Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome from sunny Hannover to our analyst and investor call on our full-year results for the year 2025. As announced, our CEO, Clemens Jungsthöfel, and our CFO, Christian Hermelingmeier, will provide a brief overview of the business development in '25 and the outlook for the current year.

For the Q&A session, they will be joined by Claude Chèvre and Sven Althoff. It's now my pleasure to hand over to you, Clemens.

Thank you, Karl. Good afternoon from Hannover.

Let's start with our business performance '25, which was indeed very satisfactory. The group net income of €2.64 billion is a record result for Hannover Re, reflecting a sustainable increase in the earnings power of the group.

The proposed dividend of €12.50 for 2025 is a significant step-up of almost 40% compared to the previous year. Furthermore, the result is based on a very strong underlying profitability.

Our deliberate actions to strengthen the balance sheet increases our confidence in future earnings growth. We have achieved this by adding around €700 million to resiliency reserves, and by actively realizing losses of almost €600 million in our fixed income portfolio.

The sum of these effects is clearly higher than the total tailwind from the benign large loss experience, positive currency effects, and a lower-than-expected tax rate. We have continued to grow in 2025.

The underlying revenue growth in P&C was around 10%, clearly ahead of our 7% growth target. Including the impact of the refinement in the calculation of the non-distinct investment component, the FX-adjusted growth was 3.8%.

In Life & Health, we recorded favorable FX-adjusted growth of 6.8%. Moreover, the new business CSM increased in both business groups, providing a good basis for further earnings growth.

Also, our total investments have grown by 0.7%, driven by a strong operating cash flow of €5.7 billion. The fact that assets increased despite negative currency effects of around €4.5 billion and the redemption of a hybrid bond is remarkable.

The impact of large losses in P&C was clearly below our budget, driven by an overall benign nat cat experience. As previously indicated, we have used this opportunity to continue to realize losses in our fixed income portfolio and to add resiliency reserves also in the fourth quarter.

All together, the EBIT of €2.6 billion and the combined ratio of 84% in P&C reinsurance are based on a strong underlying earnings power. In Life & Health reinsurance, the profitability has been satisfactory as well.

The reinsurance service result of €903 million came in above the targeted level of at least €875 million. The new business generation increased by 22% to €755 million, including a favorable contribution in the fourth quarter.

The ordinary investment performance was very satisfactory. Against the backdrop of the overall strong profitability, we have realized another €270 million of fixed income losses in the fourth quarter, bringing the total loss realization to almost €600 million for the full year.

Hence, the return on investment of 2.5% is deliberately below our target to improve future investment returns and increase the flexibility in our investment portfolio. The capitalization of Hannover Re remained very strong with a solvency ratio of 256%.

This number reflects a strong operating capital generation of €3.7 billion and the successful deployment of capital for growth. In addition, the strong capitalization allowed us to reduce the level of hybrid capital and to pay a significantly increased dividend to shareholders.

The moderate decrease in the solvency ratio in the fourth quarter was mainly driven by our prudent reserve build. In the solvency regime, this was more pronounced in the fourth quarter compared to previous quarters.

Finally, we were able to keep our group cost ratio flat at a very low 3.2%. This will continue to provide us with an important advantage in a competitive market environment.

The dividend proposal of €12.50 on the next slide is a significant increase compared to the previous year. In line with our adjusted dividend strategy, the full amount will be paid as a regular dividend.

Furthermore, according to the targeted progressive growth of our dividend, this is also the new minimum level for the next year, reflecting our strong confidence in future earnings growth. At 57%, the payout ratio is in line with our target of around 55%.

The retained earnings of slightly above 40% will support future growth opportunities in a continued attractive market environment. Shareholders' equity increased by 10%, driven by the strong 2025 results.

A mitigating factor is the negative impact from currency translation within the OCI, the other comprehensive income. The CSM decreased by 3.1%.

The healthy level of new business generated by both business groups has been offset by negative currency effects. FX-adjusted, the group CSM would have increased by 4.4%.

The risk adjustment decreased by 6.6%, mainly driven by some model refinements in P&C, and again, by negative currency effects. Our long-term ROE performance highlights our ability to consistently provide shareholders with attractive returns, significantly above cost of capital.

Our ROE performance also screens favorably compared to peers. On top, we have achieved this outperformance with less volatility.

As you can see in the chart on the right-hand side, Hannover Re is well-placed in the top-left quadrant. Comparing the 10-year ROE performance, we have reported the highest ROE with the lowest volatility.

This will continue to be our ambition. All together, 2025 was another strong and successful year for Hannover Re, confirmed by the return on equity of 21.4%.

Just as a reminder, our successful participation in Viridium has contributed around €500 million to the equity position over time without affecting the IFRS net income. Given that the balance sheet has been further strengthened to support future earnings growth, the underlying performance for 2025 was even better.

On that note, Christian, I'll hand over to you.

Thank you, Clemens, and good afternoon, everyone. As you can see, our P&C business is growing nicely on a diversified basis, including a strong contribution from structured reinsurance.

The underlying growth is around 10%, well ahead of our 7% target. The reported top-line growth is masked by the refinement in our accounting, resulting in a one-off effect when comparing the 2025 revenue to the previous year.

The reported FX-adjusted growth was lower at 3.8%. As a reminder, the NDIC effect has no impact on earnings due to corresponding effects in the service expense.

The combined ratio of 84% is comfortably within the target range below 87%. The impact from large losses was €375 million below budget.

As explained in previous earnings calls, we have used this strong earnings position in 2025 as an opportunity to increase our reserve resiliency. Based on preliminary internal estimates, we expect the reserve resiliency to stand at around €3.2 billion at year-end 2025.

This means that the increase in reserve resiliency was significantly higher than the benefit from benign large losses. Hence, the underlying combined ratio is better than the reported 84%.

To complete this picture, this combined ratio also includes the strengthening of reserves for the Russia-Ukraine aviation loss and a prudent reaction to uncertainty around loss trends in US casualty. Together, I'm highly satisfied with the profitability of our property and casualty portfolio.

It enabled us to take a more prudent position on certain prior-year developments, to significantly increase the reserve resiliency, and to report a combined ratio well below our target. Finally, the combined ratio includes a discount effect of around 10%.

One reason why this number is higher than initially assumed is the increasing reserve volume in long-tail lines with a corresponding higher discount effect. The investment result reflects an increased ordinary income and our deliberate decision to realize losses in our fixed income portfolio.

The vast majority of these losses is allocated to the P&C reinsurance segment. The currency result was significantly positive at €233 million, driven by the weakening of the US dollar over the course of the first half year.

Just as a reminder, since Q3 2025, we have implemented an accounting hedge for the IFRS currency results, you should not expect larger impacts from recent movements in the exchange rates. The main contributor to the P&C result is the CSM release, reflecting the recent renewals in a very attractive market environment.

The experience variance includes our prudent reserving on the business earned from current underwriting years. This has mitigated the positive experience from benign large losses.

The run-off result has been positive in most regions and lines of business, but as explained, we have used the strong underlying profitability and the overall strong earnings position to add significantly to reserve resiliency, to strengthen the reserves for the Russia-Ukraine aviation loss, and to react prudently to the uncertainty around loss trends in US casualty. Putting this together, the run-off result was -€603 million, although the underlying run-off was positive.

Finally, the loss component from new business is quite low, confirming the attractive rate environment in P&C reinsurance. The growth in new business CSM of 12% reflects the favorable market environment and our success in the renewal period in 2025, resulting in a strong new business CSM of €3 billion.

In Life & Health, reinsurance revenue increased by 6.8% adjusted for FX. The growth is on a diversified basis as well.

The step-up in growth in the fourth quarter is driven by new business in US financial solutions. The reinsurance service result of €903 million is above our target and based on favorable underlying profitability.

The experience variance was positive in 2025, mainly driven by financial solutions. Assumption updates for onerous business and a more cautious position with regard to our morbidity business had a negative impact in the reporting period.

The investment result is based on a good ordinary income from fixed income. The recognition of an at-equity participation had a negative impact of €36 million.

The active loss realization in our fixed income portfolio amounted to €20 million. Putting this together again, the EBIT contribution from our Life & Health business group was €886 million.

Looking now at the IFRS 17 components of the service result, the CSM release is the main profit driver and within the expected range. The same is true for release in risk adjustment.

The experience variance is clearly positive, mainly driven by financial solutions. In traditional business, we have recorded positive and negative developments with an overall limited impact, a quite normal picture for a diversified portfolio.

The main drivers for the loss component are assumption changes for onerous business in morbidity. This is particularly driven by the critical illness business in Greater China, where we have updated our assumptions and took a more cautious positioning, reflected in an increase in the risk adjustment, mostly already in Q3.

The CSM development on the right side is clearly impacted by currency effects. The CSM generation, which includes the new business CSM and extensions on existing contracts, amounted to a favorable €766 million, based on a diversified contribution from financial solutions and our traditional business.

Changes in estimates were overall positive, driven by updated assumptions for our longevity business. In the isolated fourth quarter, changes in estimates were negative, largely due to model updates for US mortality, not driven by a changed view on US mortality assumptions.

All together, the total CSM would have increased by 3.4%, excluding the currency effects, ahead of our 2% target. The development of our investments was also very satisfactory.

The ordinary investment income reflects the continued rollover in a higher yield environment and a strong operating cash flow. In addition, the contribution from alternatives was very solid.

As mentioned, we have used the overall strong earnings situation to accelerate the realization of losses in our fixed income book in the second half. In total, we are looking at realized fixed income hidden losses of €593 million for the full year.

The corresponding higher locked-in interest rates will support a further increase in investment income in the coming years. With a modified duration of slightly below 4, the positive impact is somewhere between 10 and 15 basis points.

Please bear in mind that this is not the only factor having an impact on the development of our portfolio yield. Movement in yield curves and FX needs to be considered as well, and the development of those two factors in 2025 has been slightly negative for our yield projections.

Finally, the impact from the change in ECL and fair value of financial instruments remained moderate. Excluding the loss realization in our fixed income portfolio, the return on investments is at 3.4%, higher than our initial target of at least 3.2% for the year.

As a result of yield curve movements and our active loss realization, the level of unrealized losses on our balance sheet is still material at around €2 billion, but significantly lower compared to year-end 2024. To conclude my remarks, the business performance in 2025 was highly satisfactory.

The earnings position was strong enough to clearly outperform the initial group net income guidance and to strengthen our balance sheet with the aim to invest into future earnings growth. On that note, I'll hand back to you, Clemens, for some comments on the outlook.

Thank you, Christian. Future earnings growth brings us actually directly to the guidance for the financial year 2026.

Based on the strong performance of our business in 2025 and the outcome of the January renewals, we confirm the guidance for 2026 without any changes. We do expect further growth in our business.

The strong quality of our P&C portfolio puts us in a good position to deliver on the combined ratio target of below 87%. Based on a normal large loss experience, we should remain in a position where we actually can build resiliency reserves also in 2026.

The target achievement is not linked to a change in our prudent initial reserving approach. Based on the successful new business generation in 2025 and a healthy pipeline looking forward, we anticipate an increase in reinsurance service result to around €925 million in Life & Health reinsurance.

Furthermore, our strategic mid-term target for the CSM growth of around 2% remains valid. The return on investment is expected to reach around 3.5%.

Christian explained the major factors having an impact on this number, and we do feel comfortable to confirm it. All together, the balance sheet of Hannover Re is the strongest in history, and we are confident in future earnings growth even in a more competitive market environment.

This concludes my remarks, and we would be happy to answer your questions.

Great. Thank you for taking my questions.

The first one just on P&C reserving. Was the update to your Russia-Ukraine reserving, did you take more in the fourth quarter or was that comment related to action taken earlier in the year?

I guess on the reserving for the uncertainty for the US liability trends, are you seeing a deterioration in data points or is this just prudence? Then secondly, just on the topic of longevity.

I can see obviously it drove the positive CSM estimate change in 2025. When we speak to some of the primary companies, they are saying that the reinsurers generally have a more favorable view on longevity than they do.

I guess, firstly, curious whether you would agree with that statement. Then secondly, in the UK we saw the CMI 2025 mortality tables released earlier this week.

They're showing an improvement in life expectancy and that's over '24, which was already an improvement over the past couple of years. How do we square that sort of improving mortality trends in the data that we're seeing with Hannover Re, I guess, releasing reserves related to longevity?

Thank you.

Thank you Andrew. It's Sven.

I will start with your first two questions. When it comes to Russia-Ukraine, we have increased our reserve positions throughout the full year '25.

It was not a specific exercise which we only did in Q4. On the other hand, we added a low triple-digit number also in Q4.

The main reasons are coming from the aviation side where, as we had the High Court ruling earlier in the year. Now that more ceding companies are reporting their loss positions to us, we also see that the amount of money that is spent from a legal point of view dealing with the topics at hand is higher than we originally anticipated.

Those were the two main drivers for us putting the Ukraine reserve to a higher confidence level. When it comes to US casualty, it's really three factors we are looking at.

First and foremost, we can see a higher frequency of loss activity in the younger underwriting years. It's still difficult to do a full interpretation of what the triangles are telling you.

We, as had the situation where the courts couldn't really make any decisions for an extended period due to the COVID lockdowns. We expected a certain period of catching up with the cases that could not be heard during that time.

The data points we are now seeing seems to indicate that there is a little bit more of a trend over and above catching up than maybe originally expected. As we were in the position to have a more conservative view this year, it was really the combination of the data points we are seeing, using partially also the more conservative actuarial methods, we were moving more to the outer bound of the best estimate range.

Thirdly, certainly it was of course also an area where we did build new resiliency.

Yes, and maybe on your question on longevity. I wouldn't say that we see the longevity business more aggressively than our clients.

We have pretty conservative approach to longevity, and you can see that in the new business CSM. You will have seen that in the past two years our new business CSM hasn't been growing because of longevity, because we were having quite conservative view on the longevity trends.

Now, obviously, the fact that we have released a little bit of the CSM, this is related to our initial assumptions when we wrote the blogs, and these assumptions were still more conservative than our current assumptions. That's the reason why we have been able to release, year-by-year, some of the CSM into longevity.

Our view on longevity, I can tell you, is definitely a bit more conservative than what our competitors are doing right now.

That's really clear. Thank you so much.

Hi, good afternoon. I've got two questions.

The first one is just on the dividend, which clearly hugely up from last year. Increased the payout, it's a really good yield.

My question, please take it in the light that I'm delighted with the dividend, but just wondering why it's not up more when at the Investor Day you talked about an extraordinary results, potentially leading to special dividends. Just trying to understand how 2025 is not extraordinary.

You've had a much better return on equity than your target. I think if you added back the kind of things that have dampened the result, you probably would have doubled your return on equity target.

You've got this really strong balance sheet. If 2025 is not extraordinary, what would be?

The second question is given kind of the newsflow at the moment, just really interested in kind of war impacts on kind of anything that you can talk about. Are we safe to say apart from the conflict in the Middle East, it's probably been quite a light quarter so far?

Thank you.

Kamran, starting with the first question on the dividend, asking for the extraordinary definition as we also discussed, I remember, at the Investor Day. Our target is to deliver attractive returns in terms of ROE and of dividends.

Therefore, we increased already this year the payout ratio. This is a really good year for Hannover Re, but as we want to deliver also stably and continuously increasing results, and this is also true and stays true for the dividend.

I would refer back to the guidance that Clemens already elaborated a bit on, our outlook on the earnings for 2026 is also positive and increasing. If this comes as Clemens talked about and reconfirmed, and we are quite confident with the balance sheet and all the resilience we could add, also the dividend will go up again.

Of course, it's early in the year, but this to give you a bit of flavor of the outlook also for dividends.

Kamran, probably in addition, just take it also as a view on our outlook for business opportunities, for opportunities to deploy capital into P&C, Life & Health, and probably into investments. It's a bit of a balanced view between what Christian referred to as delivering attractive dividends, but at the same time making sure that we put the capital to work and deploy it for further growth.

Thank you.

As regards Q1 to date and the war, you're right that the loss experience in Q1 to date has been relatively light. We, of course, will give you the number in May, and the quarter is not over.

I would say from what we see today would speak for quite some underutilization of the budget for the quarter. That, of course, does not include any assumption on the war yet.

It's really too early to have a view here. There's obviously a lot of things going on.

Commercial shipping and commercial flying has more or less come to a standstill in that part of the world, and we have to wait and see what the market is prepared to offer from a war coverage point of view when that situation is safer again and is changing again. From that point of view, you know the heads of cover that are exposed.

Next to aviation and marine, of course, we have political violence, we have war on land. The longer the conflict lasts, classes like trade credit or political risk may come into play.

From that point of view, we are watching the situation very carefully. What we have learned so far from a damage point of view, it looks more like quite a bit of minor damage to various assets, but nothing very significant to date.

That, of course, can change any second.

Maybe, Sven, maybe talking about Life & Health, because as you probably know, we're market leader in the traditional business in the whole region in the Middle East, including the Gulf region. We also have a subsidiary, by the way, in Bahrain with 60 employees, and they're all well, by the way, just for information.

We're obviously in constant contact with these guys. We don't expect too much of claims out of the Life & Health portfolio, even though we have an exposure.

We do not cover active war, and we cover passive war obviously with our life policies, but with a certain limit, kind of a 28 days limit. It really limits our exposure then in the Middle East, even being market leader.

No issues from the Life & Health side so far.

Thanks, Claude.

Hi, thanks for taking my questions. Just on P&C, for the full-year new business loss component, I actually noticed that was better year-on-year, which was a bit of a surprise.

I was just wondering what was the driver of that? Was that a flight to quality or could some of the retro be playing into that?

Just good to get your thoughts on how conditions are impacting that. Then on the Life & Health side, the 903 print that you've done today makes the '26 guide of 925 look pretty breezy.

Do you think there's some conservatism in the '26 guide, for example? Thank you.

Shanti, on the loss component, I don't have a very big answer for you here. It is slightly lower compared to 2024.

That has to do with, of course, us continuously portfolio pruning where we don't like the going-forward profitability of the business. These are individual transactions.

It's not a trend I can talk about. It's the sum of many little pieces.

Shanti, on the Life & Health side, yes, we came in with 903. We planned 875.

Now the new plan is 925. I would say it's maybe slightly on the conservative side, but as and I think you were probably at the Investor Day, I showed you the Life & Health result is made of many, many assumption changes, model changes, etc., etc.

I would say the 925, I feel comfortable with it, but if it's coming better, yeah, would be great.

Cool, thank you.

Hi, afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions.

The first one's just on the reserve resiliency. At the Investor Day, you sort of alluded that the reserve resiliency was heading towards a peak level if you looked at it on various different metrics, but particularly sort of as a proportion of net reserves.

Clearly, the €700 million move we've seen this year is faster than the growth in the reserves. Just sort of thinking where that is as a proportion of net reserves and how you expect that to trend as a proportion of net reserves would be very useful.

The second one's just on the operating capital generation, the €3.7 billion pre-strain. Could you just give us a sort of indication of how much that is a clean number, anything we need to consider in that related to say the realized losses and so on, and again, sort of tying that into the capital distribution and the solvency movement as well?

Because that's a very strong number and €1 billion net capital generation post-dividend. If you could just talk to those moving parts as well, that would be very useful.

Thank you.

Thanks, Iain, for your questions. Happy to take them.

Starting with the reserve resiliency and to start with an indication where, and as said, this is a preliminary estimate, our own estimate. No, in May, we will, as usual, give you the result of the Willis Towers Watson review, this might change a bit.

We would lie at above 8% including the risk adjustment that we also book as kind of a prudent reserve in addition to the loss reserves. As said, and you're right, of course, in a very attractive and in good market environment, we would consider to add a bit more to the reserve resiliency.

Looking for the cycle to come, this might then go down. We are, as also indicated before, happy when it might be necessary in a given time to use some of the resiliency.

We don't have a limit there. If 2026 is according to plan there might be another edition.

As said, it's quite early in the year, let's see where we land in the end.

Iain, just to add to that, don't take the realized losses in investment portfolio of €600 million not as an indication that we have reached the ceiling, as Christian said. It's more to have both in the toolbox, and we actively use both as indicated the Investor Day.

This is also the fact going forward.

Absolutely. Elaborating a bit on the solvency ratio, the, yeah, operating capital generation at around €3.7 billion is clearly reflecting the very favorable margins and the new business.

Or you could see this also in the CSM development, especially in the new CSM build-up. Of course, the reserving actions are also reflected here, in the fourth quarter the development might not be as positive as you would expect just from the running business.

The reason is exactly that under solvency, the full model update and the update of the reserving view is done in the fourth quarter, it's a bit more pronounced building up the prudency here reflected in the operating movements in the solvency ratio. Of course, there's also a higher foreseeable dividend as we increased, as we also talked about substantially, the dividend.

This has already to be reflected as a foreseeable dividend in the solvency ratio. We talked about this also earlier looking at the 12 months movements.

We also repaid the €500 million hybrid bond in summer. Putting this all in the mix, I think that's a good explanation for where we stand at year-end 2025.

Perfect. Thank you.

Good afternoon. I just wanted to come back to the question around the Life Insurance Service Result or Reinsurance Service Result.

I understand what you're saying about maybe being slightly sort of conservative, but can you sort of just elaborate a little bit on the onerous element that we saw in Q4? That was much, much lower than what we've seen in previous quarters.

That's sort of question number one. I guess a little bit of a random question number two, just going back to last January in the California fires.

Noted in the Q4 movements, the gross loss has gone up, the net loss has gone down. Wonder if you could sort of comment a little on that.

Moreover, sort of thinking about the prospects for subrogation, which I guess is a subject that's gone a little bit quiet, but there are still companies in the US that have a substantial subrogation benefit already embedded into their own loss assumptions. I was wondering sort of what your latest thoughts are on that, and if so, sort of any likely timing of when you would expect to see any of that loss reserve reversed?

Thank you very much.

Maybe let me start with your first question on Life & Health with the loss component. The main component of the loss component, as we were writing, it is really coming from the Greater China morbidity business.

As you probably recall, we took the biggest hit up to the third quarter. This is why in the fourth quarter we had quite a little add-on to the loss component.

The way we look into that, and I showed it in the Investor Day, you remember, we're looking into all these businesses throughout the year, and we decided to look into the morbidity business in Q3, mainly in Q3, and that's where we had all these model changes and assumption changes. This is mainly the reason why we have a very little add-on on the loss component in Q4, because we didn't do too many analysis in the fourth quarter.

That's all. What you should look at is really on an average add-on of the loss component quarter-by-quarter.

That's what I was showing you last time, remember in Frankfurt. I think we said it's around €80 million per quarter, you end up more or less at the same level.

This is also our assumption going forward. We simply don't know where it's going to come from, because if we knew it, we would have to take the hit already in principle.

Then

on the wildfires, the composition of the loss has slightly changed over the year, we are showing a little bit more from our ILS fronting activities, which is increasing our gross number, but as we are not having any retention on this, so that's therefore not increasing the net position on the fires. When it comes to subrogation in general, we of course observing that situation, but our approach has been that we would only book subrogation when received by the ceding companies.

From that point of view, we have not taken any general subrogation haircut when we look at that loss, and so hopefully over time there will be a little bit of an improvement.

Oh, good afternoon. Thank you so much for taking my questions, just a couple.

On the investment yield, I was wondering if you could give us an update on the running and the reinvestment yield? Then kind of related to that, the guidance of 3.5% ROI for 2026 and then the remaining kind of €1.6 billion of unrealized losses, is there a chance that we're going to see something similar to what we've seen in 2025 in 2026?

Then on the risk capital for US hurricanes, I just noticed there's a slight decline there and I was wondering if that's kind of cycle management or something else? Thank you.

Thanks for the questions. To start with the investment yield, the reinvestment yield is currently slightly above 4%, and the book yield is just shy of 3.6%, of course, also driven by the realization actions.

We talked about that already in the Investor Day a bit with more in detail. Looking at 2026, I feel quite confident with this 3.5, but there's a lot of dynamic in capital markets and we need to see how it develops.

Therefore, it's far too early to talk about additional actions. Of course, the optionality to realize even more hidden losses from our investment portfolio is always there, but it's far too early to really consider this.

On the capital allocation for US hurricane, I don't have the full answer for you on that question. We have grown in US hurricane, on the other hand, we have grown other country peril combinations more quickly, therefore, I would assume that we have positive diversification effects.

We also did buy a little more retrocession on the non-proportional covers last year, and then, of course, you have to be mindful of the exchange rate development. I would assume it's a combination of the three.

Thank you.

Oh, hi there. Thanks for taking my questions.

It was really a question and a clarification, both on the Life & Health side. The first question was just in terms of how you see the competitive environment going into this year in terms of, I guess, in particular the new lines that you're looking to grow in.

The second, the clarification was coming back on the CSM, the change in estimate number. It was positive for the full year, but it looks like in the fourth quarter that positive element has come down.

Could you just describe, was that a negative element relating to a longevity charge, or is there something else going on there, or have I got it the wrong way around? Thank you.

No, no, you got it the right way around, absolutely. There was a negative element in the fourth quarter on the CSM, which is a change in estimates, and this negative element came from the US.

As I told you before, we're looking into our models, we're refining our models every now and then, and we're fine-tuning them. Usually when you do that in big portfolios, these model changes, they have positive and negative impacts.

It happens just that in the fourth quarter in the US, our model changes that we have then had all a negative impact. It is not that we're changing our view on the assumptions on mortality in the US at all, by the way.

It is really just the fact that we had two or three model changes that we implemented in Q4 with a negative impact on the CSM. There's no problem at all, by the way.

This on your second question. The first question, the competitive environment on the lines where we think that we can grow.

The Life & Health market is competitive, and I don't want to tell you again what I was telling you many, many times in the Investor Day. It is competitive.

Where do we see potential to grow? We see potential to grow where we're not already market leaders.

I would say this is in the traditional business in the US, UK, we see potential to grow, but there is obviously competition. We see potential to grow in longevity outside of the UK, for what I just told you before, UK is highly competitive, and we're probably a bit little bit less competitive than our competitors over there.

Longevity out of the UK, we see possibilities to grow. Then last but not least, we also see possibilities to grow in financial solutions, in particular in Europe.

These are the areas where we do see potential to grow, but I tell you the truth, Life & Health is competitive because we're competing against professional reinsurers. There's only a handful of them.

The market is small, we will see how it goes. I'm positive.

Thanks very much. Thank you.

Yep.

Yes, good afternoon. Thank you and great set of results.

Thank you. Just from my side, one question is more on the dividend and the signal it sends.

The other question is on P&C re growth. On the dividend, you mentioned Clemens that the 40% odd growth, which is obviously not a new strategy since last few months now, but the growth you said shows your confidence about future earnings.

Now, just from the outside, I can realize the 82% underlying combined ratio is pretty strong, and we've talked about that, but so given where the pricing cycle is, the terms and conditions movements, the market dynamics in reinsurance, how should we think about this strong dividend growth and what you're trying to tell the market about or what are you trying to tell equity investors about the state of the market and Hannover Re's position in it? I presume it's positive, but just a little bit more on that would be very helpful.

Second question, as I said, was on growth. When I see say 9, 9.5, 10% kind of growth coming in underlying basis, few quarters and also in ex FX in 4Q, and I'm just wondering if you're kind of mid-single-digit excluding structured ambition for or target for '26, could that be a bit conservative?

Could that need a bit of review given how strong 4Q was? Just on that, please.

Thank you.

Vinit, I'll start probably with the first one on the dividend, and then let Sven complement on the outlook for P&C. Generally, and probably alluding to Kamran's question on 55%, well, in this case, 57%, why not more, and that is basically the reason that we still believe that this is an attractive market environment, both in P&C and that we have also a healthy pipeline on the Life & Health side.

It's really that view. You will not see us chasing top line.

We are clearly committed to our disciplined underwriting approach here. It's more that we still consider this to be an attractive market environment, it's still a rational market.

As we were quite happy with the outcome of the 1/1 renewals overall, there is plenty of growth out there. We do believe, and just to reiterate, Vinit, that our lean operating model, which does come with the lowest cost ratio of 3.2%, that it gives us room to grow our book, to capture business opportunities even in a more challenging market pricing environment.

That gives us a competitive edge where we do believe that we still can gain market share, and that's basically all feeding into our thinking about the dividend policy that clearly we didn't want to change now from October, no need there. We will see how the year plays out.

We will always, of course, consider that in light of the dividend for the 2026 year. When it comes to the growth guidance on the P&C side, Vinit, please remember that this is a 2026 number.

With us renewing 60% of our business at 1/1, we achieved a growth of 3.3%. We were talking about the clients basically taking the savings and keep them to themselves.

They are not translating this at this moment in time into more buying, lower buying, wider buying. From that point of view, we would still stick to the mid-single-digit range we have given for the traditional business for the year.

Over the cycle, we would be more bullish than that, but we are guiding only for 2026 in that respect. From that point of view, you should not expect us to change the guidance.

Great. Thank you very much.

Hi. Good afternoon.

I just wanted to ask firstly about the Russia-Ukraine reserve additions and I think some other large losses that were included as well. It looks like you've added at least a billion in 2025.

Just keen to know if any of that has gone into the resiliency reserve, if it's €3.2 billion. Then, in terms of the P&C new business CSM outlook for 2026, you've obviously got a lot of the business on your books already and should have line of sight as to the outlook for that new business CSM, including kind of reduction in retro as well.

Are you confident that the 2025 number, you can grow that in '26? Then finally, if I may, and I'll try and phrase this as best I can, but I'm just interested in kind of not so much how AI can enable you to do lots of things internally and drive efficiency, I'm more interested in how AI and hyperscalers, for example, are kind of redefining other industries, and that's likely to gather pace over the coming years.

What kind of impact do you see that having in terms of the kind of provision of integrated risk solutions from reinsurers? Thank you.

Let me start with the first two questions, James. On the CSM development, you've seen the growth, the 3.3%.

The corresponding risk-adjusted rate reduction we were reporting is -3.2%. That would imply that the CSM development, of course, neutralizing currency effects, should be relatively stable year-on-year when it comes to the new CSM generation.

On Russia-Ukraine, I didn't fully get your question, because the movement we are talking about here is outside of what we are talking about when it comes to the €700 million on the resiliency build side. As I said, in the fourth quarter, we added a low triple-digit number to this claims complex, but maybe you can repeat the question if that is not meeting

the Sure. Thanks.

point. Thanks for the opportunity.

Across the year, you've added about a billion, at least a billion, for Russia-Ukraine. I was keen just really to know if any of that was included in the resiliency reserve, or is it effectively all claims-related as opposed to increased conservatism on IBNR?

Thank you.

Thanks for clarifying that. We have not added a billion in 2025.

We have added a mid-triple-digit number, but far away from the billion, on a net basis, and none of this is forming part of our resiliency numbers.

Okay. Thank you.

I'll follow up on HR later. Thank you.

Then

I'm happy to start on your AI question, but I'm also inviting colleagues to add. When it comes to P&C business, you know that the time horizon of what we are doing is 12 months.

From that point of view, of course, we are following how AI is changing industries and what may that mean from a risk landscape point of view. Given the time horizon of our business, we don't have to look 5, 10 years into the future to come to decision-making today.

Things clearly will change, and the risk landscape will look a little different. Whether that is translating into other products that we can sell our clients, I would say time will tell.

Of course, our clients, the insurance companies, expect us to be a strong partner also when it comes to having a good understanding of what AI is all about and how we can introduce that into our discussions and/or products if that is what is required.

I can add on. I think it's going to change the insurance landscape, probably much more than the reinsurance landscape.

For us, there is an add-on or, let's say, a positive value of AI, which is that we can ingest unstructured data much easier. This improves obviously our modeling.

This improves also our ability to do real-time monitoring of our business, and makes us simply much, much better, I'm absolutely convinced. AI has a positive impact on our risk management and risk selection, definitely.

I invite also my colleagues. I'm looking at Clemens, Christian.

James, any specific question on what we are doing on AI? As Sven said, we are in very close contact with our clients on this, what they are doing on AI, both in their existing portfolios, on new products.

You will have seen some of the sort of second-order impacts on data centers, for example, or on cyber. Clearly, that will have an impact on some of the existing products.

As Sven said, this is an ongoing topic. For our operations, I think we spoke about that briefly also on the Investor Day.

Yes, it's clearly, as Claude alluded to, it will be a game changer in some of the areas, but we don't do AI for the sake of it. We try really to integrate AI into our digital journey, clearly, as you mentioned, James, on the operational side.

It gives us, given that we have the focus on reinsurance, a bit of an edge to really try to implement AI as part of our digital journey when it comes to infrastructure, data, etc. I think the amount of homework that one has to do before you actually can effectively use AI is probably underestimated.

Doing that foundational work is very much top of mind at the moment.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Hey, there. Thank you.

Just coming back to the reserve provisions, you mentioned they were in there for US casualty and Ukraine. It sounds like, to your answer to James, none of the Ukraine reserves have gone into that resiliency addition, but presumably most of the US casualty ones has, it's in the 700 addition year-on-year, unless it's coming in the 2025 underwriting year.

Or are you saying, because it's adverse news, it's not boosted it? Then when the reserve data comes out, will the Ukraine addition be shown in aviation?

The reason I ask is that that would put the '22 ultimate loss ratio at more than, say, 200% for that line. I'd have thought, in that reaction, there'd have been a steeper payback, and just sort of trying to wonder why it hasn't happened.

It's a bit of a stretch for a second question. In your projections, it sounds like there's potential for more resiliency build in 2026 given your guidance, and yet you've got a really strong solvency, you've got really strong reserves.

At what point do we see the profits that's really underneath the bonnet is really what I'm trying to get to? Thank you.

I start with your first line of questioning, Will. When it comes to Ukraine, as I said, none of the increase has formed part of our resiliency build, this is all best estimate what we are talking about here.

Not all of the increase, but quite a bit of it is in the aviation line of business. When you look at it from a segment loss and combined ratio point of view, I'm afraid your assumption is correct.

The reason why this has not yet translated into more payback also has to do that when you look at it from a reinsurance point of view, relatively little of that loss is yet paid, and it took ceding companies a relatively long time to present their loss position. From that point of view, we are in the midst of having those discussions with clients.

On the overall loss number, to just give you an idea, only 30% of this is paid for our portfolio at this stage, still a relatively low number. That maybe as an explanation on Ukraine.

When it comes to US casualty, as I said, the development was spread between moving the best estimate, moving to more conservative actuarial method, and building prudency. Therefore, it's in various buckets.

It's not all in the resiliency. Partly it has ended up in resiliency, but the bigger part is just best estimate movement, including the more conservative views of actuarial model which we have not put towards the resiliency bucket.

By the way, it's also spread between older underwriting years, but also the younger underwriting years. Therefore, part of that development is also in the current service result.

I'll I'll take the question on the resiliency build. Thank you for for the question, because it gives gives us the opportunity to clarify probably how we think about the the P&C earnings 2026.

The way we've looked at the combined ratio and when we say we're going to build further resiliency, it was just a reiteration of the fact that despite it might be a bit more challenging market environment, we will and have not changed our approach to our initial prudent reserving on the P&C side. Hence, in absolute numbers, with the growth of the book, we will build further resiliency.

In relative numbers, and Christian alluded to it, the 8. plus, we don't know exact number yet, but it's it's it's in relative terms.

If you include the risk adjustment, it's it's above 8%. We feel comfortable with that level.

Same is true for, and and to reiterate again, on the investment side, it's more an opportunistic toolbox that we are using, and we we are fully committed to deliver on the guidance 2026. Having said this, if we have an extraordinary good year, like we had in '25, we are also willing to adjust or lift our guidance as as we did for '25.

Don't take that as an absolute message, more in in in the sense of we will see how it goes and how the year how 2026 plays out, and we'll make a final decision in Q4. As always, Will, we will be very transparent about it.

Yes, I think we've covered everything. Don't want to reiterate the message that this was not only an extraordinary good year 2025.

I think we've really taken the opportunity to build a rock-solid balance sheet, to increase the resiliency further, and particularly, to be able to show and demonstrate further earnings growth in the future. Thank you all for your questions, and have a good day, stay safe, and stay healthy.

Bye.