We strengthened the management team by adding Kevin Seidler as chief financial officer and Kelly Leatherwood as head of human resources, and by promoting Jennifer Carrick to chief risk officer. We implemented a companywide return-to-office policy to support Signal’s future as a single, cohesive, high-performing team and the market leader in our highly specialized field. This approach balances our team’s prized flexibility with the current and future needs of the business. We moved into a new office in South Norwalk, Connecticut, fittingly near Long Island Sound for an insurer of maritime employers. The space was designed to foster community, learning and collaboration with welcoming common areas, a training center and seven meeting rooms, alongside employee-driven enhancements to our branch offices. And despite a challenging market, we sustained our benefits by transitioning to a health insurance group captive for the 2025/26 Membership Year, which may present a future opportunity for our Members.

Financial and risk management

We evolved our capital modeling to include Best’s Capital Adequacy Ratio (BCAR). We now use three capital models, our customized Signal Economic Capital Model, the Bermuda Solvency Capital Requirement, and BCAR, all confirming that Signal meets or exceeds capital requirements and delivering strong financial security and flexibility in serving its Members. We built a five-year financial model to predict the impact of proposed operational and capital initiatives, and advanced a surplus and return-of-capital strategy that turns excess capital into meaningful Member value or lower costs. By the 2026/27 Membership Year, we expect total returns of capital since 2015 to exceed $100 million. We modernized our investment policy statement, clarifying the roles of the board, committee, managers and consultants, and began a new strategic asset allocation for the 2025/26 Membership Year. We also strengthened enterprise risk management with a new committee, framework and updated risk register.

Governance of the Mutual

With the help of a Membership vote, we amended our rules and bylaws to ensure a healthy, dynamic board through fixed terms, term limits and a clearer election process, with representation more fully concentrated among Members.

Enhancing the Member experience

We continued in-housing services we historically outsourced, reducing risk and cost while gaining greater control of the Member experience. That journey began with Sage Adjusting in 2018, leapt forward with the founding of Signal Management Services (SMS) in 2022, and continues under the principle of constant, never-ending improvement. This year we completed two transformational initiatives: we right-sized our Charles Taylor contract to cover information technology support, claims payments, Bermuda services and some human resources support, saving more than $3 million annually, and established Signal Management Services (Bermuda) Ltd. to assume the Mutual Manager role, delegating most operations to SMS while Charles Taylor continues as a local Bermuda subcontractor. We also advanced our technology platform, completing our cloud migration, implementing Salesforce as our customer relationship management system, advancing our policy-issuance systems, selecting a new claims system and scoping a new Member portal for the 2025/26 Membership Year. Together, these efforts reduce external reliance and build a more efficient, stable environment for our employees and Members.

In short, the 2024/25 Membership Year was a year of tuning the Signal engine of Member value creation, sustaining the best solution for our Members’ longshore insurance requirements while advancing our broader vision of helping Members prosper through smarter risk management. I look forward to reporting on how the engine is running and celebrating the Mutual’s 40th birthday with you at the 2026 Annual General Meeting!