Allianz Se Unsp/Adr

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Allianz conference call on the Allianz Group financial results for the second quarter of 2025. For your information, this conference call is being streamed live on Allianz.com and YouTube. A recording will be made available shortly after the call. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to your host today, Oliver Bates, Chief Executive Officer of Allianz SE.

Please go ahead, Oliver. Thank you, Andrew. I'm not sure what host means. Probably I play the bill, but I don't know why. But I'm very happy to talk to you today. Thanks for your interest on this beautiful afternoon in Munich. I would like to do an introduction into the discussion, and then Claire-Marie will go with you through all of your questions and a lot of the details that... you may be interested in. Let me just start initially, even though this is the analyst call about what we are going to talk about. That is the delivery of the strategy that we have discussed at the Capital Markets Day in December. And that's exactly what is happening now. As a reminder, while we report in three segments, P&C, life, asset management, reality, we run from a customer perspective, two businesses. We run a protection and a retirement business. And those are we are trying to drive further at this point in time in terms of value creation through three most important levers. There are many others behind, but the most important one are three. Driving smart growth going forward. As you know, historically, Allianz has worked very hard on bringing the brand forward, customer satisfaction forward, productivity up, but it's now time to translate the strengths of the foundations into growing market share. The second one is further reinforcing productivity. You can probably spend hours on the impact of AI on the one thing we know for sure in our industry. We now have the opportunity to really process unstructured data in a much more productive way than any time before. And we're going to leverage that not just in administration or call centers, everything everyone talks about, but also how do we serve customers better. And you can measure that in terms of expense ratio for sure, which we've been improving for a long time, again, in the first six months, but also other items, as you're going to see. And the further one, and given this, how do I say this properly, interesting political and economic environment, we need to further strengthen resilience because that's what customers want. And that's many of our shareholders want that too. What is the core message? Allianz has been for a long time a world-class product organization. We are exceptional at the products we design and sell and service. What we can do better is to help serve customers across products. And you will see that in the form of lower lapses over time and in the form of higher cross-selling. Some of that to come. Now on page A5, please move there. Just two examples from the first six months. One focus is on internal or growth in the P&C segment. The other one is on productivity. Again, highlighting it through the expense ratio. We can take other items as well. On the first one, it's very important. We've shown 8% growth and that's really important. of which 5% is pricing and 3% is volume. And the biggest contributors to volume have been during the first six months. And by the way, they often change over quarters. They may change year by year, but this time it has been alliance partners. So our platform business is keeping on growing very strongly. It meets very important demands. In our economy, AGCNS, Brazil is growing leaps and bounds after we have completely reformed the platform. And certainly last but not least, Germany, where all our investments in improving performance are really paying off. Now, you can take subcategories and say, yeah, yeah, yeah, that sounds great, but what happens in retail? What happens at partners specifically? What's happening in commercial lines? And you see that the commercial lines number, let me just explain, we had very significant growth in the health side of Allianz Partners. We account in the commercial line segment, so the 6% growth number that you see there is without partners, and that's at a very solid 6%. Partners, I mentioned, is 9%, and return lines is 8%. So across the segments, we see very, very, very good results. On the productivity side, the same picture as we've had the last seven years, and you see from 22, but we can go back to 2019, where we started with the journey in terms of seeing it. Remember, we are coming from 28.6% expense ratio in 2018. Now, this year, you are seeing for the first six months, 24%. That's 4.6% lower and every year 30 to 40 basis points improvement and we do not intend to let go. Sometimes per OE or per region some of these numbers may change because of a change in the product mix or the change in the distribution mix. In an aggregate level we do not expect this number to increase. change over the coming years. It's certainly not for the strategic cycle that we've talked about. Now, now let me take your attention to page A6, just an update on what we're doing on the portfolio. For the last 10 years, we've systematically said we refrain from big acquisition, we focus on bolt-on and things that bring us new capability. maybe new distribution access or new business model invention. So let me actually guide you through them. And I start on the right hand side with Sunlum. As announced before, we have stepped up our participation in the joint venture with Sunlum to 49%. We always said we want to do that, we want to be present, but we want to be present in Africa with a partner whose destiny and origination is Africa, so we are much better placed than where we were before. I think we're now at least three times the size of our next competitor in order to be able to exploit the opportunity. And remember, the JV covers all countries outside of South Africa, the home market of Sanlam. So that is important to say. I'll talk about India in a second. Let me turn to other investments that you could consider to be more traditional in Australia. We went into a strategic partnership with the Royal Automobile Association of South Australia. It is very good for us because it helps us to diversify also from a net cap perspective. So in terms of net capital consumption, it's also pretty good. And then in Allianz Direct, we've done a number of very targeted small acquisitions in order to build on the scale of the platform. Remember, Allianz Direct is one of the very few businesses that exist in our industry that operates across countries with exactly the same operating and IT platform. It's not like they look similar, they are identical. And now we need to integrate these portfolios to build the scale on the platform. You see that some of these acquisitions will only come into the numbers later this year or early next year. Now, more unconventional, you may say, are what we've done on Sconset 3. This is a continuation of the work we've done in 21, where we hiked off $36 billion in reserves. Now we have created an open or so-called open book or flow reinsurance structure in the United States in order to be able to to not just address in-force books but also new business that makes us competitive in products and segments that we were not competitive in before because of Solvency II and our capital model having different cost of capital. and we continue to work on similar solution like Sconsidry in order to optimize the usage of capital in the United States. Remember, because of the RBC model, actually compared to Solvency II, the U.S. is not very capital efficient because we cannot use the value of the new business as an offset to capital requirements, so we need to continue to work on capital efficiency while growing the franchise. The other one is Veridium. We have led a consortium. that has taken over the company. We're very happy to having just closed this one, having received regulatory approval a while ago, and we want to combine our expertise in terms of running life insurance books With the expertise on the investment side, we also deleted asset management service provider to Veridium. So we expect a significant boost on our ability to grow both PIMCO and AGI out of this partnership. And by the way, Allianz Investment Management is the partner for Veridium in terms of asset allocation. So that's just a little bit of a view. Let me then head to the most important strategic development of the quarter. We've just announced our partnership in India with Reliance Group. Many of you may know Reliance Group really well. It's not just the biggest petrochemical and chemical company in India, it's also the biggest retailer in India. And it's also the biggest mobile phone company. Just to give you some numbers that are quite staggering. If you think about Geofone, they have 494 million, so almost 500 million subscribers. They have, and that's very interesting, in the retail side, 366 million regular customers in Reliance retail. And just Geomart, which is sort of the Amazon equivalent, does 600,000 deliveries a day. By the way, last year, Reliance Retail recorded 1.26 billion sales transactions in their retail network. So it's a giant partner that we're starting our journey with. Now, a couple of you will say, so why are you starting with reinsurance, given the numbers you just mentioned? It's a very simple answer. We do not have any competition issues with our current partner, Bajaj. Therefore, there is no issue with non-compete. That's why we're starting now and we're launching with the renewal season that is in April of 2026. But as soon as we have fully exited our partnership with Bajaj, which is happening in a very amicable way, we are going to launch in commercial lines, in P&C retail, in health, and subsequently in all lines of insurance, and by the way, also insurance services as a partnership. I'm also proud to say that in difference to what we had before, we have a 50-50 relationship, but we are going to have management control. And that is a first, apparently, in the universe of Reliance. So we are very proud about that. Now, some of you will ask, so why did you then change? Again, a very simple explanation. While we founded the insurance company in 2001 with Bajaj, we contributed 100% of the capital that ever went into Allianz Bajaj. We brought the people, we brought the IT systems. At the time, we grew it together, but we could only own and control 26%. of the capital. And we could not agree with our long-term partner, Bajaj, to a very simple fact that Allianz would want to run the insurance business. We are not in the investment business for insurance. We are in the operating business. And as the Bajaj family eventually decided that they would not ever relinquish management control to us, we have had to decide to find a new partner. We are extremely proud to have partnered with the best partner that we can ever imagine India, that's the Reliance Group and the Ambani family. We are very, very proud and dignified by them partnering with us. And I gave you some numbers. The potential is gigantic. So that's what we have done in the first six months of this year in terms of working on the portfolio, strengthening growth, and there is more to come. The investors over the next couple of months following the same strategy that we've had for a decade now. Now let me turn your attention to page A7, just to give you an overview. For us, it's very important to continuously deliver. And there may be a quarter where some of you feel, well, this is a little bit light there, and why is this part of the portfolio not perfect? Just look at the growth profile, the financials delivered, and the balance sheet strength Property casualty internal growth, that is always, remember, without M&A and FX, 8% up over the first six months. New business value growth and life is 9%. Asset management, AUM growth, is a little lower given what we have discussed, annualized at 4%, but already in July, already July, i.e. already in the first months of the third quarter, we had $21 billion of net flows into PIMCO. So the growth continues extremely strongly. A lot of the FX translation effects are really noise, clamory. We'll talk about it. because the really relevant numbers, that's dividends coming out of the U.S., are hedged forward, and therefore that is something that we need to discuss. In terms of financials, operating profit is at 54% of full-year midpoint. The core EPS is 8%, and there we have been taking out both the tax we had to pay but also the gains on earnings. unique credit, and the core return on equity is at an annualized 18%, which is an outstanding number, particularly relative to what our long-term average used to be. Capital generation, I'm very proud of the finance team and our OEs, is significantly improving. We were heavily criticized in the past for operating capital generation. It stands at plus 13% for the first six months. Solvency remains strong despite all of the volatility, and obviously there's a connection between point one and two. And, of course, our rating have been confirmed, and we have very good results. outlooks on the reading. So the overall picture while every now and then something may move in a crazy world. I'd like to also mention one thing that I find very important. I've seen some comments around sort of, we had lower net cap but we also had prior year development. You know, I've been here 18 years, I never understand these questions. We do not need high runoff, and we certainly use every opportunity to be extremely prudent in setting our reserves, if I may say so. Now, with that, I hand over to Claire Marie to give you some more color on the details in all the segments around growth, profitability, and whatever you want to know. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Oliver. And good afternoon to everyone. So looking at page B3, here you can see, as mentioned by Oliver already, that the group has delivered excellent results in the first half of the year and in the second quarter as well on a standalone basis. This is clearly positioning us very well for the full year targets, but as well towards our capital market day ambitions, also as mentioned by Oliver. First what you see on this page is that we have a strong level of growth that is coming across our three segments and we continue to see that growth steaming from the three segments as we have seen previously. So we have a strong consistency here despite some FX effects that we have also seen in the quarter. So we grew at a total business volume of 8% at constant FX. As you can see on the page as well, it would have been double-digit growth at 10%. Our operating profit in the second quarter is even higher than the record level of operating profit we have achieved in the first quarter. So overall, our first half operating profit is at 8.6 billion, which is up 9%, clearly an excellent level, which is fully on track against our guidance of 16 billion plus minus 1 billion euros for the full year 2025. Here as well, as I have been mentioning for the growth, our three businesses are contributing to the positive development of our operating profit with the stronger support from P&C, as you can see on the page as well. We see as well an excellent development of our core net income, which did benefit from the sale of Unicredit Vita and GV in the second quarter. But if I adjust for this gain on sale and for the famous badge related tax provisions that we have booked in the first quarter, our core net income is up 6% and our core EPS is approximately at 8% growth, which is the midpoint of our 7% to 9% EPS growth rate that we have been mentioning during the Capital Market Day. As mentioned by Oliver as well, we continue to deliver an excellent level of IFRS ROE, which for the second quarter on a standalone basis is above 19% on a core basis. And I think even more fundamentally, I would say beyond the P&L item, our resilience remains strong in the environment today that is quite challenged overall. Our solvency to ratio emerged up at 209%, with an excellent capital generation of around 13 percentage points in the first half of the year. So overall an excellent set of numbers from growth to profitability and financial strength. Clearly this is making us very happy as you have heard as well from Oliver clearly in his introduction. So moving to next page and having a look at the P&C business before. Here we see a strong level of growth and an excellent level of profitability in both retail and commercial. In the second quarter, we achieved an even better level of combined ratio compared to the first quarter, and we have delivered an even higher level of operating profit, which was at a record level already in the first quarter. This is bringing our first half operating profit to 4.5 billion euros, which is up 12% versus last year. This is the outcome of first higher volume level, which we are earning through at an increased level of margin, with some offsets from FXFX in the investment results. First, we see a good top line momentum that is continuing in the second quarter. This results in an internal growth rate of 8% for the half year. The growth was driven by both price 4% and volume 5% in the second quarter on a standalone basis. The volume effect was higher compared to the first quarter, with very good volume growth from commercial lines, as you have seen as well, in particular from partners. And as mentioned already by Oliver, we see plenty of good examples in the quarter of our platform play. In addition to partners, we have Direct, which has been growing by more than 20% on an internal growth basis in the first half, with more to come, I would say, in the second half of the year, as we are integrating Friday and IptiQ, which are two acquisitions, you may remember, we did previously. Our pricing trends continue to be robust in general, with clearly quite some differences and nuances between geographies and line of business. But the average renewal rate at 6M is at plus 5%. The pricing continues to be strongest in retail lines, where we are at plus 8%. We are close to 10% in motor retail and mid to high single digits in all other retail lines. In commercial, the rate momentum continues to trend downwards and now stands at plus 1% across our portfolio, where mid-corp remains resilient and we see some softening continuing in the large corporate space at AGCS and Allianz Trade as an example. Our underwriting profitability is excellent with our combined ratio at 91.5. This is fueled by three main dimensions. The first one is that we have an excellent attritional performance as we are earning through our pricing and our underwriting actions. We have had a relatively benign NATCAT experience, but this has been counterbalanced by a conservative level of reserve setting, as already mentioned by Oliver as well, and we continue to focus on our productivity with our expense ratio 40 bps lower than last year at 24%. By segment, you can see as well on this page that we have strong improvements on our retail business, while the commercial profitability remains very good at 91%. Overall, it was an excellent first half for the P&C business. Our operating profit is 12% ahead of the midpoint of our guidance run rate. We have good underlying volume goals, we have an excellent underwriting profitability, and the positive developments are very broad-based, both from a line-of-business perspective, but as well from a geographical angle. Let's now move to life, and let's have a look on page B5. Well, here we continue to see a double-digit new business growth at an attractive new business margin of 9.6% in our preferred line of business, which is very important also from a resilience perspective. Our operating profit is up 5% versus last year, which is exactly in line with our outlook and also with our capital market expectations. What I find very interesting when you look a bit further into the details of our portfolio is that our life businesses outside of our two largest entities, Germany and basically Allianz Leben and Easy Life, contributes just over 60% of the operating profit and increases their contribution 11% year on year. So we have a high quality and we have a very well diversified portfolio on the life and health side. This is as well what we see in terms of new business growth for the half year, which is really broadly spread with double-digit growth in Germany, in Italy, in Asia, or CE as an example. As always, we do have the second quarter on a standalone basis, which is a bit lower than the first quarter in terms of growth. We always have some seasonality in Europe. In our growth development in life, we should also expect to have a bit of a lower growth in the third quarter as well. And on the operating profit side, the second quarter was a bit impacted by ethics and as well some weaker investment results, which are partly reflecting the market volatility we have experienced during this period. We are particularly pleased with the underlying CSM development in the first half of the year. Here are two points to mention. First, our CSM growth adjusted for FX effect is almost 4%, which clearly demonstrates our low level of non-economic variances in the ground environment. And secondly, our normalized CSM growth is around 3%, which is clearly a strong level of growth relative to the 5% annual expectations we do have for normalized CSM growth. So in life and health, we see... A strong market appetite for our products, which is continuing and be fueled by the secular trends we have discussed in the Capital Market Day, the quality of the Allianz brand and the trust in our resilience. This clearly allows us to build sustainable value that we are going to earn in the future as we are going to earn the CSM going forward. Let's move to B6 and let's look at our asset management segment. Well, here as well, we are delivering very good results in a very volatile quarter. First, when we look at our results, you need to keep in mind that more than 70% of our third-party asset and our management are U.S. dollar denominated, meaning that it's very important to look at the underlying to judge the performance. And from all three segments, you need to note as well that asset management is the most impacted by the U.S. dollar volatility. Corrected for FX effect, our asset and our management growth is around 4%, with net inflows at 42 billion, which means an organic growth rate of around 4% annualized. This is clearly very strong for a pure active manager, in particular in the volatile market we had experienced in the first half of the year. The inflows we have experienced mainly emerge from PIMCO, and here are some colors I'd like to give. First of all, PIMCO continues to see an excellent traction in its active ETF proposition, which is now sitting at 40 billion euros of asset and our management, and we have seen 10 billion year-to-date of net flows into that proposition. Beyond the fixed income strategies, we have seen as well the credit and the private alternative strategies as being the ones which have attracted most inflows this year. And into July, as mentioned by Oliver, we continue to see more than 20 billion of inflows, where clearly I think the offering from PIMCO continues to be supported by a strong outperformance in terms of alpha for our customers. of our strategies, which is being delivered over time. So really structurally in a five-year, three-year, one-year approach, you consistently see that outperformance. And in the challenge environment we are experiencing currently, this is also a huge opportunity for PIMCO to create more values for customers. Clearly, our profitability in the asset management segment is very resilient, with an operating profit which is up 5% in the context of negative FX effects and lower performance fees. Excluding performance fees and FX adjusted, our operating profit is up 7%, which demonstrates the strength of the underlying in a volatile environment. At both our asset managers, our third-party asset and our management margin remains very stable, as you can see as well on this page, in a competitive environment. And our focus on productivity is unchanged, as the development of our cost-income ratio clearly highlights as well on the page, as we are emerging at 61.3%. While we may continue to see the translation effects from the U.S. dollar into our numbers in future quarters, our strong track record on managing productivity, efficiency, and profitability provides resilience into our numbers. We are confident on continued net inflows and our ability to create value for our customers and shareholders as well on the asset management side. Let's move to page B7 and let's have a look at the development of our solvency ratio. We remain strongly capitalized with our sensitivities broadly unchanged, as you can see also on this page. Some elements maybe to highlight when it comes to the development of our solvency ratio since the beginning of the year. We have an excellent organic capital development at 13 percentage points year-to-date. As a reminder, for the full year 2024, we were at around 20 percentage points, and we expect to achieve more than 20 percentage points for 2025, with our medium-term objective to improve the run rate of our operating factor generation to 24 to 25 percentage points in 2027. As an organization, we have been very focused on this metric, and we see some of the early benefits of this in the improved generation year to date. We as well add in the first quarter some positive variances, in particular from life, which I don't think are to be fully extrapolated into the second half of the year. Our operating capital generation is partially offset by the cost of the 2025 buyback program and the normal dividend accrual, as you can see here, with minus 11 percentage points. Then we have a small negative market impact, and we have a positive contribution from the management actions we have taken, mainly from the reinsurance transaction at EasyLife and the disposal of the Unicredit VitaGV. Those results reiterate our confidence on the strength and resilience of our capital position. At this stage in the year, we feel even more confident in our ability to improve our capital generation as we advance the initiatives outlined at the Capital Market Day. Let me conclude on page B8. Clearly, our results are excellent. We see continued business growth stemming from all three segments and a record level of profitability. This positions us very well for the second half of the year and allows us to reiterate our outlook of $16 billion plus minus $1 billion operating profit for 2025. More fundamentally, this has positioned us very well for the delivery of our capital market ambitions. As mentioned by Oliver, as an organization, we are focused on working on the initiatives along the three levers, driving smart growth, reinforcing productivity, and strengthening resilience. And I will say the energy and the creativity also in cross-sharing the initiatives we have experienced during COVID. The meetings we had with the Board of Management of each and every operating entities together with Oliver in May is very much comforting in our ability to deliver against our ambitions. With that, I thank you all very much for your attention, and I hand over back to you, Andrew, for questions.

Great, thanks, Claire-Marie. Okay, so we're ready to take your questions. Just to remind you, How to do that? If you're joining us on the web, you would press the talk request button, which I think is in the top right-hand corner. If you're joining us by phone, it would be star 5. And by way of usual housekeeping, if you could restrict yourself to questions, and then if we have time, we'll come back for follow-ups after that. Great. So with that, it looks like the first question is from Andrew Sinclair from Bank of America. Go ahead, Andrew.

Thanks, Andrew. Thanks, everyone. First for me was just looking at the undiscounted nutritional, which is a really good figure. It's What scope do you see for further improvement from here? I think 70.9% for the half year. I think Q2 standalone was about 70.3%. You mentioned there's been some conservative booking. Does that include conservative booking of the attritional? Or should we think about this as a pretty good level? Where can we go from here? And then second was just on AGCS. Rate changes... minus 0.9% for Q1, minus 2.6 for H1. By my maths, I think that means Q2 is down about negative 4.5. But you have still got internal growth in AGCNS. Just really wondered if you can give us a little bit of colour in terms of where you feel on rate adequacy for different lines. Are there any new areas where you're concerned and where you're happiest to push more for volume? Thanks.

So thanks a lot, Andrew. So let me start maybe with the attritional loss ratio. So indeed, I think the undiscounted attritional loss ratio in the second quarter was very good at 70.3%. The main driver for the improvement was the retail business. However, I think the commercial business contributed as well. What we see clearly in this 70.3 is the earnings of the pricing and the underwriting action that is structurally coming through. What we see as well is that indeed the undiscounted attritional loss ratio first quarter peak was a bit higher because indeed, as I mentioned to you at that point in time, is that you are always a bit more conservative at the beginning of the year and then you recognize more of the benefits as the year is coming through, but also in balance of the overall performance. At this point in time, I would still consider that you should look at the half year, right, which is at 70.9, which is good and which is also slightly ahead of our target for the year, which I have guided towards, which was 71 to 71.5. which for me gives you a good reference still. So as things stand for and as we are earning the benefit of our actions, I'm confident we may emerge a bit better on that dimension, or to put it differently, we may emerge also a bit better On our overall combined ratio that I had guided towards 93, maybe a bit better than that overall. So I think that's what you can anticipate a bit, given the strength of the underlying actions we see. And remember, Andrew, there is always a bit of possible noise in the attrition and loss ratio because that's coming from retail plus commercial plus many different lines of business and so on and so forth. So that's why I think looking at it overall is also giving you a good indication, I believe. I think then you were asking what are the development on the price development we are seeing in the context of the commercial business, right? So I think first of all, and you know that very well, Andrew, but I think it's important to have in mind that for us the commercial business is made of really different buckets, right? We have the partners business, we have the trade business, we have the mid-core business, we have the reinsurance business from Allianz Free, and we have AGCS that is focusing on the large corporate only. And we are focused at the level of, I mean, across the book, to grow in a very profitable manner. So we are focusing extremely tightly on technical excellence of our underwriting. This is also the case for AGCS. So even if we see some year-on-year rate reduction, because clearly the market is softening, I would say across geographies and across line of business, to be a bit nuanced, as I always mention, right, I think The areas where we see that we are mostly impacted by rate decrease will be cyber, will be property, will be aviation still. So I think it's quite broad-based. But it does not mean that the actual price against the technical price is not above 100%, which is very important to have in mind because you can be fairly priced even if the price is going down. So in many of the line of business and geographies, we are still in a status where we are fairly priced, but the price is going down. We are grabbing some good businesses in the case of AGCS where we are strong, like in the construction or still in property and so on and so forth. So there are really a lot of pockets where we can tap and grow nicely, as you may remember as well, also because our market share offers opportunities for growth in the case of AGCS. And also clearly we have a good new commercial dynamic in the environment of AGCS, also with the arrival of the new CEO who is activating some part of the organization as well.

Okay, thanks Andrew. And obviously we've got a lot of Andrews around today. It's a very unfashionable name, but here we have another Andrew. So Andrew Baker from Goldman Sachs. Andrew, go ahead.

Thanks, Andrew. So I guess the first one, obviously P&C, the internal growth still looks really strong. If we look at the insurance revenue, grew 3.8% in Q2 alone. I appreciate some of this was FX. So are you able to give us what the FX impact was there? And I guess any view on if we assume constant FX from here, how you would expect the insurance revenue line to develop would be really helpful maybe in 2025 and 2026? And then similarly, unfortunately, on the FX volatility, just on the P&C operating investment result, again, FX impacts, Argentina had some impact. I think previously you guided to 2.8 billion or so for the year. Is that still a good number, or should we re-look at that just given some of these volatile items? Thank you.

I need to push the button. So on the P&C investment results, indeed, you are absolutely right. We have seen a bit of, I mean, a reduced level of operating investment results in the second quarter. With some elements actually related to FX in the broad sense, right, many related to some hyperinflation countries. An example of that would be the fact that we had less return from the inflationary bonds, as an example coming from Argentina and so on and so forth. But I would say at this point in time, and the way I continue, I mean, I think you need to think about it, is that our outlook was at 2.8 billion euros for the overall investment results for the year, which basically was implying 200 million less compared to last year. in the P&C segment overall. So if you look at the half year, we are exactly 100 million below what we were at 6M last year, 2024, which is absolutely consistent with the assumption we have taken. So I will really keep our guidance as we have provided it when we have set the outlook. Then you were asking... Revenue growth. Revenue, yeah, okay. So basically on the fact that we... Sorry, Andrew, your question was how do we think about the revenue growth?

The volume growth was high, but the revenue growth you noted was lower.

Precisely. Yeah, cool. Just how you think about that with the FX impacts as well. Thank you.

So I think indeed we are a bit lower. We are at 5.4 in the first half versus our capital market decommitment, which is like 67%. I think that's a fair point. You have two elements you need to have in mind, Andrew. The first one is that indeed we have the FX effect. And secondly, we have this transfer of some health business, I mean the German health business and the French. So the UBR business and the health-related business in Austria, that was also transferred to the life segment. So if you correct for this later effect, then our growth is at 5.9%, which is towards the low end of this 6-7% commitment. And I think that's the way you need to think about it, basically, because this year-on-year effect related to that transfer will neutralize itself over time, 2026, 2027.

Our next question is from Michael, Michael Hutner of Berenberg. Please go ahead.

Two questions. One is hopefully for Oliver, well, clamoring. Have your competitors or has gone to sleep, not just you, but, you know, we're seeing amazing results, combined ratios and very strong outlooks on pricing above lost cost in retail pretty much across the board. Is this a – what's happening? Have the consumers kind of said, no, we'll pay more? I don't quite get it. And then the other one is on the – just a really silly question. Maybe I put two together. The cost of the AZ life hacking and the cost of French fires, the more recent ones. That's it.

Yeah, thank you. As Julio very nicely phrased, smart questions. I'll deal with the U.S. It's an unfortunate event and the key thing is really to protect our customers and to protect the business. That's the most important thing. At this point in time, from what we understand, it will not have a material impact at the group level. This is really important to understand. The key thing is to actually thank our people because at AZLive, our employees are working 24-7 now to call our clients, our distributors, and reassure them that Allianz is safe. Also, just to put it into perspective, the key thing is while there was a data leak of large numbers, there was no financial data released, so no policy content, no credit card numbers and things like that, so it's mostly contact numbers. And that is very important to know. But let me repeat, because it's very important, at this point in time, we do not expect a material impact at group level out of this event. So that's for the first one. And the other one is in terms of pricing versus volume. It's very fair what you're saying and I'm very concerned personally and many of us are about the issue of affordability of insurance for consumers. It's not just in auto but it's also in home insurance. It's in health insurance so it is not something to laugh about. The only way to really address this is twofold. The first one is to strengthen the quality of products and services to a point that customers feel that they're getting true value from us for what they pay. That's been a journey that you know we've been on for a long, long time. We will in the fall show you our updated Net Promoter Score numbers, and they're again improving massively in terms of loyalty leadership, so that's important. And you see that also what happens on the claim side. The other one is to try to pull every lever for our clients to make our products more affordable. So, yes, shareholders should be happy about the productivity gains, but also customers, because part of that we are reinvesting into the business. And the third one often goes unnoticed. The businesses that we are building as service offerings that complement our insurance offering, particularly offered by Allianz Partners and Solved, have two components. The first one is to improve service quality. and therefore value for products. But the second one is also to help to reduce the cost of risk. To give you a practical example, and we don't have the time for details today, is when we route a claim, a CASCO claim in Germany through Solved, and by the way, also in other countries, but for Germany, I have the number on the top of my head. The CASCO claims... outside of deductibles, about 6,000, 6,500 euros. We save about 1,000 euros out of that, and that allows us to significantly reduce the price paid for the consumer. We're offering a significant discount. And that role, whether that's a car, by the way, today, or a home tomorrow, or even health care, will have, over the next 10 years, a much larger share of our thinking and our value proposition for consumers. So it's a very good question, but so far we are able to fend our pricing, but we need to keep on adding value to consumers. Otherwise, it will become very tough.

Lovely.

Thank you. Thanks, Michael. Next question is from Farhad, Farhad Changazi of Capitalist Revue. Go ahead, Farhad.

Thank you very much for taking my question. Just on the PNC discount, previously it was guided to 2%. I mean, where are we seeing this end up for the year? And I suppose, what are you assuming for Turkish interest rates, which might impact it? Second thing, on the expense ratio, they're running better than the 30-bit capital markets guidance. Should we still be sticking with 30-bit? Is there something to do with business mix, for example, writing more reinsurance and medium term for 30 bits improvement is the right number to look at. Thank you.

Yeah, maybe starting with your second question. Yes, indeed. I mean, you always have a bit of a mixed effect. So that's why our fundamental view is that you should be like taking into account more these 30 bits structurally year on year as being what we are aiming for. So that's really what you should be using. And then when it comes to the discounting in the first quarter, the discounting impact, you remember, was relatively high. We were at 3.4% because we had some usual seasonality that we always see, but we also had some impact from hyperinflation in Argentina. In the second quarter, the discounting benefit is at 2.5%, which is very much in line with our expectations. So, all in all, given what we know already today about interest rate, I will see very likely that we will end up the full year a bit higher than the 2%, which basically we were guiding for two months as part of our outlook. and we will raise our land at 2.3% to 2.5%, but of course it will always depend on what are the interest rates we are going to experience, but slightly higher compared to what we were considering at the beginning of the year.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Thanks, Farhad. Next question is from James Shuck of Citigroup. Go ahead, James.

Thanks, Andrew. So part of my question has been answered. I was interested in that difference between the internal growth in P&C versus the headline and the like-to-like. You mentioned at the bottom end of your range, if you normalize for FX and other things, but presumably one of the missing pieces is also the arts transaction. So I'm just thinking if I correct for that as well, then presumably you're at the top end. Just to clarify that. On the same topic, I just look at Germany. P&C in particular, because the headline increased by 9.6, but the like-for-like was 4.4. I'm not aware of any disposals. Perhaps you can just help me understand why those two weren't aligned. That's my first question. Secondly, on LAO's partners, obviously you've got a plan towards 600 billion profit by the end of the plan. You've got the 95% combined share target, 96.7 up at 1H. It's now your bigger P&C segment really behind Germany, particularly if you look through the fronting that happens in ADC. So, Oliver, I'm just keen to hear how you think about this business as it continues to grow and scale. What do you think about it in terms of the capital stack? Are you going to open up to the third-party capital at some point? Does it make sense for Annie Ernst to be 100% over? And how do you think about MGA's within Annie Ernst's partner as well? Thank you.

Sorry, James, it was quite hard to – your line's not great. The first question, I think, was focusing back on revenue growth in P&C. Did you ask specifically about ART business as well or something?

Yeah, should I repeat it? Is the line better now?

I think that's the transfer between two of the health segments. Yeah. Correctly, maybe we can explain that.

And I think that particularly Germany is most impacted by the transfer of the health business. It's Germany and Austria, from memory, that are the most impacted segments.

Yeah. James, this is Oliver here. Thank you for your question. So we have in Germany an accident business called UBR that comes always in with 100 combined and has also always distorted our combined ratio numbers for Germany. And it is part of the protection business. As we sort of clearly formulated the strategy, we have transferred that, so that explains all the difference that you are looking at. It's a super attractive business, not under P&C KPIs, because you... don't see the value creation more properly. That is maybe the first one. The second one was more around capital structure. It is a very good question. We continuously look at how do we access more efficient capital structure. So again, as I mentioned earlier, on the life side, we need to continue with the likes of concept. We're using Viridium and we want to again build it not just in Germany but across Europe. That will offer the opportunity for partners but also for us and other markets. to find more capital-efficient sources and then transform so-called spread business into fee income that comes with a lot less capital consumption and, by the way, higher valuations. And the same thing we will do and have been doing in P&C. Now, there's a couple of things happening. The first one is whatever people say, and it's a bit differentiated if you have had LA net cat exposure or not, reinsurance prices are coming down for those that have been not attached. And more importantly, capacity is growing significantly and conditions are happening. So there is now capital available where there was no capital available. I think we're one of the only ones in the world that actually had an aggregate cover. So that's the first thing to bear in mind, and we're working on that. The second one is, indeed, we're not just looking at it for Netcat, but also for other businesses. For partners, that is not needed because they run an extremely capital-efficient set of products. Historically, the issue was a different one. It was, by and large, services businesses, fairly low margin, a lot of operating leverage. And that is something that we are working on. If we, in partners, find a way to make it more capital efficient, because there are a few businesses that are capital consumptive, we will certainly use them because we really like the 18% RRE that we have. Yeah, that's it. And again, Clamory and Tima are working very hard on improving capital generation for Solvency 2. This is already working in the first six months. You clearly see it in the numbers. So it's happening as we speak.

I hope that's very helpful. Thank you.

Yeah, thanks for that. Thanks, James. The next question is from Vineet. Vineet Malhotra of Media Banker. Go ahead, Vineet.

Thank you. Good afternoon to all of you. I'll just ask one question now. You know, we heard this news about the early approval for resorting the AGI book in the U.S. And I'm just curious that you haven't really mentioned it today, Oliver. Maybe you did and I missed it, so apologies. But if you could just share some thoughts on that, it would be very kind and much appreciated. Thank you.

Thank you, Vin. It doesn't mean much short term. It's a big relief to me personally, Andreas Wimmer. We don't have to sign all these papers anymore. Second thing, we had some limitations in the sense of having to report on certain items from our U.S. entities that also has fallen away. So that's also a big relief to the colleagues at Allianz Life and at PIMCO. And other than that, it doesn't mean anything, right? It gives us more optionality, as investment bankers would call it, but there's nothing in the cards or nothing changing as we speak. We're focusing really on further improving investment performance and productivity at AGI and growing as strong as we can. That's it. Nothing else in the cards at this point in time.

Sure. Thank you.

Thanks, Vineet. Next question is from William, William Hawkins of KBW. Go ahead, William.

Hi, everyone. Thank you. This is a very high-level one, so please forgive me. But, Oliver, I wanted to ask you if you could delve a bit more into the opportunities you see emerging in Germany, please. You were recently quoted in the press reminding us about the fiscal pressure faced by demographics and the pay-as-you-go Social Security financing. I guess I did want to ask at the macro level, you know, how serious do you think that is for Germany? You know, given that you're starting with an incredibly low debt to GDP, I recognise that it's relevant, but I don't know. if it's as relevant given all the other fiscal pressures going on around the world. But then more relevantly, I wanted to ask you about the commercial business opportunities that you're seeing in Germany from maybe the need for welfare reform and the what could be very large infrastructure spending going on in Germany. Just to tie it together, is there much going on that will be incremental to our estimates or is this all just sort of part of the general noise of macro? Thank you.

Thank you. I'll keep it very short. We can have coffee at some point to go into more detail in a complicated subject. But we think about it as an opportunity. Why? First of all, the state is now becoming as over leveraged as other European countries. That is not so good if you think about it in terms of. The question of GED2 GDP, but the nice thing for us is we'll have a spread that we can earn for our policyholders, and we run their investments very well. Second, and you saw that the last two to three years, Allianz Health Insurance is growing leaps and bounds. and is doing extremely well. We are now the loyalty leader in health insurance in Germany. We are also growing very strong in group health, which is a super strong growing business. It's supplemental because post-COVID employers who are still struggling to attract talented people are using that to retain their key employees. So it's a huge growth area for us. And with the steepening of the curve, believe it or not, life insurance is going to come back, right? Because people always compare that to investing in Nvidia. That's a brilliant idea. Much more brilliant is to look at the trillions we have in non-anything yielding bank accounts in this country. We are, I think, one of the worst in the world. So that's the right thing that cannot stay if people want to have decent retirement income. Now, on top of that, and then I'll stop We have a huge amount of unfunded pension liabilities in companies in Germany of any size, in difference to many other countries. Why is that? It's not for lack of offers from the industry. It's because the financing of these liabilities to external parties is extremely expensive because of misregulation. You have to pay 30% more in Germany to fund pensions. your corporate pension than, for example, in the UK or in the US. So we need regulatory reform if and when they come, which I can only hope for. We have two things. One, we have a huge business opportunity, and we can supply a lot more capital for the rebuild of our infrastructure. That's my last comment. It will only materialize if we have decent political leadership. Let's hope and pray they get something done. Thank you.

Okay, thanks, William. The next question is from Ian Pearce of Exxon BNP. Go ahead, Ian.

Hi, afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. Just one from me on capital generation. So in the capital generation slide, I think you flagged a positive one-off from LIFE. If you could just give us a bit of detail around the quantum of that one-off and what it relates to, that would be useful. And then also, just following that, I think even without that one-off, you would have been running comfortably ahead of the 20% guidance, probably closer to the 27%, 24%, 25% guidance. And your comments certainly imply that things are continuing to improve in terms of the levels of capital generation and the optimization going on within the business. They're just wondering why we should still be sticking with 20% as the right number for this year.

Yeah. So I think, Jan, what we see in the plus 13 percentage point of operating capital generation at this point in time, I would say is approximately 2 percentage point of operating Positive variances, if you want to put it this way, there is one which is related to the fact that we had some positive effects that came through in particular on the variances on the life side. So that's one element to it. It's almost one percentage point. And the second effect is that we have benefited from very excellent performance on the PNC side, which contributed as well to a higher level of operating capital generation against our yearly guidance, if you want. And that represents also, as well, almost one percentage point. So if you correct for those two effects, normalize, you come back to these 5.5, I would say, operating capital generation per quarter, approximately. So that's why I think we see improvements. But we are in this order of magnitude I was more mentioning. In the underlying, that's really what you can also perceive from the developments is that as an organization, we are clearly working extremely actively on the toolbox, you know, I presented as part of the Capital Market Day. And there is a lot of good energy of the business teams working with the finance teams to really look at all options to improve here, which is bearing fruits, and that's contributing to some of the positive developments. And so I would say at this point in time, we are more grabbing the low-hanging fruits in a way And the more heavy lifting type of levers will come later on. As an example, you know what I was mentioning, the shifting part of our business from the standard to internal model once we get regulatory approval and those type of things, that will more come later on. So that's why I think beyond those positive variances, I think the fundamental effect are still to come a bit later on as we have mentioned in the capital market day.

Okay, thanks Ian. The next question is from Andrew, Andrew Crean of Autonomous. Go ahead, Andrew.

Thanks, Andrew. A couple of questions. You've talked quite a lot about improving volumes through better persistency, better product density, lower lapses. Are there any data points from the first half that you could give us that show that you're moving along that line? And secondly, slide A6, you said, I think, that there was more developments to come in the second half. Obviously, you can't say what those are, but Is it possible to just look at the types of areas that you're looking to do bolt-ons, whether it's to do with developing markets or different distribution systems? Some sense as to what is your thinking when you're looking at portfolio optimization?

Thank you. I'll take the first one, Andrew. It is not yet there the way I want it, but I'll just say clearly. But remember, Allianz is a very, very big ocean liner, right? So from the time we prepared all the technology and the tools to the time that we drive it. And let me explain to you why sort of changing and excelling the course will take some time. is given the insensitivity that people worry about the most, those wonderful colleagues that are managing Allianz, they have still to deliver on profitability, right, which is the key thing for us to do, and you can very quickly lose margins. So we've been very adamant, particularly in commercial lines, to do that. And it's still hard for people to balance and to do the end, not just the or. The second component in terms of that, these things always come with a delay effect. So as we drive that, the first time you're going to see it accounting-wise, in my opinion, is in the second or third quarter of 2016. because some of the measures just, a lot of the premium that we write today have been written, a lot of the renewals have been written by the time we end the first quarter. So there will be a lay just from the fact of how the re-underwriting cycle works. I'm talking to PNC at the moment. So it is going to take some time, but we'll provide you with an update on how we do over time, trust me, because we really need to get this thing right over time. By the way, both levers are very important. And to give you an example, what we are currently doing, we are completely resetting the incentives for our distribution partners. everything that does not require to cancel or renegotiate the overall commission systems in order to make sure that both retention and cross-hailing are making it. We have, as I said, 50% of clients that haven't had a contact with us for a long time. That is not because we're idiots, it's because we have distribution systems that are excellent, as I said initially, at selling individual products that are less excellent in driving that. In fact, when you are an expert in selling live business in Allianz, you have zero incentive, factually, historically, to work on cross-selling. And that's not a good idea, and that is what we are and have been changing, and that will bear fruit, because we have more demand inbound, Andrew, than we can support. So it's not a matter of conceptualizing, it's just operationalizing it every day. Now the second question you got, Claire Marie,

Yeah, I will answer it. So I think, I mean, no big news, I would say, on that slide. ASICS, when it comes to our M&A focus, right? So we are, as an organization, constantly screening and looking at what makes sense against what are our M&A targets. Clearly, we are focusing on a bolt-on strategy when it comes to M&A, as Oliver was mentioning. In particular, I will say on the P&C side, looking at elements which are either allowing us to be in the top three in our markets, because for us to be able to implement the sort of technical excellence system, if I may put it this way, for our operating entities, we need to have a certain scale. That's very important. And the second dimension I will say on PNC is definitely as well further continuing to build our platform play. So it may be under the shape or form of smaller portfolios as we have seen for Alliance Direct. or adding, as an example, to the solved infrastructure to be able to deliver a better ecosystem to support our technical excellence. Those are the type of examples of things we are looking at. We are as well, in terms of geographical focus, definitely very interested in Southeast Asia, and our Indian development is an example of that, but also when we are looking at Singapore or other places similarly, both on the life and PNC, that's the type of perspective we are looking at. And then there is definitely the play when it comes to providing support to our life and asset management convergence. So it can be, as an example, also helping our asset management to invest into teams or basically to buy certain teams to accelerate our asset management capabilities, as an example. together with some elements around the capital optimization type of approach, or typically what we have done with the Verindium Consortium, which is very much going into that logic. So I think no fundamental change, but we continue to be, as an organization, extremely focused and active at looking at what makes sense to enhance our overall portfolio.

Thank you. Thanks, Andrew. Okay, so we have one follow-up question from Michael. Michael, your line is live again. So it's Michael Huttner from Barenburg. Go ahead.

Thank you. I had three, actually, but one is the total figure for FX headwind, if you have that, either for Q2 or H1. The second is the Wiggum numbers. How much do you own? How much have you invested? Because they've changed, haven't they, since Hanover sold their stake? And then I didn't see any reliance numbers. I'm really sorry. I'm probably lazy. But can you give us an idea of, you know, in terms of maybe songs you've trained or anything like that? Thank you.

Just so we can – Oh, and last one. Sorry. Yeah, sorry. That's it. It was FX Headwind 1H. We can give you that. Viridian, you wanted the amount we invested on our shareholding. Roughly, is that right? Yeah. And then the third one, so related to that, you want the S2 impact, I think, which we put in the analyst presentation. Yeah, and I'm sorry, I haven't heard it.

And you have one other question? Yes, I did have one. Thank you so much. It's the corporate another, which is very low, and I have read the comment, but I was a bit puzzled by it.

Okay. Okay.

Okay. So the FX Edwin for the quarter was in the operating profit was around 160 million euros. It was mainly related to the FX effect I have been mentioning on the P&C side, on the investment side. We have as well, and that you have identified, I assume, on the non-OP side, on the fair value through P&L side, some negative effects that came from the valuation of the assets. Basically, that's negative 260 million approximately. And then... Virulio, I'm sorry, Michael, you wanted the rough investment level?

Yeah, the investments in roughly 700 million and we're in the equity, so it's about 20% of the equity, if that helps, and I think we've said it's just around the point of solvency impact in the second half.

Exactly.

And the final question was corporate and other. Is that right? Yes, please. Yeah.

And just like to clarify, right, on the FX Edwin, right, that's for the entire first half. That's not for the second quarter standalone, just to be precise. Thank you. And then the corporate, you were asking why this is better than expected, right, overall? So first of all, there is always a bit of seasonality in the corporate segment. So that we see in particular because we have a lower level of admin expenses in the second quarter. There is always that seasonality effect, and usually you have a sort of cap shop effect. in the last quarter of the year that is coming through. And the second element, so I think we have another element which is associated with the seasonality related to the investment income, which was relatively high in the second quarter, and that's mainly related to some inflationary bonds and also to the dividend payment pattern we are getting into the corporate segment. Additionally, We had also a better contribution from Ion's technology into the corporate segment. That's more related to the fact that we have established also with the help of the new finance team there, like a more structured way of capturing the revenues on Ion's technology side, so that's also coming as a positive effect into this quarter. And lastly, as you know always, we tend to be a bit conservative in the outlook for the corporate segment, so that's also a reason why we are also better from that angle.

Lovely. Thank you so much.

Thanks, Michael. Thanks for that. Great. Well, that concludes. We have no more questions in the queue, so thank you very much everyone for your participation. With that, I wish you all a nice rest of summer and we'll speak to you at Q3. Thank you.