Thank you, Operator, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us today and welcome to the ASR conference call on our results for the first six months of this year.

Now on the call with me today are Ingrid de Swart, our CEO, and Ewout Hollegien, our CFO. Ingrid will kick it off with the progress of our strategy and the highlights of our financial results.

Ewout will then talk about the development of our financials, capital position, and Solvency position. After that, we will open up for Q&A.

Now we have ample time planned for this call, but we will stop sharply at 10:30 the latest. Please observe a limit of two questions so that everybody has a chance to ask questions.

Finally, as usual, please review the disclaimer that we have at the back of the presentation for any forward-looking statements that we may make. Having said that, Ingrid, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Michel. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us.

It's a pleasure to welcome you to my first results call as CEO of ASR. I look forward to engaging with you as the investment community and building a constructive dialogue with our shareholders and analysts.

Together with Ewout, I'm proud to present our strong first half 2026 results. Let's turn to slide 2, showing our strategic progress.

Over the past years, we have successfully pursued our strategy of profitable growth to create long-term value. Following a string of smaller bolt-on acquisitions over some years, the transaction with Aegon the Netherlands was transformational and has put us into various leadership positions.

On the 2nd of July, the legal merger of the life entities came through, and this marks the final step and a successful completion of the integration. At the same time, we've already started the next integration.

The acquisition of Bovemij has been closed on the 1st of July. Now I will discuss the Bovemij deal in a minute, but it's clear that this deal is another proof point of ASR as a disciplined consolidator in the Dutch non-life market.

We also showed discipline in the pension buy-out market. The market has clearly become more competitive, particularly in larger transactions, but so far this year we have announced two smaller transactions.

Importantly, only at terms that make sense for us. The progress we have made across the businesses gives us confidence that we are on track to deliver on our 2024 CMD commitments.

Over the first half of this year, we report a record OCC and a record operating result. We also see strong commercial performance with continued growth in non-life and pensions.

Together, these results give us confidence in achieving our OCC target of €1.35 billion for this year. Lastly, we continue to operate from a position of capital strength.

That enables us to invest in value accretive opportunities, such as Bovemij and pension buy-outs. At the same time, we are committed to offer our shareholders an attractive return, and to that end, we announced an interim dividend per share of €1.39, an increase of more than 9%, and we completed the €175 million share buyback which we announced at the full year results.

We made significant progress so far this year. Let's turn to slide 3 and look at the financial performance.

Our OCC increased by more than 7% to €773 million. This was driven by a strong performance in P&C, contributions from the pension buy-outs completed in 2025, and the continued delivery of cost synergies.

These items more than offset the increased investment in new technology and AI. The Solvency II ratio increased by 4 percentage points to 222%.

This reflects strong capital generation and the resilience of our balance sheet in volatile market conditions. Our operating result rose by almost 10% to €901 million, and as a result, our operating ROE reached over 15%, comfortably above our target of more than 12%.

In non-life, the combined ratio for P&C and disability was 91.6%, better than our target range of 92% to 94%. This reflects, amongst others, favorable claim experience in P&C.

Our organic growth rose 6%, supported by targeted price increases in group disability at the end of last year. In pension DC, we have seen solid inflows, and the annuity inflows showed positive momentum.

This was driven by renewed focus on the customer journey and offering attractive retirement solutions. Overall, we remain well on track to deliver our organic growth ambitions for this plan period.

Let's move to slide 4 and look at our non-financial KPIs and how we continue to create sustainable value for all stakeholders. As this slide shows, our investment portfolio is already meeting its targets for both carbon footprint reduction and impact investments.

We continue to make good progress in reducing emissions across the portfolio, and I'm pleased with that. However, I should also mention that the significant decline is primarily driven by improved and updated data regarding the government bond portfolio.

Just to be clear, this concerns not our own data, but data from external data providers. Our sustainable reputation improved further in the first six months of this year, and we are pleased with the increasing recognition we get from society.

Our other non-financial metrics are also progressing well. I'm pleased to see that our customer satisfaction, measured through NPS-I, has already outperformed our 2026 target.

This reflects the investment we have made in both technology and service delivery. By using AI in customer interactions, we can handle routine tasks more efficiently and give our people more time to focus on what matters most: personal contact with customers and helping them when they need us.

Lastly, our strong ESG profile continues to be recognized by a broad range of international sustainability indices and benchmarks. Let's move to the next slide and discuss the acquisition of Bovemij.

Small bolt-on acquisitions are, for many years already, a firm part of our strategy to create value. The acquisition of Bovemij is a very good example of how we deploy capital in a disciplined way.

This deal strengthens our number three position in non-life and gives us a unique presence in the Dutch mobility sector. Through Bovemij, we gain access to the BOVAG ecosystem, and in addition, we will establish a joint venture with BOVAG for the distribution activities.

This gives us a strong and embedded distribution platform in the mobility sector. Bovemij adds roughly €400 million of annual premiums and further strengthens our number two position in the Dutch motor insurance market, while also reinforcing our leading position in non-life more broadly.

The deal was closed at the start of July, and we expect the integration to take about a year and a half. Actually, this year already, we have planned for the legal merger with our non-life entity.

From a financial perspective, the transaction fits squarely within our investment framework. We expect the deal to exceed our 12% return hurdle and contribute around €25 million of run-rate OCC after the integration period.

As mentioned in our press release in January, we expect the impact on our Solvency II ratio to be around -3.5 percentage points. Finally, I believe Bovemij is a good example of a broader trend that we may see materialize in the Dutch P&C market in the coming years.

Beyond the three largest players, which together already account for around 65% of the market, there is a long tail of smaller insurers. For some of these companies, the investments required to remain compliant with increasing regulation, digitalization, data capabilities, and AI may become increasingly difficult to absorb on a standalone basis.

The minimum size for insurers to run their business in an economically viable way just continues to creep up every year. The Bovemij acquisition demonstrates that we are an active and disciplined consolidator.

Over the past years, we have built a strong track record to successfully integrate acquisitions and realize their full potential. We have the capital to continue to pursue attractive opportunities.

With that, let's move to the next slide and let me talk you through our business segments. Firstly, non-life, where we delivered another strong performance.

Premium income increased by 6%, clearly above our organic growth target range of 3% to 5%. Growth was primarily driven by targeted pricing actions in group disability, as well as new volume.

Premium growth is really strong in H1, helped by some single premiums and price increases in portfolios that mainly have annual upfront payments. The premium growth in the second half of the year is expected to be somewhat lower, but on an annual basis, we still expect growth towards the upper end of the 3% to 5% target range.

Combined ratio for P&C and disability came in at 91.6%, exceeding our target range of 92% to 94%. P&C was particularly strong with a combined ratio of 89.9%, which benefited from favorable claims development from prior years, and there were also some one-off expense benefits.

Weather-related claims increased compared with last year, but remained within our semi-annual budget. In disability, the combined ratio came in at 93.3%.

This reflects the pricing actions in the second half of last year, particularly in group disability, to address higher incidence rates related to psychological absenteeism. I should also mention that the uncertainty around the challenges remain, and the backlog at the employee insurance agency has worsened and is something that we monitor closely.

We will reassess our assumptions as part of the usual year-end review and will not hesitate to take further actions where necessary. Lastly, health continued to perform steadily.

The combined ratio was 99.6%, while our customer base grew to more than 700,000 customers. Premium volume increased by 10%, supported by both pricing actions and higher benefits received from the Dutch equalization contribution.

With that, let's move to the next slide and discuss our pension business. In DC pensions, inflows increased to €1.5 billion in the first half of this year, and we remain well on track to achieve our medium-term target of €8 billion in cumulative inflows.

Supported by favorable financial markets, our DC assets under management increased by 14% to €34 billion. Annuities, our pension decumulation product, gains momentum.

Inflows increased by 38%, driven by growing volume of maturing DC assets and an improved customer journey. Our focus remains on retaining these assets through high customer satisfaction and competitive pricing.

Based on current developments, we are on track to exceed our medium-term cumulative annuity inflow target of €1.8 billion. In pension buy-outs, we remain highly disciplined.

During the first half, we successfully executed the [Grolsch / Koninklijke Bavaria?] transaction, adding over €200 million of assets under management.

The Ecolab transaction, representing a further €150 million, has already been announced for the second half of the year. We will maintain our value over volume approach and will only pursue transactions that meet our return requirements.

While competition has increased, we remain confident in achieving our €8 billion buy-out ambition, although part of the opportunity may materialize beyond 2027. With that, let's now turn to our fee-based businesses, where acquisitions and cost synergies supported another strong performance.

Fee income increased by 33%, driven primarily by the addition of HumanTotalCare to our distribution and services segment. HumanTotalCare operates in the growing market for occupational health and reintegration services.

With absenteeism levels elevated, we see attractive opportunities across the broader employability value chain. The HumanTotalCare contribution also supported the operating result of fee-based business, which increased by 32% to €115 million.

Next to the acquisition, this was mainly driven by the realization of cost synergies from the mortgage platform migration. In mortgages, production amounted to €3.6 billion.

Volumes were lower than last year as we see spreads tightening. Competition is particularly strong from banks, especially at the shorter end of the maturity spectrum.

Nonetheless, we remain disciplined in pricing and only originate mortgages that meet our desired spread levels. Overall, our fee-based business continued to demonstrate their value as scalable, capital-light growth platforms for ASR.

With that, I will hand over to Ewout, who will take you through our capital generation and Solvency position.

Thank you, Ingrid. Great to have you all on the call and I hope everyone enjoyed a nice summer break.

A CFO cannot be more happy when the results are not only strong, but also a very clean set of numbers. Let's move directly to slide 10 and start with the capital wheel.

This slide shows what we mean by putting the balance sheet to work. We continue to operate from a strong capital position.

This gives us room to invest in growth, while the balance sheet remains robust. We deploy capital in a disciplined way that includes organic growth, optimization of the investment portfolio, the Bovemij acquisition, and pension buy-outs.

In every growth we achieve, value over volume is the starting point. Our level of capital generation increased to €773 million.

Our business performance gives us good confidence on delivery towards the €1.35 billion target for 2026. Capital return remains attractive as well, with 9% interim dividend per share growth and the completion of the €175 million share buyback announced at the full year results.

In short, the wheel is turning. We invest in profitable growth, we grow OCC, and we increase capital return.

Now let's zoom in on the development of Solvency on slide 11. As this slide shows, the largest contributor in Solvency development is OCC.

OCC added 13 percentage points to the ratio. The market and operational movements had only a small negative impact of 1 percentage point, where the positive impact from mortgage spread tightening and real estate revaluations were net offset by negative impacts such as the downgrade of Belgian government bonds and the growth of the equity portfolio.

After capital distributions, the ratio lands at 222%. Looking ahead, there are two relevant items to keep in mind.

Those do not differ from what I've mentioned at the full year results. One is the Bovemij acquisition, which is closed in July, and two is the removal of the DA as part of the legal merger of the life entities.

As you all know, we have chosen not to apply for the DA in the partial internal model of ASR Life, knowing that the DA has to be eliminated anyway when EIOPA 2020 kicks in in the beginning of 2027. Combined, the impact of those two points is around 7 to 8 percentage points.

Then, in the first half of 2027, the implementation of the EIOPA 2020 review kicks in, and it is still expected, by the full year, to add around 10 percentage points. Overall, we remain in a very strong position with ample room to support profitable growth and attractive capital return.

Let's turn to the next slide for further detail on our OCC. The main driver for the 7% increase in OCC was higher finance capital generation.

This reflects the contribution from the pension buy-outs that we closed in 2025. We also benefited from strong revaluation in equities and real estate over the past year, which are compensated by spread tightening throughout the fixed income portfolio.

The non-life contributed positively with a €55 million uplift. In P&C, performance was strong with a combined ratio below 90%.

Disability showed a solid performance in H1, proving portfolio discipline and at the same time knowing uncertainty remains given the situation at the UWV. Next to the strong business performance, the increase also includes a lower business strain of around €20 million.

This was the result of an increased upper limit of our net cat cover in H2 last year, and though it does not make a difference for the full year, we see an outperformance from H1 to H1 due to this timing effect. Actually, this half year is a solid base to think of also going forward.

Segment asset management shows an uplift of €15 million, mostly driven by the migration of the mortgage portfolio in H2 last year. The increase in distribution and services segment mainly relates to the full contribution of HTC, which has been reallocated from holding to distribution and services after we acquired the remaining stake of 55%.

For the holding and other segment, we see a couple of elements driving the €22 million decrease. Firstly, as we are investing into new technology and AI.

Secondly, a modified treatment of the employer's disability arrangement. Lastly, HTC does no longer contribute to the holding segment.

Before we head to the operating result, let's look at the outlook for our full year OCC. The OCC of €773 million for half-year 2026 should be your starting point.

Then, if we add the €594 million OCC from the second half 2025, you should take into account a few elements. Combined ratio in H2 last year set within our targeted range.

Growth of the business, increased investment return, and cost synergies should provide an additional uplift, and those are offset by headwinds from the impact of the introduction of the PIM to ASR Life, the transfer of Knab mortgages to BAWAG, the timing effect on the SCR strain as just explained, and additional investments that we are doing in AI and other technology. All of these developments combined should roughly be a wash.

That would keep the OCC for the second half a touch below €600 million and the full year 2026 OCC north of the targeted €1.35 billion. Let's turn to the next slide and talk about the operating result.

Given that the most underlying drivers in the operating result are the same as OCC, I will focus on the drivers that are different from the OCC analysis. The operating result increased by 10% to €901 million.

The life segment delivered a strong increase of €70 million, mainly driven by a higher CSM release, reflecting, amongst others, the higher release of CSM due to the capitalization of cost synergies in H2 2025 last year. The positive experience variance observed in pensions was offset by a lower contribution from associations compared to last year.

Lastly for life, we realized a higher investment margin from the 2025 pension buy-outs. The increase in operating investment and finance result is higher than the increase in OCC finance capital generation because the tightened mortgage spreads led to a lower liability liquidity premium under IFRS, but does not impact the VA under Solvency.

In non-life, the increase in operating results mainly reflects higher investment income. For the insurance results, the business growth is offset by slightly higher combined ratio compared to last year.

The developments of our fee-based business and holding are equal to OCC. Let's turn to the next slide and talk you through our updated Solvency sensitivities, slide 14.

As mentioned during the full year call, we would give an update on our sensitivities that also reflects the removal of the dynamic adjustment, which now actually already has been removed after the legal merger on the 2nd of July. As a reminder, the DA was an Aegon-specific mechanism that corrected for mismatches between our own portfolio and the VA reference portfolio via the required capital.

What you now can see in our sensitivities is that they stay benign and our Solvency resilience remains strong, also after the removal of the dynamic adjustment. The current sensitivities are actually now more aligned with market practice.

Let me for now focus on the three spread sensitivities, since those sensitivities are mainly impacted by the removal of the DA. For government spreads and mortgage spreads, the outcome is quite intuitive.

If spreads widen, valuation go down, and for both investment categories, risk is low, and therefore, limited compensation in required capital. Netted, a negative impact on Solvency from spread widening, and the other way around from spread tightening.

For credit spreads, the picture is different. Here, a widening actually leads to an uplift in Solvency, and there are two drives for that.

Firstly, in a European context, our fixed income portfolio has a relatively large allocation to mortgages. The VA reference portfolio has a relatively large allocation to corporate bonds.

When credit spreads widen, the VA reacts more strongly than it would on the basis of our own portfolio. Secondly, is the application of the IAS 19 for the valuation of the pension scheme liabilities for our own employees.

The IAS 19 discount curve is based on a corporate bond yield curve, wider credit spreads therefore also have a positive impact on our Solvency. Overall, the sensitivities to our balance sheet remain very manageable, and in real life, spread movements in coffees, credits, and mortgages have historically been positively correlated.

That means the different direction in spread sensitivities also provide a natural offset. Let's move to the next slide, where we discuss our investment portfolio.

This slide shows our robust and high-quality investment portfolio with over 80% allocation to fixed income assets, including mortgages, derivatives, and cash. The fixed income bond portfolio covering government bonds, credits, and alternatives is a high-quality and well-diversified portfolio that I'm very comfortable with.

We believe that mortgages offer historically a very attractive risk-return profile. The average loan-to-value is around 50% and credit losses remain below 1 basis point.

From a risk perspective, this is a very strong portfolio. As Ingrid mentioned, new mortgage production was lower, that is mainly due to the current interest rate environment, which increases customer appetite for shorter maturities, where there is more competition from banks and resulting in lower spreads.

Let's move to real estate and equities, where performance was very strong. In the first half year, real estate revaluations were up almost 3%, and this was mainly driven by residential, which was up around 5%, helped by the lowering of the transfer tax we discussed at full year stage, and remains the backbone of the portfolio, together with our rural portfolio, that also continues to show solid performance.

In equities, next to positive revaluation, we used the recent geopolitical volatility to expand our portfolio a bit at attractive buying moments. That is another example where having your own asset management and being really on top of the market creates real value.

Let's look at the flexibility of the balance sheet on the next slide. This slide shows that we continue to have ample financial flexibility, and that is really supported by the composition of our balance sheet.

Financial leverage is at 21%, interest coverage ratio well above our internal limit, and on top of that, we still have significant debt capacity. There is room for more than €2.5 billion RT1 and Tier 2 issuances.

As you can see on the bottom right-hand side, our debt maturity schedule remained nicely spread over time. From whatever angle you look at it, the balance sheet gives us significant financial flexibility.

Let's turn to my last slide and end with our HoldCo liquidity. At half year, the HoldCo liquidity position is temporarily elevated, reflecting the cash upstream needed for the Bovemij acquisition.

The cash was already remitted before the half-year closing date, while the actual cash-out took place the day after. The additional remittance came specifically from our well-capitalized life entities, and that's also reflected in the Solvency ratio for ASR Life, which still remains very strong.

OCC good, group Solvency good, cash at HoldCo good, legal entities Solvency good. What could I say more?

I think this is a good moment to hand it back to you, Ingrid, for the wrap-up.

Thank you very much, Ewout. This brings us to the end of our presentation.

Let me briefly close with the key messages. First, we have pursued profitable growth and strengthened our platform.

The integration of Aegon the Netherlands is now finalized, and the acquisition of Bovemij was completed in July. Those are important steps in creating a leading insurer in the Netherlands.

Second, we delivered a solid performance across all business segments. Our OCC is on track to reach the €1.35 billion target in 2026.

Third, our capital position remains very strong. The Solvency II ratio increased to 222%, reflecting strong capital generation and well positioned to pursue value accretive opportunities.

Finally, we will present our updated strategy and new targets at our Capital Markets Day on the 1st of December of this year. With that, we are happy to take your questions.

Looking forward to answering them.

Hello, good morning. Indeed, Cor Kluis from ABN AMRO ODDO.

Congratulations with the results, especially I think the organic growth, the premium growth in non-life was quite high, better than expected. Could you elaborate a little bit more on that, in disability and P&C, could you split it in price increase and volume?

How was the churn? Are you satisfied with the price increases in disability, especially given the WIA situation?

That's a question on premium growth in non-life, organic. Second question is about M&A.

Ingrid, you as new CEO, of course, doing acquisitions has always been an important part of ASR, you will probably also will continue that in the future. Could you give your, yeah, first views and context and way of looking to M&A?

Probably an continue way of doing business, but your own view on that. Last question is about the WIA.

I get it that of course you will do an update in Q3, but yeah, could you give some comments about, na ja, what's going on, how the government is acting, what your interactions with the government indicate, what to get the backlog in order, etc.? That were my questions.

Thank you.

Good morning. Thanks, Cor, for those questions.

I will start with answering the question around M&A and then Ewout will take care of the P&C and disability questions that you posed. Thanks for the compliments as well, Cor.

We're also very happy with the clean set that we presented this morning. I've been part of this company for almost seven years, and M&A has been an important part of the strategy and an important source of growth for years.

I think that the Aegon the Netherlands integration and deal was really transformational to ASR, and we are really proud that we completed the integration within the three years and delivered on all the targets that we promised. More importantly, also we're very successful in bringing two cultures together.

I'm also very happy that while we have just closed down the integration and really completed it, we have already started the next integration of Bovemij. I love the blueprint of Bovemij that well fits into what we have always said, that in the non-life space, particularly in P&C, there may be opportunities in the coming years because of the 65% that's divided between the three biggest players in the market.

There is a tail of smaller players, and we see now that Bovemij is, I think, a perfect proof point of that it's quite difficult for a smaller P&C insurer to stay economically viable to do the investments into digitalization and AI and to remain relevant to customers. That's why I'm very happy that we were able to have such a nice deal together with BOVAG on Bovemij, and we are very keen to explore additional opportunities.

I would say, as expected, no change here, but looking forward to creating more opportunities. The same goes for the financial investment return point of view deals, while we also always have looked at life and also funeral.

They are also very keen and interested in buy portfolios, both in life with the back books that have predictable cash flows, but also in the funeral. We still believe that there's one big insurer that we think may come to the market at some point in time, and we would be keen to have a look at that as you can imagine.

In the last couple of years, we've also required a range of smaller distribution companies, such as also HumanTotalCare that we mentioned in our presentation today, and we also are of continued interest to add those to our portfolio. That's how I would look at it, looking forward to all the opportunities feeding forward.

With that, please, Ewout, can you do the P&C and income?

Cor, on the premium growth, indeed we were very happy with the strong growth in non-life that we have shown, 6% 6% growth. When we look underlying, we see a 4% growth in the P&C market, we were able to grow in the middle of actually the target range that we are having of 3% to 5% and at the same time having a very strong combined ratio, definitely very happy with that.

In disability, we grew even 8%, and what we see there is that the price increases that we pushed through as a result of the developments in group disability, which I will answer after this question, actually resulted in less losing customers than we actually were expecting. As a consequence of that, we actually saw that the increase in disability rose to 8%.

Good to mention is that we see the increase mostly in group disability and also a bit in sickness leave. What that also means is that we have more customers that actually do annual payments, we do, as a result of that, expect that that growth in disability flattens a bit in the second half of the year.

With the strong growth that we are presenting today, we are having the confidence that we can land somewhere in the higher end of our targeted range. Then on disability, definitely an important topic to answer as well.

As you all know, in group disability and as I think also the market is seeing, in group disability we are observing elevated incident rates, which is mostly driven by mental illness and also long COVID, a broader market trend and something we also observed last year. That was also the main reason for repricing our business significantly in group disability for the year 2026.

When we actually look today into our portfolio, we see that the payments that we are doing, the claims that we are having, is actually more or less in line with the actuarial assumptions that we are having. This, in a way, proves the effectiveness of our portfolio discipline and also of the repricing.

At the same time, and Ingrid was also already referring to that, we do see that the situation at the UWV, the Dutch employee insurance agency, is further deteriorating and that their backlog is also increasing. The risk that comes with that is that we might not have the full view on the inflow of disabled people, as not everyone is assessed yet.

The second order effect can also be that reassessments are executed less because of this backlog. This could mean, compared to the past, that individuals return less often back to work, and are also less often reclassified into a group which is not expected to return at all because they are lifetime disabled.

In that situation, actually the payments are no longer covered by the insurer, but by the government. What we are doing to actually solve that backlog is that we, together with the Dutch Insurance Association, are in very close contact with the UWV and the government of Social Affairs, and we see definitely solutions there.

It might require, we don't know that, exactly time, and also change in legislation. What we will do is actually bringing all those developments, the conversation that we are having, the risk that there might be some delay in the inflow and in the reassessments, that we bring that all together as part of the annual review that we are doing for all our actuarial assumptions in H2.

We will definitely look at this in a conservative way, as you know us, in considering further actions. That's actually the situation where we are looking at today.

Very clear explanation. Thank you very much.

Hi, thank you for taking my questions. First one, just on the non-life OCC.

I know you touched on this in your comments, but can you just give a little bit more detail on the year-on-year SCR development that you saw in 1H 2026? I guess what drove the differences year-on-year?

I think you said first half is a good base to project off going forward. How do we think about the second half then in 2026 versus the second half in 2025?

Just picking apart those moving pieces would be really helpful. Then secondly, are you able to give us a sense of the amount of investment in technology and AI that you are running through the holding company cost line in the first half, what type of investments these are in, how we should think about this level of investment going forward, and I guess when should we expect to see the benefits flow into the results?

Thank you.

Good morning, Andrew. Thank you for your question.

As a former CTO, I will take the AI and technology question. You should think about tens of millions.

Ewout, can you take the OCC question?

Absolutely. We already call it internally the net cat question, because it's raised every day.

Maybe to start with what we now see in H1 of 2026 is really kind of the normal level of what we should expect. What happened is that given the continued growth that we had in the P&C portfolio, we actually saw in H1 of 2025 that the exposure levels temporarily exceeding the coverage assumptions underlying part of our net cat program.

As a consequence, we saw that additional Solvency capital was required during the first half of 2025 until the reinsurance program was adjusted at year-end. The subsequent update to that program released this additional Solvency capital requirement in the second half of 2025.

As a result, we benefit from lower capital strain in the first half of 2026 compared with the prior year period, and this created that positive year-on-year effect. Again, the level of H1 is normal.

What it does indeed mean is that around, let's say, €20 million, that's around the number, we expect around €20 million less capital release, or €20 million higher strain in H2 compared to last year. That was also part of the OCC bridge that I provided, that is included in that.

That's one of the reason that we expect more or less to land at the same level on OCC in the second half of the year as last year. Hopefully that helps, Andrew.

It's really clear. Thank you.

Thank you very much. I have two.

One is on the real estate and the other one on reinsurance. On real estate, you said 3% and in residential, 3% in real estate, 5% residential, I think, and solid in rural.

In your 13% OCC increase, how much was that from real estate, or is it somewhere else? How much more could we expect from real estate in the second half?

Then on reinsurance, you just said you've got a higher strain due to the higher exposure numbers. Is there a benefit from buying more reinsurance, or did you decide not to buy more reinsurance?

I was just curious. Thank you.

Yes, thanks for those questions. On real estate, what we have as a kind of the total return assumption in real estate is a pre-tax return of 5.5%.

Every revaluation that is actually exceeding that number, and the 5.5% is also including the direct yields, everything that is outperforming those assumptions is not part of the organic capital creation, but is part of the market and operational developments. That's why I also mentioned in the kind of market and operational developments there was some positive effect from the revaluation of real estate.

In the second half of the year, we are neutral in our view on real estate, we see still attractive direct yields, revaluation more or less a neutral view. Then the second question, in buying reinsurance, the way we are looking to reinsurance is actually always in two ways.

One is what is effective from a cost of capital perspective, we assess the reinsurance program from a cost of capital perspective. That's one element.

Also what we like, just as ASR being predictable, is that because of our reinsurance program, we also have a performance that if there is kind of cats happens, that our performance remains also strong in that type of situation. With those two kind of criteria in place, we are actually happy with the reinsurance program that we are having today.

We don't foresee to further expand our reinsurance program. Maybe you can free up some Solvency, but then it comes at a really high cost, and from a cost of capital perspective, that's then not really interesting.

Brilliant. Thank you.

Hi, everybody. Thank you very much.

Two questions which maybe more for Ewout, but just firstly, you gave that bridge on OCC. It sounds like a lot of the elements that neutralize OCC in 2H are not what you would apply to operating profit.

I'm kind of thinking that the expansion you had in operating profit, will that be more normalized? If you could talk about some of the one-offs in 1H that we should not repeat in 2H for operating profit.

Actually, just digging into one really large amount of detail, apologies, but the other line in the life results, which went negative, I think that's where you mainly earn your DC fees. Can you explain what happened there and what we should expect in that line going forward?

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Farooq, for the questions. I think like you guided already, these are typical questions for Ewout, I would say.

Farooq, I think you're right. When we talk about the strain in P&C, the benefit compared to last year was not part of the IFRS operating profit that we presented.

The fact that that will be normalized in H2 will also not be part of the operating profit. Net net, one could say that that amount of €20 million is not normalized in an operating profit basis.

You're definitely right on that one, Farooq. I think your other question was also relating to the operating profit, and then mostly the other result.

What we actually see in the operating profit of the life segment is two elements that is worth mentioning. One is indeed a lower other results.

That has to do with the fact that in H1 last year, we had a couple of associations, participations in the life segment, that really made a strong performance and that landed in the other result, and that is not there in H1 2026. That is actually compensated by an positive experience variance, and positive experience variances mostly also have to do with the expense level that we assume under IFRS versus the expense level that we were actually seeing in the life segment, and that resulted in the positive experience variance.

There are actually two elements that more or less offsetting each other: lower contribution from participations, which was very high last year, with good, strong experience variance, mostly driven by a little bit of mortality and the other part is expenses in the experience variance.

Just to follow up as well quickly on that, in non-life, you also benefited, didn't you, in the combined ratio from non-recurring elements? What's the size of that?

That was 5 million. The offsetting effect of that 5 million was, by the way, in holding and other.

There was kind of the offsetting effect. There was 5 million benefit in non-life, 5 million lower result in the holding and other.

It's more or less neutral for the second half of the year.

You're implying that 1H is kind of a run rate in operating profit?

That's exactly why I'm so happy as a CFO that I not only present strong numbers, but also a very clean set. Definitely.

True.

Thank you so much. Thank you.

Yes, good morning. Actually, the first one is on the clean OCC.

Could you give us kind of the clean run rate for H1? I think you had some prior years provision release in non-life and also one-off expense benefits, just wondering how much it is on the clean basis.

The second one is on disability. If I remember well, last year, you lost clients after the repricing put through in 2025.

Now the churn is quite limited in H1 2026. Are you kind of reaching a point where clients are becoming less sensitive and you could be, yeah, more active on the pricing into 2027?

On disability, given all what you said on the backlog and the repricing, do you think you can maintain a combined ratio in the range of 92% to 94% for the disability business, given what you know currently? Just the final one on the pension buyout.

You've done two small deals. I was wondering how you see the pipeline for the rest of the year on the pension buyout.

Thank you.

On the 5 million of, sorry, on the OCC, run rate OCC, that was the question. The release that was mentioned was only 5 million on the expense side, but we wanted to flag that because you actually see that the expense ratio goes down 1.2% in P&C.

That's a high number, and that's why we want to flag that 5 million was kind of have to be seen as a one-off. Again, the compensating effect is in holding and other.

With that, you can also see this as a run-rate number. The SCR strain is in a run-rate number because of the net cat program at the right level, but also this is a run-rate number.

That's on the OCC H1. Then, if I understand your question correctly, on the pricing and whether we can push even more price increases to the market and that they will easily accept that, well, that's would be lovely if the market works like that.

I think, in all fairness, we do see that it is a hard market, you can definitely ask the margins that you want to achieve. At the same time, there's also competition, also corporates can also go to the UWV to insure themselves, and I think there you will probably see the most competition out of it.

What we have said is we see uncertainty, and as you can expect from us, that we will address that uncertainty in a conservative manner, and then it's up to the clients to decide whether or not they want to stay with us. That is the position that we are taking when it comes down to this business.

Will that keep us in the target range somewhere around 94%? When we look today, that's actually the case.

Again, we have seen that uncertainty that I described given the backlog at the UWV, and that is something that we will assess in the second half of the year. Definitely, when we look today, we do see that the portfolio is performing in a solid way.

Thank you. Then the last question, Benoît, around the buyout pipeline.

We still believe that the market opportunity of €20 to €30 billion is there. We also think and see that a part of that is likely to materialize over a longer period than we initially anticipated.

Market competition is increasing after Achmea entering the market, and we see that Athora is willing to play the game, and we also see that returns are coming down. However, we really remain disciplined in pricing, and are very true to our value over volume principle, and will not deploy our capital if we can't make our 12% hurdle rate on these deals.

We see room for us in the small and mid-sized deals, proved by the two announced deals that I mentioned before. We still believe and expect to be able to take our fair market share over the market of the €8 billion of the €20 to €30 billion market in total, but we do believe that it will extend beyond 2027.

Thank you.

Perfect. Good morning.

Thanks for taking my questions. Firstly, on AI, where do you see the biggest benefits coming through within AI?

Which segments? I think previously you mentioned health as a easy win.

Then kind of related to that, the combined ratio, Ewout, you mentioned there's 1.2 points of benefit from a reallocation of expenses. It feels like that's a run rate, like you said, your combined ratio 92% to 94% seems like it's going to come down just of the reallocation of expenses, maybe some AI on top, you should be running a little bit lower than that range.

Is that my correct interpretation? Then just last question on longevity reinsurance, is there still more capacity to do that based on what you've got on the books?

Thank you.

The last part I didn't get fully, Nasib, but I will answer. The one-off was not 1.2%, it was a part of that 1.2%.

Around 5 million, and I think that's around 0.5% or 0.6%, that was kind of the one-off that we saw in the expense ratio of P&C. That is just to clarify that.

Sorry for not being clear. Whether or not that results in a kind of structural lower combined ratio, I think that's too early to say.

It's something that we also will assess in with respect to the Capital Markets Day. In all honesty, and we also have that dialogue in the past, we do see that the Netherlands is a well consolidated market, and at the same time, there is still a lot of competition.

Having a combined ratio at the low 90s is already very attractive from a return on capital perspective. Whether or not the combined ratio can be structural lower, that's really a question mark and not something to answer during this call.

Thanks, Ewout. Then I will take the AI question.

Thanks for asking such a nice question, because I really like this subject as you all know, I think. You were mentioning already the health part of our business.

That's the part where we started experimenting with AI. We used health as a nursery for the whole company.

Why? Because we were in the middle of an integration with Aegon the Netherlands.

Health was not in that integration since Aegon didn't have any health, so that was one. Two, we were able to have a lot of direct customer contact there, a lot of data.

We built some use cases there, especially in the customer contact area, and that's a very good area to start because there is a lot of customer contact. We were able to really develop those use cases a bit further through, we have seen, that was your other question, that when you combine AI with very well adoption by people, because it's 30% around technology, 70% is about people, processes, and also culture, we see if you do combine that in a correct way, and a way that really creates value for businesses, that we see an increase in customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction, and we see costs go down.

That's a very important proof point that we have seen. Of course, as you might imagine, we have a lot of businesses outside of health that can benefit from the same.

We do see that there is ample opportunity to really scale this from health towards all the big business segments within ASR. We see that not only operational effectiveness is an important driver for ASR towards the future driven by AI, but we also do see that customer experience also really benefits from AI, digitalization, and automation.

As one would expect, we have a focus on creating long-term value, and we see the combination of people with technology as an important driver for this. We truly believe that that is an accelerator for our strategy feeding forward if we can successfully combine the technology, AI, and people components with each other.

We have programs in place to drive this successful adoption and also build a lot of proof points within the company. I'm really looking forward to telling you the whole story on the 1st of December of this year at the Capital Markets Day, because there's so much to AI, technology, and how you can really place it in the middle of your businesses that it would be a shame to just have a couple of minutes more to talk about it.

Perfect. Thank you, guys.

The last question, Ewout, was around longevity reinsurance, what's the capacity?

Sorry, that was the one I didn't get. We are currently in the middle of assessing to do additional longevity reinsurance.

Also to give some context is that we do see longevity reinsurance on one hand as an important tool to optimize actually the insurance risk that we have in our portfolio, because in the whole ASR book, longevity risk is the largest insurance risk that we have on the balance sheet. Simultaneously, it also provides a balance sheet optimization opportunity against attractive costs.

When we look to the current portfolio, roughly €50 billion of our liabilities has longevity risk in it. A part of that risk is already being mitigated, let's say, a sixth, by a natural hedge that we are having between longevity and mortality with the funeral book that we are having.

A third is something that we already have reinsured in the past. Of course, we also think about this more going forward, that we might add in the future additional Dutch funeral business, and then you also want to have some longevity risk still on your balance sheet.

I think with that in mind, roughly €10 to €15 billion of remaining liabilities is really applicable for longevity reinsurance, and that will probably be separated into several tranches, if any. I think general rule of thumb is that a €5 billion deal will bring around roughly 2% to 3% level of Solvency benefits at group level, and that is currently still our stance, mostly driven by a low risk margin.

That's actually where we are, in the middle of assessing it. We see that the price of the Solvency benefits that we mentioned in the past seems still more or less be the case.

Good risk management, attractive from a cost of capital perspective, and we hope to give further clarity on it somewhere in H2 whether or not we enter into a longevity deal.

Perfect. Thank you very much.

Hi, morning. Thanks for taking my questions.

The first one was just on the fee business. I'm just trying to get a feel for the underlying growth in the fee businesses.

There's been a bit going on in terms of resegmentation, HTC, the mortgage transfers, just trying to get a feel if you can give us some sort of feel for the underlying growth rates that you're seeing. Also on the operating expenses in the asset management segment, which went down year-on-year, if you give us obviously synergies is part of that, but is there anything we sort of need to factor in in terms of the cost-income ratio outlook for asset management?

Then on the P&C segment, just trying to think about the impact of Bovemij on the combined ratio, just looking at the OCC guidance sort of implications that might have a bit of a negative impact on the combined ratio for H2. Again, if you could give us any sort of feel for the headwinds that it might provide to the combined ratio going forwards.

Thanks.

On the fee basis, indeed, we saw an increase in the result of our fee businesses. Actually, the two main drivers there.

One is the HTC business, that we acquired the remaining 55% stake. As a consequence, it actually moved from a participation that was part of holding and other fully to the fee segment.

The total contribution in the fee segment on the OCC level, net of tax, is around €15 million €15 million. The other contributor, €15 to €20 million, the other contributor is actually the synergies that we realized from migrating the mortgage portfolio of Aegon to the ASR platform.

That resulted in the lower expense base that you are referring to, roughly also roughly €12 million is what we are seeing on a lower expense base, as roughly €20 million of contribution coming from that. That's actually on the fee-based business that we are seeing.

I think the second question was on the combined ratio of Bovemij. The combined ratio of Bovemij, what we already mentioned during the full year, we don't expect a material contribution from Bovemij in 2026 already.

That's because we added actually a portfolio that needs to be repriced, but even more importantly, where synergies needs to be realized so that you end up with a kind of healthy P&C portfolio of Bovemij. As we integrate from end of 2026 onwards, you really will start seeing benefits kicking in from 2027 onwards, and the full amount from 2028 onwards.

Two questions if I may. Firstly, thanks for the guidance towards non-life premium growth kind of moderating back into the 3% to 5% range.

A lot of that turns on the disability market. My question there is whether ASR would be willing to kind of perhaps go below the 3% to 5% target range, particularly in full year 2027, if it's not possible to address kind of issues in terms of the disability market and gain visibility on claims costs on which to build appropriate pricing?

Then secondly, thanks for your earlier comments on M&A, those are helpful. More specifically, do you think the opportunity set is opening up a bit more than recent years, and is that mainly at the kind of smaller end of the spectrum in terms of what you're seeing?

Then finally, could you outline your thinking on business expansion outside the Netherlands? Is that still mainly for holidays?

Thanks.

Thanks, Farquhar, for your question. I will answer the last two questions around M&A and abroad and then Ewout will take your first question.

Starting with the abroad still for holidays question, ASR is really focused on becoming the leading insurer in the Netherlands. I'm really happy where we are today, but we do believe that we have a lot of organic growth opportunities, but also see that there is further consolidation possible and will occur in the Dutch market, and we are more than willing to participate in that.

That's, I think, quite clearly we continue to believe that has not changed, that it's incredibly difficult to find a compelling business case for ASR to buy another insurer outside of the Netherlands. Really focused on the Netherlands.

Then to your question around P&C and especially the longer tail of smaller insurance, like I said, we are really happy with Bovemij being a blueprint. We do believe that with the current revolution going on around AI, technology, digitalization, also changing customer behavior, and the investment money that needs to be put into a business to successfully meet the standards that are nowadays normal for P&C players, that's incredibly difficult for the smaller companies to do that on a standalone basis.

We are happy and thinking that the blueprint of Bovemij will have new transactions in the coming time.

Farquhar, on your question around the disability growth and are we willing to accept growth below actually our targeted range, the simple answer is yes. The reason is that we strongly believe in kind of the value over volume, and that every business that you write needs to deliver on the right return.

That's why I also mentioned we will definitely look at the whole situation more on the conservative side and take that into account, for example, in our price levels. If that means that, yeah, we lose more clients and that we then will come below kind of the 3% growth in 2027, then that is what it is.

We also kind of have to make a margin, and that is how we are always in the market. For the long run, we believe that is actually the right position also to have as an insurance company, because that makes you also predictable for advisors and for clients.

Great.

Thanks.

Yes, thank you, just one question from me. If we look at the good trends especially in the finance capital generation, both in non-life, but particularly in life, how should we look in terms of the outlook on this line?

How do you see this trend continuing next foreseeable future? Thank you.

I think if I understand your question correctly is how do we look to the trend on the finance capital generation in OCC?

Yeah. Now

what we see actually in the portfolio also in H1 compared to 2025 is that, on one hand, we saw actually spreads were tightening a bit. Because of that, you see a spread tightening.

Small spread tightening we have seen in mortgages, spread tightening in coffees, and also spread tightening in credits. That brings you a somewhat lower return, for example, compared to the full year 2025.

At the same time, we saw positive revaluation in real estate, more than expected in our total return assumption. We saw good developments of equity markets, and that all contributes actually to a higher investment margin.

If we look going forward to our finance capital generation, we expect that that will kind of develop in the same direction as we have seen over the year in the first half of 2026. No really worries there.

It all, by the end of the day, always depends a bit on how markets will develop.

Thank you.

Yes, hi. Quick follow-ups if I may.

The first one is on the longevity. We'll get more clarity maybe in the second half, maybe you can do a deal, but looking at your Solvency ratio, three years out, it looks very high, building up quite a lot.

Is that fair to say that actually you don't need to do longevity deals at this stage given your strong capital position? The second thing, follow-up again, is on the buyout market.

Could you differentiate between Achmea and Athora, because as far as I'm aware, maybe I've missed it, but we haven't seen a lot of large deals as last year. Do you find that it also takes, even though there is competition in pricing, it takes more time for the pension funds to take the decision, and are there also softer factors than pricing that could make that things come back to ASR, or do you think that at the end of the day it is a lot more pricing, it will be more Achmea and Athora battling it out and you focusing on the mid-sized deals over the next 12 months?

The third question is on non-life. Could you give us, specifically for the P&C combined ratio, the 89.9%, what is the percentage benefit you got from the prior-year reserve releases?

Maybe it was given earlier, I'm not sure. I think that you said that expenses was -1.2%, but if I could have the PYR, that would be great.

Thank you very much.

Thanks, Jason. You called it follow-ups, but I think you asked, there was one follow-up and two new questions that you raised.

Let me try to give a clear answer to that. On the longevity part, I think that's the beauty where we are looking at today.

We don't need longevity reinsurance from kind of a position of weakness, because we need Solvency. Now we are in a strong Solvency position, and we only want to do longevity reinsurance because, on one hand, it is good risk management, an important risk that we have on the balance sheet you can offload.

That's one element that we take into account. The second element, just as important, if you can do this against the right prices and you see that your cost of capital can become close to zero of such a deal, that makes it also from a balance sheet optimization attractive.

That is the reason that we are considering this. It's just good balance sheet management, good risk management, and that is the main driver, and not because we need Solvency.

The second element, on the non-life, how much reserve release? That's a simple answer, thanks for that, it's actually negligible.

This is a real strong underlying number. There's the 5 million that we discussed with which has an offset of the holding, but it's a clean number that we present here today, which is very strong and we are very happy with.

Then on the buyout market and how that is developing, indeed, we saw H1 2025, Athora and ASR both winning quite some deals. H2, Athora have won a lot of deals, a lot of activity in the buyout market.

H1 of 2026 is a bit less, and at the same time, we see deals happening and also ourselves actually have won smaller deals. I think Ingrid described it very well in a way that what we see is that because kind of the main competitor being Athora in this market really won a lot of bigger deals, their appetite for smaller deals seems to kind of fade away a bit, and that provided us the opportunity against the right return levels that we want to have to win those deals.

I think, this is not because of pension funds are now thinking differently to the market, it's just sometimes you have a bit more activity in the market, sometimes you have a bit less activity. H1 of 2026, there were still a couple of buyouts, and also when we look going forward, there's still a pipeline, and that's why we are still confident, though it might take two more years, that we will reach the €8 billion.

Great. Thank you.

Fantastic. Thank you so much.

Two. One, you spoke lots of times on funeral business.

Could you remind us who is the lucky competitor who you might be looking at, or any indication? Maybe you can't say, I don't know.

Then we had the question on pension buyouts, can you talk a little bit about the individual annuities? That's the one you're exceeding.

Can you give us a feel for how much more growth there is, because it's clearly not a closed block, it's linked to the DC growth. Thank you.

I will answer your last question, Michael. If you look at the annuities, we have a big book of DC that's accumulation business, and then we have the decumulation, that's where the annuities come in.

What we do see is that if you have a very good customer journey and competitive pricing, and people are already used to your brand, service, and happy with that they've experienced over the DC time of period that they have been customer with us, we see that people really like to stay with ASR because of the very good customer journey where we have invested in to the new standards that are there today, and then with that, more digital, more AI, etc., more personal. If you also have competitive pricing, people do stay with us because they liked during the accumulation phase and they do also like us for the decumulation phase.

That's why we have, indeed, a very exciting increase of our annuities of 38%, and also believe that we really think that we will exceed our target for this year.

On funeral, please be with me, Michael, that it's not really good to mention names in a call like this when it comes down to funeral insurance. To answer your question, of course, we are open to onboard closed books of funeral businesses, there are a couple of closed books of funeral business, and we are also more than willing to look more to open funeral businesses.

There are a couple of bigger players where the largest players has 50% market share, probably that is not possible for us, also from a competition perspective, to really be interested in, but other players would be of our interest.

Brilliant. Thank you so much.

Thanks a lot and thank you all for listening in and also for your very nice and interesting questions. We enjoyed being with you this morning and are looking very much forward to meeting lots of you in London in the coming days.

With that, I would like to really look forward toward the London engagement and meetings and hope you all have a very nice day with our clean set of results. Thanks very much.