Palomar Holdings, Inc. - Annual Report: 2019 (Form 10-K)

 

UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Washington, D.C. 20549

FORM 10-K

 

(Mark One)

☒           ANNUAL REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934

For the fiscal year ended December 31, 2019

or

☐            TRANSITION REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934

For the transition period from ___________ to ___________

Commission File Number: 001-38873

Palomar Holdings, Inc.

(Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter)

 

(619) 567-5290

Registrant’s telephone number, including area code)

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act:

Securities registered pursuant to section 12(g) of the Act: None

Indicate by check mark if the registrant is a well-known seasoned issuer, as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act. Yes ☐     No  ☒

Indicate by check mark if the registrant is not required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Act. Yes ☐     No  ☒

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days.  Yes ☒    No ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has submitted electronically every Interactive Data File required to be submitted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T (§ 232.405 of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to submit such files).  Yes ☒    No ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, smaller reporting company, or an emerging growth company. See the definitions of “large accelerated filer,” “accelerated filer,” “smaller reporting company,” and “emerging growth company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act.

 

If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Exchange Act.   ☐ 

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Act).  Yes ☐    No ☒ 

Aggregate market value of shares of the registrant’s common stock held by non-affiliates as of June 28, 2019 was approximately $175,098,032

Number of shares of the registrant’s common shares outstanding at February 24, 2020: 24,218,750

DOCUMENTS INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE:

Portions of the registrant’s definitive proxy statement relating to its 2020 annual meeting of stockholders (the "2020 Proxy Statement") are incorporated by reference into Part III of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. The 2020 Proxy Statement will be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission within 120 days after the end of the fiscal year covered by this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

 

 

 

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

PART I

 

Item 1.  Business

Who We Are

We are a rapidly growing and profitable company focused on the provision of specialty property insurance. We focus on certain markets that we believe are underserved by other insurance companies, such as the markets for earthquake, wind and flood insurance. We provide specialty property insurance products in our target markets to both individuals and businesses. We use proprietary data analytics and a modern technology platform to offer our customers flexible products with customized and granular pricing on an admitted basis. We distribute our products through multiple channels, including retail agents, program administrators, wholesale brokers, and in partnership with other insurance companies. Our business strategy is supported by a comprehensive risk transfer program with reinsurance coverage that we believe provides both consistency of earnings and appropriate levels of protection in the event of a major catastrophe. Our management team combines decades of insurance industry experience across specialty underwriting, reinsurance, program administration, distribution, and analytics.

Founded in 2014, we have significantly grown our business and have generated attractive returns. We have organically increased gross written premiums from $16.6 million for the year ended December 31, 2014, our first year of operations, to $252.0 million for the year ended December 31, 2019, a compound annual growth rate of approximately 72%. For the year ended December 31, 2019, we experienced average monthly premium retention rates above 93% for our Residential Earthquake and Hawaii Hurricane lines and approximately 88% overall across all lines of business, providing strong visibility into future revenue. In February 2014, Palomar Specialty Insurance Company was awarded an “A−” (Excellent) (Outlook Stable) rating from A.M. Best Company (“A.M. Best”), a leading rating agency for the insurance industry. In February 2019, A.M. Best affirmed our “A−” (Excellent) (Outlook Stable) rating for Palomar Specialty Insurance Company and affirmed our “A−” (Excellent) (Outlook Stable) group rating for Palomar Holdings, Inc. This rating reflects A.M. Best’s opinion of our financial strength, operating performance and ability to meet obligations to policyholders and is not an evaluation directed towards the protection of investors.

We believe that our market opportunity, distinctive products, and differentiated business model position us to grow our business profitably.

On April 22, 2019, we completed our initial public offering (the “IPO”), and the underwriters in the IPO purchased 6,468,750 shares, including the full exercise of their option to purchase additional shares of common stock. The net proceeds were approximately $87.4 million, after deducting underwriting discounts and commissions and offering costs.

On September 30, 2019, certain selling stockholders completed the registered sale (the “September 2019 Secondary Offering”) of 6,037,500 shares of our common stock. We did not receive any proceeds from the September 2019 Secondary Offering or incur underwriters’ discounts or commissions on the sale.

On January 9, 2020, we, along with certain selling stockholders, completed the registered sale (the “January 2020 Secondary Offering”) of 5,750,000 shares of common stock at a public offering price of $49.00 per share.  Of the 5,750,000 shares sold, 750,000 represented the underwriters’ exercise of their option to purchase additional shares.  The offering was comprised of 5,000,000 shares sold by certain selling stockholders and 750,000 shares sold by us. Our net proceeds from the January 2020 Secondary Offering were approximately $35.4 million, after deducting underwriting discounts and commissions and offering costs.

Our Business

Our management team founded our company to address unmet needs that we perceived to exist in certain specialty property insurance markets. These markets have primarily been served by either large generalist insurance companies and state‑managed entities applying “one‑size‑fits‑all” pricing and policy forms across broad geographies, or excess and surplus (“E&S”) companies offering relatively volatile pricing and coverage without the backing of state

guaranty funds. We are an admitted insurance company, which means that, unlike our E&S competitors, our rates and policy forms have been approved by the insurance department of each state in which we sell our policies thus providing a further level of security to policyholders through our backing from state guaranty funds. As a result, our products typically have lower taxes and fees. We believe that both our customers and distribution partners prefer the ease of use and security of admitted products with flexible coverages. Additionally, we believe that we can generate superior risk‑adjusted returns through underwriting that better reflects our customers’ underlying risk through a more granular approach to pricing than what is typically offered by standard carriers. We believe this market acceptance and return potential is evidenced by the fact that we have quickly and profitably grown to be the 5th largest writer of earthquake insurance in the state of California and are experiencing growth and increasing profitability across our other lines of business.

Our primary lines of business include: Residential Earthquake, Commercial Earthquake, Specialty Homeowners, Commercial All Risk, Hawaii Hurricane and Residential Flood. We seek to write a diverse mix of business by loss exposure, customer type and geography in order to mitigate the potential impact of any single catastrophe event, reduce our cost of reinsurance, and position us to capitalize on emerging market opportunities. The following table outlines our lines of business and the market opportunities that they address:

 

 

Since our founding, we have made substantial progress diversifying our business by product, market, and geography. In 2014, our first year of operations, all of our premiums were related to earthquake insurance. For the year ended December 31, 2019, 67% of our gross written premiums were related to earthquake insurance. For the same time period, 71% of our gross written premiums were attributable to residential business and 29% of gross written premiums were attributable to commercial business. For the year ended December 31, 2019, non‑earthquake related premiums grew 58.3% while earthquake related premiums grew 64.9% versus the prior year. We are currently licensed in 27 states, with California and Texas representing our largest exposures with 56.3% and 17.5% of our gross written premiums for the year ended December 31, 2019, respectively. Our business strategy is to continue diversifying our book of business

by extending our geographic reach and expanding our product portfolio. The following charts illustrate our business mix by product, residential versus commercial markets, and geography for the year ended December 31, 2019:

 

We employ a highly granular and analytical underwriting process to assess each insurance policy that we write, and we ensure that the risk characteristics of business assumed through our channel partnerships are consistent with our underwriting of direct business. Our systems enable us to underwrite all of our residential business automatically within minutes by leveraging our proprietary modeling techniques to analyze data at the geocode or ZIP code level. For example, our 2016 Residential Earthquake rate and policy form filing with the Washington State Office of the Insurance Commissioner has over 20,000 distinct pricing zones that take into account nuanced regional differences in soil types, liquefaction potential and distance from known faults. In contrast, we believe most competing earthquake insurance rate filings in Washington are based on broad territorial pricing zones across the entire state. In our commercial products, we balance automation with human expertise and controls to underwrite more complex risks. Because the data we collect through our underwriting process is highly granular, we are able to utilize detailed portfolio analytics to actively manage aggregation of policies and to ensure an appropriate dispersion of risks across our full portfolio.

We purchase a significant amount of reinsurance from a diverse group of third parties which we believe enhances our business by reducing our exposure to potential catastrophe losses and volatility in our underwriting performance. This in turn provides us with greater visibility into our earnings. As of January 1, 2020 our reinsurance program featured excess of loss reinsurance, quota share reinsurance, insurance linked securities, and per risk reinsurance protection from a panel of more than 85 highly rated reinsurers and capital markets investors. Many of our reinsurance contracts have multi‑year terms and additional features, such as prepaid reinstatements and expanded coverage windows for catastrophe events, that we believe provide us with significant protection and flexibility should market conditions change. As of January 1, 2020, we currently retain $5 million of risk per earthquake or wind event, inclusive of any amounts retained through our Bermuda reinsurance subsidiary, and our reinsurance program currently provides for coverage up to $1.2 billion for earthquake events, subject to customary exclusions, with coverage in excess of our estimated peak zone 1 in 250 year probable maximum loss (“PML”) event and of our A.M. Best requirement. Furthermore, our earthquake policies do not provide coverage for fire damage arising from an earthquake. In addition, we maintain reinsurance coverage equivalent or better to 1 in 250 year PML for our other lines.

Our Competitive Strengths

We believe that our competitive strengths include:

Focus on capturing market share and expanding underserved markets. We focus on specialty property insurance markets that we believe are underserved, and where we believe we can capture market share and expand the market to new customers. In our target markets, there are few direct competitors who focus exclusively on specialty property risks. With our specialized knowledge of these risks and our customized products, pricing and risk management, we believe we can better serve these markets than our competitors. Furthermore, we are able to expand our markets by creating products that attract insureds who previously had not obtained coverage. Our focus and expertise have enabled us to rapidly increase our market share; for example, we have grown into the 5th largest writer of earthquake insurance in California. In markets with similar characteristics, we are experiencing growth and increasing

profitability across our other lines of business. We believe that our focus on addressing the needs of specialty property markets provides us with a competitive advantage.

Differentiated products built with the customer in mind. We have invested significant time and resources into developing what we believe are innovative and unique product offerings to address customer needs within our target markets. Our products generally offer our customers the certainty of admitted insurance products with flexible features that are not typical of standard products in our markets. By offering our customers the ability to choose deductibles and other a la carte coverage options, we believe we have created products that are attractive both to those who have existing coverages with our competitors, and to those who have not historically bought insurance in our target markets. Furthermore, since our products have been approved by individual state regulators and have been supported by proprietary pricing models since inception, we believe that our products are not easily replicable, particularly by existing carriers who would face the burden of gathering data, building new models and revising existing rates and policy forms with regulators. Finally, our policy forms and ratings methodology provide us with significant flexibility to manage coverage options and pricing. For the year ended December 31, 2019, we experienced average monthly premium retention rates above 93% for our Residential Earthquake and Hawaii Hurricane lines and 88% overall across all lines of business, providing strong visibility into future revenue.

Analytically driven, disciplined and scalable underwriting. Our underwriting approach combines decades of specialty property underwriting experience of our management team with sophisticated, customized modeling tools we have developed that utilize extensive geospatial and actuarial data across all of our lines of business. Our proprietary models enable automated pricing of risks at the geocode or ZIP code level, in contrast to our competitors who we believe use less granular analytics and more manual underwriting processes. For example, we believe that our Commercial All Risk product has the only filing in the admitted market that produces location‑level wind pricing, enabling us to price wind risk more accurately than competitors who establish wind pricing at the county or zonal level. Our analytical pricing framework is embedded in all facets of our business and is incorporated into our filings, pricing, underwriting and risk management. We believe that our analytically‑driven underwriting approach has been the foundation of our ability to generate attractive risk‑adjusted underwriting margins.

Multi‑channel distribution model. Our open architecture distribution framework allows us to attract and underwrite business from multiple channels. We work with a wide variety of retail agents, program administrators, and wholesale brokers. We serve over twenty insurance companies as a specialty property partner either by issuing companion policies or providing reinsurance for their in‑force risks that fit our strict underwriting parameters. The breadth and flexibility of our distribution model allows us to generate premium from many different parts of the insurance ecosystem and to rapidly take advantage of changing market conditions.

Sophisticated and conservative risk transfer program. We manage our exposure to catastrophe events through several risk mitigation strategies, including the purchase of reinsurance. We believe that our reinsurance program provides appropriate levels of protection and superior visibility into our earnings. We believe our current reinsurance program provides coverage well in excess of our theoretical losses from any recorded historical event. We regularly model our hypothetical losses from historically significant catastrophes, including the 1906 San Francisco and 1994 Northridge earthquakes. Under our current reinsurance program, should an event equivalent to either of these two events recur, our hypothetical net loss would be capped at our current net retention of $5 million, equivalent to approximately 2.3% of our total stockholders’ equity as of December 31, 2019, inclusive of any amounts retained through our Bermuda reinsurance subsidiary. While we select reinsurers whom we believe to have acceptable credit and a minimum A.M. Best rating of “A−”, if our reinsurers are unable to pay the claims for which they are responsible, we ultimately retain primary liability to our policyholders. In addition, at each reinsurance treaty renewal, we consider any plans to change the underlying insurance coverage we offer, our current capital, our risk appetite, and the cost and availability of reinsurance coverage, which may vary from time to time. In addition to the magnitude of coverage, we believe our reinsurance program provides us with significant protection and stability during potential periods of market volatility due to our use of staggered, multi‑year contracts, and features such as prepaid reinstatements and expanded coverage windows for catastrophe events and our diverse panel of more than 85 highly rated reinsurers and capital markets investors. Given that our reinsurance purchases are driven primarily by our peak zone earthquake exposure, as we scale and diversify our book of business into uncorrelated geographies and perils, we have been able to secure multi‑peril coverage that reduces the cost of reinsurance per dollar of risk.

Emphasis on the use of technology and analytics across our business. As a recently formed insurance company, we have built a proprietary operating platform that employs best practices derived from our management team’s extensive prior experience. Our technology platform is not burdened by outdated legacy technology and process which may be utilized by older insurance companies. In building our platform, we have emphasized automated processes that use granular data and analytics consistently across all aspects of our business. Our internally developed Palomar Automated Submission System (“PASS”) acts as our interface with retail agents and wholesale brokers. PASS serves as the conduit to our policy administration system that integrates policy issuance, underwriting, billing and portfolio analytics. Our platform enables us to rapidly quote and bind policies via automated processing, and also to run detailed risk‑management analytics for internal and external constituents including distribution partners, carrier partners and reinsurers. We believe that this real‑time access to data and analytics provides us with an advantage in distributing our products, managing our risk, and purchasing reinsurance.

Entrepreneurial and highly experienced management team and board. Our management team is highly qualified, with an average of more than twenty years of relevant experience in insurance, reinsurance and capital markets. We are led by our Chief Executive Officer, Mac Armstrong, who prior to founding Palomar was President of Arrowhead General Insurance Agency (“Arrowhead”). Many of our management team members such as Mac Armstrong, Heath Fisher, our President and Co‑Founder, and Christopher Uchida, our Chief Financial Officer and Corporate Secretary, have a long history of working together. For example, while at Arrowhead, Mac Armstrong worked closely with Christopher Uchida, who served as Executive Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer. As owners of approximately 6.6% of our outstanding common stock as of December 31, 2019, we believe our management team has closely aligned interests with our stockholders. Additionally, our Board of Directors is comprised of accomplished industry veterans who bring decades of experience from their prior roles working in insurance and financial services companies.

Our Strategy

We believe that our approach to our business will allow us to achieve our goals of both growing our business and generating attractive returns. Our strategy involves:

Expand our presence in existing markets. We compete in lines of business and states that represented over $31 billion in total written premiums during 2018. By comparison, we generated $252.0 million of gross written premiums for the year ended December 31, 2019. We believe that our differentiated product offerings will enable us to continue growing in our existing markets by (i) gaining market share from competitors who have less flexible product offerings; (ii) continuing to expand our strong distribution network; and (iii) increasing the total addressable market by providing attractive products to customers who previously elected not to purchase coverage.

Extend our geographic reach and product portfolio. We are currently licensed in 27 states that represented over $31 billion in total written premiums during 2018. We continue to evaluate additional geographic markets and lines of business that will harness our core competencies and where we believe we can generate attractive risk‑adjusted returns. Our research and development efforts are exemplified through the initial growth of our Commercial All Risk and Residential Flood products.

Maintain our distinctive combination of industry leading profitability and growth. Our analytically informed risk selection and disciplined underwriting guidelines enable us to identify segments of the market that are both underserved and mispriced. As a result, we are able to generate an attractive underwriting profit through expanding the addressable market and winning market share with our distinctive products. For the years ended December 31, 2019 and 2018, our adjusted return on equity was 24.1% and 22.7%, respectively. Additionally, we will look to achieve industry leading combined ratios to ensure we are achieving attractive risk‑adjusted returns. As we seek premium growth, we intend to remain disciplined in our pricing, underwriting, and risk management processes, including closely managing our net PML, average annual loss (“AAL”) and spread of risk. We will remain focused on lines of business with attractive pricing dynamics and a favorable risk / return profile, and we will not participate in markets that we believe are commoditized or where our business model cannot add incremental value.

Maintain a diversified book of business. We currently write a book of specialty property insurance that is diversified by underlying loss exposure, customer type and geography. Our major product lines and exposures are uncorrelated, such that events contributing to a loss in one line of business are unlikely to generate material losses in our other lines of business. The diversification of our book of business improves our risk‑adjusted returns, reduces our reinsurance cost per dollar of premium, insulates us from swings in any single insurance or reinsurance market, and allows us to capitalize on market shifts opportunistically. As we grow, we intend to maintain a diversified book of business to continue to capitalize on these advantages.

Leverage our underwriting, analytics, and risk transfer acumen to generate fee income. We generate fee income by underwriting on behalf of other insurance companies and through the use of quota share reinsurance. Our multi‑channel distribution model produces attractive business that we aim to translate into a balanced mix of underwriting and fee income. As a result, we have an increasing number of partnerships where we write policies on behalf of other insurance and reinsurance companies who pay us a ceding commission to access the business. We believe these partnerships are an important validation of the intellectual property and expertise we have developed, and that this strategy enables us to scale our business more quickly and profitably and provides a growing and valuable fee stream to complement our profitable underwriting operations.

Continue to purchase conservative reinsurance coverage, while optimizing for risk‑adjusted returns. We believe that protecting our earnings and balance sheet through the use of reinsurance is critical to our business to help ensure that we are able to meet obligations to our policyholders and other constituents, and to generate strong returns for our stockholders. We plan to maintain a conservative, robust reinsurance program to help ensure that we are adequately protected against potential catastrophe losses. Our goal is to protect our earnings, and we constructed our current reinsurance program to mitigate losses and ensure profitability in a severe catastrophe. As we grow, we expect that we will benefit from increased scale and diversification of risk in our business, and we plan to optimize our reinsurance program continuously by adjusting terms, structure, pricing, and participants in an effort to maximize our risk‑adjusted returns.

Strengthen and harness our strong and growing capital base. The markets we currently serve are capital intensive, and as a recently established entrant, we compete with larger, more longstanding insurers. Nevertheless, we were awarded an “A−” (Excellent) (Outlook Stable) rating from A.M. Best at our formation, which we believe has been a source of competitive differentiation in certain markets where we operate. As we continue to demonstrate profitable underwriting operations and generate additional equity, we believe we will have access to more distribution sources that are typically reluctant to refer business to startup insurance companies. Notably, we recently surpassed five years of underwriting operations and expect to exceed $250 million in total stockholders’ equity with the completion of our January 2020 Secondary Offering. We believe that both are important thresholds for potential distribution partners, particularly in commercial lines insurance, and believe that our recent achievement of these thresholds may enable us to generate additional business through those partners.

Continue to invest in proprietary technology assets that deepen our competitive advantage. We believe that the success of our business is centered upon our relentless commitment to apply technology to improve our business. For example, we have dedicated software developers focused on building application programming interfaces (“APIs”), which enable seamless integration into the point of sale systems of our partner carriers and distribution partners. This integration increases the ease of use for our partners, embeds us within their systems, and facilitates real‑time sharing of information between our distribution, underwriting, and risk management functions. We will continue to evaluate and invest in proprietary and third‑party technology assets, which deepen our competitive advantage, strengthen our operations and improve our returns.

History

We are an insurance holding company that was originally incorporated under the laws of the Cayman Islands in October 2013. In March 2019, we (i) implemented a domestication pursuant to Section 388 of the Delaware General Corporation Law and Section 206 of the Companies Law (2018 Revision), as amended, of the Cayman Islands pursuant to which we became a Delaware corporation and no longer subject to the laws of the Cayman Islands, (ii) modified the Class P units and Plan as described below, (iii) effected a 17,000,000 for one forward stock split and (iv) caused our

then‑sole shareholder, GC Palomar Investor LP, to distribute all of the post‑split shares of our common stock to its various partners and other interest holders, including to Genstar Capital and its affiliates. We collectively refer to these transactions as the “domestication transactions.” In March 2019, we made a one‑time cash distribution totaling approximately $5.1 million to GC Palomar Investor LP enabling it to distribute funds to its partners, including Genstar Capital, in order to allow such partners to satisfy tax obligations incurred as a result of the domestication transactions. Additionally, on March 15, 2019, the 2014 Management Incentive Plan was modified by eliminating the requirement of a liquidity event to occur for the holders of its Class P units to realize value. All Class P units were modified such that the vesting of each Class P unit holder’s awards was accelerated and their Class P distribution percentages were determined. This modification resulted in a stock compensation charge and corresponding increase to additional paid‑in capital of $23.0 million for the quarter ended March 31, 2019.

Our primary operating subsidiary, Palomar Specialty Insurance Company, is an insurance company domiciled in the state of Oregon and is an admitted insurer licensed to write business in 27 states as of December 31, 2019. Palomar Specialty Insurance Company was formed in February 2014 and was initially capitalized with $75 million of capital invested by Genstar Capital, a private equity firm with a focus on the financial services sector, as well as our management team. In August 2014, we incorporated Palomar Specialty Reinsurance Company Bermuda Ltd., a Bermuda‑based reinsurance subsidiary that provides reinsurance support exclusively to Palomar Specialty Insurance Company and that benefits from the favorable operating environment for reinsurers domiciled in Bermuda. In August 2015, we incorporated Prospect General Insurance Agency, Inc., a managing general agency formed to underwrite specialty insurance products on behalf of third-party insurance companies.

Palomar Specialty Insurance Company was awarded an “A−” (Excellent) (Outlook Stable) financial strength rating from A.M. Best in February 2014. In February 2019, A.M. Best affirmed the “A−” (Excellent) (Outlook Stable) rating for Palomar Specialty Insurance Company and affirmed the “A−” (Excellent) (Outlook Stable) group rating for Palomar Holdings, Inc. This rating reflects A.M. Best’s opinion of our financial strength, operating performance and ability to meet obligations to policyholders and is not an evaluation directed towards the protection of investors.

Our Structure

 

Our Products

We provide personal and commercial specialty property insurance products in our target markets. We believe that our core markets within the specialty property sector have primarily been served by either large generalist insurance companies and state‑managed entities that apply “one‑size‑fits‑all” pricing and policy forms across broad geographies, or E&S companies that offer volatile pricing and coverage without the backing of state guaranty funds. With the goal of

giving customers better options, we designed an analytical framework to create flexible, admitted products with innovative coverages and pricing that we believe better reflects the underlying risk. Using this framework, we initially introduced residential and commercial earthquake products in 2014 and have subsequently expanded our product portfolio to cover multiple specialty property risks in several regions of the United States. We have grown our business by entering markets that demonstrated one or more of the following attributes: (i) have loss characteristics, including limited attritional losses, similar to our initial earthquake product, (ii) can benefit from our technology platform, data analytics and customer centric products, and/or (iii) allow us to leverage our existing underwriting talent, reinsurance expertise and distribution relationships.

Our insurance product offerings include Residential and Commercial Earthquake, Specialty Homeowners, Commercial All‑Risk, Hawaii Hurricane, Residential Flood, Inland Marine, Assumed Reinsurance and Real Estate Investor. We aim to develop a diversified portfolio with exposure spread across geographic regions with limited correlation. Our largest exposure remains in the state of California and we have expanded to address the insurance needs in the New Madrid Seismic zone in the Midwestern United States, wind‑exposed markets in the southeastern United States and the hurricane market in the state of Hawaii. We tailor our risk participation to optimize our returns depending on the conditions of specific markets. In total, we are licensed as an admitted insurer in 27 total states. The following table shows our gross written premium for Palomar Specialty Insurance Company, our U.S. insurance subsidiary, by state for the years ended December 31, 2019, 2018 and 2017:

 

We believe that maintaining a balanced book of residential and commercial business is beneficial. For example, while our Residential Earthquake products experience higher premium retention rates, our Commercial Earthquake products provide more flexibility on pricing, which enables us to increase premium rates more quickly when market conditions accommodate price increases. For the year ended December 31, 2019, 71% of our gross written premium consisted of residential business and 29% of gross written premium consisted of commercial business. The following table shows gross written premium (GWP) by product line for the years ended December 31, 2019, 2018 and 2017:

 

Premium Retention Rates

Our products demonstrate strong renewal rate trends, which we believe are an indication of the distinctive value we provide to insureds and which provide visibility into future earned premium. The following table shows our renewal retention by policy for the years ended December 31, 2019 and 2018:

 

Residential Earthquake

We offer Residential Earthquake products on an admitted basis in 17 states primarily under the brand names Value Select and Flex Choice. Our products insure against damage to the home, contents and any appurtenant structures and reimburse for temporary housing costs in the event of an earthquake. We design our products to provide agents and policyholders with coverage flexibility, including a full range of deductible options and the ability to tailor limits to a customer’s individual preferences. We aim to sell our products to buyers who may not have previously purchased earthquake coverage. We believe that our pricing model is a distinctive feature of our product offering. Using data from industry‑leading catastrophe models we are able to evaluate and accurately price exposures at the ZIP code or geocode level based on characteristics particular to the risk. For example, we believe competing earthquake insurance products in California are commonly based on broad territorial pricing zones that do not take into account regional differences in soil types, liquefaction potential and include little price differentiation between risks with varying proximity to known faults. Our ability to divide geographies into highly resolute grids, or ZIP codes, and price according to more detailed information relating to the exposure allows us to obtain a more appropriate rate for the risk, and often allows us to offer rate relief, particularly in low risk areas that historically have low earthquake insurance penetration. We write policy limits up to $15 million; all policies involve automated underwriting and policies under $5 million in limit are issued via automated processing.

Commercial Earthquake

We offer Commercial Earthquake products, commonly known as “Difference in Conditions” policies, on an admitted basis in 16 states. Our Commercial Earthquake products focus on providing coverage for benign commercial risks where the business interruption exposure is typically less than 15% of the total insured value (“TIV”). We attempt to avoid risks where the contents are hard to value or represent a disproportionate percentage of the value. We write policy limits up to $25 million with the ability to serve larger accounts through the use of facultative reinsurance. We believe we occupy a unique position in the market as we are one of a select group of admitted carriers that price risk at the location level. Furthermore our approved rate and form filings provide us with the requisite pricing and coverage flexibility to compete with E&S carriers.

Specialty Homeowners

Our Specialty Homeowners product provides admitted insurance coverage to homeowners in wind‑exposed coastal regions. We sell homeowners coverage through our distribution partners in certain counties in Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina and Texas. We believe that the homeowners insurance market on a national level is highly competitive but that there are specific geographic markets with attractive return potential that many insurance companies

avoid due to windstorm exposure. For example, our Texas program focuses on counties that face lower frequency windstorm exposure rather than higher frequency exposure to tornado and hail perils experienced by inland counties. Similarly, our programs in Alabama, Mississippi and North Carolina target newer construction in areas no closer than half a mile from the coast, which we believe optimizes the catastrophe premium we are able to price into the risk while minimizing the relative exposure. Our Specialty Homeowners programs are supported by a quota share and excess of loss reinsurance facility we refer to as SHF, which became effective June 1, 2019. We believe the SHF mitigates the loss exposure from both attritional and catastrophe risk to our homeowners operations and generates valuable fee income in the form of a ceding commission paid by participating quota share reinsurers. We take a 20% participation in the SHF quota share and expect to continue to evaluate the optimal risk participation in our Specialty Homeowners business on an ongoing basis.

Commercial All Risk

We offer Commercial All Risk insurance on an admitted basis in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas. The All Risk policy covers the perils of fire and wind, with wind including hurricane, tornado, and hail storm. For an additional premium the policy can include the peril of earthquake. We believe we occupy a unique position in the market as an admitted carrier with the ability to generate location level pricing informed by windstorm exposure. We write policy limits up to $25 million for occupancy types including homeowner’s associations, strip malls, hotels, motels and office buildings.

Hawaii Hurricane

We provide admitted residential property coverage for named hurricanes in the state of Hawaii. This is a required coverage for homeowners that carry a mortgage on their properties in the state. Similar to our residential earthquake product, insureds have the ability to tailor limits to their preferences. The policies we write only trigger coverage if wind damage occurs while the insured risk is in a county that is under a hurricane watch or warning as deemed by the Pacific division of the National Weather Service. Coverage only remains in effect for a period of 72 hours after the hurricane watch or warning expires. Therefore, there is no exposure to attritional losses with this product. We believe our products are preferred by local retail agents due to our “A−” (Excellent) (Outlook Stable) rating by A.M. Best. We write policy limits up to $15 million; all policies involve automated underwriting and policies under $5 million in limit are issued via automated processing.

Residential Flood

We provide admitted residential flood products under the Flood Guard brand in Arizona, California, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Nevada, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Utah. Our products primarily compete against those of the NFIP, which caps dwelling coverage at $250,000 and prices risk using broadly defined zones. We offer higher limits than the NFIP and price risk at the specific geocode level having developed detailed granular models of all current markets in partnership with a leading national catastrophe modeling agency. Furthermore, due to our proprietary pricing grid models we eliminate the need for a waiting period or an elevation certificate prior to binding and issuance of policies. We write policy limits up to $5 million, all of which involve automated underwriting and are issued via automated processing. Should proposed regulatory changes to the NFIP be enacted, we believe we are well positioned to capture premium that would come into the private market.

Inland Marine

We launched an Inland Marine division in 2019 and currently offer Builder’s Risk, Contractor’s Equipment, Motor Truck Cargo, and Miscellaneous Floaters coverage on an admitted basis in 17 states. Our Builders Risk policy covers buildings under construction against the perils of fire and wind, with wind including hurricane, tornado, and hail storm. For an additional premium the policy can include the peril of earthquake. We write policy limits up to $10 million for various construction and occupancy types.  Our Contractor’s Equipment policy covers owned, rented, and employee tools on a single policy and offers policy limits up to $500 thousand for any single piece of equipment. Our Motor Truck Cargo policy is designed for intermediate and long-haul carriers with coverage extending to full and half loads as well as coverage for property at terminals in transit. We write policy limits up to $500 thousand for any single loss. Our Miscellaneous Floaters policy covers personal property and equipment that can be either stationary or in transit but excludes contractor’s equipment. We write policy limits up to $500 thousand for any single item. We believe our admitted Inland Marine product offerings in areas that are typically served by the E&S market gives us a competitive advantage.

Assumed Reinsurance

We launched an Assumed Reinsurance offering in 2019 to address attractive risk that would be difficult for us to otherwise access as a primary carrier and that we believe is uncorrelated to our core underwriting operations. We provide reinsurance capacity to sophisticated cedants with a longstanding track record of profitable underwriting, and we examine the risk characteristics of assumed portfolios to mitigate any material overlapping of risk with our own primary underwriting operations.

Real Estate Investor

Our REI program provides property and liability coverage on an E&S basis to owners of 1‑4 dwelling investment property portfolios and is administered through our affiliated managing general agent, Prospect General Insurance Agency, an approved Coverholder at Lloyd’s of London with delegated authority to write business on behalf of capacity provided by syndicates at Lloyd’s of London. While we generate commission and fee income from the sale of REI products, we do not retain any of the underlying risk of losses incurred by those policies. We can write limits up to $2 million per location in all 50 states.

Marketing and Distribution

We market and distribute our products through a multi‑channel, open architecture distribution model which includes retail agents, wholesale brokers, program administrators and carrier partnerships. We have well‑defined underwriting criteria and have designed our distribution model to access our targeted risks through what we believe to be the most efficient channels.

Retail Agents:  We primarily distribute our personal lines products through retail agents. We believe that retail agents are an important pillar of our distribution model due to the high retention rates and rate stability that we are able to achieve with policies sold through this channel. We believe this outcome is a result of the distinctive offering we provide agents in the form of admitted, flexible products that are preferred by end consumers and are easier for agents to sell than E&S alternatives. In many cases, we provide agents with direct access to our policy management system that enables them to quote, bind and issue policies in a matter of minutes. We believe this ease of use and quick speed‑to‑quote serves as a competitive advantage.

Wholesale Brokers:  We distribute our commercial lines products primarily through wholesale brokers. Wholesale brokers are an important channel for commercial property insurance products as they control much of the premium in these segments. We select wholesale brokers based on our management’s review of their experience, knowledge and business plan. We target brokers with the experience to serve our target markets and with business plans consistent with our strategy and underwriting objectives. Brokers must demonstrate an ability to produce both the quality and quantity of business that we seek. To assist with this goal, our underwriters regularly visit with brokers to market

and discuss the products we offer. We terminate brokers who are unable to produce consistently profitable business or who produce unacceptably low volumes of business.

Program Administrators:  Within select lines of business, we partner with program administrators in order to harness the efficiency and scale of their existing marketing and distribution infrastructures. Generally, policies bound by our program administrators are pre‑underwritten using our pricing models which have been programmed into the policy administration system of each partner. For business that is not automatically underwritten, we set strict underwriting guidelines to which our partners must adhere. We audit the underwriting, systems, financial strength and reporting capabilities of all of our program administrators on a regular basis. Most notably, for our Value Select Residential Earthquake products, we have a mutually exclusive program administrator agreement with Arrowhead for the states of California, Oregon and Washington. Under this agreement, which accounts for $90.5 million of our gross written premiums for the year ended December 31, 2019, we conduct product development and underwriting while our program administrator manages a base of over 1,000 retail agents who individually bind policies through PASS or an internal system which automatically applies our pricing and underwriting guidelines to new policies, and is subjected to our disciplined risk management. The fees payable by us to Arrowhead under the agreement are based upon our premiums written in each state. The agreement remains in effect until terminated by either party upon 180 days’ prior written notice to the other party for cause. In addition, our Specialty Homeowner products are sold in Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina and Texas through program administrators with local expertise in their respective markets. Our program administrators participate in the economics of produced business through risk sharing agreements, which we believe strengthens the alignment of interests toward generating underwriting profit.

Carrier Partnerships:  Given our unique specialty property focus and underwriting expertise, we are a carrier of choice for other insurance companies seeking a specialty property insurance partner in order to transfer certain classes of risk, satisfy insurance department mandatory offer requirements or provide a more comprehensive risk solution to their customers. As of December 31, 2019, we had partnerships with over twenty insurance companies. Several carriers invite us to provide a companion offer for residential earthquake insurance alongside their homeowners’ insurance policy offerings. Other carriers will direct their captive agents to our online system so that they may quote, bind and issue policies directly. Finally, we offer assumed reinsurance arrangements to carriers whereby we assume up to 100% of the underlying risk for specific classes of business, typically Residential Earthquake, in exchange for a ceding commission. Our assumed reinsurance treaties represent risks that we would ordinarily underwrite on a primary basis and that fit well within our risk tolerance, however, the cedant either (i) has already written these policies or (ii) the cedant wants to issue the policies on their paper but not retain any of the risk and as such prefers an assumed reinsurance partnership. We believe that our carrier partnerships with sophisticated industry participants speak to the value and quality of our products, service offering and systems. Furthermore, carrier partnerships are a highly scalable distribution model as they enable us to tap into a sizable customer base and to quickly build scale in new markets. With all partnerships, we review pricing at the policy level to ensure that the risk characteristics of both new and assumed business are consistent with our underwriting of direct business.

Underwriting

Our underwriting team combines comprehensive data analysis with experienced underwriting techniques to build a profitable, stable and diversified book of business. Our underwriting process involves securing an adequate level of underwriting information, classifying and evaluating each individual risk exposure, assessing the impact of the risk upon our existing portfolio, and pricing the risk accordingly. Our overarching underwriting philosophy is ‘to write what we know’ therefore, our underwriters tend to avoid exposures that are overly complex or cannot easily be recognized from a photograph. This straightforward approach allows our underwriters to focus on business they understand and can process quickly without sacrificing diligence and attention to detail.

We develop our underwriting guidelines and pricing models through traditional underwriting metrics, management experience, and advanced data analytics that allow us to assess information about construction type, contingent exposure, location, occupancy type and size and granularly rate exposure at the ZIP code or geocode level. We access data for our pricing models provided from multiple leading risk modeling vendors, and use our information from proprietary extensions of catastrophe models to assist in evaluating soil types, proximity to faults, and loss

estimates in the form of modeled marginal impact, AAL and PML. This analytical underwriting framework enables us to offer rate relief in low risk areas and to accurately price locations that are at higher risk.

Residential policies are issued via automated underwriting and account for approximately 71% of our gross written premium for the year ended December 31, 2019. Using our predefined underwriting guidelines, distribution partners can rapidly quote and bind accounts under $5 million in limit via automated processing. We believe that automated underwriting improves efficiency, reduces errors, and enhances the customer experience.

Since our commercial lines products do not lend themselves to highly automated underwriting, we use our customized operating platform to evaluate individual risk and to quote business efficiently. We regularly audit data gathered during our underwriting process to determine the accuracy of rating information and risk pricing. For example, we often inspect properties as part of our underwriting process to discover any unrepaired damage and identify any other conditions that affect the insurability of the property. Additionally, we continue to assess the use of new technology enabled tools to assist us with inspections as well as other components of the underwriting process.

Ongoing risk management of our portfolio in aggregate is a critical component of our underwriting process. We use third‑party catastrophe modeling software to evaluate our ongoing risk exposure. We regularly review the output of these models to evaluate the geographic spread of our risk, including the evaluation of AAL and PML by line of business and for the portfolio as a whole. This review enables us to optimize the design and pricing of our reinsurance program including the purchase of appropriate reinsurance coverage.

Claims Management

Given the low frequency nature of the perils that we insure, we outsource our claims handling infrastructure to eliminate the expense associated with maintaining full time dedicated claims personnel. We currently contract with four TPAs to reduce our reliance on any single TPA, as well as to benefit from expertise of individual vendors in specific lines of business. Our management team, led by our Senior Vice President of Legal, Compliance and Claims, is responsible for overseeing our TPAs, including the management of loss reserves, event preparation, settlement, arbitration, and mediation. Claims are reported directly to us and the applicable TPA, which adheres to agreed upon service level standards.

In the case of a catastrophe event, our technology infrastructure and data analytics enable us quickly to identify potentially affected policies and begin assisting our customers by notifying our TPAs, our reinsurance partners and other potentially impacted parties. A network of TPAs improves our ability immediately to mobilize claims adjusters to the areas where our customers are most affected and helps insulate us from the “demand surge” following a catastrophe event. In order to prepare for a potential catastrophe event, we run simulations and work closely with our TPAs to ensure there are dedicated desk and field adjusters to handle the volume of claims that would be expected in each loss scenario. Using each earthquake and hurricane scenario, we project losses and identify an individualized and optimal catastrophe response plan for each event.

We audit claims files, such as field reports, case reserves and service level standards on a frequent basis, as well as make claims decisions and monitor litigation, which we do by directly accessing each TPA’s claims management system. Additionally, we have implemented certain managerial requirements including notification, reserve approval, payment management, correspondence with insureds, and reports for all claims in excess of the claims analyst’s authority.

Reinsurance

We purchase a significant amount of reinsurance from third parties that we believe enhances our business by reducing our exposure to potential catastrophe losses, limiting volatility in our underwriting performance, and providing us with greater visibility into our future earnings. Reinsurance involves transferring, or ceding, a portion of our risk exposure on policies that we write to another insurer, the reinsurer, in exchange for a premium. To the extent that our reinsurers are unable to meet the obligations they assume under our reinsurance agreements, we remain liable for the entire insured loss; see “Risk Factors—Risks Related to Our Business and Industry—We may be unable to purchase

third‑party reinsurance or otherwise expand our catastrophe coverage in amounts we desire on commercially acceptable terms or on terms that adequately protect us, and this inability may materially adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.”

We use treaty reinsurance and, on a limited basis, facultative reinsurance coverage. Treaty coverage refers to a reinsurance contract that is applied to a group or class of business where all the risks written meet the criteria for that class. Our treaty reinsurance program primarily consists of catastrophe XOL, in which the reinsurer(s) agree to assume all or a portion of the ceding company’s losses relating to a group of policies occurring in relation to specified events, subject to customary exclusions, in excess of a specified amount. Additionally, we buy program specific reinsurance coverage for specific lines of business on a quota share, property per risk or a facultative basis. In quota share reinsurance, the reinsurer agrees to assume a specified percentage of the ceding company’s losses arising out of a defined class of business in exchange for a corresponding percentage of premiums, net of a ceding commission. Property per risk coverage is similar to catastrophe excess of loss except that the treaty applies in individual property losses rather than in the aggregate for all claims associated with a single catastrophic loss occurrence. Facultative coverage refers to a reinsurance contract on individual risks as opposed to a group or class of business. We use facultative reinsurance selectively to supplement limits or to cover risks or perils excluded from other reinsurance contracts.

We have a robust program utilizing a mix of traditional reinsurers and insurance linked securities. As of January 1, 2020, we purchased reinsurance from over 85 reinsurers, who either have an “A−” (Excellent) (Outlook Stable) or better financial strength rating by A.M. Best or post collateral. Our reinsurance contracts include special termination provisions that allow us to cancel and replace any participating reinsurer that is downgraded below a rating of “A−” (Excellent) (Outlook Stable) from A.M. Best, or whose surplus drops by more than 20%. Torrey Pines Re Ltd., the special purpose insurer established in Bermuda, comprises $166 million or 12.7% of total catastrophe XOL limit we have in effect. Torrey Pines Re Ltd. was funded by over 25 different investors, with the largest investor representing less than 2% of our total catastrophe XOL reinsurance limit. Our largest single XOL reinsurer comprises 5.9% of the total catastrophe XOL reinsurance limit we have in effect. In addition to ceding risk to traditional reinsurers, we purchase collateralized limit from the insurance linked securities (“ILS”) market. The table below reflects the ratings of our largest individual reinsurers.

 

 

Catastrophe XOL Reinsurance Coverage

As of January 1, 2020, we currently retain $5 million of risk per earthquake or wind event, inclusive of any amounts retained through our Bermuda reinsurance subsidiary, and our reinsurance program currently provides for coverage up to $1.2 billion for earthquake events, subject to customary exclusions, with coverage in excess of our estimated peak zone 1 in 250 year probable maximum loss (“PML”) event and in excess of our A.M. Best requirement. In addition, we maintain reinsurance coverage equivalent to or better than the 1 in 250 year PML for our other lines. As of December 31, 2019, our first event retention represented approximately 2.3% of our stockholders’ equity. In the event of a catastrophe that impacts our reinsurance contracts, our contracts primarily include the right to reinstate reinsurance

limits for potential future recoveries during the same contract year and preserve our limit for subsequent events. This feature for subsequent event coverage is known as a “reinstatement.”

In May 2017 we completed our first ILS transaction with the successful close of a $166 million 144A catastrophe bond completed through Torrey Pines Re Ltd, a special purpose insurer established solely for our benefit in Bermuda. Torrey Pines Re provides fully collateralized protection over a three‑year risk period, which we believe enhances the overall security and stability of our reinsurance program.

To assess the sufficiency of our catastrophe XOL reinsurance coverage, we continuously quantify our exposure to catastrophes including earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes and hail storms. We evaluate and monitor the total policy limit insured for each peril and in each geographic region, and we use third‑party catastrophe models to evaluate the AAL as well as the estimated PML at various intervals. Our PML modeling is consistent with standards established by A.M. Best and includes “demand surge,” and loss amplification. To protect against model bias, we perform probabilistic modeling as well as deterministic modeling using a variety of industry models including AIR Touchstone for all perils and regions, RMS RiskLink for all perils and regions, and EQECAT RQE for earthquake across all regions. We believe our current reinsurance program provides coverage well in excess of our theoretical losses from any recorded historical event. This coverage includes events such as the 1906 San Francisco and 1994 Northridge earthquakes. Under our current reinsurance program, because the PML for each of the historical events is less than $1.2 billion, the amount covered by our current reinsurance program, should an event equivalent to either of these two events or other historical events recur, our hypothetical net loss would be capped at our current net retention of $5 million as demonstrated in the following table:

 

 

While we only select reinsurers whom we believe to have acceptable credit and a minimum A.M. Best rating of “A−”, if our reinsurers are unable to pay the claims for which they are responsible, we ultimately retain primary liability to our policyholders. In addition, at each reinsurance treaty renewal, we consider any plans to change the underlying insurance coverage we offer, our current capital, our risk appetite, and the cost and availability of reinsurance coverage, which may vary from time to time.

Catastrophe XOL Treaty Summary

Our current catastrophe XOL treaty as of January 1, 2020 is summarized below with modeled losses from historical events included for reference based on our in‑force portfolio as of December 31, 2019:

 

 

Our catastrophe XOL treaty provides total coverage up to $1.2 billion for earthquake events and $514 million for wind events, with this coverage well in excess of the 1 in 250 year PML for each peril. We believe our treaty provides expansive coverage as many of our contracts have features including prepaid reinstatements, multi‑year terms and expanded coverage windows for earthquake and wind events. We purchase coverage from a mix of traditional reinsurers and collateralized protection from the ILS market, and our reinsurance contracts largely mirror the form of our insurance policies in order to minimize any gaps between the coverage we offer to insureds and the coverage we purchase from reinsurance partners.

In the event of an earthquake or windstorm that impacts our catastrophe XOL treaty, our total available coverage for subsequent earthquake and windstorm events depends on the magnitude of the first event, as we may have coverage remaining from layers that were not previously fully exhausted. In addition, $280 million of the limit that we purchase includes the ability to drop down to fill gaps in lower layers. We also have provisions that cover the reinstatement of all coverage at no additional expense to the Company, excluding the following layers:

Program Specific Reinsurance Coverage

In addition to our catastrophe XOL coverage, we purchase reinsurance for specific programs in order to control our net exposure for any single risk, manage our exposure to attritional loss and improve our economics through ceding a portion of the risk to reinsurers in exchange for a ceding commission.

Commercial All Risk and Inland Marine. We are exposed to more frequent, less severe losses from attritional water and fire damage in our Commercial All Risk and Inland Marine lines of business, which cover the perils of fire and wind, with wind including hurricanes, tornados, and hail storms, and include the option for earthquake coverage. To reduce attritional loss activity, we cede a portion of the premium that we earn on our Commercial All Risk and Inland Marine policies to reinsurers, who assume a portion of the subject risk in exchange for a ceding commission. In addition, in our Commercial All Risk business, we maintain quota share and property per risk arrangements with reinsurers that enable us to offer policy limits up to $25 million while retaining no more than $5 million per risk; we earn a ceding commission for risk ceded to these reinsurers.

Specialty Homeowners. Our Specialty Homeowners programs in Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina and Texas are subject to attritional loss due to the broader coverage available under a homeowner’s policy. As of June 1, 2019, we completed the placement of our SHF, which provides quota share and excess of loss reinsurance for our Specialty Homeowners programs. The SHF includes the flexibility to cover additional states that we have identified as expansion opportunities. We believe the SHF mitigates the loss exposure from both attritional and catastrophe risk to our homeowners operations and generates valuable fee income in the form of a ceding commission paid by participating quota share reinsurers. We take a 20% participation in the SHF quota share and expect to continue to evaluate the optimal risk participation in our Specialty Homeowners business on an ongoing basis.

Residential Flood. Losses from our residential flood product, Flood Guard, are not covered under our catastrophe XOL treaty. In order to manage our exposure to any single loss, we currently cede 70% of flood risk up to a $75 million occurrence limit to a panel of reinsurers who assume the subject risk in exchange for a ceding commission.

Third-Party Capacity

In order to utilize our internal product development, underwriting and distribution expertise on behalf of third- party insurance companies, we launched an affiliated managing general agent called Prospect General Insurance Agency in 2016. Prospect is an approved Coverholder by Lloyd’s of London and currently manages our REI program with delegating authority to write on behalf of capacity provided by syndicates at Lloyd’s of London. In 2019, we entered into a new partnership to underwrite commercial flood risk on behalf of affiliates of SCOR SE. While we generate commission and fee income from the sale of REI products, we do not retain any of the underlying risk of losses incurred by those policies. We will continue to develop third-party capacity relationships that support our products.

Technology

Our integrated technology systems form the backbone of our business as they enable us to offer better service to our policyholders and producers, communicate seamlessly with reinsurers and partner carriers, and run our business more efficiently and cost effectively. As a recently formed insurance company, we have the benefit of having built a proprietary operating platform that employs the best practices of our management team’s extensive prior experience and that is not burdened by outdated legacy technology and processes. Our systems offer greater ease of use to distribution partners and provide seamless integration between our pricing models, quoting tools, policy administration systems and portfolio analytics databases. Our proprietary operating platform is based on applications licensed from multiple third-party software vendors. We have invested significantly in customizing, building on top of and extending these applications to increase automation and enhance efficiency. We have dedicated in‑house software developers as well as

external resources, all of whom report to our Chief Technology Officer. Our internally developed PASS provides producers direct access to our retail and wholesale distributed products including Hawaii Hurricane, Residential Earthquake, Residential Flood, and Commercial Earthquake. PASS also serves as the administration system for select policy data and the access point for business written through direct residential partnerships. PASS enables the effective use of predefined underwriting, providing efficiency and optimization to our production partners and real‑time transparency in underwriting and aggregate management. Our software development team develops APIs where applicable so that partner carriers and distribution partners can seamlessly access our system.

Our pricing models are based on the most recent versions of catastrophe models from industry leading vendors and our internal expertise. For certain products where limited models are available, we have worked directly with the vendors to develop proprietary models. We update all of our pricing models as new versions are released, which mitigates our exposure to changes in our business following industry‑wide model changes. For residential products issued through automated underwriting, our pricing models integrate directly into our policy administration system as well as the systems of program administrator partners. Since our commercial lines products do not lend themselves to highly automated underwriting, we have built a customized operating platform that our underwriters use to evaluate risk and to efficiently quote business. Historically we have licensed web‑based policy administration software. During 2018, we engaged a third‑party vendor to build a custom application platform for our commercial lines programs to seamlessly integrate policy administration, billing and maintenance. This platform has been completed for our Commercial All Risk business and is being expanded to support additional product lines.

We emphasize the use of technology in our analytics and enterprise risk management (“ERM”) operations. Our analytics team, which reports to our Chief Operating Officer, uses multiple catastrophe modeling software applications to evaluate our ongoing risk exposure. Our data analytics enable us to provide real‑time reporting of our in‑force portfolio to our reinsurers, TPAs and distribution partners on a regular basis and during severe weather events. This reporting combines content from the catastrophe models that we license with internally developed content. Event reporting is an element of our overall ERM framework which monitors our risks and ensures that we have appropriate controls and preparation are in place. Our technology infrastructure is designed to function through any major disruption, with all data stored offsite and employees provided with the resources work remotely.

Reserves

When a claim is reported to us or when an event occurs, we establish loss reserves to cover our estimated ultimate losses under all insurance policies that we underwrite, and loss adjustment expenses relating to the investigation and settlement of policy claims. These reserves include estimates of the cost of the claims reported to us (case reserves) and estimates of the cost of claims that have been incurred but not yet reported (“IBNR”) and are net of estimated related salvage, subrogation recoverables and reinsurance recoverables. Reserves are estimates involving actuarial projections of the expected ultimate cost to settle and administer claims at a given time, but are not expected to represent precisely the ultimate liability. Estimates are based upon past loss experience modified for current trends as well as prevailing economic, legal and social conditions. Such estimates will also be based on facts and circumstances then known, but are subject to significant uncertainty based on the outcome of various factors, such as future events, future trends in claim severity, inflation and changes in the judicial interpretation of policy provisions relating to the determination of coverage.

When a claim is reported and based on information from the adjuster, we establish a case reserve for the estimated amount of the ultimate payment after an appropriate assessment of coverage, damages and other investigation as applicable. The estimate is based on general insurance reserving practices and on the claim adjuster’s experience and knowledge of the nature and value of the specific type of claim. Case reserves are revised periodically based on subsequent developments associated with each claim.

We establish IBNR reserves in accordance with industry practice to provide for (i) the estimated amount of future loss payments on incurred claims not yet reported, and (ii) potential development on reported claims. IBNR reserves are estimated based on generally accepted actuarial reserving techniques that take into account quantitative loss experience data and, where appropriate, qualitative factors.

We regularly review our loss reserves using a variety of actuarial techniques. We also update the reserve estimates as historical loss experience develops, additional claims are reported and/or settled and new information becomes available. Additionally, our loss reserving is reviewed annually for reasonableness by a reputable third‑party actuarial firm. A reserve can be increased or decreased over time as claims move towards settlement, which can impact earnings in the form of either adverse development or reserve releases.

The following tables present the development of our loss reserves by accident year on a gross basis and net of reinsurance recoveries during each of the below calendar years:

 

 

 

 

Investments

Investment income is an important component of our earnings. We collect premiums and are required to hold a portion of these funds in reserves until claims are paid. We invest these reserves, primarily in fixed maturity investments. Our fixed maturity investment portfolio is managed by Conning and Company, an investment advisory firm that is an experienced manager of insurance company assets, and operates under guidelines approved by our Board’s Investment Committee. We believe our investment strategy allows us to eliminate the expense of a treasury department while allowing our management to maintain oversight over the investment portfolio. Our Investment Committee meets periodically and reports to our Board of Directors.

In the years that we make an underwriting profit, we are able to retain all investment income. Underwriting losses may require us to dedicate a portion of our investment income or capital to cover insurance claims and expenses.

Our cash and invested assets consist of fixed maturity securities, short‑term investments, cash and cash equivalents, mutual funds and exchange traded funds. Our fixed maturity securities are classified as “available‑for‑sale” and are carried at fair value with unrealized gains and losses on these securities reported, net of tax, as a separate component of accumulated other comprehensive income (loss). Our equity investments are measured at fair value with changes in fair value recognized in net income. Fair value generally represents quoted market value prices for securities traded in the public market or prices analytically determined using bid or closing prices for securities not traded in the public marketplace. Short‑term investments are reported at cost and include investments that are both readily convertible to known amounts of cash and have maturities of 12 months or less upon acquisition by us.

Our investment securities available totaled $239.5 million and $147.4 million at December 31, 2019 and 2018, respectively, and are summarized as follows:

 

 

 

Our primary investment focus is to preserve capital to support our insurance operations through investing primarily in high quality fixed maturity securities with a secondary focus on maximizing our risk adjusted investment returns. Investment policy is set by the Investment Committee of the Board of Directors, subject to the limits of applicable regulations.

Our investment policy imposes strict requirements for credit quality, with a minimum average credit quality of the portfolio being rated “A” or higher by Standard & Poor’s or the equivalent rating from another nationally recognized rating agency. Our investment policy also imposes restrictions on concentrations of securities by class and issuer and any new asset class must be approved by management and the Investment Committee. Given our existing exposure to property values, notably in the state of California, we have imposed restrictions on municipal obligations in the state of California and CMBS single issuers concentrated in the state of California.

Enterprise Risk Management

We maintain a dedicated ERM function that is responsible for analyzing and reporting our risks, monitoring that risks remain within established tolerances, and monitoring, on an ongoing basis, that our ERM objectives are met. These objectives include ensuring proper risk controls are in place; risks are effectively identified, assessed, and managed, and key risks to which we are exposed are appropriately disclosed. Our ERM framework plays an important role in fostering our risk management culture and practices. We continue to enhance our ERM framework, which is guided by the Own Risk and Solvency Assessment (ORSA) model developed by the NAIC. These ongoing enhancements include the creation of an executive risk management committee, creation and maintenance of a risk register and regular reporting on risk management.

An additional important part of our ERM is business continuity, including in the circumstances of a catastrophe event. We have established a business continuity team made up of executive management with predefined roles and

responsibilities in the event of an emergency response situation and a business continuity communication site where employees are directed to receive instructions that are tailored to various scenarios. We store all data offsite and ensure it is accessible remotely. Our communications, virtual file servers, underwriting and distribution systems, and claims portal are hosted in geographically diverse data centers domestically and globally. We maintain a second office 55 miles north of our La Jolla, California headquarters to use as a redundant location in the event of a disruptive event in San Diego, and purchase business continuity services to support the La Jolla office in the event of a disruptive event.

Competition

The specialty property insurance industry is highly competitive. While we currently target underserved markets, some of our competitors have greater financial, marketing and management resources and experience than we do. Our primary competitors include national insurance companies, including American International Group, Inc., Chubb Limited, State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company and Zurich Insurance Group Ltd., as well as specialty property insurers such as Zephyr Insurance Company, a subsidiary of Heritage Insurance Holdings, and GeoVera Holdings, Inc. We also compete with the E&S market, including Lloyd’s of London in some of our lines. In addition, we compete against state or other publicly managed enterprises including the California Earthquake Authority, the National Flood Insurance Program and the Texas Wind Insurance Association. We may also compete with new market entrants in the future. Competition is based on many factors, including the reputation and experience of the insurer, coverages offered, pricing and other terms and conditions, customer service, relationships with brokers and agents (including ease of doing business, service provided and commission rates paid), size and financial strength ratings, among other considerations.

Ratings

Our insurance group, Palomar Holdings, Inc., currently has a rating of “A−” (Excellent) (Outlook Stable) from A.M. Best, which rates insurance companies based on factors of concern to policyholders. A.M. Best currently assigns 16 ratings to insurance companies, which currently range from “A++” (Superior) to “S” (Rating Suspended). “A−” (Excellent) (Outlook Stable) is the fourth highest rating. In evaluating a company’s financial and operating performance, A.M. Best reviews the company’s profitability, leverage and liquidity, as well as its book of business, the adequacy and soundness of its reinsurance, the quality and estimated market value of its assets, the adequacy of its loss and loss expense reserves, the adequacy of its surplus, its capital structure, the experience and competence of its management and its market presence. A.M. Best’s ratings reflect its opinion of an insurance company’s financial strength, operating performance and ability to meet its obligations to policyholders. These evaluations are not directed to purchasers of an insurance company’s securities.

Intellectual Property

We have registered our logo as a trademark in the United States. We will pursue additional trademark registrations and other intellectual property protection to the extent we believe it would be beneficial and cost effective.

Employees

As of December 31, 2019, we had 77 employees. Our employees are not subject to any collective bargaining agreements, and we are not aware of any current efforts to implement such an agreement.

Item 1A: Risk Factors

An investment in our common stock involves a high degree of risk. In deciding whether to invest, you should carefully consider the following risk factors, as well as the financial and other information contained in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, including our consolidated financial statements and related notes. Any of the following risks could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations or prospects and cause the value of our stock to decline, which could cause you to lose all or part of your investment. Additional risks and uncertainties of which we are unaware, or that we currently deem immaterial also may become important factors that affect us.

Risks Related to Our Business and Industry

Claims arising from unpredictable and severe catastrophe events, including those caused by global climate change, could reduce our earnings and stockholders’ equity and limit our ability to underwrite new insurance policies.

Our insurance operations expose us to claims arising out of unpredictable catastrophe events, such as earthquakes, hurricanes, windstorms, floods and other severe events. Furthermore, the actual occurrence, frequency and magnitude of such events are uncertain. While there can be no certainty surrounding the timing and magnitude of earthquakes, some observers believe that significant shifts in the tectonic plates, including the San Andreas Fault, may occur in the future. Over the past several years, changing weather patterns and climatic conditions, such as global warming, have added to the unpredictability and frequency of natural disasters in certain parts of the world, including the markets in which we operate. Climate change may increase the frequency and severity of extreme weather events. This effect has led to conditions in the ocean and atmosphere, including warmer‑than‑average sea‑surface temperatures and low wind shear that increase hurricane activity. Hurricane activity typically increases between June and November of each year, though the actual occurrence and magnitude of such events is uncertain. The occurrence of a natural disaster or other catastrophe loss could materially adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations. Additionally, any increased frequency and severity of such weather events, including hurricanes, could have a material adverse effect on our ability to predict, quantify, reinsure and manage catastrophe risk and may materially increase our losses resulting from such catastrophe events.

The extent of losses from catastrophes is a function of both the frequency and severity of the insured events and the total amount of insured exposure in the areas affected. The frequency and severity of catastrophes are inherently unpredictable and the occurrence of one catastrophe does not make the occurrence of another catastrophe more or less likely. Increases in the replacement cost and concentrations of insured property, the effects of inflation, and changes in cyclical weather patterns may increase the severity of claims from catastrophe events in the future. Claims from catastrophe events could reduce our earnings and cause substantial volatility in our results of operations for any fiscal quarter or year, which could materially adversely affect our financial condition, possibly to the extent of eliminating our total stockholders’ equity. For example, Hurricane Harvey in August 2017 caused our gross losses and loss adjustment expenses to increase 66% from the prior year. See “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations.” Our ability to underwrite new insurance policies could also be materially adversely impacted as a result of corresponding reductions in our capital. In addition, a natural disaster could materially impact the financial condition of our policyholders, resulting in loss of premiums.

As of January 1, 2020, we currently retain $5 million of risk per earthquake or wind event, inclusive of any amounts retained through our Bermuda reinsurance subsidiary, and our reinsurance program currently provides for coverage up to $1.2 billion for earthquake events, subject to customary exclusions, with coverage in excess of our estimated peak zone 1 in 250 year PML event and in excess of our A.M. Best requirement. While we only select reinsurers whom we believe to have acceptable credit and a minimum A.M. Best rating of “A−”, if our reinsurers are unable to pay the claims for which they are responsible, we ultimately retain primary liability. Furthermore, our earthquake policies do not provide coverage for fire damage arising from an earthquake. In addition, we maintain reinsurance coverage equivalent or better to 1 in 250 year PML for our other lines. While we believe this risk transfer program insulates us from volatility in our earnings, one severe catastrophe event could result in claims that substantially exceed the limits of our reinsurance coverage.

We may be unable to purchase third‑party reinsurance or otherwise expand our catastrophe coverage in amounts we desire on commercially acceptable terms or on terms that adequately protect us, and this inability may materially adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

We purchase a significant amount of reinsurance from third parties that we believe enhances our business by reducing our exposure to potential catastrophe losses and reducing volatility in our underwriting performance, providing us with greater visibility into our future earnings. Reinsurance involves transferring, or ceding, a portion of our risk exposure on policies that we write to another insurer, the reinsurer, in exchange for a premium. We primarily use treaty reinsurance, consisting of catastrophe excess of loss (“XOL”) coverage, and, on a limited basis, facultative reinsurance coverage. Treaty coverage refers to a reinsurance contract that is applied to a group or class of business where all the risks written meet the criteria for that class. Facultative coverage refers to a reinsurance contract on individual risks as opposed to a group or class of business.

Our catastrophe XOL treaties are divided into layers, many of which are placed using alternating 24‑month contracts. From time to time, market conditions have limited, and in some cases prevented, insurers from obtaining the types and amounts of reinsurance they consider adequate for their business needs. As a result, we may not be able to purchase reinsurance in the areas and for the amounts we desire or on terms we deem acceptable or at all. In addition to limit purchased from traditional reinsurers, we have expanded our catastrophe XOL coverage to incorporate collateralized protection from the insurance linked securities (“ILS”) market. In May 2017, we closed a $166 million 144A catastrophe bond offering completed through Torrey Pines Re Ltd., a special purpose insurer in Bermuda, that provides fully collateralized protection over a three‑year risk period. We may seek to expand our catastrophe XOL coverage through similar bond offerings in the future but there can be no assurances that we will be able to complete such offerings on acceptable terms, if at all. If we are unable to renew our expiring contracts, enter into new reinsurance arrangements on acceptable terms or expand our catastrophe coverage through future bond offerings or otherwise, our loss exposure could increase, which would increase our potential losses related to catastrophe events. If we are unwilling to bear an increase in loss exposure, we could have to reduce the level of our underwriting commitments, both of which could materially adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

Many reinsurance companies have begun to exclude certain coverages from, or alter terms in, the reinsurance contracts we enter into with them. As a result, we, like other insurance companies, write insurance policies which to some extent do not have the benefit of reinsurance protection. These gaps in reinsurance protection expose us to greater risk and greater potential losses.

We utilize several risk management and loss limitation methods, including relying on estimates and models. If these methods fail to adequately manage our exposure to losses from catastrophe events, our losses could be materially higher than our expectations, and our business, financial condition, and results of operations could be materially adversely affected.

Our approach to risk management relies on subjective variables that entail significant uncertainties. We manage our exposure to catastrophe losses by analyzing the probability and severity of the occurrence of catastrophe events and the impact of such events on our overall underwriting and investment portfolio. We monitor and mitigate our exposure through a number of methods designed to minimize risk, including underwriting specialization, modeling and data systems, data quality control, strategic use of policy deductibles and regular review of aggregate exposure and probable maximum loss reports, which report the maximum amount of losses that one would expect based on computer or actuarial modeling techniques. These estimates, models, data and scenarios may not produce accurate predictions; consequently, we could incur losses both in the risks we underwrite and to the value of our investment portfolio.

In addition, output from our risk modeling software is based on third‑party data that we believe to be reliable. The estimates and assumptions we use are dependent on many variables, such as loss adjustment expenses, insurance‑to‑value, storm or earthquake intensity, building code compliance and demand surge, which is the temporary inflation of costs for building materials and labor resulting from increased demand for rebuilding services in the aftermath of a catastrophe. Accordingly, if the estimates and assumptions used in our risk models are incorrect or if our risk models prove to be an inaccurate forecasting tool, the losses we might incur from an actual catastrophe could be materially higher than our expectation of losses generated from modeled catastrophe scenarios, and our business,

financial condition, and results of operations could be materially adversely affected. In addition, our third‑party data providers may change the estimates or assumptions that we use in our risk models and/or their data may be inaccurate. Changes in these estimates or assumptions or the use of inaccurate third‑party data could cause our actual losses to be materially higher than our current expectation of losses generated by modeled catastrophe scenarios, which in turn could materially adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.

We run many model simulations in order to understand the impact of these assumptions on a catastrophe’s loss potential. Furthermore, there are risks associated with catastrophe events, which are either poorly represented or not represented at all by catastrophe models. Each modeling assumption or un‑modeled risk introduces uncertainty into probable maximum loss estimates that management must consider. These uncertainties can include, but are not limited to, the following:

As a result of these factors and contingencies, our reliance on assumptions and data used to evaluate our entire risk portfolio and specifically to estimate a probable maximum loss is subject to a high degree of uncertainty that could result in actual losses that are materially different from our probable maximum loss estimates and our financial results could be adversely affected.

A decline in our financial strength rating may adversely affect the amount of business we write.

Participants in the insurance industry use ratings from independent ratings agencies, such as A.M. Best, as an important means of assessing the financial strength and quality of insurers. In setting its ratings, A.M. Best performs quantitative and qualitative analysis of a company’s balance sheet strength, operating performance and business profile. A.M. Best financial strength ratings range from “A++” (Superior) to “F” for insurance companies that have been publicly placed in liquidation. As of December 31, 2019, A.M. Best has assigned a financial strength rating of “A−” (Excellent) (Outlook Stable) to us. A.M. Best assigns ratings that are intended to provide an independent opinion of an insurance company’s ability to meet its obligations to policyholders and such ratings are not evaluations directed to investors and are not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold our common stock or any other securities we may issue. A.M. Best’s analysis includes comparisons to peers and industry standards as well as assessments of operating plans, philosophy and management. A.M. Best periodically reviews our financial strength rating and may revise it downward or revoke it at A.M. Best’s discretion based primarily on its analyses of our balance sheet strength (including capital adequacy and loss adjustment expense reserve adequacy), operating performance and business profile. Factors that could affect such analyses include, but are not limited to:

These and other factors could result in a downgrade of our financial strength rating. A downgrade or withdrawal of our rating could result in any of the following consequences, among others:

In addition, in view of the earnings and capital pressures experienced by many financial institutions, including insurance companies, it is possible that rating organizations will heighten the level of scrutiny that they apply to such institutions, will increase the frequency and scope of their credit reviews, will request additional information from the companies that they rate or will increase the capital and other requirements employed in the rating organizations’ models for maintenance of certain ratings levels. We can offer no assurance that our rating will remain at its current level. It is possible that such reviews of us may result in adverse ratings consequences, which could have a material adverse effect on our financial condition and results of operations.

Our reinsurers may not pay claims on a timely basis, or at all, which may materially adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

Although reinsurance makes the reinsurer liable to us to the extent the risk is transferred or ceded to the reinsurer, it does not relieve us (the ceding insurer) of our primary liability to our policyholders. Our current reinsurance program is designed to limit our risk retention to $5 million of risk per earthquake or wind event, inclusive of any amounts retained through our Bermuda reinsurance subsidiary, and provide coverage up to $1.2 billion for earthquake events, subject to customary exclusions. However, particularly in the event of a major catastrophe our reinsurers may not pay claims made by us on a timely basis, or they may not pay some or all of these claims. For example, reinsurers may default in their financial obligations to us as the result of insolvency, lack of liquidity, operational failure, fraud, asserted defenses based on agreement wordings or the principle of utmost good faith, asserted deficiencies in the documentation of agreements or other reasons. Any disputes with reinsurers regarding coverage under reinsurance contracts could be time consuming, costly, and uncertain of success. We evaluate each reinsurance claim based on the facts of the case, historical experience with the reinsurer on similar claims and existing case law and consider including any amounts deemed uncollectible from the reinsurer in a reserve for uncollectible reinsurance. As of December 31, 2019, we had $17.3 million of aggregate reinsurance recoverables. These risks could cause us to incur increased net losses, and, therefore, adversely affect our financial condition.

Our business is concentrated in California and Texas and, as a result, we are exposed more significantly to California and Texas loss activity and regulatory environments.

Our policyholders and insurance risks are currently concentrated in California and Texas, which generated 56% and 18% of our gross written premiums, respectively, for the year ended December 31, 2019. Any single, major catastrophe event, series of events or other condition causing significant losses in California or Texas could materially

adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations. Additionally, unfavorable business, economic or regulatory conditions in these states may result in a significant reduction of our premiums or increase our loss exposure. We are exposed to business, economic, political and regulatory risks due to this concentration that are greater than the risks faced by insurance companies that conduct business over a more extensive geographic area.

Changes in California or Texas political climates could result in new or changed legislation affecting the property and casualty insurance industry in general and insurers writing residential earthquake and wind coverage in particular.

We could be adversely affected by the loss of one or more key executives or by an inability to attract and retain qualified personnel.

We depend on our ability to attract and retain experienced personnel and seasoned key executives who are knowledgeable about our business. The pool of talent from which we actively recruit is limited and may fluctuate based on market dynamics specific to our industry and independent of overall economic conditions. As such, higher demand for employees having the desired skills and expertise could lead to increased compensation expectations for existing and prospective personnel, making it difficult for us to retain and recruit key personnel and maintain labor costs at desired levels. In particular, our future success is substantially dependent on the continued service of our Co‑Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Mac Armstrong, and our Chief Financial Officer, Christopher Uchida. Should any of our key executives terminate their employment with us, or if we are unable to retain and attract talented personnel, we may be unable to maintain our current competitive position in the specialized markets in which we operate, which could adversely affect our results of operations.

We rely on a select group of brokers and program administrators, and such relationships may not continue.

The distribution networks of our products are multi‑faceted and distinct to each line of business. Our relationship with our brokers or program administrators may be discontinued at any time. Even if the relationships do continue, they may not be on terms that are profitable for us. We distribute a significant portion of our Residential Earthquake, Commercial Earthquake, Specialty Homeowners and Hawaii Hurricane products through longstanding relationships with two program administrators. Each of the four products managed by the program administrators operates as a separate program that is governed by an independent, separately negotiated agreement with unique terms and conditions, including geographic scope, key men provisions, economics and exclusivity. These programs also feature separate managerial oversight and leadership, policy administration systems and retail agents originating policies. In total, these four products accounted for $148.6 million or 59.0% of our gross written premiums for the year ended December 31, 2019 and $104.9 million or 67.7% of our gross written premiums for the year ended December 31, 2018. This amount includes our Value Select Residential Earthquake program, which represents the majority of our Residential Earthquake premium and is administered through a mutually exclusive program administrator agreement with Arrowhead for the states of California, Oregon and Washington. The termination of a relationship with one or more significant brokers or program administrators could result in lower gross written premiums and could have a material adverse effect on our results of operations or business prospects.

Unexpected changes in the interpretation of our coverage or provisions, including loss limitations and exclusions, in our policies could have a material adverse effect on our financial condition and results of operations.

There can be no assurances that specifically negotiated loss limitations or exclusions in our policies will be enforceable in the manner we intend. As industry practices and legal, judicial, social, and other conditions change, unexpected and unintended issues related to claims and coverage may emerge. For example, many of our policies limit the period during which a policyholder may bring a claim, which may be shorter than the statutory period under which such claims can be brought against our policyholders. While these limitations and exclusions help us assess and mitigate our loss exposure, it is possible that a court or regulatory authority could nullify or void a limitation or exclusion or legislation could be enacted modifying or barring the use of such limitations or exclusions. These types of governmental actions could result in higher than anticipated losses and loss adjustment expenses, which could have a material adverse effect on our financial condition or results of operations. In addition, court decisions, such as the 1995 Montrose decision

in California could read policy exclusions narrowly so as to expand coverage, thereby requiring insurers to create and write new exclusions.

These issues may adversely affect our business by either broadening coverage beyond our underwriting intent or by increasing the frequency or severity of claims. In some instances, these changes may not become apparent until sometime after we have issued insurance contracts that are affected by the changes. As a result, the full extent of liability under our insurance contracts may not be known for many years after a contract is issued.

Competition for business in our industry is intense.

We face competition from other specialty insurance companies, standard insurance companies and underwriting agencies that are larger than we are and that have greater financial, marketing, and other resources than we do. Some of these competitors also have longer operating history and more market recognition than we do in certain lines of business. In addition, we compete against state or other publicly managed enterprises including the California Earthquake Authority (“CEA”), the National Flood Insurance Program and the Texas Wind Insurance Association. If the CEA decided to provide coverage to non‑CEA member carriers or lessened the capital requirements for membership, we would face additional competition in our markets, and our operating results could be adversely affected. Furthermore, it may be difficult or prohibitively expensive for us to implement technology systems and processes that are competitive with the systems and processes of these larger companies.

In particular, competition in the insurance industry is based on many factors, including price of coverage, the general reputation and perceived financial strength of the company, relationships with brokers, terms and conditions of products offered, ratings assigned by independent rating agencies, speed of claims payment and reputation, and the experience and reputation of the members of our underwriting team in the particular lines of insurance and reinsurance we seek to underwrite. In recent years, the insurance industry has undergone increasing consolidation, which may further increase competition.

A number of new, proposed or potential industry or legislative developments could further increase competition in our industry. These developments include:

We may not be able to continue to compete successfully in the insurance markets. Increased competition in these markets could result in a change in the supply and demand for insurance, affect our ability to price our products at risk‑adequate rates and retain existing business, or underwrite new business on favorable terms. If this increased competition so limits our ability to transact business, our operating results could be adversely affected.

The failure of our information technology and telecommunications systems could adversely affect our business.

Our business is highly dependent upon our information technology and telecommunications systems, including our underwriting system. We rely on these systems to interact with brokers and insureds, to underwrite business, to prepare policies and process premiums, to perform actuarial and other modeling functions, to process claims and make claims payments, and to prepare internal and external financial statements and information. Some of these systems may include or rely on third‑party systems not located on our premises or under our control. Events such as natural catastrophes, terrorist attacks, industrial accidents or computer viruses may cause our systems to fail or be inaccessible for extended periods of time. While we have implemented business contingency plans and other reasonable plans to protect our systems, sustained or repeated system failures or service denials could severely limit our ability to write and process new and renewal business, provide customer service, pay claims in a timely manner or otherwise operate in the ordinary course of business.

Our operations depend on the reliable and secure processing, storage, and transmission of confidential and other data and information in our computer systems and networks. Computer viruses, hackers, employee misconduct, and other external hazards could expose our systems to security breaches, cyber‑attacks or other disruptions. In addition, we routinely transmit and receive personal, confidential and proprietary data and information by electronic means and are subject to numerous data privacy laws and regulations enacted in the jurisdictions in which we do business.

While we have implemented security measures designed to protect against breaches of security and other interference with our systems and networks, our systems and networks may be subject to breaches or interference. Any such event may result in operational disruptions as well as unauthorized access to or the disclosure or loss of our proprietary information or our customers’ data and information, which in turn may result in legal claims, regulatory scrutiny and liability, reputational damage, the incurrence of costs to eliminate or mitigate further exposure, the loss of customers or affiliated advisors, reputational harm or other damage to our business. In addition, the trend toward general public notification of such incidents could exacerbate the harm to our business, financial condition and results of operations. Even if we successfully protect our technology infrastructure and the confidentiality of sensitive data, we could suffer harm to our business and reputation if attempted security breaches are publicized. We cannot be certain that advances in criminal capabilities, discovery of new vulnerabilities, attempts to exploit vulnerabilities in our systems, data thefts, physical system or network break‑ins or inappropriate access, or other developments will not compromise or breach the technology or other security measures protecting the networks and systems used in connection with our business.

Any failure to protect our intellectual property rights could impair our ability to protect our intellectual property, proprietary technology platform and brand, or we may be sued by third parties for alleged infringement of their proprietary rights.

Our success and ability to compete depend in part on our intellectual property, which includes our rights in our proprietary technology platform and our brand. We primarily rely on copyright, trade secret and trademark laws, and confidentiality agreements with our employees, customers, service providers, partners and others to protect our intellectual property rights. However, the steps we take to protect our intellectual property may be inadequate. Litigation brought to protect and enforce our intellectual property rights could be costly, time‑consuming and distracting to management and could result in the impairment or loss of portions of our intellectual property. Additionally, our efforts to enforce our intellectual property rights may be met with defenses, counterclaims and countersuits attacking the validity and enforceability and scope of our intellectual property rights. Our failure to secure, protect and enforce our intellectual property rights could adversely affect our brand and adversely impact our business.

Our success depends also in part on our not infringing on the intellectual property rights of others. Our competitors, as well as a number of other entities and individuals, may own or claim to own intellectual property relating to our industry. In the future, third parties may claim that we are infringing on their intellectual property rights, and we may be found to be infringing on such rights. Any claims or litigation could cause us to incur significant expenses and, if successfully asserted against us, could require that we pay substantial damages or ongoing royalty payments, prevent us from offering our services, or require that we comply with other unfavorable terms. Even if we were to prevail in such a dispute, any litigation could be costly and time‑consuming and divert the attention of our management and key personnel from our business operations.

Because we provide our program administrators with specific quoting and binding authority, if any of them fail to comply with pre‑established guidelines, our results of operations could be adversely affected.

We market and distribute certain of our insurance products through program administrators that have limited quoting and binding authority and that in turn sell our insurance products to insureds through retail agents and wholesale brokers. These program administrators can bind certain risks without our initial approval. If any of these program administrators fail to comply with our underwriting guidelines and the terms of their appointments, we could be bound on a particular risk or number of risks that were not anticipated when we developed the insurance products or estimated losses and loss adjustment expenses. Such actions could adversely affect our results of operations.

Because our business depends on insurance brokers and program administrators, we are exposed to certain risks arising out of our reliance on these distribution channels that could adversely affect our results.

Certain premiums from policyholders, where the business is produced by brokers, are collected directly by the brokers and forwarded to our U.S. insurance subsidiary. In certain jurisdictions, when the insured pays its policy premium to its broker for payment on behalf of our U.S. insurance subsidiary, the premium might be considered to have been paid under applicable insurance laws and regulations. Accordingly, the insured would no longer be liable to us for those amounts, whether or not we have actually received the premium from that broker. Consequently, we assume a degree of credit risk associated with the brokers with which we work. We review the financial condition of potential new brokers before we agree to transact business with them. Although the failure by any of our brokers to remit premiums to us has not been material to date, there may be instances where our brokers collect premiums but do not remit them to us and we may be required under applicable law to provide the coverage set forth in the policy despite the related premiums not being paid to us.

Because the possibility of these events occurring depends in large part upon the financial condition and internal operations of our brokers, we monitor broker behavior and review financial information on an as‑needed basis. If we are unable to collect premiums from our brokers in the future, our underwriting profits may decline and our financial condition and results of operations could be materially and adversely affected.

Our failure to accurately and timely pay claims could materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations, and prospects.

We must accurately and timely evaluate and pay claims that are made under our policies. Many factors affect our ability to pay claims accurately and timely, including the training and experience of our claims representatives, including our third-party claims administrators (“TPAs”), the effectiveness of our management, and our ability to develop or select and implement appropriate procedures and systems to support our claims functions and other factors. Our failure to pay claims accurately and timely could lead to regulatory and administrative actions or material litigation, undermine our reputation in the marketplace and materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations, and prospects.

In addition, if we do not manage our TPAs effectively, or if our TPAs are unable to effectively handle our volume of claims, our ability to handle an increasing workload could be adversely affected. In addition to potentially requiring that growth be slowed in the affected markets, our business could suffer from decreased quality of claims work which, in turn, could adversely affect our operating margins.

We employ third‑party licensed software for use in our business, and the inability to maintain these licenses, errors in the software we license or the terms of open source licenses could result in increased costs or reduced service levels, which would adversely affect our business.

Our business relies on certain third‑party software obtained under licenses from other companies. We anticipate that we will continue to rely on such third‑party software in the future. Although we believe that there are commercially reasonable alternatives to the third‑party software we currently license, this may not always be the case, or it may be difficult or costly to replace. In addition, integration of new third‑party software may require significant work and require substantial investment of our time and resources. Our use of additional or alternative third‑party software would require us to enter into license agreements with third parties, which may not be available on commercially reasonable terms or at all. Many of the risks associated with the use of third‑party software cannot be eliminated, and these risks could negatively affect our business.

Additionally, the software powering our technology systems incorporates software covered by open source licenses. The terms of many open source licenses have not been interpreted by U.S. courts, and there is a risk that the licenses could be construed in a manner that imposes unanticipated conditions or restrictions on our ability to operate our systems. In the event that portions of our proprietary software are determined to be subject to an open source license, we could be required to publicly release the affected portions of our source code or re‑engineer all or a portion of our

technology systems, each of which could reduce or eliminate the value of our technology systems. Such risk could be difficult or impossible to eliminate and could adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.

Adverse economic factors, including recession, inflation, periods of high unemployment or lower economic activity could result in the sale of fewer policies than expected or an increase in the frequency of claims and premium defaults, and even the falsification of claims, or a combination of these effects, which, in turn, could affect our growth and profitability.

Factors, such as business revenue, economic conditions, the volatility and strength of the capital markets, and inflation can affect the business and economic environment. These same factors affect our ability to generate revenue and profits. In an economic downturn that is characterized by higher unemployment, declining spending, and reduced corporate revenue, the demand for insurance products is generally adversely affected, which directly affects our premium levels and profitability. Negative economic factors may also affect our ability to receive the appropriate rate for the risk we insure with our policyholders and may adversely affect the number of policies we can write, and our opportunities to underwrite profitable business. In an economic downturn, our customers may have less need for insurance coverage, cancel existing insurance policies, modify their coverage or not renew the policies they hold with us. Existing policyholders may exaggerate or even falsify claims to obtain higher claims payments. These outcomes would reduce our underwriting profit to the extent these factors are not reflected in the rates we charge.

We underwrite a significant portion of our insurance in California and Texas. Any economic downturn in either state could have an adverse effect on our financial condition and results of operations.

Performance of our investment portfolio is subject to a variety of investment risks that may adversely affect our financial results.

Our results of operations depend, in part, on the performance of our investment portfolio. We seek to hold a diversified portfolio of investments that is managed by a professional investment advisory management firm in accordance with our investment policy and routinely reviewed by our Investment Committee. Our investments are subject to general economic conditions and market risks as well as risks inherent to particular securities.

Our primary market risk exposures relate to changes in interest rates and equity prices. Future increases in interest rates could cause the values of our fixed maturity securities portfolios to decline, with the magnitude of the decline depending on the duration of securities included in our portfolio and the amount by which interest rates increase. Some fixed maturity securities have call or prepayment options, which create possible reinvestment risk in declining rate environments. Other fixed maturity securities, such as mortgage‑backed and asset‑backed securities, carry prepayment risk or, in a rising interest rate environment, may not prepay as quickly as expected.

The value of our investment portfolio is subject to the risk that certain investments may default or become impaired due to deterioration in the financial condition of one or more issuers of the securities we hold, or due to deterioration in the financial condition of an insurer that guarantees an issuer’s payments on such investments. Downgrades in the credit ratings of fixed maturities also have a significant negative effect on the market valuation of such securities.

Such factors could reduce our net investment income and result in realized investment losses. Our investment portfolio is subject to increased valuation uncertainties when investment markets are illiquid. The valuation of investments is more subjective when markets are illiquid, thereby increasing the risk that the estimated fair value (i.e., the carrying amount) of the securities we hold in our portfolio does not reflect prices at which actual transactions would occur.

We also invest in marketable equity securities, generally through mutual funds and exchange‑traded funds that provide exposure to the U.S. investment‑grade bond market. These securities are carried on the balance sheet at fair market value and are subject to potential losses and declines in market value. Our equity invested assets totaled $22.3 million as of December 31, 2019.

Risks for all types of securities are managed through the application of our investment policy, which establishes investment parameters that include but are not limited to, maximum percentages of investment in certain types of securities and minimum levels of credit quality, which we believe are within applicable guidelines established by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (“NAIC”), the Oregon Division of Financial Regulation and the California Department of Insurance.

Although we seek to preserve our capital, we cannot be certain that our investment objectives will be achieved, and results may vary substantially over time. In addition, although we seek to employ investment strategies that are not correlated with our insurance and reinsurance exposures, losses in our investment portfolio may occur at the same time as underwriting losses and, therefore, exacerbate the adverse effect of the losses on us.

We could be forced to sell investments to meet our liquidity requirements.

We invest the premiums we receive from our insureds until they are needed to pay policyholder claims. Consequently, we seek to manage the duration of our investment portfolio based on the duration of our losses and loss adjustment expense reserves to provide sufficient liquidity and avoid having to liquidate investments to fund claims. Risks such as inadequate losses and loss adjustment reserves or unfavorable trends in litigation could potentially result in the need to sell investments to fund these liabilities. We may not be able to sell our investments at favorable prices or at all. Sales could result in significant realized losses depending on the conditions of the general market, interest rates, and credit issues with individual securities.

We are subject to extensive regulation, which may adversely affect our ability to achieve our business objectives. In addition, if we fail to comply with these regulations, we may be subject to penalties, including fines and suspensions, which may adversely affect our financial condition and results of operations.

Our U.S. insurance company subsidiary, Palomar Specialty Insurance Company, is subject to extensive regulation in Oregon, its state of domicile, California, where it is commercially domiciled, and to a lesser degree, the other states in which it operates. Our Bermuda reinsurance subsidiary, Palomar Specialty Reinsurance Company Bermuda Ltd. (“Palomar Re”), is subject to regulation in Bermuda. Most insurance regulations are designed to protect the interests of insurance policyholders, as opposed to the interests of investors or stockholders. These regulations generally are administered by a department of insurance in each state and relate to, among other things, capital and surplus requirements, investment and underwriting limitations, affiliate transactions, dividend limitations, changes in control, solvency and a variety of other financial and non‑financial aspects of our business. Significant changes in these laws and regulations could further limit our discretion or make it more expensive to conduct our business. State insurance regulators and the Bermuda Monetary Authority (the “BMA”), also conduct periodic examinations of the affairs of insurance and reinsurance companies and require the filing of annual and other reports relating to financial condition, holding company issues and other matters. These regulatory requirements may impose timing and expense constraints that could adversely affect our ability to achieve some or all of our business objectives.

Our U.S. insurance subsidiary is part of an “insurance holding company system” within the meaning of applicable California and Oregon statutes and regulations. As a result of such status, certain transactions between our U.S. insurance subsidiary and one or more of their affiliates, such as a tax sharing agreement or cost sharing arrangement, may not be effected unless the insurer has provided notice of that transaction to the California Department of Insurance or the Oregon Division of Financial Regulation, as applicable, at least 30 days prior to engaging in the transaction and the California Department of Insurance or the Oregon Division of Financial Regulation, as applicable, has not disapproved such transaction within the 30‑day time period. These prior notification requirements may result in business delays and additional business expenses. If our U.S. insurance subsidiary fails to file a required notification or fail to comply with other applicable insurance regulations in California or Oregon, we may be subject to significant fines and penalties and our working relationship with the California Department of Insurance or the Oregon Division of Financial Regulation, as applicable, may be impaired.

In addition, state insurance regulators have broad discretion to deny or revoke licenses for various reasons, including the violation of regulations. In some instances, where there is uncertainty as to applicability, we follow practices based on our interpretations of regulations or practices that we believe generally to be followed by the industry.

These practices may turn out to be different from the interpretations of regulatory authorities. If we do not have the requisite licenses and approvals or do not comply with applicable regulatory requirements, state insurance regulators could preclude or temporarily suspend us from carrying on some or all of our activities or could otherwise penalize us. This could adversely affect our ability to operate our business. Further, changes in the level of regulation of the insurance industry or changes in laws or regulations themselves or interpretations by regulatory authorities could interfere with our operations and require us to bear additional costs of compliance, which could adversely affect our ability to operate our business.

Our U.S. insurance subsidiary is subject to risk‑based capital requirements, based upon the “risk based capital model” adopted by the NAIC, and other minimum capital and surplus restrictions imposed under Oregon and California law. These requirements establish the minimum amount of risk‑based capital necessary for a company to support its overall business operations. It identifies property and casualty insurers that may be inadequately capitalized by looking at certain inherent risks of each insurer’s assets and liabilities and its mix of net written premium. Insurers falling below a calculated threshold may be subject to varying degrees of regulatory action, including supervision, rehabilitation or liquidation. Failure to maintain our risk‑based capital at the required levels could adversely affect the ability of our U.S. insurance subsidiary to maintain regulatory authority to conduct our business. See also “Regulation—Required Licensing.”

Our Bermuda reinsurance subsidiary is subject to regulation from the European Union. The European Union adopted the Economic Substance Act 2018 and the Economic Substance Regulations 2018 (together, the “ES Requirements”). As an insurance company, our Bermuda subsidiary conducts a relevant activity and will be subject to the ES Requirements. As a result, our Bermuda subsidiary may be required to change or increase our business operations in Bermuda in order to meet the new requirements. Compliance with the ES Requirements is required with effect from July 1, 2019.

We may become subject to additional government or market regulation, which may have a material adverse impact on our business.

Our business could be adversely affected by changes in state laws, including those relating to asset and reserve valuation requirements, surplus requirements, limitations on investments and dividends, enterprise risk and risk‑based capital requirements, and, at the federal level, by laws and regulations that may affect certain aspects of the insurance industry, including proposals for preemptive federal regulation. The U.S. federal government generally has not directly regulated the insurance industry except for certain areas of the market, such as insurance for flood, nuclear and terrorism risks. However, the federal government has undertaken initiatives or considered legislation in several areas that may affect the insurance industry, including tort reform, corporate governance and the taxation of reinsurance companies. In addition, the Bermuda reinsurance regulatory framework has become subject to increased scrutiny in many jurisdictions. As a result, the BMA has implemented and imposed additional requirements on the companies it regulates, which requirements could adversely impact the operations of our reinsurance subsidiary.

Changes in tax laws as a result of the enactment of recent tax legislation could impact our operations and profitability.

Legislation commonly known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (the “Tax Act”) was signed into law on December 22, 2017. The Tax Act made significant changes to the U.S. federal income tax rules for taxation of individuals and corporations, generally effective for taxable years beginning after December 31, 2017. In the case of individuals, the tax brackets have been adjusted, the top federal income rate has been reduced to 37%, special rules have reduced taxation of certain income earned through pass‑through entities and various deductions have been eliminated or limited, including limiting the deduction for state and local taxes to $10,000 per year, decreasing the mortgage interest deduction on new homes to $750,000 and eliminating the home equity line of credit interest deduction for loans that are not considered home acquisition debt.

Changes in these deductions may affect taxpayers in states with high residential home prices and high state and local taxes, such as California, and may also negatively impact the housing market. This in turn may negatively impact our growth in these markets if there is lower demand in the housing market as a consequence of the Tax Act.

If states increase the assessments that Palomar Specialty Insurance Company is required to pay, our business, financial condition and results of operations would suffer.

Certain jurisdictions in which Palomar Specialty Insurance Company is admitted to transact business require property and casualty insurers doing business within that jurisdiction to participate in insurance guaranty associations. These organizations pay contractual benefits owed pursuant to insurance policies issued by impaired, insolvent or failed insurers. They levy assessments, up to prescribed limits, on all member insurers in a particular state on the basis of the proportionate share of the premiums written by member insurers in the lines of business in which the impaired, insolvent or failed insurer is engaged. States may also assess admitted companies in order to fund their respective department of insurance operations. Some states permit member insurers to recover assessments paid through full or partial premium tax offset or in limited circumstances by surcharging policyholders.

Palomar Specialty Insurance Company is licensed to conduct insurance operations on an admitted basis in 27 states and has applied for state approval for licenses in additional states. As Palomar Specialty Insurance Company grows, our share of any assessments in each state in which it underwrites business on an admitted basis may increase. We paid assessments of $9,587 in 2017, $1.1 million in 2018, and $14,750 in 2019. The increase in assessments paid during 2018 was primarily due to amounts assessed by the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association and Texas Fair Plan Association relating to Hurricane Harvey, with such amounts recovered from our reinsurers. We cannot predict with certainty the amount of future assessments, because they depend on factors outside our control, such as insolvencies of other insurance companies as well as the occurrence of significant catastrophes similar to Hurricane Harvey. Generally speaking, assessments are covered by our catastrophe XOL treaties and, to the extent we have experienced a net loss from an event in excess of our net retention, assessments would be recovered from our reinsurers with no additional expense to us. However, although reinsurance makes the reinsurer liable to us to the extent the risk is transferred or ceded to the reinsurer, it does not relieve us (the ceding insurer) of our primary liability to our policyholders. Significant assessments could result in higher than expected operating expenses and have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition or results of operations. In addition, while some states permit member insurers to recover assessments paid through full or partial premium tax offset or, in limited circumstances, by surcharging policyholders, there is no certainty that offsets or surcharges will be permitted in connection with any future assessments.

Because we are a holding company and substantially all of our operations are conducted by our insurance subsidiaries, our ability to pay dividends depends on our ability to obtain cash dividends or other permitted payments from our insurance subsidiaries.

The continued operation and growth of our business will require substantial capital. We do not intend to declare and pay cash dividends on shares of our common stock in the foreseeable future. See “Dividend Policy.” Because we are a holding company with no business operations of our own, our ability to pay dividends to stockholders largely depends on dividends and other distributions from our insurance subsidiaries, Palomar Specialty Insurance Company and Palomar Re. State insurance laws, including the laws of Oregon and California, and the laws of Bermuda restrict the ability of Palomar Specialty Insurance Company and Palomar Re, respectively, to declare stockholder dividends. State insurance regulators require insurance companies to maintain specified levels of statutory capital and surplus. The maximum dividend distribution absent the approval or non‑disapproval of the insurance regulatory authority in Oregon and California is limited by Oregon law at ORS 732.576 and California law at Cal. Ins. Code 1215.5(g). Dividend payments are further limited to that part of available policyholder surplus that is derived from net profits on our business. State insurance regulators have broad powers to prevent the reduction of statutory surplus to inadequate levels, and there is no assurance that dividends up to the maximum amounts calculated under any applicable formula would be permitted. Moreover, state insurance regulators that have jurisdiction over the payment of dividends by Palomar Specialty Insurance Company may in the future adopt statutory provisions more restrictive than those currently in effect.

Our Bermuda reinsurance subsidiary is highly regulated and is required to comply with various conditions before it is able to pay dividends or make distributions to us. Bermuda law, including the Insurance Act 1978, as amended (“Insurance Act”) and the Companies Act 1981, as amended (“Companies Act”) impose restrictions on our Bermuda reinsurance subsidiary’s ability to pay dividends to us based on solvency margins and surplus and capital requirements. These restrictions, and any other future restrictions adopted by the BMA, could have the effect, under

certain circumstances, of significantly reducing dividends or other amounts payable to us by our Bermuda reinsurance subsidiary without affirmative approval of the BMA.

Any determination to pay dividends in the future will be at the discretion of our Board of Directors and will depend upon results of operations, financial condition, restrictions imposed by applicable law and other factors our Board of Directors deems relevant. Consequently, investors may need to sell all or part of their holdings of our common stock after price appreciation, which may never occur, as the only way to realize any future gains on their investment. Investors seeking immediate cash dividends should not purchase our common stock.

Our operating results have in the past varied from quarter to quarter and may not be indicative of our long‑term prospects.

Our operating results are subject to fluctuation and have historically varied from quarter to quarter. We expect our quarterly results to continue to fluctuate in the future due to a number of factors, including the general economic conditions in the markets where we operate, the frequency of occurrence or severity of catastrophe or other insured events, fluctuating interest rates, claims exceeding our loss reserves, competition in our industry, deviations from expected premium retention rates of our existing policies and contracts, adverse investment performance, and the cost of reinsurance coverage.

In particular, we seek to underwrite products and make investments to achieve favorable returns on tangible stockholders’ equity over the long term. In addition, our opportunistic nature and focus on long‑term growth in tangible equity may result in fluctuations in gross written premiums from period to period as we concentrate on underwriting contracts that we believe will generate better long‑term, rather than short‑term, results. Accordingly, our short‑term results of operations may not be indicative of our long‑term prospects.

We may act based on inaccurate or incomplete information regarding the accounts we underwrite.

We rely on information provided by insureds or their representatives when underwriting insurance policies. While we may make inquiries to validate or supplement the information provided, we may make underwriting decisions based on incorrect or incomplete information. It is possible that we will misunderstand the nature or extent of the activities or facilities and the corresponding extent of the risks that we insure because of our reliance on inadequate or inaccurate information.

Our employees could take excessive risks, which could negatively affect our financial condition and business.

As an insurance enterprise, we are in the business of binding certain risks. The employees who conduct our business, including executive officers and other members of management, underwriters, product managers and other employees, do so in part by making decisions and choices that involve exposing us to risk. These include decisions such as setting underwriting guidelines and standards, product design and pricing, determining which business opportunities to pursue, and other decisions. We endeavor, in the design and implementation of our compensation programs and practices, to avoid giving our employees incentives to take excessive risks. Employees may, however, take such risks regardless of the structure of our compensation programs and practices. Similarly, although we employ controls and procedures designed to monitor employees’ business decisions and prevent them from taking excessive risks, these controls and procedures may not be effective. If our employees take excessive risks, the impact of those risks could have a material adverse effect on our financial condition and business operations.

We may require additional capital in the future, which may not be available or may only be available on unfavorable terms.

Our future capital requirements depend on many factors, including our ability to write new business successfully and to establish premium rates and reserves at levels sufficient to cover losses. Many factors will affect the amount and timing of our capital needs, including our growth rate and profitability, our claims experience, and the availability of reinsurance, market disruptions, and other unforeseeable developments. If we need to raise additional capital, equity or debt financing may not be available at all or may be available only on terms that are not favorable to

us. In the case of equity financings, dilution to our stockholders could result. In the case of debt financings, we may be subject to covenants that restrict our ability to freely operate our business. In any case, such securities may have rights, preferences and privileges that are senior to those of the shares of common stock offered hereby. If we cannot obtain adequate capital on favorable terms or at all, we may not have sufficient funds to implement our operating plans and our business, financial condition or results of operations could be materially adversely affected.

We may not be able to manage our growth effectively.

We intend to grow our business in the future, which could require additional capital, systems development and skilled personnel. However, we must be able to meet our capital needs, expand our systems and our internal controls effectively, allocate our human resources optimally, identify and hire qualified employees and effectively incorporate the components of any businesses we may acquire in our effort to achieve growth. The failure to manage our growth effectively could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.

If actual renewals of our existing contracts do not meet expectations, our written premium in future years and our future results of operations could be materially adversely affected.

Most of our contracts are written for a one‑year term. In our financial forecasting process, we make assumptions about the rates of renewal of our prior year’s contracts. The insurance and reinsurance industries have historically been cyclical businesses with intense competition, often based on price. If actual renewals do not meet expectations or if we choose not to write a renewal because of pricing conditions, our written premium in future years and our future operations would be materially adversely affected.

We may change our underwriting guidelines or our strategy without stockholder approval.

Our management has the authority to change our underwriting guidelines or our strategy without notice to our stockholders and without stockholder approval. As a result, we may make fundamental changes to our operations without stockholder approval, which could result in our pursuing a strategy or implementing underwriting guidelines that may be materially different from the strategy or underwriting guidelines described in the section titled “Business” or elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

The effects of litigation on our business are uncertain and could have an adverse effect on our business.

As is typical in our industry, we continually face risks associated with litigation of various types, including disputes relating to insurance claims under our policies as well as other general commercial and corporate litigation. Although we are not currently involved in any material litigation with our customers, other members of the insurance industry are the target of class action lawsuits and other types of litigation, some of which involve claims for substantial or indeterminate amounts, and the outcomes of which are unpredictable. This litigation is based on a variety of issues, including insurance and claim settlement practices. We cannot predict with any certainty whether we will be involved in such litigation in the future or what impact such litigation would have on our business.

Changes in accounting practices and future pronouncements may materially affect our reported financial results.

Developments in accounting practices may require us to incur considerable additional expenses to comply, particularly if we are required to prepare information relating to prior periods for comparative purposes or to apply the new requirements retroactively. Our consolidated financial statements are prepared in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (“GAAP”). The impact of changes in GAAP cannot be predicted but may affect the calculation of net income, stockholders’ equity and other relevant financial statement line items.

In addition to compliance with GAAP on a consolidated basis, our U.S. insurance subsidiary, Palomar Specialty Insurance Company, is required to comply with statutory accounting principles (“SAP”). SAP and various components of SAP are subject to constant review by the NAIC and its task forces and committees, as well as state insurance departments, in an effort to address emerging issues and otherwise improve financial reporting. Various proposals are pending before committees and task forces of the NAIC, some of which, if enacted, could have negative effects on

insurance industry participants. The NAIC continuously examines existing laws and regulations. We cannot predict whether or in what form such reforms will be enacted and, if so, whether the enacted reforms will positively or negatively affect us.

We rely on the use of credit scoring in pricing and underwriting certain of our insurance policies and any legal or regulatory requirements that restrict our ability to access credit score information could decrease the accuracy of our pricing and underwriting process and thus decrease our ability to be profitable.

We use credit scoring as a factor in pricing and underwriting decisions where allowed by state law. Consumer groups and regulators have questioned whether the use of credit scoring unfairly discriminates against some groups of people and are calling for laws and regulations to prohibit or restrict the use of credit scoring in underwriting and pricing. Laws or regulations that significantly curtail or regulate the use of credit scoring, if enacted in a large number of states in which we operate, could impact the integrity of our pricing and underwriting processes, which could, in turn, materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects, and make it harder for us to be profitable over time.

Risks Related to Ownership of Our Common Stock

Genstar Capital owns a significant amount of our common stock and has the ability to exert significant influence over us and our corporate decisions.

Genstar Capital currently controls approximately 14.6% of our common stock. Currently, one of our directors, James Ryan Clark, is affiliated with Genstar Capital. Mr. Clark has fiduciary duties to us and, in addition, has duties to Genstar Capital. As a result, this director may face real or apparent conflicts of interest with respect to matters affecting both us and Genstar Capital, whose interests may be adverse to ours in some circumstances

In addition, we are party to a Stockholders Agreement with Genstar Capital that permits Genstar Capital to exert influence over us and our corporate decisions. The Stockholders Agreement specifies that until such time as Genstar Capital beneficially owns less than 10% of our outstanding common stock we will not take certain significant actions specified therein without the prior written consent of Genstar Capital, including, but not limited to, (i) amendments or modifications to our or our subsidiaries’ organizational documents in a manner that adversely affects Genstar Capital, (ii) making any payment or declaration of any dividend or other distribution on any shares of our common stock, (iii) merging or consolidating with or into any other entity, or transferring all or substantially all of our or our subsidiaries’ assets, taken as a whole, to another entity, or entering into or agreeing to undertake any transaction that would constitute a “Change of Control” as defined in our or our subsidiaries’ credit facilities, (iv) other than in the ordinary course of business with vendors, customers and suppliers, entering into or effecting any (A) acquisition by us or any of our subsidiaries of the equity interests or assets of any person, or the acquisition by us or any of our subsidiaries of any business, properties, assets, or person, in one transaction or a series of related transactions or (B) disposition of assets of us or any of our subsidiaries or the shares or other equity interests of any of our subsidiary, in each case where the amount of consideration for any such acquisition or disposition exceeds $15 million in any single transaction, or an aggregate amount of $30 million in any series of transactions during a calendar year, (v) undertaking any liquidation, dissolution or winding up, and (vi) changing the size of the Board of Directors.

Under the Stockholders Agreement, Genstar Capital has the right, but not the obligation, to nominate (a) 50% of our directors, as long as Genstar Capital beneficially owns 50% or more of our outstanding common stock, (b) 40% of our directors, as long as Genstar Capital beneficially owns 40% or more, but less than 50% of our outstanding common stock, (c) 30% of our directors, as long as Genstar Capital beneficially owns 30% or more, but less than 40% of our outstanding common stock, (d) 20% of our directors, as long as Genstar Capital beneficially owns 20% or more, but less than 30% of our outstanding common stock, (e) 10% of our directors, as long as Genstar Capital beneficially owns 10% or more, but less than 20% of our outstanding common stock, in each case rounded up to the nearest whole number of directors. If Genstar Capital is able to exert significant influence over our Board of Directors as a result of their nomination rights pursuant to the Stockholders Agreement, our other stockholders may have limited ability to influence corporate matters and, as a result, we may take actions that our other stockholders do not view as beneficial.

As a result of its ownership and the Stockholders Agreement, Genstar Capital is able to influence matters requiring approval by our stockholders, including the election of directors and the approval of mergers or other extraordinary transactions. Genstar Capital may have interests that differ from yours and may vote in a way with which you disagree and which may be adverse to your interests. The concentration of ownership could deprive stockholders of an opportunity to receive a premium for their common stock as part of a sale of our company and may ultimately affect the market price of our common stock. In addition, the requirement to obtain Genstar Capital’s prior consent for certain transactions, including acquisitions and dispositions, may adversely impact our ability to operate our business or take advantage of certain opportunities.

Our costs will increase significantly as a result of operating as a public company, and our management will be required to devote substantial time to complying with public company regulations.

As a public company, we incur significant legal, accounting and other expenses that we did not incur as a private company. We are subject to the reporting requirements of the Exchange Act, which require, among other things, that we file with the SEC annual, quarterly and current reports with respect to our business and financial condition and therefore we need to have the ability to prepare financial statements that comply with all SEC reporting requirements on a timely basis. In addition, we are subject to other reporting and corporate governance requirements, including certain requirements of and certain provisions of the Sarbanes‑Oxley Act and the regulations promulgated thereunder, which will impose significant compliance obligations upon us. In particular, we must perform system and process evaluation and testing of our internal control over financial reporting to allow management and, to the extent that we are no longer an “emerging growth company” as defined in the JOBS Act, our independent registered public accounting firm to report on the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting, as required by Section 404 of the Sarbanes‑Oxley Act. Our compliance with Section 404 will require that we incur substantial accounting expense and expend significant management efforts. We currently do not have an internal audit group. We will need to hire additional accounting and financial staff with appropriate public company experience and technical accounting knowledge to satisfy the ongoing requirements of Section 404 and provide internal audit services.

The Sarbanes‑Oxley Act and the Dodd‑Frank Act, as well as new rules subsequently implemented by the SEC and Nasdaq, have increased regulation of, and imposed enhanced disclosure and corporate governance requirements on, public companies. Our efforts to comply with these evolving laws, regulations and standards will increase our operating costs and divert management’s time and attention from revenue‑generating activities.

These changes will also place significant additional demands on our finance and accounting staff and on our financial accounting and information systems. We may need to hire additional accounting and financial staff with appropriate public company reporting experience and technical accounting knowledge. Other expenses associated with being a public company include increases in auditing, accounting and legal fees and expenses, investor relations expenses, increased directors’ fees and director and officer liability insurance costs, registrar and transfer agent fees and listing fees, as well as other expenses. As a public company, we will be required, among other things, to:

We may not be successful in implementing these requirements, and implementing them could materially adversely affect our business. The increased costs will decrease our net income and may require us to reduce costs in other areas of our business or increase the prices of our products or services. For example, we expect these rules and regulations to make it more difficult and more expensive for us to obtain director and officer liability insurance and we

may be required to incur substantial costs to maintain the same or similar coverage. We cannot predict or estimate the amount or timing of additional costs we may incur to respond to these requirements. The impact of these requirements could also make it more difficult for us to attract and retain qualified persons to serve on our Board of Directors, our Board committees or as executive officers.

In addition, if we fail to implement the required controls with respect to our internal accounting and audit functions, our ability to report our results of operations on a timely and accurate basis could be impaired. If we do not implement the required controls in a timely manner or with adequate compliance, we may be subject to sanctions or investigation by regulatory authorities, such as the SEC or Nasdaq. Any such action could harm our reputation and the confidence of investors in, and clients of, our company and could negatively affect our business and cause the price of our shares of common stock to decline.

We are required by Section 404 of the Sarbanes‑Oxley Act to evaluate the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting. If we are unable to achieve and maintain effective internal controls, our operating results and financial condition could be harmed and the market price of our common stock may be negatively affected.

As a public company with SEC reporting obligations, we are required to document and test our internal control procedures to satisfy the requirements of Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes‑Oxley Act, which will require annual assessments by management of the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting beginning with the annual report for our fiscal year ended December 31, 2019. We are an emerging growth company, and thus we are exempt from the auditor attestation requirement of Section 404(b) of Sarbanes‑Oxley until such time as we no longer qualify as an emerging growth company. See also “We qualify as an emerging growth company, and any decision on our part to comply with reduced reporting and disclosure requirements applicable to emerging growth companies could make our common stock less attractive to investors.” Regardless of whether we qualify as an emerging growth company, we will still need to implement substantial internal control systems and procedures in order to satisfy the reporting requirements under the Exchange Act and applicable requirements.

During the course of our assessment, we may identify deficiencies that we are unable to remediate in a timely manner. Testing and maintaining our internal control over financial reporting may also divert management’s attention from other matters that are important to the operation of our business. We may not be able to conclude on an ongoing basis that we have effective internal control over financial reporting in accordance with Section 404(b) of Sarbanes‑Oxley. If we conclude that our internal control over financial reporting is not effective, we cannot be certain as to the timing of completion of our evaluation, testing and remediation actions or their effect on our operations. Moreover, any material weaknesses or other deficiencies in our internal control over financial reporting may impede our ability to file timely and accurate reports with the SEC. Any of the above could cause investors to lose confidence in our reported financial information or our common stock listing on Nasdaq to be suspended or terminated, which could have a negative effect on the trading price of our common stock.

We qualify as an emerging growth company, and any decision on our part to comply with reduced reporting and disclosure requirements applicable to emerging growth companies could make our common stock less attractive to investors.

We are an “emerging growth company,” and, for as long as we continue to be an emerging growth company, we currently intend to take advantage of exemptions from various reporting requirements applicable to other public companies but not to “emerging growth companies,” including, but not limited to, not being required to have our independent registered public accounting firm audit our internal control over financial reporting under Section 404 of the Sarbanes‑Oxley Act, reduced disclosure obligations regarding executive compensation in our registration statements, periodic reports and proxy statements and exemptions from the requirements of holding a nonbinding advisory vote on executive compensation and stockholder approval of any golden parachute payments not previously approved. We will cease to be an emerging growth company upon the earliest of: (i) the end of the fiscal year following the fifth anniversary of the IPO; (ii) the first fiscal year after our annual gross revenue is $1.07 billion or more; (iii) the date on which we have, during the previous three‑year period, issued more than $1.0 billion in non‑convertible debt securities; or (iv) the end of any fiscal year in which the market value of our common stock held by non‑affiliates exceeded $700 million as of the end of the second quarter of that fiscal year.

We cannot predict whether investors will find our common stock less attractive if we choose to rely on these exemptions while we are an emerging growth company. If some investors find our common stock less attractive as a result of any choices to reduce future disclosure, there may be a less active trading market for our common stock and the price of our common stock may be more volatile.

Under the JOBS Act, emerging growth companies can also delay adopting new or revised accounting standards until such time as those standards apply to private companies. We plan to avail ourselves of this exemption from new or revised accounting standards and, therefore, we may not be subject to the same new or revised accounting standards as other public companies that are not emerging growth companies.

Our operating results and stock price may be volatile, or may decline regardless of our operating performance, and holders of our common stock could lose all or part of their investment.

Our quarterly operating results are likely to fluctuate in the future as a publicly traded company. In addition, securities markets worldwide have experienced, and are likely to continue to experience, significant price and volume fluctuations. This market volatility, as well as general economic, market or political conditions, could subject the market price of our shares to wide price fluctuations regardless of our operating performance. You should consider an investment in our common stock to be risky, and you should invest in our common stock only if you can withstand a significant loss and wide fluctuation in the market value of your investment. The market price of our common stock is likely to continue to be subject to significant fluctuations in response to the factors described in this “Risk Factors” section and other factors, many of which are beyond our control. Among the factors that could affect our stock price are:

The securities markets have from time to time experienced extreme price and volume fluctuations that often have been unrelated or disproportionate to the operating performance of particular companies. As a result of these factors, investors in our common stock may not be able to resell their shares at or above the price at which they purchased their shares. These broad market fluctuations, as well as general market, economic and political conditions, such as recessions, loss of investor confidence or interest rate changes, may negatively affect the market price of our common stock.

In addition, the stock markets, including Nasdaq, have experienced extreme price and volume fluctuations that have affected and continue to affect the market prices of equity securities of many companies. If any of the foregoing occurs, it could cause our stock price to fall and may expose us to securities class action litigation that, even if unsuccessful, could be costly to defend, divert management’s attention and resources or harm our business.

Our certificate of incorporation provides that Genstar Capital has no obligation to offer us corporate opportunities.

Genstar Capital and the members of our Board of Directors who are affiliated with Genstar Capital, by the terms of our certificate of incorporation, will not be required to offer us any corporate opportunity of which they become aware and could take any such opportunity for themselves or offer it to other companies in which they have an investment, unless such opportunity is expressly offered to them solely in their capacity as our directors. We, by the terms of our certificate of incorporation, expressly renounce any interest in any such corporate opportunity to the extent permitted under applicable law, even if the opportunity is one that we would reasonably be deemed to have pursued if given the opportunity to do so. Our certificate of incorporation cannot be amended to eliminate our renunciation of any such corporate opportunity arising prior to the date of any such amendment. Genstar Capital is in the business of making investments in portfolio companies and may from time to time acquire and hold interests in businesses that compete with us, and Genstar Capital has no obligation to refrain from acquiring competing businesses. Any competition could intensify if an affiliate or subsidiary of Genstar Capital were to enter into or acquire a business similar to ours. These potential conflicts of interest could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations or prospects if attractive corporate opportunities are allocated by Genstar Capital to itself, its portfolio companies or its other affiliates instead of to us.

Anti‑takeover provisions in our organizational documents could delay a change in management and limit our share price.

Provisions of our certificate of incorporation and bylaws could make it more difficult for a third party to acquire control of us even if such a change in control would increase the value of our common stock and prevent attempts by our stockholders to replace or remove our current Board of Directors or management.

Our charter documents contain anti‑takeover provisions that will hinder takeover attempts and could reduce the market value of our common stock or prevent sale at a premium. Our anti‑takeover provisions:

In addition, as a Delaware corporation, we are subject to Section 203 of the Delaware General Corporation Law. These provisions may prohibit large stockholders, in particular those owning 15% or more of our outstanding voting stock (excluding Genstar Capital), from merging or combining with us for a period of time.

Our certificate of incorporation and bylaws provide that the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware is the exclusive forum for substantially all disputes between us and our stockholders, which could limit our stockholders’ ability to obtain a favorable judicial forum for disputes with us or our directors, officers or employees.

Our certificate of incorporation and bylaws provide that the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware is the exclusive forum for the following civil actions:

However, this provision would not apply to suits brought to enforce a duty or liability created by the Exchange Act. Furthermore, this provision applies to Securities Act claims and Section 22 of the Securities Act creates concurrent jurisdiction for federal and state courts over all suits brought to enforce any duty or liability created by the Securities Act or the rules and regulations thereunder. Accordingly, there is uncertainty as to whether a court would enforce such provision, and our stockholders will not be deemed to have waived our compliance with the federal securities laws and the rules and regulations thereunder. This choice of forum provision, if enforced, may limit a stockholders’ ability to bring a claim in a judicial forum that it finds favorable for disputes with us or our directors, officers or other employees, which may discourage such lawsuits against us and our directors, officers and other employees, although our stockholders will not be deemed to have waived our compliance with federal securities laws and the rules and regulations thereunder. Alternatively, if a court were to find the choice of forum provision contained in our certificate of incorporation and bylaws to be inapplicable or unenforceable in an action, we may incur additional costs associated with resolving such action in other jurisdictions, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition or results of operations.

If securities or industry analysts do not publish research or publish inaccurate or unfavorable research about our business, our stock price and trading volume could decline.

The trading market for our common stock depends, in part, on the research and reports that securities or industry analysts publish about us or our business and our industry. If one or more of the analysts who cover us downgrades our common stock or publishes inaccurate or unfavorable research about our business, our stock price would likely decline. If one or more of these analysts ceases coverage of us or fails to publish reports on us regularly, demand for our common stock could decrease, which could cause our stock price and trading volume to decline.

Applicable insurance laws may make it difficult to effect a change of control.

Under applicable Oregon and California insurance laws and regulations, no person may acquire control of a domestic insurer until written approval is obtained from the state insurance commissioner following a public hearing on the proposed acquisition. Such approval would be contingent upon the state insurance commissioner’s consideration of a number of factors including, among others, the financial strength of the proposed acquiror, the acquiror’s plans for the future operations of the domestic insurer and any anti‑competitive results that may arise from the consummation of the acquisition of control. Oregon and California insurance laws and regulations pertaining to changes of control apply to both the direct and indirect acquisition of ten percent or more of the voting stock of an Oregon‑domiciled or California‑domiciled insurer. Accordingly, the acquisition of ten percent or more of our common stock would be considered an indirect change of control of Palomar Holdings, Inc. and would trigger the applicable change of control filing requirements under Oregon and California insurance laws and regulations, absent a disclaimer of control filing and its acceptance by the Oregon and California Insurance Departments. These requirements may discourage potential acquisition proposals and may delay, deter or prevent a change of control of Palomar Holdings, Inc., including through transactions that some or all of the stockholders of Palomar Holdings, Inc. might consider to be desirable. See also “Regulation—Changes of Control.”

SPECIAL NOTE REGARDING FORWARD‑LOOKING STATEMENTS

This Annual Report on Form 10-K contains forward‑looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws, which statements involve substantial risks and uncertainties. Forward‑looking statements generally relate to future events or our future financial or operating performance. In some cases, you can identify forward‑looking statements because they contain words such as “may”, “will”, “should”, “expects”, “plans”, “anticipates”, “could”, “intends”, “target”, “projects”, “contemplates”, “believes”, “estimates”, “predicts”, “would”, “potential” or “continue” or the negative of these words or other similar terms or expressions that concern our expectations, strategy, plans or intentions. These forward‑looking statements include, among others, statements relating to our future financial performance, our business prospects and strategy, anticipated financial position, liquidity and capital needs and other similar matters. These forward‑looking statements are based on management’s current expectations and assumptions

about future events, which are inherently subject to uncertainties, risks and changes in circumstances that are difficult to predict.

Our actual results may differ materially from those expressed in, or implied by, the forward‑looking statements included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K as a result of various factors, including, among others:

We have based the forward‑looking statements contained in this Annual Report on Form 10-K primarily on our current expectations and projections about future events and trends that we believe may affect our business, financial condition, results of operations, prospects, business strategy and financial needs. The outcome of the events described in these forward‑looking statements is subject to risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other factors described in the section captioned “Risk Factors” and elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. These risks are not exhaustive. Other sections of this Annual Report on Form 10-K include additional factors that could adversely impact our business and financial performance. Furthermore, new risks and uncertainties emerge from time to time and it is not possible for us to predict all risks and uncertainties that could have an impact on the forward‑looking statements contained in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. We cannot assure you that the results, events and circumstances reflected in the forward‑looking statements will be achieved or occur, and actual results, events or circumstances could differ materially from those described in the forward‑looking statements.

In addition, statements that “we believe” and similar statements reflect our beliefs and opinions on the relevant subject. These statements are based upon information available to us as of the date of this Annual Report on Form 10-K, and while we believe such information forms a reasonable basis for such statements, such information may be limited or

incomplete, and our statements should not be read to indicate that we have conducted an exhaustive inquiry into, or review of, all potentially available relevant information. These statements are inherently uncertain and investors are cautioned not to unduly rely upon these statements.

You should read this Annual Report on Form 10-K and the documents that we reference in this Annual Report on Form 10-K and have filed as exhibits to this Annual Report on Form 10-K with the understanding that our actual future results, levels of activity, performance and achievements may be materially different from what we expect. We qualify all of our forward‑looking statements by these cautionary statements.

The forward‑looking statements made in this Annual Report on Form 10-K relate only to events as of the date on which such statements are made. We undertake no obligation to update any forward‑looking statements after the date of this Annual Report on Form 10-K or to conform such statements to actual results or revised expectations, except as required by law.

 

Item 1B: Unresolved Staff Comments

 

None.

 

 

Item 2. Properties

 

Our primary executive offices and insurance operations are located in La Jolla, California, which occupy approximately 14,700 square feet of office space for annual rent and rent‑related operating payments of approximately $0.7 million. The lease for this space expires in 2024.

We do not own any real property. We believe that our facilities are adequate for our current needs.

Item 3. Legal Proceedings

 

We are subject to routine legal proceedings in the normal course of operating our insurance business. We are not involved in any legal proceedings which reasonably could be expected to have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations or financial condition.

 

Item 4. Mine Safety Disclosures

 

Not applicable.

 

 

PART II

 

Item 5. Market for the Registrant’s Common Equity, Related Stockholder Matters and Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities

 

Our common shares began trading on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the symbol “PLMR” on April 17, 2019. Prior to that time, there was no public market for our common shares. As of February 24, 2020, there were approximately 28 holders of record of our common stock. Because many of our shares of common stock are held by brokers and other institutions on behalf of our stockholders, this number is not representative of the total number of stockholders represented by these stockholders of record.

 

The continued operation and growth of our business will require substantial capital. We do not intend to declare and pay cash dividends on shares of our common stock in the foreseeable future. Because we are a holding company with no business operations of our own, our ability to pay dividends to stockholders largely depends on dividends and other distributions from our insurance subsidiaries, Palomar Specialty Insurance Company and Palomar Re. State insurance laws, including the laws of Oregon and California, and the laws of Bermuda restrict the ability of Palomar

Specialty Insurance Company and Palomar Re, respectively, to declare stockholder dividends. State insurance regulators require insurance companies to maintain specified levels of statutory capital and surplus. The maximum dividend distribution absent the approval or non‑disapproval of the insurance regulatory authority in Oregon and California is limited by Oregon law at ORS 732.576 and California law at Cal. Ins. Code 1215.5(g). Dividend payments are further limited to that part of available policyholder surplus that is derived from net profits on our business. State insurance regulators have broad powers to prevent the reduction of statutory surplus to inadequate levels, and there is no assurance that dividends up to the maximum amounts calculated under any applicable formula would be permitted. Moreover, state insurance regulators that have jurisdiction over the payment of dividends by Palomar Specialty Insurance Company may in the future adopt statutory provisions more restrictive than those currently in effect.

Our Bermuda reinsurance subsidiary is highly regulated and is required to comply with various conditions before it is able to pay dividends or make distributions to us. Bermuda law, including the Insurance Act 1978, as amended (Insurance Act) and the Companies Act 1981, as amended (Companies Act) impose restrictions on our Bermuda reinsurance subsidiary’s ability to pay dividends to us based on solvency margins and surplus and capital requirements. These restrictions, and any other future restrictions adopted by the BMA, could have the effect, under certain circumstances, of significantly reducing dividends or other amounts payable to us by our Bermuda reinsurance subsidiary without affirmative approval of the BMA.

Any determination to pay dividends in the future will be at the discretion of our Board of Directors and will depend upon results of operations, financial condition, restrictions imposed by applicable law and other factors our Board of Directors deems relevant. Consequently, investors may need to sell all or part of their holdings of our common stock after price appreciation, which may never occur, as the only way to realize any future gains on their investment. Investors seeking immediate cash dividends should not purchase our common stock.

Performance Graph

The following performance graph compares the cumulative total shareholder return of an investment in (1) our common stock, (2) the cumulative total returns to the Nasdaq Composite Index and (3) the cumulative total returns to the Nasdaq Insurance Index, for the period from April 17, 2019 (the date our common stock began trading on Nasdaq) through December 31, 2019.

 

The graph assumes an initial investment of $100. Such returns are based on historical results and are not indicative of future performance.

 

 

 

 

Item 6. Selected Consolidated Financial and Other Data

The following tables present our selected consolidated financial and other data as of and for the periods indicated.

The selected consolidated statements of operations data for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2019, 2018 and 2017, and the selected consolidated balance sheet data as of December 31, 2019 and 2018 are derived from our audited consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this annual report on Form 10-K. The selected consolidated balance sheet data as of December 31, 2017 is derived from our December 31, 2017 audited consolidated balance sheet which is not included in this annual report on Form 10-K.

You should read this data together with our audited consolidated financial statements and related notes which are included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, as well as “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of

Financial Condition and Results of Operations,” also included elsewhere this Annual Report on Form 10-K. Our historical results are not necessarily indicative of the results that should be expected in any future period.