W. R. Berkley Corporation (WRB) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending June 30, 2023

July 20, 2023 5:00 p.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Good day and welcome to W. R. Berkley Corporation's Second Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference call is being recorded.

The speakers' remarks may contain forward-looking statements. Some of the forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking words, including, without limitation, beliefs, expects or estimates. We caution you that such forward-looking statements should not be regarded as representation by us that the future plans, estimates or expectations contemplated by us will, in fact, be achieved. Please refer to our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2022 and our other filings made with the SEC for a description of the business environment in which we operate and the important factors that may materially affect our results. W. R. Berkley Corporation is not under any obligation and expressly disclaims any such obligation to update or alter its forward-looking statements, whether as a result of the new information, future events or otherwise.

I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Rob Berkley. Please go ahead, sir.

Robert Berkley

Breanna, thank you very much and good afternoon, all. And again, welcome to our second quarter call. Along with me on this end of the phone, we also have our Executive Chairman, Bill Berkley, as well as Chief Financial Officer, Rich Baio. And we're going to follow our typical agenda where momentarily, I'm going to hand it over to Rich, who will walk us through some highlights from the quarter. I will follow up with a few observations after Rich makes his comments and then we will be opening it up for Q&A.

Before I hand it over to Rich, a few comments from me. Based on everything, I can see -- it would look as though the stage is being set for what one might call yet another but-for quarter for the industry. It would seem as though cat losses don't make a difference. And bizarrely, from our perspective, people seem very quick to back out cat losses as though it's not real money. But ironically, they don't seem to back out the premium associated with the exposure that just had the losses. So again, from our perspective, it's no wonder why the industry struggles oftentimes to make good risk-adjusted returns. In order to do that, one needs to recognize the exposure taking on and not pretend that it doesn't exist, particularly when it occurs.