Unipol Grupo Spa

Good afternoon, this is the Coruscant Conference Operator. Welcome and thank you for joining the Unipo Group Preliminary 2024 Results Conference Call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode. 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 the telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Matteo La Terza, CEO of Unipo. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning to everyone and thank you very much for participating to this call. As usual, let me make some remarks on the number that we disclosed this morning. We are here, of course, to comment 2024 results. But we are also at the end of our industrial plan, and this is, of course, an opportunity to share with you the last three years' results. In the last industrial plan, named Opening New Ways, we had to face two very important headwinds, as you know. The first one was was an inflation rate that was way higher than expected with a significant impact on the average cost of claim in general in the P&C business. And the second headwind was the huge impact coming from NatCat in 2023. Notwithstanding these two headwinds, we were able to over-delivery all our economic KPIs in terms of net profit and dividends, and also our KPI in terms of solvency. Secondly, except for the combined ratio, where short of less than 1%, mainly because of the two headwinds that I mentioned before, we also over-deliver all our industrial KPIs. Passing to 2024, which is the subject of this call. 2024 was a very good year for top line growth, where we were growing in all our business line. above all in bank assurance and in health insurance, as we have been achieving for a very long time, above all in the last three years. We had also a further improvement in technical profitability, with motor reaching technical equilibrium with 100% of combined ratio, and with a significant improvement coming also from the non-motor business. In life, we continue to achieve net inflows that allowed us to invest the cash flows at the current interest rate yield that we have in financial market. We had CSM coming from new business again higher than the CSM released, and we achieved a new business margin at 3.7% above the 3.5% that was one of our KPIs of the past industrial plant. Very solid was also the investment income, as usual, even if the pace of the fourth quarter was a little bit lower than the first three quarters that were actually very strong. And passing to solvency, of course, there has been, in the number of 213%, there has been the impact coming from the deduction of the proposed dividend, but... Nevertheless, the numbers continue to be very solid in absolute value. I conclude with the dividend. The total amount of a bit less than $610 million has to be compared, above all, to the number of the insurance group net result. That is in the 815 million area. And this number gives to you, as I said in the last meeting, the idea of the cash remittance of the group and consequently the maximum dividend that theoretically we can pay. To conclude, it has been a very good year, I think, but nevertheless, I also think that there is still room for improvement in the next three years, and these will be the main topics that we will discuss the next 28th of March when we will disclose to the financial community. the new industrial plan. Having said that, as usual, I am here with Enrico Sanpietro to answer to your question, and so I open the floor for the Q&A. Thank you very much.

This is the Coruscall conference operator. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. To remove yourself from the question queue, please press star and two. We kindly ask to use the handset when asking questions. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. We will pause for a moment as participants are joining the queue. First question is from Elena Perini in Tesa San Paolo. Please go ahead.