2025 Report (EssentGroup ESG 2025)

A MESSAGEFROM OUR CEO

At Essent, we are dedicated to creating a sustainable future by fostering a vibrant company that prioritizes our customers, employees, and communities while delivering value for our shareholders. Our strong financial results in 2024 continue to reflect the strength of our operating model, the efforts of our dedicated team and the partnership of our nationwide customer base.

We maintain a thoughtful approach to corporate responsibility with Service, Innovation, Community and Integrity at the forefront of our mission. We are proud to be a best-in-class partner to the housing finance industry by offering private mortgage insurance (MI), reinsurance and title insurance and settlement services.

Since our inception, Essent MI has helped more than 3 million homebuyers become successful homeowners or to retain homeownership in communities across the country. In 2024, Essent also donated nearly $1.1 million dollars to over 30 worthy causes across the country that support Children, Education, Health and Housing.

I am pleased to share this year's Corporate Responsibility Report. I hope you find it insightful to read how our corporate governance and dedication contributes to creating stakeholder value and advancing our core mission of providing affordable and sustainable homeownership opportunities in communities across the country.

Mark A. Casale

i

Employee Engagement, Development And

AT ESSENT .............................................. 01

About Essent Group ............................................................................ 02

Our Values And Board Oversight ........................................................ 03

How We Combine Our Values And Corporate Responsibility Focus 04

2.0INVESTING IN OUR EMPLOYEES ............... 05

Compensation And Benefits ............................................................... 06

Performance Management ................................................................ 09

Equal Opportunity Employment, Diversity And Inclusion ................. 10

3.0BEING A COMMUNITY PARTNER ............... 11

Employee Matching And Volunteering .............................................. 12

Our Commitment To Giving Back ....................................................... 13

Creating Pathways To Homeownership ............................................ 15

4.0OPERATING WITH INTEGRITY ................... 16

Leading With Integrity ......................................................................... 19

Delivering On Our Customer Service Promise .................................... 19

Risk Management And Responsible Investment .............................. 20

5.0ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT ............ 22

Energy Efficiency................................................................................. 23 Impacting The Environment ............................................................... 23

6.0APPENDIX ................................................ 24

Trademark Attributions ....................................................................... 25 Legal Disclaimer .................................................................................. 25

About Essent Group

Essent Group Ltd. (NYSE: ESNT) is a holding company (collectively with its subsidiaries, "Essent") offering private mortgage insurance, reinsurance, and title insurance and settlement services to serve the housing finance industry.

We provide private capital to mitigate mortgage credit risk, allowing lenders to make additional mortgage financing available to prospective homeowners. We also offer mortgage-related insurance, reinsurance, and advisory services through our Bermuda-based subsidiary, Essent Reinsurance Ltd. In July 2023, Essent acquired a title insurance underwriter and full-service title agency to add title insurance and settlement services to our offering.

At Essent, our mission is to serve as a trusted, best-in-class partner in the U.S. housing finance industry. Having a home provides a sense of security, well-being, and belonging. The very core of what we do in our MI business enables more people to buy their own homes, creating a positive ripple effect throughout their communities.

Our mortgage insurance subsidiary, Essent Guaranty, Inc., is a strong and trusted counterparty in the mortgage lending community, serving approximately 1,500 lenders and helping more than 3 million homebuyers become successful homeowners or reducing the cost of homeownership in communities across the country.

Our title business strengthens our offerings to our customers, serving agents, and lenders across the country with title and settlement services.

Mortgage Insurance

Mortgage insurance plays a critical role in the U.S. residential mortgage market by facilitating secondary market sales and by providing lenders and investors with a means to diversify their exposure and mitigate mortgage credit risk while extending affordable homeownership to borrowers. By providing MI, we provide an opportunity for homebuyers to become successful homeowners.

Title Insurance

Title insurance is essential to the real estate closing process for most transactions in the U.S. involving real property mortgage lenders. We provide our customers, which include lenders, agents and servicers, with underwriting and settlement services to protect the title customer's rights and interest in the subject real property against financial losses and legal issues arising from defects or problems with the property's title.

Our Values

Integrity, service, innovation, and community-our core values drive us to uphold the highest ethical standards, deliver solutions that raise the bar, and serve as responsible corporate stewards, making a meaningful impact on the people and communities we serve.

Integrity.

We adhere to high ethical standards and are committed to doing what is best for our policy holders, employees and shareholders.

Service.

We are focused on managing risk and dedicated to serving as a strong and fair counterparty to the housing finance industry.

Innovation.

We are motivated to generate solutions for our customers that raise the bar within our organization and our industry.

We are dedicated to responsible corporate stewardship through

philanthropic, environmental, and social initiatives.

Under the direction of our Chief Executive Officer and the

Board of Directors, we are committed to supporting

initiatives that are relevant to the company and

align with our dedication to responsible

corporate citizenship that positively impacts

the people and communities we serve.

How We Combine Our Values And Corporate Responsibility Focus

We Believe Our Employees Are Our Greatest Asset.

We provide many opportunities to support, grow and challenge our employees, including:

• •Competitive benefits

• •Career development opportunities

• •Flexible work arrangements

• •A friendly and professional work environment dedicated to equal opportunity and inclusion

Investing in our employees enables us to attract and retain best-in-class team members who act like owners.

We Enable Homeownership And Invest In Communities.

Having a home provides a sense of security, well-being and belonging. The very core of what we do (MI) enables more people to buy their own homes, creating a positive ripple effect throughout their communities. The expanded opportunity we provide to homeowners helps them accumulate the wealth that comes with homeownership.

We also employ people who give back to the communities where they live and work. Our employees volunteer in schools, daycares and nursing homes. They serve on the boards of universities, high schools and religious institutions. They run marathons, build houses and serve meals at homeless shelters - all within their communities.

In addition to offering service opportunities and a match program to our employees to encourage and enhance charitable giving, Essent also has its own charitable giving program, which focuses on supporting education, children, health and housing.

We Are Prudent Risk Managers And Operate In A Sustainable Way.

As professional risk managers, we are experienced at analyzing the consequences of our actions. Planning for the long-term through a measured approach resonates throughout our business.

At the same time, we strive to operate in a sustainable manner to the benefit of our broader environment.

Compensation And Benefits

Our employees are the key to our long-term success. We encourage our employees to cultivate their entrepreneurial spirit and embrace our customer-first focus to continuously innovate our technology, our products and our processes to not only help our customers grow their businesses, but also to grow their businesses better.

We have employees located in offices in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, New York, Virginia, Missouri and Bermuda.

We believe in attracting and retaining talented people who want to do meaningful work and do it well. We design compelling job opportunities that align with our mission, foster work-life balance and offer competitive compensation and benefits that promote the health and financial security of our employees and their families.

OFFICESin Pennsylvania, North Carolina, New York, Virginia, Missouri, and Bermuda

625 EMPLOYEESacross the United States and Bermuda

Fair Wages And Benefits.

Employee engagement begins at the time of hire by providing our employees with a total rewards package inclusive of a fair and livable wage, medical, dental, vision, prescription, life, short & long-term disability coverage and paid time off to all full-time employees.

Recruitment Process.

The process through which we recruit employees has an impact on the quality and timing of filling positions. Open positions may be filled internally through our applicant tracking system. External candidates are primarily identified through job boards such as LinkedIn®, Indeed®, our employee referral program and candidate sourcing. Additional recruitment resources include college placement services, trade journals and professional recruiting firms.

Employee Retention.

Year over year, we attract, develop and retain our employees by offering a competitive total rewards package and assigning measurable business objectives. This is imperative to a successful and sustainable business model. Our "do the right thing" culture has enabled us to achieve ~95% retention rate over the past 5 years.

We believe in education and saving for education. Each employee's new baby is granted a $1,500 gift card to be deposited into a 529 plan of their parents' choice to help families start saving for education.

EMPOWERING FINANCIAL WELL-BEINGShare Grant Program.

We strongly believe that all employees should make good decisions, do the right thing and act like owners, which is why we frequently grant equity awards to our workforce.

Essent Babies.

Adoption Assistance Program.

We support the building of families and offer an adoption assistance reimbursement program to all full-time employees.

Employee Assistance Program.

We provide an Employee Assistance Program and Caregiver Support Program for all employees and their dependents' wellbeing. This benefit offers confidential telephone and online support, as well as counseling sessions, referrals and practical help for a variety of work-life balance issues. Topics covered include substance abuse, caregiver support, marital or family issues, financial and legal support, mental illness, stress, domestic violence, health education and disease prevention.

Commuter Benefits.

The use of mass transit helps to reduce our carbon footprint and we encourage the use of mass transit when possible. Our headquarters is strategically located within walking distance from Amtrak and local train lines. We offer WageWorks®, a pretax monthly benefit to help defray mass transit and parking costs.

401(k) Options.

Essent's 401(k) Plan contributes generously to the retirement savings plans of our U.S.- based employees. Our plan is offered to all full-and part-time employees. The non-discretionary matching contribution is an amount equal to 100% of the first 5% of an employee's eligible compensation. Employees are eligible to participate as of their date of hire and all contributions immediately vest. Our 401(k) offerings include funds that have a sustainability score, which assists employees in making personal investment decisions in alignment with their values. Our employees value this benefit. As of December 31, 2024, our participation rate was ~85%.

Town Hall Meetings.

Our CEO holds "town hall" style calls and in-person meetings with employees throughout the year, providing an opportunity for employee questions to be directly answered by senior management. We believe that this format facilitates strong and productive conversations across our organization.

EMPLOYEE EQUITYrewards employees with equity, promoting ownership

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Disclaimer

Essent Group Ltd. published this content on April 02, 2025, and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed via Public Technologies (PUBT), unedited and unaltered, on April 02, 2025 at 19:57 UTC.