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.

Fortune 500

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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Total Stockholder Equity ($M)

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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)

EPS % Change (5 year annual rate)

EPS % Change (10 year annual rate)

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Total Return to Investors (last year)

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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.

Q3 2025

Q2 2025

Q1 2025

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 third quarter 2025 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 raise your hand. If you have dialed into today's call, please press star nine to raise your hand and star six to unmute. 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 31, 2024, 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.

Nicole, thank you very much, and let me echo your warm welcome to our Q3 call. In addition to myself on this end of the phone, we also have Executive Chairman William Berkley as well as Chief Financial Officer Rich Baio. We're going to follow our typical agenda where momentarily I'll be handing it over to Rich. He's going to run through some highlights of the quarter. I may follow with a couple of sound bites of my own, and then you will have the three of us at your disposal to try and answer any questions or engage in any discussion that the participants would like to engage in.

Before I hand it over to Rich, let me just, as I oftentimes do, state the obvious, and that is I think the past 90 days is just a continuation of clear evidence that the insurance industry is still a cyclical industry. For whatever the reason may be, some would say fear and greed, the industry continues to seemingly make an art out of self-sabotage when it comes to its own success. That having been said, we as an organization are not completely insulated from that, but we are able to mitigate that quite effectively because of how we, what parts of the market I should say, we focus on, particularly specialty and furthermore small accounts, which a lot of the challenge that continues to percolate and seems to be building momentum, again, we are somewhat protected from. Let me leave it there.

I'm going to hand it over to Rich. He'll run through some thoughts, and then I will come back and offer a few more of mine. Rich, please.

Great. Thanks, Rob. Appreciate it. Good evening, everyone. Third quarter results were excellent with a return on beginning-of-year equity of 24.3%, reflecting an increase over the prior year's quarter of almost 40% in net income, $511 million or $1.28 per share. Operating income increased 12% over the same period to $440 million or $1.10 per share, with a return on beginning-of-year equity of 21%. Further growth in underwriting and net investment income drove the strong performance, combined with net investment gains. Pre-tax quarterly underwriting income increased 8.2% to $287 million. Calendar year combined ratio was 90.9%, and the current accident year combined ratio ex-cats was 88.4%. cat losses represented 2.5 loss ratio points or $79 million compared with the prior year of 3.3 loss ratio points or $98 million.

Current accident year loss ratio ex-cats for the current quarter was 59.9%, reflecting an increase over the prior year attributable to business mix, however, comparable to the second quarter of 2025. Drilling down further, the insurance segment's quarterly accident year loss ratio ex-cats was relatively consistent with the first half of 2025 at 60.9%, bringing the accident year combined ratio before cats to 89.3%. Reinsurance and monoline excess segment's accident year loss ratio ex-cats was 52.6%, with a strong accident year combined ratio before cats of 82.4%. Moving to our top line, quarterly net premiums earned continue to benefit from written growth, reaching another record of more than $3.2 billion. Growth in net premiums written were $3.8 billion and $3.2 billion, respectively. Net premiums written grew in all lines of business in both segments. The comparable third quarter expense ratios were 28.5%.

In addition to benefits from the growing net premiums earned on our expense ratio, several of our recent startup operating units are gaining scale and contributing favorably to the expense ratio. Technology enhancements are also contributing to operational efficiencies. Our pre-tax quarterly net investment income grew to $351 million, driven by an increase in our core portfolio of 9.4%. As a reminder, 2024 did benefit from heightened Argentine inflation-linked income, and excluding such income from both periods would increase the core portfolio growth to 14.6% quarter-over-quarter. The fixed maturity portfolio had a book yield of 4.8%. We do expect investment income from our fixed maturity portfolio to grow in the foreseeable future due to strong operating cash flow of almost $2.6 billion on a year-to-date basis and new money rates comfortably above the roll-off of existing securities.

The duration of our fixed maturity portfolio, including cash and cash equivalents, increased to 2.9 years in the third quarter, while strengthening our AA- credit quality of our portfolio. Stockholders' equity reached a record of $9.8 billion, increasing 16.7% from the beginning of the year, driven by strong earnings and improvement of $428 million in our after-tax unrealized investment losses and currency translation losses, as well as capital returned of $362 million through ordinary and special dividends and share repurchases. As of September 30, our after-tax unrealized investment losses, including stockholders' equity, decreased to $177 million, and our financial leverage has improved to historic low levels of 22.5%. We've continued to generate significant capital. The company proactively refinanced its debt when interest rates were historically low, resulting in a low cost of capital and adding permanence to our capital structure with our nearest scheduled maturity in 2037.

Our liquidity remains strong, with almost $2.4 billion of cash and cash equivalents to invest. Book value per share before dividends and share repurchases grew 20.7% year to date and 5.8% on a quarter-to-date basis. Rob, with that, I'll turn it back to you.

Okay. Rich, thank you very much. Maybe just a couple of quick sound bites from me that perhaps will invite a bit of conversation later on. Starting out with some observations regarding the market. The reinsurance marketplace, clearly the property market, particularly property cat, you know, that bloom is off the rose. From our perspective, there's still margin in the business. We'll see how long that lasts. It's without a doubt eroding. To that end, you can feel the growing groundswell, quite frankly, it's palpable around 1.1% and the appetite that's going to be coming from the reinsurance market. We'll have to see what 1.1% holds. As far as the liability side, again, from our perspective, and we've expressed this in the past, we've been a bit frustrated on the reinsurance marketplace, drawing a line in the sand and demonstrating some discipline.

It would seem as though that reinsurers are dissatisfied with the underlying rate increases that their students are achieving. From our perspective, we think that there should be opportunity to push a little harder. That having been said, obviously, it enures to our benefit as a buyer of reinsurance. Flipping over to the insurance side, per the comment earlier, from our perspective, and again, using a very broad brush here, larger equals more competition, smaller equals less competition, which certainly bodes well for us. On the property front, highlighting that clearly the world of shared and layered, as we talked about, give or take 90 days ago, is where the competition is heating up the greatest. It is also pronounced just in E&S in general.

That having been said, from our perspective, clearly the small admitted space, as well as select parts of the homeowners market, continue to offer attractive opportunities. Not different from what we've expressed in the past as well. The world of professional liability is very much a mixed bag. On one hand, you have D&O that continues to erode, although at a slower rate from where it had been, and the E&O market, generally speaking, is choppy. One of the brighter places, and by the way, it needs every drop of it and then some, would be the world of HPL as an example or hospital professional. As far as workers' compensation goes, Main Street comp, from our perspective, consistent with what we've shared with you in the past, tends to be particularly competitive.

We have talked and talked and talked about California and certainly some of the challenges that market faces, and happy to see the rate action coming through. A lot of that indigestion is coming about as a result of cumulative trauma and litigation stemming from that. GL, it would seem, at least from our perspective, for the moment, one's able to keep up with the trend. Auto has been on again and off again. I think it was the first quarter where we expressed a view that there were some green shoots. In the second quarter, it was a little less encouraging, and quite frankly, it remains pretty choppy. A bit of a puzzle to me, and I believe colleagues, because there is no product line that has been more exposed to social inflation in our opinions than Auto, but we'll have to see what happens with that.

As far as our portfolio goes, and we can get into it later, we are reducing exposure. We're taking a lot of rate, and quite frankly, our top line is growing considerably less than our rate. Over to Umbrella, again, not without its challenges for the marketplace. Clearly, the smaller end of town has been the better place to be. In addition to that, the indigestion that the Umbrella line has experienced disproportionately has been impacted by Auto. Rich covered our quarter in some detail, so maybe just a couple of quick observations on that front from me. Top line up 5.5%. Rate ex-comp coming in at 7.6%. Different folks can interpret that in whatever the way they wish to, but from my perspective, it highlights the concept or the idea that this is an organization that is focused on rate adequacy.

To that end, we are very attuned to the fact that we are in business to make good risk-adjusted returns, not solely to issue insurance policies. You would have seen some on the insurance front growth in the short tail lines. Just to call a couple of pieces out, what's really driving that, because you may be scratching your head saying, "How do I reconcile this, what he was just babbling about as far as the property line and competition?" There are really two pieces that are driving that. One is our personal lines effort and Berkley One, that being the private client personal lines where there is great opportunity and we continue to lean into that. In addition to that, our accident and health business continues to prosper as well. You would have also perhaps taken note of the growth in the workers' comp line.

That, not dissimilar to what we've talked about in the past, is really driven by specialty comp. Some of it tends to be higher hazard and so on and so forth. It is not Main Street comp. The growth under the reinsurance banner, really as far as the property piece goes, that's just us getting our last bites at the apple before the apple starts to rot. We have a view as to rate adequacy, and we have no problem drawing a line in the sand as we have demonstrated in the past. As far as the excess line, where the growth is coming from, is primarily excess comp. Rich covers the loss ratio, the expense ratio. As far as the cat goes, that was really just SCS that gave us a little bit of noise there.

The expenses, again, continue to be benefiting from our focus around automation, as Rich highlighted. Please understand, we continue to make investments. On occasion, with the expense ratio, you will see us having to take half a step back in order to take multiple steps forward. Flipping over to the investment portfolio, I'm not going to completely pile on what Rich has already covered, but I would just flag that the duration did nudge out to 2.9 years, and we feel as though we have a fair amount of runway before us. As Rich highlighted, the strength of the cash flow continues to build the size of the portfolio. In addition to that, we see the book yield continuing to go up from here.

Just as a point of reference, the domestic book yield for the quarter was 4.6%, and our new money rate is, give or take, right about 5%. Growth in the portfolio, higher new money equals runway ahead. By and large, it was a pretty solid quarter. It wasn't just because the wind didn't blow and the earth didn't shake in a consequential way. It's because this is the trajectory that we're on, and it would take a lot to take us off that path. When the day is all done, the underwriting opportunity continues to unfold. The discipline remains in place to ensure that margin is there. Our other economic engine, being the investment portfolio, again, has much opportunity ahead of itself. Let me pause there. Nicole, we are going to turn back to you. Please, if we could open it up for questions. Thank you very much.

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 raise your hand now. If you have dialed into today's call, please press star nine to raise your hand and star six to unmute. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Alex Scott with Barclays. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

I think I got this unmuted correctly. Let me know if you can't hear me.

Yeah, we can hear you. We get stuck on mute all the time, but you're coming through.

All right. I'll jump into it then. I first wanted to ask you about how you're thinking about the capital position of the company and just hearing a little bit more restraint in terms of what you're willing to grow into. Still getting some decent growth, what would your plans be for the additional capital flexibility that would give you, and what would the pecking order look like?

A couple of comments. If you were to take the rating agents, some of the rating agency models, I don't know if it's all of them, but certainly several of them, and you ran us through their sausage maker, it would tell you that we have significant headroom to the tune of 10 digits as far as excess capital. Loads of flexibility there. In addition to that, as you pointed out in your own words, we are generating capital more quickly than we are able to consume it. Obviously, as we've discussed in the past, we want to make sure we got plenty of wiggle room. That having been said, we're also equally conscious of the fact that the capital does not belong to us. It belongs to the shareholders.

To the extent that we are not able to utilize it effectively, we should be thinking about returning it to the shareholders. We have multiple tools to do that, and we have not been shy about utilizing them. Rich flagged the balance sheet, in particular, the capital structure. Not in a rush to do anything as far as the debt or related securities, and that would really leave us with two options, that being dividends and repurchase. Again, we are open and regularly thinking about that question. Let me pause there. That was probably a lot of babble without a specific answer that you're looking for, but I'm probably not going to be able to give you a specific answer.

It just so happens that my boss is here, and he spends a lot of time thinking about capital and excess capital, particularly as our, by a wide margin, largest shareholder.

We spend a lot of time thinking about it. There will be opportune times to buy back stock. We've been a very effective utilizer of that tool, and we've bought back a lot of stock over the years. It's because we're not impatient. We wait. The opportunity comes. We continue to do that. In the meantime, we feel that special dividends is a way to let the shareholders know we work for them. That opportunity to buy back shares can come at any time. We'll keep plenty of powder available so we can seize those opportunities. We don't think it's there right at the moment.

Thanks for the question, Alex. Nicole, was there another question out there?

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

Tracy, a reminder to kindly unmute yourself.

Sorry for the confusion with the new platform.

I'm sure it was a brilliant question. I ask all my best ones when I'm stuck on mute too.

That's okay. I want to go back to your comments about your excess capital position. It's my observation that this is an industry-wide phenomenon. Are you worried that the industry is sitting on too much capital and your competitors are so used to growth coming off a hard market, it's going to be hard for them to take their foot off the pedal? I'm just curious of your thoughts. What catalysts can you envision that could turn pricing around given the supply-demand equation?

Maybe a couple of comments there. We took ex-comp and we back out comp because presumably that's sort of keeping up through wage inflation. We took 7.6 points of rate in the quarter. As far as our ability to keep getting rate and keeping up with the trend, we feel pretty good about that. That having been said, as far as excess capital, some of our peers have a lot of excess capital, some of them don't. We're really just focused on what we're doing, and we're focused on our value proposition to the marketplace every day. If at some point it means that we have irrational competitors that drive parts of the market to unattractive places, as we've demonstrated in the past, so be it. We'll shrink the business.

As I, in a clumsy way, was trying to allude to in my comments earlier, given the breadth of our offering or how many different parts of the market we participate in and how the marketplace has decoupled as far as where product lines are in the cycle, that positions us as an organization to be more resilient when it comes to growth. When the day is all done, people may become more aggressive. We've seen some version of the movie in the past, and you and others have seen how we respond. As I suggested earlier, we're focused on making good risk-adjusted returns. If we can't do it, so be it. We'll let the business shrink.

Got it. I want to go back to your auto comments. Since your growth was flattish, can you just unpack how much exposure you're reducing, balanced by the pricing you're seeing there?

I don't think we break out that detail. I will double-check with Karen. If we do provide that to the world, I can assure you she will follow up with you tomorrow. What I can say is I wouldn't have made the comment I made earlier if it was just rounding. It's meaningful. There are some market participants, particularly those with delegated authority, that don't seem to get where loss costs are. That will end in tears eventually, and we will have an opportunity.

Your next question comes from the line of Elyse Greenspan with Wells Fargo. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Okay. Perfect. My first question, I guess, is just on Mitsui Sumitomo. I know we have not seen a regulatory filing hit indicating that they've hit a 5%.

Do they have to file when they hit 5%, or is there any update? I know you guys are coming up with some process.

My understanding is yes. I am not an SEC attorney, so full disclosure, that having been said, my understanding is they get to 5%, they need to file, and every, you know, X amount of shares that they buy beyond that, they will have to do follow-on filings. I do not believe there is any reason for them not to have to comply with what everyone else does. As we also mentioned in the past, in an effort to ensure that we are not handicapped in our ability to participate in the market, we have no information beyond what you have as far as where they stand in their process.

Thanks. My second question, you know, you guys saw kind of stable rate price in the quarter. Growth slowed, right, mostly due to commercial auto, a little bit other liability. It feels like that's a trade-off, right, Rob, you guys are willing to make. I know last quarter you said we're kind of in this 8%-10% growth world. This was a little bit lighter. Does it feel like we're in a little bit lighter growth world as you guys, you know, look to keep as much price in the portfolio as you can?

From my perspective, the answer is, Elyse, that we have major parts of the marketplace that are in some period of transition. Some are eroding and will likely erode further. Some are healthy, and others are somewhere between the bookends, perhaps going through some stage of fits and starts. Our opinion is you will likely see it needing to firm from here, commercial auto being an example of that. It is these periods of time of transition which make it really, really hard to predict what the opportunity will be over the next 90 days. Once upon a time, we tried to give guidance because we were trying to be helpful. I'm not sure if that proved to be the case or not, but that was the intent around what the growth opportunity is.

I do believe that there's still opportunity for us to grow and grow at a healthy rate from here. As you pointed out, thank you for flagging, we are not going to compromise our underwriting and particularly rate integrity in order to juice the top line. That sort of highlights what we've talked about on occasion in the past. That's because we have a sense of ownership, obligation, and responsibility to the capital we manage. We get rewarded. Our colleagues throughout the organization get rewarded not just monetarily, but emotionally based on delivering good risk-adjusted returns coming out of the underwriting in part, as opposed to an NGU where, you know what, it's just about how many widgets you can roll off the assembly line today.

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

Hey, good afternoon. For my first question, I just wanted to ask about the catastrophe losses in the insurance segment. It just looks like it was more in line with the average ratio, cat loss ratio we've seen for the last couple of years, whereas some peers are reporting lower cats. I know you called out SES. Is there any particular geography or large loss to call out there, or is this just a result of growth in short tail lines recently?

I would tell you that it's two things. One, it is a bit of frequency with very modest severity. Number two, as you pointed out, look, we, the property market in particular, it's been a pretty good run. We have leaned into it because we like the risk-adjusted returns that were available. As a result of that, we got a little bit more exposure. I would caution you not to read too deeply into it.

Okay, great. That makes sense. Just to follow up on homeowners, sounds like there's still some opportunity there. Can you talk about how, you know, Berkley One has performed compared to your expectations and, you know, where you're growing? Is it in states with more cat exposure or less cat exposure? Any context would help.

I think buy-in, first off, I think Berkley One has proven to be a great success. It basically started, it was started from scratch with a small team of people that made it happen. Today, it is comfortably more than a $500 million business and growing at a healthy pace. No, we are not leaning into California or anything akin to that. I would tell you we have a certain group of states that we're in, and we are just going deeper. This is not just an idea to try and go into every last nook and cranny. We're going where our colleagues believe the opportunity is and where we feel as though we have a value proposition that we can deliver consistently, day in and day out. No, the growth there isn't because California became the flavor of the day for us.

We do not participate in the California market.

Your next question comes from the line of Ryan Tunis with Cantor. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Yes, I can hear you. Yep, good afternoon.

Perfect. Hey, good afternoon. I guess just a question on the casualty side, just low single-digit growth and other liability, less than I expect. I'm just curious, are you starting to see more competition in some of those lines, or is there something else that's kind of causing that D-cell?

I think there's a couple of things. One, we have a view on rate. Is there a bit of competition? Yeah, there's a bit of competition, but it's also how we're pivoting the portfolio at this moment in time.

Got it. I guess I was a little bit surprised that Berkley One and A&H could move the needle that much in short tail lines. Could you just give us some idea? Again, I don't know how big those lines are. Could you give us some idea of how much of that short tail lines line item is non-commercial property, if that makes sense?

I don't have a specific number here. If it's okay with you, Ryan, let me ask Rich or Karen to follow up with you. I don't have it at my fingertips, and I don't want to, but it's consequential, obviously, hence the comment earlier.

Your next question comes from the line of Brian Meredith with UBS. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Hey, Brian. Good afternoon. Brian, you there?

Brian, a reminder to kindly unmute yourself.

Thanks, Ed. Yes, you're coming through. Thanks, Brian.

Awesome. Two questions. First one, big picture. Maybe this is kind of for you as well as the Chairman. I recall, you know, Bill saying that one of his biggest regrets from the last hard market was starting to pull back too early, when there was still healthy margin in the business. Is that a debate that's going on right now? How are we, how are you thinking about that?

You know, Brian, it's funny. I recall that comment from the Chairman usually at about 7:45 A.M. every morning, at least five days a week. I'm going to yield the floor to him.

I think it's always, you look at your business and you say, "Our price is going to go down more, but they're at the bottom. How much margin do you have? And where is the current accident you're going to come out?" Because you've had a lot of years of substantial price increases. As all of us know, this is a business where you don't know the ultimate margin for several years after you've written the business. In that case, which was 1986, give or take, we had much more margin than we were reporting. We didn't realize it, and we cut back too soon. There are two pieces to this puzzle. Are you being pessimistic as to the margin you're presenting because you haven't appropriately reflected the price increases? The second question is, where have prices changed and what's happening with the loss ratio?

That is the issues you face. It was different in 1986 than it is today. There's more litigation. There are more lawyers who are incentivized to bring about litigation. That's a tougher decision. I would say that you can still grow. There are still opportunities. You don't have to run away at this moment. It will come at some point in time. We would guess it's not here quite yet, but it is going to evolve to that point. It may be shorter duration because of all kinds of other things than last time because when those losses happen, they can happen all of a sudden.

Brian, thanks for the question and highlighting the genetic flaw that runs through the family. Did you have a second question?

Yeah, my second question, Rob. I know you chatted a little bit about the first quarter and you didn't see much on.

Okay, good. Question on tariffs. Are you seeing anything yet in your loss picks?

We are preparing for it, but we're not seeing anything particularly consequential yet. We are certainly preparing for it in all the product lines, as you'd expect, that are more exposed, highlighting, obviously, property and APD.

W.R. Berkley (WRB) Q3 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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