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 speakers' presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automatic message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one 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 Hülters. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us today. Welcome to the ASR conference call on our full year results of 2025. On the call with me today are Jos Baaten, our CEO, and Ewout Hollegien, our CFO. Now, Jos will kick it off with the progress of our strategy and the highlights of our financial results. Ewout will then talk about the development of our financials, capital, and solvency 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 A.M. 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, 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 Life, and as we expected, it delivered an uplift of 12 percentage points in the Solvency II ratio.
Additionally, decommissioning of the former Aegon systems has started, and after completion, we will achieve our run rate cost synergy target of EUR 215 million. 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 three buyout transactions, and we have acquired the remaining shares of the HumanTotalCare. This strengthened our position in the field of occupational health, services, and reintegration. Last, but not least, we announced the acquisition of Bovemij 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, also quite happy with the profitable organic growth that we realize, which will support us in achieving the OCC target of EUR 1,350 million for the full year 2026. Lastly, we also raised the capital returns to our shareholders. We increased the total amount of dividend by 7%, and we announced a total of EUR 280 million in share buybacks over 2025, of which EUR 175 million announced today and EUR 105 million in our participation in the sell down by Aegon in September last year. The dividend of EUR 3.41 per share is a 9.3% increase. Significant progress in delivering on our CMD plans.
Let's go to slide 3. Our OCC increased over 10% to EUR 1,315 million. 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 Life. Our operating result rose 12% and came in at EUR 1,637 million. 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%-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, particularly 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 4 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'm 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 are now on our way back up, and our ambition is to achieve a score of 85.
We're also very, 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 while 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 life individual businesses. In the meantime, we've disconnected all product lines from the Aegon systems, which allows us to decommission these systems before midyear 2026. This is the final step in realizing our run rate synergy target of EUR 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 life business. A final step is the legal merger of ASR and Aegon Life. The preparation for this legal merger has already been 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 2024-2026. We delivered on the integration, as just discussed, but I'm also very happy to see that we finally closed the unit-linked 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 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. As we have shown with deals such as Bovemij and HumanTotalCare, as well as the pension buyouts. 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 EUR 525 million, which we already increased by EUR 205 million with the additional buybacks on the back of the sale of Knab and the participation in the first Aegon sell down in September last year.
Over the year 2025, 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%-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 capital light product lines and primarily from, 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. 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%-94%. In P&C, the combined ratio was 90.4% and remains 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 3 percentage points, ending just above our target range due to additional provisioning in the group disability portfolio.
We experienced 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 life 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 EUR 3 billion. Our pension DC business continued to grow with inflow of EUR 3 billion in 2025.
The pension DC assets under 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 ex-expiring DC assets from our own book. We are right on track to deliver our EUR 1.8 billion cumulative annuity inflow target. In the pension buyouts 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 EUR 20 billion-EUR 30 billion, of which a part is likely to materialize even beyond 2028. 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 deals so far put us well on track towards the EUR 8 billion cumulative target. And finally, we closed a longevity reinsurance deal on the back of EUR 1.3 billion pension buyout liability, which enhances the capital efficiency on the transaction and thus the return on capital. Ewout will talk about a bit more about exploring the reinsurance to reinsure 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. HumanTotalCare is included in the D&S segment onwards from the fourth quarter. In July, we announced the full acquisition of HumanTotalCare, 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 remains 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 EUR 186 million, 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 2025.
Our dividends per share of EUR 3.41 represents a 9.3% increase compared to last year. Since IPO, our dividend per share has experienced a 12% compound annual growth rate, so 12% over the last 10 years per annum, which is enormous. Today, we announce a share buyback of EUR 175 million, which is the second tranche of our share buyback program over the plan period, totaling EUR 525 million. The final tranche of our share buyback program, which is EUR 225 million over the full year 2026, 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 strength 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 EUR 100 million to the, on the sale of the bank and the EUR 105 million 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 first of December this year.
And with that, I'll hand over to Ewout to walk you through the financial and capital position. Ewout, the floor is yours.
Thank you, Jos. And you behave well by not doing a wrap today, so thanks for that as well. Good morning to everyone on the call. The results we're presenting today highlight the strong financial performance and the robustness of our capital position, and it confirms that we are advancing well towards our strategic objectives. Now turning to slide 12 and kick off with the capital wheel. The capital wheel has been spinning for quite some years already. We are operating from a position of capital strength. Our Solvency II ratio rose to 218%, giving us ample capital to fund our initiatives for profitable growth. We have proven to be successful in deal making for inorganic growth, one of the cornerstones of our capital deployment strategy.
The OCC benefited again from strong, strong underwriting performance, the absence of large weather-related claims, and higher investment returns. We are well on track to hit the EUR 1 billion 350 million target by 2026. As Jos mentioned, our capital return remains strong as our dividend per share rose by 9%, and today we announced to execute a EUR 175 million share buyback. Looking at our 2025 delivery, we deployed 100% of our capital generation. 75% was returned to shareholders, and 25% was invested, invested in profitable growth. This balanced allocation ensures that our capital wheel keeps spinning.
Now let us zoom in on how our Solvency developed in 2025. We have implemented the partial internal model to the benefit of ASR Life, which strengthened our Solvency position by 12%, which is the upper end of the earlier communicated range. We will discuss the partial internal model in more detail later in the presentation. We have deployed capital in three buyout deals in the first half of 2025, adding almost EUR 3 billion of assets and liabilities, and the acquisition of the remaining shares of HumanTotalCare, which combined had an impact of six Solvency points. This includes the reinvestments of buyout assets towards the target asset mix in the second half of the year. This Solvency impact was partly offset by the execution of longevity reinsurance of EUR 1.3 billion buyout liability.
This year, we also explore if it makes sense for ASR to reinsure the longevity risk, risk of a part of our back book. Just below half of our Aegon life book is already reinsured, and another part of the book is naturally hedged by mortality risk from our funeral and individual life portfolio. With that in mind, about EUR 10 billion of remaining liability is applicable for longevity reinsurance in the short term. Although we would probably aim for a deal size of around EUR 3 billion-EUR 5 billion if the longevity reinsurance remains to be attractive. The level of capital generation of EUR 1.3 billion contributed to only 1 Solvency points to the ratio.
The market and operational movement shows an uplift of 7 percentage points, and this includes a positive impact from the steepening of the interest rate curve, which we already mentioned at the H1 stage, and positive revaluations in real estate, especially in residential and rural. The positive impact from spread tightening in government and mortgage spreads has been offset by two specific special items. That is the downgrade of the French government bonds and the adjustments of our mortgage spreads methodology. More on that topic in a minute. Lastly, operational developments also contributed positively to the Solvency stock. We capitalized the remainder of our cost synergies, marking the finalization of the Aegon NL integration, and we raised the LAC DT, releasing some conservatism and bring it more in line with market practice.
This brings the Solvency II ratio to 221% before any capital management actions, and after deducting the 11 percentage points to the dividend, 4% for the share buyback in the first and the second half of the year, and the 12% uplift from the adoption of the PIM to ASR Life, we land at a strong Solvency ratio of 208% for the year-end. Truly robust and well-positioned in the entrepreneurial zone.
Let's turn to the page, to next page to see what is still in store for the Solvency position in the coming years. At our Capital Markets Day in June 2024, we presented the future catalyst for our Solvency position, which, due to the cash consideration of Aegon NL acquisition, stood at that moment in time at 176% at year-end 2023. Some analysts, some of you, calculated that we would get to a Solvency ratio of 220% in 2026. But as you know, we first want to have clear visibility on delivery before people getting overly enthusiastic. But today, I'm very pleased that we have reached that number one year earlier, increased the Solvency position with over 40% in only two years, and at the same time invested in buyouts, M&A, and we did EUR 205 million buybacks more than initially planned.
Frankly, I'm extra proud because each of these items did not just suddenly happen, but are a result of hard work and dedication from our employees. For the coming year, I should already mention some expected movements. We will see an impact from capital deployment to support inorganic growth. In early January, we announced the acquisition of Bovemij, which is expected to reduce Solvency by around 3.5 points. We are hopeful for further bolt-on deals. In addition, we anticipate additional buyout transactions over the course of the year. However, as Jos already mentioned, we remain financially disciplined and stick to our value over volume principle. The expected contribution of the EIOPA 2020 review is mid- to high single digit.
This is driven by a lower risk margin, slightly offset by a different regulatory discount, discount curve, and where the benefits of the VA is offset by the elimination of the deterministic adjustment. And just to ensure everyone is on the same page, the deterministic adjustment, VA, is an Aegon Life specific element from the partial internal model, that aims to resolve the mismatch of spread movements between own portfolio versus the EIOPA VA portfolio via required capital. And this has been temporarily allowed for Aegon Life until the introduction of the new EIOPA regime.
As said earlier, there is a lobby going on to allow insurers to report already by full year 2026 under the new regime, but fair to say that I now expect that the implementation date of Solvency II review will be January 2027, meaning that the impact of the review will be reflected in our H1 2027 results. Given the fact that the VA will be eliminated, the sooner of the legal merger of life entities, as it is not part of the internal model for ASR Life or the EIOPA 2020 review, that could mean a split between the -4% of the VA by full year 2026, and 10% in H1 2027 from the review. Now let's discuss the partial internal model on the next slide.
The partial internal model reflects a more accurate view of ASR risk and risk interdependencies. While doing so, we gained EUR 600 million of tangible capital. This strengthened the balance sheet and creates additional capacity to pursue opportunities, accelerating the spinning of the capital wheel. Besides releasing the capital, the model enables more efficient and economic pricing, asset allocation, and risk retention decision, supporting our growth ambitions. If you take a closer look at the source of the capital relief, we distinguish between underwriting risk and market risk, where the majority of the earn uplift comes from underwriting risk. Within the internal model, the interaction between longevity and mortality risk is much better reflected. When one risk increases, the other automatically decreases. This is the key improvement of the internal model compared with the standard formula.
Next to that, also the level of the shock and the longevity trend is lower and a better reflection in the partial internal model of the Dutch circumstances. The lower required capital also leads to a lower risk margin, and in total, we see an 11% Solvency uplift coming from underwriting risk. Within market risk, we see various offsetting effects. Real estate becomes more capital efficient under the internal model, where interdependencies with other asset classes are reflected more accurately. In particular, the inflation link characteristics of real estate are captured far better in the internal model than under the standard formula.
Spread risk is higher in the internal model, reflecting the inclusion of mortgages, while in the standard formula, these sit in the counterparty default module, and the application of a modest charge to government bonds. Overall, the combined effect across market risk results in a small net benefit, contributing to a total Solvency uplift of around 12 percentage points from applying the internal model to ASR Life. At the legal entity level, the contribution is over 30%. Before we move to the Solvency sensitivities, it is important to note that the transition to the PIM creates a small headwind for the level of capital generation. The partial internal model leads to a lower required capital, which reduces the release of capital recognized in OCC. Impact is around EUR 10 million per annum, as this is partly offset by a lower capital strain on new business.
Let's turn to the next slide. The expansion of the internal model leads to limited changes in our Solvency sensitivities. For interest rate sensitivities, we maintain our hedging strategy aimed at stabilizing the Solvency ratio, and we have adjusted our hedging position to reflect the partial internal model, and as a result, interest rate sensitivities remain broadly unchanged. Also, in the spread modules, we observe only limited impact on the sensitivities. Please note, the deterministic adjustment currently has a dampening effect on the sensitivities and will be removed as of H2 2026. And of course, the VA will remain in place and will continue to have a dampening effect on spread movements.
At half year stage, we will provide an updated view on our sensitivities. Equity sensitivities continues to reflect the impact of the symmetric adjustments from the standard form formula, albeit to a lesser extent. And the real estate sensitivities increased because lower required capital charge under the PIM provides less mitigation of the impact on funds. Let's turn to our level of capital generation on the next slide. The OCC increased by 10% to EUR 1,350 million, in particular, driven by the finance capital generation, which is the largest in the life segment. This is driven by a number of factors: re-risking in the second half of last year, positive equity and real estate revaluation, wider government spreads, contribution from buyouts, and the steepening of the interest rates increased the finance capital generation by EUR 180 million.
Secondly, the non-life result increased as a result of higher business and finance capital generation, which was partly offset by a lower net SCR impact, mainly related to the new business strain from the growth in disability. The non-life OCC includes the professional strengthening in disability. Our fee-based business contributed an additional EUR 27 million to the OCC, supported by an improved operating result. Now, looking ahead, how we plan to achieve our EUR 1.35 billion OCC target for 2026. The OCC of EUR 1.35 billion per full year 2025 was helped by favorable weather in P&C. Normalizing the non-life combined ratio to the middle of the range would bring the OCC to around EUR 1.29 billion.
Taking this as a starting point, I see a couple of main moving parts to bring us to the EUR 1.35 billion target for 2026. That includes growth of the business, the full contribution of the pension buyout deals closed in 2025, synergy benefits, and this is then partly offset by the, the negative impact from the lower net capital release due to departure internal model, the transfer of more cases to BAWAG as part of the, of the Knab deal, and accelerations of investment in AI and technology that we, that are currently taking place. Taking all these items into account, we expect the OCC for full year 2026 to be north of EUR 1.35 billion. The operating results increased by 12% to EUR 1.637 billion.
The life segment delivered a strong increase of EUR 183 million, mainly driven by a higher CSM release, reflecting, for example, the full capitalization of cost synergies and higher investment income, which is consistent with the uplift we also observed in our OCC. In non-life, continued business growth and solid profitability contributed positively to the operating result. However, the operating result is slightly lower than last year due to the additional provision in group disability and accounting change, which is not part of the 2024 OCC. For the holding and other segments, the temporary allocation of IT infrastructure charges related to the integration and investments into new technology and AI resulted in a lower holding and other operating results.
The longer term plan and contribution of new technology and AI is something we will talk about on the Capital Markets Day in December. Let's turn to our investment portfolio. This slide illustrates the strength of our investment portfolio. It is high quality, well-diversified, and resilient. As mentioned at the half year stage, we have now updated our mortgage spread methodology to reduce the uneconomic short-term volatility in the solvency ratio. This volatility stemmed from slowly adjusting mortgage tariffs on the one hand, and volatile interest rates on the other. Under the updated methodology, the mortgage spread is derived using an eight-week average interest rate, reducing volatility in mortgage spread by roughly one third, as you can see on the page. As a result, the likelihood of mortgage spreads peaking at unusually high or low levels is now significantly lower.
Consequently, our mortgage sensitivity scenario has been adjusted from 50 basis points to 25 basis points. For year-end 2025, based on the new methodology, we applied a net spread of 104 basis points, which we consider a fair representation at the through-the-cycle level. Finally, let us have a look at the revaluations in the real estate, which have been once again strong this year. Around 60% of our portfolio consists of residential property and rural land, which deliver revaluations of over 7% and almost 9%, respectively. On average, the entire portfolio revalued by 5.7%. Including rental yields, the total return in 2025 exceeds 8%.
Let's look at the flexibility of the balance sheet on the next slide. I truly believe we have a very strong balance sheet with ample financial flexibility. In March, we issued a restricted Tier 1 instrument to refinance the maturing Tier 2 in September 2025, and by replacing the Tier 2 with an RT1, we have further rebalanced our headroom over Tier 2 and three versus the RT1, enhancing our financial flexibility. As you can see on the bottom right-hand side, our debt maturity schedule remains nicely staggered over time. And lastly, we are very proud that we can present on this slide for the first time since we are listed an A+ rating of our operating entities. The upgrade confirms that the financial strength, the consistent performance, and the leading market positions across products is also clearly recognized by the rating agency.
And finally, let's end with our holdco liquidity, which remains very comfortable. As you know, we only upstream cash from our operating entities to cover last year's dividends, coupons, and holding expenses. Starting this year, we are including a portion of our unconditional revolving credit facility in the definition of holding liquidity, because this allows us to retain more cash within the legal entities where we can achieve a better yield. As a result, the amount of cash required at holding level becomes lower. Remittance is definitely not hampered by the solvency ratio of our legal entities. Solvency ratio at our life entities are very strong, peaking at levels above 200%. The ASR Life entity is materially strengthened by the application of partial internal model, resulting in an uplift of more than 30 percentage points at entity level.
Aegon's life solvency ratio also increased, despite deductions for remittances to the group and capital deployment related to pension buyouts. The continued strong capital position at Aegon Life provides capacity for us to remain active in the buyout market. In addition, ASR non-life operates from a robust solvency position of over 160%, which represents an 8 percentage points increase compared to last year, driven by retained OCC. This concludes my part of the presentation. Before I hand it back to Jos for his wrap-up, I believe it would not be right to just let this moment pass by without noting that this call marks Jos' final analyst call.
And Jos, I know you prefer to ignore this fact, and rest assured, I'm not going to be sentimental, and I won't take long. But many in the audience today will remember that our journey on the capital markets started with our IPO in June 2016. Our share price was EUR 19.50, market cap just below EUR 3 billion, and our cap gen and operating profit were not even one third of what it is today. In almost 10 years, as a listed company, ASR has transformed itself under your leadership into a leading Dutch insurer with a strong earnings profile, a rock-solid balance sheet, high customer satisfaction, and recognized in this society by sustainability profile. A company with a strong performance track record, known for under promise and over delivery, and well-positioned for a successful future.
I know you will give credits to the rest of the organization, but you should be really proud of the progress us, ASR has made and everything that has been achieved. Thank you for that on behalf of myself, the rest of the organization, but I'm sure also on behalf of the investor community.
Having said this all, I would like to hand it back to you, Jos, and hope very, very much that you will enjoy this final wrap-up.
Thank you, Ewout, and I definitely will enjoy the final wrap-up, especially after your kind words, which were unexpected for me, because in my feeling the fat lady hasn't sung yet. So I will continue to deliver until the last minute of my CEO-ship. And wrapping it up, I think we really can be proud on the successful completion of the integration of Aegon NL. On track to realize the run rate, cost synergies, target of EUR 215 million, and we delivered a 12% solvency points benefit from the application of the PIM to ASR life. A solid performance in all business segments, supported by increased investment returns, OCC on track to achieve medium-term target on EUR 1.35 billion in 2026.
A very robust solvency ratio of 218%, reflecting very strong OCC and favorable market developments, supported by the uplift from expanding the PIM. Finally, proven execution in the pension buyout market, and with the acquisition of both Bovemij and HumanTotalCare, we are confident on delivering on all of our medium-term growth targets. Now, before we take your questions, today, indeed, as Ewout already said, marks a special day, as this is, in fact, the last set of results that I will present to you as CEO of ASR. At the upcoming AGM in May, I will hand over the helm to Ingrid de Zwart, our current COO and CTO, and I do so with full confidence. I truly believe that under Ingrid's leadership, we will continue to grow towards being the leading insurance company in the Netherlands.
With that, the floor is open for your Q&A.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one, one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. We will now take our first question. Coming from the line of Cor Kluis from ABN AMRO ODDO BHF, please go ahead.
Hello, good morning. Yeah, I think first, the most important part, Jos, thank you very much for all the work that you've done the last decades, basically. I still know you from that you built, was running, the Rotterdam unit, ASR, and you built it into a huge company, which is now owning a one third Dutch insurance market. Many thanks, thanks for that and the great cooperation with you. Yeah, still, you will still remain around for a while, but many thanks for that. Then, the first question is about solvency, especially the real estate part. I think the solvency was of course clearly better than expected.
Could you elaborate a little bit more on the market effect, especially on the real estate part? What was the contribution of the real estate evaluation from residential houses, et cetera, and rural on the solvency ratio? And how conservative have you now valued the residential houses in your portfolio? I still think that you have quite some discount on that, because house prices went up, of course, in the Netherlands a lot, and you reflected that in the solvency, but still, I think you have quite some discount there, especially because the Dutch transaction tax was reduced by 2.5% on the first of January, so that should also benefit you. And second question is about buyouts. I know you're very disciplined on buyouts.
I thought that there were some deals in the market, but you didn't do anything, and I think NN didn't do anything either in H2. What's your view on pricing and volumes to come in the coming years? And my last question is about M&A. I think, Jos, you've done so many acquisitions the last decade. Yeah, you just did one. Is there still some more potential to do this year? And what's your view on this, what you see in the market? That's it from my side.
Thanks, Cor, and also thanks for your kind, kind words. Hopefully not everybody is going to make me blush. Please stop with that and wait at least until tomorrow evening when we see you all life. For the solvency question on real estate, I hand over to Ewout, and I will take the two other questions.
Yeah, so the contribution to, so of course, we always expect some revaluation in the level of capital generation. As we assume a 5.5% pre-tax total return on real estate, there is always a kind of a portion of revaluation that we expect. If we deduct that additional 1% or 2%, 1.5% on average, sources points is added from the revaluation that we have seen, both on the residential side as well as on the rural side. So both asset classes had very strong performance last year. With that, we are moving a bit towards the, towards the-- Sorry, there's a call going on here.
So with that, we are moving a bit towards the historical level of 80% that we have seen. It is correct that we've seen that the transfer tax in the Netherlands is actually going down per the first of January 2026. And it's going down just over 2%, and that is a one, or you can see that more as a one-on-one upside also in the valuation of residential houses. So that's the-- and with that, we expect also to close further the gap between the market value of houses and what we currently have, how it's currently being valued on our balance sheet.
So to around 2% of uplift in the valuation, what we expect from the transfer, lowering of the transfer tax, closing the gap.
Thanks. Then on your second question, Cor, on the buyouts, and especially on the pricing dynamics. We indeed currently see some so-called leapfrogging from competition. Let's say until the beginning of last year, actually, only Athora and ASR were very active in this market, and both of us were able to to win a number of contracts. Since the introduction of Sixth Street at Achmea, we have seen a third player in the market, and that creates more pressure on pricing. And that means that we decided to remain disciplined. The value of volume principle is a hard one within ASR.
At the same time, we have looked into the potential pipeline going forward. That's why I said during my presentation that we're still confident that we were able to make EUR 8 billion. It may take maybe a year longer than initially projected. But even when we do deals, they have to meet the 12% IRR. So yes, we do see more competition, and we will see how it plays out in the long run, but we remain confident. Then on your second, on your third question on M&A. Actually, what we've said over the last two years, that we still see opportunities in the P&C area.
I think the acquisition of Bovemij is a proof point that there is really opportunity to do so. And we all also explained that we still see a tail of, let's say, 15-20 P&C players owning roughly 35% of the market. And that within that cohort of medium-sized and smaller players, we still expect that there will be necessary for further consolidation due to the investment in AI, due to increased regulatory pressure, et cetera. If you look into the reason why Bovemij looked for new ownership, they couldn't follow up on all the developments in investing in AI, in digitalization, et cetera. And we really know there are more players that will face that difficulty in the future. So yes, we do see opportunities there.
Secondly, we think that the life market is not yet consolidated, especially the funeral market has to consolidate further, so we expect that there will arise opportunities there. And maybe, and hopefully, there will be one more, a larger life consolidation in the near future in the Netherlands. So from that perspective, we're optimistic that ASR can do further transactions there. Whether that will be this year, that's to be seen. We never can give comments on the period where something should happen, but we remain very optimistic in that area.
Great. Many thanks for all.
Thank you. We will now take the next question-- From the line of David Barma from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Firstly, on OCC, please, Ewout, thanks for the bridge you gave for 2026. Can we come back to that, and particularly what you are assuming for the contribution of HumanTotalCare, Bovemij, and some of the de-risking that I thought would go through together? I would've thought alone, these things would take you above the 2026 target, so if you can give a bit more detail on the assumptions there. And then secondly, on longevity. So you've announced the longevity reinsurance transaction on some of the pension buyouts to date. Can you please explain how that impacts the new business strain, and the IRR for buyouts, please? Thank you.
Let's start with the bridge of capital generation, and especially the items that you requested for how those are contributing. What we try to make clear is that we have a very strong starting position of EUR 1,315 million. You see that the combined ratio is at a very strong level at the lower end of the range, we have 92.9%, 90%. If we normalize that to the middle of the range, that would bring us to the EUR 1,290 million.
We see actually coming through the growth of the business, the fact that we see the buyouts that we have executed, and one in H2 that we now can recognize for the full year. Some re-risking that we have done on those buyouts, but also indeed, small benefits, for example, on how to say that that is actually contributing to a higher level of capital generation, but there are also some small minuses in it. For example, the lower release of capital on partial internal model , but also the accelerations of investments that we are doing in technology and AI. There are small minuses.
If you look more closely to the items that you-- And that brings us to the north of the EUR 1.35 billion, David. If you then look more to the elements that you ask, so how is the Bovemij contributing to that? Yeah, actually, we expect to close Bovemij in just in the beginning of the second half of 2026. But you then get a book that is, well, where the profitability on a standalone basis will be close to zero. And we really need to realize the synergies to make it profitable and to bring it to the combined ratio levels that we have for our own portfolio.
So that's why we don't expect a lot of contribution or no contribution actually from Bovemij in 2026. Or how to say that will contribute a couple of million, but please know we were already for the full first half nine months 40% owner of [HTC] [audio distortion]. And that was also already a portion of profitability that was there. So it is only the remaining 55% that you will see for nine months additional compared to what we have seen in 2025. So that's why only a couple of million.
The real benefit comes from the synergies, the growth of the business, the fact that we recognize the buyouts for the full year, and these are small pluses in the total bridge. Hopefully, that helps in the explanation. On the question on the longevity deal, what we do, what we have not done until now is take any longevity reinsurance into account when we price a buyout. For example, the buyout that we won, that of Dentist, where we have now executed the longevity reinsurance deal, was actually an additional improvement of the IRR with a couple of percentage points.
But it's not something that we take into account in beforehand, when we actually price, when we price those deals. Because you never know for sure whether you get the same quotes, and we always want to be conservative on this one, and not already take into account without having a hard quote actually on what you can achieve with reinsurers.
Thank you.
Thank you. We will now take the next question. From the line of Andrew Baker from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Great. Thank you for taking my questions. First one, just on the Solvency II review, are you able just to give us a sense of the OCC impact once implemented? And then just to clarify, the 10 percentage points that you show on the slide, is this before or after the four points? So should we be thinking 10, or should we be thinking six, based on the guidance today? And then secondly, on the unit-linked settlement, I think at the time you had EUR 90 million on the balance sheet set aside for individuals that weren't represented by the foundations. Is this amount still on the balance sheet? And if so, could you look to release this at some point, and how do you think about timing around that? Thank you.
Yes. Thanks, thanks, Andrew. So the impact on the level of capital generation, and please be with me, that is a high level, but we actually, when we calculate it today, it will be around EUR 10 million -EUR 15 million on the OCC. That's the assumption that we are having today. The solvency uplift is, so the 10% is gross of the elimination of the VA, so the net amount is, let's say, around 6%, maybe a 1% higher, but around that percentage point. So it's the net amount is 6%, but if you eliminate the VA earlier, then you will see the benefit of the EIOPA 2020 review to be around 10%.
And then on your second question, the provisioning on unit-linked. Indeed, we had still roughly EUR 90 million additionally on the balance sheet. The current stand is that it is around EUR 50 million that will remain on the balance sheet at the closing of 2025 because we are still paying out the people that weren't connected to one of the foundations. So we expect it will be at least enough, the 50 mil-- the EUR 50 million, and if and when there will be a remaining part, then it probably will be released somewhere in the second half or even at the beginning of next year. But we haven't put a number yet on that.
The key message is it will be at least enough.
Very helpful. Thank you.
Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Benoît Pétrarque from Kepler Cheuvreux, please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. And thank you, Jos, I think you leave the company in a very good shape. Actually, my first question will be on the CMD. Jos, if you will kind of have an opportunity to advise the new management team on the key topics you want to see on the agenda, could you maybe walk through the main topics and the main things you would like to see on the slides in December? Obviously just as a kind of advisory work and just not being too serious on that. And then the second question is on the capital. You have a very strong stock of capital. Now you have the EIOPA review coming in, probably more longevity deals.
So, you are well above the 175%. So how should we think about, yeah, the utilization of excess capital going forward, or do you stand currently on your- on the possibility to get, more top-ups on share buyback? How open are you for that? Or are you more willing, at this stage, to keep, excess capital for potentially a larger deal in, in life? And then just the last question will be on longevity reinsurance. I think you mentioned that you are also open to do more deals. What type of timing and, and impact on solvency ratio can we expect? Thank you.
Thanks, Benoît. Your first question is a nice one, and I may become the advisor of Ewout and Ingrid after I step down, but I'm not yet in that position. But what I should expect on the Capital Markets Day, like ASR is doing, is further clarity on strategic opportunities we do see going forward. And I already in answering the question of Cor, I gave already some insight what I should expect that will be part of the messaging by then. I think ASR has done a lot in terms of investing in AI and is still investing in AI.
Knowing that Ingrid is very well aware, together with the team, of the impact of AI, I would expect that there will be an important part on that. Further, capital management will remain important. I think the philosophy value over volume will not change after I've left, so that will be an important part. But in general, I think it will be about how to continue the successful story of ASR going forward, adopting the new reality in the world, the reality on AI, but also the geopolitical reality.
So that would be, for now, my advice and further advice is I will whisper in their ears, and I will leave it to them whether they will do something with it. On your second question, to be serious again, I think the key message is, we have a very strong capital position, and our key preference is to deploy capital in a way that it will sustain the growth of ASR going forward, either through organic growth or through inorganic growth. Having said that, we will combine that with returning a fair share of the OCC that we have generated, and over 2025, we will return roughly 75% of the OCC generated, and 25% is spent on inorganic growth, like the pension buyouts.
If and when we can't deploy that capital in a rational way, we're fully aware, and, I don't expect that to change after I've left. We're fully aware of the fact that we then may have to return more capital to shareholders. That's why we made a clear statement in our presentation, if and when Aegon will decide to sell down further in this year, we're willing to fast forward the EUR 225 million that is now announced for the next year, we're willing to fast it forward to this year. With that, I think there is significant proof that ASR never has been a capital hoarder and never will be a capital hoarder.
And on longevity, I hand over to you, Ewout.
Yes, thanks. So no, indeed, it was very helpful to do that smaller longevity reinsurance deal on the buyouts. What we have seen is the cost of capital was just above 0%, which makes it from a cost of capital, very attractive. So when we look to our back book, what we see is actually that historically, Aegon almost did 45% of their pension liabilities transferred via longevity reinsurance. And ASR roughly had no, did no longevity reinsurance deals, but one third of the book is naturally hedged with mortality.
So there is a kind of remaining book to do longevity reinsurance for. When we look to the remaining liabilities and the size of that, it's roughly EUR 10 billion. How we look at it today, that we can deploy in the short term, but we also see that the market favors deals around three to EUR 5 billion. And EUR 5 billion, when we take into account the same cost of capital that we have seen in that deal of the buyout, then it will bring roughly 2-3 Solvency points at group level. And that's mostly different by a lower risk margin, because the required capital release is limited because of diversification that you already see at the legal entity level. But especially at group level, you see also additional diversification benefits.
So let's say half of the book that we can see in the short term, the EUR 10 billion, half of that is EUR 5 billion, that would bring with the current pricing, roughly 2-3 Solvency points.
Very clear. Thank you very much.
Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Michael Huttner from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Fantastic. Thank you so much. I just to the, firstly, on disability, can you talk a little bit about what you've done, the 98% in the second half? How much kind of that is kind of potential provision, how much is actually needed? And how confident you are that it's not a lingering problem? In other words, do you, you know, more needs to be done, or the numbers could get a little bit worse. And then the second is, you spoke about AI more of a topic for December, but you've also said that there's also quite a bit of AI already in your plans for kind of spending or investment in 2026, in the OCC.
So I just wondered if you could give us a feel for that. And then the last one, I'm sorry, but Jos, so what you've done is quite a lot in a very short space of time. How confident are we that-- I mean, if I were working for you, and I'm glad I'm not, 'cause I'd never get to sleep, that the pace doesn't slow down when you leave. Thanks.
Well, a lot of questions. So, thanks for that, Michael. Let me start on disability. We already, during the first half, were able to take some provisioning that was, by then, not that visible, because we also had some offsetting items, and the provisioning taken in the first half was around EUR 50 million. In the second half, we have provisioned another EUR 50 million, combined with significant increase of premiums. We already increased last year the premiums, but we did a significant increase per the first of January. We probably will lose some customers due to that, but the customers we probably are going to lose are customers we're not regretting that we will lose them because they're not bringing any profitability.
From that perspective, based on everything we know today, we think the combination of the provisioning we have done and the significant increase should do the trick, and that's why I said that we expect that there will be further, that the combined ratio in disability will improve further going forward. It decreased 3 percentage points in this year, but due to the provisioning and the premium increases, we are confident that we have stopped that. Of course, we don't have a glass ball. We can't look into the future.
On AI, as said, my advice to Ewout and Ingrid is to spend some time on it during the CMD. So, I don't feel free to put any numbers on that now. Yes, we are already using in almost every business area of ASR, we're already using AR. For example, in our bodily injury area, we've implemented an AR-- AI model, which is very helpful to the claims handlers to speed up the incoming letters on cases that are already running for 10 or 20 or even 30 years. So, we do see significant benefit from that, but also in our health area, the fact that we were able to keep the costs low in the health area is predominantly due to AI.
But we've agreed with each other that that will be a topic on the Capital Markets Day, and it's not up to me to disclose that already now, but it will be amazing, Michael, as you can expect. And then to your last question, I already said that I strongly believe a successful company is a company with teamwork. If you look at the success of the skating team in the Olympics, it's due to teamwork, and that's how I've always run the company. Yes, I'm the one who's doing the talking towards the investment community together with Ewout, but at the end of the day, it's based on a group of people that are willing to work very hard.
You're right, you better shouldn't work for us if you're a bit, no, I'm not gonna say that. If you need more sleep than average. But so, having said that, I'm very confident that there will be no change in the pace, and knowing that Ingrid is much younger than I am, she may push the button even harder and then speed up it a little bit. But we'll have to see that.
Fantastic. Thank you.
Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Thomas Bateman from Mediobanca. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, all. Thanks for good results, and congratulations on a fantastic tenure, Jos. Just on the CSM, I think we've had some positive experience there, and just again, can you just explain maybe what those are, and how recurring this might be going forward? And the second question is just on competition in P&C. I heard you some comments talking about international players in the mandated broker segment. I guess I was just interested, 'cause that sounds similar to what you told us before, but I was just wondering if that is a change, if competition has increased, if that's something that worries you, or is it a bit more of the same and, you know, you still maintain your strong market position there?
Let me start with the second one, and then I'll hand over to Ewout. Well, it is the same message that we gave before. It hasn't increased, but it is still there. My personal expectation is it will be there for the next 12 months. It will not significantly harm our market position, but it might limit to be at the upper end of the growth of the growth ratio that we projected. So we're now around 3%. In P&C, we were at 3.8%.
We expect that also in 2026, we will deliver at least a 3% growth over the combined entities of disability and P&C. The worry is it is there, it will stay there, it creates a bit more price competition, but we've said to each other, we will remain to the value over volume strategy. Looking back a bit further than over the last couple of years, we've seen it. I've seen it earlier also in the 1990s, we've seen it, and between 2002 and 2010, it was also there, and they come and go.
So, I expect that in a couple of years or, or within a couple of years, some of those players will discover that, the promises made by mandated brokers, that it will be very profitable if they do the underwriting, that they, that they will, have to face some disappointment there, and that they will, become more rational.
And on the CSM?
On the CSM, indeed, yeah, we have seen a positive CSM development in both life and in non-life. On the life side, a couple of elements played a role. One is the capitalization of the cost synergies. As you know, we have achieved the synergies that we have, of that we have integrated Aegon, and with that, a full confidence that we achieved the synergies.
In life, you will not see that running through the OCC or through the business capital generation, but what it does is actually it increases your future profitability, so it lowers your best estimate liabilities, and with that increases the CSM and the own funds on the Solvency II. That is one element that is clearly not something that is recurring. The second element that plays a role is the inclusion of the partial internal model. The partial internal model results in a lower required capital.
The lower required capital results in a lower risk margin, but a risk, the lower required capital also is related to the risk adjustment under IFRS, and it also results in a lower risk adjustment, and with that, a higher future profitability, so a higher CSM. Also, that one is not recurring. If you look more to the recurring items, so what we see is on average, 5%-6% is more or less released every year due to the run-off of the book. And we see half of that being taken out by accretion of the CSM, but also by the new business that we are making.
So then you are more, let's say, on average, 2.5% net amount of in a normal basis, without special circumstances, in a release of CSM that you will see.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Farooq Hanif from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hi, everybody. Thank you very much. My first question was actually on the top line in P&C. You know, you've clearly benefited from pricing in 2025, and obviously you're doing more, but even with that, you're at the lower end. I mean, is this something that we may expect going forward, that, you know, with the competitive environment, and as that changes, we might continue to be at the lower end of top-line growth in the non-life business generally? That's question one. Then question two is, on the life investment margin in the IFRS profit, I mean, that was a very pleasing jump. Is that sustainable? What's left in the de-risking program that could help that going forward? Thank you very much.
The live investment margin question will be taken up by Ewout. As said, Farooq, thanks for your question. Yes, we do see a competitive environment, but at the same time, we still see room, despite the competitive environment, to increase premiums, especially in motor. We already decided that we will increase premiums in motor mid-year, and depending on the category, that will be somewhere between 5%-7%, but in some cases, maybe even towards 10%. We feel free to increase motor premiums going forward.
And at the same time, we are confident that we will be able to grow the top line in P&C with at least 3% at this moment. So if I look into the multi-year plans of the P&C team, there is confidence that we will be able, despite all the market circumstances, to grow the business organically on a year-on-year basis.
So with that, I think I've answered your question, and I hand over to Ewout.
Yeah. So, in detail, so what we, I think when we look to the investment margin in, in life, a strong, a strong jump, it was driven by actually all the elements that we have mentioned. For example, the growth in, in the investment margin in the level of capital generation also apply for the, operating and investment and finance results under IFRS. So I think this is the basis and the starting point, the starting base for 2026 as well. We always, run, every year, we run an, strategic asset, allocation study to look, can we further optimize the portfolio?
It will not be huge risking that we foresee for 2026, but we do see some optimization opportunities, and that is mostly related to actually moving a bit out of the credits because that as were very tight at the beginning of the year. Maybe move a bit out of certain govvie bonds , which are also tightening again after steepening in steepening spreads, increasing spreads in widening spreads in 2025. And we expect to invest a bit more on the illiquid side, for example, in CLOs, which has been reduced in our balance sheet quite significantly during 2025.
We see room to do a bit more there, and maybe also some more illiquid credits, because we believe we are a bit underrated there today.
Thank you very much. Thank you.
Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Iain Pearce from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. Just a couple of quick ones. Firstly, just on the update on the cash at holding target. Can you give us a little bit more detail on the RCF and how that benefits and what the new cash at holding target is, and if there's sort of now quite a bit of excess cash at the holding company? And the second one, just on the longevity reinsurance topic again. So you said EUR 10 billion is available to reinsure and indicated there's a pretty low cost of capital. I know you're saying the market's only supporting those smaller deals, but is the expectation that you would look to do the full EUR 10 billion over time?
And also, you know, with future buyouts, will you be expecting to look to do longevity reinsurance on those deals as well, given the sort of cost of capital that, that you're attributing to those, those opportunities? Thank you.
Ewout, I think you're the master of cash at the holding.
Master of all every ca-- every euro that we have in the company. So no, it's, so the holding cash at the, at the full year is EUR 956 million. It's an increase compared to what we have seen in the full year 2024. Actually, the policy on holding cash did not change, did not change at all, meaning that we always keep cash at holdco level to cover the coupon payments, to cover the holding expenses that we are having, and the last year dividend, actually. That is the policy that we are having, and that did not change.
What we also have witnessed is that we have, of course, also for liquidity reasons, quite some facilities in place, which you pay an amount for, but actually do not use, and one is the unconditional, revolving credit facility that we are having.
Knowing that's actually the most, the higher yields, that you get higher yields on investments when the cash is at the legal entity level instead of at the holdco level, we said, "Okay, it might be wise to at least capture a small portion of that, as a kind of part of the holdco cash policy, so that you don't have to remit too much, and then have cash at the holdco that actually is not doing anything for you as, for our shareholder community." And that is what we have... That's actually what we have changed, and also communicates already by H1.
I think the portion of, that we now include is almost EUR 230 billion, so that is, a million, EUR 230 million, of the holdco, of the, the credit facility that we actually have kind of earmarked as part of the holding cash.
Okay. Thank you.
There's a bit of noise, Ian. And then on the--
Sorry.
On the longevity—no worries. On the size of longevity reinsures that we can do, indeed, EUR 10 billion is what we see as the potential today. I mean, we have more longevity in our portfolio, but you don't have all the data available for those books. We are also working on further improving, but EUR 10 billion is what we see for the short term. What we see in the market indeed is that the most favorable deals can be done around EUR 3 billion-EUR 5 billion.
What we will do is that we will further investigate where the prices are still very attractive, and if that's the case, then we will definitely consider, not because we need the capital. So we will not do any longevity deal because we need the capital. We will only do this because of the fact that cost of capital is, on one hand, attractive, and on the other hand, we also can see this as good risk management. Because when you look to the life balance sheet, the biggest insurance risk that you have on the life balance sheet, by end of the day, is longevity risk. So it's also a part of good risk management.
That is how we will evaluate the case by case, starting with the first investigation in 2026. We expect to conclude that in the second half of the year, and if it turns out that it is attractive, we might do the deal. If it's not, we will not do the deal. If it is, and if we do the deal, we will definitely look into it, whether it makes sense to do another deal, but we will take it when we get there. Thank you.
Thank you. We will now take the next question. From the line of Nasib Ahmed from UBS. Please go ahead. Nasib Ahmed, please go ahead. We will now take the next question. From the line of Michael Huttner from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Thank you so much. Just to play a small follow-up. One is the, on the buyouts, the CSM benefit you said was about EUR 50 million. I expected more from EUR 2.8 billion, but maybe I'm completely wrong. I just wondered if you could remind us of the metrics here. Then the other one is, I think one of your peers mentioned low reinsurance costs as a benefit, and you haven't. I just wondered maybe you can give us an update here. Thank you.
On the first one, I hand over to Ewout, and he probably will also take the second one. Yeah.
S o on the buyout. So indeed, there's EUR 50 million additional CSM. We were actually very positive with the fact that you already, at day one, see that those contracts are profitable, Michael. I think, and we also have seen competitors, or one competitor that actually wrote a buyout, that's yeah, that had a big negative actually, as a result of the buyout. We see that already at day one, it contributes positive to future profitability. And that's not even taking into account all the excess return that we can make on those buyouts.
And because those will flow through the operating and investment finance result, and that should also be taken into account. So that's the two things where you see back on one, and the CSM, which will be released over time. But on the other hand, you are also seeing increase of the operating investment and finance result. And together, that makes that you actually see that the return over time will be on an IRR basis. That is, by the way, based on the sources calculation, but on the IRR basis will be over 12%. Hopefully that clears it up.
Yes, indeed.
Cool. On the reinsurance program, indeed, we see that the reinsurance market has been softening again, also in 2026, compared to last year. We have seen that, yeah, we have seen attractive prices, which offers us the opportunity to have a somewhat bigger cat program, to keep retention levels at the same level, and still pay even more or less the same prices. When you more purely look from a risk, gross risk perspective, prices have come down. In total, we see kind of that we will pay the same to reinsurance in non-life as we have done over the year 2025.
But, but you'll keep your retention is coming down?
No, the retention is at the same level, but the cat program is actually at a higher level. So we have increased the cat program.
Ah, I understand.
And we were able to increase the cat program without paying any euro more.
Brilliant. Thank you.
Thank you. We have time for one more question. Investor relations team will contact all the further participants with any answers. Our last question comes from the line of Nasib Ahmed from UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi, morning. Can you-- Hopefully, you can hear me now. First question on just the 75%-25% split of the OCC. If I take the EUR 1.35 billion guidance, take 75% of that, you get more than EUR 1 billion. EUR 750 million is probably the dividend. So we're already at more than EUR 250 million of potential buybacks on your EUR 225 million. Just question on why not upgrade that? I think last year you were at 75% because you did the EUR 100 million special with the participation from Aegon sell down. So is that the way we should think about this year as well? I think you make the comment around participating again in a potential sell down.
And then on the 25%, which is around EUR 350 million , I think you spent EUR 185 million on Bovemij, and that leaves EUR 165 million for, I guess, DB pensions. Is that the main use of that remaining EUR 165 million ? And then just quickly on the EUR 600 million fungible capital that you released from the PIM. That's on a group solvency basis, but the real cash is in the entities where you got 30 points of solvency. So shouldn't that EUR 600 million be actually a little bit, well, quite a lot larger than what you're getting at the group level? Thank you.
Maybe you can take the second part of the question on the EUR 600 million. I will comment on the first one.
The second part of the EUR 600 million-- So the--
The second question.
The second, yeah. On the EUR 600 million. So in detail, so when you calculate that at the group level, you come to a level of EUR 600 million, but the good thing is, when you calculate this on a le- at the legal entity level, you really come more or less at the same point. So it's just over 30% of Solvency upside. If you take kind of a re- and, and, and if you multiply the required capital by 1.6%, 6 x, sorry, that's actually how we are doing that, then you will land also at the fungible capital of around EUR 600 million, Nasib.
So that's really in the same area. This is also the way we are actually looking at fungible capital. So we look at fungible capital at the legal entity level, because that determines our remittance capacity and not the solvency at group level. So that's on that question.
On your question on the 75%-25%. The way we've always approached this is that it was our intention to return, let's say 70%-75% of the OCC in terms of dividend and and potential buybacks. So that is what we've done over the last year. So I recognize the numbers as you have calculated them, and also for this year, at least mentally, we're prepared to do the same, 70%-75% of OCC will be returned.
And that's why we've also said that if and when Aegon will decide to further sell down, that we're willing to fast forward the EUR 225 million of buyback that we have projected for the next year. So consider it not as a hard number, 75%, but consider it as a rule of thumb that we always wanna be between 70% and 75%. And Ewout wants to add on that.
Yeah, then for the year 2026, yes, so indeed, you see the-- Of course, we already have the deployment opportunity of Bovemij, which we are very happy with. And when you purely look to the level of capital generation and the remaining kind of capital that you don't have deployed, you come to the number that you mentioned, but as you can see, we also have a strong balance sheet. We, so we would be more than happy to deploy over the level of capital that we, that we have generated. That's the good thing about the strong solvency, is that you have, that provides you the flexibility to be entrepreneurial. So we would be very happy, whether it's M&A or buyouts, to do more.
Perfect. Thank you very much. That's very clear.
Thank you. I would like to turn the conference back to Jos Baeten for closing remarks.
Thank you very much, operator, and thank you all of you for joining us, joining us. From my side, I enjoyed every minute of it, not only today, but also the 19 earlier conversations we had due to all the reporting we did on half year and full year. I was always inspired by your views and your questions, and what I think is great that we together created an atmosphere also in those calls, that we could seriously talk about the execution of our strategy and the successes we have brought, but that we always could do it with a smile on our face, and that was accepted by the investment community.
I'm a big fan of Warren Buffett, and Warren Buffett once said, "Only when the tide goes out, you discover who's been swimming naked." And I think if I look at ASR and the last 10 years since we were a listed company again, we've seen different phases. We've seen COVID, we have seen volatile markets, but one thing was clear, ASR was always swimming fully dressed. And with that, I think a second saying of Warren Buffett is, "Price is what you pay, and value is what you get." And I think that's what we have delivered together on ASR. Thank you for joining us, and see you all tomorrow evening in London.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.