Swiss Re AG

Good morning and also good afternoon for everybody who's dialing in. I appreciate you taking the time to join us today. Before Anders Malmström, our group CFO, walks you through the details of our H1 result, I'd like to start with some brief remarks. Today, we're pleased to report a strong net income of 2.8 billion US dollars for the first half of 2026. This represents more than 60% of our full-year net income target of $4.5 billion, which positions us well for the remainder of the year. We're proud to operate three core businesses. They're our passion. Each one is a leading value creator in its respective market. Together, Life & Health Re, P&C Re, and Corporate Solutions provide significant diversification, both from a capital efficiency standpoint and an earnings perspective. The strength of this diversified business model is reflected in our first half year results. With excellent underwriting results driving the group's 23% return on equity, Life & Health Re delivered a strong result in the first half of the year, marking two consecutive quarters of clean earnings. The result was driven by strong in-force margins and favorable experiences particularly in U.S. mortality. This reinforces our confidence in the actions taken last year and in achieving our $1.7 billion net income target for 2026. Our P&C businesses continue to deliver strong underwriting results, supported by a low level of large natural catastrophe losses and the high quality of the portfolios we have built over the years. This allowed us to post strong results while also strengthening the balance sheet. You hear us talking about cycle management. Let me expand on that and what this really means for us, namely preserving the quality of our underwriting portfolio, maintaining prudence on loss picks, expanding cycle-decorrelated business lines, improving cost efficiency, and elevating capital management. All of these we are delivering. The mid-year renewals were broadly consistent with what we had already seen at the January and April renewals. Competition remains most pronounced in non-proportional property, where nominal pricing is down by high single digits year-to-date, with similar trends observed at the mid-year renewals. Casualty and specialty continued to present a more balanced pricing environment. Within casualty, liability experienced notable rate increases, while motor also saw positive rate developments. Overall, we achieved a mid- single-digit nominal price increase across our casualty portfolio year-to-date, In specialty, competition has picked up. However, nominal rates rose across the majority of sub-lines in specialty. Our approach in this environment remains unchanged, maintaining underwriting discipline while defending our portfolio quality and margins. Being in a constant, active dialogue with our clients and brokers is absolute key in this market. This proximity and relevance to clients means that even if we reduce exposures in some cases, where expected returns no longer meet our requirements, we can often expand our role in other areas. This has helped us not only defend our market position and share a wallet, but also to selectively grow through tailored solutions based on our leading risk knowledge while remaining disciplined where returns are inadequate. Overall to date, we have maintained our market position. We achieved volume growth of 11% at the mid-year renewals compared to our business up for renewal, driven by new business wins in proportional property and selected specialty lines while maintaining broadly stable terms and conditions. Combined with the January and April renewals, year-to-date premium volume increased by 0.5% compared with the business up for renewal. Overall, the nominal pricing across our diversified portfolio remained broadly flat year-to-date. And we consider all of this a good outcome, reflective of successful cycle management so far. The second important element of cycle management is to maintain prudence on lost ticks. Year-to-date, we increased our loss assumptions by 4.4%, almost entirely explaining the risk-adjusted price decline of 4.6%. In addition, new business continues to include our uncertainty load. If experience develops more favorably, then assumed at inception, both the prudent loss assumptions and the uncertainty load would emerge as positive experience variance. This is exactly the resilience we aim to build into the portfolio and what we are now seeing come through. Corporate Solutions is navigating a similar market environment. Risk-adjusted commercial rates were down by around 6% across the portfolio. during the first half of the year. Despite this, the business unit continues to grow in its strategic focus areas, namely in cycle decorrelated lines and differentiated propositions such as international programs. Over the years, we've built a market-leading AI-enabled technology platform that allows us to seamlessly manage the insurance needs of our multinational clients across more than 150 jurisdictions. This makes us a trusted global partner with a truly differentiated value proposition. The exclusive strategic partnerships announced today in Mexico and India are a good example of how we continue to strengthen this proposition while selectively expanding our presence in attractive growth markets by leveraging our underwriting expertise and global capabilities. This, too, is an important element of how we manage the cycle. Alongside our underwriting actions, improving efficiency remains a key priority. Today, we announced an increase in our operating cost reduction target to US$500 million by 2028. The increase reflects strong progress towards our initial reduction target of $300 million by 2027, as well as further opportunities to simplify how the group operates, focusing on non-client facing teams. We continue to measure this cost reduction on a run rate basis. That means the lower cost run rate of $500 million by year end 2028 will be fully reflected in the full year 2029. I also mentioned capital management as a key component of our cycle management strategy. Anders will update you where we stand on this. Looking ahead, our priorities remain unchanged. We remain focused on delivering our financial targets and the group's overall resilience. Although the market environment remains competitive and we are entering the peak of the hurricane season, We are confident in the quality of our portfolios, our disciplined underwriting approach, and our diversified earnings profile. Now with that, now I can hand over to Anders, and not before, and he will provide you with more details on the first half year results.

Thank you, Andreas, and good morning or good afternoon to everyone on the call. Andreas has taken you through the highlights of our strong first half-year performance. Let me add a few further details before we move to the Q&A. Pinti Reinsurance reported an insurance service result of $1.8 billion in the first half of 2026, well above the prior year level. The increase was mainly attributable to favorable experience variance related to both current and past services. The positive experience related to current services of around $350 million primarily reflects large NASCAR losses coming in 676 million below expectations, of which 391 million in Q2. Positive experience related to past services of around $350 million in the first half of 2026 reflects reserve releases across short-tail lines of more than 1 billion US dollars. Given the benign large NATCAT experience in the first half, we retained a significant portion of these releases by adding around 500 million US dollars to IBNR reserves for long-tail lines in the second quarter. This is in addition to the IBNR reserves established earlier in the year for potential inflationary impact of the ongoing Middle East conflict. Together, these actions further strengthen the resilience of our balance sheet. On the back of these elements, P&C RE reported an excellent combined ratio of 76.7% for the first half, comfortably within its full-year target of below 85%. Let me also briefly touch on new business CSM before moving to corporate solutions. P&C regenerated new business CSM of 1.6 billion US dollars compared with 2.2 billion dollars in the prior year period. The year-on-year reduction in new business CSM and increase in new business loss component is consistent with the approximately 4 percentage point increase in the nominal combined ratio on the between 16 and 17 billion of 3C business renewed through the end of June. In addition, there is also a modest impact from our facultative book. It's also important to point out that the new business CSM reduction is driven by our higher loss picks, not by an overall decline in nominal pricing. That is a good sign. Turning to corporate solutions, the business continued its strong performance, delivering a combined ratio of 86.1%. The insurance service result amounted to 578 million US dollars, supported by a CSM release of around 400 million US dollars. Experience variance and other was positive at 193 million, primarily driven by a favorable experience related to past service across lines of business. In addition, corporate solutions benefited from lower than expected large NAVCAT losses more than offset by the usual allowance for potential claims seasonality due to late reporting. New business CSM amounted to $201 million compared with $262 million in the prior year period, reflecting the more challenging market environment in some lines, partially offset by the inclusion of P&C Re's credit and surety business. Turning to Life & Health 3, where we continue to see the benefit of the actions taken in 2025 coming through. Net income for the first half amounted to just over 1 billion US dollars. The insurance service result increased to 1.2 billion dollars and includes a CSM release of 758 million US dollars, corresponding to an annualized release rate of around 9%, in line with our full year guidance. The result was again supported by positive experience variance, particularly from U.S. mortality. New business CSM amounted to $338 million, compared with $569 million in the prior year period, primarily reflecting lower transaction activity. On our investment portfolio, again, it delivered a robust contribution in the first six months with an ROI of 4.0%, and a recurring income of $2 billion.

Let me also add a few words on group items.