International General Insurance Holdings Ltd. (NASDAQ:IGIC) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Waleed Jabsheh: No, honestly, I mean, as you said, I mean, there’s nothing specific that sticks out. I think we’re just following it. We’ve always said we’ll shift focus towards the areas where we believe margins are going to be highest. And reinsurance was definitely one of them this year. By and large it was a more benign loss year as a market as well. So we got benefit of that in line with other players.

Scott Heleniak: And then just one final one just on the special dividend. That was a nice surprise not and something new for you guys. I wonder if you could talk about just some of the factors that you guys considered that led you to the special dividend versus other areas of capital return or growth. And I know you mentioned excess capital, but just anything more you can kind of comment on that, how you were thinking about that in terms of ultimately declaring special dividend?

Waleed Jabsheh: As you know, I mean, a couple of years ago we announced a new capital management strategy where we had announced a new ordinary dividend. We saw the opportunities in the market, Scott, and as we’ve said, it’s underwriting first for us — first and foremost, we went towards growing the portfolio when the opportunities were there, which we have done. We announced the share buy program, which we felt would be most beneficial to shareholders and adding and creating value. We use those funds to buy back the warrants last year. But in all honesty, the returns that we’ve achieved over the last couple of years have exceeded our expectations. And the returns we’ve made are extremely healthy some of the best in the market allowing us with the financial flexibility to be able to declare dividend on top of all the actions that we took in 2023, and the recognition of the support that our shareholders have given us and the rewards they deserve.

So capital wise we remain very adequate and with this dividend we are confident we’ve got the runway and the capital to — for us to continue on that runway of growth.

Operator: This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to management for any closing remarks.

Waleed Jabsheh: Thank you all for joining us today and thank you for your continued support of IGI. If you have any additional questions, please contact Robin and she will be happy to assist. We look forward to speaking to you on next quarter’s call. Have a good day everyone. Thank you.

Operator: The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.