ASR Nederland N.V.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the ASR full year 2025 results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automatic message advising your hand is raised. To answer your question, please press star 1 1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Michel Holtzers. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us today. Welcome to the ASAR conference call on our full year result of 2025. On the call with me today are Jos Baten, our CEO, and Ewout Hollegien, our CFO. Now, just to kick it off with the progress of our strategy and the highlights of our financial results. Ewald will then talk about the development of our financials, capital, and Sol C position. After that, we will open up a Q&A. We have ample time planned for this call, but we will stop sharply at 10.30. So please observe a limit of two questions, and that means that everybody has got a chance at least to ask questions. Finally, as usual, please do review the disclaimer that we have in the back of the presentation for any forward-looking statements that we may be making in this presentation. So having said that, Jos, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Michel, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'm very proud to report that 2025 has been again a great year for ASR. We made significant progress in executing our business strategy and we have delivered strong financial performance. So let's start on slide two and take a closer look at the progress we've made in executing our plans. I'm pleased that the integration of the Aegon NL business has been successfully completed And we have realized that well within three years after closing the deal. A key milestone in the implementation of the partial internal model for ASR Live. And as we expected, it delivered an uplift of 12 percentage points in the solvency tool ratio. Additionally, decommissioning of the former Aegon systems has started and after completion, we will achieve our run rate cost synergy target of 215 million euros. Secondly, on profitable capital deployment, we've materially strengthened our balance sheet over the past year, enhancing our capacity to be entrepreneurial and seize the right opportunities. In the past year, we've deployed capital in attractive inorganic growth. We've done free biotransactions and we have acquired the remaining shares of the human total care. This strengthened our position in the field of occupational health, services and reintegration. And last but not least, we announced the acquisition of Bovaymai at the start of this year, a mid-sized P&C insurer with a strong distribution network in the mobility sector. These deals fit perfectly in our business strategy, but also quite happy with the profitable organic growth that we realize, which will support us in achieving the OCC target of 1 billion and 350 million euros for the full year 2026. Lastly, we also raised the capital returns to our shareholders. We increased the total amount of the dividend by 7% And we announced a total of 280 million in share buybacks over 2025, of which 175 million Euro announced today and 105 million Euro in our participation in the sell-down by Aegon in September last year. The dividend of 3 Euro and 41 Euro cents per share is a 9.3% increase. So significant progress in delivering on our C&D plans. Let's go to slide three. Our OCC increased over 10% to 1,315,15 million euro. This is driven by business growth, higher investment margin, and the realization of cost synergies. The solvency ratio increased with 20 points to 218, which includes the uplift from the implementation of the partial internal model in ASR Live. Our operating result rose 12% and came in at 1,637,000,000. Operating return on equity rose to 14.1%, comfortably above our hurdle of more than 12%. In non-life, the combined ratio for P&C and disability stood at 90%. 92.2, this is at the lower end of our target range of 92 to 94. The non-life combined ratio benefited again, I should add, from favorable weather, but it also includes provisioning in group disability. Organic growth in non-life of 3% is within the target range and in line with our expectation and reflects price competition from foreign players, particular in relative capital light products through mandated agents. In pension DC and annuities, we saw solid inflows and combined with the pension buyout deals we've executed so far, delivering on our profitable growth ambition. Let's move to slide four and look at how we are progressing on our sustainable KPIs and we continue to create sustainable value for all of our stakeholders. Our investment portfolio is clearly on track to meet its targets for both carbon footprint reduction as well as impact investments, where we aim to deliver positive impact. I am pleased to see that our employee engagement increased to 77. This increase comes after a decline last year. The integration of Aegon Netherlands businesses and the merger of two corporate cultures And overall, FTE reductions had, of course, an impact on our people. But we're now on our way back up, and our ambition is to achieve a score of 85. We also see very positive developments in customer satisfaction. This is already exceeding the target a year ahead of plan. The higher score in customer satisfaction reflects that we've been able to successfully execute the business integration whilst keeping focus on servicing our customers. Our other non-financial metrics also show good progress and our compelling ESG profile remains acknowledged by a broad range of international ESG indices and benchmarks. Let's move to the integration of Aegon Netherlands. Last year, we integrated the mortgages and live individual businesses. In the meantime, we've disconnected all product lines from the Aegon systems, which allows us to decommission these systems before mid-year 2026. This is the final step in realizing our run rate synergy target of 250 million in 2026. The full benefit will show up in 2027. I already mentioned the implementation of the partial internal model, which better reflects the risk specific to ASR. Completion of the integration process allowed us to capitalize the remainder of the cost synergies associated with the live business. The final step is the legal merger of ASR and AgonLife. The preparation for this legal merger has been already made and this is expected to be realized early July. Therefore, I am proud that we have successfully integrated the Aegon Netherlands business within three years after closing. A tremendous achievement of the company and an important step in creating the leading insurer in the Netherlands. Let's dive into other elements of our strategy that we've delivered on. At the CMD in June, we presented our targets for the period 24-26. We delivered on the integration as just discussed. But I'm also very happy to see that we finally closed the unit link file. ASR's final settlement solution has provided clarity and certainty for policyholders. Our solution is widely accepted by the affiliated customers. All collective legal claims have been stopped and payments have been made. Turning to our balance sheet, this has been strengthened significantly in the recent years. The sale of the bank, the capitalized cost synergies, and the PIM. In total, this boosted our solvency ratio by circa 40-40 points, and it enhances our capacity to be entrepreneurial. to seize the right opportunities and to deploy the capital for profitable growth, organically as well as through acquisitions. And as we have shown with deals such as Boveme and HTC, as well as the pension buyouts. And lastly, we presented our intention to progressively grow our dividends by mid to high single percentage, and we laid out a share buyback program of 525 million euro, which we already increased by 205 with the additional buybacks on the back of the sale of KNAPP and the participation in the first Aegon sell down in September last year. Over the year 25, we will return 75% of our OCC to shareholders and 25% was invested in inorganic growth, like for example buybacks, sorry, buyouts. So a very strong delivery. Let's move to the performance of our segments, starting with non-life. The premiums received in our non-life business grew by 3%, which is within our target of 3% to 5%. This was mainly driven by tariff adjustments and higher sales volumes in the P&C commercial lines and group disability. In disability, the selective tariff adjustments means not only that pricing better reflects the claim risk, it often also presents an opportunity to cleanse the customer base and improve the underlying quality of the portfolio. We do see competition pick up, particularly in capitalized product lines and primarily from foreign players that offer underwriting capacity to mandated brokers. Of course, we keep an eye on this, but our strategic principle has been for many years value over volume, and this remains the case. So we will continue to pursue profitability over market share. This is demonstrated by the combined ratio of our P&C and disability business, which at 90.2% comes in at the lower end of our target range of 92 to 94. In P&C, the combined ratio was 90, 90.4, and remained strong and better than targets. Similar to last year, profitability was supported by the absence of weather-related calamities, and we experienced a low amount from larger claims. In disability, the combined ratio went up with three percentage points, ending just above our target range due to additional provisioning in the group disability portfolio. We experience adverse claim developments due to elevated incidence rates, especially related to psychological absenteeism and long COVID. We believe this is a broader market phenomenon, which has become more challenging due to the significant backlog at the UWV, the Dutch Employee Insurance Agency. Our pricing has been adjusted to reflect this phenomenon and to further restore our profitability to appropriate levels in 2026. Let's now move to the live segment on the next slide. The strong commercial performance in our pension business has continued. DC inflows are up 9%, annuities are up 11% and driven by the pension reform. We executed on a total of three buyout deals this year totaling almost 3 billion euros. our pension DC business continued to grow with inflow of 3 billion in 2025. The pension DC assets and the management increased even further as a result of positive market developments. Annuity inflows are also gaining pace, driven by maturing DC assets. The majority of annuity inflows come from expiring DC assets from our own book. we're right on track to deliver our 1.8 billion cumulative annuity inflow targets. In the pension buyout space, we've shown strong deal execution in the first half of the year. Competition, however, most notably from the second half of the year is strong. We continue to believe that the total market opportunity is 20 to 30 billion, of which a part is likely to materialize even beyond 28. However, we remain rational and disciplined and will only pursue deals where we can make our minimum required return. And you all know that's at least 12% IRR. Nonetheless, the buyout deal so far put us well on track towards the 8 billion euro cumulative target. And finally, we closed a longevity reinsurance deal on the back of 1.3 billion pension buyout liability, which enhances the capital efficiency on the transaction and does the return on capital. Ewart will talk about a bit more about exploring the reinsurance, to reinsurance the longevity risk of a part of our back book. Let's turn to our fee-based business on the next slide. The fee-based business grew by 15.5%, partially driven by inorganic growth. Human total care is included in the DNS segment onwards from the fourth quarter. In July, we announced the full acquisition of human total care, the market leader in occupational health and reintegration services. This deal strengthens our position in the value chain of sustainable employability. With absenteeism on the rise, a tight labor market, and a higher retirement age, prevention and reintegration are more relevant for the business than ever before. Our mortgage production remained robust, even while executing a major portfolio migration. This is a very solid achievement of the mortgage team. The operating result increased by almost 25% to 186 million Euro driven by solid business growth and the realization of cost synergies. Looking ahead, I believe our fee-based business are well positioned for further growth. So let's move to my final slide before I hand over to Ewout on our attractive capital returns since our IPO in 2016. As our profits and capital generation grow, we can also increase returns to our shareholders. The total capital return to shareholders amounts to 75% of our OCC in 25. Our dividends per share of 3 euro and 41 euro cents represents a 9.3 increase compared to last year. And since IPO, our dividend per share has experienced a 12% compound annual growth rate. So 12% of the last 10 years per annum, which is enormous. Today, we announced a share buyback of 175 million, which is the second tranche of our share buyback program over the planned period, totaling 525 million euro. The final tranche of our share buyback program, which is 225 million over the full year 26, can be accelerated, and listen carefully, can be accelerated if and when Aegon initiates further sell downs of their position in ASR this year. As you all know, we operate from a capital position of strengths and deploy capital rationally. We are no capital hoarders. So in case we can't find proper deployment, we will return it to shareholders, as we demonstrated with the additional 100 million euro on the sale of the bank and the 105 million euro additionally with which we participated in the sell-down of Aegon. An update on our capital management policy can be expected at our CMD on the 1st of December this year. And with that, I'll hand over to Ewout to work through the financial and capital position. Ewout, the floor is yours.