Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Tower Limited Half Year Results Announcement 2024 Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Michael Stiassny, Chairman. Please go ahead. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for making the time to join us for this positive Investor Call and Presentation of our 2024 Half Year Results. With me, as usual, in our Auckland office is our Chief Executive Officer, Blair Turnbull, and our Chief Financial Officer, Paul Johnston, who will take you through the results and answer questions, if any. After the tumultuous weather events of 2023, it is a welcome shift to be delivering good news today. Remaining focused on implementing strategy and solid operational delivery, coupled with benign weather patterns, has resulted in a considerably improved business performance. In addition, enhanced profitability and the comparatively swift resolution of catastrophe event claims has significantly improved Tower's capital position. Consequently, I'm very pleased to announce that based on Tower's ordinary dividend policy of paying 60%-80% of cash earnings, where it is prudent to do so, the board has declared an interim dividend of NZD 0.03 per share to be paid on the 27th of June. As you will recall, at the end of FY 2023, following the significant weather events in February 2023, Tower set a prudent large events allowance of NZD 45 million, which currently remains intact. Should the weather gods continue to look favorably upon us between now and 30 September, any unused portion of that NZD 45 million, NZD 32 million after tax, will directly increase underlying net profit to improve the full year results. Our year-end underlying net profit after tax guidance of greater than NZD 35 million assumes full use of the NZD 45 million allowance, so the potential upgrade, God willing, will be significant. The strategic review Tower announced late last year is continuing to progress, with a range of options being considered to maximize shareholder value and optimize our capital structure to support our market competitiveness. No decisions have been made, and we will update the market at the appropriate time. Suffice to say that the Tower executive remains fully focused on strategy and business delivery. While we're all enjoying calmer weather this year, insurers paid out some NZD 4 billion to New Zealand's customers following last year's catastrophic events. This underscores the critical role insurance continues to play in New Zealand's resilience, both economic and societal. Ensuring insurance remains available and cost-effective will necessarily be our focus going forward. That will require Tower to develop new and innovative offerings that not only identify and manage risk and support customers and communities through climate change, but are also affordable. As I've said previously, this is a particularly difficult sum to balance, and regrettably, Tower and other insurers will not be able to continue to provide insurance for everyone. Tower has led the way in New Zealand with our early adoption of risk-based pricing and underwriting. Our view was, and remains, that risk-based pricing is in the best interest of policyholders, shareholders, and New Zealand Inc. There is no question that risk-based pricing gives Tower a competitive advantage by enabling more accurate risk selection and pricing. But importantly, it also signals to the market where to buy and invest. These signals are absolutely crucial if New Zealand is to successfully manage and avoid some of the financial risks posed by climate change. Despite this, what I would call common sense, for the longest time, it has felt like we have been a lone voice, and there were plenty of detractors. Happily, for the future of this country, it appears the tide is turning. To quote recent comments from the Reserve Bank of New Zealand: "Risk-based pricing can provide a strong signal to encourage the proactive mitigation and lowering of exposure to risks, which can be beneficial for society's overall risk management." The Reserve Bank then went further in its most recent financial stability report, calling on other insurers, and most notably the banks, to take action to improve their understanding of natural hazards, to proactively manage affordability challenges. We couldn't agree more. The banks have been missing in action, seemingly reluctant to actively embed climate-related risks in their business operations and risk management frameworks, but nevertheless, content to continue making record profits. I look forward to seeing how the banks choose to respond to the Reserve Bank's challenge, because insurers can't and shouldn't be shouldering this burden alone. In closing, risk-based pricing will continue to underpin Tower's competitive position and underwriting capability, and together with improvements in digital and operational efficiencies and better expense control, will ensure that Tower remains well-positioned to both support customers and deliver shareholder value. I'll now hand over to Blair and Paul, who will take you through the results and outlook before we take questions. Kia ora. Thank you, Michael, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our 2024 Half-Year Financial Results. Here is a summary of our results, which overall demonstrate Tower's positive operational and business performance. On the tail of last year's events, we've never been clearer about our strategy of being a leading direct player in our New Zealand and Pacific markets, and leveraging digital technology and data to drive efficiencies and excellent customer experiences and outcomes. I will walk through these points in more detail shortly, but first, an overview of our performance this year. Gross written premium for the half-year to 31 March increased to NZD 291 million, up 20% on the same period last year, excluding divested portfolios. This was predominantly driven by prior period rating increases designed to mitigate the impacts of inflation, crime, and increased reinsurance costs following the 2023 catastrophe events. Customer numbers decreased to 309,000, down from 312,000 in half year 2023, partly due to our tightened risk appetite for high-theft motor vehicle models. Tower reduced high-risk motor policies by 3,500 policies in the half. Enhanced processes, a reduction in motor theft claims, and calmer weather have led to a decrease in the BAU claims ratio to 49.7%, compared to 51.1% in half year 2023. We are pleased to see our management expense ratio improve again to 31.3% versus 35% in half year 2023. Thanks to our GWP growth, combined with a disciplined cost control and improved efficiencies from investments in digitization and streamlining the business. Large event costs for the half were -NZD 1.9 million, due to a favorable revision to the most recent estimate for Vanuatu cyclone claims incurred in the prior year. There have been no large events in the half, compared to NZD 37.3 million of large event costs in half year 2023. Reflecting a positive operational and business performance, we are reporting an underlying profit after tax of NZD 36.6 million, up from an underlying loss of NZD 3.7 million in HY 2023. Reported HY 2024 profit is NZD 36 million, compared to a loss of NZD 5.1 million at the half year 2023. On the basis of these results, Tower will pay an interim dividend of NZD 0.03 per share. Continued premium growth. The prior period rating increases that were designed to mitigate the impacts of inflation, crime, and increased reinsurance costs following the 2023 catastrophe events have taken effect and were the predominant driver of the 20% GWP growth in the half. We continually review premiums to ensure we provide good value and competitive prices for our customers, while also ensuring that the premiums we collect cover the costs of the claims we pay out. This year, Canstar announced that Tower is the winner of its Home and Contents Insurer of the Year award. The independent research panel noted the outstanding value offered by Tower's insurance products, especially its Standard and Plus policy options, which feature comprehensive insurance cover at affordable prices. A dynamic rating ability enables us to respond quickly to market conditions. Inflation and reinsurance markets are currently looking to be more favorable in the second half of the year, and providing this eventuates, we will review premiums accordingly. Noting, of course, that our approach to risk-based pricing means that pricing for individual customers will always reflect their individual risks. We are particularly pleased to see our proportion of house policies start to increase as we focus more on the home insurance market. We know that our home insurance customers hold more policies and stay longer than motor customers.... Reflecting this is the fact that 55% of policy cancellations in the half were customers who held just one motor policy with Tower. We offer more favorable pricing to lower-risk vehicles and apply higher premiums to those that our data shows will potentially incur higher claims costs. Our retention rate for our New Zealand risk portfolio remains stable at 77%. Half of our customers hold multiple policies with us, and these customers stay with us for an average of eight years. Business unit distribution. Our strategy is underpinned by our three distribution channels: Tower Direct, partnerships, and our Pacific operation. For Tower Direct, over the half year, we've continued to build rewarding and engaging relationships with customers, and our flagship Tower Direct business now comprises 75% of our total GWP, up from 58% three years ago, and in line with our strategy to focus on direct-to-consumer business. A key contributor to this was a 14% increase in new home policies sold compared to HY 2023. Partnerships. Our partnership channel continues to provide positive growth opportunities. In line with our strategy, a group referral model customer journey looks and feels like our Tower Direct experience, and is re- and is focused on one-off referral commissions at the point of policy sale. This increases the benefit to Tower from customers who stay with us after the first year of business, compared to traditional annual commission models. In the half year, partnerships in-force risks increased 6% to 106,000, driven in part by the 36% increase to 3,000 active advisors now referring customers to Tower over the year. The Pacific. This year marks 150 years in operation in the Pacific, and we are continuing to digitize and simplify our offering in the region, aligning our New Zealand and Pacific activities more closely to deliver growth and efficiencies. With this simplification in mind, we completed the sale of our Solomon Islands business in HY 2024, following on the sale of our Papua New Guinea subsidiary in FY 2023. We do expect the sale of our Vanuatu subsidiary to complete in the second half of FY 2024, pending regulatory approval. Tower's first parametric product is now live in Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa, following a successful trial launched in Fiji in FY 2022. Our customer experience continues to improve. Our digital platform is improving the overall Tower experience for our customers as they increasingly adopt our online sales and service channels. In HY 2024, the proportion of New Zealand service and claims tasks completed online over the last twelve months increased to 57%, and active myTower users increased 10% to 156,000. This uptake comes as we've released new features in myTower, such as our Ways to Save advice and the ability to change payment frequency online. We also completed the rollout of myTower across our Pacific operations in FY 2023. Customer satisfaction for New Zealand online sales engagements is positive. Our combined New Zealand Net Promoter Score for online experiences remains steady at 52%, and our overall NPS score has improved to 31%, up from 28% in September 2023. With our core platform now live across the Tower Group and our Suva hub officially opened in February 2024, we're able to flex resources across Fiji and New Zealand, our two biggest markets. The benefits of our 300-strong Suva hub team continue to be realized, contributing to a decrease in our sales and service abandonment rate, now at 12% versus 20% in HY 2023. An important part of delivering a positive customer experience is fixing things when we don't get them right. As we've shared previously, Tower is focused on putting things right for customers who have received incorrect discounts or benefits. The most significant part of our remediation program has been refunding customers who have not received correct multi-policy discounts, and we've made substantial progress towards remediating these customers, and as of 30th of April 2024, we had paid over NZD 8.6 million, excluding GST, to these customers. Continued improvements in our management expense ratio. We're pleased to have achieved yet another reduction in MER to 31.3%, down from 35% in HY 2023. And contributing to this MER improvement are Tower's GWP growth, combined with disciplined cost control, which has seen expenses rise at a lower rate than inflation, as well as business efficiencies from investments in digitization and streamlining the business. The expansion of our Suva hub has also delivered operational efficiencies. In the half year, our Suva team answered 50% of all New Zealand sales and service calls to Tower, up from 16% in FY 2023. Pleasingly, these improvements have also seen our management expenses increase at below the rate of inflation. Our commission ratio continues to improve, reducing to 1.6% in the half, from 2.5% in HY 2023, thanks to legacy portfolio purchases and referral arrangements that have reduced total commission. Our BAU claims ratio is back within target range. Throughout FY 2023, BAU claims costs were challenged by large events, the frequency of motor claims, rapidly increasing inflationary pressures, and supply chain capacity constraints, which impacted the severity or cost of claims. In the half year 2024, a number of key drivers have improved our BAU claims ratio from a peak of 59% in the second half of 2023, back to within our target range at 49.7%. Firstly, underwriting changes combined with targeted premium increases across motor and home, have been effective in reducing claims from higher risk assets. General rating increases implemented to offset inflation and increased reinsurance costs are also now earning through. Recording record claims volumes due to the FY 2023 catastrophe events, Tower improved processes and implemented new technology to deliver faster and more efficient claims management, and this has resulted in 50% of motor claims now being automatically allocated to our repair network via our digital journey, compared to just 10% in the second half of FY 2023. We have also reduced our reliance on third-party assessors, and now more than 80% of house and motor claims are either assessed internally or sent straight through to builders and repairers, and this has reduced both assessing costs and complexity. External factors have also played a part, with calmer weather in the half, reducing both the frequency of home claims in New Zealand and across all claims from the Pacific region. The frequency of motor vehicle thefts has also reduced in the half, and consequently, BAU open claims are now tracking closer to historical averages. As at 27th of May, 2024, Tower had closed 97% of FY 2023 catastrophe event claims. Business performance continues to improve. The underlying NPAT, excluding large events for HY 2024, was NZD 35 million. As you can see from this chart, we are steadily improving our underlying business performance. The fundamentals of our business are performing well, and investment income is also benefiting from higher interest rates. I'll now hand you over to our Chief Financial Officer, Paul Johnston, who will take you through the details of our financial performance this year. Thank you, Blair. Looking at the consolidated results, we can see that growth in GWP has been strong, increasing by NZD 46 million or 20%, excluding divested portfolios, compared to half year 2023. This growth was driven by an appropriate mix of rating and underwriting actions, alongside modest volume growth in the house portfolio. Motor theft and claims volumes continue to reduce following decisive underwriting actions. Organizational efficiencies through the likes of our Suva Hub and digital journey improvements have helped reduce our BAU loss ratio to 49.7%. No large weather events have been experienced in the half year. Pleasingly, the MER improved to 31.3% as a result of expense efficiencies and scale. Higher yields have seen net investment income increase by NZD 3.7 million to NZD 10 million. Underlying net profit after tax, including large events, is NZD 36.6 million, up from a NZD 3.7 million dollar loss in half year 2023, reflecting Tower's financial resilience following catastrophic weather events experienced in full year 2023. Tower's half year 2024 reported profit after tax is NZD 36 million. Movement and underlying NPAT. Here is the bridge between underlying NPAT in half year 2023 of minus NZD 3.7 million and underlying NPAT of NZD 36.6 million in half year 2024. You can see that calmer weather with no large event costs, coupled with business growth, the BAU loss ratio falling back into target range, improved management expense ratio, and investment income have helped support this result. Reported profit was impacted by an increase to the CEQ valuation and an increased customer remediation provision, as well as other non-underlying costs, partially offset by the gain on sale of Solomon Islands business. Due to the low level of open properties and outstanding provisions, this will be the last period in which Canterbury earthquake claims are reported in detail. You can find the slide with the half-year 2024 detail in the appendix of this presentation. Business as usual claims ratio reduced. Over the past two and a half years, the insurance industry has been impacted by rapidly increasing inflationary pressures, the increasing frequency of motor claims and motor theft, as well as supply chain capacity constraints, which have impacted the severity or cost of claims. Throughout full year 2023, these continued to track above historical norms in New Zealand, following a more subdued period due to COVID lockdowns in previous periods. Coupled with weather events, these factors led to our BAU loss ratio increasing. Throughout FY 2023 and half year 2024, Tower applied targeted premium increases across motor and home to offset inflation, higher reinsurance costs, and other increases. We also continue to work closely with supply chain partners while focusing on internal efficiencies and streamlining our business to moderate the impact on customers as much as possible. These actions, combined with motor theft frequency beginning to reduce from its full year 2023 peak, and calmer weather, which has lessened the frequency and severity of house claims, have led to a reduction in our BAU claims ratio. Our BAU claims ratio is now within the target range at 49.7%. Continued improvement in management expense ratio. We are pleased to see our management expense ratio continue to reduce, with an improvement over the half year of 3.7% to 31.3%. The effects of inflation were partially offset by cost efficiencies in the year. Increased scale from business growth also enabled efficiencies and a 4.7% reduction in MER, with a further 0.5% decrease in net commission expenses due to the legacy portfolio purchases. Staff and other costs accounted for a 0.9% increase, and a 0.6% increase in amortization was due to legacy portfolio purchases and continued spend on investments to drive growth and efficiency automations. Higher investment returns as yields have increased. In half year 2024, net investment income increased to NZD 10 million before tax. This was NZD 3.7 million higher than the same period last year. This increased income reflects interest rates stabilizing, resulting in higher running yields. Tower maintains a conservative investment policy, with a focus on high credit quality and liquidity bonds, and a target duration for the core investment portfolio of six months. Our strategy has mitigated the impact on our profit from macroeconomic factors and mark-to-market movements in the past. Throughout FY 2023 and half year 2024, this has allowed us to benefit from higher interest rates, as evidenced by the running yield on the core investment portfolio remaining stable at 5.67% as at 31 March 2024. The outlook for investment income is to remain stable across the second half of FY 2024. Reinsurance program supports resilience. Tower's reinsurance strategy provides protection from volatility caused by large events, and maintains financial flexibility to support growth while underpinning strong solvency. Our reinsurance arrangements for FY 2024 include catastrophe reinsurance of up to NZD 750 million for two events, with an excess of NZD 16.9 million for each event. This was down from NZD 889 million in full year 2023 due to the EQC cap change, which reduced the amount of coverage needed. We also purchased coverage for a third event of up to NZD 75 million, with a NZD 20 million excess. Our FY 2024 retention limits and program premium increases were mitigated by our three-year rolling contracts. Tower's FY 2024 large allowance is NZD 45 million. We have not recorded any large events in the half. Full utilization of the large events allowance is assumed in our guidance for the full year. Capital and solvency position. Increased profits and the progress we've made in settling catastrophe event claims and collecting the recoveries from reinsurers in the half, have further improved our solvency position compared to 109.39% at the 2023 full year. With a solvency ratio of 162%, we are now holding NZD 117.1 million above the minimum capital required for solvency, which accounts for the dividend payment. This is an increase from NZD 79.8 million as at 30 September 2023. Tower's regulatory solvency position is calculated under the new Reserve Bank of New Zealand Interim Solvency Standard, which applies from the current financial year. On the fifteenth of May, 2024, Tower uploaded a presentation to the NZX and ASX, detailing the impacts of these new regimes. While the presentation and disclosure of information in Tower's financial statements from the half year 2024 will change, the standards will not affect Tower's strategy, profitability, and dividend policy. We note that the RBNZ is proposing a second amendment to the Interim Solvency Standard, which is not expected to be issued and effective until Tower's 2025 financial year. The proposed changes to the Interim Solvency Standard are likely to have a material impact on Tower's regulatory solvency position and will reduce the solvency margin. We were pleased that Tower's A-minus credit rating was reaffirmed in April 2024 by AM Best. The board has declared an interim dividend of NZD 0.03 per share. Looking forward. Thank you. I'll now hand back to Blair, who will provide an update on our guidance and priorities for FY 2024. Thanks, Paul. In line with our strategy, our priorities for the remainder of the year are clear. We will continue to invest in creating leading customer experiences and initiatives to support affordability, while targeting the right risks at the right price. This includes adding landslide and sea surge risk ratings to our automated customer-facing quote-to-buy tool, where customers can already see their home's risk ratings for earthquake and flood hazards. In the second half, we will continue to focus on offering competitive pricing. Should inflation and the reinsurance market soften near the end of the year, as we currently expect, then we'll see lower levels of premium increases coming through. In the coming year, we anticipate the proportion of new business from home insurance policy sales to grow as we target high quality risks, and we will continue to grow organically through our existing partnerships. An important priority is addressing the multi-policy discount remediation and other customer remediations, while also ensuring we address the root causes of errors that have led to these remediations. In the second half, we will continue to focus on delivering efficiency, digitization, and process improvements. We will launch new house and motor assessing systems to reduce assessment times and repair costs, and we will continue to leverage our Suva hub to increase efficiency and customer benefits. Our claims transformation project is already delivering benefits, and we expect this to further accelerate in the coming 12 months as key assessment and workflow initiatives are delivered. We'll also continue to invest in products and initiatives that foster future climate change, resilience, and sustainability. Turning to our FY 2024 guidance and future targets. In FY 2024, Tower expects GWP growth, excluding revenue from sales of subsidiary operations, of between 10% and 15%. We've set a conservative large events allowance of NZD 45 million for FY 2024 versus NZD 56 million in the prior year. The half year release of NZD 1.9 million due to a favorable revision to the most recent estimate for Vanuatu cyclone claims in FY 2023, has reduced the FY 2024 large events guidance expense to NZD 43 million. And consistent with FY 2023, we measure large events as those which have a total cost of more than NZD 2 million. We expect further improvements to our management expense ratio, which we anticipate will be between 30% and 32%, and we are on track to meet this target with a current MER of 31.3%. As the rating and other actions that we have put in place to address inflation continue to improve our BAU loss ratio, we expect our combined operating ratio to reduce to less than 93%, down from previous guidance of between 95% and 97%. Assuming full utilization of the NZD 45 million large events allowance, Tower anticipates underlying NPAT to be greater than NZD 35 million. However, any unused portion of the large events allowance at year-end will increase underlying NPAT and improve the full year result. If there are no large events, this would represent an additional NZD 32 million of underlying NPAT or NZD 45 million less tax. At FY 2025, medium-term targets will see our focus in the next financial year on delivering another 10%-15% GWP growth, a management expense ratio of less than 28%, and a combined operating ratio of less than 91%. We are targeting a return on equity of between 12% and 15%. In FY 2026, we plan to deliver another 10%-15% GWP growth, a management expense ratio of less than 26%, and a combined operating ratio of less than 87%. We'll be targeting a return on equity greater than 15%. Thank you for your time this morning. I will now hand back to the operator to ask for questions. Thank you. We will now conduct a question-and-answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by as we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from Andrew Buncombe from Macquarie. Please go ahead. Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. Just the first one in relation to your FY 2024 GWP growth guidance, can you give us some color around what it would take to actually get to the bottom end of that range this year? Thank you. Thanks, Andrew, for your question. You know, 20% in the first half reflects a lot of the rating that we put through last year, and, you know, as a result of the reinsurance inflation and heightened crime. You know, we're still saying in the second half of this year, we expect those premium increases to level out a little bit, and so it will be less than obviously what we've achieved in the first half. You know, we've been very responsive to what we see in the market. We want to be competitive on the pricing. We have some conservative conservatism in there, but, you know, it'll, it'll. The reflection of that is on the 20 on the first half. Excellent. Second question, just in relation to slide 23 and your FY 2026 targets, can you just give us some color around how you're thinking about that NZD 55 million large events allowance, in the context of the reinsurance program you intend to buy at that point? It just strikes me as a little bit unusual that you'd have confidence around that number when you don't know what the reinsurance market looks like. So just some color behind that thinking would be great. Thank you. Hi, Andrew. Two comments to reply to that question. The first one is that we do buy on a multi-year basis. Obviously, as you know, a lot of our multi-year is rolling off, but we'll continue to look to renew. But that multi-year gives us a little bit of certainty for proportions of our program. And then the other one is, you know, obviously we form a view on what the trajectory of the reinsurance market is, and what we feel our reinsurers will be looking for with regards to a retention limit for us in the future. We are obviously, both those numbers are projections, but they are based around holding our 90% confidence level for that large events allowance, taking into account where we expect retention limits to move to. Excellent. And then just the final one from me, please, on the solvency calculation. Previously, you'd flagged a NZD 15 million solvency charge in those stacked bar charts. Firstly, can I confirm that that is still there? And secondly, how should we be thinking about that going forward? Thanks. Yes, when we call an adjusted prescribed capital requirement, the adjusted is to include that NZD 15 million license condition from the RBNZ. So yes, that is absolutely included in those stacked bar charts under the new ISS, that is. And then going forward, you know, we continue to work with the RBNZ. We've made great progress over the years around strengthening our risk and capital positions, and so, you know, we're continuing dialogue. As you know, our license conditions started off at NZD 100 million, and it's now reduced over the last few years down to that 15. And so, yeah, we continue to push and speak to the RBNZ to get it down to zero. Great. That's it from me. Thank you. Thanks, Andrew. Thanks, Andrew. Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone. Our next question comes from James Lindsay from Forsyth Barr. Please go ahead. Good morning, gents, and congratulations on the result and recovery of the dividend. So that's excellent work indeed. Three questions from me, if I may. The first one, just with regards to, again, the GWP growth. And, I suppose if, you know, if I think about the sort of the matrix of, you know, customer numbers, new product development, and on price, can you just talk about, you know, sort of how each of those sort of three components are going? Obviously, this first half, customer numbers were down. Do you wanna go through the other two questions, James, or- Yep ... tackle one at a time? Yep. More than happy to. Yep. No, that's fine. I can cover off the second one. Just with regard to the BAU loss ratio, obviously, good progress there. You mentioned within a range. What would you now expect to be the sort of normalized range for BAU? And then thirdly, if I picked it up correctly, you're suggesting that no ongoing further detail for Canterbury. I'm just interested in your the sort of rationale for that. Obviously, it's been a very long time, and they're down to 21 claims left. Can we suggest, though, that your confidence in having no further charges coming through by not having the detail provided? But, yeah, three questions there. Thanks. Thanks, James. Look, I'll take the GWP one, and then Paul will talk to loss ratio and Canterbury. So on GWP, and look, as mentioned to Andrew, the rating that we put through last year does take a while to flow through the full portfolio, and so the first half of this year reflects the rating that we put through, that we started about this time last year, in response to those big events, the inflation and the heightened crime. The key part is we look forward into the second half of this year. If our expectation around inflation and also crime does start to level a little bit to more normalized levels, then we would expect to see lower levels of insurance premium increases going forward, compared to the first half of this year. Our customer mix is also quite key for us. You're right to highlight that, our overall customer numbers were down marginally. We did increase and focus on our home book, but we did take an approach to very selective around our motor book, and we did exit some high, you know, leading models that were prone to those, those crime activities, in the past year, like ram raids. And that's resulted in the overall motor portfolio reducing, as we noted. Do you want to talk to the loss ratio, Paul, and Canterbury? Morning, James. Yeah, so a normalized range for BAU loss ratio, we feel somewhere is around those very high 40s to very low 50%. And I'd say that's pretty good benchmark compared to any insurance company around the world. You know, we feel that's a fair loss ratio with regards to premium and for our customers. And it also means that we're running the business as efficiently as we can. If I look at your second question on Canterbury earthquake, two points there. One, now that we've moved to IFRS 17, we have increased the probability of adequacy to 90% for our Christchurch earthquake reserves. And so, you know, we're actually holding a little bit more on the balance sheet there now for those Christchurch earthquake reserves in order to hold a slightly more conservative position. And, you know, as you've seen over the years, while obviously those claims are still with us, they are getting smaller and smaller, and that outstanding balance sheet position is still continuing to decrease. And so, you know, those two coupled together just mean that we feel it's just a much less impactful part of our business now. And we'll continue to manage those out and look after our customers down there. But fundamentally, we've strengthened the position a little bit more with that move to IFRS 17, and so therefore we—you know, it's not such the balance sheet focus that it used to be in the past. No one else is reporting it separately. And as you can imagine, James, it becomes almost gets its own head of steam if we keep focusing on it for 11 claims. So it's a way of moving on. Yep, understand. And, yeah, congratulations, as I say, on solid performance and, luckily, the weather's obviously helped you. But, you know, I think this result, you know, obviously shows a lot of extra work on the operational side as well. So congrats to you all. Thanks. Thank you, James. Thank you. Our next question comes from Andrew Adams from Barrenjoey. Please go ahead. Hey, guys. Can you hear me? Yep, yep, perfectly. Hey, guys. Thanks very much for taking the question. I just wanna build on the previous questions, I guess, just back on the GWP guidance. So premium rates are leveling out. I guess you've been getting 15%-20%. Do we think leveling out is, like, back to single digit? And likewise, on volume, are you kind of expecting more volume exits in second half 2024? Because I guess the second half 2024 GWP guidance, and then the FY 2025, 2026 guidance doesn't quite reconcile. So we're taking a step backward in second half 2024, but then it's all better again in 2025. So just trying to understand what's unique in 2024, that you think is happening on GWP, that's not gonna create that momentum into 2025. Hey, Andrew, I'll take this one, Blair, if you like. The key thing really is that FY24, you know, as Blair talked about in the slides, has been focused on really looking at the right risks from a motor vehicle point of view. And that's where we've gone backwards in customer volumes. And so we'll, you know, we continue to see some of those underwriting decisions and that underwriting discipline in the portfolio play out in FY24. And, you know, then we expect to see ourselves for the outer years, going back to our mix of organic growth, and rate growth as well. And you're right, you know, that, you know, we've managed to achieve low double digits for the last couple of years, and so we just see the next few years as the continuation of that trend with using our risk-based pricing and managing that, attracting the right risks at the right price for us. Maybe that touches on that point, Andrew, regarding, you know, GWP again, is, yes, we've seen a lot of rating over the past year. We still expect to see between 10%-15%, and that's as per our guidance for the full year and into 2025 and 2026. You know, as the chair said, and we've said up front, for a long time now with Tower, we are very selective on the risks. We want the right risk, right price. Risk-based pricing is at the heart of everything we do. There's lots of insurance companies that can grow, you know, NZD 20 worth of premium for NZD 10. We want to be-- we're very clear about the risks we take on in both home and also in terms of motor. We think that we offer something unique in terms of direct to consumer. We can be very competitive and with our partnership model, and we believe we've got the scalability to offer competitive pricing. As we've seen a number of times, you know, we have seen a lot of inflation and crime come through in the past year, and as we look forward, we see those insurance premium increases start to level off a little bit, and we'll be very competitive in the risks that we want to target. But we still think we can get high single digit or 10% rate, you know, into the outer periods? Yes, 10-15. We think we've got something unique in the market, and we can... And, And, and through the direct and the partnership side and, and to a lesser extent, the Pacific side, we believe we can get good targeted growth. Yep. And then, I guess related also on your COR guidance, so even if we allow for the full usage of the NZD 43 million, and, you know, your BAU, your BAU is kind of—BAU loss ratio is kind of in the mid of that kind of target range. So just if we backsolve into second half 2024 and your guidance for full year, you are kind of allowing for some deterioration in that COR into the second half 2024. What's kind of driving that deterioration second half on first half? Two things. One of them is that full year is the large events allowance, obviously. And then the second one is, you know, as I said, the BAU claims ratio will bounce around somewhere between around that 50% mark. But then, the third one is that- So we're at 50 at the moment. Are we kind of assuming it's worse than 50, like higher than 50 in the second half? And I guess, given the premium rate increases coming through and the positive signs we're seeing on inflation, shouldn't it be at least as good as first half? Well, in New Zealand, we've had a very benign six months from a weather point of view, and we're going into winter. And so we know our loss ratio seasonally does bounce around. And so, yeah, I mean, if we do end up with a very wet winter, then we'll see it tick up a little bit. You know, we do believe that we're holding conservative numbers here, and so we'll see how we go with the weather. But fundamentally, you know, we're within range of what we're targeting over the long term, and we're happy with that. We're unfortunately different, aren't we? We sort of, because of the weather patterns, would be a hell of a lot easier to have our annual year end earlier, and so therefore, we track the worst part of our trading in the first six months rather than the last. So we amass our money in the first six, and then try and hold ourselves together for the last six, and you know, it's an unfortunate weather pattern that we face, isn't it? All right. Thanks, thanks for that, guys. Thank you. Our next question comes from James Lindsay from Forsyth Barr. Please go ahead. James, you still there? Oh, yeah. No, I, I didn't actually hear the moderators calling out my name. So yeah, just last one from me, just with regard to your comments with regard to reinsurance markets sort of becoming more favorable in the second half. Yeah, half- on- half, or sorry, yeah, for this period, reinsurance costs are up by 30% -odd. Can you give us some expectations for your view for the second half? And just what sort of what you're seeing in international markets with regard to pricing that sort of gives you a bit more confidence? So obviously we, as you know, we buy our reinsurance a year in advance or the multi-years. But we've we lock in the price for that whole year. So what we've seen in this half year is basically the earned impact of what we've committed to at the beginning of the year. So, you know, absent any large events and requirements for any reinstatement costs, we don't see our reinsurance materially moving around. Obviously, we'll earn a bit more through, and therefore, we'll earn a bit more reinsurance costs through. So that's what we're seeing. So yeah, the second half should be similar to the first. And then with regards to the outer years, global markets, there's a lot of indication out there that global markets are softening. We are about to start our detailed discussions with our reinsurers, although we, of course, have a lot of them throughout the year. But yeah, we're certainly expecting a much more benign renewal environment this year than we had last year. Great. Thanks much. Thank you. I see no further questions at this time. I will now pass back to Michael for closing remarks. Well, thank you, everyone, for attending today. It's always good to announce a positive result, and to be paying a dividend. And thanks as a shareholder, and indeed, on behalf of the board to management. It's been a good six months. We have had some good wins behind us, and we hope that continues for the next six months. So thank you, everyone.