Zurich Insurance Group Ltd

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Zurich Insurance Group Q3 Results 2020 conference call. I am Alessandro, TICOR's call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and 1 on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and 0. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it is my pleasure to hand over to Mr. Richard Burden, Head of Investor Relations and Rating Agency Management. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning and good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to Zurich Insurance Group's third quarter 2020 Q&A call. On the call today is our Group CEO, Mario Greco, and our Group CFO, George Quinn. As usual for the Q&A sessions, we kindly ask you to keep to a maximum of two questions. But before we start the Q&A, as usual with the Q3, George will make a few introductory remarks before going on to your questions. George, I'll pass over to you.

Yeah, thanks, Richard. And good afternoon, good morning to everyone. I mean, over the third quarter, the group overall has successfully managed what have been a series of unprecedented challenges related to COVID-19. Not only that, but a global recession and, of course, a record number of hurricanes making landfall in the U.S. We've continued to deliver strong growth in property and casualty. That's driven by commercial insurance, but we've also seen our life business return to growth in Q3. And the P&C business pricing momentum in commercial remains strong both in North America and in other regions. And we expect this to continue through the remainder of this year and into next, which will support further improvement in the underlying accident year loss ratios. Our balance sheet remains very strong with our conservatively calibrated ZECM solvency returning to the midpoint of the 100 to 120% target range. Over time, we think the ZECM has served us Well, it's informed our decision to move away from interest rate sensitive life business already over a decade ago. Having said that, the high level of calibration and conservative assumptions that underpin the model, I think we believe cause unnecessary uncertainty. Therefore, we intend to change reporting from the fourth quarter to focus on the Swiss solvency test ratio. It's obviously still conservative, but it's much more aligned to metrics that you see reported by peers. From a COVID-19 perspective, you'll have seen already today that we've reported claims net of the associated frequency benefits at an unchanged level since the end of the first half at $450 million. And I think, as you know, from early in the crisis, we've worked Hard to further clarify wordings as policies renew and today I'm happy and I'm confident that we only have limited exposure to any new developments in the pandemic. The combination of a flexible and resilient business model and the increasingly evident answer of higher commercial pricing gives me great confidence that we will emerge strongly from this year's disruption. and be in a strong position to take advantage of new opportunities as they present themselves. I'm now happy to take questions.