PART I ITEM 1. BUSINESS In this Form 10-K, references to “RenaissanceRe” refer to RenaissanceRe Holdings Ltd. (the parent company) and references to “we,” “us,” “our” and the “Company” refer to RenaissanceRe Holdings Ltd. together with its subsidiaries, unless the context requires otherwise. Defined terms used throughout this Form 10-K are included in the “Glossary of Defined Terms” at the end of “Part I, Item 1. Business” of this Form 10-K. W e have also included a “Glossary of Selected Insurance and Reinsurance Terms” at the end of “Part I, Item 1. Business” of this Form 10-K. All dollar amounts referred to in this Form 10-K are in U.S. dollars unless otherwise indicated. Due to rounding, numbers presented in the tables included in this Form 10-K may not add up precisely to the totals provided. OVERVIEW RenaissanceRe is a global provider of reinsurance and insurance. We provide property, casualty and specialty reinsurance and certain insurance solutions to customers, principally through intermediaries. Established in 1993, we have offices in Bermuda, Australia, Ireland, Singapore, Switzerland, the U.K., and the U.S. To best serve our clients in the places they do business, we have operating subsidiaries, branches, joint ventures, managed funds and underwriting platforms around the world. Our operating subsidiaries include Renaissance Reinsurance, Renaissance Reinsurance U.S., RenaissanceRe Specialty U.S., RREAG, Renaissance Reinsurance of Europe and our Lloyd’s syndicate, Syndicate 1458. We write property and casualty and specialty reinsurance through our wholly-owned operating subsidiaries, joint ventures, managed funds and Syndicate 1458 and certain insurance products primarily through Syndicate 1458 and RenaissanceRe Specialty U.S. Syndicate 1458 provides us with access to Lloyd’s extensive distribution network and worldwide licenses, and also writes business through delegated authority arrangements. We also underwrite reinsurance on behalf of joint ventures, including DaVinci, Top Layer Re, Upsilon RFO and Vermeer. In addition, through Medici, we invest in various insurance-based investment instruments that have returns primarily tied to property catastrophe risk. Our mission is to match desirable, well-structured risks with efficient sources of capital to achieve our vision of being the best underwriter. We believe that this will allow us to produce superior returns for our shareholders over the long term, and to protect communities and enable prosperity. We seek to accomplish these goals by being a trusted, long-term partner to our customers for assessing and managing risk, delivering responsive and innovative solutions, leveraging our core capabilities of risk assessment and information management, investing in these core capabilities in order to serve our customers across market cycles, and keeping our promises. Our strategy focuses on superior risk selection, superior customer relationships and superior capital management. We provide value to our customers and joint venture and managed fund partners in the form of financial security, innovative products, and responsive service. We are known as a leader in paying valid claims promptly. We principally measure our financial success through long-term growth in tangible book value per common share plus the change in accumulated dividends. We believe this metric is the most appropriate measure of our financial performance, and in respect of which we believe we have delivered superior performance over time. The principal drivers of our profit are underwriting income, investment income, and fee income generated by our third-party capital management business. Our core products include property, casualty and specialty reinsurance, and certain insurance products principally distributed through intermediaries, with whom we have cultivated strong long-term relationships. We believe we have been one of the world’s leading providers of catastrophe reinsurance since our founding. In recent years, through the strategic execution of several initiatives, including organic growth and acquisitions, we have expanded and diversified our casualty and specialty platform and products, and believe we are a leader in certain casualty and specialty lines of business. Our current business strategy focuses predominantly on writing reinsurance, although as we grow our casualty and specialty and other property lines of business, we are increasingly writing excess and surplus lines insurance through delegated authority arrangements. We also pursue a number of other opportunities, such as creating and managing our joint ventures and managed funds, executing customized reinsurance transactions to assume or cede risk, and managing certain strategic investments directed at classes of risk 3