O, there's been increasing conversations around rates beginning to flatten out. We are seeing some signs of that in some cases, but the market remains competitive. So we're not, we haven't banked in any change to D&O next year as far as our planning is concerned. And nothing has happened yet to change our risk appetite. So we're continuing to be quite constrained on that D&O book. I think for things really to change, either we need significant loss emergence from more recent accident years and/or the financial markets to really open up and put more demand into the system. And neither of those have happened yet. We've got quite a large healthcare book. A relatively small part of that is hospitals. And that book in itself is about a quarter of the size it was at its peak. So from a premium perspective, you won't notice it at all. We've been saying for a while that the hospitals business for us is right at the crucible of where we see social inflation because you've got large institutions that are typically targets for the plaintiff bar that can cause, you know, severe or catastrophic bodily injuries, which is the sort of thing that juries react to, and unfortunately, that market for a long time now has not adjusted its underwriting to contemplate that dramatic increase in exposure, so we announced a few weeks ago at the big healthcare conference, ASHRM, that we wouldn't be writing any new business and our renewal business will be restricted to key long-term clients only, which is a relatively negligible amount of business. It's a shame. We've been in that market now for over 20 years and we, you know, healthcare is a big segment for us. But, you know, we could not see a way through it at the moment. We need some things to change quite significantly for that business to become more attractive again. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And we will now move on to our next question from Nick Johnson of Deutsche Numis. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Thanks very much. Morning, everybody. Please can I ask three questions about is that okay? But firstly, on pricing. So you're saying that for the nine months as a whole, pricing is flat for the portfolio year on year and it was plus 1% for the first six months. Just wondering what the pricing change was for business actually written in Q3 year on year. Just trying to understand what the go-forward pricing environment is like based on Q3 experience. Second question is on investments. Very nice to see a strong third quarter. So yields were down in the third quarter, but they're now heading back up. Just wondered if you've taken any portfolio actions to lock in some of the gains on investments that you saw in Q3, remembering a few years ago that you, I think, were actively putting in place some hedging when yields were moving. And then thirdly, sorry, it's now our IFRS 17 question. Cool. In the first half, there was a big positive effect from cash flow timings. Just wondering if you'd seen anything similar in the third quarter, I suppose positive or negative versus assumptions on cash flow timings? Thanks. Great stuff. Good morning, Nick. Thank you for your questions. I'm delighted that I'm only going to answer one of those. So we give a breakdown in the IMS of pricing movements by division. And, you know, it's relatively marginal up and down both ways. I think as we think about pricing into Q into 2025, essentially one of the things we'll be doing is thinking about what we expect rates to do per division. And we'll be changing the business mix according to that and the relative risk reward. So I think we'll be able to give more guidance about what we expect overall rates to look like as we get towards the end of the year. But broadly speaking, we're expecting for rates to be, you know, up a little bit or down a little bit, you know, but it's very low single digits either way, I would expect. Yeah. And if I take your question, the investments, Nick, yes, it's correct. We've seen a downward move in yields in this particular quarter. We haven't as such been taking any derivative actions in terms of locking in certain profits. But bear in mind, we have approximately 90% of our investment portfolio being liabilities or assets that are matching our liabilities. Hence, you would see those two net out in terms of movements. In terms of portfolio changes, otherwise, what we've also been doing, I would say in this particular quarter is to take off a little bit of risk. But in general, no derivatives to do any particular transactions on locking in profits. As said, we are very much focused on the matched profile of our investments. Hence, the big proportion actually having a counter effect when it comes to our liabilities. When it comes to the IFRS 17 question, we don't give out any sort of details when it comes to the cash flow patterns in this particular quarter. But again, when looking at the effect on the discounting, obviously, you will see that there is a discounting benefit, which will be smaller in the third quarter than it would have been in the second quarter where we discussed this somewhat. So what you should be focusing on going forward is that the reduction of the unwinding of the discounting effect will probably be somewhat lower than what you saw in the first half year if rates remain as they are. But let's see how it moves from here. Okay. Super. Thanks for your answers. Thanks a lot. Thank you. And we will now move on to our next question from Andreas van Embden of Peel Hunt. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Hello. Good morning. I just had one question around your casualty book. I just wondered whether you could sort of talk around the assumptions you're making across your initial loss picks and any changes in your reserving assumptions. I'm hearing there's an acceleration of social inflation in the U.S., across the U.S. casualty books, particularly excess liability, general liability, and commercial auto. I appreciate you're not exposed to all of these classes, but could you just sort of indicate whether you're seeing this acceleration in Q3 and whether you are sort of setting aside more against your casualty book in the third quarter and plan to do so in Q4 as well? Thank you. Great stuff. Thanks, Andreas. So there's been nothing since the half year. No, I think, you know, we had some conversations after the half year about our initial loss picks for our liability business in 2024 versus 2023. And, you know, we did get more cautious when we made our initial loss picks because we don't see social inflation going away. It is relatively concentrated for us. You know, we do see social inflation really being geared towards individuals and small businesses suffering egregious harm or bodily injury, which, as you notice, mostly in things like general liability umbrella, excess casualty, and auto, which we don't write. So I think for us, the main area is healthcare and of that, the most extreme is in hospitals, which we've already discussed. As you read some of the third quarter statements that have come out, you know, there are more adjustments being made, particularly in those areas. But we haven't had to update any of our assumptions since the half year, no. Do you think the issues are really confined to these areas and there's no spillover effect into the book you're writing? I don't think the exposure to our book has changed since the interims that caused us either to adjust our underwriting or adjust our reserving. No. So things haven't got worse. They've just got the level of inflation is continuing as it has been. I think we've been reacting consistently for the last seven or eight years on this. Yeah. Understood. Well, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And we will now move on to our next question from Darragh Quinn of RBC. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Hey, morning, everyone. First one, could you maybe talk about your expectations for the property renewal next year in both E&S and reinsurance? And maybe just tack on to that also kind of your risk appetite for property risk in light. And the second question, could you maybe speak to deployment year to date that you've done compared to plans? I guess, you know, I'm thinking about you've taken out more cyber reinsurance. Does that mean that actually you've deployed less capital? Because kind of like the second part to that is I'm also thinking about the flexibility, I guess the capital flexibility that you have for 2025. Okay. Thank you. So I didn't quite get the second part of your first question, but I'll attempt to answer the first part and then maybe you could ask the second part again. So you'll see on the rate change that our property team continue to get a little bit of rate. We're not expecting additions next year for property insurance to change a great deal. We still see business moving from the admitted market into the E&S market. So continuing to promote business into the market that we operate. I think the opportunity to be more likely to be in the mid-market to SME than the large ticket business. And so our business mix may change a little next year. And we may get more in the U.S. and less in London that reflects that change in business. But we still see a good and expanding opportunity on the insurance side. For reinsurance, I think, you know, before the hurricane season really got going, there was some discussion about changes in structure and price reductions. I think the commentary for that has adjusted a little bit, you know, more flat and maybe some specific adjustments in the Southeast and parts of Europe. I think our expectations for 1/1 are relatively flat for the reinsurance business overall. As we think about cyber, the main reason for us buying the increased reinsurance was because we could and we're trying to encourage growth in that catastrophe market and bring different pools of capital into the cyber reinsurance business. It does give us more optionality going forward, both in terms of how we hedge our cyber business and therefore how fast we want to be able to grow the cyber business. It does give us a little bit more capital flexibility. We haven't done it, though, for the capital flexibility in and of itself. That will not impact particularly how we think about excess capital or uses of capital. It does give us more options in terms of how we manage our business mix and how we manage the cyber opportunities. It wasn't really done for capital purposes. It was done for more strategic reasons, although there are some capital benefits to it. Yep. And I guess just for completeness, this comment about capital flexibility is not just at a cyber level, but also at a group level, right? Because presumably they might have some benefits to, I don't know, your diversification or the whole capital. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So the three peak risks we have for capital are cyber, our U.S. specialty risk business, and property. And the fact that we're effectively hedging the tail risk for cyber, you know, helps that diversification absolutely and just gives us a bit more optionality. Got it. Thank you. Thanks very much indeed. Thank you. Thank you. And we will now take our next question from Abid Hussain of Panmure Liberum. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Oh, hi, morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Two questions, if I can, please. The first one is on growth. Just wanted to check my understanding. If pricing remains stable in the property cat lines in particular, do you feel you're able to grow that book into that environment, or do you need to see growth elsewhere across the total book in order to remain balanced and diversified across the group? That's the first question. And then the second question is on your reinsurance book. What proportion of the property cat reinsurance book is quota share versus excess of loss? I'm really asking the question because your overall losses for Helene and Milton seemed a little bit light. I'm just trying to understand why that was. Thank you. Got it. So I think if prices stay where they are on the property book overall, we will be able to grow next year. And I think there'll be growth on both the reinsurance side and the insurance side. One of the reasons why we brought those teams together in the first place was to allow us to deploy capital actively where the risk-reward was better. And so we'll continue to shift that around a bit to sort of match where conditions are. But I think there's opportunity for growth in both those across property in both divisions. When we look at the reinsurance book in totality on the property side, it is by far the bulk of it is property cat XL. There are a very small number of quota shares in there, but it is de minimis, really. So it's mostly an excess of loss business. Got it. That makes sense. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. There are no further questions in queue. I will now hand it back to Adrian for closing remarks. Great stuff. Well, it's good to be able to have another quarter where we've delivered in line with our guidance. We're trying to rebuild our track record in doing what we say we're going to do. Thank you very much indeed for your time and your questions. And enjoy the rest of the day. Thanks very much indeed.