Douglas Worman
President, CEO & Chairman

[ The transcript was presubmitted by CNA Financial Corporation. No live call was conducted for the fourth quarter earnings call. ]

In the first quarter we continued to successfully drive our underwriting strategies to generate consistently profitable returns as we navigate this challenging market. The fundamentals of our business remain strong as we execute specialized and deliberate strategies to achieve profitable growth. We grew certain pockets of our portfolio that offer accretive returns and scaled back in other areas where the market can't earn an acceptable return. We took prudent actions this quarter to strengthen both our prior accident year reserves as well as our current accident year loss ratio. Catastrophe impacts in the quarter were consistent with our five-year average.

Core income was $225 million in the first quarter, with net investment income of $610 million which was up slightly compared with the prior year quarter. Higher earnings from the fixed income portfolio were modestly offset by a market decline in common stocks.

The P&C all-in combined ratio was 102.2% in the quarter, including 3.6 points or $97 million of catastrophe impacts, which was consistent with the prior year quarter. Catastrophe impacts were driven by severe convective storms, more than half of which were driven by a significant winter storm in January and a severe hail event in March. Prior period development for P&C overall was unfavorable by $106 million, or 4.1 points of the combined ratio, and was driven by reserve strengthening primarily in recent accident years in our excess casualty and affinity professional errors and omissions (E&O) classes. The P&C underlying combined ratio was 94.5%, up 2.4 points compared to the prior year quarter. The expense