Zurich Insurance Group Ltd

Good morning, good afternoon. Welcome to Zurich Insurance Group's first half 2021 results Q&A call. On the call today is our group CEO, Mario Greco, and our group CFO, George Quinn. Before I hand over to Mario and George for some introductory remarks, just a reminder for the Q&A, we kindly ask you to keep to a maximum of two questions in the first time round, and if we've got spare time at the end, we'll come back to you. So with that, Mario, over to you.

Thank you, Richard, and good morning, good afternoon from myself. And let me just have a few remarks as an introduction, and then we pass to Q&A. This morning, we published one of the strongest ever first half results for Zurich. Our earnings are back to pre-pandemic levels despite the continuing impact of the public health crisis and a very high level of natural catastrophes. This performance reflects the improvements made to the business since 2016 in terms of underwriting, simplifying our business, and delivery for our customers. Our focus on customers is leading to higher levels of customer satisfaction, and this drove the growth in customer numbers by approximately 600,000 in the first half, and supported growth in revenue across all of our businesses. Since 2016, we have reshaped and improved our property and casualty portfolio. This is allowing us to take full advantage of growth opportunities within our commercial insurance business as price increases and terms and conditions further improve. Property and casualty gross return premiums grew an excellent 16% in the first half, while combined ratio fell to its lowest level in over 20 years, despite more than six points of natural catastrophe losses. We expect pricing to remain strong through the remainder of 2021 and into 2022, and we're well-placed to achieve a further strong growth and margin expansion. Our consistent focus on protection and unit-linked life business continues to pace off, and we have improved margins within the business through continued product development and selective repricing. These actions led to a 44% increase in life business operating profits to an all-time high level. Farmers' management services saw a return to growth in the first half, driven by the improved growth at the farmers exchanges, where expansion in the agency force and improved productivity supported growth. With the further strengthening of the exchanges distribution through the completion of the acquisition of the MetLife Appropriate and Casualty business, I'm confident of the growth outlook for the farmers business. These year's extreme weather events, which have touched most parts of the world, underscored the risk of climate change and the need for businesses to take immediate actions. Over the first half, we have continued to strengthen our own commitments to reduce CO2 emissions through new intermediate targets for both our own operations and investments. As part of these commitments, we're planning further actions to reduce emissions related to travel, vehicle fleets, foods, food and real estate over the second half of this year. And we will publish news in the next three weeks about that. The group's simplification and strengthening of the business over recent years, together with our very strong balance sheet, positions us well to continue to take advantage of opportunities to grow all of our businesses and earnings as economies emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic. I have great confidence in the strength of our business and the skills of our employees to maintain this momentum and to deliver on our goals. Thank you for listening and we're now ready to take your Q&A.

The first question comes from Louise Miles from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.