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Text: Both of the documents are available at Old Republic's website, which is www.
Risks associated with these statements can be found in the Company's latest SEC filings.
Let us first reiterate our continued best wishes to all of you, your families, friends, co-workers as we all face the challenges related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
As we mentioned in the release, while some of our associates have begun returning to our office, the majority of Old Republic's more than 9,000 associates continue to work remotely, ensuring that our services are delivered uninterrupted to our customers, agents and brokers and all in our remote work efforts have gone extremely well.
Given the challenges emanating from COVID-19, we're pleased with the results we posted for this quarter, particularly the very strong Title Insurance results and the recovery in shareholders equity since the end of the first quarter.
As we noted could be the case in our first quarter release, the effect of COVID-19 and the associated governmental responses have indeed had a negative effect on the top line in the General Insurance Group in the second quarter.
However, our Title Insurance Group set yet another production record, again demonstrating that our strategic diversification between General Insurance and Title Insurance works very well.
So at this point, I'll turn the discussion over to Karl Mueller, to discuss our overall consolidated financial results and also our small RFIG run-off business.
And then he'll turn things back to me to discuss the General Insurance segment, followed by Carolyn Monroe, who will discuss the Title Insurance segment and after that I'll make a few closing comments before we open up the discussion to Q&A.
So with that, Karl, please take it away.
Earlier today, we announced second quarter net income excluding all investment gains and losses of $124 million or $0.42 per share and that's down approximately 7% from last year.
For the first six months of 2020, earnings per share was $0.89, up nearly 4%.
Consolidated net premiums and fees earned grew by 1.5 percentage points during the second quarter and 5.7% for the first half of this year.
Our Title Insurance Group as Craig said continues to set the pace with an increase of almost 10% for the quarter and 16% year-to-date.
General Insurance recorded relatively modest decline of 3.8% and 0.6% for the quarter and the first six months of the year, as the pandemic further impacted economic activity here in the US.
Net premiums earned in our mortgage run-off business continued to decrease as expected and really there are no longer a significant contributor to the consolidated total.
Net investment income dropped by 3.8% for the quarter and 1% year-to-date, and that's mostly caused by lower yields, which offset the generally higher invested asset balances.
Turning to underwriting results, this quarter's consolidated combined ratio ticked upward by less than 1 percentage point to 96% from 95.2% last year.
For this year's first six months, the combined ratio was 95.4% and that was largely unchanged from the same period a year ago.
Consistent with recent trends, the claim ratios moved lower and the expense ratio higher and that's due mainly to a shift in the mix of business toward the Title business, making up a greater percentage of total.
And as we've pointed out in the past, Title carries lower loss and higher expense ratio and that's influencing the consolidated total.
Claim reserves on a consolidated basis dropped or developed favorably for the current quarter and year-to-date periods, reducing the reported claim ratios by 0.4 percentage points and 0.6 percentage points.
Prior year development for the comparable 2019 period was again favorable by 0.2 percentage points and 0.9 percentage points.
At June 30th, the allocation of the investment portfolio remained relatively consistent, roughly 75% is invested in bonds and short-term investments, with the remaining 25% directed toward equity securities.
Our primary investment objective is to create a steady and growing stream of interest and dividend income and in that light, we do not anticipate any material changes to our investment strategy.
Turning to -- during this year's first quarter, disruption to the financial markets resulted in a 24% or $963 million decline in the value of our equity portfolio.
During the second quarter, the financial markets improved considerably resulting in a $354 million recovery in the valuation of our equities portfolio.
And I would also add that as of yesterday's close, the portfolio had rebounded by an additional $126 million on top of the $354 million.
Old Republic's book value per share increased from $17.29 at March 31st to $19.68 at the end of June, driven both by operating income and increases in the fair value of the investment portfolio.
Book value is now up slightly for the year after consideration of the regular cash dividends paid year-to-date, which now generate nearly a 5% yield.
In fact 2020 marks the 79th year of uninterrupted regular cash dividends and the 39th consecutive year of increasing dividends.
So now let me turn briefly and discuss our run-off mortgage insurance business.
As previously noted, we continue to monitor the impact of unemployment levels along with the effects of government loan, forbearance programs on reported delinquencies.
At the end of the first quarter, we cautioned that these factors along with the rate at which the US economy recovers could affect future claims experience and potentially slow the return of capital from the run-off business.
During the second quarter, we did actually experience an increase in reported delinquencies.
A significant portion of these still reported almost 41% of total delinquencies outstanding at June.
Our loans in forbearance and our experience with prior forbearance programs suggest that these loans will have significantly lower ultimate claim rates.
Therefore, they have been segregated and reserved for separately.
We have also pre-emptively increased the frequency factors on early stage delinquencies for normal loan defaults and what I mean by that loans that are not in forbearance and we've done so in consideration of the current economic environment.
So in combination, these additional reserves resulted in the $5 million pre-tax operating loss and escalated claim ratios that were reported.
So overall, we believe this was a very good quarter.
And there are number of positives to build upon for the future of Old Republic.
So as the release indicates, compared to the second quarter, General Insurance saw quarter-over-quarter operating revenue decreased by 3.6% and quarter-over-quarter pre-tax operating income decreased by 1.8%.
For the General Insurance Group, quarter-over-quarter combined ratio, we saw that it rose slightly to 98.4% from 98.1%, while the expense ratio remained very steady.
As shown in the financial supplement, net premiums earned in commercial auto decreased by 2.5% quarter-over-quarter, attributable to a decline in the exposure base resulting from the economic downturn, along with tighter risk selection criteria, offset by the positive effect of rate increases that have continued at a pace in the percentages in the lower teens.
Claims frequency has decreased significantly for commercial auto, again attributable to the economic downturn, but this was offset by severity that continued to increase.
We believe that comes from higher speeds as a result -- as a result of less congestion on the highways and also continued effect of social inflation on settlements.
Continuing with financial supplement, workers' compensation experienced a 14.3% decrease.
Net premiums earned quarter-over-quarter here too attributable to decline in exposure base resulting from the economic downturn.
And on this line, that's also further exacerbated by the effect of rate decreases that continued in the low single digits for workers' compensation.
Aside from COVID-19 related claims, claim frequency here too decreased, again attributable to government and businesses and their responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and of course the impact on the overall economy.
Turning to the line of coverage claim ratios in the financial supplement, our second quarter commercial auto claim ratio increased to 83.4% compared with 79.6% in the same period of 2019.
So our work on this line of coverage continues with necessary rate increases and stricter risk selection criteria to bring that claim ratio back in line with our target in the low 70s.
Turning to the workers' compensation claim ratio, the second quarter came in at 65.7%, compared to 69.3% in the second quarter of 2019.
As we discussed following the first quarter, it's important to remember that more than 90% of our COVID-19 workers' compensation claims emanate from loss-sensitive business such as large deductibles.
And furthermore, greater than 90% of the COVID-19 claims that we see in workers' compensation are mild in nature, with very low claim payments.
And ultimately less than 1% of those workers' comp claims are severe and less than 1% result in a fatality.
So, therefore based on our current analysis, we are confident in our current accident year, loss ratio selection for workers' compensation and we're confident that they're adequate, especially taking into consideration the loss sensitive nature of our business, the reduction in frequency we spoke about and the very high proportion of mild cases for COVID-19 claims.
For commercial auto workers' comp, general liability combined given that we usually provide these coverages together to our customers, we like to look at it that way as well and quarter-over-quarter that claim ratio came in at 74.6% compared to 75.3% last year.
Still looking at the financial supplement, the remainder of our other line of coverage claim ratios are generally within our targets and we feel very good about those.
So for General Insurance, the second half of 2020 will remain challenging from a top line perspective no doubt, but we will continue to seek the appropriate price for our products and continue with our long-term focus.
So on that note, I'll turn the discussion over to Carolyn for her comments on Title Insurance.
Carolyn along with her team continue to do a remarkable job, keeping our Title operations executing at an extremely high level.
So, Carolyn, please take it from here.
As the trials of COVID-19 continued in the second quarter, our Title employees continue to face the challenges head on effectively serving the needs of agents and customers.
We have transitioned a portion of our workforce back to their office.
So we are maintaining our nationwide work-from-home capabilities.
Our high standard of service commitment and execution remain regardless of the location of our employees.
In our first quarter earnings call, we reported that our owned digital closing provider, Pavaso had adjusted its platform to allow our agents and offices to be able to offer electronic signing products that were key to facilitating real estate transactions in the manner predicated in many of the emergency orders implemented by state government.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the real estate industry had not committed to adopting the digital closing models.
Based on need and then following regulations, there has been a dramatic increase in this activity.
From a national perspective, these electronic closings are relatively small number of the overall transactions.
However, as a result of the emerging interest to continue these methodologies, we have accelerated the development and roll out of our digital close tools.
We also continue to evaluate multiple products that will augment automation in the Title Production segment.
All-time second quarter and mid-year highs were set for both underwriting revenue and operation profit.
For the second quarter, total premium and fee revenue was up 9.9% and up 16.4% year-to-date.
Our pre-tax operating income of $65.4 million for the quarter, compared to $60.2 million in last year's second quarter was an increase of $5.2 million or 8.6%.
Year-to-date, pre-tax operating of $108.7 million compared to $80.8 million in the prior year-to-date period and the increase of $27.9 million or 34.6%.
Year-to-date 2020, our composite ratio of 93.1% compares favorably to the 94.3% reported for the comparable 2019 period.
Despite all the unknowns surrounding COVID-19, we remain cautiously optimistic going into the third quarter, with a robust order count in both purchase and refinance transactions, a strong real estate market, the 30-year mortgage rates remain historically low around 3% and expectations for these favorable rates to continue for this foreseeable future.
While we have adjusted to doing business during COVID-19, we are still mindful of the challenges ahead for our organization and our nation.
My appreciation goes out to all our employees and Title agents as they remain dedicated and positive, as we all deal with the daily challenges of the pandemic.
Our accomplishments are achieved through the commitment of our employees and the support of our agents.
As with past challenges, we rely on the same guiding principles of integrity, managing for the long-run, financial strength, protection of our policyholders and the well-being of our employees and customers that have served us well over the last 100 plus years.
So again, our second quarter operating results indicate that our businesses continue to perform and our strategic diversification between General Insurance and Title Insurance works well.
We will continue to focus on underwriting excellence and we will continue to ensure that our capital position remains very strong as we weather the current economic disruptions.

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old republic international - qtrly total operating revenues $1,623.9 million versus $1,607.7 million.

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