Good afternoon. This is the Chorus Call conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Unipol Group first quarter 2026 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 their telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Matteo Laterza, CEO of Unipol. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you very much and good morning to everyone, and thank you for connecting to this call regarding the Q1 2026. You saw the presentation and the press release, so there will not be a presentation on my side, but only a few remarks on how the quarter was. By comparing Q1 2026 with the Q1 2025, I can make only a couple of remarks. First of all, a significant improvement in the technical profitability in life and non-life. In particular, in life, the improvement was spread in all the line of business, traditional product, but also unit-linked and pension funds.
Also in non-life, the improvement was very important in motor and non-motor. Notwithstanding, we maintained a very high level of prudence in our approach in reservation as usual. Nevertheless, as you have seen, the combined ratio reached a 90% level. That is a very important number in terms of KPI for us in comparison to what are our target in our industrial plan. On one side, a very important improvement in technical profitability that more than offset a lower contribution coming from investment income. Q1 2026 was a quite soft quarter in terms of performance of financial market.
Q1 2025 was a very positive quarter in terms of performance of financial market. Consequently, the contribution coming from investment was lower, more or less EUR 50 million less than what we got in 2025. Nevertheless, the quality of the number in 2026 in terms of investment contribution was very positive in the sense that the contribution coming from coupon and dividends in 2026 was stronger than what we got in 2025. We missed the contribution coming from financial assets that are marked at fair value to P&L that in 2025 gave a contribution of more or less EUR 80 million. In 2026, the contribution was close to zero.
Consequently, the overall contribution coming from investment income was lower than EUR 50 million, as I mentioned before. Very good, the position in terms of solvency, not only due to the issuance of the Restricted Tier 1 that we did in January of EUR 1 billion, but also thanks to the contribution coming from the organic capital generation that also in the quarter was quite important and in line with our target of the industrial plan. Having said that, I will stop with my remarks. As usual, I am with Enrico San Pietro, ready to answer to your question. Thank you very much.
Thank you. This is the Chorus Call 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 handsets when asking questions. Anyone who has a question may press star and one. At this time, the first question is from Tommaso Nieddu, Kepler Cheuvreux.
Hello, thank you a lot for taking my questions. I have few. The first one is on the attritional loss ratio, which rose to 69% at group level from almost 68% of last year. Can you walk us through the drivers of that? How much of this reflects a more prudential initial loss peak approach? How much is from mix shift towards health and how much is from underlying claims trends? Should we read this as a temporary or just a structural step up? The second question is on the health premiums, which in Q1 seem to be decelerating a bit from prior quarters.
Also here, is this seasonality mix related or some kind of sign of more competitive market dynamics? At the same time, the bancassurance channel was very strong. Also there, how sustainable are these growth rates, and if this represents the first signs of the integration of BPER Sondrio, and that's it. Thank you.
Yeah. I missed to comment on the performance of the top line business. In particular in health, there is nothing that can be worrying on our side in the sense that health insurance has three main driver of growth. The first one is the traditional one coming from the big contract that we have with large corporation or funds. That in the quarter was flat because we did not have new contract coming in, and so it is a sort of consolidation in the quarter. I expect in the next few quarter to establish a single-digit growth in that line of business. Regarding the bancassurance was very strong.
Growth in the first quarter was higher than 30%. It is in line. It accelerated in the health insurance business. There is nothing that in a sort of sense created a drag in the growth of bancassurance as a consequence of the integration with Banca Popolare di Sondrio. It was the opposite. The growth coming from bancassurance was very strong, as strong was the growth coming from the agents, higher than 20%. The slowdown in health, I can say is driven by the softness in the traditional area that I expect to improve in the next few quarters.
In the attritional, I ask Enrico to answer.
Good morning, Tommaso. As far as the attritional loss ratio is concerned, basically, we have no issue about increasing number of claims reported, both in motor and non-motor. Basically, we are usually very prudent, and this time we were even more prudent in estimating the future amount of claims. We don't see any issue about the profitability of the attritional loss ratio and the current insurance business.
Okay, thank you.
The next question is from Michael Huttner, Berenberg.
Fantastic. I hope you can hear me. I'm outside at the moment, so I'm traveling. Two, three questions. The first one is. It was a question I asked, wonderful I asked. I said, if I take the profit for the quarter, including the bank, saw EUR 30 million something, why can't I multiply it by four to get a full year number? The consensus is actually 1,475. I'm sure there's an easy answer to this, but it's basically a way of asking if something is a seasonality in the business. The second question is on the solvency ratios.
It feels like they're extremely high, nearly 300% in the insurance, nearly 250%, including the bank. How can you leverage this strength, I don't know, whether to grow in more business or make acquisitions? It's just a question. The last one, if I'm being a bit critical here, but I don't mean to be critical. It's to understand. If I exclude from the non-motor the part which is bank insurance, which did fantastically, the other parts felt a little bit soft. Is there something to note here? Thank you.
Okay. Considering the first question, unfortunately, Michael, it doesn't work in this way. It's not so easy. The evolution of the quarters, you should not multiply by four the number. You know that NatCat events are more impactful mainly in the third and fourth quarter, sometimes also in the second, but usually the first quarter is light in terms of NatCat impact. Consequently, first quarter number is a very good number, you should not expect an evolution of the full 2026 by multiplying by four.
It will depend on the trend in terms of NatCat events in the second half of the year, even if, you know that, we invested a lot in reinsurance protection. We are ready to face any kind of event in terms of NatCat by maintaining very solid our target, our industrial target at the end of the industrial plan.
Concerning the solvency, yes, we are in a very solid solvency number, both individually and consolidated, and concerning the insurance, the insurance group. You have always to consider that we are in a situation where financial market are close to the top, equity market, the credit market, also the spread of BTP versus Bund is, I think, close to a lower number after the Lehman crisis. You have to prepare yourself to face any kind of scenario in financial market, also in the prospect that there could be a risk of stage, and you must have enough capital to face this kind of scenario, first of all.
Secondly, of course, we have, if we can spend the capital that we have, when and if we would have to grow in some line of business more than the assumption of the industrial plan. I'm thinking about the bancassurance business, health insurance business. We have not yet a clear picture on the evolution of the compulsory NatCat insurance protection in our, in our country, and we have to be prepared to employ capital. We must have enough capital to do it, and this is the second purpose that we have.
Concerning the M&A activity, of course, if there would be a possible target in terms of M&A, you must have enough capital to take the opportunity. We don't have opportunity on the table today, but if we would, we would have also enough capital to take in consideration this possibility. Then there is the final question concerning the trend in non-motor, I will leave Enrico to elaborate on it.
Yes. Good morning, Michael. As you have seen, the growth in non-motor overall was 0.8. The vast majority of our business line are going according to the plans, and the figure you can read is related in particular to the marine insurance business that, as you can see with SIAT, our marine insurance company suffered a reduction of 28% of premium return related to the Hormuz Strait blockade that is slowing down this kind of business. Heavily slowing down. A couple of big corporate accounts we did not renew according to our discipline growth strategy. Basically, I think that vast majority of our business is going according to our plan.
Fantastic. Very clear. Thank you.
The next question is from Gianluca Ferrari, Mediobanca.
Yes. Hi, good afternoon, everyone. Three for me, please. On top line, on the opposite side of non-motor, motor is progressing very well in TPL and other motor. Actually, it is accelerating motor TPL, which is a bit counterintuitive considering the tariffs are slightly normalizing according to Eurostat. What is driving this? Second question is on expense ratios that are worsening a bit in both motor and non-motor. I remember you were flagging to us that acquisition costs are linked to the loss ratio, so an agent is remunerated more if the technical profitability of the agency is better.
I was wondering if this deterioration in the expense ratios is coming from the admin or the acquisition cost, and if you can remind us if the acquisition costs are linked to the accident year loss or the loss ratio itself? The final one is on the tax rate. Both Life and P&C improved significantly in the Life business, in particular from 32% tax rate to 23%. I was wondering how we have to read this sharp improvement in the two tax rates. Thank you.
Okay. I will start, Gianluca, from the final question. Yes, you should compare 2025 with 2026. First of all, in Q1 2025, we were quite conservative in considering not deductible some items that then impacted in the tax rate in 2025. 2026 should be misleadingly because you could expect an increase as a consequence of the increase of the IRAP tax that is effectively in power in the first quarter 2026.
We had some items that more than offset this negative contribution, in particular the positive contribution in tax coming from some devaluation that we did in 2025 in some assets that have a positive impact in 2026. Concerning the other two question, I ask Enrico to elaborate.
Thank you.
Hi, Gianluca. About motor business, yes, we have interesting growth in MTPL. As you are imagining, it's not only about the retail business that is growing related to the average premium growth, but this is something around 3% more or less. The rest is an increase related to fleet business. Also on motor other damages, we have growth on the retail business still related to increase of prices on the coverages are needed some additional increase in price. Like we explained in our previous meeting, we are seeing last year and also this year significant increase in growth related to important distribution agreement with Stellantis that is driving both growth and profitability so far.
This is about motor expense ratio. The main explanation of the increase of the expense ratio is what you just said about the commission ratio that is related to the technical profitability of the business. This correlation works with a with a delay, and so basically reflects the year after or in some cases a couple of year after fully what's happening on our technical profitability.
Sorry. The technical profitability is the underlying without PYD, I guess.
No, no, no.
Is the overall?
No, no. It's the overall. This is a very complex issue. Basically, we have several form of remuneration related to technical profitability in motor and non-motor. In motor, for instance, we take into account two-year results of the technical profitability of every single agency. When we report as the profitability of a year, for instance, the 2025 profitability will be reflected from July 1st, 2026 into the commission ratio we are giving to our agents. Basically, depending on the previous two years of the results. Something similar there is for non-motor for the individual results of the single agent. This arrives, of course, with a delay, a significant delay.
Also there is an important scheme that is related to the overall company profitability that is shared for some part with our agents, and this works year by year. A few months of delay in seeing that. Basically, we are or still seeing effects of the improvement of the technical profitability of the last two years.
Sorry, Enrico, you said that you got some fleet contracts explaining the +5.5 with motor TPL. Is that maybe explaining the deterioration in the accident year loss ratio, or it has nothing to do?
No, no, no. Not at all.
Okay.
Not at all.
Okay. Okay. Okay. Clear. Thank you.
The next question is from Andrea Lisi, Equita.
Hi, everybody. Thank you for taking my questions. The first one is again on technical profitability. In particular, this quarter, we saw that it was quite benign in terms of NatCat. On the other hand, we had prior year development that provide a stronger contribution to the combined ratio versus last year. My question is how do you intend to manage an integrated way, the evolution of NatCat with prior year development and, in particular, the margin of prudence that you are still adopting in reserving. The second question is on the financial results.
In particular, how do you expect the evolution of rates could impact the financial results based on what the current curve is discounting? I have two other questions. One is on capital. You have indicated why you want to preserve a significant high level of capital. If another element that was not indicated is the distribution. Just wondering to understand. Clearly, it is quite early, but if you see some room to improve the distribution and if there is any scenario where you could consider share buyback. The very last one is on BPER. In particular, we saw that BPER will launch a share buyback.
So far it has indicated that it will not cancel shares. If we assume that at some point could cancel the shares, there is a possibility for Unipol to overcome the threshold of 20%. Could you consider going above this threshold, or you will keep the threshold as selling eventually the shares in the market? Thank you.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you to you, Andrea. I would start from the question concerning the level of capital. As I said before, I argue in general the concept of excess capital. We are in a position in which we have a very strong position of capital in the prospect of facing any kind of scenario financial market or financing the extra growth that we should have in some area of business like health or bancassurance. As I said several times, if at the end neither of these two scenario should realize, we could think about the possibility to distribute more capital.
Actually, we already did it because, in the announcement of the dividend that we will pay in few days, we increased our target in terms of capital distribution to more than EUR 800 million, and we have also set this number as a sort of floor for the next distributions. Having said that, we are still in the first half of the year. It's very early to think about what we could do in 2026. Everything is all set for a good profitability also in 2026, but I would postpone the discussion on capital distribution at the end of the year.
Having already increased the target of the industrial plan in terms of dividend to at least EUR 2.4 billion in the three years versus EUR 2.2 that we disclosed in May 2025. Concerning the our stake in BPER, as you know, we have an exposure of less than 20% in BPER. We will, of course, be compliant with the rules, with any decision that BPER would take in terms of canceling or not canceling the shares. We will be compliant what the regulation says in terms of authorized shareholding that we can have in BPER.
We will respect what BPER will decide to do with their shares. Concerning the first one, I will leave Enrico on reserve release and NatCat.
Hi, Andrea. Starting with NatCat, the first quarter was quite benign. The amount of the claims reported was lower than the last year. Of course, the first quarter is not that relevant in the overall results of the year. As you know, it's the third quarter that is the most relevant one. As you remember, we took a very prudent approach on this kind of business line. At the year-end 2025, we introduced a relevant strengthening of our risk adjustment calculation using a probabilistic approach estimating the average loss that could be reported in related to our book.
We are not going to release this kind of prudence soon because the idea is to keep it and strengthen it until something relevant happens. When a relevant event will happen, we will have this amount of money to use to absorb a part of this issue. As far as the prior year development in claims, it was a good quarter. Basically, you have to expect a prior year release quite significant since we are very prudent in reserving the current year. As you can see from the presentation, the increase was in non-motor.
The main reason is that last year in the first quarter, we accounted relevant amount around EUR 30 million on the book of the loss reserves in the active reinsurance book. It was one-off to strengthen, and it proved to be even more prudent that it was needed. Definitely, this is not gonna to repeat this year and or in the future.
Sorry, Andrea, I missed to answer on the share buyback. I see it was one a part of the question. We don't plan to do share buyback. As you know, we only focus our capital distribution in cash dividends.
Thank you very much.
The next question is from Antonio Gianfrancesco, Intermonte.
Yeah, good morning, and thank you for taking my question. Just one from my side, and it is on labor cost flexibility. Just, I was wondering if you could give us a bit of color on the impact of potential renewal of insurance national labor contract under discussion currently in ANIA. If I'm not wrong, Unipol still applies ANIA national labor contract. Given the proposal salary increase of EUR 280 over 2026, 2028 and the EUR 1,000 one-off for 2025, should we expect any visible impact in terms of cost base or expense ratio? Or, is this already fully embedded in your plan assumptions? Thank you.
Yes. Thank you to you. Yes, we participated to the discussion concerning the renewal of the contract. There is this agreement, EUR 280 per month, for the fourth level. That is a number that match our forecast. We already considered the impact of the renewal of the national contract in the evolution of the numbers that we have concerning 2026 and mainly all 2027. It is this renewal does not impact in any way on the evolution of the investment that we do in human resources in this industrial plan.
Very clear. Thank you.
The next question is from Elena Perini, Intesa Sanpaolo.
Yes. Thank you for taking my questions, and good morning everyone. I've got one question about your cost of claims. I was wondering whether you already perceive some inflationary impacts on this. Considering that the tariffs were softening, were expected to soften this year, if you are ready to respond in case you feel any tensions on this. Thank you.
Yes, Elena. Actually, it's very early to make an assumption on the evolution of the increase of the oil price on the domestic inflation. Of course, it is not a good news. It is not a good news in terms of possible evolution of inflation in our country. We are working on trying to do some forecast concerning an adverse scenario where the increase of the oil price can have an implication on the claim inflation. Generally, I don't think this could create a similar scenario to what we did in 2022, 2023 after the COVID, because it is true that the implication on inflation will be negative, but it is a sort of supply side driven increase of inflation.
It is not an increase of inflation driven by a stronger demand as it happened in 2022, where the level of interest rates was negative across the board until the 10-year maturity. Today, the absolute level of interest rate is quite high on one end. On the other end, there are some forces that are working on the opposite side in a more, much more structural way. You can consider the contribution coming from investment in artificial intelligence in order to improve the productivity of the workforce that is working in the opposite side. I don't expect actually this could be a structural increase of inflation rate that could driven a new hardening stage in prices in motor.
Having said that, in the assumption of the average cost of claim, the first quarter we were conservative also in the in consideration of the possible implication of inflation in 2026. We are already, in a sort of sense, pricing this supply side increase of inflation that we can have this year. Nothing expected to be structural in order to set up a new hardening period for prices, at least for the moment, considering the information that we have that we have today.
The next question is from Qian Lu, UBS.
Morning, everyone. Thank you for taking my questions. It is Qian Lu from UBS. Just a couple of clarification questions on the reserve prudency. You said that you were more prudent with estimating future claims this time. What is driving that increased prudence, please? Is that mainly related to the potential inflationary risks from the Middle East conflict? I think you mentioned that you strengthened the risk adjustment back end of last year, and you intend to maintain the strength. Just to clarify that the PYD this quarter was one-off in nature and the underlying reserve strength is intact, if not stronger. Thank you.
Yes. This is a position that we have for a very long time, the prudence in the reserving policy. In particular, we underline this point when we commented the final year result, where we decided to position ourself in the top percentile in terms of assessing the risk adjustment that we have to post in the reserving approach in general. In particular, we did it in 2025 in the property area and concerning the probabilistic expectation of the impact of NatCat events. In general, we have the positioning of the risk adjustment in the IFRS 17 approach is focused to position ourself in the top percentile in terms of risk adjustment.
It is a way to manage the, what we call the prudence in the reserving approach. This is the point. Concerning the inflation is more or less the same in assuming the average cost of claim in the first quarter of the year. We have adopted a very prudent approach that considers also the possibility that there could be a spillover of the increase of the oil price in the average cost of claim in motor.
Thank you very much.
The next question is a follow-up from Michael Huttner, Berenberg.
Thank you very much for the opportunity. Just two. One is a clarification on pricing. I think in motor you said motor TPL 2%, and you said Motor Own Damage was higher. I just wondered if there's a figure there. Then the second, you spoke about strong operating capital generation in the context of the strong solvency. I just wonder if you can remind us what the target is and how much higher or lower you are than that target. Thank you.
Yes, Michael. Concerning the capital generation that I leave Enrico to answer to the other question. Yes, I said that we had, again, a quite strong contribution coming from organic capital generation. In the quarter, we usually do disclosure in the first half result, and you will have a full disclosure when we will talk about the first half result. On a qualitative way, we had an organic contribution positive of a couple of hundred million in the first quarter. We had a negative contribution coming from economic variance because of the negative performance of financial market in the quarter.
You can see negative performance of equity market, even if there was quite muted in the quarter, but the BTP Bund spread widened a little bit. The credit market was not in a good shape. I'm talking about the first quarter. After the first quarter, financial market performance improved a lot. We had a positive contribution coming from non-economic variance, thanks to the different performance coming from our portfolio compared to the assumption of the industrial plan. Then, you have in terms of capital contribution, the contribution coming from the issuance of the Restricted Tier 1. Overall, I can say that the organic capital contribution in the quarter was in the whereabouts of EUR 200 million.
Thank you.
I'm not sure that I understood fully the question? I guess it's about motor, it's about growth.
No.
Or about-
Motor Own Damage . I think you said, and excuse me if I misunderstood, that you raised the pricing in motor and damage. I just wondered if.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, okay. When you look at our figure in motor, other damages, the growth is very strong.
There are two main reasons on the retail business. The reason is that we are completing repricing of some motor other damages coverage, especially kasko and natural events, and still we are seeing an increase the average premium. The most relevant part is related to the growth of production in the distribution agreement with Stellantis. Stellantis, of course, in Italy is very important as a market share. Basically, the new vehicles, the new cars that are sold with some kind of financing scheme, are also insured in a good percentage of this kind of sales, and are insured for motor other damages. Stellantis dealers are very good in selling this kind of cover that of course is driving our growth.
Great. Thank you very much.
The next question is a follow-up from Qian Lu, UBS.
Hi. Thanks for the follow-up. Just a quick one on pricing and claims inflation. Could you please update us on the current trends in Italy, both in motor and non-motor, please? Thank you.
Let's start with motor. In motor pricing is basically slowing down. We had a period in which as a market we had to face the increase of the cost of the claim related to the update of the Milan court table about bodily injury compensation for claims. This phase is basically over, and that's why the average increase of the price is now quite small, let's say around 2%-3%. Of course, the main concern is what can happen in case of a new inflation increase related to Hormuz Strait blockade and cost of the price of oil.
In that case, of course, it's quite easy to forecast a new phase of the market in which the price could increase to offset the effect of the increase of inflation. So far on the cost of the claim, we are not seeing yet an impact of a new phase of inflation. But it is something that we are looking very, very carefully to understand what's happening and to be able to respond in the most proper and fast way.
About non-motor, we are in a period of the cycle in which, especially for property business, we had a spike after 2023 atmospheric events for our pricing, but also for the market pricing that had a significant increase. This phase is definitely over. Nowadays, what we are seeing is prices are stable or also for some kind of business decreasing in non-motor. In non-motor, we have so far a very benign situation, both for loss frequency and also for the average cost of a claim.
Super helpful. Thank you.
As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. Once again, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. Gentlemen, Mr. Laterza, there are no more questions registered at this time. I turn the conference back to you for any closing remarks.
Okay. No closing remarks. Thank you very much for attending this conference, and we will meet again for the first half results. Thank you, and have a good day.