You are given a text that consists of multiple sentences. Your task is to perform abstractive summarization on this text. Use your understanding of the content to express the main ideas and crucial details in a shorter, coherent, and natural sounding text. 
Text: I think we're well on our way to our Safe Harbor statement being the longest component of our call, but perhaps that's just a reflection of the sign of the times.
On the call, in addition to me, you also have Bill Berkley, Executive Chairman; as well as Rich Baio, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.
We're going to follow a similar agenda to what we have in the past, where Rich is going to lead us through some highlights for the quarter.
So with that, Rich, do you want to lead off, please?
The company reported record quarterly net income of $312 million or $1.67 per share.
Despite the heightened catastrophes experienced by the industry, and slowdown in the economic environment due to global pandemic, our financials significantly improved in the quarter.
This improvement was evidenced in our current accident year combined ratio ex-cats of 88.8% and strong investment income and net investment gains, which contributed to an annualized quarterly return on equity of 20.6%.
Starting first with our top line.
Growth in our gross premiums written accelerated through the year, with fourth quarter representing growth of 9.3%.
Similarly, net premiums written grew by 8.2% to approximately $1.8 billion in the quarter.
All lines of business grew in the insurance segment, with the exception of workers' compensation, increasing net premiums written by 7.2% to approximately $1.6 billion.
Professional liability led this growth with 29.6%, followed by commercial auto of 20.6%, other liability of 10.6% and short-tail lines of 2%.
Growth in the reinsurance and Monoline Excess segment was 16.8%, bringing net premiums written to $205 million.
Casualty reinsurance led this growth with 21.2%, followed by 9.3% in property reinsurance and 6% in Monoline Excess.
Rate improvement, along with lower claims frequency and non-cap property losses contributed to our improvement in underwriting income of 44.2% to $165 million.
Offsetting this improvement were higher catastrophe losses resulting from natural cats and COVID-19 related losses.
We recognized $42 million of total catastrophe losses in the quarter or 2.3 loss ratio points, of which, 1.5 loss ratio points relates to COVID-19.
The current quarter's natural cat losses compare favorably with the prior year quarter of $20 million, or 1.2 loss ratio points.
The reported loss ratio was 61.3% in the current quarter, compared with 62.4% in 2019.
Prior year loss reserves developed favorably by $4 million or 0.2 loss ratio points in the current quarter.
Accordingly, our current accident year loss ratio, excluding catastrophes, was 59.2% compared with 61.4% a year ago.
Rounding out the combined ratio, we benefited from an improving expense ratio of 1.3 points to 29.6%.
We continue to benefit from growth in net premiums earned at 5.6%, which outpaced an increase in underwriting expenses of 1.2%.
In addition, the expense ratio is benefiting from reduced costs impacted by the global pandemic, including travel and entertainment.
This contributes a benefit of more than 50 basis points to the expense ratio.
Net investment income for the quarter increased 32% to approximately $181 million.
The increase was driven by investment fund income of $53 million due to market value adjustments and arbitrage trading income of $26 million, in large part coming from investments in special purpose acquisition companies.
Investment income from the fixed maturity portfolio declined due to lower reinvestment yields compared with the roll-off of securities due to maturities, calls and pay downs.
In addition, we continue to maintain a cash and cash equivalent position of approximately $2.4 billion, enabling us to maintain a relatively short duration of 2.4 years and significant liquidity.
Pre-tax net investment gains in the quarter of $163 million is primarily attributable to realized gains of $127 million and changes in unrealized gains on equity securities of $36 million.
As previously announced, the realized gain was largely driven by the sale of a real estate investment in New York City, which resulted in a gain of $105 million.
Foreign currency losses in the quarter were driven by the weakening U.S. dollar.
Two items of note.
First, you'll see that on a year-to-date basis, we were about breakeven; second, the loss in the quarterly income statement is offset considerably by the increase in stockholders' equity.
In the quarter, our unrealized currency translation loss improved by $66 million, resulting in a net equity pick up of approximately $47 million.
As a reminder, expenses included a non-recurring cost of $8.4 million relating to the redemption of our $350 million subordinated debentures in the quarter.
Stockholders equity increased 5.3% in the quarter and book value per share before share repurchases and dividends increased 6.1%.
We ended the year with more than $6.3 billion in stockholders equity, after share repurchases of approximately 6.4 million shares for $346 million at an average price per share of $54.43 and ordinary dividends totaling $84 million.
That brings total return to shareholders of $430 million in the year.
Finally, the company had strong cash flow from operations in the quarter of $480 million and more than $1.6 billion for the full year, an increase of more than 41%.
Very complete, you leave me nothing to say.
But I'll come up with something to babble on about for a relatively brief amount of time.
So, from my perspective, and I believe from our perspective, the market is clearly in the throes of firming.
When we look at the marketplace, is it what we saw at least at this stage in ‘86.
There is not a vacuum when it comes to capacity.
But clearly, there is a recognition within the industry among carriers that capacity is not going to be build out in such a casual manner as it has been done in the past.
And when it is provided, it will be with a lens towards a more appropriate rate associated with that.
When we look at the marketplace, overall, we think this is very appropriate.
And whether it will prove to be similar to what we saw in sort of late 2001 and 2002 and 2003, we’ll only see with the time, but the reality is no cycle looks like any other cycle.
All that being said, when we look at Q4 and when we think about our own business, every product line at this stage with the exception of workers compensation, we believe is achieving rate in excess of loss cost.
And quite frankly, that is appropriate and necessary.
When you think about where trend is and in addition to that, when you think about the realities of what one can expect from the investment income portfolio, particularly around the fixed income, we do need to be pushing full rate and driving down the combined ratio further in order to achieve a sensible risk adjusted return.
Just as far as different product lines go, at this stage we are seeing meaningful firming continuing in the much of the PL market, also, the excess and umbrella market is quite firm as well.
Property continues to be notably hard and auto, I would suggest, is also quite firm.
One of the laggards has been primary GL, and we've been pleased to see over the past couple of quarters that seems to be building some momentum.
And we think that's really important given what's going on, on the social inflation front and again as well as the realities of investment income.
And as mentioned in prior calls and just a couple of moments ago, workers' comp does continue to be the outlier.
Having said that, we continue to believe that's in the early stages of bottoming out, and would expect that to be reversing direction by the end of -- or later part or end of 2021.
Just on the topic of rate.
From our perspective, we think that there are many market participants that have a good deal of catching up to do.
When we think about the past several years, there have been moments where, quite frankly, it's been a little bit lonely when we've been pushing for rate.
As you may have picked up in the release ex-comp, we got 15.5-ish points of rate.
In the quarter, if you go back a year earlier to Q4 2019, we were getting just shy of 9 points of rate, Q4 2018, 4 points of rate, Q4 2017, 2.3, Q4 2016, we got a point of rate.
We think that there are many market participants that have not been pushing for rate for an extended period of time.
And again, we are going to see them needing to catch up, and they are going to need to catch a moving target.
One other comment that I would just make on this front related to rate and loss costs and how people think about rate adequacy.
It would appear as though there are some market participants that may be thinking about loss costs slightly differently than how we think about loss costs.
When we look at the current circumstance, I think it's very clear that severity is on the rise for much of the liability market.
And recently, as a result of COVID-19, there are certainly many parts of the market that had experienced somewhat of a benign period when it comes to frequency.
And our observation is that some may be in for a little bit of a route awakening hopefully, sooner rather than later when COVID is somewhat behind us, we see frequency return to a more traditional normal and that severity trend continues to take off like a rocket ship for the foreseeable future as we've been discussing.
Turning to our quarter, as Rich referenced, pretty healthy growth on the top-line, the growth was up about 9%, the net was up about 8%.
And, obviously, the rate increase that we mentioned earlier is a big contributor to that.
We've gotten the question from time to time from folks to saying, hey, help me do the math.
So you're getting 15 points a rate in this quarter or so.
But you're only growing a smaller amount?
Are you shrinking your business from an exposure perspective?
And the answer to the question is, yes and no.
And what I mean by that is our policy count is actually up a bit.
But what's actually going on is that our insurers, while we may be selling more policies and that number is growing, many of the insurers business activity are particularly measured in their revenue, which we price the policies off of is down as a result of this economic activity in the industry.
So when we look at the situation, here's sort of the short version.
Policy count is up a little bit.
Rate is up, but the number -- the amount of revenue or a number of widgets, if you will, that our insurers are producing is down.
So what does that mean?
That means that we are reasonably well positioned for growth when the economy starts to open back up.
And you will see in all likelihood, from my perspective, a notable catch up in audit premiums, as the revenue begins to pick up, even with those policies that we've already issued, because again, there is a catch up in our audit activities.
Just a couple of other things quickly, the expense ratio, again Rich, covered this pretty thoroughly, I would just offer a couple of quick sound bites.
One, the 15 basis points benefit, if you will, that the expense ratio is getting as a result of a reduction of activity on our end with travel and entertainment, and so on.
That will one of these days come back but we are actively looking at what does return to work look like for us, we certainly expect that people will be back in the office.
But will the travel be the same?
Or were there opportunities to learn through this period of time where maybe travel will not have to return to it what it once was.
That all being said, the reality is that we envision the business growing considerably more as the economy opens back up.
And in addition to that, these higher rates which will also contribute to the higher earned premium coming through, will help out on that front.
And on the loss ratio front, obviously, there was some improvement there.
We also have heard some commentary from some really asking, given all the rate increases, why are we not seeing more improvement in the loss ratio?
Short answer is that, we're trying to be as always very measured and not declaring victory prematurely.
As we've shared with some in the past, the simple reality is, we do not know what the legal system is going to look like and what that is going to mean for loss costs activity once the economy opens back up, and we see the legal system, particularly the courts, operating at more of a traditional level.
Having said all this, let me share with you just a quick observation.
If one were hypothetically, to look at our loss ratio that we had in 2020.
And one were to apply a healthy level of trend, just to pick a number arbitrarily a handful of points.
And then one were to apply that type of rate increases earnings through that we have been achieving.
I think that gives you a reasonable indication as to what the math may look like.
One other piece that one could factor in hypothetically speaking, would be it is perhaps reasonable assumption, I should say, that a pandemic will not happen every year.
And obviously there's significant loss associated with the pandemics and our 2020 numbers.
So some might suggest that we're being a little bit optimistic, but quite frankly, when the dayis all done, it’s pretty simple, straightforward math.
Just on the investment portfolio, again, I'm not going to repeat what you already heard from Rich, but again, it was a strong quarter both as far as the gains.
We have shared with people in the past that on the realized gain front, it's going to be lumpy.
And quite frankly just our alternative returns are going to be lumpy.
Penciling in on average, give or take 25 million a quarter is what we've suggested to people in the past.
We still think that's appropriate.
And they're going to be moments in time where it may feel like there's a bit of a drought.
And there's going to be moments in time where it feels like it's raining money but on average, we think we get great risk adjusted returns.
And again, the same thing applies to the funds.
As we have suggested to people there are going to be moments when the funds do great, there are going to be moments where the funds are lagging a little bit but on average, we suggested that people pencil in high teens, call it 20 million a quarter.
Rich mentioned and I know we've talked about this last quarter how the duration is sitting there at about 2.4 years.
We continue to have a view, that one does not get rewarded for taking the duration out or going out on the yield curve.
When we look at -- when we do the math, when we look at the numbers, yes, we could take it, the duration back out of it.
But the simple fact is that if you move rates up, call it our modeling 100 basis points or so, the impact on a quarterly basis, we will pick up after-tax give or take maybe $5 million.
But if you move rates up 100 basis points, the impact on book value will be approximately $160 million.
So, we are, at this stage, prepared to live with a slightly lower book yield and maintain the flexibility, the high quality and the liquidity and we think that makes sense.
One last topic for me is Lifson Re, you may have picked up the announcement we made just in time for the one-one.
This is a vehicle that we created to sit side-by-side with our traditional reinsurance partners.
We remained very committed to traditional reinsurance, but we felt as though that this was a good platform to sit side-by-side.
We're very fortunate to have two outstanding partners in Lifson Re and while there certainly are plenty of people to partner with these two institutions, not only are financially well heeled, but they are two organizations that are both thoughtful, sophisticated, with tremendous expertise in the insurance industry, and they are truly partners.
In addition to that, it was very important to us that there's a shared view around the topic of risk adjusted return, and a shared sense of obligation and duty to capital.
So, since people tend to unplug right after the Q&A, I'll just tuck in my parting comments now.
And that is while some might suggest that, I found a bit optimistic and some might even suggest that it is a genetic flaw being overly optimistic.
I think the simple reality of the situation is all you need to do is look at the facts and do the math.
And if one were to go down that path and look at the facts and do the math, I think it paints a pretty clear picture for what the next several years look like for this organization.

user
compname reports q4 earnings per share $1.67.
q4 gross premiums written grew 9.3% and return on equity of 20.6%.
qtrly earnings per share $1.67.

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