Skyward Specialty Insurance Group Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
February 21, 2024

There are 12 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Skyward Specialty Insurance Group 4th Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question and answer session. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

Operator

I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Natalie Schoolcraft, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Shannon. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our Q4 2023 earnings conference call. Today, I am joined by our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Andrew Robinson and Chief Financial Officer, Mark Haschel. We will begin the call today with our prepared remarks, and then we will open the lines for questions. Our comments today may include forward looking statements, which by their nature involve a number of risk factors and uncertainties, which may affect future financial performance.

Speaker 1

Such risk factors may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in our projections or forward looking statements. These types of factors are discussed in our press release as well as our 10 ks that was previously filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Financial schedules containing reconciliations of certain non GAAP measures along with other supplemental financial information are included as part of our press release and available on our website skywardinsurance.com under the Investors section. With that, I will turn the call over to Andrew. Andrew?

Speaker 2

Thank you, Natalie. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. We closed out 2023 strong, reporting adjusted operating income of $0.61 per diluted share. Gross written premiums grew 21% in the quarter and our combined ratio of 90.7% for the quarter included less than a half a point of cat losses. While it was a quiet cat quarter for the industry, we continue to be at the low end of our peer group even though over 25% of our business is property.

Speaker 2

Operationally, rate retention and submission flow in the quarter continue to be strong. I will talk more about this later in the call. Altogether, the execution of our ruler niche strategy continues to be excellent and our aim to deliver top quartile financial returns is visible in our growth, underwriting profitability, shareholder returns and balance sheet strength. With that, I'll turn the call over to Mark to discuss our financial results in greater detail. Mark?

Speaker 3

Thank you, Andrew. For the quarter, we reported net income of $29,300,000 or $0.74 per diluted share compared to $20,400,000 or $0.63 per diluted share for the same period a year ago. On an adjusted operating basis, reported net income of $24,300,000 or $0.61 per diluted share compared to 11,600,000 dollars or $0.36 per diluted share for the same period a year ago. In the quarter, gross written premiums grew by approximately 21% and our transactional E and S, Captus, Industry Solutions and Professional Lines divisions each grew over 20%. Only Global Property and Agriculture did not grow in the quarter, which is expected given the seasonality of this business.

Speaker 3

We continue to see excellent opportunities for this division in 20 24. Net written premiums grew by approximately 19% to $214,000,000 in the quarter compared to $180,000,000 in the Q4 of 2022. Q4 2023 net premium retention was approximately 67% versus 68% in the 4th quarter 2022. Year to date, net premium retention was approximately 62% versus 59% a year ago. The 4th quarter is when we renew our professional workers' compensation and excess reinsurance programs.

Speaker 3

All of these renewals were orderly and we are satisfied with the terms and structures of these programs for 2024. Turning to our underwriting results, the 4th quarter combined ratio of 90.7% improved 1.7 points compared to the Q4 of 2022. The 2.3 point improvement in the current accident year non cat loss ratio to 60.9% was principally driven by changing mix of business. During the quarter, catastrophe losses were minimal and accounted for less than 0.5 point on the combined ratio compared to the Q4 of 2022, which was impacted by 1.2 points of cat losses from Winter Storm Elliott. Excluding the deferred benefit from the LPT, there was no net impact from prior year development.

Speaker 3

We continue to maintain a conservative position with respect to our loss reserves as our actuarial central estimate at the end of 2023 indicated that we are in a more redundant position than at the end of 2022. The expense ratio increased slightly compared to the Q4 of 2022. We talked in prior quarters regarding our business mix shift and investing in the business. So this is in line with our expectations and a target of a sub-thirty expense ratio. Turning to our investment results.

Speaker 3

Net investment income was $14,000,000 in the quarter, an increase of 8 $700,000 compared to the same period of 2022. Consistent with our investment strategy to deploy all free cash flow to core fixed income, in the Q4, we put $118,000,000 to work at 6.5%. The net investment income from our core fixed income portfolio almost doubled to $10,700,000 from $5,900,000 in the prior year quarter, driven by improving portfolio yield and a significant increase in the invested asset base. Our embedded yield was 4.5% at December 31, 2023 versus 3.7% a year ago. Our core fixed income portfolio is now over $1,000,000,000 a $410,000,000 increase from a year ago.

Speaker 3

Net investment income in the Q4 of 20232022 were impacted by negative equity mark to market adjustments in our opportunistic fixed income portfolio. Just a reminder that last quarter we provided a redemption notice on 42 dollars of the opportunistic fixed income portfolio. Given the actions that we've already taken and inclusive of that notice of the $172,000,000 in the opportunistic fixed income portfolio at December 31, 68% was in redemption. We anticipate reinvesting the proceeds from this part of the portfolio into our core fixed income portfolio. At December 31, we had approximately $270,000,000 in short term and money market investments, resulting from strong operating cash flow of over $335,000,000 During the quarter, our yield on short term investments continued to be north of 5%.

Speaker 3

We will continue to deploy this liquidity into our core fixed income portfolio. During the quarter, we executed a successful upsized follow on offering of 5,000,000 shares of common stock. Skyward sold 2,200,000 and West Ames sold approximately 2,800,000 reducing their ownership to approximately 17%. We continue to see strong interest from our existing and new shareholders and we appreciate their support for our company and our strategy. In terms of how we look at 2024, we expect full year adjusted net income to grow over 30% to between $105,000,000 $110,000,000 based on a combined ratio between 91% 92% inclusive of 2 to 2.5 points of cap.

Speaker 3

With that, I'll turn the call back over to Andrew for concluding remarks.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Mark. Our 4th quarter results capped off what was truly a defining year for Skyward Specialty. Operationally, we had another great quarter as we grew double digits in 7 of our underwriting divisions. We continue to realize pure pricing increases in the high single digits, which is above our estimated loss cost trends. Our new business pricing was up again over our in force book and retention too remains strong in the low 80s.

Speaker 2

All are strong indicators that the attractive underwriting margins that we are generating should continue. We also continue to see strong submission activity, which is up over 34% from the prior year, the largest year over year increase we have ever achieved. Our full year results are also notable, particularly in the context of the lead up to our IPO. During that period, we communicated core metrics and committed to building a company that consistently delivers top quartile performance. Our 2023 results demonstrated our progress towards this commitment.

Speaker 2

For the year, we delivered record growth of 28%, a combined ratio of 90.7 percent and adjusted operating income of $80,800,000 and we achieved a return on equity of 15.99 percent and grew fully diluted book value per share by 24% from $12.87 to $15.96 The year marked a significant underwriting achievement for us, as we now have all 8 of our underwriting divisions producing more than $100,000,000 as compared to 5 at the end of 2022. Each division is now at a scale that can substantially contribute to the company's earnings. The 3 divisions that reached $100,000,000 this year were surety, transactional E and S and Professional Liability. In just 3 years, we've grown these 3 businesses in aggregate from 44,000,000 dollars to $383,000,000 driven by significant investments in talent and technology. All three are generating outstanding returns and have added meaningfully to the diversification of our earnings.

Speaker 2

While each division is delivering at or above our minimum target returns on capital, We continue to capitalize on market opportunities to grow both top line and margins and ensure that we shape our portfolio to those areas that offer the best risk adjusted returns on capital. As such, we have ongoing investments in new underwriting areas, product adjacencies, teams and of course technology. As I reflect on the progress following what was a remarkable year for Skyward Specialty, I find myself energized and inspired by what we have accomplished in such a short period of time and also the possibilities for 2024 and beyond. And of course, we remain laser focused on executing our Rural Earnings strategy and our progression towards generating top quartile returns at all parts of the market cycle. Finally, I'd like to thank my 510 colleagues for their excellent performance in 2023 and their commitment and drive to achieving our shared goals for 2024.

Speaker 2

I'd now like to turn the call back over to the operator to open it up for Q and A. Operator?

Operator

Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Matthew Carletti with Citizens JMP. Your line is now open. Matthew, your line is open. Please check your mute button.

Speaker 4

Can you hear me?

Speaker 2

Yes. Good morning, Matt.

Speaker 4

Hey, Matt. All right. Good morning. Andrew, I was hoping I could kind of go 30,000 feet per second. And if we rewind a year ago when you guys were out on kind of the IPO roadshow, if technology was a big theme about how you guys embrace it and use it to empower your underwriters' claims, so on and so forth.

Speaker 4

And I was hoping you might be able to kind of fast forward a year and what has changed there? I mean, we hear a lot about AI and things like that. Is that something you're working on embracing? Just maybe a quick bring us up to speed just on how big a role that plays in your organization and how that might have changed over the past year?

Speaker 2

Yes. Well, I think that probably we're moving at like very, I would say very, very rapid pace, right? So a lot of stuff is being done very quickly. And yes, I would just say to you that nearly in every part of our business, next week we have our board meeting and the first session is claims. And as part of our claims presentation, our data scientists are going to show how is it that we've been able to isolate on the claims that have the highest propensity for reserve development.

Speaker 2

So the managers can be watching those with greater intensity, kind of separating out the 20% that account for the potential 80% of movement. And all that is kind of like the just turning the crank on the intelligence that we're trying to bring to the desktop of our in this case, our claims professionals, as well as in our underwriters. And look, it's not one single thing. Great example right now is that we've completely flipped within auto the notion of using telematics. If there's a GeForce event, we're not waiting for a first notice of loss to come in.

Speaker 2

We're outbound reaching out to the risk manager of the entity that had this G Force event to determine whether there was an accident. And if so, then we can rapidly respond off the back of that. And that's just fundamentally sort of turns things upside down. And so all those little angles, right, that I'm describing, these are just things that we we've got a long list of things that we can be doing. We're always trying to figure out what's the stuff that we can really make an impact in our business.

Speaker 2

And it's just a it's a big part of our DNA. And those two examples, there's equal number of examples on product, on underwriting, etcetera, etcetera.

Speaker 4

Great. Thank you. That's helpful. And then if I could just sneak another one in a question for Mark. Mark, you mentioned that at year end, 68% of the $172,000,000 of West Dane funds are in redemption.

Speaker 4

Can you help us with the timeline of kind of how long that usually takes? Is that kind of a quarter or 90 day process? Or can it take longer for those funds to kind be redeemed and reinvested?

Speaker 3

Sure, Matt. No, it won't be a quarter. I'm looking for about 30% of it to be redeemed in 2024, time will tell. But I think that's what I'm looking for, 30% percent -ish in 'twenty four and the rest of it in 'twenty five. We'll let you know, but it will take a little bit of time.

Speaker 2

And Matt, these are just what these are, we're just letting the 2nd year. And they were the average duration was around 2 years. 50% in the second year. And they were the average duration was around 2 years, a little under 2 years. Correct.

Speaker 4

Perfect. All right. Thanks very much.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Matt.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mark Hughes with Truist. Your line is now open.

Speaker 5

Good morning, Mark. Good Good morning, Andrew. Good morning, Mark. Good morning, Mark. Hope all is well.

Speaker 5

Good. Mark, the guidance, the 105 to 110, that's coming off of the 2023 base. So is it 81,000,000? Am I seeing that properly?

Speaker 3

Yes. Yes, sir, you are.

Speaker 5

Okay. And that seems like a pretty strong result. Anything you can say in terms of the contribution from net investment income and the top line as you think about that guidance?

Speaker 6

You want to do top line?

Speaker 2

Yes. Mark, this is Andrew. I think we'll leave it to you guys to put your models together. But with the guidance that Mark gave on combined ratio between 91%, 92% and the cap portion of that, you can you know what our gross to net is. I would I'll just say to you that that should be pretty consistent.

Speaker 2

And so you can work your way through it by just taking our written premium in 2023, put your earned premium for 2024 and kind of fill in the blanks. I will say that our plans, if you're asking specifically about growth, we don't want to give guidance on growth. Our internal plans are for 15%. That's what we're planning for. That's based on the market conditions that we see and the investments that we've made.

Speaker 2

I would also say to you that it is our view and we said this a number of times that a measure of us during a at least a what I would describe a functional market is that we should be able to double up the growth of our competitors. And again, our competitors are the guys who you can directly compare us against in sort of the that we compete against in the sort of the public company specialty space, but it also includes the primary insurance divisions of the diversified Bermudian guys and a handful of others. And we've been consistently at 28% growth, more than doubled up the growth of that cohort this year. And we believe that kind of 15% growth is in line with sort of doubling up the growth of that cohort next year. That's our plans.

Speaker 2

We'll leave it to you guys to figure out whatever you want to put into your models, but that's what our plans call for.

Speaker 5

Understood. And then, Mark, anything on net investment income that's relevant here?

Speaker 3

Mark, we just talked about $1,000,000,000 fixed income portfolio with a yield of 4.5%. You and I can do the math. I expect that to continue throughout 2024. The other components can be a little bit more variable. So I'll leave it to you to model out the portfolio in terms of fixed income.

Speaker 3

With the rest of it, you just time will tell. We've done well on opportunistic, but it has moved around a little bit as you know in 2023.

Speaker 5

You guys are asking me to do a lot of work.

Speaker 3

I can help you with that.

Speaker 2

If you want to send us your models, we can fill out your models. How about that?

Speaker 5

Yes, I know. I'm joking about that. The Global Property, I hear what you're saying, it's not a seasonally strong quarter. But even on that basis, it was down a little bit year over year, you had a lot more meaningful growth earlier in the year. What anything going on in particular in the Q4?

Speaker 2

Genuinely, Mark will tell you, don't read it. It is it would give you a false negative if you look at that. It's a very, very light quarter. I think we let one account go. We also roll AGRA into that division and there's no premium written for AGRA in the Q4.

Speaker 2

So honestly, I can say with great confidence already knowing how we started the year that you don't let that sort of give you a false negative. Look, obviously the property market is I think it's either at its peak or maybe past its peak, but I feel very good about where we are and both the profit as well as the sort of growth opportunities that are available to us given our discrete focus there.

Speaker 7

Appreciate that. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Anderson with Jefferies. Your line is now open.

Speaker 5

Good morning. Hey, good morning. Hey, good morning.

Speaker 8

Hey, good morning. Good morning. Looking at the GPW growth from professional lines and transactional E and S, can you kind of help us think about the source of growth there and how much of that is retained net?

Speaker 2

Yes. Well, without knowing the sort of the context for your question, I can only assume that given everything that's being talked about in the D and O market and particularly the public D and O market that probably underlies it a little bit. First off, everything that's claims made rolls into our professional underwriting division. So our main driveline there is our miscellaneous professional, which quite honestly is relatively small face value, less than $1,500,000 average limit. All types of classes included in that as well are things like, employed lawyers, tech E and O, our excess lawyers offering.

Speaker 2

As you saw, we also did a media liability offering, including the professional portfolio as well is our architects and engineers book of business. It also does include is in the healthcare professional market. For management liability, just to maybe get in front of our conversation, Look, I feel great about our management liability book, but I think it's probably noteworthy that almost all of that today is private company. Less than a quarter of that is public and of that 70% is Side A and 30% is Side ABC. It probably has a 50% retention rate.

Speaker 2

We've been letting it go. And on the positive side on our management liability, like we are we're Ninjas assets going after very niche areas, right? So we've been very successful in areas like Web3, cannabis amongst others, which are true sort of specialty risks where we have some pretty darn legitimate expertise as compared to the rest of the market. So our professional sort of growth and our portfolio is very atypical of maybe how it is you would compare us against others. And then lastly to your question, because our average limit is so low, we are principally keeping it net.

Speaker 2

It's not entirely net, but it's principally net.

Speaker 8

Very helpful. Thank you. And maybe thinking about casualty loss picks here, can you kind of give us some color on how accident years 2016 to 2019 are developing both for business within the LPT and non LPT business?

Speaker 3

Sure, Andrew. Good question. Look, so I'm glad you brought it up. We the industry is talking about the 2019 and prior years. Good reminder, the LPT covered policy years 2017, which of course would include part of the 2018 accident year.

Speaker 3

Before we went public, we took the LPT up to the co participation limit. We're not seeing any surprises on inflation and or loss costs. We've talked about that. Our rate increases have exceeded what we think our inflation and loss cost trends are. And Andrew, we haven't pulled that through in terms of our income statement.

Speaker 3

We've been conservative, meaning with loss picks, we're not taking full credit for rate increases. Does that answer your question?

Speaker 8

Yes, that's helpful. Thank you.

Speaker 9

Great. Thanks and good morning.

Speaker 3

Good morning there.

Speaker 9

One quick question I guess on the catastrophe load. I know it's really, really light compared to most of your peers, but it's also at least the upper range is higher than you guys have produced in worse pricing environments. And I was wondering, is this intentionally a conservative outlook or is it something changing in terms of the overall mix of cat exposure?

Speaker 2

No. Our cat what we use for our cat number is a combination of 10 year history. So we're we feel like we're giving appropriate sort of recognition to the cat that's in our book. And then it's our job to be able to sort of continue to successfully grow our property portfolio in a way that ensures that we're not adding a lot of concentrated aggregate, which when you're talking about 2 or 2.5 points of caps in total, that's where you can really get yourself messed up as you have a lot of aggregate in a small area and some of that happens. It may be hurricane, but it might be convective storms or something else.

Speaker 2

And so we're really good at our aggregation management. And yes, I think that what you find probably given our book of business, if you looked over 5 years, we'll probably be in that 2 to 2 point 5 point range, which is a pretty darn good outcome given the amount of property that we have in our portfolio overall.

Speaker 9

Okay. No, that's very helpful. You also mentioned property growth prospects. Does that include increasing exposure along with rate increases?

Speaker 2

Yes. Well, look, there is obviously just growth in values given inflation. There is growth in values related to business interruption. And depending on what part of our portfolio, right, all of that's true in our global property. In our transactional E and S business, like we might sublimit business interruption.

Speaker 2

We are likely doing actual cash value on the buildings. And so a lot of that, you're not there's not a lot of exposure growth per se, given how we oftentimes structure those policies. But that's not to say that we're not seeing sort of maybe the equivalent increase in price running through rate that theoretically should be assigned to exposure for those kinds of risks. Does that help?

Speaker 7

It does,

Speaker 9

yes. And one last question if I can. We've been seeing a lot of reserve issues, burble up around the industry. And I'm wondering what that implies for maybe talent becoming available at competitors or from competitors?

Speaker 2

That's a really good question. I don't know if I can see a correlation to it, to be honest. Look, not that this is going to sound a little bit flippant, but I would believe that we probably would not want the talent that would be flushed out of an organization due to adverse development.

Speaker 9

Okay. So, right. Sometimes the reaction is a little bit imprecise, which is the what I was asking about, but I completely get what you're saying.

Speaker 2

Yes. Well, one thing I will say though, which has been the case for my 3.5 years here is we've been very targeted and intentional with our recruiting, right? So we're we tend to have a very good view of the people that we're recruiting, their track records, their underwriting, their distribution following, etcetera, etcetera. And so like I wouldn't say that we're not recruiting from a general pool. We're recruiting in a quite intentional way.

Speaker 2

And the media liability announcement a few weeks back was a great example of that. That has been an area of focus for us for a long time and we were only targeting 1 of 3 teams. And so when we were able to move on one of those teams, we get so really fast.

Speaker 9

Okay, completely understood. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Paul Newsome with Piper Sandler. Your line is now open.

Speaker 2

Good morning, Paul. Good morning.

Speaker 6

Hi. Sorry, I only got about half of that. I think it's me.

Operator

Yes. So

Speaker 6

A couple of questions that I think I want linked. One is, I want to ask your response to the concerns that the competitive environment has gotten a lot, at least significantly worse over the last year and maybe even more recently. And I would like I was wondering if this is sort of the second question, if you could combine that with a conversation of what you think about what's happening from a rate versus inflation perspective? Because my sense is the fear is in especially in line, the competitive environment has just gotten to the point where the baseline is you're sort of flat with respect to what you're getting from rate versus inflation. And of course, the fear is that somehow that continues to turn over.

Speaker 6

But what's your response to that? And what do you see as you look at the both in your own book and outside of your own book that may or may not line up with those Sears?

Speaker 2

Okay. Well, let me first just I'll make a couple of industry observations, not to sort of take too much of the time on that. But if you follow what's been going on, I will tell you that there is no consistent theme. You're hearing in some instances discussions on professional. When the earnings season before the earnings season started, there was a very large announcement around that was driven a lot by professional.

Speaker 2

Then you're hearing you've been hearing the drumbeat of auto for a long time. Now it's GL and Access, making its way into the next. And so there's no clear theme. I think really great companies of which there are some fantastic competitors that we see, like everybody has been talking about rising loss costs here for a long time. It feels like a combination of the media and the analyst community, investment community said, well, now is a good time to do it to dump in the to dump your kitchen sink in this quarter.

Speaker 2

And some companies did that, but I think a lot of the great companies who have been talking about just the inflationary environment on liability have recognized that in both how it is that they're writing risk and how it is that they're booking their loss ratios. For our part, listen, nothing's ever perfect, but to Mark's point, in the Q3 of 2022, we moved to take our LPT reserve position to the top of the Copart, right. We've been incredibly conservative not released a dollar of reserves since I've joined, right? And we've reported out very consistently about our pricing above loss cost trend, our new business pricing and all that's to ensure that our balance sheet is strong and getting stronger period over period. People's other companies' decisions about what to do in this quarter, I like that's just a to me that's a little bit of a conundrum.

Speaker 2

It seemed like it was a kitchen sink for some. But the competitive environment certainly feels like it is consistently been a relatively rational environment. There are some crazies out there. The reason we're not doing anything in public D and O is because the people who are writing that business, particularly a lot of the MGAs are nuts. We see something similar on certain areas within auto.

Speaker 2

Occasionally, I asked my underwriters to send me examples of stupidity that are happening in the market where a competitor is just undercutting for no reason at all on what likely is a challenging kind of exposure. And I of course get a handful of those every week. And so you see kind of silly behavior. But in aggregate, it feels like the market this quarter, the market last quarter, the quarters before are relatively orderly and constructive. And that's showing through in our results, 34% increase in submissions in the quarter is absolutely astonishing.

Speaker 2

Now some of that's because of the talent that we brought with us, but that tells me that there's plenty of opportunity. The fact that we grew by 21% versus proportional to the submission flow also tells me that our underwriters are doing a fantastic job of weeding through and picking out the things that really suit us at terms that suit us. So I when I look at this, I feel like it's been a kind of a rational orderly market in aggregate. Sansa, some of the areas that have been talked about for some period of time and the actions that folks have taken in the Q4, it feels like, I don't know, there was almost an escape hatch that was created, that occurred in the Q4 that some took advantage of. And we're just trying to be more consistent, more orderly about how it is that we're approaching things and holding on to our reserves and allowing ourselves to have a position where we can consistently see the seasoning and the redundancy play out and at that point, we would move.

Speaker 6

Great. That's really good time to ask. Appreciate it. Thanks. That's it for

Operator

me. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Bill Carcache with Wolfe Research Securities. Your line is now open.

Speaker 10

Thanks. Good morning, Andrew and Mark. Hi, Bill. Good morning. Following up on your investment portfolio commentary, what's your latest thinking duration of the core fixed income here ahead of the rate cutting cycle that most expect to begin in the coming months?

Speaker 3

We're not right now, we're not looking to extend duration. Our duration is right at about 4 and has been for quite some time. Not real honestly, not real interested in extending it out just yet. We'll see how things play out, but not right

Speaker 10

now. Understood. That's helpful. And separately, if I may, Andrew, at a high level, can you speak to how focused you are on the risk that some of the E and S business that you've written, you could ultimately see move back to the admitted markets over time? How much exposure do you think you have there?

Speaker 2

I it's hard to sort of partition and it's also about what you believe. Is it an industry event last week, it was a big topic of conversation. What I can tell you is that within our transactional E and S unit and within our global property unit, and I'd say in most parts of our professional unit, we're not writing what I would describe as kind of E and S light. I think that the stuff that we're seeing is very sticky into the E and S market. And so I feel good about that.

Speaker 2

But that said, right, the challenge around it is, it's not just whether that is true E and S business. If there's less flow into the E and S marketplace, there's more competition for the business that's there. And so it does obviously have a second order effect, but I would be I'd be surprised if it's more than a small percentage of our business that ultimately will end back up in the admitted market. We I would describe ourselves as a true, true E and S writer. We're looking when I give you examples, right, try to write great example while we're being very thoughtful around where we write management liability and we're doing only private company, you want to do a Web3 risk or you want to do a cannabis risk, well that's not going into the standardized markets anytime that I could imagine.

Speaker 2

And it takes real expertise that tends to be the domain of a small number of people. And that's generally true across our business.

Speaker 10

That's very helpful context. Thank you for taking my questions.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Gregory Peters with Raymond James. Your line is now open.

Speaker 11

Hey, good morning. This is Sid on for Greg.

Speaker 2

Good morning, Sid.

Speaker 11

Oh, yes, good morning. When we look at your growth over the last few years, it looks like it's really been driven broad based, but more specifically in global property, transaction E and S and professional lines. So just hoping you can comment on the outlook from here. Should we expect the growth to be more balanced across your book or do you still see some more attractive opportunities in certain underwriting divisions versus others?

Speaker 2

Yes. There's no question about it that we will first off, we're big believers in microcycles, right? That while the market is orderly in aggregate, as I mentioned, there's certain areas where things just aren't rational, right? And no matter how good you are, you're going to have reduced opportunities to compete there. What I'd say to you is, we certainly have taken advantage of the property market.

Speaker 2

You'd mentioned 2 areas, surety is being another area that we've seen a lot of growth in. I feel that sort of our plans for this year are relatively widespread across our business and maybe less spikes in a particular area or particular areas. But inevitably, I think one of the sort of strong features of this organization is that we're really good at when we see a market opportunity to kind of reallocate our resources and jump on top of it. And so I suspect that while the best laid plans are sensible, it probably not how the year is going to play out for us. And I'm sure that we'll reflect back on 2024 with an error or 2 where we had better growth than we expected, and we'll have a couple of areas where we had worse growth because the marketplace changed on us.

Speaker 2

I tend to find that our execution is not the reason that we're not like we're always we've always been very good at execution. So it tends to be more marketplace driven. But as I said, I think it's more balanced and more widespread as sort of as our working assumption for this year.

Speaker 11

All right. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Michael Zaremski with BMO. Your line is now open.

Speaker 2

Hey, good morning.

Speaker 7

This is Jack on for Mike. Good

Speaker 2

morning, Jack.

Speaker 7

How's it going? Good morning. My question is on reinsurance seating levels. I know there were some gross to net premium lumpiness last quarter. I guess longer term is the current 35% plus seating level the right percentage to think about?

Speaker 7

Would you expect those levels to fall over time?

Speaker 2

Yes. I think that for this is Andrew. For 2023, I believe that our gross to net number was I'm not looking at the 62.7%, I believe, in aggregate for the quarter for the year, excuse me. I could be wrong in that, but right around that number. And I think our general expectations are that, that that's a good number rolling into next year, a regional planning number.

Speaker 2

I think as you do, given our outlook for 2024, when you just run the numbers and you kind of apportion underwriting income and investment income, I think you'll sort of tie back to that kind of low 60s gross to net.

Speaker 8

Yes. Okay, great. Thank you. And then

Speaker 7

I guess thinking about 2024, can you talk about how business do you expect business mix to impact the loss ratio? I know that in 2023 a shift toward property put downward momentum on your attritional loss ratio. I was just wondering about any color for 2024?

Speaker 2

Yes. So implied in our view is a relatively consistent loss ratio underlying, just sort of back out what we've said about expenses and then take out cat and so forth, you'll find that we're broadly in line. And from a mix perspective, we have we've definitely been shortening up our portfolio. So this at this point at the end of 2022, I believe that, 49% of our business or thereabouts was what we call short duration less than 2 year liabilities. This year, it's 53%.

Speaker 2

I think that as we look forward to 2024, it might go up a little bit more towards a shorter sale liabilities. But that really there's not really much going on here in terms of mix that's driving our underlying accident year. And there's also not much going on in terms of our recognition of rate over loss cost trend going in there as well. We're planning our working assumptions are for something that's relatively consistent.

Speaker 8

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. I would now like to hand the conference back over to Natalie Schoolcraft for closing remarks.

Speaker 1

Thank you everyone for your questions, for participating in our conference call and for your continued interest in and support of Skyward Specialty. I'm available after the call to answer any additional questions that you may have. We look forward to speaking with you again on our Q1 earnings call. Thank you and have a wonderful day.

Operator

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

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Earnings Conference Call
Skyward Specialty Insurance Group Q4 2023
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