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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, 2021

☐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)

(Address of principal executive offices) (Zip Code)

(619) 567-5290

Registrant’s telephone number, including area code)

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

Title of each class Trading Symbol(s) Name of each exchange on which registered

Common Stock, par value $0.0001 per share PLMR Nasdaq Global Select Market

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.

Large accelerated filer ☒ Accelerated filer ☐

Non-accelerated filer ☐ Smaller reporting company ☐

Emerging growth company ☐

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 has filed a report on and attestation to its management’s assessment of the effectiveness of its internal control over financial reporting under Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (15 U.S.C. 7262(b)) by the registered public accounting firm that prepared or issued its audit report. ☒

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 30, 2021 was approximately$1,823,374,767

Number of shares of the registrant’s common shares outstanding at February 22, 2022: 25,438,118

DOCUMENTS INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE:

Portions of the registrant’s definitive proxy statement relating to its 2022 annual meeting of stockholders (the "2022 Proxy Statement") are incorporated by reference into Part III of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. The 2022 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.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

PART I

Item 1. Business 3

Item 1A. Risk Factors 27

Item 1B. Unresolved Staff Comments 52

Item 2. Properties 52

Item 3. Legal Proceedings 53

Item 4. Mine Safety Disclosures 53

PART II

Item 6. [Reserved] 55

Item 7A. Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures About Market Risk 82

Item 8. Financial Statements and Supplementary Data 89

Item 9A. Controls and Procedures 134

Item 9B. Other Information 135

Item 9C Disclosure Regarding Foreign Jurisdictions that Prevent Inspections 135

PART III

Item 10. Directors, Executive Officers and Corporate Governance 135

Item 11. Executive Compensation 135

Item 14. Principal Accountant Fees and Services 135

PART IV

Item 15. Exhibits and Financial Statement Schedules. 136

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PART I

Item 1. Business

Who We Are

We are a rapidly growing and innovative insurer focused on providing specialty insurance to residential and commercial customers. Our underwriting and analytical expertise allow us to concentrate on certain markets that we believe are underserved by other insurance companies, such as the markets for earthquake, hurricane, inland marine, and flood insurance. We use proprietary data analytics and a modern technology platform to offer our customers flexible products with customized and granular pricing for both the admitted and excess and surplus lines (“E&S”) markets.

We provide admitted insurance products through our Oregon domiciled insurance company, Palomar Specialty Insurance Company (“PSIC”), and non-admitted insurance products through our Arizona domiciled surplus lines insurance company, Palomar Excess and Surplus Insurance Company (“PESIC”). We distribute our products through multiple channels, including retail agents, program administrators, wholesale brokers, and partnerships with other insurance companies. Our business strategy is supported by a comprehensive risk transfer program with reinsurance coverage that we believe reduces earnings volatility and provides appropriate levels of protection from catastrophic events. 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 in our first year of operations to $535.2 million for the year ended December 31, 2021, which reflects a compound annual growth rate of approximately 64%. For the year ended December 31, 2021, 55% of our gross written premiums were generated by our Residential Earthquake, Commercial Earthquake and Hawaii Hurricane lines of business, all of which are not subject to attritional losses. We experienced average monthly premium retention rates above 89% overall for these lines of business, providing strong visibility into future revenue.

In February 2014, PSIC was awarded an “A−” rating from A.M. Best Company (“A.M. Best”), a leading rating agency for the insurance industry. An “A−” rating is categorized by A.M. Best as an excellent rating and indicates a stable outlook. In July 2020, PESIC was also awarded an “A−” rating by A.M. Best. In May 2021, A.M. Best affirmed the “A−”rating of PSIC and PESIC. These ratings reflect A.M. Best’s opinion of our subsidiaries’ financial strength, operating performance, and ability to meet obligations to policyholders and are not an evaluation directed towards the protection of investors.

We received regulatory approval for PESIC during the second quarter of 2020 and capitalized PESIC with approximately $100 million in initial surplus. PESIC is domiciled in the State of Arizona and licensed in Arizona to transact across all our existing lines of business. We believe that the underwriting acumen and market expertise we have established in the admitted insurance market is also applicable to the non-admitted market (also known as the “surplus lines” or “E&S” market), and that PESIC enables us to serve certain risks that our admitted products cannot currently satisfy. We began writing E&S business on a national basis during the third quarter of 2020.

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

Our Business

Our management team founded our company to address unmet needs that we perceived to exist in certain specialty 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 by surplus lines companies. We sell both admitted and surplus lines products. For our admitted products, the 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

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of security to policyholders through our backing from state guaranty funds. As a result, our admitted products typically charge lower taxes and fees than alternatives sold by surplus lines carriers. We believe that for our personal lines products, both our customers and distribution partners prefer the ease of use and security of admitted products with flexible coverages. We primarily write surplus lines policies for our commercial business. As the E&S market does not involve the same level of regulation and required approvals as the admitted market, our surplus lines products enable us to react quickly to changing market conditions.

We believe that we can generate superior risk-adjusted returns through underwriting which better reflects our customers’ underlying risk by applying 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 4th largest earthquake insurer in the state of California and the 6th largest earthquake insurer in the United States. We continue to experience growth and profitability across our other lines of business.

Our primary lines of business include: Residential Earthquake, Commercial Earthquake, Specialty Homeowners, Inland Marine, 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 primary lines of business and the market opportunities that they address:

Line of Business Opportunity Palomar Offering

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Line of Business Opportunity Palomar Offering

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, 2021, 49% of our gross written premiums were related to earthquake insurance. For the year ended December 31, 2021, 54% of our gross written premiums were attributable to personal lines and 46% of gross written premiums were attributable to commercial lines business. For the year ended December 31, 2021, non-earthquake related premiums grew 77% while earthquake related premiums grew 31% versus the prior year.

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Our principal insurance subsidiary, PSIC, is licensed in 34 states and we have the flexibility to write nationally through our surplus lines subsidiary, PESIC. Currently, California and Texas represent our largest exposures with 46% and 12% of our gross written premiums for the year ended December 31, 2021, 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, state, and entity for the year ended December 31, 2021:

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 or written by program administrator partners are consistent with our underwriting of direct business. Our systems enable us to underwrite all of our personal lines 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 consider 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. With 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 can utilize detailed portfolio analytics to actively manage aggregation of policies and to ensure an appropriate dispersion of risks across our full portfolio.

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Our Competitive Strengths

We believe that our competitive strengths include:

Focus on capturing market share and expanding underserved markets. We focus on specialty 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 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 can 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 to become the 4th largest earthquake insurer in California and the 6th largest earthquake insurer in the United States. In markets with similar characteristics, we are experiencing growth and profitability across our other lines of business. We believe that our focus on addressing the needs of underserved specialty 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 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 admitted products have been approved by individual state regulators and have been supported by proprietary pricing models since inception, we believe that these products are not easily replaceable, 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.

Product offerings in both the admitted and surplus lines markets. We believe that our core capabilities can be applied to both the admitted as well as the E&S insurance markets. Admitted products are backed by state guarantee funds and, as a result, are subject to more regulation, as admitted insurance companies must receive approval for rates and policy forms from individual state regulators. Our admitted insurance company subsidiary, PSIC, is licensed to write business in 34 states. We primarily serve the personal lines insurance market through the sale of admitted insurance products as those risks tend to be more homogenous in nature and retail agents prefer the sale of admitted products. We offer E&S insurance products through our surplus lines insurance company subsidiary, PESIC, which is licensed to do business on a national basis. We primarily serve the commercial lines insurance market through the sale of E&S insurance products as those markets are better suited to the flexibility of rate and form available to E&S carriers. Having surplus lines offerings allows us to react quickly to changing market conditions and to accelerate the expansion of our business nationally as we do not have to go through the process of receiving required approvals from individual state regulators.

Analytically driven, disciplined and scalable underwriting. Our underwriting approach combines decades of specialized underwriting experience of our management team with sophisticated, customized modeling tools we have developed that utilize extensive geospatial and actuarial data across all 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, our Residential Flood products underwrite risks at the distinct address level compared to the broader pricing zones of the National Flood Insurance Program (“NFIP”) product offerings. 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 partner either by issuing companion policies or providing reinsurance for their in-force risks that fit our strict underwriting parameters. The breadth and

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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 improves 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 before any tax effect would be capped at $12.5 million, equivalent to approximately 3.1% of our total stockholders’ equity as of December 31, 2021, 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 multiple severe catastrophes or market volatility due to our use of aggregate reinsurance protection as well as features such as prepaid reinstatements and expanded coverage windows for catastrophe events and our diverse panel of more than 80 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. Additionally, we buy program specific quota share reinsurance coverage for specific lines of business to further mitigate the impact of attritional losses on underwriting results.

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 Chairman and 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 Mr. Armstrong, Jon Christianson, our Chief Underwriting Officer, Jon Knutzen, our Chief Risk Officer, and Chris Uchida, our Chief Financial Officer, have a long history of working together. For example, while at Arrowhead, Mac Armstrong worked closely with Chris Uchida, who served as Executive Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer of Arrowhead. As owners of approximately 3.9% of our outstanding common stock as of December 31, 2021, 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.

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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 primarily compete in lines of business and states that represented over $100 billion in total written premiums during 2020. By comparison, we generated $535.2 million of gross written premiums for the year ended December 31, 2021. 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. Our admitted insurance company, PSIC, is licensed in 34 states, while our E&S company operates on a nationwide basis. We continue to evaluate additional geographic markets and lines of business where we believe we can generate attractive risk-adjusted returns by harnessing our core competencies.

Maintain our distinctive combination of 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, 2021 and 2020, our adjusted return on equity was 14.1% and 3.0%, respectively, with our results for 2020 reflecting profitability in spite of losses sustained by several severe weather events. 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 probable maximum loss (“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 where we believe our business model cannot add incremental value.

Maintain a diversified book of business. We currently write a book comprised primarily of specialty 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.

Pursue new opportunities via our surplus lines company. Our surplus lines company, PESIC, began writing business in the third quarter of 2020. Our current strategy with our surplus lines company primarily involves addressing segments of the commercial lines insurance market, where the flexibility of premium rates and forms is better suited to the market. Our surplus lines company is licensed to write on a national basis and we intend to use it to grow our national footprint including through partnerships with program administrators that target national account business.

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 treaties whereby third party reinsurers pay us a ceding commission in order to access attractive pools of risk. Our newly launched fronting business offers an additional source of fee income that we earn from program administrators and reinsurers seeking to access our licensed insurance companies. 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.

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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 and supports our ability to meet obligations to our policyholders and other constituents, and 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 severe or frequent catastrophe losses. Our goal is to protect our earnings by constructing a reinsurance program that mitigates losses and ensures profitability in spite of potential shock losses or catastrophic activity. 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 to maximize our risk-adjusted returns.

Strengthen and harness our strong and growing capital base. We compete with larger, more longstanding insurers in many of the markets that we serve. 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 operations and generate additional equity, we believe we will have access to more distribution sources, particularly in commercial lines insurance, that may have been reluctant to refer business to us earlier in our operating history.

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 became a Delaware corporation.

Our primary operating subsidiary, PSIC, is an insurance company domiciled in the state of Oregon and is an admitted insurer licensed to write business in 34 states as of December 31, 2021. PSIC was formed in February 2014. In August 2014, we incorporated Palomar Specialty Reinsurance Company Bermuda Ltd.(“PSRE”), a Bermuda-based reinsurance subsidiary that provides reinsurance support exclusively to PSIC and PESIC. In August 2015, we incorporated Prospect General Insurance Agency, Inc., now known as Palomar Insurance Agency, Inc., (“PIA”), to underwrite specialty insurance products on behalf of third-party insurance companies. During 2020, we received regulatory approval for and capitalized PESIC with approximately $100 million in initial surplus. PESIC is domiciled in the State of Arizona and licensed in Arizona to write surplus lines business on a nationwide basis across all our existing lines of business.

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Our Structure

Our entities are structured are follows:

Our Products

We provide personal and commercial specialty insurance products in our target markets. With the goal of giving customers better options, we designed an analytical framework to create flexible 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 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/or distribution relationships.

Our primary insurance products include Residential and Commercial Earthquake, Specialty Homeowners, Inland Marine, Commercial All Risk, Hawaii Hurricane, and Residential Flood. 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 regions including the New Madrid Seismic zone in the Midwestern United States, wind-exposed markets in the southeastern United States and 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 34 total states.

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The following table shows our gross written premium by state for the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020 and 2019:

Year Ended December 31,

($ in thousands)

% of % of % of

Amount GWP Amount GWP Amount GWP

State

We believe that maintaining a balanced book of personal and commercial lines 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, 2021, 54% of our gross written premium consisted of personal lines business and 46% of gross written premium consisted of commercial lines business, compared to 60% personal lines business and 40% commercial lines business during the year ended December 31, 2020. The following table shows gross written premium (“GWP”) by product line for the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020 and 2019:

Year Ended December 31,

($ in thousands)

% of % of % of

Amount GWP Amount GWP Amount GWP

Product

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.

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The following table shows our premium retention for the years ended December 31, 2021 and 2020 for our Residential Earthquake, Commercial Earthquake and Hawaii Hurricane lines of business, which represented 55% of overall gross written premiums during the year and which are not subject to attritional losses:

Year Ended

December 31,

Average monthly premium retention by product:

Residential Earthquake 91 % 93 %

Commercial Earthquake 85 % 83 %

Hawaii Hurricane 96 % 97 %

Residential Earthquake

We offer Residential Earthquake products in 18 states on an admitted basis and nationwide on an E&S basis. 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 can 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 consider 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 lower limit policies are issued via automated processing.

Commercial Earthquake

We offer Commercial Earthquake products, commonly known as “Difference in Conditions” policies, on an admitted basis in 15 states and nationwide on an E&S basis. 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 using facultative reinsurance.

Specialty Homeowners

Our Specialty Homeowners product provides admitted insurance coverage to homeowners in wind-exposed coastal regions. 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.

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Inland Marine

Our Inland Marine division currently offers products that include Builder’s Risk, Contractor’s Equipment, Mobile Equipment, Motor Truck Cargo, Miscellaneous Floaters, Installation Floaters, and Special Property Floaters. We write our Inland Marine products on an admitted and on an E&S basis directly and through program administrators. Policy limits vary by product, however, our E&S offerings are designed to target larger limit business and does not directly compete with our admitted offerings. We believe the flexibility of our Inland Marine product enables us to compete in select market segments and price risk appropriately.

Commercial All Risk

We offer Commercial All Risk insurance on a E&S basis nationwide through the underwriting division of a national wholesaler. Our products currently compete in the national layered and shared commercial property market, an area where we believe there is currently a high-level of market dislocation. The Commercial All Risk policy covers the perils of fire and wind, with wind including hurricane, tornado, and hailstorm. For additional premium, the policy can include the peril of earthquake. We target occupancy types including government entities, homeowner’s associations, retail stores, hotels, motels, and office buildings. Previously, we wrote this business on a direct admitted basis in select states in the Southeastern United States. During 2020, we ceased writing this business on an admitted basis and as of December 31, 2021, all admitted Commercial All Risk business has been run off.

Hawaii Hurricane

We offer 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 residential flood products on an admitted basis in 14 states and on an E&S basis in 6 states across the United States. 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.

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Other

We continue to develop product offerings for lines of business that harness our core competencies and where we believe we can generate attractive risk adjusted returns. Notable recent examples of our commitment to developing new products include the launch of our casualty and fronting operations during 2021. Our Casualty division provides casualty coverage on an admitted and non-admitted basis in two segments of the casualty sector: General Casualty and Professional Liability.Our Fronting business, known as PLMR-FRONT, provides fronting paper on both an admitted and E&S basis through Palomar Specialty Insurance Company and PESIC, to reinsurers, insurance carriers and managing general agents to enable the design and operation of customized insurance programs. The Fronting team targets opportunities across multiple lines of business where traditional insurance is difficult to source. In addition, we offer commercial flood products in certain markets and generate premiums through assumed reinsurance agreements on selected risks. We believe these markets compliment our existing product offerings and offer significant growth opportunity across both the admitted and E&S markets.

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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 provide agents with flexible products that are preferred by end consumers and are easier for agents to sell. 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 to harness the efficiency and scale of their existing marketing and distribution infrastructures. Generally, all 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 accounted for $194.0 million of written premiums for the year ended December 31, 2021, 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 through program administrators with local expertise in their respective markets and that participate in the economics of produced business through risk sharing agreements, which we believe strengthens the alignment of interests toward generating underwriting profit. Finally, we have partnered with several program administrators that focus on specific areas of the E&S market as we pursue the growth of PESIC, our surplus lines insurance carrier.

Carrier Partnerships: Given our unique specialty focus and underwriting expertise, we are a carrier of choice for other insurance companies seeking a specialty insurance partner 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, 2021, 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 its 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,

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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. We intend to pursue additional carrier partnerships in the future including those that involve PESIC, our E&S company.

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’ a straightforward approach that 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.

Personal lines policies are issued via automated underwriting and account for approximately 54% of our gross written premium for the year ended December 31, 2021. Using our predefined underwriting guidelines, distribution partners can rapidly quote and bind accounts lower in limit via automated processing. We believe that automated underwriting of personal lines policies improves efficiency, reduces errors, and enhances the customer experience.

Since commercial lines risks involve additional complexity and do not lend themselves to highly automated underwriting, we combine robust risk analysis an data collection with underwriter expertise 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. Our underwriters bring specific line of business experience including underwriting expertise, distribution relationships and support from the reinsurance community. Additionally, we continue to pursue the use of technology to streamline inspections and other components of the underwriting process.

We apply the same principles and discipline to underwriting when selecting program administrator partners. We proactively engage with our program managers to create specific underwriting guidelines and techniques. We regularly conduct underwriting, claims and financial audits to ensure consistent execution upon underwriting guidelines, claims processing and compliance with regulatory requirements.

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 monitor our exposure to correlated risks and 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 primary perils that we insure, we primarily outsource our claims handling infrastructure to third-party administrators (“TPAs”) to eliminate the expense associated with maintaining full time dedicated claims personnel. We currently contract with multiple 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 is responsible

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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 to identify potentially affected policies immediately and begin assisting our customers by notifying our TPAs, our reinsurance partners and other potentially impacted parties. A network of TPAs improves our ability to mobilize claims adjusters immediately to the areas where our customers are most affected and helps insulate us from the “demand surge” following a catastrophe event. 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 review claims files and claims reports from our TPAs for accuracy and reasonableness on an ongoing basis. We review all claims received from our TPAs to validate coverage, limits, and deductibles prior to making payment. Additionally, we have certain managerial requirements of our TPAs around notification, reserve approval, payment management, correspondence with insureds, and reports for all claims in excess of the claims analyst’s authority. We also monitor possible litigation and litigation trends associated with our claims.

Reinsurance

We purchase a significant amount of reinsurance from third parties that we believe enhances our business by reducing our exposure to potential catastrophe and attritional 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. We currently purchase reinsurance from over 80reinsurers, 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%.

In addition to reinsurance purchased from traditional reinsurers, we have historically incorporated collateralized protection from the insurance linked securities market (e.g. catastrophe bonds). During the first quarter of 2021, the Company closed a $400 million 144A catastrophe bond which became effective June 1, 2021. The catastrophe bond was

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completed through Torrey Pines Re Pte. Ltd. (“Torrey Pines Re”). Torrey Pines Re. is a special purpose insurer established in Singapore that provides Palomar with indemnity-based reinsurance covering earthquake events.

Our largest single XOL reinsurer, excluding Torrey Pines Re, comprises 6.1% of the total catastrophe XOL reinsurance limit we have in effect. The table below reflects the ratings of our largest individual reinsurers.

Reinsurer Ratings A.M Best S&P

Torrey Pines Re 144A Cat Bond NR NR

Fidelis Insurance Bermuda Limited / Fidelis Underwriting Limited A A-

Elementum Re Ltd. obo Allianz Risk Transfer / Hannover Rueck SE A+ AA-

MS Amlin AG / Lloyd's # 2001 - MS Amlin Underwriting, Ltd. A A+

Houston Casualty Company (UK Branch) A++ A+

Securis ILS Management, Ltd. Bermuda obo Arch Re and Hannover Rueck SE A+ A+/AA-

Transatlantic Reinsurance Company / obo General Reinsurance Corporation A++ A++

Lloyd's # 1084 - Chaucer Syndicates Ltd A A+

Catastrophe XOL Reinsurance Coverage

Our catastrophe event retention before any tax effect is currently $12.5 million for all perils. Our reinsurance coverage exhausts at $1.68 billion for earthquake events and $700 million for hurricane events, providing coverage in excess of our 1:250 year peak zone PML 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, 2021, our first event retention represented approximately 3.1% of our stockholders’ equity.

In the event that multiple catastrophe events occur in a period, many of our contracts 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 addition, to provide further coverage against the potential for frequent catastrophe events we have $25 million of aggregate XOL reinsurance limit, which is effective through April 1, 2022. This coverage, applying within our per occurrence retention, has an attachment point of $30 million and applies across all perils including but not limited to earthquakes, hurricanes, convective storms, and floods above a qualifying level of $2.0 million in ultimate gross loss. We believe the aggregate reinsurance cover reduces the volatility of our business and we expect to utilize similar coverage in the future.

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 and RMS RiskLink for all perils and regions.

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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 $1.68 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 before any tax effect would be capped at our current net retention of $12.5 million as demonstrated in the following table:

Historical Event modeled PML

($ millions)

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.

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 losses and improve our economics through ceding a portion of the risk to reinsurers in exchange for a ceding commission. We purchase program specific reinsurance, consisting primarily of quota share coverage, for certain lines of business with an attritional loss component.

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 (“PGIA”) in 2016. During 2020, Prospect General Insurance Agency was renamed to Palomar Insurance Agency, DBA Palomar General Insurance Agency (“PGIA”). In 2019, we entered into a new partnership to underwrite commercial flood risk on behalf of a proven partner. 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 quality and timely 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

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PASS provides producers direct access to our retail and wholesale distributed products including Residential Earthquake, Commercial Earthquake, Hawaii Hurricane, Inland Marine and Residential Flood. PASS also serves as the administration system for select policy data and the access point for business written through direct personal lines 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 programing interfaces 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 personal lines 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. Our custom application platform seamlessly integrates policy administration, billing, and maintenance.

We emphasize the use of technology in our analytics and enterprise risk management (“ERM”) operations. Our analytics team, which reports to our Chief Risk 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 preparations 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 to 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 investigated by a claims adjuster, we establish a case reserve for the estimated amount of the ultimate payment after an appropriate assessment of coverage, damages and other information 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 consider 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

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becomes available. Additionally, our loss reserving is reviewed quarterly 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:

Gross Ultimate Loss and LAE

Development- (Favorable) Unfavorable

(in thousands)

Net Ultimate Loss and LAE

Development- (Favorable) Unfavorable

(in thousands)

$ (181) $ (64) $ (3,585)

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 of Directors. 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.

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, exchange traded funds and equity securities. 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.

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Our investment securities available totaled $465.9 million and $422.3 million at December 31, 2021 and 2020 respectively, and are summarized as follows:

Fair % of Total

December 31, 2021 Value Fair Value

Fixed maturities:

States, territories, and possessions 4,014 0.9 %

Political subdivisions 6,380 1.4 %

Special revenue excluding mortgage/asset‐backed securities 44,498 9.6 %

Mortgage/asset‐backed securities 111,874 24.0 %

Fair % of Total

December 31, 2020 Value Fair Value

Fixed maturities:

States, territories, and possessions 6,636 1.6 %

Political subdivisions 2,152 0.5 %

Special revenue excluding mortgage/asset‐backed securities 41,227 9.8 %

Mortgage/asset‐backed securities 85,553 20.3 %

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 our 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 our Board of Directors. 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 (“ERM”)

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 ERM Sub-Committee comprised of executive management and select board members, 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

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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 additional offices in Mission Viejo, California and Bloomington, Minnesota to use as redundant locations 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.

Environmental and Climate Change Matters

Our economic model is closely tied to our coverages for natural disasters and catastrophes. We believe the existing scientific consensus that man-made changes to climate conditions are leading to increases in sea levels and global temperatures, and that the severity and frequency of weather-related natural disasters may increase relative to historical experience. We believe that this increase in severe weather, coupled with currently projected demographic trends in catastrophe-exposed regions, contributes to factors that will increase the average economic value of expected losses, increase the number of people exposed per year to natural disasters and in general exacerbate disaster risk, including risks to infrastructure, global supply chains and agricultural production. In addition to the impacts that environmental incidents have on our business, changes to law and regulation related to climate change could also directly affect our business, including state insurance regulations that could impact the Company’s ability to manage property exposures in areas vulnerable to significant climate driven losses, and possible new requirements that insurers integrate the financial risk of climate change into business operations and governance.

From an underwriting standpoint, we carefully consider the development and deployment of insurance products in coastal areas that may be impacted by rising sea levels, and we incorporate scenarios into our catastrophe modeling that involve elevated sea surface temperatures and other relevant data. From an operations standpoint, our efforts include establishing a standing environmental, social, and governance (“ESG”) committee of the Board of Directors that works with the company to establish and measure progress toward several metrics related to climate change and environmental health. We are undertaking a third-party audit of the company’s carbon footprint, as well as options to mitigate that footprint. Evidence of the Company’s commitment to the environment and combating climate change can be found in the Sustainability and Citizenship report available on our corporate website.

The company considers ESG factors as part of its investment strategy and reviews individual investments to ensure congruence with company goals in this area. We have also made commitments to automate manual or paper-intensive processes and promote the paperless delivery of documents to our policyholders and producers. We will remain proactive in our efforts to evolve our business in response to our changing natural environment.

Competition

The specialty 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 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).

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“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.

Human Capital

Overview

We believe our greatest asset is our talent. As of December 31, 2021, we employed 151 team members. During 2021, our workforce increased by approximately 23% compared to the prior year, and our turnover rate was approximately 20%.

Our business relies on our ability to attract and retain talented team members. To attract and retain talent, we strive to create a diverse, inclusive, and supportive workplace, with opportunities for our team members to develop in their careers. This is supported by competitive compensation, benefits and health and wellness programs, and by programs that build connections between our team members and their communities.

Diversity and Inclusion

We are committed to increasing diversity within our Company. We believe that diversity yields greater creativity and productivity, helps us serve our customers and partners more effectively, and ultimately returns greater value to our shareholders and to the communities in which we do business. We set diversity goals in our annual Sustainability & Citizenship report. In 2021, 39% of our team members identify as a member of an ethnic minority group, compared to 37% in 2020. Our commitment to Diversity and Inclusion follows:

DIVERSITY – We are not all the same. Palomar celebrates our differences, and we identify opportunities for increased innovation and collaboration amongst diverse teams with diverse perspectives.

INCLUSION – Palomar appreciates and takes pride in the active involvement of every team member’s unique contribution within a culture that harmonizes our differences. Our team members understand their important contribution to the greater good and understand that what they do makes a difference, both for the company, and in the larger communities we serve.

COMMUNITY & ENGAGEMENT – Palomar’s commitment to diversity, equality and inclusion extends into the communities where we conduct business. We believe that every organization, regardless of size or scope, can make a meaningful difference on issues of community welfare, justice, and equality. Through our social, personal, and professional networks, we champion our values and actions. We partner with like-minded organizations to drive action and positive change.

EQUALITY – Palomar promotes a work environment where individuals are treated fairly, respectfully and have equal access to resources and opportunities for growth. We encourage our teammates to share ideas and collaborate to remove organizational boundaries, solve problems, and drive company growth.

Compensation, Health and Well Being

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We offer fair, competitive compensation and benefits to support our team members overall well-being. Our compensation programs include base pay, annual incentive compensation and, in many cases, long-term equity-based compensation. In 2021, 70% of our workforce received equity awards. We offer team members a comprehensive and leading benefits program that includes a holistic approach to health and wellness. We regularly benchmark programs to ensure our team has access to industry-leading benefits to address all aspects of well-being — physical and mental health, family care, financial support, and community engagement.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, many of our team members have been working from home since March 2020. We recently began allowing all employees to return to our offices on a voluntary basis, with established protocols to ensure operational reliability and employee safety. We provide team members a reimbursement to help manage incremental costs associated with remote work. We also regularly check-in with team members to assess their mental health. Team members receive 24/7 access to behavioral health tools and resources and a company paid subscription to Headspace, a meditation and wellness application.

Talent Development

We provide numerous training opportunities for our team members, with a focus on personal and professional development.We utilize “Coaching for Performance” methodologies to manage performance, provide feedback and develop talent. Our talent development programs provide team members resources to achieve career goals and build leadership skills. We encourage all team members to take advantage of company supported learning opportunities that help broaden industry and functional knowledge to help them excel in their current roles as well as advance their overall career objectives. In 2021, our team members completed approximately 1,100 hours of training. We believe in the dynamic allocation of talent, and therefore we encourage interested team members to explore functions outside their current role. To support this belief, we provide a $3,000 tuition and/or certification reimbursement for ongoing development. Lastly, we have a methodical approach to talent development, offering organizational advancement and mentoring services to all team members regardless of position or title. In 2021, 30% of our workforce was promoted or moved into new positions.

During the fourth quarter of 2021, our team members completed an engagement survey, and we received a 90% response rate. We are using the responses and learnings from this survey to inform our future talent management strategies.

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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.

Summary Risk Factors

Our business is subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, these risks include, but are not limited to, the following:

● There is intense competition for business in our industry;

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Risks Related to Our Business and Industry

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

Our insurance operations expose us to claims arising from 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 of insured property due higher material and labor costs, increases in 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. We have recently experienced significant catastrophe losses including hurricane related losses during the third and fourth quarters of 2020 and third quarter of 2021. 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.

Our catastrophe event retention is currently $12.5 million for all perils. Our reinsurance coverage exhausts at $1.68 billion for earthquake events and $700 million for hurricane events, 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, if our reinsurers are unable to pay the claims for which they are responsible, we

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ultimately retain primary liability. Furthermore, our earthquake policies do not provide coverage for fire damage arising from an earthquake. While we believe this risk transfer program reduces volatility in our earnings, one or more severe catastrophe events could result in claims that substantially exceed the limits of our reinsurance coverage. Furthermore, catastrophe events which cause our reinsurers to incur losses may increase the cost of reinsurance in future periods or make it more difficult to obtain reinsurance on commercially acceptable terms.

We and our customers could be negatively and adversely impacted by the Pandemic, which may result in a decline in demand for our products, a decrease in underwriting income and a decrease in the value of our investment portfolio.

The ongoing Pandemic and response thereto has impacted and may continue to impact financial markets, businesses, households, and communities. The extent of the impact of the Pandemic on our operational and financial performance will depend on several factors, including the ultimate duration and severity of the Pandemic, the emergence and severity of variant strains, actions taken and restrictions imposed by the government and health officials in response, the effectiveness and adoption of COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics, the ability for our customers to continue to pay premiums, contraction of the insurance and reinsurance markets, and the ability for reinsurers to satisfy claims, all of which are uncertain and cannot be predicted. In addition, the Pandemic has contributed to financial market volatility, supply chain disruptions, price inflation, and material and labor shortages, all of which may have a negative impact on our business. Continuation of the Pandemic could cause additional reduction in business activity and financial market instability and the global macroeconomic effects of the Pandemic, may persist for an indefinite period, even after the Pandemic has subsided.

Disruptions to the economy from the Pandemic could cause our customers to have less need for insurance coverage, cancel or cease payment on existing insurance policies, modify their coverage, or not renew the policies they hold with us. Policyholders may exaggerate or even falsify claims to obtain higher claims payments. Any of these outcomes would reduce our underwriting income. Inflationary pressures or supply chain shortages caused by the Pandemic may increase our operating expenses and the average size of our loss claims.

We underwrite a significant amount of our commercial insurance policies for businesses such as hotels, motels, retail stores, and professional services. These businesses have been impacted by restrictions placed on them and changes in consumer behavior resulting from the Pandemic. Prolonged restrictions or ongoing changes in consumer behavior as a result of the Pandemic would have a negative adverse impact on these insureds and their revenue streams, which consequently will impact their ability to meet their financial obligations, including purchasing or renewing insurance policies.

In addition, our results of operations depend, in part, on the performance of our investment portfolio. The Pandemic’s impact on the economy and financial markets could reduce our net investment income and result in realized investment losses in future periods.

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.

Our ability to grow our business is dependent in part in our ability to secure reinsurance for a substantial portion of the risk associated with our policies. 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 $12.5 million of risk per earthquake or wind event and provide coverage up to $1.68 billion for earthquake events and $700 million for hurricane 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 these claims. For example, the Pandemic has put financial pressure on the insurance market due to several factors, including the inability of customers to pay premiums and increased claims for business interruption. Increased claim demands for business interruption has put substantial financial pressure on the insurance and reinsurance market which may lead to court action and impact the ability of insurers and reinsurers to satisfy the liability under their policies.

In addition, 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,

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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. If a catastrophic event were to occur and our reinsurers were unable to satisfy their commitments to us, we may be unable to satisfy the liability to our policyholders. 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, 2021, we had $157.3 million of aggregate reinsurance recoverables. These risks could cause us to incur increased net losses, and, therefore, adversely affect our financial condition.

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 excess of loss (“XOL”) coverage. Additionally, we buy program specific reinsurance coverage on a quota share, property per risk or a facultative basis. 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 multiple layers.

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 reinsurance purchased from traditional reinsurers, we have historically incorporated collateralized protection from the insurance linked securities market (e.g. catastrophe bonds). During the first quarter of 2021, we closed a $400 million 144A catastrophe bond which became effective June 1, 2021. The catastrophe bond was completed through Torrey Pines Re Pte. Ltd. (“Torrey Pines Re”). Torrey Pines Re. is a special purpose insurer established in Singapore whereby Torrey Pines Re provides Palomar with indemnity-based reinsurance covering earthquake events. We may seek to expand our catastrophe XOL coverage through similar bond offerings in the future. However, there can be no assurance that we will be able to complete such offerings on acceptable terms, if at all.

If we are unable to renew our expiring reinsurance contracts on acceptable terms or expand our reinsurance coverage through traditional reinsurers, catastrophe bonds, or otherwise, our loss exposure could increase, which would increase our potential losses related to catastrophe or non-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, our reinsurance contracts 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 of the occurrence of catastrophe events and their severity and overall impact on our underwriting and investment portfolio. We monitor and mitigate our exposure through a

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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 due to the overall impact on financial markets from the occurrence of catastrophe events.

In addition, output from our risk modeling software is based on third-party data that we believe to be accurate and 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 such as lumber 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 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:

• The models may not accurately reflect the true frequency of events;

• The models may not account for unusual or unprecedented catastrophe events;

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 could adversely impact our financial results.

A decline in our financial strength rating may adversely affect the amount of business we write and impact compliance with our debt covenants.

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

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publicly placed in liquidation. As of June 30, 2021, A.M. Best has assigned a financial strength rating of “A−” (Excellent) (Outlook Stable) to our insurance company subsidiaries, Palomar Specialty Insurance Company (“PSIC”) and Palomar Excess and Surplus Insurance Company (“PESIC”). 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:

• If our losses exceed our loss reserves;

• If we have unresolved issues with government regulators;

• If we are unable to retain our senior management or other key personnel;

• If our investment portfolio incurs significant losses; or

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:

• Increasing the cost or reducing the availability of reinsurance to us;

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. If our credit rating were to be downgraded, or general market conditions were to ascribe higher risk to our rating levels, due to the Pandemic or otherwise, our access to capital markets and the cost of any equity or debt financing will be negatively impacted. 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 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 46% and 12% of our gross written premiums, respectively, for the year ended December 31, 2021. We are exposed to business, economic, political, judicial 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. Any single, major catastrophe

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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.

Changes in California or Texas political climates could result in new or changed legislation affecting the property and casualty insurance industry in general which could have a negative impact on our business.

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. Since the onset of the Pandemic, companies have had issues with employee turnover and finding and hiring qualified employees. These challenges may continue for the foreseeable future.

In particular, our future success is substantially dependent on the continued service of our Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman, 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 person 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 $255.8 million or 48% of our gross written premiums for the year ended December 31, 2021. 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 General Insurance Agency 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.

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 expressed 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.

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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 insurance subsidiaries. In certain jurisdictions, when the insured pays its policy premium to its broker for payment to us, 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 the 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. Additionally, the loss or disruption of business from our agents and brokers or the failure or inability of these agents and brokers to successfully market our insurance products, including impacts related to the Pandemic, could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.

Because the possibility of these events occurring depends in large part upon the financial condition and internal operations of our brokers, we regularly meet and communicate with our brokers, monitor broker behavior and review broker 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.

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.

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 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.

Certain 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.

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

Most of our insurance policies 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 policies. 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.

In addition, during the fourth quarter of 2020, we purchased the renewal rights of certain Hawaii Hurricane policies from another insurance company. There is no guarantee that current policyholders will renew their Hurricane policies with the us and the ultimate impact of this purchase on our written premiums is uncertain and may be below our expectations.

Our failure to accurately and timely evaluate and 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 results of operations.

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 and take other steps 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.

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 our public filings.

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

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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, 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 we are unable to successfully scale our excess and surplus insurance company, our business and future prospects may be harmed.

During the third quarter of 2020, we launched our excess and surplus lines (E&S) insurance product offerings via our surplus lines subsidiary, Palomar Excess and Surplus Insurance Company (‘‘PESIC’’). The E&S market is highly competitive and many of our competitors are better capitalized and have a longer history in the market. While we believe that the underwriting acumen and market expertise we have established through our admitted insurance company, PSIC, can be applied to the surplus lines market as well, there can be no assurances that we will be successful in accurately analyzing risks and scaling a profitable operation in the E&S market. If we are unable to underwrite profitably in the E&S market, our business and future prospects may be adversely impacted.

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 and 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. Additionally, the future impact of the Pandemic on our business, operations, liquidity, financial condition, and results of operations remains uncertain.

We seek to underwrite products and make investments to achieve favorable returns on tangible stockholders’ equity over the long term. Our opportunistic nature and focus on long-term growth in tangible equity may result in fluctuations in gross written premiums, loss expenses, and other underwriting expenses 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.

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Our Credit Agreement contains restrictions and covenants that limit our flexibility in operating our business and any debt borrowed under our Credit Agreement exposes us to additional risk and may adversely affect our financial condition and future financial results.

In December 2021, we entered into a Credit Agreement (the “Credit Agreement”) with certain lenders which provides a revolving credit facility of up to $100.0 million. Currently, we have no borrowings under the Credit Agreement. If we make borrowings in the future, it may impact our business and financial condition by:

In addition, the Credit Agreement contains financial covenants, restrictions on indebtedness, liens, investments, mergers, dispositions, prepayment of other indebtedness and dividends and other distributions. The financial covenants in the Credit agreement require the Company not to exceed a maximum leverage ratio and maintain a minimum net worth at the end of each quarter. The Company’s insurance subsidiaries are also required to maintain a minimum Risk Based Capital Ratio at the end of each year and must always maintain a minimum AM Best Financial Strength rating. All of these covenants and restrictions impact how we operate our business and may limit our flexibility in planning for, or reacting to, changes in our business and industry. Our ability to comply with these covenants may be affected by events beyond our control. If we breach any of the covenants and do not obtain a waiver from the noteholders or lenders, then, subject to applicable cure periods, any outstanding debt may be declared immediately due and payable.

Risks related to the Economic Environment

The effects of the Pandemic have significantly affected the global and U.S. economies and financial markets, and may further disrupt our operations and the operations of our insureds, agents, and third parties upon which we rely.

The current Pandemic has caused significant disruption in the global and U.S. economies and financial markets. COVID-19 and its variant strains have caused illness, quarantines, cancellation of events and travel, business and school closures, reduction in business activity, increased unemployment, supply chain interruptions, and overall economic and financial market instability. There continue to be significant reported cases of infected individuals throughout the United States and globally. Impacts to our business could be widespread and material impacts may result, including but not limited to, the following:

● employees contracting COVID-19 and/or related variants;

● reductions in our operating effectiveness as certain employees work from home;

● unavailability of key personnel necessary to conduct our business activities;

● increases in frequency and/or severity of compensable claims;

● increased credit risk;

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Since the beginning of the Pandemic, we have taken precautions to protect the safety and well-being of our employees while providing uninterrupted service to our policyholders and claimants. However, no assurance can be given that these actions will be sufficient in the future. Furthermore, the macroeconomic effects of the Pandemic may persist for an indefinite period, even after the pandemic has subsided, which could negatively impact demand for our insurance products in the future and result in a material adverse effect on our results of operations and financial condition.

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 general 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 or cease payment on 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 Board of Directors. 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 credit quality considerations. 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.

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We also invest in marketable equity securities. These securities are carried on the balance sheet at fair market value and are subject to potential losses and declines in market value based on the performance of equity markets. Our equity invested assets totaled $33.3 million as of December 31, 2021.

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 and Arizona Departments 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.

Our investment portfolio could also be adversely impacted by ratings downgrades, increased bankruptcies and credit spread widenings caused by economic downturns from pandemics or other events. Severe economic downturns could cause impairments in our fixed income portfolio. In addition, declines in fixed income yields would result in decreases in net investment income from future investment activity, including re-investments.

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.

Risks related to Technology

We employ third-party licensed software for use in our business, and the inability to maintain these licenses, problems with the software we license, or increases to the cost of software licenses could adversely affect our business.

Multiple areas of our business rely 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. Unforeseen issues may arise in third-party software platforms which may have an adverse impact on our operations. Integration of new third-party software or modifications to our existing third-party software may require substantial investment of our time and resources. The inability to integrate or operate third-party software successfully or the inadequacy of third-party software may have a material adverse impact on our operations. In addition, the cost of third-party software is significant and we expect it to increase in the future. If we have issues with the functionality or expense of third-party software, we may not be able to find acceptable alternatives in a timely manner 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.

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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, pandemics (including the COVID-19 Pandemic), cyber-attacks, 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.

A significant portion of our employees work remotely and outside of our primary offices on a regular basis. We believe remote work increases the need for our information technology and telecommunications systems to work properly and creates additional operational risk and difficulty should these systems fail.

Security breaches or cyber-attacks could expose the Company to liability and damage its reputation and 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.

Cyberthreats are constantly evolving and becoming increasingly sophisticated and complex, making it increasingly difficult to detect and successfully defend against them. In addition, cyber-attackers (which may include individuals or groups, as well as sophisticated groups such as nation-state and state-sponsored attackers, which can deploy significant resources to plan and carry out exploits) also develop and deploy viruses, worms, credential stuffing attack tools and other malicious software programs, some of which may be specifically designed to attack our products, information systems or networks. Outside parties have in the past and may in the future attempt to fraudulently induce our employees or users of our products or services to disclose sensitive, personal or confidential information via illegal electronic spamming, phishing or other tactics.

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, and at times are, 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. While we maintain insurance coverage that may, subject to policy terms and conditions, cover certain aspects of cyber risks, such insurance coverage may be insufficient to cover all losses.

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 cloud provider service failure or control weakness could adversely affect our business.

We employ cloud-based services to host our applications and intend to expand our use. As we expand our use of cloud-based services, we will increasingly rely on third-party cloud providers to maintain appropriate controls and safeguards to protect confidential information we receive, including personal, personally identifiable, sensitive, confidential or

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proprietary data, and the integrity and continuous operation of our proprietary technology platform. While we conduct due diligence on these cloud providers with respect to their security and business controls, we may not have the visibility to effectively monitor the implementation and efficacy of these controls. Outside parties may be able to circumvent controls or exploit vulnerabilities, resulting in operational disruption, data loss, defects or a security event. Migrating to the cloud increases the risk of operational disruption should internet service be interrupted. While we have implemented business contingency and other plans to facilitate continuous internet access, sustained or concurrent service denials or similar failures could limit our ability to write and process new and renewal business, provide customer service, pay claims in a timely manner or otherwise operate our business. Any such event or failure could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.

Risks Related to Laws and Regulations

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.

PSIC 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. PESIC is subject to extensive regulation in Arizona, its state of domicile, and to a lesser degree, the other states in which it writes business. Our Bermuda based reinsurance subsidiary, Palomar Specialty Reinsurance Company Bermuda Ltd. (“PSRE”), 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 our business objectives.

Our U.S. insurance subsidiaries are part of an “insurance holding company system” within the meaning of applicable California, Oregon and Arizona statutes and regulations. As a result of such status, certain transactions between our U.S. insurance subsidiaries 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, the Oregon Division of Financial Regulation, or the Arizona Department of Insurance, as applicable, at least 30 days prior to engaging in the transaction and the California Department of Insurance, the Oregon Division of Financial Regulation, or the Arizona Department of Insurance, 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 any of our U.S. insurance subsidiaries fail to file a required notification or fail to comply with other applicable insurance regulations in California, Oregon or Arizona, as applicable, we may be subject to significant fines and penalties and our working relationship with the California Department of Insurance, the Oregon Division of Financial Regulation, or the Arizona Department of Insurance, as applicable, may be impaired.

In addition, state insurance regulators have broad discretion to deny, suspend, 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

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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 subsidiaries are 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 Arizona, 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 by any of our U.S. subsidiaries to maintain risk-based capital at the required levels could adversely affect their ability to maintain regulatory authority to conduct business.

PLMR US Equity

PLMR · 10-K · period ended 2021-12-31

Item 1. Business

Item 1A: Risk Factors

PLMR US Equity☆

PLMR · 10-K · period ended 2021-12-31

Item 1. Business

Item 1A: Risk Factors

PLMR US Equity