Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Coface SA H1 2026 Results Presentation. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question- and- answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone. You will hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. Please be advised today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Xavier Durand, CEO. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Good evening. Welcome, everybody. Thank you for joining on the hot summer evening like this for our report on the mid-year 2026. You will have seen from the numbers we had another strong quarter of execution in what I would qualify as a pretty tough environment at Coface. Just reminding everybody of the headlines. Net income at EUR 108 million or close. Solvency at 194%, a very strong position. We had a quarter in Q2 where we saw a relative rebound of volumes versus the first quarter. Insurance premiums grew 1.4% versus a - 1.3% in Q1. I'll explain a little bit more in the next pages where that comes from. Most of the operating metrics, as you will see, have been strong. The retention is close to record at 93.6%. Pricing is negative but above historic average at -1.3%.
We continue to grow business information double digits, including the total parameter. Organic growth is at 12% for the semester and 19.1% with the acquisition of Cedar Rose. Debt collection growing almost 32%. Also good news on factoring, which is up 3.5% after many quarters of subdued performance, I would say, in the current economy. I think the other good news for the quarter is the losses. The net loss ratio is better by 2.7 points versus last year at 37.4%. That brings a strong combined ratio, which is stable at 71.3% for the first half. The net cost ratio is increased by 2.7% as we continue to deliberately invest in line with our strategic plan. I'll go through more of that detail in the next pages.
If we step back a little bit, we are now past mid-plan for Coface, two and a half years into Power the Core. We'll take a look at our main financial targets. We are reconfirming these. Actually, over the last two and a half years, we have beaten all of our metrics: combined ratio, return on average tangible equity, solvency, and the payout ratio. As you know, we evolve in an environment which is both slower growth and also an acceleration in digital and AI and connectivity. We know that at this point, what matters most for us is the long-term value creation with the BI business versus short-term profitability. We think that the guidance we've given around the 50 basis points RoATE contribution in 2027 is now irrelevant.
We are planning to, however, adjust the 2027 dividend, which will be paid out in 2028, upwards to compensate for the difference. As I said, net income at EUR 108 million, annualized RoATE at 10.9% with a strong solvency at 194%, which is almost 20 points above the upper range of our targets. We've appointed two new directors to the Board on the Arch representation, Hugh Sturgess, who is President and CEO of Arch Insurance International, and Christine Todd, who is the Chief Investment Officer at Arch Capital. Two strong appointments here, insurance professionals to the Coface Board, and a lot of continuity on the Arch side. On page five, just to remind everybody of the financial targets that we had set for Power the Core.
Again, I'll say it, these metrics, these goals, were how we planned to position the company over the course of the plan to be able to deliver. If you look at the actuals in blue versus the targets, you see that we've actually done better. The average combined ratio for the first two and a half years is at 72.2%, which is way lower than the 78% we had targeted undiscounted in the plan. As I mentioned, our solvency is about 20 points above, actually 21 points above the upper limit of the range that we targeted, the 155%-175%. We continue to pay out over 80% of our profits to shareholders on a regular basis and maintaining a high level of profitability through this cycle. The RoATE to date is at 12.3%.
I'll just remind everybody that obviously this is influenced by the high level of equity that we retain in the business. So I would again qualify this as over-performance with us versus the plan that we had in place. On page six, I just wanted to give you some perspective on the markets. On the left-hand side, this is not news, but putting it in a graph like this, I think, highlights where we stand, are the global corporate insolvencies index that we've developed to represent what's going on in the world. You see that where we are in the cycle is actually at a peak in the last 13 years. We thought things would stabilize a little bit this year, but actually the events in the Gulf keep putting pressure on companies. So we see continued increases in insolvencies.
You see the drop that happened after COVID when governments flooded the economies with, I would say, free money. That had a dampening effect on insolvencies, then there's been normalization since, we've gone back to, I would say, a much more normal behavior here. But the point is, we are at a tough place in the cycle. On the top right-hand, I think I just wanted to illustrate also the slowdown in the economy is weighing on our core markets here. It is not often that we see negative growth in our core markets in Europe, like the U.K. is down 5.5%, Germany 5%, France 4.5%, Netherlands almost 1% or 0.5% . Then the traditional growth engines in the TCI markets, which are Spain and Italy, are still growing, but on much lower rates.
Italy has been a growth engine for this industry for many, many years and is now growing 3%. My main comments here is global insolvencies at a decade-high level. Premiums under pressure in our key markets. That explains also why these low volumes drive intense competition, and you still have pressure on prices. There's a lot of needs for companies to invest and catch up in AI, make sure they stay up to the pace of what's going on in the market. We see a tendency, and that's true across all of our businesses, of large companies to delay large purchase decisions, whether it's in TCI or BI or others. Yet, I would say that Coface is outperforming on both volumes and margin. I think that's just that I wanted to put that in perspective of what the markets look like.
On page seven, we have a regular update on CSR. I think I've already highlighted that in the last quarter, one, the key achievements that we've had in 2025 versus the interim goals that we had set for ourselves. The message is we pretty much beat every single target that we had set for ourselves. I also highlighted the 2030 new goals that we set, further improving our performance on the key pillars. What I can say is on responsible insurer, we continue to weigh carefully how we invest the portfolio to continue to drive down the carbon emissions carried by that book. The efforts continue. In terms of being a responsible employer, our key goal here was to have 40% women in the top 200 jobs in the company.
Now, what's happened over the course of the last few years is we've added 1,000 jobs in the data, tech, and digital space. These are typically areas which are male-dominated. For us to maintain that ratio requires work, and we're really thoughtful and proactive in that area. As a responsible enterprise, we want to further reduce our own carbon emissions, and the focus right now is on responsible IT and procurement. We're working our providers hard to make sure that they also do what's required to lower the emissions that are linked to them in our own accounting. Obviously, we are switching all of our fleet of vehicles and things like this to 100% electric and renewable energies. In terms of the culture, we have an EcoVadis rating, which puts us in the top 23% of companies that they rate.
A few years ago, we had a really strong MSCI rating as well. I think there's space here continuing to work on the way we report our business and the actual efforts that are ongoing in the business to continue to improve the way we meet the reporting needs of these agencies and continue to strengthen our ratings. Not much to report, but the work continues. Let's go to page nine. This is my, I think, 42nd presentation to this group. The format, as you see, and it doesn't change quarter- on- quarter. I'll just comment on page nine that, as I said, total revenue is up 0.8%. A better quarter in Q2 than we had in Q1, with insurance revenue for the first semester up 0.1%. Our other revenues continue to drive the growth of the business at almost 9%.
We spoke about Bisnode BI growing 12% organic and 19% with Cedar Rose. Confirms actually that we are able to grow these acquisitions when we make them. We see a clear uptick from being integrated into the Coface network. Third-party debt collection up at 32%, factoring having a good quarter. I mean, Q2 was almost 5%, which, as you know, we are mainly a factoring business in Germany and in Poland. Obviously, there's been a lot of work going on in that space, and things seem to be rebounding a little bit. Good performance on fees, broadly stable, I would say, in terms of percentage of fees on premiums in a market which has a strong tendency to give away the fees in order to win the business.
I take it as a sign that our clients are willing to pay for the services that we provide alongside the insurance policies. On page 10, we have the usual breakdown by region. I think what you see here as a headline is subdued growth around the world. Clearly that affects a lot of areas, but it affects more Europe, I would say, than the rest of the world. You see almost zero growth in Western Europe, almost the same in Central Europe, but slightly better news actually in Northern Europe, which includes Germany. I already mentioned that within Germany, factoring has been doing pretty well. Mediterranean and Africa has traditionally been a growth engine for us, and it is still growing, but at much lower rate. We used to see more like 5%, 6% growth on a regular basis, so we're down to 2%.
We see that the Gulf region is holding up remarkably well. I think the governments in the area are pouring money on the economy in an effort to sustain growth, and that's affecting us. Some effects in North America, but I think overall, outside of AI, a quite flat economy. I think the good news is more in the emerging markets. You don't see it here in these numbers because we have tough comparisons for the first half of 2025. Underneath those numbers, there are good growth momentum in Asia. I think this is the place where I think a lot is happening today in the world. Latin America, still growing much less than before, but there's a disproportionate amount of that business, which is actually driven by European contracts with an extension in Latin America.
When you look at it, I think at this stage, a lot of the growth around the world is driven by emerging markets. On page 11, we show the usual metrics of our performance. You see that new business is almost at a record, and I think the almost is because, as I said, we see large deals being slower. Companies are investing in AI and trying to save costs, trying to manage the situation in the Gulf, and putting off where they can decisions that are not absolutely critical. In terms of retention, we're near a record, and that's been now for years quite stable. Prices are still negative, but they're a little bit better than they were last year, and generally speaking, the last few years. Then the activity that we get from our own clients' business growth is quite subdued at 1.5%.
That's really not exciting, but I think that reflects the world economy here. On page 12, we have an update on the risk. I think the good news is that you see the sequence on the top left of the quarterly loss ratio before reinsurance, including claims handling expenses, and the story is really flat quarter-on-quarter. When you look into the details here, you see that the number of claims is back to 2019 levels, pretty stable. The amounts have grown because there's been quite a bit of inflation since 2019, and that's reflected in an average amount which is up by 4.6%. At the same time, we've seen still pretty good severity with the limited number of large cases that have come to hit us. Keeping our fingers crossed here. I think the business is executing. We haven't changed our reserving policy.
We have opened the new vintage at a level of 81.2%, which you see historically reflects, I would say, the political and economic uncertainty. It's pretty conservative. We have enjoyed continued strong releases from the prior vintages here with almost 44% throwback from the prior vintages. I would say, happy to not have much to report on the risk side, actually. You can see that on page 13. I'm not actually going to spend any time here because there's really not that much to talk about. I will just skip that one and go to page 14, where we have the quarterly numbers. It's an easier sequence to follow. Again, here, there's really not that much going on. A very slight uptick in Western Europe. That's because of the Coface geography. We have actually Senegal in the Coface Western Europe segment.
As you know, that's a country that's going through a little bit of a challenge right now. Outside of that, there's really nothing going on in the rest of the world. Latin America has volatility. I think every single quarter, I comment on that, and there's no news here. Frankly, on the risk side, there's not much to talk about. On page 15, we talk about the cost. As we've seen, the premiums are a bit better for the quarter. The cost is still growing 3.4% quarter-on-quarter. For those of you who have been here for a long time, this is the second-best quarter in 22 quarters in a row. In five years. We've highlighted how the cost increases are slowly coming down quarter-over-quarter, and that's true again this quarter.
If you look at what makes up the increase in the cost ratio on the top right-hand side, you see there's still a 0.6 points that is driven by the difference in cost inflation versus premium inflation, that's coming down, as I said. The rest is really deliberate investments we're making. The business is performing. We are investing deliberately according to our plan in sales for trade credit insurance, in connectivity, in data and technology, in BI, in debt collection. That's two points of cost increase. We get 0.8% back this quarter from the increase in sales that we have in the services area. I can say that these investments are really important. They position us differently. They make us better at managing the core business insurance.
I think it's the right choice in an environment which otherwise is quite subdued and not easy. That's what I have to say on cost, and I'm going to pass it over to Phalla to talk about the rest of the pitch.
Thank you, Xavier. Good evening, everybody. Let's go now to page 16. From reinsurance side, we can see that the premium cession rate is stable compared to first half last year at 27.7%, while the claims cession rate has increased from 23.3%- 23.5%. You know that our quota share, I think, is divided by, well, there's two sections. On the TCI side, the quota share is 23%, but on our specialties, which is single risk and bonding, the quota share is at 50%. It's really driven by the mix of our business, and we have been able to pass on some of the reserve that we put in naming. I think I can name the Senegal one, for instance, 50% of reserve going back to the reinsurers. That drive is increased.
As a result, I think the reinsurers income or loss for us, but income for them, has moved from EUR 52 million last year to EUR 46 million this year. Leads us to the next page. The net combined ratio, you see is a very good one at 71.3%. Very stable compared to half year last year, with an increase in the net cost ratio and a similar decrease in the net loss ratio. From a Q2 perspective, from Q2 2025 to Q2 2026, has a decrease from 74%- 72.4%. Remember the last year, the 41.1%, there are some noises in terms of accounting related to the FX, where you have a little bit more in the net loss ratio. I would say the FX gain will sit in the financial income. This year, I think it's a little bit back to normal.
Still, I think we have a very good net loss ratio. Let's move to the next page. I think it's page 18 now. Financial portfolio. The mark- to- market stands at EUR 3.3 billion, EUR 190 million after the payment of our dividends of EUR 186 million at the end of May. Asset allocation-wise, no changes really, with a high level of cash as usual, 14% of our assets held in cash or very liquid assets. In terms of return on investments, you can see that if you look at the first line, which is the recurrent income for our investment portfolio before gain and loss on sales, moving from EUR 52 million- EUR 53 million with an accounting yield moving from 1.7%- 1.8%. This is half year, of course. As usual, I would comment on the FX impact.
Of course, less than last year, because the U.S. dollars and related money has not moved or a little bit less volatile this year than last year. The EUR -2.4 million, I think there are two elements here. The first one, of course, we have the usual hyperinflation accounting in Turkey, stands for EUR -8 million at half year. You have the unrealized gain on FX of EUR 5.6 million, usually offset, you can see that in terms of geography of booking with the unrealized FX loss of EUR 9 million in the insurance finance expense line. Nothing more to be added. I think it is on this page. We can move to the next one. The half year net income at EUR 107.8 million, down 13% compared to last year, the same period. I think a little bit better than in Q1. In Q1, the net income was down 13.7%.
We are improving on this front as well. Leads us to the next page 20. Return on Average Tangible Equity. I start with the IFRS equity. We are moving from EUR 2.213 billion to EUR 2.166 billion. We paid our dividend, and we accounted for the net income of the period. As I have managed changes related to interest rate movement, but not very significant. Leads us to a decrease of our Return on average tangible equity from 11.4% at the end of full year 2025 to almost 11% at half year 2026, of course, with the decrease of our net income compared to last year. For this quarter, you know that half year, we will comment on the capital management, solid balance sheet. Total balance sheet at EUR 8.9 billion. We commented on investment portfolio at EUR 3.2 billion.
The factoring assets, EUR 3.5 billion, is reflecting the increase of our factoring activities backed by the factoring liabilities, which is for the refinancing that we have in front of this. Book value per share, EUR 14.5. I think we are trading at almost EUR 16. I think we are at EUR 15.80-something, which is above this level. We can move to the next page, which is the solvency ratio, moving from 197% at the end of December last year to 194%. You can see that the capital requirements have decreased the solvency ratio by 11 points. Offset by the [inaudible] generations, which is the good performance of our business. This just showing that we are financing our organic growth with the level of balance sheet that we have. On the right-hand side, as usual, you have the two types of stress tests. The first one from a financial market shocks.
We have already commented that previous quarters, the portfolio is pretty much de-risked now, we can cope with all the financial market shocks. The crisis scenarios, the one in 15 and one in 20. Again, we will be above the upper range of our comfort zone in the shock scenarios. If we move to the next page 24, just laid out how the 194% of solvency ratio is made of. EUR 2.7 billion of solvency to unfunds to be compared to the EUR 1.4 billion of capital requirements. That is pretty much it. Very, very strong again, in terms of balance sheet, within 194% of solvency ratio. With this, if we go back to Xavier.
Just to wrap it up. I think I mentioned this. We're in a slow growth environment. We have a lot of uncertainty out there. I mean, the story in the Strait of Hormuz continues to evolve almost by the hour. We don't see at this stage what the outcome is going to look like. I think a lot of companies are dealing with this. It's going to create longer, higher interest rates. It's going to create some inflation. It's going to create slower growth. We see that at play. Obviously, for Europe, it's not easy. Emerging markets are doing a little bit better. There's the AI craze going on with a lot of investments, a huge amount of investments going into that space, which also creates a need for companies to invest correlatively.
In that environment, I think we have a really strong performance with a 71% combined ratio, which is well below our through-the-cycle targets. We are seeing a little bit better quarter in terms of growth for insurance and a continued growth in our services activities or non-insurance activities. I think we feel good about the strategy and the choices we've made. The economy's weaker than we anticipated. The data stuff is going faster than we anticipated. At least we got the direction right. We're beating our financial targets that we had set for the business after the plan is completed. We're doing that already. We're reaffirming all these targets. We are, however, prioritizing, I would say, long-term value creation or midterm value creation in BI versus the short-term profitability, because I think that business continues to see needs in terms of investment and building up at scale.
We're going to compensate the difference, which is a few cents by share in the payouts that will be made in 2028 for the 2027 dividend. That's pretty much it. I think we had discussed that a couple times before in the prior call. No big news here. With that, I'm going to leave it open for questions.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Thank you. We'll now begin with the first question, which is from Michael Huttner from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Fantastic. Thank you very much. Well done for better revenues and better margin. I have three questions. The first one is on the dividend. I don't quite understand what compensate means. If income isn't there, how do you compensate for dividend? I don't understand. Does it mean I should add an extra bit to my dividend or assume it's growing? I'm puzzled. The second is on the business information. The growth was 12% in Q2. I was hoping for something around 15%. I'm just wondering, is this a structural slowdown? I know that with Cedar Rose, the acquisition you had 19%. The underlying is fine, but I was a bit puzzled by that. My last question. I didn't pick it up. What is in Western Europe, which is so bad? I couldn't make it out. Thank you.
Maybe, Phalla, you want to take the dividend question? I mean, it's fairly straightforward. The 0.5% RoATE means, I think, EUR 0.04 or EUR 0.05 per share.
Per share.
We're just going to increase the dividend by EUR 0.04 or EUR 0.05 per share to make sure that the dividend paydown to shareholders is the same as if we had reached the target. That's it.
Understood. Okay.
Okay.
But-
Yeah. In terms of Western Europe, that one is you want to take that one?
Yeah, I can take that one. This is the country where Senegal the country itself is under restructuring, we have some exposure there.
Senegal isn't Europe.
Yeah, that's Coface geography. I'm sorry about this. We actually changed the name of that region to call it Western Europe, Africa-
West Africa. Okay.
West Africa, something like this. Whatever. There's a little piece of stuff in there. It's non-major. It just happens to be there. We booked some reserves there.
Some reserve there, I think less than EUR 10 million. The whole country is under restructuring, so it can last a couple of years but still, it will be, I think, supported by the IMF. You have the Club de Paris restructuring team around this. Fine. We'll just follow this.
Okay.
As I said, it's a single risk, so in terms of quota share, it's highly reinsured.
Okay. On your second question, which was BI growth. Yeah, we've been attuned to 15%, I don't know, for quite a bit of time. It is a bit slower this time. I think what we see is, as I said, large companies delaying decisions that we thought they would make faster. I think the environment plays a role into this. Whether that's structural or cyclical is for anybody to guess. If you can read what's happening in the Gulf, let me know. What I see, though, is that it continues to grow. There's demand for what we do.
I always said, because I think this happened a couple of times in the past, that I wouldn't take a quarter as a sign for long-term trends, but nevertheless, there is a slowdown, and at the same time, I think we need to continue to invest to put this business on a good footing in an environment in digital, which is moving quite fast. There's a lot going on. I'm not going to tell you guys about AI because you probably hear it on every single pitch that's being made by every single company around the world. That's true as well for Coface. The good news, I think, is that we are doing quite a bit in that space. We have a Data Lab that's now 50 strong. We have 1,000 people in BI.
That's giving us capabilities that we didn't have before, and we feel good about that.
Good. Thank you.
Thank you. We'll now move to our next question. This is from Benoît Valleaux, from Oddo BHF. Please go ahead.
Yes, good evening. Thank you for taking my question. In fact, they are only related to business information. I'd just like to better understand what has changed compared to what you had in mind when you have presented your strategic plan. At that time, I think that you expected organic growth, which is broadly in line, which we have achieved. You are today at 12%-
Yeah.
Q2 this year. Maybe I'm wrong, but just to understand, do you believe that in the end, your organic growth is a bit faster than what you had in mind at that time, which can be what you need to invest a bit more than what you had in mind? Or does it mean that, I don't know, maybe this business is a bit more costly than what you had in mind? Linked to this, there is a point I don't really understand on this business. You plan to be breakeven, if I understand, next year. Maybe still a bit too early, but does it mean that you plan also to be breakeven in 2028, 2029, and we have to wait many years before reaching profitability on this business? Or do you believe that it's only maybe delayed by one or maybe two years?
This also-
Are you-
Yeah, sorry.
No, go ahead.
I just would like to understand also the benefit of scale, in fact, because it's all my question behind all that. It means that to cap to EUR 1 million more revenue, you need to invest EUR 1 million more in cost. Honestly, I believe that there is a point of, we'll say, of size at which you may start to have some benefit of scale.
Yes.
And it seems it's still not the case. Just to understand, do you believe that, once again, you're just delayed by one or two years?
Yeah.
Or not really? Sorry.
Yeah. A few things. We have started this thing from scratch in tens of countries at the same time, right? Yes, we have some more size now. We have EUR 100 million of turnover or something like this, whatever. But the scale that we have in each individual country is still very small. We're talking about a market that is, I don't know, EUR 15 billion or EUR 16 billion, something like this. We're barely making a scratch at this stage. I think just to put things in perspective, when it comes to achievement of scale, we are still very small. Right? The second thing we learned is that from the surveys we did with investors, everybody tells us we will not get any recognition for value until we reach a certain size, and that's not EUR 100 million. It's got to be bigger, right?
There's no question for us that value creation means, as you said, reaching scale, which means reaching scale market by market. We see a lot of opportunities coming up for growth, but also a lot of changes in technology, which means the technology spend's probably going to be bigger than we thought. That's not actually news for any business right now. I think everybody's spending more on technology than they thought they would, but that also impacts us, particularly in BI, which is a technology-driven business. There's some of that going on as well. AI is coming fast. We have to be there. There's a lot of stuff going on. We're still planning to run that thing at the quasi-neutral impact on P&L, plus or minus, whatever.
I think it's more important for us to continue to grow and to keep on par with the market's evolutions than it is to just try to make a buck. I understand your point. Yes, there is a place at which we need to prove that scale matters, but I don't think we're there yet.
Okay. Not before a few years. Yes, I understand this compensation in terms of dividend and payout ratio, it's for 2027. Initially, once again, you target to break even this year and + 50 basis points on RoATE 2027. We might have imagined that 50 basis points could move to, I don't know, 2/10 of basis points higher in 2028 and so on going forward.
Yeah.
From your point of view, compensation will be on 2027 for 50 basis points, at this stage, you believe that could be the same for the next year, Yeah.
Yeah. We haven't gone that far because our plan is 2024, 2025, 2026, 2027. By the time we get to those stage, we'll have a new plan, right? I'm not going to anticipate what we're going to say there. We're going to study this. We're going to do all the right diligence as you would expect us to do. We limited our view to 2027 because that's the last year of Power the Core, and then we'll have to come up with a new one. I don't know if it'll have three words or four words or two words in the title, but I think we're going to revisit the whole thing, which you would expect us to do. We haven't gone further than that. I don't know if that answers your point.
An additional question, if I may. Just regarding solvency. Your solvency was at 194%, still well above your group's target. It has been well above your group's target for four years now. It seems that in the end, group target is more how I understand the capital requirement from regulator and really what you had in mind. Could you be tempted, to some extent, to reduce a bit this solvency margin? Because it has been very resilient despite current challenging environment over the three years, and thanks to your strong underwriting policy and risk management policy. Do you believe that you need, I would say, such high level of buffer versus what is the target range, if we can call that target range?
Before Phalla jumps in, let me just remind what have we said, I think, over the course of the last 10 years, which is the solvency level is a choice between several different constraints, right? One is what we agreed with the regulator, which is 155-175%, and where we put our guidance stores. The second one is ratings. The third one is security of our reinsurers, the requirements of the banks that fund us, particularly in factoring in other areas. The view that our clients have of us, et cetera. There's a lot of different things that go into trying to figure out where we should be positioned. Phalla, maybe you want to add something to this?
Well, I think two things. The first thing is that, of course, this level is comfortable, but it also allow us, when we say that we want to compensate in 2027, the low five will use this as well. You can see that we are using it to grow our business. I think that's also one of the reason why we. I'm not saying that we're cautious, but just give us some room to grow internally and externally. Today it's internal. You can see that it's just 11 points from full year 2025 to half year. If we didn't have this level of comfort, this also give us some freedom of how we want to drive the business. Then, as you can see that we have already made two acquisition last year. This allow us to grow externally as well.
We will have the same question mark of discussion, Benoît, I'm pretty sure, in a couple of quarters. I will have always the same answers to you.
We already said this. We're disciplined about capital allocation. I think I've had 10 years of that question. Actually, not 10 years, because the beginning was a little bit rough, but let's say eight or seven, after we went through the major turnaround in the beginning. What we want to do is we want to be able to grow comfortably our core business. When you look at what happened after COVID, we had an inflation surge, and we were happy to have capital because a 15% increase in premiums means a 15% increase in capital, right? God knows where the world's going. That gives us complete flexibility there. Second, we want to be able to do acquisitions if there are some that make sense. We're not going to grow for growth's sake, but we are going to grab opportunities if they make sense to us.
We know that in BI and services, the multiples are much higher. We do not want to pay top dollar for big businesses, but we are happy bringing in bricks that help build the fort. Third, when we have too much, we return it to shareholders, right? That's what we've done consistently. We've shown the dividend distribution of Coface over the years, and it's been pretty substantial.
Full year, 2025, we distribute 84%.
Yeah.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you. We'll now take our next question. This is from Pierre Chedeville from CIC. Please go ahead.
Yes, good evening. Not many questions are left. Maybe regarding reserve release, we have the impression that you have some leeway there again, still. I was wondering if we could expect this reserve to be continuously released in the coming quarter, in your view. More generally, I can see that most financials, banking or insurance companies are progressively improving their targets when reality, if I can say, is better than expected. Things that you don't do. At the end of the day, I was wondering if it's really useful for us, for the financial community, to compare your current loss ratio, for instance, or combined ratio with your target, because there's such a big gap between them that it seems that the target seems irrelevant.
I was wondering why you don't adapt these targets a little bit more often when you see that they are so far away from the reality. I was wondering if preparing your next plan, you are thinking of that. Thank you very much.
Yeah. We've had that discussion, by the way, I think again, in the past, every time we've done a plan, we've improved our target so far, right? The issue with our business, and those of you, everybody here on the call knows this, is it's cyclical or it's subject to economic variations. It's not easy to define a confidence interval for that number based on the cycle. We can do it through the cycle on average, and the cycle is kind of a theoretical definition of, I think we're showing it here on this page where we have 13 years of insolvency. You see we're at a peak. Are we at the peak? I don't know. It very much depends what happens to the world.
If the AI bubble bursts, plus the Gulf of Hormuz, plus the Red Sea is closed off, and there's a raging war in the Middle East, I think you're going to see some sporty stuff. If everything is kicked down the can, keeps being kicked down the road, then everything's fine. Hard to say. We are prudent. We give benchmarks which are improving over the years. I think we over-deliver. That's been our story, at least so far. We operate by very consistent principles, which is we're going to do the smart thing for the medium term. We're trying to build, to do value creation. We're not going to go growth for growth's sake. We're not going to try to reach a number for the sake of reaching a number.
We're going to do what we believe makes sense in the medium term to position this business to continue to be a really good business going forward.
Thank you.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, you can press star one and one on your telephone. We will now take our next question. This is from Michael Huttner from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
I had lots of little silly questions. Tax 27%, I had in mind your run rate was a little bit lower. I just wondered, A, what it means. I think it was very helpful, the appendix that you showed Q1 was 26%, Q2 28%. What's the right number to use going forward? It seems to be nudging up. The second is maybe the opposite of my colleagues. I see the positive in everything, but is there any way that you can quantify that the investment that you're making in BI and stuff, how much is that is benefiting your loss ratio? Because ultimately at the moment, that is what's driving the business. I suspect it's quite a bit, but there's no way I can do it from the outside. You can probably do it a little bit better. I have a really silly question.
What's the TNAV number? I know you give it per share, but I'm always worried about multiplying numbers, whether I'm rounding too much. Maybe I know you don't like to give forward-looking, and you're being very cautious, but you did have in Q2 versus consensus and Q1, a better loss ratio and a better volume. It feels like, we've reached the bottom, but I don't know. Maybe you can give us a feel for what you're seeing right now. Thank you.
I think your last question relates to the cycle. Frankly, it's anybody's bet. If you give me the scenario, I'll tell you, but the scenario moves all the time. We had a war that nobody had seen coming, then everybody believed the war was over, then the war is back on again, and you tell me where it's going. I think time will tell where this goes, if AI is going to continue the way it is, if it's going to turn out to be profitable, if the amounts of investments that are being made are reasonable or if it's too much, if there's a bubble that's going to burst. I don't know. There's a lot of stuff going on at the same time. To call the peak or the trough on something, I don't think is very easy.
On the transfer of know-how or technology or whatever, between BI and TCI, I think it's true. I think there's learnings and there's capabilities that we would've struggled to pay for if it had been just with the TCI business, and certainly not at the scale at which we're doing it. Just the fact of having 1,000 people in the business focused on data just gives you a bit better understanding of data. It's just simple. The marketing impact, because we have now thousands of clients on BI, gives us scale, gives us knowledge, gives us presence in the market and opportunities to cross-sell and stuff like this. You're seeing that it's hard to say exactly what's going where. We know the P&L for BI, but we also know that it has a positive influence on TCI. To me, it's pretty clear.
I'll take the question on tax.
Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah. Michael, you know that our tax computation is really based on the business mix that we have in countries where you have different income tax rates. That's nothing that is unusual, and there's no guidance for going forward because it really depends on the jurisdictions in where we're making our money and our taxable income. There's nothing specific to be noticed. That's all I can say, it's just a computation from various jurisdictions or tax jurisdictions of our benefits. You can see that if you look at quarter- after- quarter, it is true that it's 50 basis points. The variability is moving back and forth. What we can say is that when you look at the past, it's between 23 and 28, and it will be something in between.
Okay. The TNAV?
TNAV, I think it's EUR 2 billion.
EUR 2 billion. Okay. That's helpful. Okay, may I ask just one last follow-up question? Cisco reported today and their numbers are, funnily enough, quite good, like your numbers are quite good. There seems the surprise or the thing I would've wished for is a bit more investment income. Am I wrong to expect more investment income to come through? I keep thinking that if you're growing the business, you've got more reserves or more assets and invest interest rates not actually budging that much. We should see a little bit more, but it doesn't seem to come through very much.
Well, it's improving year after year, but you know that we have repositioned and de-risked our portfolio for, I think now two years. I think it's probably we're reaching a kind of [1% rate]. Of course with the level of cash that we have, we have very liquid assets at 40% asset allocation on this one is probably where we can see some opportunities of the market. For the time being, because the yield curve is inverse, you have a higher interest rate on the shorter tail of the yield curve than the longer one. I think this is where I'm benefiting from this, but who knows where the interest rate will go.
Okay.
Yes, I think it's pretty much depending on the interest rate level. Increased interest rate environment is something that we fully benefit from.
May I ask one last, I'm really naughty, last one. It was really interesting what you said about there's clearly a crossover benefit from BI and TCI. Would it be fair to say that one would more expect the benefit in terms of large claims, because clearly you haven't had large claims in the past, I don't know, two, three years? Or is it more benefit on what I would call attritional, all the little exposures?
In our industry, we obviously don't like large claims, right? That's the one thing that we're trying to avoid. It's hard to say. I think, obviously the discipline has increased. The processes are tighter. I think there's also probably a structural shift in the market where it's not just us improving, it's also the entire market improving and the governments being more attentive and the companies being more sophisticated and having better tools and the banks tightening up their processes. There's a whole bunch of things that are going on and playing into this. Very hard to pinpoint the details. The general trend, I would say, is that we are improving the business, the bills coming in. The amount of work that's going on in digitization, AI, and all that good stuff is quite impressive.
At least from a historic standpoint, I think we are seeing quite a bit of change. I would also though, that's more of the personal reflection. I think you're going to see AI make changes, but I think it's going to be, in general, slower than people think because the challenges are human, the challenges are stability, control, governance, technology. Putting it in to work in a safe way and in a sustainable way is not as simple as people think. Which is good news because if we're able to invest and do some of that, then it will be a differentiator for probably longer periods.
Brilliant. Thank you.
Thank you. There were no further questions coming through. I will now hand back to the speakers for any closing comments.
Well, look, we're right on time. I think as we said, we're halfway through the year. We're in a pretty good position. Of course, nobody knows what the future holds. The news could be coming any time. The business is sticking with its plans, got a clear strategy. We're executing. We'll take the environment as it comes. Well, thank you very much for your attention. With that, I think we can close the call.
Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.