Okay, good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Hiscox Q1 2024 trading update. I'm Paul Cooper, Hiscox Group CFO, and I'll be walking you through the usual topics that we cover at Q1, namely growth, claims experience, the investment results, and the buyback update. After this, I will hand over to the call moderator, who will open the floor for Q&A. Let's begin with growth. I'm pleased to report the group has delivered ICWP of just over $1.5 billion, up 8.3% year-on-year. This has been underpinned by disciplined capital deployment in Re & ILS, as well as accelerating growth in our retail business. We continue to make solid progress across a portfolio of businesses. In retail, we are beginning to realize the benefits of the initiatives implemented over the last couple of years, focused on improving service to brokers, reinvigorating our brand, as well as launching new products to service our customers' needs. In our big ticket businesses, we continue to maintain a thoughtful and disciplined approach, growing the business where we see opportunity and moderating our position where this is not the case. Let's dive further into this and examine our growth by segment, starting with retail. Retail ICWP growth increased to 5.8% in constant currency, up from 4.2% at full year. In line with our guidance, retail growth has returned to its medium-term target range. This has been driven by a step-up in growth in the UK business and robust growth in both US DPD and Europe. So three of our four retail engines are now performing well with good momentum and opportunities ahead. In the U.K., improved performance across all areas of our business delivered growth of 8.3% in constant currency, a significant step up from 2023's full year growth of 2.4%. We remain positive on the U.K.'s outlook. However, growth will temporarily moderate in the second quarter due to some non-recurring premium recognized in June last year. Our European business has delivered growth of 6.6% in constant currency. This is in line with our expectations due to challenging first quarter comparatives. We expect the growth rate to build as the year progresses, with the momentum further helped as new products and partnerships come online over the course of 2024. In the US, our digital business, US DPD, is now growing at double-digit rate, having accelerated to 11.3%, up from 9.2% in the second half of last year. It is most pleasing that both the direct and the partnerships parts of the business are growing at double digits. Marketing investment, strong retention, and the full digital launch of our workers' comp partnership are all helping to drive growth in the direct business. In digital partnerships, production is ramping up across both our new and existing partners. The only part of the retail portfolio that is performing below our expectations is US Broker, where premiums continued to reduce in the first quarter. As previously disclosed, the business has been impacted by the challenging market conditions in cyber and the time it is taking to pivot to growth after the book was decisively re-underwritten back in 2021. While we're starting to see promising results from our targeted growth campaign, particularly in architects and engineers and entertainment lines, we expect the US broker business to continue to shrink at mid-year. Now, moving on to London Market. After a year of strong results, our London Market division has continued to exercise discipline to manage the cycle effectively. The rate increase of 3% achieved in Q1 was slightly ahead of our expectations. While it is lower than last year, overall, the business remains attractively rated, with cumulative rate increases since 2018 now standing at 76%. London Market ICWP decreased by 4.9%, and net ICWP decreased 6.3%. Adjusting for the one-off impact of accounting reclassification items, London Market gross premiums were broadly flat year-on-year. Consistent with our strategy to lead on the majority of the business we write, during the first quarter, we made the proactive decision to non-renew certain large binder deals and instead write the business in the open market. The initial negative impact of this is expected to dissipate through the course of the year. Looking at the underlying momentum, property classes continued to enjoy double-digit net growth, most notably in property binders and flood, while we continue to manage the cycle in D&O, Cyber, and GL. The transition to the green economy and national energy security concerns continue to present significant opportunities. Our ESG sub-syndicate, launched a year ago, has had a positive start to 2024, with casualty risks now also written under its umbrella. We are also continuing our collaboration with Google Cloud. After the 2023 proof of concept successfully demonstrated that we could reduce the time taken to quote a terrorism risk from 3 days to 3 minutes, we are now implementing this into the live environment. Work is also underway to extend the core capabilities to our major property class. Over time, we aim to roll out AI capabilities to all relevant lines of business, which will free up time for our underwriters to focus on their higher value tasks. Moving on to Re & ILS. Hiscox Re & ILS achieved ICWP growth of 19%, as the business deployed additional own capital and new quota share capacity, with net ICWP growing nearly 10%. January saw an orderly and balanced renewal season, with standardization of terms and conditions across the market, r ates grew modestly by 2%. This followed a significant improvement in 2023, with cumulative rate increases since 2018 now at 94%. Regarding the April renewals, rates fell slightly in the Japanese renewals, but remains adequate. Looking ahead, positive market conditions are anticipated to persist throughout 2024, and we will continue to deploy capital where we see attractive opportunities. After a successful 2023, our ILS fund returned profits to investors, leaving our assets under management at $1.7 billion at the end of March. Fund outflows were partially offset by our sidecar and ILS fundraising efforts. The movement in AUM should be considered alongside the additional quota share capacity we secured ahead of 1/1. We expect ILS AUM to continue to decrease, resulting in a likely trend of net ICWP growth exceeding moderated top-line growth in 2024. Now, looking at our claims experience. The first quarter of 2024 has seen some natural catastrophe activity, but these have had a limited impact for Hiscox. Overall, we are well within our group nat cat budget for the quarter. The situation regarding the Baltimore Bridge disaster is complex and ongoing. I can report Hiscox has no direct exposure to the business interruption policy of the port, nor the property policy covering the bridge. Hiscox London Market does participate on the reinsurance for the IG group of P&I clubs. No associated reserves were booked in the first quarter, as it remains an emerging event. However, we expect the net loss to be moderate for the group, due to the reinsurance arrangements in place. Let's move briefly on to our investment result. The investment income result for the first quarter of 2024 is $66.9 million, representing a return of 0.8% year to date. This has been somewhat impacted by mark-to-market adjustments on bonds, as expectations of central bank rate cuts moved out during the quarter. The outlook for the year is good, with the yield to maturity now at 5.2%, up from 5.1% at year-end. The duration of the bond portfolio has been extended to 1.8 years, to position the portfolio in anticipation of falling interest rates, and also to be more in line with our liabilities. I am pleased to report good progress with our $150 million share buyback. As at 30th of April, we have repurchased 4.7 million shares for approximately $71.4 million. This represents approximately 48% of total buyback. At full year 2023, we declared a final dividend of $0.25 per share, an increase of 4.2% year-on-year. Today, we have gone ex-dividend on this. In summary, we are excited for 2024, with opportunities to be realized across all areas of our business. The return of our retail business to the target growth range is an encouraging result and demonstrates the success of our initiatives to proactively capture the opportunities in front of us. We expect our UK, European, and US DPD engine to continue to deliver robust growth through the year. Attractive market conditions persist within our big ticket businesses, and we will continue to deploy capital where there is opportunity for profitable growth. This concludes my opening remarks, so I will now hand over to the operator to open the floor for Q&A. Operator, over to you. Thank you, Paul. If you'd like to register a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad, ensuring you are unmuted locally. If you'd like to withdraw your question at any time, you can do so by pressing star followed by two. The first question comes from the line of Will Hardcastle of UBS. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Oh, hi there. Thanks for taking the question. The first one is just on retail. I guess you called it out there that maybe the only niggle in retail was the US broker side of things. When would you expect this headwind to normalize? And with UK now coming through, US DPD coming through, would you be confident enough, confident enough at this stage to be exiting 2024 nearer higher—nearer to double-digit levels, or is that too optimistic? And then on London Market, I guess, can you help us to understand whether we should be anticipating this still to be in the positive territory by four-year stage? And you talk about that this is partly because of improved economics. Is there any way to discuss whether that perhaps less premium expectation that people expect now is entirely offset by the better margin? Thanks. Great. Thanks, Will, for your 2 questions. So yeah, look, it's useful to walk through the retail dynamics. So yeah, you're right. I think it's useful to put a U.S. broker in the context of the overall retail performance. So, you know, let's start with that. So first of all, it's good that we are back within the 5-15 range at Q1. The overall momentum is positive. If I talk to US B roker, I think there's 2 things that are occurring. One is, we talked and signposted at Q2 last year, that the cyber market in U.S. brokers become very competitive. And although that sort of abated slightly into 2024, it has persisted into this year. I think the important thing to bear in mind is, as the cyber book has shrunk as a proportion of the overall US broker portfolio, clearly the drag is less, going forward than it would have been, let's say, in 2023. I think the other aspect is, you'll recall that in 2021, we repositioned the entire US broker portfolio away from, let's say, really large clients, for simple purposes, and much more towards the smaller micro end. And it's just taken time to really re-engage with brokers, our underwriters, and distribution, to get that sort of underwriting appetite clarified and really driving forward. Now, what I would say is, that there are signs of sort of positive momentum, certainly within architects and engineers and entertainment. There are two aspects where we've put some growth initiatives forward, and that's clearly got some traction. But, I mean, we are cautious on US broker overall, and that's why we've said, look, you know, we don't anticipate this to return to growth in Q2. We'd expect the reduction in premium to continue, and we'll give an update at the half year. That does contrast, I would say, with the other engines of the retail business. So your sort of point about the trajectory of retail as a whole, it's worth considering the three other aspects. So the UK, clearly what we've seen is a really good step up from the 2.4% at full year 2023, up to the sort of in excess of 8% for Q1. The momentum there is really positive. So, you know, we have new distribution deals signed. We've got a stronger operating rhythm within the business, and the brand refresh has been positive, and is driving traffic into our website. I think Europe continues to have solid and strong performance. It's had a solid Q1 at 6.6%. We expect the momentum to increase over the rest of the year. And then US DPD is clearly a benefit and is very encouraging for us to see that that momentum that was building in H2 last year has continued into the first quarter of this year at the 11.3%. So I think you can see the sort of shape and direction of the retail business when you take all four of those parts in aggregate to help you sort of determine where we'll end up within that 5%-15% range. And then I think on the London Market question, where I think it's useful just to put that in a strategic context, first of all. So what we have said is that, you know, if you look at what differentiates us in London Market, it's to lead on the majority of the business that we underwrite. And that lead enables us to have better control over terms and conditions, and it enables us, we believe, to see the market faster. And I think as a consequence of that, we non-renewed certain binders in the first quarter. And what we intend to do is capture that business and write it in the open market. Now, clearly, that saves on some additional commissions where it's delegated authority. I think what you'll see is that, that growth will come back over the course of the year as we write more and more of that business in open market. I mean, renewables is a good example of that, where we non-renewed a binder. We have. You know, if you think it's pretty much an emerging line of business with the significant investment in the transition to the green economy. And in essence, what we've done is we've built up the underwriting expertise. We have added engineering resource, and we've got more and better data for better underwriting insights. And clearly, that enables us to lead on the business as to purely delegate the authority. So, you will see where we have done that, taken that approach and that strategy, improve the economics, but it won't be material, given, you know, the context of the overall London Market business and the overall group. So hopefully that helps sort of explain, the London Market sort of trajectory well. Yeah. Thank you. The next question comes from Kamran Hossain of J.P. Morgan. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Hi, morning, Paul. Two questions from me. The first one is just on, I guess, DPD and partners there. It's good to see growth ramping up in 2024, from those partners. What's the pipeline like for new partners at the moment, and kind of where, you know, in general, where are these partners, coming from or being sourced from? The second question is from, on the London Market. You've kind of said you want to increase the amount of business that you lead, but I note there's also a comment that you're writing more. You've said that you've seen particularly strong growth in property binders as well, and properties. I'm just trying to square the two things, because one says you want to lead, and one says you're growing a little bit more on property binders. Thank you. ... Yeah, it's okay, that's a good point and worth clarifying. So I think if I deal with the second one first, just on London Market, because it follows on quite nicely from Will's earlier question. Now, the important thing on London Market is it's not either/or. You know, what we've said is it's a lead on the majority, but if you take the London Market binder business, you know, rates are very attractive in that line of business at the moment. So they're up 12% on our book of business in Q1, and that's entirely consistent with our points that we've made, that we will deploy capital into attractive market conditions. And we've seen that, if I broaden that point out, not only in property, where overall we've grown that double-digit on a net basis, but also into the reinsurance space, where we grew our net book nearly 10%. So I think it is consistent, but it's definitely not an either/or, but it'll give you a sense of sort of what we want to achieve on London Market. I think for DPD, the point that we would do is. The strategy is really one of all roads lead to Hiscox, and therefore, what we want to do is broaden out the distribution base, certainly to points of aggregation. So if you have a look at sort of some of them, they might be wholesale brokers who are online, they might be other insurance companies that want access to our portfolio of business, that they don't have expertise and write on their own balance sheet. And I think there's a. If you look at what we've achieved, we had something like four new partners in Q1 of 2024. We'll continue to see a pipeline, clearly, the business is very attractive of those partners, who either want to get access to our products or actually want to earn decent fee income for distributing our products on our behalf. I think the important thing is that we are very focused on the quality of those. It's not just a question of driving volume for its own sake, and therefore, you shouldn't expect a sort of partner pipeline to be sort of metronomic and sort of steady. And indeed, what you'll see is, you know, actually the existing partner base is very pleasing. I would say that we have some tremendous existing partners. They are showing, you know, strong growth as we've replatformed, finished the replatforming of that. And indeed, you know, you are starting to see traction on the newer partners. Thanks, Paul. The next question comes from Faizan Lakhani of HSBC. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Hi, there. Thank you for taking my questions. The first is sort of looking at the retail growth beyond 2024. So, you know, you mentioned DPD growth has sort of pleasingly got sort of, you know, low double digit. I just want to understand how sustainable that is. And assuming that we maintain that level, and the rest of the business sort of grows sort of, you know, rate plus 1%-2%, would it be fair to say that structurally you're sort of thinking about growth being at the lower end, or the 5%-15% looking out to 2025 onwards? The second question is on the rate increases within the retail business was about 3%. Is that enough to cover inflation, or should we assume that the retail combined ratio deteriorates from here? Thank you. No, I think it's... Thank you, Faizan, on both of those questions. So, I think the first one is that, you know, what's hopefully been helpful is the trajectory of the business over the course of 2024. So, you know, we're into the first quarter, you know, we've talked about the trajectory, and then, and we've said that, you know, the guidance is to be, to be within the 5%-15% range. And then I think from a rate perspective and the prospects of inflation, I think what is useful, first of all, is that you've seen inflation come down. Mercifully, it's not where, from a sort of, you know, whether you want to call it RPI, CPI perspective, say, 18 months ago, it was far more strong and on an upward trajectory. Hopefully, it's coming down, and you'll know that we've sort of been monitoring inflation quite closely. Now, the read across, and I think the important point to note about rates, is that there are sort of two dynamics. There's one which is the rate itself, but also indexation. And you'll know that we also index a number, certainly on the property classes, that's not reflected in rates. So what you'll have is, if the exposure of a building has increased by 10%, we'll increase premiums by, say, 10%, the rate will be zero. But clearly what we've got is more premium on the same underlying exposure. So I think that's just another aspect to consider on that. You have to look at it in the round, but absolutely, we're focused on inflation and how it might permeate through the book. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Anthony Yang of Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. ... Good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. My first question is coming back to Hiscox UK. Are you able to give some color on how much quantitatively the non-recurring premiums was recognized in June 2023? And then, the second question is just a general question. Why ILS outflow, given the attractive market conditions in general? Thank you. Yeah. Great question. Thanks, Anthony. I think the first one is that, I mean, we've, we signposted the Q2 non-recurring. I mean, I'm not gonna put a number on it, but I think it's more important to just think about the overall trajectory of the UK. So what I think is very pleasing is firstly, the step up in Q1, and I think what's useful is that that's off the back of, and it's broad based, so it's across products and channel. And what we've seen is a stronger operating rigor in that business. We've seen the distribution deals that we talked about at year end get traction. And we've seen the brand really start to, to play a part in the brand refresh. So I think it's more the question of, you know, the H2 momentum and the output to that is positive. I think, I think then in terms of, ILS, I think it's a really interesting position. So, we're seeing sort of contrasts. You'll recall that our ILS funds, we delivered, record returns for them, last year. We delivered ourselves a sub 70% combined ratio, which I was extremely pleased with. And against that background, I think if you look at the sort of various, third party capital providers that we trade with, what you have seen is an increase in quota share partners. So we have attracted more interest from those. That's off the back of, you know, we can originate a lot more risk, and get access to risk that those quota share partners may not be able to, or indeed it would be non-correlating for them. So that's, that's sort of increased, and we deployed their capital early in Q1. Then you're right, it's... You know, we have seen an outflow of the, the ILS capital. Now, you know, we, we had got some further, capital in, so, you know, that number we quoted, a net number. There is interest out there. We continue to garner interest. I think it's just a question of, timing for that part. So it's a bit newen. But look, I think, you know, the longer that you see, you know, if I talk about more the broader market context, the longer that ILS stays on the sidelines or exits, the, you know, the harder the market will remain. And you've seen that, you know, in the, the fact that we deployed our own balance sheet and grew, in re, you know, around 10%. So it's an interesting dynamic, that one. Cool. Thank you. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from the line of Tryfonas Spyrou of Berenberg. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Hi there, Paul, and I've got two questions. Sorry if one of them may have been answered. My line got disconnected. So, it's on the US retail, DPD in the US growth. Can you maybe contrast the relative growth rates of partnerships versus the direct business? So the first one. The second one is more high level, I guess, question on London Market. You talk about rates being up 76% cumulative since sort of 2018. And appreciate it's a very simplistic way to look at it, but I estimate sort of total net premium growth of 87% during that period. So, I guess in real terms and volume, that implies very little growth. Clearly profitability is at a very good level. You know, the best, you know, conditions we've seen across Lloyds, in general in many years. So I guess my question is: Why have we not seen more growth, given we're in the cycle? Clearly, there's a lot of tweaking in portfolio, but I guess, I just want to get your maybe high-level thoughts on why, sort of, Hiscox hasn't grown more into this, London market cycle. Thank you. Yeah, it's a good question. So, you know, I think what we've done, and hopefully it's helpful, that you know, if you take the direct and partnerships business, you'll see that we've achieved in Q1 for USDPD, 11.3%. And, you know, we've said that partnerships is in double-digit category. You can, you know, roughly the split, direct is one-third, partnerships two-thirds. You can sort of infer what the what the you know that it's also double digits are direct from that basis. I think London Market, I think it's important to you know we write and manage on a very disciplined basis across the cycle. That is absolutely the franchise value of Hiscox in London Market. So if you rewind, over the course of the four years, we've had four consecutive years in the 80s territory in terms of combined ratio. You know, for the larger syndicates above, say, 1 billion of premium, you'll see that for the last three years we've been in the top two, from a profitability perspective. That's not done through having, a growth agenda, come what may. It's absolutely focusing on profitable underwriting. And, you know, you can see that play out in the way that there are mini cycles occurring across London Market, where we're leaning into the attractive rating conditions in property. For the last two years, you've seen, you know, rates go up. It was something like 20% plus last year, for certain of those sub-lines. And this year, you see binders increase 12, flood 13. So we're leaning in and growing where we see that conditions are attractive. And then equally, we're managing the cycle where conditions are less attractive. So cyber's down 9% for us, D&O's down 6%. We're managing that aspect accordingly on the sort of casualty line. So, I think that's, I think that's sort of one dynamic. The other one is, you know, we intend and are well positioned to capture the structural opportunity that exists in that transition to net zero I talked about, and that's through, you know, two aspects. One is, you know, just purely the MES division, but also the ESG syndicate that we launched new last year. So we continue to innovate, to grow. And then the last aspect, I think, is one of efficiency that will underpin the overall London Market, and we're very pleased with the pilot that we're extending to the broader London Market business. You know, clearly, if we can drive efficiencies into the underwriting terrorism as that example of reducing the underwriting from three days to three minutes, really, really helps. And therefore, I think, you know, it's just that hopefully positions the overall sort of London Market aspect. And then clearly, we're a diversified group, so, you know, we have the advantage and benefit of, you know, not only looking at London Market on its own, but, you know, we've shown that we will deploy capital in attractive market conditions for Re. And equally, we've got a long-term structured opportunity in retail, that we are continuing to capture. That's helpful. Thanks, Paul. The next question comes from the line of Freya Kong of Bank of America. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. Just to clarify on London Market, so I think net premiums were down 6% in Q1, but you expect it to recover through the rest of the year through recaptures. Are we still looking at positive territory for the full year, or do you expect there will be some overall disruption from the non-renewals? And also, can you give us some steer on how much business in London Market that you lead, versus what you delegate, and has this changed materially over time? And other than the renewables portfolio, are there other lines that you're looking to take more of a lead in? And another question just on the Baltimore Bridge, which you've talked about as a moderate loss. Some of your peers have said that there's nothing in that loss that would change our combined ratio guidance for the year. Would you say your comments are broadly consistent with this as well? Thanks. Yeah. So let's cover the there's three elements to this. So let's start with London Market. Yeah, so you're right. On a net basis, we were down 6, gross about 5. We expect that to recover as we recapture the binders that we've non-renewed. And we expect that to be in positive territory. It just won't be as high a growth result as compared to the prior year. So, but it will grow over the course of the year. I think in terms of the overall business that we lead, it's about 2/3. And, you know, I said that as a strategy, we look to increase that. Clearly, I think there's just a... It's difficult to get that to 100%. We'll look to increase that modestly, and it will vary across various lines of business and various divisions. Some of it we have a very high lead capability, and other lines of business, actually, it's far lower, but we'd be looking to increase it. And then I think the last point about Baltimore is... Look, I think it's one. If I comment about Baltimore, specifically, you know, that loss occurred on something like the twenty-sixth of March, so it's very close to the quarter. It is very complicated. There's clearly a number of parties involved. What we have been trying to add clarity about is, from a direct perspective, the exposure that we have and where equally don't have it on a direct basis. So you'll see that for the port, we're not on the business interruption cover. For the bridge itself, we're not on the property policy, and then, but we are on the sort of P&I Group. We do have extensive reinsurance in place, so, you know, we've said that that loss will be moderate. As kind of that sort of interacts with the overall combined ratio for London Market and the group, I mean, it's sort of Q1, you know, we've got to get through the second half, cat season. But what is pleasing is, you know, the first quarter of the year, you'll see that we are well within our overall cat budget. So I think it's a good start to the quarter. We'll provide more detail as we work through the complexity of the Baltimore Bridge and put a number up in the second quarter. That's our expectation. Okay, thank you. The next question comes from the line of Ivan Bokhmat of Barclays. Your line is now open, please go ahead. Hi. Good morning. Thank you very much. I've got two questions, please. The first one, maybe if you can just share some of the experience of the recent April renewals and your expectations into the summer renewals. I mean, what I think mostly interests me is what's happening with the attachment points on the property cat business. Are you seeing any tangible evidence of them sliding down? Or maybe it's being offered as part of some broader treaties, et cetera. And maybe, you know, another question related to that, you've commented about the price change in April renewals. What do you expect for June and July, please? And the second question, it's related to the expectations of a rather busy hurricane season this year. Maybe if I could ask you about the, your exposure to severity of losses. And if we go back, let's say, to the experience of 2022 with Hurricane Ian. I mean, if we have a rerun of an event of similar magnitude, let's say, you know, $60 billion-$70 billion, God forbid, would you expect your reinsurance, your exposures to work in a, in a similar way, just in terms of where, let's say, share of loss might end up being? Thank you. Great. Wow, there's a lot to unpack there, Ivan. Look, if we start with Japan, you know, we said at 1.4, rates were down modestly. You know, we have a good market share there. You know, that's off the back of the business being well-rated off of the loss environment that was prevalent in the market for Japan in something like 2018, 2019. So we're sort of pleased with, you know, not only with the sort of premium and the rates that we obtained, but also the sort of general terms and conditions. I think in general, and I think we've said this, the market has been, what we'd say, is in equilibrium. So, you know, if you go back to 1/1 and certainly through to 1/4, we're not seeing a meaningful drop-down, certainly for our own portfolio or attachment rates. You'll recall that, given the dislocation of 1/1 in 2023, I think the whole market, as a generalization, really increased attachment points quite significantly to move away from the sort of attritional action. Now, I think what we can see, and that sort of equilibrium position, I think is trending similarly into the summer period that you mentioned, June and July. So what we are seeing is, you know, there is still interest in cedants buying additional limit, and I think that additional limit that's being sought and the additional demand is being met by the supply that's out there. So, you know, we think that, that sort of orderly market will continue into the summer period, is our sort of outlook and the view. And then I think, you know, what you'll see is... And, you know, I would say that, hard to say entirely if, if Ian was a rerun, you'll know that that's 2022, because clearly, you know, the portfolio sort of changed, certainly on the primary front, and, and to some degree on the, on the, reinsurance front. But you can-- there's clearly going to be a different impact given the move up in attachment rate, attachment points, that you mentioned for, for 2023. And I think that was borne out. If you... If another, data point to maybe bear in mind is, you know, last year was another $100 billion loss, similar to 2022. It was in excess of $100 billion of insured losses. But you can see that really the reinsurance sector as a whole performed very well through that. And I think that shows the, you know, not only that people were being paid a lot more for the risk that was being undertaken, but also I think, you know, the changes in terms of conditions that were, were biting then. Just as an indication, you, you'll know that we put out in our results a box whisker chart around the sort of exposure that we have at various return periods. It might just be worth taking a look at that and, you know, if you want to kind of get a sense of roughly what the industry loss is, and what it would mean on a mean basis to us, is hopefully some helpful data, if you're wanting to look into that. Yeah. Thanks, appreciate that. The next question comes from the line of Nick Johnson at Numis. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Thank you. Morning, Paul. Just a question on expense ratio. I think at the finals, you said the expense ratio impact of increasing marketing spend and other cost growth would be offset by net premium growth. So broadly neutral to the expense ratio. Does, does that still remain the case given the net premium growth you're seeing in 2024, after we include things like portfolio adjustments and U.S. broker headwind? Thanks. Yeah, I mean, Nick, I'd sort of say, you know, we absolutely remain focused on that expense ratio. It is a key priority of mine. You know, what we are looking to capture is, you know, this is broadly across the group, is those aspects of, you know, procurement—strong control of headcount, and then, you know, looking to capture, what we think is a move to things like centers of excellence and shared services. I mean, I think the one delta is clearly, marketing costs. You know, that is one aspect where we continue to deploy, marketing spend to grow, to grow premium. So, and we'll continue to do that. It won't necessarily again, be linear. It'll just depend on the opportunity in any quarter for any of the markets, be it U.S., be it Europe, and be it the U.K. But, I can assure you that it is a, it is an absolute focus of mine. Great. Thanks very much. Thank you. The next question comes from Abid Hussain of Panmure Gordon. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Hi, morning all. I think I've just got one question left. It's on the pricing levels on the big ticket lines. I was just wondering if you can give us a sense of how far above you might be in terms of absolute price adequacy. And I know that the rates have increased some sort of 76%-94% since 2018, but I think part of that is to reflect the increased exposures, as you said, and part of it would be to reflect better margins and getting straight to the bottom line. But overall, it feels to me that you know, prices are still very attractive, you know, possibly you're sort of some 50% away from a point at which prices become inadequate. Is there any sense of sort of illustrating that or sort of pointing us to where or how far you are from that point? Yeah, look, I mean, I think, sort of answer that sort of quickly is, you know, the, the rates are, first of all, risk adjusted. Secondly, you know, if you look at sort of rate adequacy, if you look across the business, it is, you know, certainly rate adequate. We're very pleased with where the portfolio is positioned. You can see that borne out really by the financial results of 2023. And really, if you, you know, if you go back to the year end, I'm pretty sure that Jo said, you know, the portfolio is in the best shape across the group than it ever has been. So, and she's been at Hiscox for a long period of time. Great. Thanks. The next question is a follow-up from Faizan Lakhani of HSBC. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Hi there. I just had a couple of follow-up questions on the back of some of the other analysts. The first one is coming back to Baltimore Bridge, but more broadly, you mentioned you have extensive reinsurance. Could you just give some sort of color what sort of reinsurance you have in place, and how that works in terms of aggregates and specific lines of business? The second question is coming back to the marketing expenditure that you mentioned, that you're looking to increase. Does that mean you're also spending more on branding? And what is the implications in terms of sort of the other operational expense line as well? Thank you. Yeah, I think, look, on, on, on the Baltimore Bridge, we don't give a breakdown of sort of the detail of the reinsurance program. But clearly, you know, if you think about it, we manage severity from a large loss perspective, so that might be in the form of, risk excess of loss protection or, quota share. And generally, if you look across the portfolio, it'll be a blend of those on, you know, the sort of non-cat lines. On marketing spend, you know, we, we haven't split out the, the mix in terms of brand and direct acquisition costs, but the, the way that we think about it, Faizan, is you've got to combine the two for maximum effect. So, really what we want to do is use scale over time to become more effective from a marketing aspect. Pleasingly, we've got strong brand awareness in the niches that we want to go after. And, you know, the spontaneous awareness in the UK, for example, has certainly increased off the back of the brand spend that we've undertaken. Where that washes up is a combination of the attributable cost and obviously the combined ratio for a component of the marketing spend, and then brand falls below the line into the non-attributable. But, you know, clearly what we've said is, you know, and off the back of Nick's question, you know, I see marketing as a good cost. We absolutely look around the economics of what that returns for us before we deploy it. But, you know, we've got a significant retail opportunity ahead of us, and I have no qualms as long as the sort of marketing KPIs show the sufficient return to continue to deploy that. But overall, you know, over time, we're very fixed on getting the scale benefits that should come through on the retail business in particular. So, would you say simplistically, it would be worthwhile for us to add back the other operational expenses into the combined ratio to get a true sense of what that means? Or do you think that's egregious to do so? Well, look, I think it's one view. I think it determines on what you are, what the objective is. So, clearly, IFRS seventeen has been very specific. It's not for us to determine what goes below the line. The standard actually states, any costs associated with underwriting goes in attributable costs and therefore forms part of the combined ratio. And, you know, we are merely following that guidance or the IFRS 17 rule book. I think what's below the line, you've just got to bear in mind and unpick it, that by its nature, it's non-underwriting expense. And you'll have a blend of different items in there, that don't contribute directly to the underwriting. Great. Thank you very much. Much appreciated. Thanks, Faizan. As there are no additional questions waiting at this time, I'd like to hand the conference back over to Paul Cooper for closing remarks. Well, thanks everyone for dialing in, and thanks for all of your questions, as always, and have a good rest of the day and weekend when it comes. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining today's call. You may now disconnect your lines.