Assicurazioni Generali S.p.A.

After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, they may signal an operator by pressing star and zero on their telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Fabio Cleva, Head of Investor and Rating Agencies Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Generali 9 Months 2024 Results Call. Here with us today, we have the Group General Manager, Marco Susana, the CEO of Insurance, Giulio Terzarioli, and the Group CFO, Cristiano Boria. Before opening the Q&A session, let me hand over to Marco and Cristiano for some brief opening remarks.

Thank you, Fabio. And hi, everyone. Good morning. Let me start by saying that our TORQ work has confirmed the continued business and operational improvement achieved throughout the year and the positive effect of the commercial and technical action implemented since 2023. At the same time, we have maintained a solid Net Promoter Score leadership position versus peers. This is thanks to our ability to connect with multi-holding customers and a clear reflection of our lifetime partner proposition. I would like today to share three key highlights from the third quarter with you. The first one is in life. We confirm robust new production trends leading to sizable net inflow concentrated in our preferred line of business. At the first half 2024 result call, we provided the guidance on the new business margin between 4.5% and 5%. I am pleased to confirm that the third quarter will reach a 4.92% new business margin. While we confirm our guidance, we expect a lower new business margin in the fourth quarter compared to the third quarter, given the declining interest rate and the impact of product mix on the margin. The third quarter also enjoyed a 9% growth in new business volume, protection growing by 11.5%. As presented at our Investor Day in January 2024, we see attractive opportunities for long-term profitable growth in protection in the coming years. Protection generated again over 40% of our new business value in the past quarter. As we commented previously, lapses in France have basically normalized to the level seen in 2022. In Italy, we have continued to see a decrease in lapses in the second half of the year. We fully expect this trend to continue as the competition from government bonds and bank deposits gradually abates. Italy returned to positive net collection in the third quarter, and we confirmed that we expect the Italian business to achieve a positive net inflow for the year by the end of 2024. At that point, we will evaluate how to gradually scale back some of the commercial incentives introduced last year to support production. My second message is about the P&C business trends. The numbers we released today confirm the positive Joe's effect driven by both rising tariff and normalizing claims inflation in a context of overall benign frequency. Going into more detail, the annual average premium for our 10 main markets grew by 6.8% overall. In the motor line, this increase is equal to 7.5% and translates into an annual earned premium of 6.5%. more than compensating increase of the risk premium of 0.3%. We continue to implement our pricing and technical excellence strategy, and this is increasingly resulting into a positive development in the attritional combine ratio. The undiscounted combine ratio has improved to 96.3%, down by 1.4 percentage point compared to the last year. The third quarter improvement in the undiscounted attritional combined ratio was also supported by very benign frequency and low incidence of severe bodily injury claims. While we would not project the rate of improvement of the third quarter linearly into the future, it is certainly very encouraging to see this trend as we enter into a new strategic cycle. We confirm our confidence to reach our target to the end of 2024 with an undiscounted combined ratio below 96. This despite an impact from natural catastrophe that at the nine months 2024 is about 100 basis points higher than what we have budgeted. Our confidence is based on the strong improvement of our underlying underwriting result that is becoming increasingly visible in the numbers. And indeed, my third message is about nut cuts. Clearly, the third quarter has been an adverse one. It is a development that we will take into account within our new plan, where a higher budget for natural catastrophe will be appropriate. Most likely, this event will lead to a continuation of the hardening cycle in personal line in Europe. During the last months of the year, we usually experience a more benign trend for weather events in consideration of the footprint of our portfolio. Natural events since the end of September are estimated to lead to around 100 additional net natural catastrophe losses so far in the fourth quarter. In addition, we book a 20 million man-made loss from the riots in Martinique. Concerning the tragic events we have all seen in Spain, let me look past the economic impact and express our sorrow for the many people affected. To support this effort, Generali is actively supporting the Spanish Red Cross with financial aid. To express our solidarity with the affected areas, we have also launched a global fundraising campaign to support the Spanish Red Cross on the ground. focusing on helping those displaced from their homes or cut off from essential services. We are also actively providing support through our Human Safety Net Foundation in the areas in which it operates in Spain. Thank you for your attention and let me now hand over to Cristiano.