Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. Bryan Petrucelli, our Chief Financial Officer; Brian Haney, our President and COO; and Stuart Winston, our Chief Underwriter, are joining me this morning for the call.

In the fourth quarter 2025, Kinsale's diluted operating earnings per share increased by 26%, and gross and net written premium grew by 1.8% and 7.1% respectively over the fourth quarter 2024. For the quarter, the company posted a combined ratio of 71.7% and a full-year operating ROE of 26%.

Our book value per share increased by 33% since the year-end 2024, and our float increased by 23%. Overall, E&S market conditions in the fourth quarter continued to be competitive, with the level of competition and our growth rate varying from one market segment to another.

As we have noted for the last year or so, much of the recent headwind to Kinsale's overall growth rate is due to the shrinking of our commercial property division, which writes larger catastrophe-exposed accounts and operates in one of the more competitive segments of the market. This decline in premium comes after several years of extraordinary growth.

Excluding the commercial property division, Kinsale had growth in gross written premium of 10.2% for the quarter and 13.3% for the year. Given the success of Kinsale's disciplined underwriting and low-cost business model over the last 17 years, we have confidence in our ability to generate best-in-class returns and growth while maintaining a strong balance sheet with conservative loss reserves.

It's always important to maintain underwriting discipline, but especially so when the market competition is intense. Likewise, it's in a more competitive moment in the insurance cycle that Kinsale's enormous expense advantage is most impactful.

Kinsale last year had an expense ratio under 21%, and many of our competitors tend to run in the mid-30s or higher, some even above 40%. Given the customer's focus on low cost, it's hard to overstate the significance and the durability of this advantage.

Another competitive advantage that we speak about frequently is technology. We consider tech to be a core competency of ours alongside underwriting and claim handling.

We own our one core operating system, which we custom-built for our operation, and we don't have any legacy software going back 20, 30 years or longer. In addition, we have spent years developing our analytics capabilities with a growing team of actuaries and data scientists who use our data and data we acquire to discern insights and improve decision-making and profitability in our business.

Further, over a year ago, we began a company-wide push to introduce and promote the use of AI in our operation. We are making consistent use of these tools in our technology and analytical teams.

We are also using AI extensively in other areas of the company, particularly underwriting. Every employee in the company has access to an enterprise AI license, and we have dozens of bots and agents being used every day in our business process, yielding interesting productivity gains even at this early stage.

Many of these AI innovations will be quickly integrated into our custom enterprise system, and the continued gains we expect for both productivity and improved segmenting and pricing of risk are material. Lastly, given our recent growth rate, we are returning more excess capital to shareholders, mostly through the $250 million buyback authorization that we announced in December.

Subject to a variety of considerations, we generally expect to deploy this authorization over the next year or so. Likewise, we announced an increase in our quarterly dividend to 25 cents, up from 17.

Note that even with this activity, Kinsale still maintains a conservative level of capital, well above that required by both regulators and rating agencies. With that, I'll turn the call over to Bryan Petrucelli.

Thanks, Mike. As Mike just noted, we continue to generate great bottom-line results with net income and net operating earnings increasing by 27% and 25% respectively, quarter-over-quarter.

71.7% combined ratio for the quarter included 4 points from net favorable prior year loss reserve development, compared to 2.6 points last year, with less than a point of cat losses this year compared to 2.2 points in the fourth quarter of last year. Gross written premiums grew by 1.8% for the quarter, while net written premiums grew by 7.1%.

The growth in net written premiums was higher than gross due to an increase in the retention levels when we renewed our reinsurance program June 1st of last year. We produced a 20.8% expense ratio for the full year, compared to 20.6% last year.

The other underwriting expense piece of the ratio, which is the best measure of the operational efficiency of the business, was 10.5% for the year and about 1/2 point better than 2024. On the investment side, net investment income increased by 24.9% in the fourth quarter over last year as a result of continued growth in the investment portfolio generated from strong operating cash flows.

Kinsale's float, mostly unpaid losses and unearned premiums, grew to $3.1 billion at the end of 2024, up from 2.5 billion at the end of 2024. The gross return for 4.4% for the year, and consistent with last year.

New money yields are averaging around 5%, with an average duration of 4 years on the company's fixed maturity investment portfolio. Lastly, diluted operating earnings per share continues to improve and was $5.81 per share for the quarter, compared to $4.62 per share for the fourth quarter of 2024.

With that, I'll pass it over to Stuart Winston.

Thanks, Bryan. The level of competition in the E&S market differs by underwriting group, with some areas experiencing more competitive pressure than others.

We continue to see soft pricing around D&O and some other professional lines, and while large, shared and layered commercial property lines experienced heightened competition during the quarter, we were able to realize growth in other property lines like small business property, high-value homeowners, inland marine, personal insurance, and agribusiness property. Casualty remained a strong area of growth for the quarter.

This growth was led by our commercial auto, agribusiness casualty, general casualty, entertainment, and excess casualty divisions. We will continue to explore new products and enhance our current offerings within these growing areas to capitalize on opportunities throughout the year.

Overall, new business submission growth, excluding unsolicited submissions, was up 6% for the quarter. We continue to see a decline in new business submissions in the commercial property division that handles large, shared and layered deals.

However, most divisions are still seeing submission growth, with about half of those seeing double-digit growth. Excluding commercial property, new business submissions were up 9% for the quarter.

While our lines of business are experiencing varying levels of competition and pricing pressure, the combined pricing trend is in line with the Amwins index, which showed a rate decrease of 2.7% compared to 0.4%—compared to a 0.4% decrease in Q3. Although large commercial property placements continue to experience strong rate pressure, other property lines like small business property and inland marine, and casualty lines like commercial auto, excess casualty, and general casualty, present opportunities for meaningful rate increases.

We remain confident about our position and opportunity in the E&S market. Our low-cost model provides a durable advantage that helps us remain competitive in both hard and soft market environments.

This advantage, combined with our broad risk appetite, best-in-class service standards, fast turnaround times, and the ability to quote more than 70% of all new business submissions, will enable us to gain market share and deliver strong returns for our investors. With that, I'll hand it back over to Mike.

Thanks, Stuart. Operator, we're ready for any questions in the Q&A now.

Thank you. Good morning.

I guess I wanted to talk on the commercial property down pretty hard this quarter. Was that a change from what you were seeing last quarter or maybe did I misinterpret?

I thought you were talking about an inflection there. Was there something else that happened that caused that to go down harder than what you said last quarter?

Thanks.

I think when we mentioned in the last call, in September, October, it seemed like it was stabilizing a little bit, and then November, December, there was an influx from London and some MGAs in that large, layered and shared space that caused the deceleration in growth.

I guess any thoughts on how that might proceed, at least for the next foreseeable future this year? Is that going to stay where you saw in November, December?

This is Mike. It ebbs and flows, month by month, but I would just say in general, at some point after the next couple quarters, it should stabilize.

Thanks. Thanks, Mike.

Stuart, last quarter you said the excess casualty rates were holding strong, and you mentioned it again this quarter. I guess I don't know how much of your commercial casualty is commercial auto.

Can you say what percent that is? Maybe a little bit more on what you're seeing, you said commercial auto rates were moving up, what are you seeing there in terms of loss trends?

Again, just how much of that is commercial auto in your excess casualty?

It's a pretty small percentage in our actual excess casualty book, and even with our commercial auto division, without getting into the details, there's no primary auto and it's a small portion of excess wheels.

Okay. Thank you.

That's all I had. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Michael.

Hey, good morning. On the submission figure that you quoted of up 6%, I think you added excluding unsolicited submissions.

Is that like-for-like for the 6% in 3Q, or is that a different methodology now?

That's the same.

Thanks. Then, could you maybe just talk about what you're seeing in business retention ratios?

Not so much the retention versus reinsurers, but just year-over-year business retention, and maybe just some color on how you're thinking about any flow back to the admitted market that you may be seeing in either property or casualty?

Andrew, it's Mike. I think our renewal retentions in the very low 70% range, and that's been pretty steady.

We don't see a big movement there. In terms of move to standard lines, I would just say it's a very dynamic marketplace overall.

There's always business moving back and forth, but we don't see any uptick in movement away from the E&S market overall.

Hey, good morning. Thank you.

Just wanted to make sure I'm teasing this out correctly. Most of the decel in the growth rate on premiums is coming from property, kind of larger accounts, shared and layered.

If that's correct, maybe you can kind of help us with kind of what percentage of the portfolio at this point is made up of that type of business at this point? I know it's been shrinking.

Mike, this is Mike. We're going to publish that next week in our K.

If you look at our investor slide deck on the internet, we break out all the divisions. I think it's through the end of 2024, and that'll be updated at the same time with the '25 stats.

It's essentially the commercial property division. It was our largest division last year, and they're larger accounts and they're just subject to a much more intense level of competition.

I think Stuart mentioned the fact that all of our other five or six property divisions are experiencing pretty robust growth. They're just off a smaller premium base at the moment.

Got it. Just because I think we're probably focusing too much on this division's cyclicality, is it fair for us if we want to kind of get ahead of this trend for '26, I think the consensus in the market is that large-account property stays similarly soft to '25.

I guess unless you think I'm off, we should just kind of assume that this portion of your business is still material, and we should kind of make sure we're accounting for a further potential shrinkage in this part of your business for next year. Is that fair?

I think yeah. It's a very competitive market, and so I think what you saw in the fourth quarter, again, the specific numbers are going to ebb and flow, but the fact that we're in a hyper-competitive environment there, I think we'll continue over into '26.

Okay. Then pivoting to casualty, you're seeing kind of a stabilization of the trendline there, excellent, what appears to be loss ratios.

Specifically for casualty, pricing and submissions, have we troughed there on those KPIs? I'm assuming pricing's still competitive, or is there still kind of incremental pricing competition on the casualty side?

Thanks.

I would say in general, we're in a competitive moment in the insurance cycle, with the level of competition varying quite a bit from one, if you will, market segment to the next. The commercial property we've been talking about, the larger Southeastern wind accounts, that's an example of one of the most competitive areas, and then Stuart a few minutes ago listed a number of areas where we're still seeing reasonably strong premium growth and upward movement in pricing.

We feel very positive about the business overall, given our underwriting and our cost advantages, and one of the reasons we broke out that commercial property in our press release and in our comments is just to reiterate that that's a little bit of a unique market segment and division for us in that it grew tremendously over the prior several years, and now we're kind of giving back a little bit of that outsized growth. If you pull that out and look at the rest of the business, it's still running not just great margins, but 10% growth in this competitive environment I think is quite positive.

That's helpful. Thank you, Michael.

Hi, good morning. Thank you.

Any quantification you could provide on how much better in terms of percentage points the underlying combined ratio is between commercial property and kind of the rest of your business? Because I'm trying to get a sense of how much deterioration we could see just from business mix shift.

Because if I do simple calc, I think property is down to 20% versus the 24% at the start of 2025. I'm just trying to get a sense of what that gap is.

We're not going to be able to provide that on a conference call, but when our K is published next week, there's some accident-year exhibits that break out occurrence casualty, claims-made casualty, and property. Then when our statutory statements filed in a couple weeks, that gives you even more granular loss data on an accident-year basis by statutory line of business, you can really get into the weeds there.

I think that'd be better. I would just say overall, I would remind all of our investors, certainly, that it is a, it's a strategy of ours over the 17 years we've been in business to post loss reserves in a conservative fashion.

If you look at our history, every year we've had favorable reserve development in our GAAP financials. Hopefully we're building a lot of confidence among the investment community.

We have also commented that over the last couple years we've been quicker to release IBNR, reserves for future claims, from the short-tail lines of business like property, and we're being a little more cautious on the long-tail lines like casualty. Again, that's a good thing.

We're still posting best-in-class financial results, but we're doing it with a high level of conservatism in our reserving practices, hopefully our investors take some comfort in that.

Got it. Thank you.

Then for my follow-up, how big of an opportunity are data centers for Kinsale? Are you guys writing that business currently?

I guess any general market commentary on how the competition and the terms and conditions are developing in that area?

This is Stuart, by the way. It's not a meaningful percentage of our book of business in property or casualty.

The limits required on those placements, it's just not where we're competitive.

Thank you.

Thanks. Good morning.

Morning, Mark.

Stuart, you had mentioned that in November and December in property, you saw an influx from London and MGAs. Anything in casualty on that front?

Did you see a little more competitive pressure across the board?

There's always been competition from the MGAs and fronting companies on the casualty side, but no real increase in the quarter.

Yeah. When you look across the industry as a whole, it seems like casualty has meaningfully decelerated from 3Q to 4Q.

Is that pricing? Is that competition?

Is it business going to other carriers or non-public carriers?

I think it's just the normal variability in the market,

Mark, between quarter to quarter.

Very good. Very good.

Bryan, you talked about the expense ratio. How much impact this quarter just from the mix shift, maybe lower ceding commission from lower property?

I think we didn't break out the components by quarter, Mark, but the portion of the expense ratio related to net commissions was relatively constant with the third quarter. I think we mentioned and I've mentioned in the past, sort of looking at it quarter by quarter, there is a fair amount of variability, we're sort of guiding you to the annual metric.

Again, I commented in my remarks that, hey, the other underwriting component of the expense ratio did improve by about 1/2 point year-over-year.

Okay. One could assume mix might account for a little bit of an uptick in the expense ratio?

Exactly.

Yeah. Then how about kind of new business trends, excess versus primary?

Has it been any material shift in that? If excess is more attractive, are you leaning into that or is it still more balanced?

It's still pretty balanced. The mix has stayed pretty similar since day one.

Very good. Thank you.

Thanks, Mark.

Hey, good morning, guys. Just a quick question.

I know obviously social inflation and increased litigation, this has been much more prevalent in the larger accounts, but I wasn't sure if that was starting to migrate at all more towards the area you guys typically play in. Do you have any comments there on how that environment is kind of shaping up?

Joe, this is Mike. There's plenty of claims and litigation activity in the small-account market like there is in larger accounts, small accounts definitely aren't immune from that.

I don't know that there's any pronounced change in recent months, but the litigation industry in the United States is large and growing, and the plaintiff attorneys are entrepreneurial as hell, looking for new ways to drive claims and serve their clients. We're vigilant, for sure.

Great. Then just to follow up, a quick question.

I know you guys talked about kind of leaning into a little bit more AI in your opening remarks. Just kind of wondering if you can expand a little bit more on that, where you kind of see more of the opportunities or where you're most excited for AI really to be deployed within the business, whether it's on claims, underwriting, or what have you, kind of for the next year or so?

I think broadly speaking, AI in the business operation allows you to automate tasks that are repetitive and whatnot, and so it's a cost savings opportunity. It's an opportunity to drive better customer service.

It's an opportunity to reduce errors in a business, we had, give or take, a million submissions last year, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of quotes and policies. Automation is something we've been working on for 10 years.

AI is just a powerful new tool in that regard. I would say, in our analytics and our IT area, it's probably being used most effectively today in terms of writing code and testing code and converting unstructured data to structured data, etc.

It's got a lot of use cases, but I think the two things we're focused on, one is driving automation in our business, and two is to get smarter about how we segment and price risk.

Thank you.

You bet.

Hey, good morning. At the investor day last month, you guys highlighted a bunch of new products that were launched in the last year.

I was wondering if we could maybe talk about how much growth is new product versus existing, and any new plans for 2026?

We're going to publish in our K the breakout of our written premium for 2025 by underwriting division, and that'll be out I think it's next week. Personal insurance isn't new, but we've expanded into the homeowners space there, you can look at that.

A lot of the new products in 2025 were enhancements to existing products, it's not necessarily going to be split out within divisions, but there is an element to growth with those.

Generally, new products, we roll them out. It's kind of a methodical rollout, and so it's really over a series of the first couple years that they start to be meaningful.

If you look at the small business property division, I think last year that was $100 million of premium, give or take, and 5 years ago I think it was nothing. Right?

It does take time, but it's been a big part of our growth story really for 17 years.

That's great. Thank you.

I wanted to just ask on the leverage in the capital return. You guys have highlighted you're underlevered versus peers on a number of metrics, and I think it's on your debt to cap you're below kind of the long-term target you've talked about.

It's a nice step up in the capital return in the last 18 months, but why not do more now with the competitive environment the way it is?

With the capital allocation strategy, with the buyback in particular, we're in effect shrinking the denominator and increasing the ratio, we're pursuing it through the denominator, I guess you could say.

That makes sense. Then I guess just one more.

Can we talk about the durability of softness in the property markets, and what does it take to actually push this competition out?

Keep in mind we're talking about intense competition in these larger Southeastern wind accounts in particular. In our agribusiness property, inland marine, high-value homeowners, personal insurance, small business property, they may have all grown in the double digits in the quarter.

It's just a reminder that the market does not move monolithically. It's a whole series of individual segments that kind of ebb and flow independently.

That's great. Thank you so much.

Hello, it's Pablo from J.P. Morgan.

First question, some other public insurers that have larger or newer E&S businesses have been reporting premium growth or submission growth that's running much higher than where you are now. Is there evidence in your minds that they might be taking some flow that used to go to you?

I know in the past you've identified MGAs as a main source of competition, but I was just wondering if you're seeing more competition from traditional markets as well. As small commercial E&S and technology is a focus for many of your peers.

Pablo, this is Mike. I would answer that question this way.

A, we're bullish on our opportunity. We're working hard to grow.

We're in a much more competitive environment overall, and so you have to be careful in balancing the growth with the profitability of the business. I can't really speak for other companies and what they're doing, but I would say our investors should have a lot of confidence that Kinsale's producing not only very strong margins, but that we're continuing to grow and take market share, with the one caveat that we've got one large division that, if you will, is going through a little bit of a unique correction.

Overall, if you look at the disciplined underwriting model and the low-cost platform, we're confident we're going to continue to grow, take market share, and deliver very quality returns at the same time.

All right, thanks, Mike. I guess just following up on the expense advantage, right?

I guess philosophically, how do you think Kinsale demonstrates or exercises that advantage in this market, right? Effectively, are you willing to write at ROEs below 26% but still above your minimums, or is your approach to sort of let the market do what it does and you'll just keep on printing 26% ROEs for the foreseeable future?

We manage each product line to I would call it a low-20s ROE or greater. Of course, in an insurance company, you don't know the cost of goods sold immediately, right?

There's some assumptions there. Those assumptions I think lean into the conservative side, and so historically we've outperformed our target.

I don't think that would change overnight, for sure. Like every business, we balance growth and profitability.

It's just that we're always going to prioritize generating that low-20s ROE or better. Then where the specific return goes quarter by quarter, of course, is subject to claim activity and the weather and all sorts of things.

I think we've got a long-term track record of producing pretty attractive margins, and I would expect those to continue.

All right, thank you for your answers.

Hey, good morning. Could you provide a little more clarity on the casualty lines and the rates that you're getting on the new business and the degree to which those rates are ahead of loss costs or maybe even not ahead of loss costs?

Andrew, that's a tough question to answer on a conference call like this, because, again, we've got 25 different underwriting divisions. They're operating in very unique market segments in terms of the coverages they sell, the industries that we target, and, as Stuart mentioned, right, our commercial auto is experiencing strong price increases.

Management liability, I think those rates are probably down. Non-medical professional liability, they're down.

The commercial property division, clearly, those rates are down in the quarter. We kind of directed in our comments to look at the Amwins pricing index.

I think that's a good composite of Amwins is a very large wholesale broker. They see a ton of business, and I think they've got a really interesting window into pricing trends across the industry, and I think that's probably the best point of reference we can guide you to.

That's very fair. I guess what I was trying to get at even with that question is you've got pressure in property, it sounds a little mixed in casualty on rate.

I get that the 75% combined ratio in part is due to your expense ratio, but your loss ratio is exceptional. Given what the mosaic is with pricing right now, should we expect the underlying combined of 75 to kind of drift up gradually over the course of the next year, two years, three years?

We don't really offer guidance going out like that. I would just say we're in a competitive environment.

Some of our results on an annual basis are driven by things we don't directly control, like the weather or whatever. In general, we are managing to a low-20s ROE or better.

We're very conservative in setting aside loss reserves to pay claims that are reported in the future, right? Investors should have a lot of confidence in our balance sheet.

We've got competitive advantages that are, in my opinion, quite significant. If we have a 15-percentage-point cost advantage, and we're in a commodity business where the customers want and focus on cost sometimes over and above everything else in the transaction.

I think that's probably the best guidance we can offer. We're bullish on our opportunity.

It's a competitive environment. We're quite conservative in the reserving, and the actual results obviously are going to ebb and flow quarter by quarter, but I think our investors should expect us to generate very high and attractive returns for the foreseeable future.

Got it. Thank you, Mike.

Okay.

Hey, thanks. Switching gears a bit to home insurance, I thought one of the new items that came out of your recent investor day was the opportunity there, kind of I think you talked about maybe it being up to 10% of your revenues even over time.

If as long as it's not, too competitive and you're willing to share any color, any thoughts on kind of how that's shaping up in terms of, nuances on the types of policies you're might be offering and in the states and the trajectory of growth there? Thanks.

This is Stuart. The homes product is definitely a long-term project for us.

We're starting small, the crawl, walk, run mentality that Mike mentioned earlier, and where the opportunity to expand exists, we're going to take that opportunity to expand and do so profitably.

We're in probably four or five Four

or five states for homes. and

that continues to expand. The manufactured homes are in

It's

15?

15. About 15 states, and we're expanding the geography within the state, diversifying away from coastal there.

Then we write high-value homes in another

small

group of states,

it's an ongoing process, but we're bullish. You are seeing across the industry a little bit more premium being pushed from the standard to the non-standard side in the homeowner space, and obviously we're leaning into that in order to try to take advantage.

Just as a follow-up, sounds like this is both high-value and not high-value. Are these atypical of a standard market policies in terms of just much higher deductibles or different exclusions, just is there any broad brush that you can paint?

Thanks.

It's a mix. It could be a pretty standard policy, but there's also some in tough areas that might have non-standard exclusions in there.

Thank you. What do you make of the idea that AI might take over some of the broker's role?

Do you think that's likely? Is that a way to get efficiency?

More of a direct route or is that just a fantasy at this point?

Look, the short answer, Mark, is we don't know. I've always been impressed with Pat Ryan's commentary around the fact that the customer needs an advisor and an advocate, and I don't think that changes with AI.

I do think AI is going to it's a new tool for the whole economy, and I think businesses in P&C, but really in every industry, are going to have to lean in and use this tool to get better at what they do and serve their customers. So.

Appreciate that. Thank you.

Hi, yeah, it's Pablo again from J.P. Morgan.

I guess first question, with growth slowing, is there an opportunity on your end to take up reinsurance retentions and therefore just retain more premium in economics? Is that something you're actively considering?

Pablo, it's Mike. We've looked at retentions in our reinsurance program we look at it every year, and we're constantly making adjustments to settle on what we think makes the most sense for the company in managing volatility and that type of thing.

Absolutely. Our program renews on 6/1, we'll be starting that process here in the next month or so.

All right, thanks, Mike. Then last question for me, if we just focus on your book ex large account, right, growth has been slowing there too.

It's still a good level, but it's been slowing. I think it was 22% in '24 and '25 is 13%.

I realize this line of questioning might be too simplistic, but is that slowdown more a reflection of pricing or submission flow, and if both, how would you break down the attribution?

I would characterize it as mostly a function of just increased level of competition. As the competition increases, if you're a disciplined underwriting company, you just have to be a little more cautious.

Maybe the submission flow is down slightly, but ex commercial property, I think it was 9%. I think maybe 2 years ago, maybe in the mid-teens.

It's down a little bit, but still pretty robust. The 13% growth overall ex commercial property, I think is pretty strong if you look at how all the public brokers that have reported growth rates, I think tend to be kind of low to mid single digits.

I think it speaks to the competitiveness of our model, even in a competitive moment in the cycle, and hence, that's why we continue to be bullish on our opportunity.

All right, thank you, Mike.

Pablo.

All right. I just want to thank everybody for participating, and we look forward to speaking with you again in the near future.

Have a great day.