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)

Revenues ($M)

Profits ($M)

Assets ($M)

Total Stockholder Equity ($M)

Profit Ratios

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)

Total Return

Total Return to Investors (last year)

Total Return to Investors (5 year, annualized)

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.

Q4 2025

Q3 2025

Q2 2025

Q1 2025

Q4 2024

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

legacy

W.R. Berkley

w.r. berkley

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us, and welcome to the W. R. Berkley Corporation Q4 and Full Year 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 31 December 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.

Kevin, thank you very much, and good afternoon, all. Let me echo Kevin's welcome to our Q4 call, and we appreciate everyone finding the time to tune in, and certainly are grateful for your interest in the company. On this end of the call, you also, in addition to me, you have Rich Baio and Bill Berkley, and we are going to be following our typical pattern as we have in the past, where I'm going to offer a couple of quick soundbites, and we're going to hand it over to Rich. He's going to do the heavy lift as far as walking us through some highlights on the quarter and the year. Then I will trail behind him with a few more soundbites, and then, of course, we're very pleased to entertain questions.

Before we get rolling here, though, it seems like perhaps the most appropriate place to start would be with a few words of gratitude. Those of you that have had an opportunity to review the release, and certainly as you hear Rich's comments, I think it will come into sharp focus that 2025 was yet another great year for the company. As I've shared with some in the past, these type of outcomes, they don't happen on their own. They happen because people make it happen. People go above and beyond to achieve a goal. And, I just wanted to express my gratitude and a heartfelt congratulations to approximately 7,600 people that all come together to really deliver a great outcome for the good, not only of our shareholders, but to all stakeholders that we serve.

So again, thank you and congratulations. A couple of macro observations, not particularly insightful, but perhaps it'll invite some conversation a little bit later on. Number one is, I think it is clear as day that the world is moving at an ever-increasing pace. The world is becoming ever more complicated, and in my mind, and I think the minds of many others, is the simple question whether this industry is going to be able to keep up with that pace of change. We are not an industry that has been able to embrace change. In fact, I think the industry has really struggled with change over generations, but the challenge is before us. Clearly, one of the areas that is creating some of the greatest challenge and is driving this trajectory of change to be so steep and the velocity to be so significant is technology.

And the tip of that spear, without a doubt, these days, is AI. There's a lot of discussion around AI and what it means for the industry. Much of the conversation, appropriately, is focused on the adoption. How will the industry adopt these tools? What will it mean from an operational perspective? And these are certainly questions that we are grappling with actively, and we are well on our way to be utilizing many of these tools throughout our organization. But from our perspective, that's not the only question. One also needs to be grappling with the question of: What does this mean for us as underwriters?

How do we think about these new technologies and the impact they're having on society, the impact that they're having on our insureds, what it means for risk, and our ability to fully understand that risk so we can control it, select it, and price for it? We, as an organization, are particularly well-situated or quite frankly, built for this type of change. We have the best of both worlds. We have the scale to be able to participate at any level. At the same time, because of our structure, we have the agility to be able to pivot quickly, and in addition to that, we have the benefit of not putting all of our chips on red or black. In fact, we have 60 different incubators where we're able to experiment, learn, and then cross-pollinate. Another area of great change is the topic of distribution.

There is no doubt that customers are changing, customers' priorities are changing. But in addition to that, the relationship between traditional distribution and carriers is, without a doubt, evolving. Once upon a time, it was a very simple, straightforward relationship. One was the factory, the other was the distributor. But today, traditional partners, traditional distribution, oftentimes is not just a partner, but is actually a competitor. Furthermore, we are actively looking at changes, as I mentioned a moment ago, in the behaviors of customers. Customers are much more comfortable with a self-serve model, and it is becoming increasingly clear that convenience is more important to many customers than price. Please do not misunderstand my comments. We are very committed to our partners.

At the same time, it is not lost on us that the customer is queen or king, and that we, as an organization, are going to do what we need to do to meet them where, when, and how they wish to be met. Let me move on to a couple of comments about the marketplace, more specifically. Let me start with the ugly. Auto Liability is something that we have been talking about... I don't know, Richie, it's got to be a couple of years at this stage. It continues to be a challenge. And from my perspective, while we did speak about possibly seeing some green shoots, I guess it would have been early in 2025, that proved to be a mirage.

As it's turned out, the market has continued to find new lows, and our hope is, as we make our way towards the end of 2026, we find a bottom. In addition to that, I think last quarter and perhaps the quarter before, but certainly last quarter, we talked about large account property, particularly shared and layered. I would suggest to you that this market is a feeding frenzy at this stage. And furthermore, I would tell you that London, particularly Lloyd's, is perhaps the hotspot for this feeding frenzy. On the topic of property reinsurance, maybe a little forward-looking because it relates to 1/1. A data point for you all as it relates to our property cat treaty, our main treaty. Our risk-adjusted rate decrease was 19%.

So from my perspective, I think that speaks volumes to the challenges in the market and perhaps what will be waterfalling and making the marketplace more competitive. Let me also suggest that we are seeing early signs that the competitiveness in the property cat market would seem to be spilling over into the casualty market. I think many participants are struggling, quite frankly, with getting to their premium targets on the property front, and as a result of that, are trying to lean into the casualty to try and hit their top line. The big difference is the property cat market had a bounce a couple of years ago, so they are starting from a different altitude. Casualty never really had that bounce. Moving over to professional, as we've talked about in the past, D&O remains a challenge, and I would add A&E, architects and engineers.

Some of the brighter spots, because it is not all doom and gloom, I would suggest, is the casualty market. In particular, I would tell you that the smaller end of town and the excess and umbrella market are both offering opportunity for meaningful rate. E&S also stands out, but there is clearly opportunity in the standard market as well. I would also flag within the A&H space, Medical Stop-Loss continues to be an attractive place from our perspective. Berkley One, our private client operation, continues to see great opportunity to grow as they continue to be a preferred alternative for the marketplace. And finally, last but not least, what we've been talking about for some extended period of time, Workers' Compensation.

While it is not rosy at this stage, there are early signs that are coming into focus that perhaps participants in the California market are starting to come to grips with reality, and that there is some early signs of a backbone reemerging. So, I went on a lot longer than I promised, but that's not the first time that's happened. But that's just because after they listen to you, Rich, they all tune out. So I got it off my chest and why don't you go ahead and run with it, please.

Okay, great. Thanks, Rob. Good evening, everyone. As Rob mentioned, the Q4 closed out an outstanding 2025 full year, with record quarterly operating earnings of $450 million, or $1.13 per share, growing 9.5% over the prior year, with a 21.4% return on beginning of year equity. Net income of $450 million or $1.13 per share also resulted in a 21.4% return on beginning of year equity. Record quarterly pre-tax underwriting income and strong net investment income from our core portfolio contributed to the excellent quarterly results. Beginning first with our underwriting performance, continued rate improvement, lower catastrophe losses, and prudent expense management resulted in record quarterly pre-tax underwriting income of $338 million, an improvement of 14.9% over the prior year.

Current accident year cat losses in the current quarter declined to $48 million or 1.5 loss ratio points. The expense ratio improved to 28.2%, driven by record net premiums earned of $3.2 billion, as well as operational efficiencies arising from investments in technology, business process outsourcing, and a non-recurring benefit for commission-related accruals. We expect that our expense ratio will continue to be comfortably below 30% in 2026, barring a meaningful change in the marketplace. The current accident year loss ratio, excluding cats for the quarter, was 59.7%, slightly better than the 2 preceding sequential quarters. The shift from 1 quarter to the next is largely driven by each operating unit's contribution to the whole, which is influenced by where we may be growing or pulling back based on market conditions.

In sum, the current accident year combined ratio ex cats is 87.9%, and the calendar year combined ratio is 89.4%. By segment, current accident year loss ratio ex cats for insurance improved to 60.6% and remained relatively flat to the full year results for 2024 and 2025. The reinsurance and monoline excess segment was 53.9%, resulting in a strong current accident year combined ratio ex cats of 83%. Strong operating cash flows of nearly $1 billion for the quarter and $3.6 billion for the full year have contributed to the increase in our invested assets, which grew 11.4% during 2025 to $33.2 billion, reaching a record level.

The combination of investable assets like cash and short-term assets, as well as the roll-off of fixed maturities at book yields below the new money rate, positions us well for future growth in net investment income. This improvement was evident in our investment income attributable to the fixed maturity portfolio, which grew 13.3% quarter-over-quarter to $346 million. Partially offsetting this growth in the Q4 of 2025 was investment fund losses of $32 million, bringing our overall pre-tax net investment income to $338 million. The credit quality of the investment portfolio remains very strong at AA-, while the duration of our fixed maturity portfolio, including cash and cash equivalents, increased to 3 years.

As a reminder, the duration was 2.6 years as of year-end 2024 and has been increasing throughout 2025, yet remains shorter than the average life of our liabilities. The effective tax rate in the Q4 was 20.5% and benefited from a lower effective tax rate relating to foreign earnings and the utilization of foreign tax credits. We expect the annual expected effective tax rate will approximate 23% for the full year of 2026. Turning to capital management, we returned $608 million of capital to investors in the Q4, comprising special and regular dividends of $412 million and share repurchases of $196 million.

Earlier in the year, we returned an additional $363 million, made up of dividends and share repurchases, bringing the total for the year to $971 million. Besides returning more than 10% of stockholders' equity to investors, we grew stockholders' equity by 15.6%. We continue to thoughtfully manage our capital position, which is further evident by our historically low financial leverage ratio of 22.6%, with the next scheduled maturity in 2037.

In summary, 2025 was an outstanding year with record top line, both gross and net premiums written of $15.1 billion and $12.7 billion, respectively, underwriting income of $1.2 billion, net investment income of $1.4 billion, operating income of $1.7 billion, and net income of $1.8 billion. These record results culminated in growth in book value per share before and after dividends and share repurchases of 26.7% and 16.4%, respectively. Rob, I'll stop there and pass it back to you.

All right, thanks, Richie. That's tough to follow. So just a couple of more soundbites and, as promised, on to the Q&A. Regarding the top line, first off, unpacking that a little bit for folks, I think it's worth noting that October and November, from a growth perspective, were particularly disappointing. I would call it flat-ish. And December, I don't have the net number in front of me, I left it down in my office, unfortunately. But the net and the growth tracked pretty closely, and the GWP was up 7% in December. So I would caution people not to leap to the conclusion that what you saw for the quarter is the new reality. I think it is quite the contrary, in all likelihood.

To that end, early returns on January, again, we haven't even gotten to the end of the month, but we are seeing some encouraging signs as it relates to the top line there. You would have seen the rate ex comp just a little bit over 7%. I would tell you that they're, given what we are seeing in some of the more recent years, granted it's early, but how they seem to be developing out, we are not feeling across the board the same level of pressure to keep pushing on rate. I think we will continue to be diligent. We will continue to stay on top of it. We are not interested in our margins eroding, but we think that we're in a pretty good place, and we are looking at that carefully.

The expense ratio, again, I'm not going to do a deeper dive on that. Rich touched on it already, but I would tell you that the 28.2, excuse me, very comfortable number. That having been said, we are going to be making some pretty meaningful investments. Some we've already made, but we're going to be leaning into it a bit harder, both on the tech side and the broader banner, both data, AI, et cetera, and that will come as a price, but we're confident that these are going to be investments that generate very good returns. I think one of the things that's worth noting about this organization, and it's something that we talk about from time to time, is the consistency of the results. We are not an organization that looks to have a lumpy performance.

We are an organization that is very focused on hitting base hits every day, consistently. From our experience, assuming that one of the leading goals is to build book value through making a good underwriting margin, we look to manage volatility through thick and thin. So we are very pleased with the results that we've delivered in the quarter and the year. But again, part of what distinguishes us is the consistency of those results. Rich talked about the investment portfolio. I would just highlight that the AA- is teetering on almost becoming a AA.

In addition to that, yes, while we have pushed the duration out to 3.0, neutral for us is probably closer to just inside of 4 if you look at the average duration of our loss reserve, or I should say, the average life of our loss reserves. Still room, if you compare what's rolling off the portfolio over the foreseeable, call it, give or take 4-6 is coming off, and we're still able to put money to work, you call it 5. So when you look at the situation, the business is really firing on all cylinders. We're generating very strong returns. We already had a surplus, even after the capital management of capital, that would be measured in 10 figures.

Quite frankly, given the returns and the market conditions, while we would love to have an opportunity to put the capital to work, right now, we're generating capital more quickly, and we can utilize it, and you should expect us to continue to look for thoughtful ways to return the excess capital to those that it belongs, that being our shareholders. I will pause there, and, Kevin, at this time, 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 raise your hand now. If you have dialed in to today's call, please press star nine to raise your hand, star six to unmute. Please stand by as we compile the Q&A roster.

Kevin, you run a tight ship. One question per person. All right. We'll see if anybody pays attention.

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

Hi, thanks. Good evening. I thought he said one question and one follow-up, but we'll see. I guess my first question was, just in terms of premium growth, Rob, I appreciate the color on October, November, and then also on January. But just given your view of the market, right? You know, just the growth you saw in the quarter, I think you also said, right, that there is probably perhaps less of a need to continue to push for the same amount of price. How are you seeing this all translating into premium growth, I guess? Would your expectation that 2026 is better than the Q4, maybe weaker than the full year, 2025? How does this all come together in your mind?

I think it's likely that the insurance activities will, both primary and perhaps and excess, will likely do better than what the total number was in the Q4. I think that the reinsurance marketplace, you know, some version of history may be repeating itself. A little early to declare that, but it would seem like the table is being set.

And then I guess, my second question is on the expense ratio. You guys guided to, you know, comfortably below 30% in 2026. It sounds like 2026, based on commentary, you described it like an investment year. If, you know, saying that correctly, you can correct me if I'm wrong. So would you expect, like, the AI and the tech type investments, I guess, would be higher in 2026, and then we start to see a return on those investments in 2027, or how are you thinking through the moving pieces there?

I think it's exactly what Rich and I alluded to, that we are going to be making meaningful investments in 2026, and I expect we will continue to make meaningful investments in 2027. I mean, this space, and it's in part what I was alluding to earlier in the call, Elise, I just did it in a very clumsy way, was that, you know, this is a trajectory of how the tools are coming to be available and how we as an organization are adopting them, and it's not a one and done. This is just an ongoing process. So do I think that when are the benefits going to show up? I would like to think that we're going to start to see benefits certainly in 2027, and I think it will scale from there.

but it's going to—it certainly does take some time because, you know, it, it's not just you, you drop it in, it's a, a more complicated process than that.

Thanks for the question. Have a good evening. Thanks for the question. Have a good evening.

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

Hey, good evening. You know, I always appreciate hearing your market commentary. You sounded a tad more constructive on workers' comp. You were mentioning that while it's not rosy now, California's coming to grips. But if we zoom out of California, one of the large brokers had said at their investor day that medical inflation is rampant, and it'll show up in rate. Are you seeing something similar? And can you also comment about the reduction in premiums just in 4Q, if that was largely exposure-based?

Yeah, so, a couple of things there. First off, as far as medical trends and how that ties in with severity, I think that's something that we've been talking about at least as long as we've been talking about auto liability. I think it's finally coming into focus for many. You know, from our perspective, we think the medical costs and just, quite frankly, claims activity in general within the space of workers' comp has been somewhat artificially suppressed because of how it gets the benefits get priced, and the reimbursement gets priced in many, many states. Regarding our growth in the quarter, it was primarily exposure based, where we just there were certain pockets where we didn't see the opportunity at those rates.

Got it. Also in your press release, you were talking about exceeding 15% ROE, and I think the 15% is not new. That's a longer-term goal throughout the cycle. Consensus estimates are well above that. How should we think about a nearer-term ROE, given your comments about returning excess capital?

I think that we believe that the company is firing on all cylinders at the moment, and we got a lot of momentum, and that momentum is both on the underwriting side as well as the investment side. So I can't promise you that the return will be this or that, but I can tell you that just the nature of the business, barring the unforeseen event, you know, to a great extent, 26 is almost the results. Again, barring the unforeseen event, they're kind of cooked, right? Because of how the premium earns through and the way the investment portfolio unfolds.

So again, I can't sit here and promise you what a return will be, but barring the unforeseen event, it's not that hard to connect the dots that it should be another very good year, and with every passing day, we're setting the table for 2027.

Your next question comes from David Motemaden with Evercore. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hey, sorry, guys. Can you guys hear me now?

Yeah, sorry about that. Just wanted to just go back just on the PYD, and so it looks like a little bit under $11 million in insurance of adverse, offset by about $13 million of favorable in reinsurance. Could you just talk a little bit about what was driving the adverse on the insurance side? Any different accident years you know you would point to? Just sort of keeping in mind your comment, Rob, on maybe not seeing the same level of pressure to keep pushing on rate. Just want-- trying to understand that, given what's going on on the PYD side in the insurance business.

Yeah. So, if you don't mind, maybe... I don't have the answers in front of me, just because in the scheme of $18-point-something billion of reserves, I didn't do a deep dive on the $11 million. But if you wouldn't mind, we'll have Karen and or Rich follow up with you tomorrow, and we'll get you all the detail that we're able to.

Got it. Okay, that'd be great. And then also, just trying to get the right jump-off point on the expense ratio. Rich, I think you mentioned a non-recurring benefit for commission-related accruals that helped the expense ratio this quarter. Could you just size that benefit?

Sure. That was about 30 basis points impact on the expense ratio.

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

Good evening. Thank you for just the detailed commentaries there. Maybe just a follow-up on pricing and what you said about pricing trend and casualty. I understand that some lines are softening, but you... Are there any lines of business right now where you feel within casualty, where you feel the pricing trend is beginning to not make sense anymore? In other words, are there any lines of business where you feel like you might need to start cutting exposure as we go forward into 2026 and 2027?

Yeah, I mean, Auto Liability would be one where if you look at what our top line is, and relative to our rate, we are clearly shrinking the business from an exposure perspective. So that would probably be a leading example.

Got it. And then in other businesses, you don't feel the other lines of business are as bad or as obvious. Is that a fair statement?

We certainly have some concerns and reservations about some of the professional lines that I alluded to earlier. And I think that also we don't do a lot of it, so, you know, it doesn't really move the needle for us in a huge way. But the large account property stuff, the shared and layered stuff, you know, we're... That's getting pretty tight.

Got it. I really appreciate that. Thank you. My-

My follow-up is, your, the next stage of the AI growth. This is very clear that you're really leaning into the capabilities here. I think previously you've talked about, early stage of the hybrid model, where both a group-wide and individual tools can be implemented, and then that's been. Like, are there any things going into, rest of the year and next year where you feel, that are somewhat of a low-hanging fruit, where the, the, the payoff realization can happen relatively quickly? Or are there any specific capabilities you feel that are more, closer to reality, in today's environment, that, that gets you really excited?

I think probably what is underway now, if we focus on the underwriting side, we can talk about claims separately, but on the underwriting side, what's here and now and happening is on the intake side, where we are able to utilize certain technologies, and they are enabling us to increase our efficiency dramatically. So we are able to get to more business, and we are able to effectively prioritize.

Got it. Really appreciate the color. Thank you very much.

Oh, yeah, so differently, people's time is utilized much more effectively.

Okay. Got it. Thank you. Really appreciate the time. Thank you very much.

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

There we go. Now I'm unmuted. Evening, Rob. So two questions here. First, Rob, I wanted to dive into your comment about maybe laying off rate a little bit, but keeping margins, I think is what you also said, and I'm wondering if that implies you to think that trend is starting to moderate some here, and then as we look into 2026, that maybe loss picks are kind of stable then, if you don't want margins to deteriorate.

So my take on that is it's premature to reach any conclusions with confidence, but some of the activity or that we are seeing, or lack of activity in some of the more recent years, would suggest that we're in a comfortable place. I think as we've discussed in the past, Brian, you know, a trend is a moving target, so I don't think it's that we take our foot off the pedal, but maybe the foot doesn't have to be stepping down on the pedal quite as hard, selectively.

Gotcha. And then just with respect to loss rates or loss, you know, loss picks?

Yes, sir. I'm sorry, I didn't hear you. I beg your pardon?

No, I mean, with respect to your kind of jumping off point here with respect to loss picks, if you're going to keep margins stable, and it sounds like your expense ratio is going to be flatted up a little bit, it would imply that loss ratio is going to be pretty stable too.

We are looking to preserve our margins to the best of our ability, as long as the market will allow us to, and right now, we think we can do that.

Certainly more easily to the insurance business. I think the reinsurance marketplace is probably going to become more challenged more quickly-

That makes sense. And then just quickly going back to your comments about distribution competing with you a little bit now, and customers want simplicity. Does that mean that, you know, perhaps you may lean into a little bit more utilizing MGAs and/or buying MGAs, and that maybe that's a quicker way to kind of get to where you want to get to with respect to distribution?

No. The short answer is, I don't think we're going to necessarily be leaning into or acquiring. Generally speaking, I think as we've tortured you all in the past, we have a real caution around delegated authority, and quite frankly, the valuations of some of these businesses we think have gotten to the point where oftentimes it's irrational. And you know, there's a lot of private equity money still trying to figure out, you know, how they're going to make it all work. But in the meantime, we're pleased to continue to partner with traditional distribution. But I think the point is, it's not lost on us that some of the traditional distribution is looking to have the pen or in some ways, have a different relationship with capital. We're aware of that.

We are responding to it, and it also means that we're thinking about distribution maybe a little bit in a way that we wouldn't have thought about it five years ago.

Your next question comes from Alex Scott of Barclays. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

A reminder to unmute yourself on your end, Alex. Star six if you're on the phone.

Hey, sorry about that. All right, so first one I had for you is just to follow up on the technology improvements you're working on. How would you characterize the way you're thinking about that over the medium term? Is that something that as you bring the expense ratio down, some of it can drop to the bottom line? Or is this something that is going to potentially just, you know, help to make you more competitive? You might be able to, you know, give back on price a little bit, get a little more competitive and improve growth. I'd just be interested in how you're approaching those investments.

I think the answer is all of the above. I mean, ultimately, we certainly are looking to have efficiency and savings, and how much of that we hold on to versus how much gets passed on to the customer, in part, depends on the marketplace and, quite frankly, competitors, what they are doing and what kind of efficiencies they're capturing and what they're passing on to customer. So look, when the day is all done, I appreciate that a lot of the focus may be around pricing and margin, but I would suggest to you that a lot of these tools, it's not just about dollars saved, it's also about value creation. I think that that's an additional way to consider these tools, how they will be incorporated, and how they will impact the business that the three of us work for.

That's helpful. Thanks. And, you know, I guess just, just looking at the growth and thinking about increased competition, I was just interested if you could talk about, to any degree, you're seeing a flow back into admitted at this point. Like, is that something that's affecting the growth rate at all, or is it more just competition within the E&S market?

I would tell you, in the very, very small end of town, as far as account size, you might see a standard market slip in there a little bit, but by and large, they are, for the most part, for the moment, staying within their swim lane. That having been said, national carriers in particular, but some of the regional carriers on the standard side, within their swim lane, they are being remarkably aggressive at this stage of the game.

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

W.R. Berkley (WRB) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Company Participants