Asr Nederland Nv Uns/Adr

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us today on this call. So welcome to the ASR conference call on our results for the first half of 2024. On the call with me are Jos Baten, our CEO, and Ewad Holagiet, our CFO. And Jos will kick it off with the highlights of our financial results. He will give a brief integration update and discuss the business performance. Ewad will then talk about the developments in our capital and solvency positions. After that, we will open up for Q&A. We have ample time planned for this call, but we'll stop at 10.30 sharp. Please observe a limit of two questions, so that makes sure that everybody has an opportunity to ask the questions that they have. And finally, as usual, please do review the disclaimer that we have for many forward-looking statements, which is in the back of the presentation. Having said that, Jos, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Michel and good morning everyone. Thank you for joining on this on this early morning call. I hope everyone has been able to to enjoy a very relaxing vacation and I am pleased and also proud to report a solid set of results for the first half of 2024. Notwithstanding the focus on executing a successful major business integration, we have continued our commercial momentum and I believe that we are firmly on track to deliver on the ambitious targets that we have presented at the Capital Markets Day in June. We report a significant increase of the figures. This mainly reflects our underlying business performance, which has continued at strong levels across the organization, as well as a step up from the addition of the Aegon NL businesses. we are happy to provide additional insights into our performance in this call today. So let's turn to slide two for the most important highlights. Our OCC increased by 244 million to 658 million, and it's reflecting the continued solid underlying capital generation from our businesses, as well as a step up from Aegon NL. Our strong OCC is also reflected in the increase of the Solvency II ratio to a robust 180%. If we take into account the impact of the sale of our bank that we expect to finalize in the fourth quarter of this year as well, as the redemption of the remaining part of our 5% G2 capital instrument, which we announced last week, our Solvency II ratio would, on a performer basis, be 196%. So clearly operating on a very, very strong capital base. Operating results increased with almost 50% to 677 million, reflecting an overall strong performance of our businesses, together with the contribution from EgoNL. Combined ratio of non-life, and that is, as you know, P&C and disability together, was 91.8. This is an improvement versus last year, and ahead of our target of 92 to 94. And importantly, we did this while we were at the same time growing our non-life premiums organically close to 5% in the first half of this year. Our business growth is further elevated by the addition of Aegon NL. Organically, besides higher premium volumes in P&C and disability, we see a strong increase in pension DC inflow as well. the operating return on equity is increased to 13.4%, well above our target level of 12%. And so let's now turn to slide three to see how we are progressing in our non-financial KPIs. This first half year, we delivered against the new non-financial targets, and we are very pleased with the progress we've made so far. The development of ASR reputation as a sustainable insurer has risen to 39% within the target range of 38 to 43, and this was supported by our campaigns focusing on sustainable damage repair. The carbon footprint in our investment portfolio decreased by 2%, and that is mainly due to the increased allocations to government bond portfolios to countries with lower emissions. Here, we aim to achieve a 25% reduction by 2030. We are making good progress with our impact investments, which now represent 8.1% of the total investment portfolio, leaving us well on track to reaching our goal to be above 10% in 2027. While not shown on this slide, we are also happy to see our customer satisfaction as measured by the NPSC has improved in the first half from 52 to 54. As mentioned on our CMD in June, we will start reporting on the new NPSI metric in 2025. Our compelling ESG profile remains acknowledged by a broad range of international ESG indices and benchmarks. This was confirmed by Sustainalistics earlier this year, awarding ASR a number one position in being the most sustainable insurance company in the world. Let's now move to the integration milestones. When talking about the integration, I am happy to mention that all integration activities are progressing well and overall we are on track. We've identified clear milestones and will execute accordingly in this and the following one and a half to two years. This year, most product rationalization decisions and IT preparations for life, pensions and mortgages will have been made and we are progressing well to almost fully finish the migration and integration of our asset management services, our non-live and our disability. We relocate staff functions in a single location per function. This will enable us to close the Hague location as planned by the end of 2024. We keep working on the implementation of the partial internal model to extend the EGEN model to ASR live. we still expect to have the live PIM implemented by the end of 2025. So let's now turn to the business performance on the next slide. And I'm very pleased to see our premiums received in P&C and disability increase with almost 17%, reflecting a strong organic growth and the contribution of EGLE Netherlands. The organic growth was driven by tariff adjustments and increased sales volumes in P&C, and the addition of a large collective insurance contract in disability. The non-live operating results went up with 46 million in the first half of 2024, mostly driven by improved underwriting results in disability, organic growth, and as said, the contribution of AGON. The combined ratio of our P&C and disability business improved with 0.6 percentage points to 91.8, below our target range of 92 to 94. In P&C, the combined ratio increased to 92.2, partly as a result of claims inflation. We already saw claims inflation picking up in the second half of 2023, which we have countered by implementing tariff adjustments. And as you already know, we implemented further price increases for our personal lines starting in Q2 of this year of a circa 10% on average. And as you remember, price increases become effective at the policy renewal date throughout the year. So it will take two years to be reflected at a full level. The combined ratio in P&C also reflects the absence of weather-related claims in the first In disability, the combined ratio improved by 2.9 percentage points to 91.5. The enhanced profitability of our disability book reflects an improved underwriting result. In the first half, just to remember you, of 2023, the profitability was impacted by a one-off strengthening of the provisions. The combined ratio of our health business stands at 99.3, being almost similar to the first half of 2023. At the start of 2024, we already reported a decline in our health portfolio as a result of disciplined pricing. Reduction of economics of scale is compensated by the improved claim development on the supplementary health portfolio. And let's now move to the important segment of life in the next slide. We're very happy with the solid commercial performance of our pension products. Our pension DC inflow benefits from the developments in the pension market due to the pension reform, as well as the addition of Aegon DC products. We see a growing premium volume from annuities as a result of the conversion of DC accumulation and the addition of Aegon. In the pension buyout space, we see a strong interest in solutions that we offer, and we have already received quite a number of requests for information and requests for proposal. But typically, decision-making in these type of deals just take a bit more time. We remain confident about a longer-term opportunity and meeting the target we have set there of $8 billion. The operating result in life increases with 182 million to 492 million in total. The increase primarily relates to the addition of aid on Netherlands. The operating insurance service result increases 62 million. The result is partly offset by a lower experience variance, which is mainly driven transfers of collective pension entitlements, which has a contra-entry in the CSM through the changes in estimates. Included in the operating insurance results are also the higher project expenses related to the implementation of a new IT system in pensions. The operating investment and finance insurance result increased by 125 million due to higher market valuation of equities, the addition of the EGON portfolio, and a negative impact from the higher LIB, liability illiquidity premium, on the accrual of the balance sheet. So let's now move to our fee-based business on the next slide. The operating result of our fee-based business consists on the one hand of asset management businesses, which comprise mortgages, real estate, and asset management, and on the other hand, the distribution services businesses, including TKP. Operating results of the asset management more than doubled to 50 million by predominantly the contribution of Aegon Mortgage Business, partially offset by a lower fee income due to the transfer of the management of the mortgages and private debt funds to Aegon, which was part of the transaction we did with Aegon Group. Mortgage origination increased by 2.9 billion and reflects the inorganic growth of the Aegon transaction and also an increasing demand for mortgages in the Dutch housing market. Assets under management for third parties increased with 3.2 billion to over 32 billion since year end of 2023. This was mainly by positive revaluation and net inflows of the DC products. Switching to distribution and services, the operating results rose by 9 million due to both organic growth of the existing business and inorganic growth of the acquired businesses Nidasco, Robidus and TKP. As announced at the CMD, we are making additional investments at the TKP to create a competitive platform enabling our customers a cost-efficient implementation of the new pension reform. By then, we mentioned that these expenses would be included in the operating result of the OCC. However, given the incidental nature of these investments, we have to exclude the expenses from our operating results. Operating result of the holding and other decreased by 48 million, broadly driven by higher interest expenses, optimization of our debt profile by the issuance of the RT1 and senior debt instruments, and the transfer of activities to the holding. I'm sure you all noticed that the banking segment is missing in our presentation. As we reach an agreement to sell KNAPP, the results are included under discontinued operations in our income statements. And this for now concludes my summary remarks on the business performance. And now I would like to hand over to Ewout to provide further detail to key developments like the solvency ratio, the OCC, and of course, the investment portfolio.

Ewout, the floor is yours. Thank you, Jos, and good morning to everyone on the call. I hope everyone had some time to enjoy the summer and relax before the earnings season kicked off. Happy to discuss our Sol-C and capital position with you, so let's start at slide 9 for the movements in our Sol-C ratio. Our half-year 2024 Sol-C ratio amounts to 181% after deducting the interim dividend. The increase of five Solstice points mainly relates to a strong level of capital generation of around 10 Solstice points, partly offset by market, operational, and capital movements. Capital movements did minus 2% points, which includes the interim dividend and the temporary benefit of around 2 percentage points due to the RT1 issuance and not full redemption of the existing P2 instrument. Within the market and the operational movements, The largest components are spread movements with positive impact for market spread tightening by around 40 bps, which drove an uplift of the solstice ratio of about six solstice points, offset by government spread widening, higher equity charges, and VA tightening. In addition, as you know, the UFR was lowered with 15 basis points, so all in all, a minus 4% from markets. And looking at our pro forma solstice ratio, we foresee an uplift of around 15 solstice points. The expected closing of the KNAP transaction in Q4 will give an uplift of around 17 solstice points based on the H1 2024 figures. The higher contribution than the earlier state 13 solstice points at the time of the transaction, reflecting the inclusion of the 18 million for the transfer of the servicing of the mortgage portfolio to BAWA and an increase a required capital by the end of June for us as an insurance company due to business growth and account cyclical growth. Next to KNAPP, we also include the announced redemption of the outstanding 120 million tier two instruments in the pro forma numbers, which will be executed by end of September. The high performer ratio means an acceleration of the pace we go back into the balance sheet and puts us in a good position to execute our plans as announced during the CMD two months ago. Before moving to the details on the capital generation, I want to quickly remind you about the changes we have made to the OCC methodology on the next slide. We presented this slide as well during CMD and shows a good summary of the changes we have made. First of all, we have remapped the different OCC components to better align it with the IFRS 17 operating results, which means that business capital generation will represent business impacts like the results from fee-based business, value in your production, your risk margin impacts, and holding costs. And BCG is with that now more comparable to the operating insurance service results and other results under IFRS 17. Finance capital generation is the excess return, finance expenses, including hybrids and the U of R drag. And this is the equivalent of the elements that are part of the operating investment and finance results in our IFRS operating results. And the last part is the net SAR release, which only shows the SAR-related impacts and does not have a counterpart in IFRS. Secondly, we have updated our OCC methodology, with the key changes being the OCC is now based on quarterly numbers, where in the past we had the U of R drag and the SAR multiplier on an annual average basis. This caused an echo effect in the U of R drag from one year into the next, which was not easily understood. And with this change, we have solved that. And the full year OCC will then, with that, be the addition of four quarters. OCC will be built up bottom-up from the underlying insurance entities instead of from a group perspective, which reduces non-cash components like the diversification impact. And the SCR release methodology is updated and now includes the release of equity and real estate SCR in line with the runoff profile of the live book. And the SCR impacts are now multiplied with the SCR target ratio from the different entities and not the reported group ratio. And these changes will further align OCC with the free cash flow generation And it will also enable us to disclose segmental numbers as per full year 2024. That being said, let's have a look at our half-year 2024 OTC figures on the next slide. What we see here is that the level of capital generation increased with almost 60% compared to the first half of 2023. This is mainly driven by organic growth of the business and the agon NL contribution. The business capital generation amounts to $156 million, reflecting the strong contribution from non-life and the addition of AGOM to the Netherlands. The finance capital generation is with $325 million, the largest component, reflecting excess returns being partly offset by higher finance expenses and, of course, the EU part rate. And all components have increased related to the AGOM NLD. The net SCR release shows the net impact of SCR release and SCR strain, which will be lower in age two, given the timing of the SCR new business for mainly group disability. On the opposite, we also expect an increase of the business capital generation due to the family of the same portfolio. An OCC of 658 million 658 million in the first half of 2024, and knowing that the second half will have a lower OCC contribution due to the seasonality pattern in most of your disability portfolio, makes that we are well on track to meet our target of 1.35 billion OCC in 2026. The OCC sensitivity for interest rates has been updated in line with our updated OCC methodology, and now includes the impact on excess return in addition to the earlier presented EU FAR DRAG. For a 50 bps movement in interest rates, the OCC sensitivity remains manageable with certain offsetting elements in either up and down scenario. In the graph on the bottom right of this slide, you can see a bridge between OCC and the IFRS operating result given the remapping of the OCC. And this analysis has become easier where the two buckets of tax and SAR release speak for themselves. The difference in business capital generation is mainly related to differences in timing of profit recognition. The new business strain and fairly new production is mainly recorded in Q4 in OCC. In IFRS 17, this is released across the following years through the CSM. And finance capital generation shows a lower number for IFRS 17. This mainly relates to the difference in balance sheet accrual, where the LIB is material higher compared to the 3A and the Solstice II. This is because the LIB is a more comprehensive proxy for the actual portfolio, including mortgages. In addition, under IFRS 17, the overall liabilities are larger due to the CSM, which is being accrued as well. Let us now move to our investment portfolio on the next slide. This slide shows our high-quality investment portfolio that hasn't changed materials since full year, with a slight decrease of the overall portfolio due to interest rate movements. The main changes relate to the execution of our re-risking plan regarding optimization within the sovereign bond portfolio, where we shifted from AAA rated bonds to more AA rated bonds for additional spread at the very low charts. This part of our re-risking plan has been almost fully completed in the first half of 2024. Exposure to mortgages increased slightly due to the net positive revaluation related to mortgage spread tightening. and the point case portfolio remains of very high quality with a low amount of payment areas and eligible credit losses on average LTV of 62%. Our real estate portfolio shows improvement after a difficult 2023. The two largest elements in our real estate portfolio being rural and residential both show a positive revaluation in the first half of 2024. The smaller retail and office portfolio shows a small negative revaluation, Both, but on average, our real estate portfolio increased with around 1%. For the remainder of the year, we also remain positive on this estimate. Let's now have a look at the financial leverage and flexibility of the balance sheet on the next slide. As you all know, our holding cash policy has not changed, so we only remit enough cash from our entities to cover dividends, coupons, and hold-go expenses. the first half of 2024 we remitted 513 million from the different entities with a special one of remittance from s management related to the sale of the mortgage funds to acre capital distribution of 342 million relates to the payment of the final dividend the bucket order represents different different items of which the largest being the net positive impact of the earlier mentioned rt1 issuance and the partial partial to redemption being offset by replacement of the senior bank loan of 200 million various intercompany current account settlements. The social ratio of the insurance entities have increased or remain stable with the OCC exceeding the remittance to the group. On average, since 2021, we have remitted around 80% of the OCC from the non-life and life entities while continuing to grow these businesses. And that was even excluding the 500 remittance to finance the Aegon NL acquisitions. and further evidence that OCC is pretty much the line of free cash flow generation. And with that, I would like to end my presentation and hand back over to Julius for the wrap-up.

Thanks, Ewout. And this, of course, concludes our presentation. But before opening up for questions, let me briefly summarize. We achieved a very solid performance in all of our business segments, bolstered by the contribution of Aegon NL. Our OCC is on track to achieve the medium term target of 1.35 billion in 2026. We continue to have a strong commercial momentum, and that drives our organic growth and sustainable value creation. The solvency to ratio is robust and a 196 on performer basis with which we are comfortably in the entrepreneurial zone. And finally, the integration of Aegon NL is well on track, and we are on track to deliver on Synergy targets. So we are now happy to take any questions, and I hand over to the operator.

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star 1 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 1 again. We kindly remind participants to limit themselves to two questions per person.

We will now take the first question. The first question is from the line of core.

The clue is from ABN AMRO, OdoBHF. Please go ahead.

Hello, good morning. A couple of questions, maybe first on residential houses in the Netherlands. The court in H2 will probably come with a verdict on the CPI Plus case, which was basically a risk for rents in the future and it seems that the Advocate General made some positive advice to the judge. Could you give a little bit more clarity on that? How conservative have you valued your residential houses and if there would be a positive verdict? what might that impact the portfolio, the solvency, etc., or what's your view on this CPI Plus court case? And secondly, for market effects in July and August, a few things happened, of course, in the markets. Could you give us an update on the impact on solvency? And the last question is about the bank sale, which was only 4% points better than, I think, guided before and expected by the market. Could you give a reason why that exactly is? Is the eligible-owned funds higher, SGR lower? What's the reason for that, for my questions? Thank you.

Hey, Wout.

Yes. So thanks, Cor, and great to meet again, though, via the phone. A residential house valuation to start with. In detail, like you said, As we know, there is a rental case going on, where the High Court has been requested for advice on how to deal with that. The High Court is also advised by the Attorney General, and actually the conclusion of the Attorney General was that the indexation of 3% is not seen as unfair. And now it's waiting for the high court to come up with their final advice. On your question, what does that mean for valuation? I think what we have seen over the last one and a half years is that while house prices were already going up again, that the value of rented houses actually remained more or less stable. So there was an increase in the way the rented houses were valued. versus the fair value of houses. I think the percentage is somewhere around 70% at this moment in time. And I believe when this uncertainty will be out of the market, that gives some kind of a potential for the valuation of the rented houses to actually go up again in the coming period. How quick that will go, we have to see, of course. But I think getting this uncertainty out of the market will definitely be helpful in the valuation of rented value. And as you know, we have a valuation of around $4.5 billion of rented value on our balance sheet. So that will definitely be something that can be positive for our SOLCI ratio. So that's one. On the Solstice 2 market-to-market movements, I think we see a few developments since H1. One is that rates went down with, let's say, around 40 bps compared to the H1 number. I think we haven't seen mortgage tariffs year-to-date, H1 to date, have moved a lot. So that kind of results in mortgage-backed widening. At the same time, what we also have seen is that there was tightening of Covenant bonds, especially when it comes down to Germany and the Netherlands, which is a large part of our investment portfolio. And thirdly, we also have seen the VA coming down. So when you bring that all together, I would say that the total market-to-market movement is more or less neutral. And it's kind of the same effect that we have seen in H1 the other way around that we have seen since actually H1. So that's on the source to market-to-market. Then on the bank impact, indeed. So I think two components that plays a role here. One is that the SDR impact in the Solstice ratio that we present today of the bank is larger than it was when we presented the deal. So that's one. And we now also have included the 18 million that we received from handing over the administration of the mortgage business to BABA. And that together makes that actually the contribution of KNAP, of the sale of KNAP in our performance Solstice ratio increased with four Solstice bonuses.

Wonderful. Very clear. Thank you.

Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of David Barmer from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one is on your capital generation targets. Could you remind us how conditional that is to the rates and the spreads remaining at the sort of level that we saw this summer? And linked to that you now have a positive OCC gearing to low interest rates. Is there a level of interest rate drop at which the sensitivity breaks and becomes a bigger negative or a big negative? And then secondly on non-life, so the combined ratio and disability was very good and back closer to the sort of level we would see in the past. I think it even gets seasonally better in the second half, thanks to the individual side. Could you give us a bit more color on what you see as an underlying performance of disability and your outlook for that? Thank you.

So thanks, David, for your question. Let us start with the last question, and then Ebert will jump in on the question on CapGen. Um, what we do see as a, as a development in, uh, in disability is that we're actually, uh, fairly back at the levels that we were used to, uh, before, uh, before the first half of, uh, of 2023. Um, so, uh, stable developments in the individual portfolio, uh, uh, and we don't see any adverse trajectories in, uh, uh, for the, for the second half of the year in individual. Group business developing stable and sickness leave has become better than last year. And that still remains the area where we are keen to follow up on developments. And if we need to increase premiums there, we will not hesitate to do so. So all in all, disability market seems to be fairly stable at the moment. and we remain, as always, cautious on specifically the short-term sickness leave markets.

Yeah, and then on the sensitivity of the capital generation, let's start with spread movement. So I think the main sensitivity would be on more cases. I think when we look to the current level of spreads that we see on more cases, I think we are perfectly in line with what we see on the food cycle OCC spread of, let's say, around 90 bps. We are even a bit higher per H1. So I would not expect from spread movements a significant change compared to what we have seen, for example, in H2 2023. So not so much to expect from that one. Then your question on how sensitive are we for rates going up or down? I think that's also what we have shown on the slide when it comes down to capital generation. There are offsetting effects when it comes down to a race going up. So when rates are going up, you're seeing benefit on one hand from lower UFR drag. On the other hand, you see a kind of small negative on the excess return, for example, on the equities and the real estate side. So that is more or less offsetting each other. And there's also an SCR component which will be a bit lower. So that's why we now have presented a bit being even a bit in favor for rates are going down for the OCC sensitivity. And I think when we remain within the 50 bps as we have presented here, that is also an amount that you then can expect. um yeah when it goes down with 100 bits you have to reassess again but that is something that we've seen and this is an annual number that we present over here so something that's on an annual basis is the 10 million sensitivity could you give us an idea of what it would be for a like a hundred bits move i think it's the the best assumption to make now is is double the amount that we have presented that we have presented here So the double the amount of 50 bps going up or down.

Thank you. Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Benoit Petrarch from Kepler-Chevre. Please go ahead.

yes good morning uh yeah two questions on my on my side so just to come back on the non-life results um and the growth cross return premium growing very nicely at plus 4.6 organic could you maybe detail the the breakdown between price and volume effect and and what you see also on the pricing side for the for the second part of the year and also linked to the non-life years. Maybe on disability, you mentioned improved underwriting results. Is that the first effect of the improved consolidation on this market? And also maybe could you talk briefly on the plan of implementing mandatory disability insurance products for entrepreneurs? I think there is a plan running at the Parliament and just wondering what is your view on that one. And then maybe just to, second question is more on the capital side with the 196. Obviously you will get of course synergies still in H2, PMIs coming. What is your view on excess capital? Obviously, Aegon might be selling some shares at some point. How do you see the excess capital at your end? How much do you think you can buy back if Aegon will be coming? Thank you.

Benoit, thanks for those two questions. First of all, on the non-live. Let me diversify a little bit between non-live and disability. In non-live, we have seen as well growth due to the fact that we were able to gain more customers, especially in the area of the SME. However, the increase in P&C is for roughly two-thirds due to the development of premiums, due to the premium increases. And as you know, we have increased the premium last year, and we've done the same on average with 10% mid-year 2024, and that will kick in over the next 12 months. So one can expect that the growth in BNC only due to premium increases will continue also over the next 12 to 18 months. But at the same time, we see increased customer demand and also see growth there. In disability, the increase is predominantly to the addition of large contracts that we did within Loyalis. and to a lesser extent premium increases in individual and group, but of course also due to the increase of premiums in the sickness leave portfolio. To the second part of your question, our view on the obligatory insurance for entrepreneurial, We are now in the phase that the old government, to mention it like that, has presented a proposal and everybody can react to that proposal. And the question is whether the new government will continue with the old proposal or that they will start over the debate again. our prediction for now, but it is difficult because we have to see what the dynamics are in the new government. This new law is based on an agreement between unions and employers in the pension contract that we had a couple of years ago, so it will be fairly difficult. to not implement an obligatory disability law going forward. Whether it will look like it is now presented, we have to see. And it's our expectation that it will definitely not happen before 2027. So if and when it happens, it will be at the earliest date in 2027. That could be beneficial for us, for the new business, of course, But at the end of the day, it's going to depend on how the obligatory product will look like and how interesting it will be, because there will be, and that will not change probably, there will be an opportunity for customers to make a choice between the obligatory product coverage and the regular insurance products with insurance companies. So we're positive on the development and we have to see whether the proposal will end up being implemented like it is today.

Question on how we look to access capital and the flexibility that we have when Agon is coming. So we always have said that we have presented at this Capital Markets Day that we have a kind of a path of buying back shares in the coming three years of 1.25, 1.75 and 2.25. So that is the trajectory that we have looked at. But we also have said, yeah, when Aegon decides to sell down its stake, we can also accelerate that path. And I think with the pro forma ratio that we are presenting, we actually are having the flexibility to do so when Aegon LTD is starting to sell down their stake in ASR.

Great. Thank you very much.

Thank you. We will now take the next question. From the line of Farouk Hanif from JP Morgan, please go ahead.

Hi, everybody. Thanks very much. And I think congratulations on the OCC kind of breakdown with IFRS. I think that's really helpful. But just my two questions. Firstly, in life, can you just clarify a little bit what your message is on the experience therein? In the appendix, I can see that some of it will be recurring. If you could just give some guidance or some explanation on that. Plus, what is the risk that you get more negatives from losing pension entitlement? And then the second question is, you know, great outlook for annuity business and for DD. So how much of this is just your existing customer's essentially switching to DC and how much are you seeing kind of, you know, a win from corporates or others who are switching to an insured DC solution? And for both the DC and annuity, what's your kind of outlook for growth? I mean, I presume it's going to be very good, but if you could give some numbers or guidance there, that would be helpful.

Thank you.

about on the experience very yes question more than appear to answer so in yeah so we in our half-year we sold through guess you said correctly we see some negative variance from from transfer of the of collective pension entitlement with which has a positive counterpart in the in the CSM and this is one of the I've read 17 and particularly at these peculiarities that may be solved in the in the future but what happens currently is that the transfer of accumulated assets runs directly through P&L and with expected total liability as a counterpart in the CSM. And this results in kind of a timing mismatch where the CSM counterparts will flow into the P&L over time. In addition to that, we also see that the release of risk adjustment is like we have no longevity reinsurance in place. But in the ACOM portfolio, we are actually having the offsetting effect of around 20 million is also presented in the experience variance. So that's the second component. And when you take out both of that, you will come more close to a minus 10 to minus 15 million for H1 as a real experience variance. And that has mostly to do with the investments in the new pension system, as you also mentioned in the call today. So actually, that is the bridge when it comes down to the experience variance. So two very particularly elements that are related to how we deal with IFRS 17. One element we are looking at whether or not we can solve that. And then the real remaining portion is kind of experience variance of minus 10 to minus 50 million related to mostly the investments that we do in the pension ending.

Can I just ask a quick question on those points? Just very quickly, very sorry. It feels like the risk adjustment thing might continue. And will you have more projects integration type of expenses? Will there be some element of negative variance that we should build into forecasts?

I think the experience variance for the reinsurance might continue, but the offsetting effect is also in a higher release of the risk adjustment, because we release the risk adjustment like we have no longevity reinsurance in place, and that's why you see a higher risk adjustment release. And the offsetting effect is in the experience variance. So both are offsetting each other. So that one will be continued. Like I said, we are really looking into the timing mismatch as a result of the transfer of collective pension entitlements, whether that can be resolved. and the remaining portion is then mostly the investments in the pension system, and we expect also there's some further investment in H2, so also there we expect it to increase a bit.

For the long term, that will not be the case anymore. Then the second question is on pensions. Maybe a couple of remarks up front. We do see three growth areas in the pension business. First of all, buyouts. We have set a target on that of 8 billion for the next three and a half year. And we do see a lot of inquiries as said, and we feel comfortable that we will be able to meet that 8 billion target. To your question, if we see the development in DC that is partially to new contracts due to the new pension law growth in our market position and the addition of Aegon NL. And this is very helpful. So the growth in pension DC is to a lesser extent coming from people that are changing from a DB contract to a DC contract. We do see that, but most insured contracts already in the recent past have taken decisions on switching from a DB contract to a DC. And that's why we have set a second target on the growth of DC. We aim to grow that business with 8 billion assets under management in the period 24 to 2026. And then lastly, annuities. There we expect and we're on the way to delivering on that target to meet a 1.8 billion growth of annuities over the next three to four years. And that predominantly comes from our own portfolio, where people that have built up an amount of pension money start to use it from their 66 or 67 age. a smaller part of that 1.8 billion will come from external portfolio, but it will be predominantly from our own DC portfolio. And that's why it is important to grow the DC business to support the future growth of the annuity business.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. We will now take the next question. From the line of Michael Hutner from Barenberg, please go ahead.

Fantastic, thank you. You probably answered the question, but it's from the TKP, which is no longer in OCC. So I just wondered if you can remind us what the investments are and where they would be. And then a reminder of the headroom, which is on slide 13. because I always hope that you'll do the ECMEA deal. So an idea there would be lovely. And then I know I'm only allowed two, but maybe a third one. You talk about free cash flow, and I've completely forgotten. How do you define free cash flow? And I think that's on slide 14. Thank you.

On your first question, the impact of the fact that TKP is a one-off and that we excluded from our operational results and OCC, the impact of that in this year will be roughly somewhere around 5 million in OCC. And to your third question, Remind me what was it? The free cash flow, yeah. Maybe you want to do it, I can do it, but go ahead.

We didn't put an exact definition on it, Michael, but what we mean is that OCC is free cash flow, which means that it's fully distributable.

Oh, I see. So just to understand, the 6, 5, 8 million is quite...

cash i mean cashable if i may say is that about right yeah it's just distributable capital yeah those are cash components but for example also the release of capital of course that you have that is not cash but what you do is that you get excess cash in the legal cash in the legal entities is distributable and that's why we said the OCC definition that we have made is even more free cash flow than it already was and that means that we can the capital that we generate in the legal entities can also be distributed can also be remitted to the whole book and also be paid out to two shells really helpful and the headland

The second one, your assumption that we will do a transaction. Well, I'll leave that with you. We agree that it would be great. But we don't see any activities on that front anymore at the moment. So we don't know whether they are still in the process, whether they've stopped the process, whether they're negotiating, whether they will come back to us. So if and when the portfolio would be available, we would be very happy to entertain such a transaction.

In addition to that, Michael, so when we look to the financial leverage, we see a leverage ratio which is actually below the 25%, so that we release really healthy leverage ratios. So of course, in case of a large transaction, there would be financial flexibility to also look to the debt side.

Very helpful, thank you.

Thank you. We will now take the next question. From the line of Stephen Haywood from HSBC, please go ahead.

Good morning and thank you very much. Two questions. One is on the real estate portfolio. Obviously, you mentioned the £4.5 billion rented property where you've had no real kind of revaluations on that for a while. But actually, I'm hoping you can give us some guidance on expected revaluations of the rest of the property portfolio in the second half of this year and maybe going forward as well. One of your peers has obviously given us some helpful revaluation guidance there. And then secondly, on the... full year 2024, the OCC and also on the IFRS operating profit, can you give us any sort of colour helpful hints getting towards what sort of level you expect for the full year? Thank you.

I think both for you, Erol.

Yes, so let's start with the residential revaluation. Maybe good to mention it there. So we don't value real estate ourselves. We do that via external valuators independently. So it's always difficult to exactly project what the valuation will be. Unfortunately, we cannot see at least the outcome of the valuation. So that's a hard one. Looking more to the market perspective, I think Investors are more positive on real estate across the market. The majority in our real estate portfolio is in residential and is in rural real estate. When we look to residential, also what I've mentioned by answering the question of CORE, we actually see that the fair value is way higher than the valuation that we have in the book. So that's kind of 70% is the rented value compared to the fair value. And historically, it is always, let's say, around 10% to 50% higher than the 70% today. So that gives a kind of an upside that we believe is there. Having said that, we don't know. how quick that upside will be really into our numbers, but we are definitely positive about the large part of our portfolio being a residential real estate. That's one. Rural is already very positive for a long time. A lot to do with the scarcity of good farmland, because when we talk about our rural land, it's always about farmland. In the Netherlands, you can't make land. Well, in the Netherlands, we don't do that any longer. And that means that actually good farmland is becoming scarce, and that drives actually the prices of that land already for many, many years. And we remain positive for that part of the portfolio. And come down to retail, we actually don't see an increase in the vacancy levels that we are having. We still see rents are going up. So also there, we believe that the momentum is not negative. Transaction prices are not high, and that makes it, we don't see positive evaluations there, but when we look to the direct rental income on retail, actually that is good, and the same applies for offices. Of course, across the world, a lot to do on offices. When we look to our office portfolio, the office portfolio is situated near a large railway station. and actually that makes that we still see that fake sea levels are very good and strong and also the rental income remains there but of course also there you see transaction prices not going up so I think for retail offices neutral maybe slightly negative for the other for the large portion of the portfolio we are actually positive also for the second half of the year And then the second question was on how we look to the level of capital generation for H2. Yeah, I think it's good when we want to make kind of an assessment there to start with last year, H2 last year as a starting point. So I think OCC in H2 2023 was at the level of 525 million. included in that was 64 million of the banks, so that should be excluded. That leaves us with a number of 460 for the second half of the year. We have some additional expenses for the senior loan that we have issued, so let's say around 10 million. On the other side, we can add that cost synergies that we are already realizing. We see business growth, so both together, let's say around 40 million. So, all in all, a number of at least 500 million should be feasible when it comes down to OCC. And that brings us for a full year OCC of at least 1150, and I think perfectly on track to achieve the 1.35 billion in 2026. Okay. Thank you very much.

Thank you. We will now take the next question. From the line of Ian Pierce from Exxon BNP Paribas, please go ahead.

Hi, morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one was just following up on some real estate items. Just the office vacancy rate, if we include those newly refurbished properties, that's close to 10%. I know you said that you're sort of comfortable with office vacancy rates at the moment, but is there anything that gives you confidence about filling those new properties and sort of reducing that office vacancy rate to more normal levels? And if you could just briefly touch on the competitive dynamics in the health market, obviously a decent loss of volume in H1. So just give us some details around what's driven that. That would be useful.

Thank you. Let us start with the last question, and then I'll hand over to Ewa about it. The health market in the Netherlands is a market where customers once a year can make a choice whether they stay with their current health insurance companies or whether they move to someone else. We over the last couple of years have been very rational in our pricing and as already mentioned during the full year 2023 results, what we have seen at the end of 2023, that our pricing in health was above the average pricing and was above the price increases in the rest of the market. So we lost customers that have chosen to move to a health insurance company with a lower price. That is part of the market dynamics, but our policy is value over volume. we want to price in a rational way. And if that would mean that we lose some business, then we prefer to lose business instead of pricing irrational and actually buying losses for the future. So that's not the way we run the company. So that is actually the main dynamic in the health market. And then the real office...

Thank you for asking this. Exactly the reason why we presented that bucket separately is that we are confident that the office space that is new for rent due to recent renovation, we are very confident that we can rent it in due course. So that's why we also presented it separate. And that brings us back to the levels that we see more as regular levels, and that was the confidence that I had. that I just mentioned in answering your previous question.

Thank you.

We will now take the next question from the line of Nasib Ahmed from UBS. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Monique. Thanks for taking my questions. So firstly, on the P&C premium growth, you mentioned 10% over the next 12 to 18 months. I see PNC premiums are about 50% of the book. So you're kind of hitting the top of your target 5% already without any volume growth or without any rate increases in disability. Is that kind of the short-term view that you're probably going to exceed that target? That's the first question. Second question on the PIM impact. So I know it's greater than 10 points on the group, but if you were to combine the ASR life and Aegon life entities, the 176% and the 179% solvency, what would be the combined value? Solvency of the life entity post the PIM implementation and would you get more than 10 points at that at that subsidiary level?

Thank you On your P&C question We've increased premiums on average with 10% and There is a diversification impact between fire and motor and between retail and commercial. So you can't add 10% on the total premium volume because it will flow in over the next 18 months. And there are differences, for example, in motor, the increase is a bit higher than in fire. So it's too easy to add up 10% to the total premium volume. Having said that, the growth going forward, of course, predominantly will be at least driven by this premium increases. But especially in the commercial business, in SME, we also aim further organic growth of customers and products. And then to the combined life entity solvency question.

Yeah, so the introduction of the partial internal model for ASR life, so what we have said before is somewhere between 10% to 12.5% at group level. That's the contribution that we expect. difficult to put an exact number on it, what it means by the combined life entity, because the first phase of the first step that we are doing is that we bring ASR life to the partial internal model. Then, when they are both on the partial internal model, then we can merge the legal entities. The 10 to 12.5% that we have mentioned before as a benefit of the inclusion of the partial internal model is the benefit at group level.

Perfect. Thank you.

Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Anthony Yang from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. The first question is, could you give us an update on your asset re-risking progress? And if so, how much has that contributed to the OCC? And then the second question is coming back to the non-life business. Just to clarification, are there any portfolios up to renewal in the second half, 24, which you may still increase price? Thank you.

Let me first answer the second question. A non-life portfolio is built up over time and through the year. So actually, as from the 1st of June, the full portfolio is up for renewal. Most non-life contracts are short-term, one year or three years. So if we announce a premium increase on average of 10%, contracts that were new as from the 1st of August 2023 will be renewed and get a premium increase 1st of August 2024. And that's why it will become visible through the year. So there is not one particular part of the portfolio that renews at, for example, a certain date. That is for the retail portfolio. In SME, there on average, it's more around the 1st of January. So the SME portfolio, more of the SME contracts will renew from the 1st of January.

Yes, and on the re-risking question, Anthony, so as you know, the re-risking consists of three parts there, so moving to equities, moving to liquids, and optimizing the software portfolio. What we have done in H1 is mostly the third part, so it's actually optimizing the sovereign portfolio by moving from AAA to the most AA countries, and that's actually more or less finalized, and the annual OCC contribution of that is around 10 million.

Thank you.

Thank you. We will now take the next question. From the line of Farquhar Murray from Autonomous, please go ahead.

Morning, all. Just one question from me, really, on the life side with regards to the kind of DC and annuity inflows. I mean, those already look to be kind of running around about the levels that are needed to reach the targets that you outlined. I just wondered if you could outline whether there'd be any reasons why that would taper off from these levels. Obviously, the buyout opportunities, back-end loaded. I just want to double check. There's no reason why this is front-end loaded. Thanks.

Hey, do you want to? Yeah. So I think on both the DC as well as annuities is indeed perfectly on track with the ambition that we have set. So the annuities is almost 300 million already for H1. And we have an ambition of doing 1.8 billion in three years. So actually we see already that we are perfectly actually on track on getting the annuities into our business profile. And actually the same applies when it comes down to VC. When we see the inflow now, it's ramping up perfectly actually to meeting the 8 billion target in three years.

And as I say, is there any reason why that would be front-end loaded in terms of pension reform impacts?

No, because the pension reform, every employer has the time to take a decision during the next three years. So that will be spread over the next three years. So we expect that the DC developments and the annuity developments will be more equal over the years. And as said, the pension buyouts is more lumpy business. That will definitely not four times two. That will kick in over time. As mentioned in my presentation, we already have a number of RFIs running and requests for proposal. So we are positive on the fact that we don't have to wait until the end of 2025 or 2026 for the first buyout. But that will be more lumpy and is less predictable whether that will be equally spread out of the full period. Great. Thanks, Mark.

Thank you. We will now take the next question. From the line of Michael Hutner from Berenberg. Please go ahead.

Thank you so much. Just two. One, you talked about insights from OCC. I just wondered if you could feed them just again. The impression I have is that it looks as if you make more of your money from the real world investment kind of numbers rather than the base assumptions. But it's hard for me to – it's the first time I've really looked at this. And then the second is you do have a fee target. I think it's $140 million. It looks like you're already beating it, but I'm just wondering if you can talk about that.

Thank you. To your second question, when we announced the targets of the asset management business and the distribution businesses, By then, that included still the TKP investment. We've taken that out. So yes, we are on the way to meet the 140 million, but it is still the target. And if you would take out the TKP investment for the year 2026, in that year, we assumed that we were still investing roughly 2 to 3 million in that business. So if you want to add a number to that, then it would be roughly 2 to 3 million on the 140 in 2026. Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, and then on the... I think Michael had another question, which I hope I answered correctly. So my interpretation of your question is, Michael, is that your question is whether or not the... the result on the investments, whether or not they should be higher. Well, the way we are actually looking at the portfolio, so we look to the actual spreads of the portfolio, both on the market side as well as on the credit portfolio, and of course also in the coffees. And as you know, for equities and real estate, we have an excess return assumption that actually is already for many, many years stable, so 6.6% on equities pre-tax, uh 5.5 percent for real estate pre-tax uh and it's also what we discussed during this capital market we did not increase that that excess return assumption despite the fact that actually the rates have moved up and well theoretically you can also could have a kind of a theory that then also the excess return on the equity in real estate should be higher. We did not do that. So excess returns remain stable. That's for real estate and equities. And for the rest, we really look to the actual spreads of the portfolio. And that's actually how we come up with the excess returns.

Does that answer your question, Michael? Yes, 100%. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Thank you. We will now take the next question. from the line of Jason Calambusi from ING. Please go ahead.

Yes, hi there. A couple of small questions.

The first one is a clarification and a question by Aoud. And you're saying that, I may be wrong, but I've always assumed that this is really a 26 to 27 story. And along the way, of course, you can pick up a couple of deals somewhere there. do you find that though we are starting to move to 25 that means in 25 we are more likely to see a number of deals rather than you know the odd occasional deal and essentially also for 24 do you think that you know something can happen or at the end of the day for the moment there are a lot of requests for proposals but as you had said i mean pricing will only tighten later on um the second question is on the cash balance I know you don't run there at Holco level your cash, but just to check, you still want to remain the 500 to 600 million in general, and so you had, I think, a repayment of 200 million loan to Rabobank. Are there any such items that we should expect over the next 12 months? Thank you.

To your first question, in an ideal world, We would hope that we would do this year 2 billion, next year 2 billion, and the two years thereafter 2 billion. But as said, it is fairly lumpy business, and we expect that it will not end up being like an ideal world. Predominantly, it could be back-end loaded, but what we do see is that a number of pension funds are already acting now. And we are realistically hopeful that at least in 2025, we will already see the first transactions coming to a final conclusion. And maybe, but that would be under very positive circumstances, maybe already in 2024, we could do one or two smaller transactions. I expect that there will be focus on 2025 and 2026 and, of course, also a remaining part in 2027. But we do see enough activities to be positive on that development.

Jason, and with respect to your question on the hot code cache? As I said, the whole cash policy that we had in Class TV did not change. So what we do by full year is that we remit enough cash to cover dividends, coupons, and also the holdco expenses. The $560 million for an interim is fine, but I think for the full year, the number will be higher and will be around the $800 million mark. When it comes down to do we expect additional outflow, special outflow, not the only one that we do expect is the 120 million tier two redemption. So the remaining portion that we expect to redeem by end of September. And besides that, we don't expect additional outflow. So no additional outflow besides the 120 million and cash at hold call by year end closer to 800 million than the 560 today. Okay, great. Thank you very much.

Thank you. We will now take the next question. From the line of Michele Balatore from KBW, please go ahead.

Yes, thank you. My question, I have one question about the net SCR impact. specifically about the different components, if you can give more details. And also, what changed? I mean, in 2023 was 34 million, I see from the capital markets representation, but was not restated according to the new methodology. So can you remind us what changed?

Yeah, and as I said, the different components. Thank you. Yes, thanks, Michele.

So a few comments on that. So the net SCR impact is the release of capital due to the fact that we have a runoff portfolio in the life segment, but also during the year in disability, you have kind of released the SCR strain that you actually add at the end of the year. So that is included when it comes down more to the bridge to watch H1 2023. I think it's, of course, difficult to bridge because we have now added AGON to it. And that is a large balance sheet that you add to that. And with that, you also see an increase of the SCR release compared to last year. And I think that's the main reason for the bridge, actually, between H1 2023 and H1 2024.

Thank you.

Thank you. We will now take the last question from the line of Naseeb Ahmed from UBS. Please go ahead.

Hi, sorry. Just to follow up on my earlier question, Ewald. On the ASR Life Company, the impact of the PIM, if I estimate that there's 400 million benefit of the SCR, That gives me about 12 points on the group. Take off 400 million on the SDR of ASR life, I get about 38 points benefit. Is that kind of in the right ballpark? Of course, there's going to be diversification at the group, so you probably get more than 38. It's just, yeah, is that math correct?

Thanks. I can only give you applause. I think it's a nice assumption to make when it comes down to the benefit that you can expect in ASR life.

Okay, thanks.

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the conference back to Jos Petten from closing remarks.

Thank you very much, operator, and thanks all of you for the questions. And hopefully we were able to answer them in a way helpful for you. Just to sum it up, as said, we are very happy with the performance we've delivered today. We're really on our way to deliver on all the targets we have set in June, especially achieving the medium term target of 1 billion 350 million in terms of OCC. We see a continued strong commercial momentum, which we're happy with, because at the same time, we're still busy with the inclusion of the AGO Netherlands business, which is hard work and remaining commercial active in that period. It's always a challenge, but we're successful in that. We're happy with the robust solvency tool ratio that we presented on a performer basis, the 196 going forward, with an additional uplift due to the inclusion of ASR Live in the PIMP. And finally, as said, we are meeting the at least 215 million target in our integration program going forward. So all in all, happy and happy to see you over the next period to continue the conversation on the performance of ASR. So thanks for joining us. For those who are still on vacation, enjoy the rest of your vacation. And for those who started to work like all of us, enjoy your working day.