RENAISSANCERE HOLDINGS LTD

Over the last 10 years, we have made key strategic decisions to build the capabilities and scale that we believe will allow us to generate superior returns in an evolving marketplace. We have diversified our sources of capital through various owned and managed balance sheets as well as equity, debt and insurance-linked securities markets. We believe that the prior planning initiatives we implemented provide the flexibility to manage large loss events and efficiently distribute capital across balance sheets. We are unique among our peers in that we have both owned and managed, and rated and fronted, vehicles across the risks that we write. This has afforded us significant flexibility to react when the world changes.

In 2023, we accomplished several strategic milestones, including achieving a step change in property catastrophe reinsurance pricing, and completing the Validus Acquisition, which will help us accelerate our growth in a favorable market.

Validus Acquisition

On November 1, 2023, we completed the Validus Acquisition, accelerating our strategy at a critical juncture in the reinsurance cycle. The Validus Acquisition has several significant strategic benefits for us, and advances our position as a global property and casualty reinsurer, providing additional scale and diversification, and increasing our importance with customers and brokers. Through the Validus Acquisition, we have gained access to a large book of attractive reinsurance business that is closely aligned with our existing business mix. We believe that the integration of Validus has been proceeding smoothly.

The Validus Acquisition was immediately accretive to our shareholders across our three drivers of profit. At the same time, we have expanded our relationship with a core trading partner, AIG, who is one of our five largest clients by premium volume, as the Validus Acquisition provides options for increased strategic engagement.

Reinsurance Market Trends and Developments

At the January 1, 2023 renewals, we sought to reset the relationship between insurers and reinsurers, and believe that there was a structural shift that should allow us to achieve the risk-adjusted returns that our investors require while providing the access to reliable, high-quality capital that our customers need. We did this by increasing rates and retentions, improving terms and conditions, and rationalizing structures.

Over the course of 2023, we saw a shift in the reinsurance market environment that we think sustained the step change momentum and has inured to our benefit. We created significant opportunities to source attractive risk in the lines of business that we write, and these opportunities should result in superior returns for our shareholders. Overall, the shift in the reinsurance market environment has resulted in an increase in rates across certain lines of business throughout the year.

At the January 1, 2024 renewals, our objective was to retain our legacy lines while renewing the Validus business that we chose to keep. Providing consistency to customers and brokers across market cycles is a critical component of our value proposition, and when coupled with our position as the incumbent on many lines of business across the RenaissanceRe and Validus portfolios, contributed to our successful January 1 renewals.

The January 1, 2024 renewals should benefit many of our stakeholders: our customers benefit from access to our highly rated and well capitalized balance sheets; our brokers benefit from access to an expanded and more influential market; our capital partners benefit from increased access to desirable risk; and our shareholders benefit from improvements to each of our Three Drivers of Profit. We think that the momentum that we witnessed in 2023 will persist into 2024.

We believe that our understanding of volatility places us in a preferred position to accept risk, and we continue to see strong opportunities for growth across our portfolio. We have a strategic commitment to reinsurance that we think enhances our value proposition to customers because our reinsurance participation is consistent and broad, and our focus on reinsurance minimizes potential channel conflict with our customers. This commitment was only reinforced by the Validus Acquisition.

We are uniquely positioned to write a variety of risks, leveraging the enhancements we have made over the last several years to our risk and capital management technology and underwriting expertise to cover additional lines of business. In particular, we have invested heavily to understand the influence of climate change on the weather and its impact on the risks that we take. We believe that the RenaissanceRe Risk

Sciences team gives us an advantage in properly reflecting the evolving phenomenon of climate change in our models as compared to commercially available models. Our scientists and underwriters have consistently adjusted our global views of risk to consider our present and future expectations of hazard and loss drivers from all sources including, but not limited to climate change, inflation and other factors. We plan to continue to seek to take advantage of additional available opportunities and think that the strategic decisions we have made in prior periods have laid the foundation for these initiatives. Our clients value our ability to be a long-term partner who brings access to multiple forms of capital and innovative, large-scale solutions.

General Economic Conditions

We think that the stresses in the global economy will continue and that this may result in increased market volatility. Global events and geopolitical instability have contributed to widespread economic inflation. We consider the anticipated effects of inflation, including social, economic, and event-driven, in our loss models, on our investment portfolio, and generally in the running of our business, and actively monitor trends in these areas.

Many central banks have been raising interest rates, which could act as a countervailing force against some inflationary pressures. The effects of interest rate trends on our reinsurance and insurance business could be magnified for longer-tail business lines that are more inflation-sensitive, particularly in our Casualty and Specialty segment, and in our other property class of business within our Property segment.

The risk of a global recession is a continuing concern. However, we think that our business model is well positioned to be less sensitive to an inflationary or recessionary environment. Notwithstanding the many uncertainties and challenges that lie ahead, we believe that our track record of responding to industry events, differentiated risk management and client service capabilities, and access to diverse sources of both capital and risk position us favorably in the current environment.

Tax Updates

On December 27, 2023, the Government of Bermuda enacted the Corporate Income Tax Act 2023, which will apply a 15% corporate income tax to certain Bermuda businesses in fiscal years beginning on or after January 1, 2025. The act includes a provision referred to as the economic transition adjustment, which is intended to provide a fair and equitable transition into the tax regime, and results in a deferred tax benefit for the Company. Pursuant to this legislation, the Company recorded a net deferred tax asset in the fourth quarter of 2023, expected to be utilized predominantly over a 10-year period. The Company expects to incur and pay increased taxes in Bermuda beginning in 2025. We believe that the flexible global operating model that we have utilized will continue to prove resilient.

Three Drivers of Profit

We have built a strong foundation across all three drivers of profit, and each made a strong contribution to our successful results for the year.

Underwriting Income

Through disciplined underwriting, we aim to manage the cycle and allocate our capital to the business that will generate the best returns. Over the course of 2023, we were focused on managing the cycle to shape our underwriting portfolio to favor attractive lines. We believe that we have constructed a large and profitable underwriting portfolio that was bolstered by our ability to participate broadly across our clients’ portfolios.

Property

With the global impact of climate change, we expect the frequency and severity of perils such as drought, flood, rain, hail and wildfire to continue at the elevated levels we have seen in recent years. Industry insured losses in 2023 approached $120 billion, and inflation, climate change and geopolitical instability have continued to drive exposure. Due to the underwriting changes we made during the course of the year, including requiring higher rates and attachment points, we believe that this catastrophe activity had a smaller impact on our financial results than it otherwise may have.

At the January 1, 2024 renewals, we improved on what we think was an already strong Property segment portfolio. Rates in the property catastrophe market remained strong and the markets remained disciplined.

The other property market continued to experience rate increases, and we will continue to monitor rate adequacy in this area for potential growth opportunities.

Casualty and Specialty

The renewal in our Casualty and Specialty segment was also successful. The Validus Acquisition provided us with significant access to additional Casualty and Specialty business and provided us with an even more influential position in the market. We continued to manage the cycle, focusing growth in the specialty and general casualty lines of business, while reducing in the professional liability and mortgage lines of business.

Our prior work building strong relationships with key customers has allowed us to gain superior access to desirable business. We have focused our growth in attractive areas while reducing on deals that do not meet our return hurdles. We believe that we have a prudent reserving process for our Casualty and Specialty business and remain confident in our reserves.

We take a differentiated approach to our Capital Partners unit, with a focus on first sourcing the risks that we intend to write, and then matching it with the appropriate third-party capital. Our Capital Partners unit continues to grow into an attractive market and benefited from increased access to desirable risk as a result of the Validus Acquisition. We view this as a growing and sustainable driver of profit that we expect will continue to generate increasing low-volatility management fee income. We continue to deepen our relationship with AIG, and they made a significant investment in our Capital Partners business.

Investment Income

We are benefiting from higher interest rates and growth in this driver of profit as a result of our proactive rotation of the portfolio into higher yielding securities as we saw historic increases in interest rates. However, we continue to maintain a relatively conservative position for our investment portfolio.

With the close of the Validus Acquisition, we obtained a relatively large investment portfolio that should contribute to our investment income in future periods.

See the “Risk Factors” section in our Form 10-K for additional information on factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements contained in this Form 10-K and other documents we file with the SEC.