Beazley (BEZ) CMD 2025 summary

Business Model and Strategic Priorities

• Focus on specialty and complex insurance with over 50 products, targeting structurally growing and volatile risks, and maintaining a 15% ROE target across cycles.

• Diversified global platforms in Lloyd's, North America, and Europe, leveraging deep underwriting expertise and continual product innovation.

• Emphasis on underwriting alpha, innovation in emerging areas like cyber and transition underwriting, and investment in talent and strategic acquisitions.

• Product diversification enables agile response to market cycles and risk opportunities, with robust monitoring and retrenchment in underperforming lines.

• Specialty Risks division leverages niche classes, achieving a 9% CAGR since 2019.

Financial Performance and Guidance

• Consistent profitability with a 10-year average ROE of 15.5% and a 5-year average of 17.7%, and a mid-80s combined operating ratio targeted.

• Gross premium has more than tripled since 2010, supported by disciplined cycle management.

• Investment portfolio doubled since 2019 to over $11.7 billion, with a 4.0% average yield as of September 2025.

• Over $2.5 billion returned to shareholders in the last decade, with payout ratios of 43% in 2024 and 64% in 2025.

• Capital strategy prioritizes organic growth, capability-enhancing acquisitions, and returning surplus capital to shareholders, aiming to stay above a 170% SCR ratio.

Cycle Management and Underwriting Discipline

• Rigorous annual business planning with 75+ business plans, focusing on growth, BAU, and de-risking, with 17% of business currently being de-risked.

• Underwriters incentivized for long-term profitability, with profit-related pay linked to multi-year business performance.

• Portfolio mix actively managed to adapt to market conditions, with examples of pivoting into property and cyber during hard markets and reducing D&O exposure as markets softened.

• Outperformance demonstrated in property, cyber, marine, and specialty lines versus market benchmarks.

• Cyber leadership continues, with outperformance in combined ratios and ongoing product development, including cyber catastrophe bonds and ILS.