Münchener Rückversicherungs-Gesellschaft Aktiengesellschaft in München

and a warm welcome to our Q1 earnings call. Today's speaker is our CFO, Christoph Jureka. And the procedure is very straightforward. As always, Christoph will start with a short introduction and then we will go right into Q&A. And with that, I have the pleasure to hand it over to Christoph.

Yeah, thank you, Christian. And yeah, good morning also from my side. As we announced two weeks ago, Munich Re made a successful start to the year 2024 and the operating performance in all lines of business was better than expected and a favorable capital market environment including forex exchange provided an additional tailwind as well. With a strong net income of above 2.1 billion euros in the first quarter, we have already achieved more than 40% of our full year guidance after just one quarter. As a consequence, the annualized ROE of 27.3% is exceptionally high. Let's look at the Q1 earnings drivers in more detail, starting with the investment result. Supported by positive fair value changes on equities, we posted an ROI of 3.8%. The reinsurance segment in particular benefited from rising stock markets, posting an ROI of 4.5%, while Ergo delivered a very solid return of 3.3%. I'm very pleased that the running yield is further trending up as we are reinvesting new money at an ongoing high yield of 4.6%. Let's turn to the business fields and start with reinsurances. The life and health total technical result of 586 million euros came in significantly above the ProRata annual ambition. Beyond the release of CSM and risk adjustment in line with expectations, the performance was driven by very pleasing new business and positive experience across the board. But also the FinMauri business made a strong contribution. which includes positive currency effects. The stock of CSM increased remarkably in the first quarter, as new business generation, which was particularly pleasing in North America, by far exceeded the release through P&L. All in all, the increased CSM level of 13.6 billion euros provides a very sound basis to continue to support a strong technical result going forward. In P&C reinsurance, we posted an exceptionally good result. While releases on basic losses were fully in line with the expected five percentage points, the very low combined ratio of 75.3% benefited from major claims of only 9.9 percentage points, which is well below our unchanged 14% average expectation. At the same time, the normalized combined ratio of 79.5% was better than our 82% full year guidance. Aside from business mix effects, this seems to reflect an element of earned through of the improved margins. However, we do not yet give too much credit for it and prefer to wait a couple of quarters to better understand to what extent this positive development manifests itself. So please do not consider the very low Q1 normalized combined ratio and U1 rate for the remainder of the year yet. This brings me to the April renewals, where we successfully largely maintained the high profitability and the sound quality of our book. We continue to manage our portfolio diligently to safeguard an optimal risk-reward. We expanded premiums by more than 6%, in particular driven by participation in sizable rate increases in original motor markets, while our nut-cut exposure in Japan slightly decreased. Coming off a particularly high level, the risk and inflation adjusted prices in our total portfolio declined by 0.7%. Excluding business mix effects related to a higher share of proportional business, rates even increased further by 0.6%. From our view, the overall market environment remains positive, allowing us to earn strong margins on the risk we take. At the same time, we were able to defend recently achieved improvements in terms and conditions. In primary insurance, Ergo delivered a very pleasing net result of €252 million. The German P&C and the international business came in strongly, while German Life & Health was somewhat below expectation, but posting a still solid net result of €36 million in Q1. While the CSM release was in line with expectations, we saw elevated claims expenses in short-term health and travel business. The CSM increased driven mainly by capital market-related effects, which exceeded the release through P&L. In P&C Germany, we achieved a good technical performance with a combined ratio of 84.4% in Q1. We benefited from significantly lower than expected major losses and positive seasonality of acquisition costs. In addition, the investment result was strong, driven by the stock market performance. All in all, this led to a very high segment result of Euro P&C Germany of 150 million euros. The international business continued the positive trend of profitable growth, with a net result of 65 million euros. We saw good technical development in life and health business. The P&C business posted a pleasing combined ratio of 89.5%, driven by benign major losses, profitable growth, and a strong operating performance across all major markets. In particular, the Polish business had a very strong quarter due to benign major losses and price adjustments. Just a few remarks on capital management. The group's economic position remains very strong. Resolvency 2 ratio increased to 273% in Q1, as the strong operating performance more than offset the deduction of the $1.5 billion in share buybacks. I would like to conclude with the outlook for 2024, which remains unchanged. we are still anticipating a net result of about 5 billion euros. As already mentioned in our pre-release, surpassing this target has become more likely due to the strong Q1 result. As we still have three quarters to go, we decided not to change other outlook KPIs either. With this, I'm at the end of my opening remarks and look forward to answering your questions. But first, I hand it back to questions.

Thank you, Christoph. We can go right into Q&A. Just allow for my usual remark. Please limit the number of your questions to a maximum of two per person. And then please, for additional questions, rejoin the queue. With that, please go ahead.