Good day, and welcome to the International General Insurance Holdings Limited Second Quarter and Half Year 2021 Financial Results Conference Call. . I would now like to turn the conference over to Robin Sidders, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Andrew, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to today's conference call. Today, we'll be discussing our second quarter and half year 2021 results. You will have seen our results press release, which we issued after the market close yesterday. If you'd like a copy of the press release, it is available on the Investors section of our website at www.iginsure.com. We have also posted a supplementary investor presentation, which can also be found on our website on the Presentations page in the Investors section. On today's call are Wasef Jabsheh, Chairman and CEO; Waleed Jabsheh, President; and Pervez Rizvi, Chief Financial Officer. Wasef will begin the call with some high-level comments before handing over to Waleed to talk through the results for the second quarter and half year 2021, also giving some insight into current market conditions and opportunities that we are seeing. At that point, we'll open up the call for question and answers. And just before we start, I'll begin with some safe harbor language. Our speakers' remarks may contain forward-looking statements. Some of the forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of the forward-looking -- use of forward-looking words. We caution you that such forward-looking statements should not be regarded as a representation by us that future plans, estimates or expectations contemplated by us will, in fact, be achieved. Forward-looking statements involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. Actual events and results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements due to a variety of factors, including the risk factors that we had set out -- set forth in the company's annual report on Form 20-F for the year ended December 31, 2020, the company's reports on Form 6-K and other filings with the SEC, as well as our earnings press release issued yesterday evening. We undertake no obligation to update or revise publicly any forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date which they are made. In addition, we'll be using some non-IFRS financial measures in this conference call, and you can find a reconciliation of those non-IFRS financial measures to the nearest IFRS measures in our earnings release, which has been filed with the SEC and, again, is available on our website. So with that, I'll turn the call over to our Chairman and CEO, Wasef Jabsheh.

Thank you, Robin, and good day to everyone. Thank you for joining us on today's call. Our results for the first half of 2021 continue to demonstrate that IGI is capable of achieving or speak not just to the numbers that you are seeing from us today, but also the thoughtfulness with which we have approached the business for many years to maintain our track record of generating shareholders' value for the long term. On the back of our solid 2020 results, we recorded strong core operating results for the first half of '21, supported by excellent premium growth of over 13%, i.e., 21% in the second quarter of '21. Focused underwriting reflected an 88.5% combined ratio and steady investment income during the first half of '21. Market conditions are holding up well and rate increases across our portfolio are close to 13%, with much variation by line of business and geography. I'm very pleased with the steady focus our underwriting teams have shown in maximizing the opportunities across our portfolio. Specifically, while we have grown our total book, we have, at the same time, maximized our diversification, which apparently speaks to our risk profile and our ability to continue creating value for our shareholders. We have entered into new lines of business. We recently announced the opening of our European operation in Malta with the purpose of growing our footprint across Europe. And we have grown our long-tail casualty business outside of the United States. I want to focus on the long-tail business for a moment. We started to write this business in 2015 and have grown it gradually over the past 5 years, adding long-tail business to our existing short-tail portfolio, offer the opportunity for better diversification to our overall risk profile. More recently, as market conditions have…

Thank you, Wasef. Thank you all for joining us today. As Wasef said, we had a strong first half of 2021 with solid core underwriting results, and we continue to build a high-quality diversified book of business that will support our earnings profile in line with what we have achieved in our 20-year track record. We're very well positioned to continue to take advantage of what are still some of the strongest market conditions we've seen. I'll start with a high-level recap of the numbers, as you have the press release and the story is fairly straightforward. Premium growth in the second quarter was solid at 21% when compared to the second quarter of 2020, which itself saw excellent production. While growth in the first quarter was more muted, we expect the remainder of the year to remain more or less in line with what we achieved in terms of premium growth in the second quarter of this half of 2020. For the first 6 months of 2021, the most significant growth was in the long-tail segment, which accounted for approximately 38% of our portfolio and which recorded an increase in gross written premium of 16.3% for the period. Growth was primarily driven by professional indemnity and D&O business, where rates remain up on average over 30%. As we've mentioned previously, capacity and market appetite in these lines has reduced, as many players have either exited the business, significantly reduced their line size or have limited writing new business. A large portion of our business in these lines is written on an excess basis and also on a claims-made basis. It's also worth reiterating that we do not write this business in the U.S. It's primarily made up of the U.K. and, to a lesser extent, Europe and the Middle…

. The first question comes from Mark Dwelle of RBC.

Just a couple of questions. I wanted to start with the small reserve addition on the short-tail lines. If you could just maybe spend a minute kind of talking through that in a little bit more detail, kind of what trends you are observing and the lines that were involved?

Yes. Thanks, Mark. The reserve addition from prior years on the shorter-tail business is effectively down to one loss that we incurred at the -- or that happened at the beginning of last year of 2020. It was an onshore energy or power line where it was just one of those things that we knew about the loss. We attach at a certain level, all expectations were that the loss would end up below our attachment point and more recently due to whatever circumstances with the loss adjusting, the loss deteriorated. And so it ended up impacting us. But as I said in my commentary, I mean this is a complete one-off, not a trend. It happens in our business. And we're prepared for the effects of movements and reflected within the overall reserving of the company.

Got it. That's helpful. Second question, kind of staying with, I guess, margins and things. I mean it looked like there was a fair amount of additional -- the growth rate, I guess, in the long-tail business was much higher than the short-tail business. Is that really one of the primary drivers as to why the core, the accident year margin was a little bit higher -- loss ratio was a little bit higher in the quarter relative to something that we've seen recently?

Yes. In part, Mark, that's an accurate statement. I mean the growth in the long-tail business is more pronounced simply because of the underlying market conditions. We've seen more recently in the last couple of quarters, as we've mentioned before, easing on the short-tail side, but we haven't really seen that on the long-tail side. So the opportunity in the market is still very much there on the long-tail book. I've personally never been more confident or comfortable with our long-tail book than I am today. The underlying fundamentals are extremely strong. So -- but again, we said all along, we reserve very cautiously, we reserve very prudently. In the long term, we'll see the benefit of that. There was, however, additional claims activity on the engineering side in the first half and second quarter of this year that contributed to the higher accident year loss ratio. Again, it's not an area of concern for us. It's not a trend. It's a normal part of the business that we're involved in the composition of our portfolio. And as we've always said, we've got to take a longer-term view of the company of the performance. That's always been our story, which we're following through on and prospects for the future look very bright.

That's good color. And it's actually very consistent with what we've heard other people say about the long-tail lines of business. It's some of the most attractive pricing in terms in probably 15 or 20 years. So I appreciate the color. One last question just related to the Malta branch with sales office. Are you actually -- I know that it just got approved several weeks ago. Are you actually writing business at this point? Or is it you're still in the kind of hiring and ramp-up mode?

No, no, no. We started writing business on the day that we got our license. Our team was already on the ground and just waiting for the green light. So we've already written a couple of million dollars so far in this quarter. And we expect to write probably around $10 million between now and the end of the year. And as I mentioned in my commentary, first full calendar year, probably around the $25 million GWP mark.

. This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to management for any closing remarks.

Well, in that case, thank you all for joining us today. We appreciate your continued support, and we'll continue to build on our success so that we continue to generate value for you in the future years. If you have any additional questions, please contact Robin and she will be happy to assist. Have a great day.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.