With a combined revenue of $21 trillion and $2.1 trillion in profits, the 2026 Fortune 500 is the definitive list of America's largest companies.

Fortune 500

Almost $20 trillion in revenue—and a record-breaking $1.87 trillion in profits. Introducing the 2025 Fortune 500, the definitive list of the biggest companies in America.

The Fortune 500, in its 70th year in 2024, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

The Fortune 500, in its 69th year in 2023, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 68th running of the list.

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 67th running of the list.

Based out of Greenwich, Conn., the insurance company offers commercial insurance for property and casualty in countries all around the globe.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 66th running of the list.

F500-2020-402-W.R. Berkley

Based in Greenwich, Conn., Berkley is a holding company for more than 50 entities that specialize in different lines of property and casualty insurance.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 65th running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 64th running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 63rd running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 62nd running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 61st running of the list. Wal-Mart claims the top spot again. See who made the list.

Wal-Mart stayed on top as its sales crept closer to half-a-trillion dollars. Apple moved into the top five. And UnitedHealth Group continued its steady climb. 

Key Financials (last Fiscal Year)

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Profit as % of Revenues

Profits as % of Assets

Profits as % of Stockholder Equity

Earnings Per Share (last Fiscal Year)

Earnings Per Share ($)

EPS % Change (from prior fiscal year)

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EPS % Change (10 year annual rate)

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Total Return to Investors (last year)

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Total Return to Investors (10 year, annualized)

W.R. Berkley Corporation is an international property casualty and health insurance and reinsurance holding company founded in 1967. Through its 58 businesses, it provides insurance for home, auto, fine arts and collectibles, and cyber risk, as well as professional liability products.

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Q4 2024

W.R. Berkley (WRB): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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W.R. Berkley

w.r. berkley

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us, and welcome to the W. R. Berkley Corporation first quarter 2026 earnings call. This conference call is being recorded. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, please press star one again. The speaker's remarks may contain forward-looking statements. Some of the forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking words, including, without limitation, believes, expects, or estimates. We caution you that such forward-looking statements should not be regarded as a representation by us that the future plans, estimates, or expectations contemplated by us will in fact be achieved.

Please refer to our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31st, 2025, and our other filings made with the SEC for a description of the business environment in which we operate and the important factors that may materially affect our results. W. R. Berkley Corporation is not under any obligation and expressly disclaims any such obligation to update or alter its forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Rob Berkley. Please go ahead, sir.

Alexandra, thank you very much, and good afternoon to all. Thank you for finding time in your calendars to join us. My colleagues and I, we appreciate your interest in the company. Speaking of colleagues, joining me on this end of the phone, we also have Executive Chairman Bill Berkley, as well as Group Chief Financial Officer Rich Baio. We're going to follow a similar path to what we have used in the past, where I'm going to offer a few more quick comments, then Rich is going to provide us a summary on the quarter. I will follow behind with a few additional thoughts, and then we will be very pleased to take your questions and the conversation in any direction you wish to take it. Before I do hand it over to Rich, just a couple of observations from me, perhaps a bit stating the obvious.

One is, let there be no confusion. This continues to be very much a cyclical industry. As we've discussed in the past, the cycle is driven by two human emotions, greed and fear. Without a doubt, these days, it would seem as though the fear is fading and the greed is fully percolating in many of the corners of the marketplace today. One of the things that we've talked about in the past couple of quarters is where is some of this competition coming from, or much of this competition coming from? We've talked about MGAs and MGUs, delegated authority, a lot of that capacity coming from a variety of different sources, in particular, the reinsurance market, as well as we've talked about Lloyd's as a marketplace providing a lot of capacity to delegated authority.

One of the things that we've taken note of over the past 90 days or so is a notable shift in the appetite of the standard market, in particular, national carriers who seem to be broadening their appetite and having reached a new level of, I would suggest, competitive nature that we haven't seen in some number of years, though it tends to be focused in certain pockets. A couple other comments on the marketplace, focusing on the reinsurance market for a moment. I think, no surprise, property and property cat within the reinsurance space, it has been more and more competitive. We're not surprised with it directionally, but we have been taken aback a bit by the pace of change and how that level of competition has really taken hold at an accelerating pace.

In addition to that, the casualty market or the liability market within the reinsurance space never seemed to have gotten much of the bounce that we saw in the property market. Nevertheless, it remains very competitive, and we remain concerned for the health and wellbeing of that marketplace over time, as there is more competition in the property market that will undoubtedly, at least history would suggest, create more irrational behavior that will be plentiful in both the property cat market as well as the liability market. Couple of thoughts on the insurance marketplace. Speaking of property and how it can turn into a marketplace that quickly erodes, we are definitely seeing that, particularly with cat-exposed property on the insurance side. GL and umbrella, I would suggest, are areas where rate is still available with good reason.

Professional, as we've talked about in the past, continues to be a mixed bag. D&O remains one that we are very focused on and seems to be continuing to flirt with the bottom. On the other hand, EPLI in certain jurisdictions is an area from our perspective to be very cautious. I would call out California, particularly Southern California, as one that we are paying close attention to. Speaking of California as it relates to workers' compensation, we've talked about in the past, and we remain convinced that California this time around is out in front of much of the broader workers' comp market.

Without a doubt, all eyes remain on the WCIRB and what is to come in the not-too-distant future. At the possibility of, I guess, finishing on a bit of a low note, I guess auto would continue to be an area of great concern from our perspective. It's unclear to us that the marketplace has really wrapped their head around loss cost trend and what action needs to be taken. I give you the punchline before I hand it over to Rich, is that at the intersection of a cyclical industry and a focus on risk-adjusted return, undoubtedly is a concept that we subscribe to, and hopefully others do, known as cycle management.

The good news for us as we exercise cycle management, the decoupling of product lines as to where they are in the cycle, combined with the breadth of our offering, allows us to be more resilient than many of our peers that have a narrower offering. Why don't I pause there, and speaking of resilience, Rich, over to you, please.

Great. Thanks, Rob. Good afternoon, everyone. The first quarter marked an excellent start to 2026, with record net investment income and strong underwriting profits contributing to a return on beginning of year stockholders' equity of 21.2%. Net income for the quarter was $515 million or $1.31 per share, while record operating income was $514 million or $1.30 per share. Other drivers benefiting the quarter compared to the prior year included lower catastrophe losses and an improved effective tax rate. Starting with underwriting performance, current accident year combined ratio excluding cat losses was 88.3%, and the calendar year combined ratio was 90.7%. The difference was current accident year cat losses of 2.4 loss ratio points or $76 million, compared with the prior year of $111 million or 3.7 loss ratio points.

Unlike last year, which was heavily influenced by California wildfires in the first quarter, this year, the industry experienced significant winter storm activity occurring in January and February. The current accident year loss ratio ex-cats for 2026 is 59.7%, compared with 59.4% for the prior year, which reflects a shift in business mix as we look to maximize profitability. The insurance segment's current accident year loss ratio, ex-cats, increased 10 basis points to 60.9%, while the reinsurance and monoline excess segment increased to 51.1%. The expense ratio of 28.6% is comparable to the recent sequential quarters and reflects a small impact from the decline in net premiums earned from the reinsurance and monoline excess segment. We continue to believe that the 2026 expense ratio will be comfortably below 30%, barring any material changes in the marketplace.

On top-line production, despite heightened competition in certain pockets of the market, the insurance segment grew gross premiums written by 4.5% to $3.4 billion, and net premiums written by 3.2% to $2.8 billion. As you can see from the supplemental information on page seven of the earnings release, net premiums written grew in all lines of business apart from workers' compensation. The reinsurance and monoline excess segment reported net premiums written of $395 million, reflecting decreases in property and casualty lines of business. Net investment income increased 12.2% to a record $404 million, driven by growth in the core portfolio of 11.8% to $354 million, and an increase in investment fund income of 46.3% to $40 million. As a reminder, we report the investment funds on a one-quarter lag, and an average quarterly range for investment fund income is $10 million-$20 million.

We expect that strong operating cash flow of $668 million in the current quarter should continue to contribute to the growth in net investment income. The duration of our fixed maturity portfolio, including cash and cash equivalents, increased during the quarter to 3.1 years, which remains below the average life of our insurance reserves. The credit quality of the investment portfolio continues to improve to a very strong AA-. The effective tax rate in the first quarter was lower than our normalized run rate of 23% ±, which is usually attributable to higher taxes on foreign earnings and the ability to utilize such foreign tax credits. In the current quarter, we reflected a net non-recurring tax benefit, reducing our effective tax rate from 22.8%-16.3% as reported. We expect the remainder of 2026 will return to our normalized run rate.

During the quarter, we repurchased approximately 4.5 million common shares amounting to $302 million and paid regular dividends of $34 million. Stockholders' equity increased to approximately $9.75 billion despite the significant capital management. In summary, another positive quarter with meaningful growth in earnings and 21%+ return on beginning equity. Rob, I'll turn it back to you.

Thank you, Rich. I'm a little disappointed that this isn't our new run rate on the tax front, but I guess you got a whole quarter to figure that out.

Let me just offer a couple of more quick soundbites, and then we'll move on to Q&A. First off, you would have taken note on the rate. It came in reasonably healthy at the 7.2% ex-comp. Just as another perhaps relevant data point, the renewal retention ratio continues to sit at around 80%. Now that thing fluctuates between 78.5%-81.5%. It doesn't move very much. I look at it as one barometer to really understand whether we are turning the book or not in our efforts to get rates. That's an encouraging sign from my perspective. Just another quick soundbite on the topic of rate, and we touched on this briefly when we had our fourth quarter call, and I think you're going to see it come into more and more focus.

We've taken a tremendous amount of rate over not just the past couple of quarters, the past few years. I think there are many pockets of the organization where we're feeling very good with what the margin is and the need for rate is perhaps not going to be as strong going forward. What's the punchline? We are actively rethinking what the balance is between rate versus growth, and over the coming quarters, you may see us take our foot slightly off the rate pedal and look to push harder on the growth in particular lines where we see the margin is particularly attractive and exposure growth is of more interest to us than rate. Rich talked about the top line overall growth. It was obviously some pretty separate and distinct pieces, and it does map back, at least in my mind, to the topic of cycle management.

You would have seen we took a pretty firm position, which quite frankly, given our comments in the Q4 call and earlier last year, shouldn't have surprised anyone. We all know what's been going on with the rate. We've been very transparent about our view on the casualty or liability lines and the discipline that we'll be exercising there. Kudos to our colleagues that are actually putting that discipline into practice. The other side of the coin, as Rich pointed out, we are still finding opportunities to grow within the insurance space. Clearly a bit of a mixed bag.

I think the note between the gross versus net, again, highlights, hopefully, in the eyes of those that are observing, that this is probably a moment, generally speaking, where it's better to be a buyer of reinsurance than a seller of reinsurance, hence the delta between the gross and the net. I do think, just a final quick comment on the top line, in the insurance space, there is a reasonable chance that we will see a bit more growth as the year unfolds, and we are revisiting this notion or balance between growth and rate. Pivoting over quickly to the loss ratio, I think in a nutshell, it's winter storms. We had more exposure to that than some. That having been said, we think it is still a good trade. The comments on the expense ratio, I share very much Rich's view that we'll be keeping it below 30%.

The movement that you would have seen in the reinsurance and excess segment was primarily a result of a reduction in premium on the reinsurance front. Switching over to the investment portfolio for a moment, Rich flagged for you all the strength of the quality with a very strong AA-, almost flirting with AA. A couple other points that I would flag is that the book yield on the portfolio is about 4.7%. New money rate is 5%+, so we still got some room there for improvement. In addition to that, the duration, as Rich pointed out, is sitting at 3.1 years. As a friendly reminder, the average life of our loss reserves, which is a big part of what we're investing, is a hair inside of four years. What's the punchline? The punchline is a couple of things.

One, the quality is high. There's opportunity with the book yield moving up, and we have flexibility around pushing that duration out, which is a plus as well. Even if you discount the growth in the portfolio due to the strength of the cash flow that Rich was referencing, which is there, is real, and you see it quarter after quarter. Even if you put that aside, there is meaningful upside on the, depending on whether you look at the overall, including cash, $28 billion, or if you want to back out the cash, $25.5 billion. There's meaningful upside from there, both because of growth of investable assets as well as the new money rate, which again, with the duration, we have flexibility. On the topic of flexibility, and I promise last topic for me, at least for the moment, is capital.

I know it's not something that we spend a lot of time talking about on these calls, but I did want to draw folks' attention to it, and that is our financial leverage, which is sitting at about 22.6% these days, which is, I don't know if it's an all-time low, but it's an all-time low in my, some number of decades at the organization. I think it's important to take note of that for a couple of reasons. Number one, when you look at the returns that we're generating, we're generating it with a much higher level of capital or equity for that matter, more specifically in the business. Number two, I would draw your attention to the fact that we, as an organization, do not have an expectation for 22.6% to keep going down from here. This is a very comfortable place.

We think we got lots of room if an opportunity presented itself. What does that mean? That means if you look at this business that's earning, I don't know, between $1.75 billion and $2 billion and something a year, give or take, and you think about where our leverage ratios are, what that means is we are generating capital significantly more quickly than we can consume it, and that we will have significant amounts of capital to return to shareholders for the foreseeable. To that end, even with us doing that, we still have a tremendous amount of flexibility to take advantage of whatever unforeseen opportunities may be coming our way.

I flag that because what you saw in the quarter with the repurchase, what you've seen us do with special dividends and recognizing the earnings power of the business and how we see the growth opportunities before us, that we are going to, in all likelihood, have large amounts of capital to continue to return to shareholders in what we will believe is the most effective and efficient way that is in the best interest of our shareholders.

I know we talk about repurchase every now and then. People talk about special dividends, but I just wanted to put those data points out there, and again, we can talk more about it during the Q&A if people wish to, but it seemed like that was a relevant topic of the day. Why don't we take a pause there. Alexandra, if we could please open it up for questions.

We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Elyse Greenspan with Wells Fargo. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thanks, team. Good evening. My first question, I guess I'm just trying to, Rob, square away your comments, right? You started off by just pointing to greed and fear in the market, and then you were talking about standard market carriers, especially national carriers, right, that brought in appetite and pointing to the market getting more competitive. But then you also, right, ended your comments by saying that there's perhaps some better opportunities to push for a little less price and show better growth. Can you just help me square what felt like introductory comments that pointed to stuff?

Thank you for the question, Elyse, and what I perhaps was not as clear on as I should have been with my opening comments is that I think there are still pockets where there is good opportunity. I think a lot of those pockets tend to be more casualty related. We, as an organization, have a bent towards casualty as opposed to shorter tail lines, particularly property, where the competition is most pronounced. Do I think overall the market is a bit more competitive today than it was yesterday? Yes, I do. Do I think there are still pockets of the marketplace that we are a meaningful participant that offer opportunity? Yes, I do.

Okay, as we translate that in terms of just thinking about premium growth, and I guess my comment is more focused on the insurance segment, right? It got slightly better this quarter, but I think from your comments on last quarter's call, right, I think you had insinuated growth in January might have been within range of 7%, right? We could see that things, it seems like, slowed in February and March. How are you thinking about just the level of pickup of growth that we could see here?

You're right, Anthony, there's a lag. Sorry to interrupt you, Elyse. I beg your pardon. There's a bit of a lag on the line. I think to answer your question, and maybe we confused the situation if we did, apologies, but we actually saw the top line improve as we made our way through the quarter as opposed to the other way around. January did not prove to be our best month.

Okay. For your comments about growth getting better, I guess my last question, is that a Q2 comment? Is that more maybe Q3, Q4, just based on how you see that today?

We are hopeful that we will be able to do better in Q2, but I can't promise that right now. What I can tell you is that we, as an organization, oftentimes are quoting 90 days out, sometimes 60 days out, sometimes even longer than 90 days out. As we identify pockets where we're willing to make a trade as far as maybe a bit less rate in order for a bit more growth, it takes a little bit of time for that to come into focus.

How that will play out, I can't promise that. I know what I've talked to my colleagues about, and I hear from them how they're thinking about things, and that's what I'm trying to share with you. I can't promise that in Q2, we will grow X amount more. We'll have to see how it unfolds. I am trying to give you a little bit of a flavor as to what the dialogue is within our clubhouse.

Your next question comes from the line of Robert Cox with Goldman Sachs. Rob, your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Good evening. Yeah, just first question on property. I hear your comments this quarter and in recent quarters that property dynamics are repeating themselves. I'm curious where you think property is from a price adequacy perspective, whether it's ROE or whatever metric, and how you would bifurcate across insurance, reinsurance, and maybe by geography?

I think that's a pretty big question. From my perspective, I think that there's still margin in a lot of places, but it's falling off pretty quickly. I think it's fallen off most quickly in the reinsurance marketplace. I think then it would waterfall down into cat exposed or E&S property, and probably the place where there's been the least level of sea change would be the admitted or standard risk property market overall. That having been said, that part of the market probably got the least bounce. But in my mind, the reinsurance market led the way up and the reinsurance market is leading the way down.

Okay, that's helpful. I just had a follow-up. Professional lines, you mentioned pricing trying to bottom there. Looked like your strongest growth at Berkley since the first quarter of 2022 in professional lines this quarter. I don't think a lot of that was pricing, so it seems like exposure grew. Do you anticipate seeing further opportunities in professional lines, and is there any other color you could provide on the quarter?

Sure. I think professional is a pretty broad category. I tried to fashion my comments around two areas that gave us reason for pause. D&O, particularly public D&O and certain components of the EPLI market. That having been said, a lot of the growth that you saw on the professional front, much of it came from outside of the United States. My earlier comments were really focused on the U.S. market. That's really what I can offer on that. As far as the places specifically where we think that it's the best opportunity, that's just not something we're going to unpack publicly.

Your next question comes from the line of Alex Scott with Barclays. Alex, your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Hi, thanks for taking the question. First one is on reinsurance. I know you mentioned better to be a buyer than a seller at the moment, so I just wanted to take your temperature on what to expect there for the full-year. When we look at the growth numbers for this quarter, is there anything funky in there around reinstated premiums or anything like that that we should consider? I just want to make sure I understand the right kind of run rate to that business.

Nothing funky, to use your words, in the reinsurance numbers, and I think it's just a reflection of market conditions from our perspective. You're seeing a combination certainly of a more competitive market, and simultaneously you're seeing a couple of signs of cedants struggling to get their top line where they want it, so they're increasing their net, and that may feel good in the short run. We'll see how it works out in the long run.

Makes sense. Okay, I wanted to come back to casualty reserves a little bit. I know this is sort of old news because you guys put out the triangles and so forth with the 10-K results, or sorry, the 4Q results. Would be interested if you have any comments you'd share on the other liability and just what we see in there related to some of the early years is releasing on shorter tail casualty versus some building of reserves on longer tail. I mean, what would you say to us to help us kind of wrap our arms around that and get more comfortable with the trends we see?

As far as that goes, I think that's probably a bigger conversation than probably makes sense to hold up everyone's time on it. We have put a fair amount of information out and supplements out. In addition to that, I think some of our folks, in an effort to help piece it all together, have reached out to yourself and to others, and if you'd like to further the conversation, we're happy to help you piece together the public information. Obviously, there's a bit of a constraint as to how far we can go, but we'd be very happy to pick that up with you, Alex, offline. I think that's not going to be a quick answer.

Yeah, understood. Yeah, fair. Okay, thank you. I do appreciate the extra disclosures. Thanks.

Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Kligerman with TD Cowen. Andrew, your line is now open. Please go ahead.

The first question is around the capital management, Rob. I'm trying to frame your appetite in terms of what's bigger. Is it the buyback, the one-time big dividend, special dividend, or is it growth in a challenged market? Because as I look at what you did in the first quarter, $302 million, that's a lot of buyback. As much as you did in all of 2024, when the stock price was about 20% lower and the earnings were very similar to what we're seeing today.

Yeah, do you do a big dividend like you did in 2024 or 2025? And then where should that leverage ratio be? You said 22.6% is too low. Where would you like it to level out? Sorry for the long-winded on this one, but why the big buyback in the quarter and what's the appetite, buyback versus dividend, and where will the leverage be? A lot to unpack.

Great. Well, thank you for the question, Andrew. I guess a couple of things there. First off, as far as the 22.6%, I did not suggest, and if I misspoke, shame on me, but I didn't suggest that we wanted to go lower or higher. I think what I tried to suggest to you is that we didn't see it going much lower than that. I'm not suggesting that we want it to go considerably higher. It really depends on the circumstances at any moment in time and how we're positioning the business for what we see today and what we envision for tomorrow.

Number two, the point that I was trying to articulate earlier is that the opportunity for growth for the organization today and what we see in all likelihood tomorrow, is we think we'll be able to grow, but it's not going to be the growth rate that we enjoyed some number of years in the past or for some number of years. That's just a reality of market conditions. Again, will there be growth? Yes. Is there going to be the kind of growth we saw in the past? Probably not. With that all having been said, the reality is with the company generating, call it 20%+ returns, or said differently, call it flirting with $2 billion of net income, that is a lot of capital that we need to figure out, if we don't need it, how we're going to return it to our shareholders?

That's just the reality. As far as what levers we utilize to return capital to shareholders, that's something that we grapple with every day, and we think about what is in the best interest of all shareholders as far as whether it's special dividend, whether it's repurchase, whatever it may be. As far as what we did in the past and when we bought back, we can take it offline and try and unpack what we did this quarter versus that quarter. A lot of it has to do with valuation at that moment in time. A lot of it has to do with how we see growth opportunity. There's a lot of things that we consider.

If you're looking for more guidance as to what we're specifically going to do to be returning this surplus or significant surplus of capital that we're generating as of today and expect to be generating tomorrow, I don't have a particular roadmap to share with you, but it's certainly something that we will continue to be transparent about on a quarterly basis.

Okay. Thank you for that, Rob. With regard to the gross versus net written premium, the net being $3.2 against the gross at $4.5. Any read-through there with the lower net? Any color that you can share on why that net was materially lower?

It's a combination or mix of business, and in addition to that, as we tried to flag earlier, there were opportunities to buy some reinsurance at what we believe to be attractive terms.

Got it. Just sneak one last one. Prior year development, anything unusual in the casualty lines, plus or minus?

Nothing particularly exciting. If you want to do a deeper dive, at least to the extent we're able, we'll share with you whatever we're allowed to share with you on that, and obviously there'll be more detail available in the queue.

Your next question comes from the line of Michael Zaremski with BMO Capital Markets. Michael, your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks. First question, kind of pivoting back to social inflationary lines. Rob, loud and clear, we heard your comment. I think most would agree with you that the industry's still getting their hands around loss cost trend. Industry's doing very well, though, overall. Would you be willing to kind of just paint a broad brush on how Berkley views loss trend in GL, umbrella, commercial auto, because back to Alex Scott's questions, we all do see Berkley, like peers tuning up your loss picks a bit higher as well. Curious if you could add any color there.

If you're asking me to share with you what our trend assumptions are by product line, that's not something that we put out, generally speaking, for public consumption as it relates to our loss picks. We are constantly looking at our data, and what is it telling us? We're constantly looking at industry data, and we're looking at other data sets as well, both traditional and non-traditional, and trying to respond to that. We put it all into our sausage maker, and then a lot of folks sit around and try and apply our judgment to the best of our ability. So, I'm not sure what more I can add, Mike, at this stage other than we are very focused on making sure that our picks are appropriate. Based on what we conclude on that front, we are looking to actively respond from a rate perspective, terms, conditions.

I think one of the points I should have made earlier that we tend to not always focus on as much as we could or should, is the role that jurisdiction or territory plays as a component of selection. Anyways, I suspect there's not a satisfactory answer amongst my commentary to you, but the long and the short of it is, we just don't get into that level of detail by product line, what our view around trend is. I can assure you we are very focused on it, and we are responding in what we believe is a timely manner, not just for the picks, but the action that that would suggest we should be taking from a selection and pricing perspective.

Got it, that's fair. Yeah, I just thought worth asking. Some of your peers have reluctantly, I guess, disclosed some broad brush trends. Just kind of pivoting back to the debt to cap discussion, and maybe I'll try another way. You gave the context earlier, but we can see as you kind of alluded to your very long-term average debt to cap oscillates low 20s, mid-30s, but it's averaged 30%+. So can you maybe remind us? Are there circumstances when you are increasing the leverage? Is it when you feel you're very bullish about the marketplace? Or any additional context you think worth mentioning? Thanks.

The answer is that when we see opportunity in the market, we are very happy to, in the short run, flex that leverage up. Quite frankly, we are very comfortable where we are today, but we certainly have the ability to flex it up if the opportunity presented itself.

Your next question comes from the line of Bob Huang with Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Good evening. My first question is also on the capital side in a different way, right? I think you talked about willingness to grow your business. You clearly have that capital. Is there some way to think about the balance between growing inorganically versus buyback and dividends? Are there lines of business that you feel-

Bob, to make sure I'm following, when you say inorganically as opposed to organically, are you talking about M&A?

Yes, sir. Yeah. If we were to think, does M&A make sense for you guys? Are there lines where you think M&A makes sense?

Most things that investment bankers are out trying to sell, we get a phone call on. Most of the time when you hear about a transaction, we're already somewhat aware of it because we got the phone call. As we've shared with some, we tend to err on the side of being cautious and cheap, and we recognize that most M&A transactions in this industry, not all, but most, if folks could do it all over again, at least the buyers, they probably wouldn't.

I would never say never. We certainly look at things from time to time, but we are very comfortable with the organic growth model. We are pretty disciplined in how we operate the business, and we are willing to be patient because of this philosophy around risk and return. Again, you never know what tomorrow will bring. There's a reason why we have not been historically active on that front.

Really appreciate that, thank you. My second question is on the growth side of things, right? This is somewhat of a thing that's been asked somewhat, and I'm just curious. In the beginning of the call, you kind of talked about the market is in a greedy environment, so to speak, right? As you think about pivoting to growth, are there areas where you feel the market maybe is too greedy and that you just kind of have to avoid? Are there areas where you think maybe the market is too cautious and it represents a very big opportunity for you, or a semi big opportunity for just maybe if you can give us a little bit more of a breakdown there.

The answer is, and again, maybe I created more confusion than clarity with my opening comments, apologies for that. There is no doubt that if we want to use a broad brush, the market is overall more competitive today than it was a year ago, let alone two years ago or three years ago. That having been said, there are still pockets, particularly within certain aspects of the liability space that offer some, what we believe is attractive opportunities as far as available margins. It is not as broadly available as it once was, but it is still there. The shorter tail lines, not all, but much of them have become notably more competitive, and certain aspects of the liability lines have become more competitive.

Because of the breadth of our offering, we are still able to find opportunities where we still think that there are attractive margins that are available. Attractive enough to the point that we are willing to take our foot off of the rate pedal a little bit, which is why I'm suggesting as our colleagues are contemplating that and pivoting their behavior, there is a likelihood that you will see some level of growth that is coming from these niche opportunities. We saw our colleagues pivoting more and more throughout the quarter, which is why I was suggesting to, I believe it was Elyse earlier, that January, the growth was less relative to March. That was primarily a result of our colleagues pivoting, reminding you and others that we are oftentimes quoting 90 days out in advance.

It takes time for that pivot to convert into binders or written premium. What does that mean for Q2? Honestly, I can't promise anything. I can only share with you what the narrative is that's going on within our organization and how we are seeing the marketplace and how we are adjusting our approach.

Okay, really appreciate that. Thank you for clarification.

Your next question comes from the line of Tracy Benguigui with Wolfe Research. Tracy, your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Hey, good evening. Since casualty reinsurance never got the same bounce as you saw on property reinsurance, I'm curious, is this business rate adequate now, or is it approaching rate inadequacy?

I think you would have heard for some number of quarters or beyond us bitching and moaning about the casualty reinsurance marketplace and how we didn't think ceding commissions made sense, and that's a pretty broad brush that I'm using there. If we're riding the business, we believe that it's an acceptable margin. As you would have seen, our casualty portfolio within reinsurance was down considerably in the quarter, and that is not because we're charging less for the same exposure, it's because that book of business is shrinking. I can't speak to the broader market. I can only talk to what our colleagues are doing as I understand it.

Understood. Also, you mentioned potential upside from net investment income, and you also noted certain insurance pockets like casualty, you might prioritize growth over rate. Are you taking more of a total return approach when setting combined targets for your underwriters? Maybe putting more weight on net investment income, which will allow you to grow?

The answer is no. We have a view on loss ratios and to take your comment to an extreme, we as an organization have never subscribed to the notion of cash flow underwriting or anything akin to that. Are we conscious of what the contribution is from the investment portfolio? Of course, we are. We are acutely aware of that, but we are not willing to throw the underwriting discipline out the window because of where interest rates are today. We look to each component of our economic model to stand on its own two feet and justify the capital that it utilizes.

Your next question comes from the line of Mark Hughes with Truist Securities. Mark, your line is now open. Please go ahead.

W.R. Berkley Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript | Fortune

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W.R. Berkley (WRB) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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