Perfect. Good morning - good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining us today in the room or via the webcast for the SCOR 2024 Investor Day, during which we're gonna provide you with some updates on the SCOR strategic plan for Forward 2026. I'm joined today by our CEO, Thierry Léger, as well as the entire SCOR executive team, which will be available for chat during the break or after the presentation around drinks. For your information, the presentation today is recorded. Please take note of the disclaimer on the slide number two. On slide three, you've got the agenda of the afternoon. The event will be split in two sessions. The first one relates to the Life & Health strategy and the property and casualty outlook presented respectively by Thierry Léger and Jean-Paul Conoscente. Then, after a short break, François de Varenne will go through the finance topic.
There will be opportunity to ask questions after these two sessions. For those joining us remotely, feel free to write your question in the box at the bottom of your screen. Someone from our team will be your spokesman during the Q&A session. And with no further ado, I will end off, I will hand it over to Thierry Léger, our Group CEO. Thank you.
Thank you, Thomas. I hope the microphone works. So hello, everyone, also from my end, and welcome to the London Stock Exchange. It's a particular pleasure for SCOR to be here today and see so many people joining us physically, but also welcome and hello to those joining us virtually. So again, great pleasure to have you all here. And today, for me, it's about two things. If you can just reclaim two things, that will be enough from today's presentation. So the first thing is we still owe you something. So we have to complete what we couldn't complete at Q3, which is, you know, we said we have completed the internal review of our reserves, but we still owe you the external completion of those.
So today, we would like to show you that we have actually completed the external review on the Life & Health side. The feedback is positive. I will come back. We will come back on this in a few minutes. We have positive feedback. What we have also done is we have also again asked an external review of the P&C reserves, and also that feedback is positive. And so the P&C conclusion was last year that we had some resilience in our reserves, and what it says this year is that we have built additional resilience beyond the within the best estimate, of course, of our reserves. So that's a very, very important message today. So with this, I think we can really say the reserve reviews and assumption reviews in Life & Health have been completed.
They have been reviewed externally, and we can now draw a line and move on, and moving on for us brings me to the second point, which is our business. Our business, in P&C and Life & Health and investments, our three businesses, are doing well. We have always said that the underlying business, even in Life & Health, is doing well. The P&C, P&C business is doing exceptionally well. You will hear from Jean-Paul later, get more details. And obviously, investments continue to be a strong contributor. And I'm convinced that we have everything at SCOR to deliver considerable value in the years to come for our shareholders. The positioning of SCOR, the strategic positioning of SCOR, is very clear. We start from a very, very strong tier-one franchise. So I've always said it.
We have a franchise that is about here, and there are maybe three other ones in the market that have such a franchise. So franchise means we have access to any insurance company in any country across the world, and we have the ability to price any program we wish around the world. So that's, that's franchise. And there are really just a few that have such an access everywhere in the world in the way SCOR has it. That's tier-one franchise. Our market share, however, is about here. So the difference between the two, you shouldn't view this negatively. I think as an investor, you should look at this positively because that's the opportunity. We could double our market share, and we would still have an opportunity to grow. And so the opportunity for SCOR to grow in a profitable way in the next years to come is very significant.
So for me, it all starts with our tier-one franchise and the potential it provides us with. We have been very clear with regard to our strategy. So Forward 2026 that we presented last year has presented a strategy that creates value in the years to come and leverages this tier-one franchise. And it consists of growing in a very clearly determined strategic way into our preferred lines of business, which are diversifying, profitable lines. So I'll come back to that, as well. To achieve this kind of company positioning, of course, we needed to adjust our organization. And it was no simple work, and I was very pleased to have the full support of my executive team to transform also the way we are organized. We had to align our organization with actually the strategy.
We needed to become a more nimble company, one that can take decisions faster. So what we have done is we have reduced the layers. So we were up to 10 layers, heavy, and we have reduced them to six. We have reduced the managers from 900 to 600. And we have done many other things to the organization. And this allows us now that every client is obviously about four or five levels closer to me today, and the whole organization moved closer to our clients. And at the same time, we are making sure that decisions are being made at the front, by the teams closest to the clients. So the whole turning around of the company was based on this reorganization and also creating values that go with it. And this is important because we wanna be a solutions provider for our clients.
And to be a solutions provider, you have to be fast, reactive, innovative, and that's the culture we are building. And of course, the whole thing is embedded in strong governance, and again, strong management that goes with it. Over the last 12-18 months, we have actually achieved a lot. You have heard the word deliver from me already in the past, and I will hopefully repeat it several times, and my colleagues will because with Forward 2026, we were very clear that it is all about delivery. And even if we hit roadblocks like the Life & Health review this year, you know, we accept and we do what needs to be done, but we deliver, right? So we have done it faster than foreseen. We have done it by Q3.
We didn't wait for the full year end, and we have added an external review. That's what I mean by delivery. We have aligned the structure. We have done the organization. We have said that we wanna save EUR 150 million of costs. Our message to you today is that what the EUR 150 million that we wanted to achieve by the end of 2026, we now think we can achieve that one year early. That means we are really accelerating some of the delivery that we have. Life & Health, you've probably understood by now that there are things that need to change. Also there, we have done a lot. You will hear, of course, much more from me.
But there are things in place today already, just a few months after the Q2 results that will show you that we do what we say, and that's important to me. One thing I'm particularly proud of is the fourth element, which is the capital allocation. I think that what we have changed is to the fastest is moving the capital around in the company. So today, we are not saying 50/50 between Life & Health and then tell the businesses come back at the end of the year and tell us how you did. We actually are looking at portfolios below, and we are very clearly and strategically deciding where we would like to grow more and where less. We have said that already under Forward 2026 last year, but we can see today already successes in this regard.
Of course, particularly in P&C, where I think this leaning into the hard market in a very strategic way has paid off today. But you will hear more about this. So to come back on the reserve review just a second. So we have a P&C review done now externally as well. So internal review done, external review done. It's completed. The opinion is strong, and as François and I have said already many times, we think we have built significantly more buffer. So the journey to our EUR 300 million buffer building has been shortened almost by two-thirds, and we are very pleased with that achievement, and it really shows the strength of our underlying P&C business in the state it is currently.
On the Life & Health side, internal review completed, external review completed with a very positive statement from Milliman. François will come back on this one. So, as I said, this allows us to turn the page to move on. Forward 2026 is the plan and the journey we are on since last year. We consider this chapter of Life & Health now closed. It does reset the basis from which we're gonna grow on the Life & Health side very clearly. We acknowledge that, and you will see it through multiple slides. But from this new basis in Life & Health and from the current basis in P&C, we can now move on and deliver on our Forward 2026 plan. This consisted of two things, if you remember. One was creating value, and the other one was modernizing SCOR.
Creating value, we expressed it a year ago by 9% Economic Value Growth per year. Today, we are particularly pleased and proud, actually, to be able to confirm that we think that we can grow our economic value in the next two years by 9% per year. So very, very pleased about this outcome. If I look at the value creation, the way it's gonna work, you will hear more about Life & Health, but it's all about creating new business on the one side that is more profitable than it was in the past and have a stronger, more stringent, inforce management compared to the past. So that's on the Life & Health side. Again, you will hear more about it. On the P&C side, it's all about doing more of what we have done so far.
The strategy that we have thought about a year ago is working extremely well, and we think that 2025 will be another excellent year where we can grow again in a very profitable but also strategic way, and that's very, very positive for us, and investments have been a strong and stable contributor in the past, and we expect that to remain. Which brings me to modernizing SCOR or preparing for the future, which I said a year ago, consists mainly of these four areas. Capital allocation, I talked about it already, but it's one area where we more and more refine our system. So we have concluded by the end of this year our performance management under IFRS 17. This is something we have developed the whole year. François will tell you more about it.
We will look at in 2025 to how we generate capital under Solvency II. That's another project we will launch. All of this will allow us to become more and more refined in the way we look at our capital allocation and how we actually use our capital. We are maybe not as rich in capital as other companies, but it does actually force us to use our capital very, very wisely. So that's the way we would like to treat it. Then we have ALM. We said that we need to move from a more static ALM that we had in the past that works pretty well over the last 10 years. We need now in the new environment that is much more volatile to adapt our ALM. We are moving gradually to a more dynamic ALM.
We have hired a team. We have a framework that works, and we have done by the end of the year already. We have taken first actions in the space of ALM that will also look favorably, I guess, for example, under our Solvency II sensitivities. We have said that we would like to grow our risk partnerships. You will remember risk partnerships is monetizing our expertise in our tier-one franchise. So it's allowing sidecar partners, for example, to participate in our growth beyond what our balance sheet can accept. So that's one that's working very well and last but not least, tech and data. So tech and data for us, it's obviously at the core of who we are. SCOR and reinsurance is a data business, and it's very clear that data is for us a huge opportunity.
The new ways of building data platforms and the new way of analyzing data provide us with tools for the future that will enable us again to gain in efficiencies but also design better products, better monitoring, better risk management. For us, tech and data is a real future differentiator for SCOR in the long term. These are things we have done already, but there's still a way to go. I do not wanna go too much into the details of this slide, but here you have some of the numbers. It will be more in François's part, but I would still like to offer three numbers that are important to me. We are happy to today confirm that the economic value growth is 9%. We can confirm the 9% growth for the next two years.
We also, of course, keep our solvency target between 185%-220%, and it's also very clear, and I will be very open here that our ambition is not to be somewhere in the middle, but to be in the upper part of that, of that range. And thirdly, the 12% minimum return that we have promised, return on equity, it's also one that we were very pleased today to confirm for the next two years, and again, as I said, François will explain to you more details later, so with that, I would like to switch to the business side, Life & Health, first, and then Jean-Paul will talk about P&C. On the Life & Health side, of course, this is my first presentation as CEO of Life & Health.
I hope, by the way, it's gonna be also my last one. I have no intention to stick around for much longer. I would like to still share with you a little bit how it feels, right? When you move one level down and you become a business unit leader, it's different. It's a very different business. So, of course, I could not run it in a proper fashion. Lots of shortcomings the way you run it, but it did allow me to get much closer to our Life & Health business, really look more into the details of how this business is run and also understand the people better, the culture.
Sometimes you think you know, but then when you see it, you, you see that sometimes things are a little bit different. So for me, obviously, it helped a lot to accelerate what you will hear on the next slide, this whole transformation to accelerate it massively, and also to be today in a situation where a lot of what you will read is already done and we have already moved on, right? So that, that's important. But the second point is it showed me actually what type of leader do we need for the next few, few years. And so in terms of leader today, I'm pretty sure who what type of profile we need for this position. And I hope that in January, we can announce the name to everyone. So that's the target.
For me, that's obviously a very important step because you know that I put a lot of emphasis on my leadership team, and that is obviously a very important missing piece today. Again, I'm very optimistic to be able to find the right person. Let me for the first and last time present Life & Health more in detail. The three-step plan that I have announced at Q2. You remember this is also when I replaced the CEO of Life & Health. We said we want to review the reserves. That's done, right? We can move on there. The new business strategy, we worked the whole summer on the new business strategy. You will hear in a minute about the new business strategy, but this one is also done.
So we have to define what we wanna do. And, since several weeks or even months, we're actually already running in this, in this direction. So already today and yesterday, we are writing our business according to the new standard of, of new business. Again, more in a few minutes. On the inforce side, you can see I feel we are 50% there. My team thinks I'm a bit harsh to say only 50%. I do believe that the challenge we have, and I will come back on this one, the challenge we have today under IFRS 17 and Solvency II is much, much higher than it was under IFRS 4 and Solvency II. And so I think this challenge is maybe not fully yet recognized. I'm not saying in the industry, but maybe within SCOR. So I try to be very realistic here.
So I have a very high expectation about how we run such an inforce, and I will tell you what the building blocks of such an inforce business are. I will start with new business first and then move to inforce and try to be fast. You can ask questions in the break if you want more details. So this is already telling you everything about the shift of our new business. So it's shifting from the column on the left to the column on the right. So this is the shift from where we are in 2023 and where I want the business to be by 2026. You can see it's a massive switch. Today, in 2023, our business was more than 90% traditional protection business, traditional protection business.
I will give you a bit more detail about what type of business that was and very little other business, a bit of longevity, but almost no Structured Solutions. I think that was a mistake. I think that was a mistake of the previous management. We should have moved in a more determined way into the Financial Solutions space. I think there are many good reasons for it. I come back to that in a second. But you can see that by shifting the business around, I will create a mix that in the end will be better diversified and have a better profitability than the column to the left. The column on the middle shows that we were already moving in that direction, with Forward 2026.
But what I found when I took over in July is that we were actually very, very slow moving. I'm not sure we would have reached any of these targets at that rhythm. And now we are really accelerating and the teams are being hired and so on. So let me go a bit into the details of the three elements. So this is protection. Protection is a business. Very, you know, competition is high. The need for services is very high. So it just generally comes with lower margins. I'm not saying it's coming with very low margins. If you pick and choose the right business, you can make a living out of that one. But it's not high margin business. Definitely, definitely not. And it's very competitive. And the clients expect more and more services.
They will never pay for that service, right? They just tell us, "If you wanna keep the treaty, you will have to offer us all of this." Costs, you know, are always an issue in that business. What we have done are several things, but the most important piece of what we did is we set the minimum margin for the business. We just don't accept business anymore below a certain margin. I'll give you an example. We would not write any economically negative business, anymore. That's simple. Of course, that washes out a lot of the low performing business. By just not writing this, it does have a positive impact on the return, overall. We have also decided to stop writing the very, very long term. I really insist on the very, very long term.
So I'm not talking 20 years duration. I'm talking 30-40 years plus duration of living benefits type of solutions. So that's. Imagine this is like a dental product where you guarantee dental care for somebody's life from age 50 until 95, so 80 years. This kind of product, I think this is not the type of product that anyone should offer. And so, you know, I've asked the teams now to remove ourselves from those offers. The problem with those very, very long-term businesses are that they create theoretical profits over 80 years, not just 10 or 20. So that creates CSM, isn't it? But it also costs a lot of capital, but it does CSM, right? And so it's very unclear, very intransparent for investors to actually understand. So all I'm telling you is there's CSM and CSM.
That's my story today to all of you. It's, there's CSM and CSM. So if somebody does 100 CSM and the other does 100 CSM, you cannot know whether it's the same. I think you have an idea if you divide new business CSM by the risk adjustment, you can have an idea of the profitability and of the quality of that new business CSM. It's one indicator, right, but there's CSM and CSM. So there's more profitable CSM, and less profitable CSM. And so we are definitely trying, and you can see with the +2% there that we are moving our traditional protection business to more valuable type of business. And this means a lot, right? We have looked at every country, every line of business in every country, right? During summer break.
And I still feel sorry for some of the colleagues, because it really spoiled the holidays. But it was a very interesting exercise despite that, because it really showed very quickly where actually the market is, where our products are, where the profitability is. So we have taken actions along the four buckets here. So you can see, for example, maximize capital efficiencies. So there are some countries where we just have huge durations, and the capital efficiency is the whole challenge there. So the local balance sheet and how can SCOR headquarters balance sheet protect that balance sheet. And so there's lots of ways to handle this. We also have markets where we like our positioning, but we are not efficient anymore. Services are required by clients. So we are under real cost pressure, for example.
So there's multiple challenges here, but all we did was act in countries and in lines of business. That's what we did. So for example, one decision we took under the turnaround countries is that we decided to close South Africa to new business. So we are stopping all our new business and our activity in South Africa, which allows us on the one hand to do saving of people that we have there. And we lose actually very little because that's a market where the margins were low, and the volatility high. So somewhat we decided that the risk-reward profile was not the right one, at least for us. I'm not saying nobody else gets it. We couldn't get there. And so we decided to exit. Another important decision we took was in Central and Eastern Europe.
We had people a bit everywhere and actually realizing very little new business. We found a lot of inefficiencies there. We have decided to create a centralized what we call international desk. The new thing will be that the small international desk will cover a lot of countries and will be able in a much more efficient way to pick and choose the markets and the type of business we wanna write. That's just two examples. There would be many more. As a result, we reduce our new business CSM. If you look carefully at the color coding there, we see that we don't reduce mortality that much. We reduce mainly the morbidity one. Why is that? That has to do with the minimum margin.
That has to do with these very long term types of businesses that we stopped doing. They are so rich, so rich in CSM, but so poor in return. Yeah. So that's why it's not; it's a good picture. You should be happy about it, because with less exposure, we will probably do more profits tomorrow. This one is all about longevity. Longevity is a relatively simple game for us. So far we were in the U.K., and U.K. remains for us an important market, and we will still do deals in the U.K.. However, the most effective set off between the cash flows of mortality and longevity happen in the same country. So for us, the perfect longevity book would be if it would perfectly match the mortality book distribution.
Now, you know, today we are not. We have almost 100% of longevity in the U.K., and we have 50% of our exposures in the U.S. So you can see that discrepancy is what I'm trying to get at, so we need to grow outside of the U.K., to move into all those countries where we have mortality business, which is where we will achieve the highest amount of diversification with the mortality business, so for us, of course, the U.S. is attractive. I think we have a very good positioning there, and part of our strategy is to grow in a very determined way, our longevity book in the U.S. And we think the U.S. market is kind of ready for it. The good news is that in December we have been able to close two transactions that are actually perfectly in line with our strategy.
So it's kind of early signs of optimism with regard to longevity on the financial solutions one. So we have been absent in that market. So when people ask me, "So are the clients waiting for you?" and so on, the thing is simple, right? When you have relationships with clients, they actually like to do business with you. They only go to somebody else, for such a structured solutions if you are not able to provide that solution. Tomorrow we will provide that solution to our clients, right? And it's important solutions because they're strategic. So, these solutions are tailored to the needs of a client. It enforces, enhances the relationship with the client. And, the additional benefit, compared to the traditional business is, they are financial solutions. They don't come with all these services. So ultimately, the returns on this business is bigger.
We think that it's a bit misleading, the picture. So we are not today at this middle column, the left column. That was our ambition on the Forward 2026. So last year we said by 2026 we will grow to this extent. What we now say is we will do almost twice that. So a much bigger ambition. In reality today we have almost none of that business. So it's a very ambitious growth curve. To achieve it, I think the client side is ready, the demand is there, but we need to build our team. So what we did first is bring all those people at SCOR that have structured solutions capabilities, brought all of them together under the leadership of our most experienced Life & Health person.
That person now has the task actually to build that team, hire people where necessary, and grow the business at the fastest pace possible. I can talk more about this. When you now just consider the two, a protection business where we want to increase by, let's say, around 2 percentage points the business overall, where we will add diversification, where we'll add longevity and financial solutions, our aim of our new business, Life & Health, is actually to create an additional ROE on the new business side of at least 2%. Personally, I think we can reach 3% and more. We'll see. It depends a bit on where exactly we find our growth opportunities.
But in the best possible case, it can be well above three in terms of improvement of our IFRS 17 ROE, new business compared to where we are today. So that's important. Let me switch to inforce. On the inforce side, it's important because I talked about the new business. But of course, the new business, imagine you have a fire today and the fire slowly goes down, isn't it? So you always need to put more wood to it so it sticks, right? So what we do is we keep that fire burns today, but it's relative. It's good quality wood. But what we are doing, we are adding better quality wood, right? That's what we do with the new business. But it's gonna transform the inforce only over time.
So it takes five, 10, 15 years for the new business to be massively contributing to the inforce of tomorrow. So all I told you in the last minutes is great. I think it's the way to go, but it's gonna create value for all of us only down the road, right? Five, 10 years down the road. The value that we have today and that we will have next year, 2025, 2026, all comes out of the inforce, of course, in Life & Health, through the amortization of our CSM stock. That's how it's happening. So it's absolutely crucial for us to strengthen the governance around our inforce management. So we have decided to centralize our team, the team for inforce management that creates guidelines, best practices, monitoring, all of those.
KPIs, of course, will be done or have been developed already for that type of business. Those KPIs will, of course, become the objectives of the leaders in that space. So it will have a bonus impact, of course. So we make sure everything aligns nicely down to regular reporting to the executive committee. When you look at inforce, it's about end to end, right? I think in the past we have maybe been a bit different pieces. And so what we do are two things. So we bring everything together in this circle. That's the first thing we do. And the circle really means yes, it starts with underwriting and then it goes through the contract and technical accounting, all of that. We do all of that properly. We wherever possible, we try to do it even better.
But you make it a circle. So this is this virtuous circle that we would like to create and need to create and strengthen in Life & Health inforce management. So this should really be the circle that's gonna help us to improve additionally our inforce management. And we will embed. That's the second element. We will embed the whole inforce management on a new data platform. You know that we have hired a new tech leader, we have hired a new data person, and the two together have now taken over a project that is to build and starting with the U.S. Life & Health to create the platform in which we will embed this virtuous circle, right? So this is gonna be a data rich, very, very data rich.
Imagine all the experience analysis data. There are technical accounting all submissions are in there, everything's in there, reserving and so on. So this tool and this new platform will allow us to do analytics in a way we haven't been able to do before. We will improve the process step by step. We will create a circle and we will embed it into a data analytics platform. So three things that in my view will create a whole new level of insights in that business. In terms of track record, it's not like we are starting at zero. So this is numbers we have been asked for many times from all of you. So this is the U.S. So over the last eight years we have launched 78 actions, 78 actions over eight years.
They have impacted 407 treaties all in the U.S. The outcome of it was that 55% of those actions triggered ended in rate increases. So where the client accepted our rate increase, or at least maybe a little bit less than we wanted. Sometimes you have to negotiate that, but let's say rate were increased. On 45 of the treaties or the actions, the clients have recaptured the business with economically sometimes anyway for us is the best outcome. And in average it took six months from the moment we triggered the action until the client decision was made. On 10% of all these actions we actually had to go into arbitration. Yeah. So I know that arbitration is a big topic, but only 10% of all of these are in arbitration.
Of course these are the bigger cases, these are the more complex cases. But these 10% actions in arbitration are obviously all included in the numbers that I show here. Yeah. That's our track record. Obviously we continue to build on that track record, but now we wanna really enhance the whole platform in the way I have said before. What has been successful so far should become even more targeted and more successful to tomorrow. I've talked about the efficiency. Of course we have a new strategy in Life & Health and we have less new business. We wanna do more financial solutions and others. It's very clear that we had to take costs out of the system.
So we went through a relatively harsh exercise over the last months and we will take out EUR 30 million of costs in the Life & Health side. So we have already realized EUR 20 million of savings by the end of this year. And we realized the other. It's a bit more than 20 and we realized the other 5-10 in 2025. So that should help us with the profitability on the Life & Health side. So when you bring it a bit together and again, François will talk much more about it. Let's start again with the stock of CSM in Life & Health, EUR 4.7 billion. This will run off at around. This will be amortized at around EUR 300 million per year, let's say EUR 0.3 billion per year. We will create new business CSM of around EUR 0.4 billion.
You can see the new business is bigger than the amortized CSMs. Over time, we will see the CSM stock growing. Now this is another important slide for all of you. The CSM release from our CSM stock was assumed last year at 8%, right? Amortization 8%. We are now telling you it's gonna be 6.5%. Of course the question is, why only 6.5%? There are only two reasons for it. The first is the Life & Health review. The CSM stock today has a different profile than what it was before. We also admit that we had a bit of learning as well through IFRS 17. It turns out that we probably had overstated a bit the 8%.
So, for two reasons we are correcting it down now to 6.5. However, what this picture also shows to the right on the graph is that you can see that the new business now, the new business mix will have more business like structured solutions that run off faster, right? Also longevity is running off faster. So you can expect, again, this is not gonna be next year, but you can expect over time, right? As we write that business that runs off faster, you can expect that amortization rate to go and move up slowly again. So that's the positive effect, even if of course for you probably 6.5 is a bit of a disappointment. So overall, Life & Health numbers have been updated almost across the board.
So the new business CSM is slightly lower, but I told you that by 2026, 2027 we would like to be back to the levels of 2023, 2024. At that time, the same CSM will be higher quality. So just again, whatever it is that we show, it's gonna be higher quality CSM. And the other numbers you can see. I won't go into the details because François will do that much better than I do. So again, it just concludes for Life & Health a few things we wanna do, move to higher margins, new business mix. This will help us massively in the long term to create the value in Life & Health. We strengthen, in a very determined way, strategic way, our inforce management. We improve our competitiveness through reduction of costs.
There is obviously a very, very strong focus on cash flows. François, we come back on the cash flows in Life & Health. We are not satisfied with the cash flow profiles. We have delayed again by one year the break even of our Life & Health cash flows. But I hope you will be with us, when we detect things we don't like. Usually they improve at some point. I can promise that the new Life & Health CEO will have cash flow generation very high on his or her MBO. I wanted to add on, end on this one and ask Jean-Paul to let us know how well P&C is doing. Jean-Paul, please.
Thank you, Thierry. Hello everyone. Let's take a closer look at the P&C business.
I would like to remind you of our P&C strategy, which can be summarized in two guiding principles: leveraging our Tier 1 franchise to lean into the favorable market conditions while balancing our exposures. I will now explain to you how we have already exceeded our initial Forward 20 26 targets, focusing on three key areas: growing our reinsurance portfolio and diversifying lines such as marine, engineering, IDI, and international casualty; growing our SBS engineering portfolio, leveraging our expertise and proven track record to ride the wave of growing energy transition investments; third, accelerating the development of alternative solutions across reinsurance and SBS. As you will see on this slide, we have already delivered and exceeded our targets on these three key areas. 2024 insurance and reinsurance market conditions were very attractive with high levels of price adequacy and strong market underwriting discipline.
Leveraging our Tier 1 franchise, we have been able to strategically increase our position on targeted placements and segments, putting us significantly ahead of 2026 targets. We're very pleased with the diversification achieved in 2024 and the excellent P&C results as regularly reported throughout the year. Starting with reinsurance, we have accelerated growth in our targeted diversifying lines. In engineering, the market is still experiencing legacy issues from the soft market years. So the reinsurance terms remain firm, while the direct rates is more than adequate. We continue to see attractive opportunities in 2025 and intend to seize them. In IDI, we're a global leader and we're present across most of the insurance value chain, leveraging our decades of experience in this highly technical business and seizing new opportunities in both emerging and mature markets. In marine, we have leading positions in a highly disciplined and very attractive market.
Our product range is broad and not limited only to cargo and hull, but also includes offshore, downstream, P&I, inland marine, and other sophisticated products. The significant tech underwriting expertise gives us access and the ability to underwrite complex, higher margin business. On the SBS side, in construction, we have doubled our 26% growth target with a particular focus on new energies where we have already doubled the premium volume. Our growth has been driven by several key factors. We have actively invested in writing local business in the U.S. to take advantage of the various economic stimulus around the Inflation Reduction Act. This has allowed us to diversify our portfolio, which was focused on heavy infrastructure projects. In the new energy sector, we have seen a resurgence of nuclear power projects where we have significant technical expertise.
We have also seen a significant volume of battery energy storage business with more mature technology and larger projects. Taken together, these efforts underline our commitment to driving the construction and new energy sectors forward, ensuring sustainable growth and innovation. Finally, the alternative solutions area, we have already almost achieved our Forward 2026 target in 2024, which was to double the premium between 2023 and 2026. While these segments have been areas of focused growth, we have also maintained strong underwriting discipline on our climate exposed business and our U.S. casualty. We have grown a Cat portfolio in line with the overall portfolio growth, allowing us to manage our portfolio within a 10% cat ratio. On U.S. casualty, we have maintained a prudent approach, keeping the allocated capital to U.S. casualty flat year on year.
I would also like to highlight that all this substantial growth has been achieved while meeting our profitability targets and accelerating the buildup of reserving buffers throughout 2024. As a conclusion, I'm happy to share that we have already delivered on many of our 2026 targets ahead of 2026, and we are confident that there's still plenty of opportunities for us to deliver further in the next two years. We wanted to do now a deeper dive on alternative solutions, which remains a core strategic development over the next two years. Firstly, on the market outlook, we are pleased to confirm that the increase of our targets for 2026 aligned very well with a vibrant market environment, offering particularly attractive prospects. We continue to see demand generally for alternative solution products.
One of the key assumptions we had made was that the continued hardening of the market will result in greater risk retention by insurers who would then have stronger needs for capital optimization solutions. We have focused on capital relief solutions such as solvency quota share reinsurance or retrospective reinsurance protecting against the deviation of reserves. The growth of our reinsurance alternative solutions portfolio is primarily focused on these two products. We have also witnessed strong demand for earnings protection and cash flow management driven by the increased frequency of losses, especially in Nat Cat losses. However, our appetite for those products remains limited to highly structured solutions. One of the key success factors to expanding our AS book has been our ability to leverage our global footprint and provide these tailor-made solutions to our clients across Europe, U.S., Canada, Latin America, and Asia.
It's also worth noting that the development of AS is not limited to reinsurance. We have also significantly increased our SBS portfolio, in particular leveraging favorable onshore captive regulations in Europe, including new regulations in France, by offering structured reinsurance solutions for captives. In conclusion, we believe the conditions remain in place for further acceleration, and as a result, we are revising our development target to a tripling of the AS premium between 2023 and 2026 to fully capitalize on this strong momentum. Looking now at how AS contributes to our IFRS 17 results, we provide a quick introduction to the impact of AS contract structures, particularly on insurance revenue and our combined ratio.
Without going into too much detail, AS premium are composed of three parts: a fixed commission, which is always returned to the client, a profit commission, also known in IFRS 17 as NDIC, or non-distinct investment component, which is also always returned to the client in the form of a claim payment or commission depending on the level of losses, and lastly, the remainder of the premium that we refer to as risk premium. This remaining part is what constitutes insurance revenue in IFRS 17. Since the portion of the premium returned to the client in the form of fixed and profit commission is excluded from insurance revenue, the IFRS 17 combined ratio is limited to the losses tied to the insurance revenue or the risk premium.
As a result, everything else being equal, the IFRS 17 combined ratio for a given AS contract will be lower than the IFRS 4 combined ratio, which takes into account the entirety of the incoming and outgoing flows. Finally, sorry, we'd also like to bring more clarity on our P&C growth assumptions detailing how the EGPI growth translates into the insurance revenue on the IFRS 17. We have seen previously that only around 40% of the AS EGPI is recognized as revenue. While the same mechanism applies to the rest of the P&C portfolio, roughly 80% of the EGPI is recognized as revenue, with the remaining 20%, corresponding to fixed commissions and NDIC. We also need to keep in mind that the growth of the insurance revenue follows the premium acquisition patterns.
For P&C growth, for P&C, the growth of the EGPI feeds through the insurance revenue over two years on average. It's also worth noting that the insurance revenue can be influenced by large multi-year contracts and late premium updates. Our 2025 insurance revenue growth is impacted in particular by the commutation of one large contract with an estimated impact of two points. Taking into account the portfolio mix and the attractive opportunities remaining for 2025 and 2026, we are confident in to deliver a 4-6% annual growth over the 2024-2026 plan period. Finally, looking at the market outlook, we believe 2025 will continue to offer SCOR very good opportunities to deliver on our objectives. This will enable us to maintain our focus on profitability while pursuing growth in targeted areas. This should lead us to a double-digit EGPI growth in 2025 compared to 2024.
Let's dive now into the reinsurance market before moving on to SBS. For reinsurance, we see 2025 as a continuation of 2024 with high price adequacy despite growing pricing pressure on luxury programs. At a market level, we believe there is more balance between demand and supply. However, there are other factors at play. Despite solid returns on equity for the P&C reinsurance sector, 2024 has been another active Cat year in terms of losses, particularly in Nat Cat. This encourages underwriting discipline amongst reinsurers and other participants. Looking at the more recent losses, Milton appears to be small, a smaller event than initially thought, whilst estimates for Helene have been increasing. Both together remain manageable for the sector but contribute to the increased risk aversion and consequently increased demand for reinsurance.
As regards property rates, we expect them to remain broadly stable with significant increases on loss-affected programs and reductions on loss-free programs. Early indications from the January renewals appear to support this view, keeping in mind there's still two weeks to go. We remain focused on maintaining terms and conditions and notably attachment points on Cat XL, preserving progress made in the last few years. We are pleased that most reinsurance structures submitted to date do not show significant changes year on year. On U.S. casualty, while many reinsurers call for significant improvements, these don't seem to materialize to the extent we required. We'll therefore maintain a cautious approach to U.S. casualty. We do, however, see attractive but limited opportunities in international casualty and intend to pursue those. For SBS, the story is very similar.
Most lines have seen a very strong hardening since 2017, while the softening starting only this year. As a result, price adequacy remains high, terms and conditions hardening, even if there are modest price reductions. Our focus for SBS is on protecting our profitability through diversification and managing the various cycles across lines who are at different stages and therefore require different approach. In conclusion, we move confidently in 2025 with three goals in mind: continue to deliver on Forward 2026 ambitions with a particular focus on accelerating alternative solutions; strengthen the resilience of our business through diversification and active management of volatility; maintain high level of client engagements through solutions, partnerships, and innovation. And with this, I hand it back to you, Thomas.
Thank you. Thank you, Jean-Paul. So let's move to the first Q&A session.
Please restrict your questions to the topics, which have just been presented. For those attending through the webcast, please use the text box and we'll take your question when we've got the opportunity. So with that, we're gonna take the question in the room. Who would like to go first? Yeah, Vinit and then Ivan.
Thank you. So, Vinit from Mediobanca. So, Thierry, one for you. You know, the very clear example you gave of franchise and market share gap, and even last year when you first presented, it looked like the CSM growth, and I know you said CSM is not the right, the best measure, but the economic value growth is not really being driven by that CSM book was not last year and even now is not really changing.
So, I'm just keen to hear your thoughts on, do you think that the ambition that you presented is actually being reflected in how the business growth is there in that metric that we can track? And then if I can ask on Financial Solutions, please, and also then one for Jean-Paul for three questions, sorry. The Financial olutions in life, you know, in other entities, one of the risks seems to be lapses once you take on those, say, Triple X reserves or whatever the contract you might take. I mean, is such a rapid growth, I mean, free from that risk, or have you thought about how to manage those things? So, and just for Jean-Paul, one question is, you know, you mentioned that loss-free rates are under pressure, but probably that's a metric that the market wants to look at first.
So would you still say that the market is as hard and attractive as you have been saying? Thank you.
Yeah, absolutely. You're absolutely right. It's, it's a very good observation on, on the CSM stock growth because you referred to this one, isn't it, that actually the CSM stock does not really grow, technically, but you have to look, very much into the detail. We do actually believe that, with the updated plan, it grows a little bit more, but you cannot really see it from the numbers we presented. So now we see actually a bit of growth, whereas before we thought it's probably gonna be more or less stable. So whether that's good news or bad news, right?
I think the good news is if you wanna grow the stock by one percentage point, we need to create 50 million more new business CSM, that amortization, right? And that if you wanna go by 2%, it's 100 million more, right? So if you have a CSM amortization of 300, you can already see, right, there's a limit to how much growth you can generate. So if you wanted us to create, let's say, 10% or let's say 5% growth of the 5 billion, we would have to create 250 million difference between the amortization and the new business, and that seems unreasonably large. So I think you should not have too much expectations anyway into growth of the CSM stock. But we do actually now with the updated one grow a bit more.
The good news, however, at least for us, is that we will grow economic value through equity building, right? So that's mainly the profits that turn into capital for us. And that's a very powerful message. As you know, we were very clear with François already last year that we think that the contribution or the share of equity in the EVG overall, right, should increase, and that's what we're gonna see. So that means actually we are having profits, healthy profits, and this should enable us to generate that capital that's gonna increase the equity. So I think it's a good thing. On structured solutions, I honestly think that structured solutions are also attractive because the risk profile is very different from traditional.
Traditional, you have lapse rates, you have mortality, morbidity, you have all these elements. Structured solutions, there are many different solutions. And so the impact comes from many different things. You were referring to, for example, lapses. I mean, we even offer, you know, kind of mass lapse cover, I mean, explicitly, so that we lean into sometimes even certain risks that otherwise we would run away from. But in a very structured way, in a very clearly defined way, we can even make money with that. But lapse risk can be completely structured away in other solutions that we have in financial solutions. So I would not simplify alternative solutions to lapse risk. So it can be that there is some exposure to it.
Sometimes it's 100% of the exposure, but there are lots of alternative solutions in Life & Health that have no lapse risk whatsoever. So that I think is attractive because it does actually add elements of risk that we otherwise don't have that much of in Life & Health. And it really extends our diversification.
And to your question, Vinit, on the profitability of the business and the pricing pressure, I think what we've seen is significant, you know, middle double-digit rate increases over the past two, three years across most lines of business in P&C, leading to a significant profitable portfolio that, you know, we've started seeing in 2024 and we believe will continue in 2025.
I mean, François will go more into this in his section on the reserving and the buildup of buffers, but we see the business today performing significantly better than the 87 net combined ratio that we have as a maximum target. We think this is going to continue in 2025. The price decreases we're starting to see is, you know, reinsurers results have been quite good over the past two years. Insurance results have been mixed over that period. Clients are looking for some give back from reinsurers to insurers, especially when they've been loss-free. You know, the rate decreases we're talking about on most programs is between 0% and 5%, sometimes between 5% and 10%. But given the level of profitability we see in the business, that's very manageable.
Also, we see loss-affected programs having still significant rate increases. You know, a good example is programs that were impacted by the Eastern European floods this summer have seen, you know, high double-digit rate increases to their program this year. So I think it's still a mixture, and this is why overall we believe this is more or less stable. And that's why we believe the profitability of the P&C business will remain similar to what we see in 2024. And we're also a little bit different in the way that our portfolio is more diversified than a typical reinsurer. So we don't have a typical Cat first and second and third, and then we also do other lines. Actually, Cat for us is standing right side by side with all the other risks.
So when we grow with a client, it's usually just across all the lines. And that gives us actually a good buffer as well. And we are increasingly doing that since 18 months to really grow into these other lines. And we think it's gonna help us also when the market softens.
Okay. I think that Ivan was the next one.
All right. Thank you very much. Ivan Bokhmat from Barclays. I think my first question would be on the. I think it's a very interesting point you've made, Thierry, on the quality of CSM, and that you know goes back to the 9% economic value target. I'm just wondering if we could translate that into quality of IFRS earnings and maybe a change in the ROE profile within some form of a foreseeable future.
You know, do we need to see that improvement five years down the line, 10 years? How do you think about that? And maybe related to that, is that change in the quality of CSM will be reflected in the management KPIs? How can we see that? And another question on Life & Health. So the plan to grow more in financial solutions and in longevity, I'm just wondering if you are still competing with the same group of peers there. Is it, you know, are you not going more against other financial institutions, a broader group of players where competition, in fact, will be higher and not lower? And maybe one more question that I have for JP.
So, throughout this year, you've been showing the technical margin have been improving at renewals by 1.4 points, but we can't see that in the combined ratio guidance, in the new plan. I'm just wondering, you know, how does that all, that mix translates into unchanged guidance?
Yeah. So the quality of CSM and we don't have a walk to offer, and maybe that's something we can think about at some point in time. But what it really means, you're absolutely right. Over time, this will come through a better ROE, a higher ROE. So if you have an ROE of 12 today, right, and you improve the quality of CSM going forward, that ROE will grow. So that's my message, right?
Because with the same amount of profit, we'll have less capital against it. That's higher quality CSM that I was referring to, and it will have an impact. We have no walk in this regard, and all I gave you as an indication is it's gonna be visible in very tiny little bits over the next years, but until it's really visible, it's gonna probably take 5 to 10 years. Yeah. That's why I said today our attention is on the inforce because that's really where we need to protect and realize the value tomorrow on Life & Health. So the competitive environment in longevity is very broad, but there are like two groups of competitors.
One group is that group that's interested in the assets, mainly in the assets, and then there's the other group that is more interested in the longevity biometric risk. So we are in the camp of longevity biometric risk because, under Solvency II , the asset risk doesn't really make sense. So and IFRS 17 doesn't really show nicely. And so we probably need another accounting form and another regulatory environment to like it. It really doesn't work properly. But the biometric risk that we get through these swaps, right, that we do, that actually shows quite nicely, shows quite good returns. I'll be honest, however, longevity is not a high technical margin business. It's actually low technical margin business because indeed the competition is high.
But that low technical margin together with the huge diversification benefit it does have is a very, very interesting and attractive addition to our business. So it's really complementary. If you would build standalone with no mortality, no nothing, just longevity, it would be highly unattractive. Yeah. Let's just face it. It is attractive for us because it comes together with mortality. And so in that sense, in that space where you need people that have a lot of mortality, right, and not so much longevity, and those would be competitors to us. But you will appreciate that the field that I show you has already dramatically reduced. So I think there are deals to be done today on the alternative solution side. That's very different. A lot of some of the deals are competitive, where you know they offer it to multiple reinsurers.
Then you're in a fully competitive environment. Then usually you can win through price and speed. If it's speed, we have a good chance. If it's price, probably we have less opportunity. But a lot of our relationships are strong and not every deal is competitive. So again, these are tailored deals. Sometimes the client doesn't even wanna go public with an issue that the client has, and therefore we come in handy as a good relationship, a good partner, and can provide solutions. So this is the landscape there. Again, I expect in the first one, two, three years, quite a lot of low-hanging fruits. And then, of course, from a higher base at some point, right, it's gonna be a bit different to grow, very similar to P&C.
On your question on P&C profitability, I mean, as I mentioned before, what we see today is the actual underlying profitability of the business is, you know, significantly below the 87 net combined ratio. But this has allowed us to accelerate the buildup of buffers in our reserve. As I mentioned, François will deal with this in his presentation, and why we believe that, you know, we maintain that target going forward for 2025. So I think it's a question that François will probably be better answer.
It's probably better if he waits for the second. You can ask the same question again to François.
Yeah. I'll put him to goodbye.
Okay. Then we'll go to Faizan and then Cameron.
Hi there. Faizan calling from HSBC.
Given your updated forward plan for the business mix for Life & Health Re, if we were to take that, what is the sort of CSM profile around monetization on the new business plan? Second question is, you've talked about diversification within the Life & Health Re b ook. Given the fact that you have quite a large benefit on the diversification already, does the business mix help you on that front in solvency too, or are you already at a very sort of optimized position there? Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you for that. So the business mix, I mean, today I cannot answer your question very clearly, right? But I gave you an indication, right, that the amortization rate will increase.
But we don't have any answer to this immediately, and I cannot tell you, is it gonna be seven, seven and a half, or eight, right, even? But it's gonna go up. I can also be very clear. Should we shift the portfolio to 60% financial solutions, and then the whole inforce shifts to it? Of course, the amortization will become double digit. It's very clear. So it mainly depends on how much business we will be able to write in financial solutions. But you could see it's running off much faster. Yeah, I can unfortunately not offer you a precise answer, but I don't think there's a limit or there's any target there for us.
But again, I told you it's gonna take years until the inforce moves there. The diversification, no, unfortunately, it's not gonna help the diversification. So, I mean, our internal model is very sophisticated. I'm sure somewhere at the margin, it would show a bit of an improvement. But the bigger picture, fact is Life & Health P&C complementary business models that offers the biggest diversification. And whether I write a tick more of this, a tick more of that, it's not really moving the needle. My remark to diversification was more related to from a risk framework perspective. So what we like from a risk framework perspective is to pick up as many risks as we can, right, even if it's not fully reflected in the model. And that's what we like.
And it's very clear that we add elements of risks that we otherwise don't have or still have a lot of appetite for it. That's the attractiveness with those.
Hey, it's Cameron. I've got a couple of questions just on the Life & Health walk. I guess you've taken a lot of action in Life & Health this year. You know, we've got the Milliman review out today and, you know, a positive outcome there. When we look at that CSM walk, obviously you've got the amortization, you've got the risk adjustment release. Should at this point now we expect that experience variance should be more positive than negative? So if you're gonna come up with a, you know, kind of where that probably goes, do you think that should be more positive or more negative or just, you know, for now, you know, just neutral?
And the second question is just on the risk adjustment release. I guess over the last few months, it's been my understanding that this has been an area that you've added prudence to. Is the EUR 100 million a EUR 100 million plus or a kind of EUR 100 million? That's a real number. Thank you.
Okay. Are you fine if you ask again the second question to François in the second half? Yeah. Absolutely. Is that okay? So we keep this for business questions. Even the Life & Health or the CSM walk is a bit more in François's camp. But I'm happy to answer it already. And if you're not satisfied, you ask François again, and then I'm sure you will get a satisfactory answer. I would say neutral.
I mean, we are best estimate now, and Milliman confirmed that we are best estimate with our reviews and assumptions. So what you should expect is over the longer term a neutral outcome, but we, I think we were sufficiently clear to state multiple times already in this speech that IFRS 17 is intrinsically more volatile, and particularly for Life & Health, and so accordingly, we expect, François and I, that it's gonna, it would cost us too much, right, to reduce this volatility to the sheer minimum, right? So we think there will be quarterly ups and downs, but over the longer term, it should be neutral.
Who's next? Will, you're next.
Thanks. Will Hardcastle, UBS. Thierry, I guess there's clearly a lot of changes gone on in Life & Health, on both protection and inforce.
How much of this do you feel is catching up with competitors? Is there any area where you think you're getting ahead and, and therefore in a even more competitive position? And, and I guess just coming onto the alternative solutions, how much should I think about this? How sticky a business is this? Because is there a risk that as the hard market recedes and we don't wanna wish it away, but, you know, some of that could switch back to traditional reinsurance of its solvency relief type? And, and I guess, do you feel you'll have the capital to participate fully on that side of things if it does shift back to traditional things?
So is, is the second one specific because you looked at Jean-Paul?
Yeah, I get that was very much more on the P&C side, the second one. Yeah.
I can happily you can answer it if you want.
No, I'm very happy to leave this, the second one to Jean-Paul, take the first ones and the question was, if I understand it well, when you feel with the changes, we are catching up with our competitors. So I think my view is a bit more differentiated for that. I do believe that today you have very different participants in the Life & Health space, and it goes from almost all structured to very little structured contributions, right? And in the structured space, you have what we call full risk and remote risk, right? So it's much more differentiated for that. But I will still answer you the questions because I don't think there is a scientific answer to it. The way I see it is ahead. No.
I think where we move, others are already, but not many. I think we are. I'm ultimately targeting an environment in which alternative solutions in Life & Health take, you know, I'm not saying the next two years, but in the really longer term, where it takes more space than just 20%-30%. It could be half of the business or more. I think in that space, there are only very few. If I look at the risk return profile of those companies, I find it very favorable. And if you then combine it with our balance sheet and, you know, the P&C Life & Health diversification and our internal model, if you combine the whole thing, and then you are down to maybe two companies, us and somebody else, once we are there.
Yeah.
On your question on AS, I think I would categorize it in three buckets. You have what I mentioned, the earnings protection covers. This ise especially true on the Cat, where since clients can't buy risk transfer solutions on the traditional market, they buy structured solutions to help them better manage the volatility. I think that's the bucket that's the most at risk of shifting as the market changes. And we already see in 2024 some reinsurers that have decided to offer second event, third event covers, and clients are reducing their purchases on a structured basis and moving more towards a risk transfer basis. But as I said, for us, this is really not the area that we have developed in.
Then in the capital relief part, you have clients that have been buying these structures for 10 years just because for them it's a more efficient way of buying capital. You also have, you know, for example, mutuals that don't have the legal infrastructure to raise capital, but still want to grow. And so those companies buy alternative solutions every year for the next, you know, as long as they want to grow. And so I think that's a large part of our client base today. And so we think that's very sustainable. And then the third bucket are clients that have capital strain because of the hardening market, and need solutions for the immediate term. And, you know, if they're able to build back the capital position, we'll probably switch to other solutions.
With those clients, what we do is we use alternative solutions as a solution to get a privileged position in the program and then ask to participate on other programs that we find attractive. So I think being able to offer a solution to our clients puts us in a very good position when the market turns, you know, who are the clients who are the reinsurers they want to do business with. We'll probably be in one of the first positions.
And the need for alternative capital solutions will never go away because it's alternative capital. So it's part of the toolbox of any CFO, as you know, also of our CFO. We have just closed one of these alternative deals with the whole account stop loss, far out of the money, right?
That's the type of remote risk deal that can, in certain situations, if structured well, help your client to produce the capital you want. And it does it without going to capital markets. It's a solution that stays for the duration you wish and goes away after that. Again, it can be decided by the head of reinsurance together with the CFO. It doesn't need any shareholder approval or anything. So it's extremely flexible. It's very targeted, and it can be very, very efficient for the client too. So believe me, they're there forever. I mean, I'm in this business since the 1990s. They've always been there. And even though they've been growing because the sophistication of capital management becomes larger with all our clients. And as they grow that sophistication, of course, the demand for efficient capital relief solutions is going up.
So we don't expect that to dry up, not in Life & Health, not in P&C, which is why we wanna play in that field, which is why we think, you know, we should have done it before, but let's not wait now and move into that space.
Thank you, Thierry. Given just our time, we're gonna take the last question for this session, and then we'll have another one after, François. So one last question for Thierry or Jean-Paul at this stage. Do you have a need? Go on. Oh, James, sorry.
I'll take both. Thank you. James Shuck from Citi. I'm just intrigued by the change in the mix of business on the Life & Health side and when we consider this, the economic sensitivities because, specifically pivoting more towards the financial solutions business and change in mortality and morbidity, etc.
Does that mean that this life CSM becomes more sensitive or adversely affected by higher interest rates? And how do you incorporate that within the economic solvency? Because there's obviously gonna be some sort of mismatch there, and you're presumably gonna be managing those in an integrated fashion. And then secondly, I was just interested about the volatility under IFRS 17. I presume that comes from the onerous contracts, principally Israel. I think you used to disclose what the onerous contract level was. If you're able to give an update on that at nine months, that would be helpful, please.
Thank you. Yeah. So is it okay if we take the ALM with François later? If you please ask the question again.
As long as it doesn't use one of my questions later.
It won't. It won't.
But I think it's one that we can probably take there. On the mix and my expectation on the interest rate sensitivity, I would expect that the mix of business that we are looking to achieve will have a positive impact on interest rate sensitivity. Just generally, I'm not saying all structured solutions deals are so, but just generally, structured solutions deals have less interest rate sensitivity. Just general. But it depends, right? In Life & Health, you can also do very large inforce type deals where you pick up a lot of duration, where you pick up all sorts of risks, including interest rate risk, where ALM capabilities are asked to balance this out. We'll also try to compete in that space, at some point.
But, at this point in time, you're not fully equipped for that type of business. So right now, as we restart that business on the Life & Health side, it's really gonna be diversifying from many different aspects. So it should, in the short term, rather reduce the sensitivity.
And Vinit, I think that you've been gifted one additional question, so use it, please. Actually, we are on the web, so you need the mic.
Thanks for the opportunity. It was really a last filler question. Let's call it. The Slide 10 has an ALM comment, which has a little bit extra phrases compared to last year's CMD. And one of those phrases says that you're going to look at cash flows of liabilities with more granularity.
Is that some kind of an orange light for us? So, I mean, I've because, you know, when a company wants to look at liability cash flows more carefully, could that be a risk as well that you're trying to flag here? You didn't say that, but I'm just curious about because that phrase didn't exist befo re.
I understand, right? It, it, you, you, you it's not helpful for you. It's more concerning you. You should not be. What we are saying is that, it's like on both sides. So we are today better equipped to look more granularly, but it's also required to handle IFRS 17 really well, plus solvency too. So all we are saying is there is solvency too, there is IFRS 17.
They are sometimes very different, and you need quite a sophisticated ALM to somewhat bring the different things together. So if as a target you have to protect, for example, shareholder equity under IFRS 17, that's probably gonna create volatility for the solvency ratio, right? So this kind of thing. That's what we are saying. But we're also saying that we have today an opportunity to get much more granular data because we need it for IFRS 17. So that's all we say. We just say there is actually more available, and it will help us to refine and improve our ALM, additionally. So that's the two things, huh? So we need more, but we are also enabled to do a better ALM. So nothing for you to worry about. This is pure upside edge. Now, this is just upside.
I will come back on ALM now in my section.
All right. With that, we're gonna break for 10 minutes. Please come back to the room at 3:35 P.M., and we'll have the final sections. Thank you. Thank you.
Welcome back from the break. Now let's move on to the finance section, and more specifically, what has changed for 2025 and 2026. My messages today are very simple. One, we have addressed a number of challenges to strengthen our balance sheet. Two, we have made significant progress on enhancing the organization to shape the reinsurance of tomorrow. Three, we are listening to market concerns, and I will provide a response to each of your top issues following our Q2 and Q3 publication in the next 30 minutes.
And four, we'd like to demonstrate that we are committed to deliver our targets and to generate capital for Forward 2026. I have identified six topics from many interactions I've got with you over the last few months and quarters. Let's identify the first one. First, our reserving position and validation from external parties. We have carried out both internal and external review for Life & Health and also for P&C, with all results confirming that we are at Best Estimate today. Second, topic, our earnings power in 2025 and 2026 following the Life & Health review and in a changing market context. Today, we confirm an unchanged EV growth target of 9% per annum and a return on equity assumption of above 12% per year for 2025 and 2026, and I will provide more details on each business activity in the next slides.
Third, our net operating cash flow generation. We have updated, compared to last year, our projection on net cash flow from operations for 2026 and reduced it from EUR 1.5 billion to EUR 1.1 billion. Let me, however, walk you through this change in a few slides. First topic, our financial leverage and refinancing strategy. As you may have seen this morning, we are going to issue a new RT1 debt, which is in line with our refinancing strategy that is in favor of larger tranches, and this is expected to lead to a temporary increase in our financial leverage ratio in the short term. Fifth point, our dividend policy. Our capital management framework, published last year, remains unchanged. The dividend policy kicks in when the solvency ratio is at least or above 185%. And sixth topic, our four pillars to enhance the SCOR platform.
You will see we are well on track, and today I will provide an update on capital allocation, ALM, and risk partnerships. Let us start with the most awaited topic, our reserving position for P&C and for Life & Health, as well as the external review outcomes. We mentioned it. Thierry mentioned it. We are very happy to announce that we have completed the 2024 annual reserve review for P&C, and we have asked Willis Towers Watson to perform an independent external review for a second consecutive year. Both internal and external review outcomes show that our P&C reserves are at best estimate, and compared to last year, with an increased redundancy compared to the end of 2023.
On the amount of buffer, we have the question, during the first session, on the amount of buffer that we have built in P&C, you would have understood from our body language and from our messages from our last quarters that given the strong performance on P&C, we have been able to accelerate the buffer building compared to the EUR 300 million objective initially set for the end of 2026. So I'm happy today to say that we are very close to the EUR 300 million objective. So it means what for the future? It means that we can, from now on, maintain the buffer strategy, but at a slower pace and no longer systematic, but opportunistically in accordance with group profitability.
Following the same approach as for P&C, on the Life & Health side, we mandated Milliman, as we indicated, in Q3, to review the Life & Health assumption and reserve at an aggregate level. Milliman reviewed 100% of our gross PVFCF, and not only the deep dive we mentioned during the summer. We reviewed 100% of our gross PVFCF, and they concluded that our gross PVFCF, risk adjustment, and CSM are materially reliable. I think this is the first time in the industry we have such an opinion under IFRS 17. With this review completed, we have drawn the line on the reserve for P&C and Life, and we can now move forward from a position of strength. Let us now talk about the updated financial look for the Forward 2026 strategic plan. Here is an overview of our updated targets and assumptions for 2025 and 2026.
We confirmed the 9% economic value growth target per year. This comes, we discussed it a little bit already, this comes from a return on equity of more than 12% and a growth in CSM of 1%-3%. The growth in our shareholder equity is faster than the growth in the CSM, and it's coming from what? The equity will benefit from a fast translation of the CSM into profit, notably on the P&C side, and the growth in CSM will mainly come from Life & Health, which I will detail in the next slide. Let's now describe in more detail our group earnings power, and I would like to discuss five points. Point number one, our Life & Health performance for 2025 and 2026.
As presented earlier by Thierry, the Life & Health assumption and strategy reviews have an impact, notably on the CSM amortization and new business CSM generation. The CSM amortization rate will decrease from 8% initial estimate to around 6.5% per year. We mentioned it. This is partially driven by a change in cash flow profile and CSM mix. This is because protection amortizes faster than longevity in our book, and the weight of protection CSM has been reduced following the assumption review. This reduction in amortization, let's say it, is also driven by some adjustment of the amortization rate in some region, which appeared to be too optimistic compared to the initial estimation during the first year of the transition to IFRS 17. The reduction in CSM amortization has a one-for-one impact on the insurance service result.
As such, we are lowering the Life & Health insurance result from EUR 500-600 million per year to EUR 0.4 billion for 2025 and 2026. New business CSM is expected to reduce significantly in 2025 following our strategic review. We expect, however, it to come back to the normalized 2023 level in 2026 with, as discussed, a higher margin and a better mix. Overall, we are providing you an updated assumption of EUR 0.4 billion per year. As we are releasing less CSM each year, the CSM stock will grow progressively because new business CSM will more than offset the amortization. We are also proactively managing the inforce book, including continued strong U.S. management action. Here, we look to protect and deliver the value from inforce. You would also notice that we have removed from our assumption the assumption of insurance revenue for Life & Health.
We don't think it's a relevant metric. What matters in Life & Health is the value being generated, and this is reflected in the new business CSM, which captures both growth in volume and improvements in profitability or margin. Maybe a last word before we move to P&C. During the roadshows post Q3, many of you have asked about the true-up of the arbitration position that we booked in Q3. I remind you the main message here. The message to take away is that the size of the true-up should be a good illustration that tailored arbitration risk is expected to be contained since each individual case assessed is at best estimate at Q3, both under IFRS and Solvency II. So again, it's a good illustration of the size of the tail risk. Let's move to point number two, our P&C performance for 2025 and 2026.
As you can see here, most of the profitability and gross assumption remain unchanged. Jean-Paul walked you through our expected growth of insurance revenue in 2025 and 2026. We continue to expand in P&C in a hard market and continue to expect an insurance revenue growth of 5%-6% over the plan. Combined ratio is unchanged, below 87, with the same cat budget as last year, 10 points. Keep in mind that this assumption below 87 is a two-year target. The only assumption that we update for 2026 and for 2025 and 2026 is the discount effect, which is about one point lower compared to last year. The lower discount benefits will be compensated by reduced buffer building compared to 2024. As mentioned earlier, we are now very close to our EUR 300 million buffer target, and we are happy about this outcome.
As a result, we will build buffer opportunistically going forward. This means that our P&C underlying earnings power is much stronger than 87.3 to describe our earnings power. Let's move to our investment performance. Our strategy here does not change. Interest rates have come down a little bit compared to last year, but remain at a high level. We expect to see continued high reinvestment rates and high regular investment income over the next two years. So the assumption of our regular investment income yield remains at 3.4-3.8% in 2026. Let's move to our management expenses, point four. Our management expenses, the group transformation simplification initiative, as mentioned by Thierry, are well advanced. This leads to an acceleration of our ambition of EUR 150 million savings by almost one year.
The additional EUR 30 million savings in Life & Health, mentioned by Thierry, at the beginning of this afternoon, will partially contribute to higher savings of more than EUR 150 million, and we will partially be reinvested for business growth and future operational excellence. Therefore, we maintain our assumption to maintain management expenses flat between 2023 and 2026 at EUR 1.2 billion. Moving to point number five, our strategy, our strategy to repatriate profit in France. I can understand that in the context of the French environment today, many of you have inquired about the group tax assumption going forward. Please remember that following several, several years of Nat Cat and COVID losses, and due also to past internal retrocession structure that brought losses to the parent company, so SCOR SE in France.
SCOR SE has accumulated a significant amount of tax losses carried forward in the French tax perimeter, so it means under statutory accounts. These losses in France are evergreen and can be recognized as deferred tax assets if we can demonstrate that we are able to generate enough taxable income in the future, again, in France. As you see on the slide, we have a number of initiatives to bring profit back to Paris. The moment, the moment when the statutory result of SCOR SE, so again, in France, becomes positive, the cash tax payment in France would be reduced by around 50%, benefiting from the DTA absorption. The PNL benefit will depend on the activation of the tax losses carried forward and discussion, of course, with the auditors and tax authorities. It will happen, but it will take a longer time to realize.
We consider this as beyond the Forward 2026 time horizon, and therefore we keep the corporate income tax rate assumption at 30% until 2026 before probably in the next strategic plan, reducing this assumption. Let's move to cash flow generation. From the many investor meetings I have attended since almost now one year and a half, I understood that the cash flow generation continues to be one of your top concerns, and I promised to provide you with an update. As mentioned at the start of my presentation, we have updated our projection on net cash flows from operations for 2026, and we reduced this projection from EUR 1.5 billion to EUR 1 billion, of which EUR 0.3 billion reduction comes from Life & Health and EUR 0.2 billion from P&C.
Let's take the time to look in detail at the impact within each business unit. On Life & Health, Thierry was clear. Last year, we indicated EUR 0.2-EUR 0.4 billion for 2026. We are now updating our view to a break-even level in 2026. There are two root causes. The first one is this is partially driven by the assumption review this year, of course, and the additional temporary tax that we have to pay in Canada, for the transition to IFRS 17. There is an exit tax until 2026 in Canada on the tax side. And there is a second explanation. Let's say it also. This is also partially explained by an improved view. We did a lot of job internally on intra-group allocation on non-technical cash flows.
Non-technical cash flows, that allocation of investment income, tax, and expenses leading to higher allocation to Life & Health and less to P&C, but overall, it's neutral at the level of the group. Now, if we look at the situation of the P&C, the underlying cash flow generation continues to be very strong. Let's say it. You may recall that we had exceptionally strong cash flow of EUR 1.5 billion in 2023 for P&C, and this is partially due to lag payment of large claims. We expect to pay these claims out by the end of 2026 and our cash flow to be impacted by EUR 300 million. The reduction in our P&C cash flow assumption for 2026 is therefore more of a timing matter than an operational issue.
We are confident that P&C cash flow generation will return to a normal level of EUR 1.2 billion at least in 2027 once those claims are paid out. Moving on to now our financial leverage and what we announced this morning. We are proactively anticipating the refinancing of our corporate bond. This morning, we announced the issuance of an RT1 bond targeting roughly EUR 500 million tranche together with a tender offer on the Grandfathered Tier 1 bond issued in 2014 with a call date at the end of 2025. Listening to our fixed income investors, this is in line with our refinancing strategy to provide them larger and more liquid tranches.
As a result, we expect our financial leverage to increase by 2-3 points over the next four-five years and the financial expense to go up by around EUR 25-30 million. We remain opportunistic on our debt management, and we will continue to offer a AA level of security to our client. The question on our dividend policy: let me remind you of our capital management framework and our dividend policy. Again, we introduced this in September last year. The capital management framework is unchanged compared to last year, so which means our dividend policy kicks in when our solvency ratio is at 185%. There is really nothing new here. We just say we are committed to the Forward 2026 dividend policy. Let's now move on to the Forward 2026 levers that will shape SCOR to be future-ready.
I would like to show you the progress we have made over the last 12 months. Let's look at three levers: capital allocation, ALM, and risk partnerships. Capital allocation, Thierry, you mentioned it. The objective is to steer capital at a more granular level, optimize utilization, and enhance return. The enhanced capital allocation framework contains three pillars. So we have one which is gross, with defined risk appetite. So that was done last summer. Capital performance and capital generation. So this year, we have developed an IFRS 17 capital performance framework that will monitor performance based on IFRS capital only at the business unit and portfolio level. This will give us a more complete view, taking into account the expected performance over the life of the contract.
This methodology and this framework will be effective starting from 1st January 2025, and it will be the main key performance KPI within SCOR combined with the solvency to capital generation framework, which will be refined over the next few months. The two frameworks, plus the addition of the gross dimension under constraint of risk appetite. So it will be used for capital allocation and portfolio steering by the end of 2025. Second lever, ALM. You know that last year, and we discussed it also earlier this afternoon, we announced that we wanted to move from a static ALM to a dynamic framework. The new framework aims at protecting shareholders' economic value against market variances and making decisions dynamically via hedging strategies to meet SCOR objectives. Those objectives can vary from solvency ratio to own fund or to IFRS economic value.
Compared to last year, we have made significant progress, and we have seen the first impact in 2024. We have enhanced the ALM team. The team is in place. We have implemented hedging strategies on FX and interest rate risk in Q4. You saw it already in Q3, but we started to lengthen the asset duration, almost 0.5 years, over the first nine months. That was in line with the move to this new ALM framework. We expect to see slightly reduced solvency sensitivities and a positive solvency ratio impact from a reduction in SCR in Q4 2024. Currently, the objective function of the ALM framework is to protect the solvency ratio from downside risk. Once our solvency ratio will be in the upper part of the optimal range, we will move our ALM target to protect shareholders' economic value dynamically.
Let's move to the third lever to prepare SCOR to be the reinsurer of tomorrow. A quick word on risk partnership, where we are. So, as mentioned by Thierry, the objective of this lever is to leverage and monetize our tier one franchise and expertise and bring these hard business opportunities or exposure to our partners. This year, we have moved the Life & Health, and the P&C, teams into a single team. We did this move earlier this year, and this team is reporting to me. We have also refined our definition of risk partners. They are traditional retro providers or capital market providers with proportional capacity on a multi-year basis with the potential to scale up the business ceiling.
Risk Partners will support our underlying portfolio growth, help us manage risk exposure, and expand our income sources, notably, of course, through the generation of income. The Whole Account Stop Loss we signed at Q3 is very solvency efficient, very solvency efficient, and is a good testimony of the innovative solution we are developing in risk partnership. We'll be looking at developing more of this type, this type of solution, in the future. So we confirm here on risk partnership our ambition to increase the fee income by 60% during the time horizon of the plan and to increase our capacity so outside our balance sheet by 50% by 2026. Now, to conclude my presentation, five messages and not four, like on the slide. First, our P&C and life reserves are 100% checked, 100% checked, set at Best Estimate with some buffers.
This is also supported by external parties, so we draw the line. Second, we are determined to execute the strategy for Forward 2026 and confident to deliver the target, generating economic capital and enhancing returns on capital deployed. Third message, we have simplified processes. We have accelerated the group transformation and simplification, and we will continue to make progress and enhance SCOR platform to shape the reinsurer of tomorrow. So here, we are really in the delivery mode. Fourth message, we are confident that our solvency ratio should be the upper part of the optimal range at the end of 2024 and correlated to the fourth message and my last message of today. We are committed to our Forward 2026 dividend policy.
Thank you for your attention, and I will hand it back to Thierry for a few slides of conclusion before we move to the Q&A.
Thank you, François. So it's up to me to conclude our conclusion, which is always a bit difficult, but I will try my best, and it will really just be a few minutes. So, I think my conclusion of all the conclusions that you have heard already holds in one sentence. So SCOR will create a significant value in a profitable and sustainable way, in the years to come. I think this is really the mindset and what we would like you to retain. And the way we will do it, we said it, we repeated it, but I would like to mention it the last time before we go into Q&A is to grow in this way. So that's the easiest way to present it. So there are the lines of business on the upper part that we grow above capital generation.
Capital generation as measured under Solvency II, of course. That's our capital tool. So these lines, these seven lines are the ones we will particularly grow. And I hope you recognize everything that has been said today there. You know, things like financial solutions that have been talked about a lot, longevity, marine engineering, you heard it from Jean-Paul. So those are the lines we grow above. Then we have all the lines we grow in line. You know, in Cat, we have not discussed Cat much today, but in Cat, we told you our risk and our risk profile overall Cat is underweight, and our risk manager will be happy to talk you through this again. We are underweight, and if we grow in line with capital generation more or less, we will remain underweight. You can look at this in two different ways.
One is, for example, to say, okay, underweight means a bit less exposed to Cat risks. You can also look at it differently. We have a lot of powder dry if at some point we want to change this risk profile. And then we have all those lines that we want to grow below capital generation. So protection, you have heard about it, and U.S. casualty are in this bucket. So that's how we intend to grow, and we see on the upper line to in those seven lines of business, attractive opportunities in the years to come. And the value creation has been mentioned multiple times, and I just wanted to reemphasize the 9% value creation target that we have set ourselves, and we will do it in a profitable way. So at an ROE of at least 12% over the planning period.
You can also see that the value generation is on the equity side, so on what we call hard capital side and not so much on the soft capital side. And yes, you can look at this in different ways. I think it does actually in our case help us to create a stronger profile in terms of balance sheet to have this growth more on the capital side. And I overmentioned sustainable because I meant sustainable. I think that probably right now the E and the S is not so much en vogue anymore, and people are shying away from it. But you should know at SCOR we have sustainability really at the heart of our purpose.
Our raison d'être says, you know, that we use the art and science of risk to help the resilience of societies. And this is driving a lot of our people. We have thousands of employees, and that purpose means something to them. I know there are times where people talk more about ESG and times where they talk less about it, but that's not how we can run a business. We cannot say, okay, now it's in fashion, now it's out of fashion. For us, it's a purpose. And when we talk about environmental targets, we mean it. Every year we adjust our targets to the one and a half degree path defined by science. We have put new exclusions in place earlier this year, and we will continue to do that. We take this very, very serious.
The social one is important to us, and this is mainly around equal chances for everyone. As much as I don't like targets in the women men relationship on top level meetings, it is fair to say that whilst we are 50/50 overall at SCOR in terms of women and men, when you go up the ranks, actually, the part of women diminishes. So we have set ourselves the target of at least 30% women in senior positions at the end of 2025, and we're on a good path. For me, it's important as much as we have today talked about numbers, growth, and economics and all of that thing, which is really at the core of what we want to deliver.
I also wanted to leave this with you that these elements remain there and unchanged and all these ambitions remain unchanged. So that's what I wanted to leave with you. And now, Thomas, we go to Q&A.
Perfect. So thanks, François, thanks, Thierry. We're gonna follow the same rule as the previous Q&A session. So we're gonna take the question first in the room, and Derald, you have the first one.
Should we take the question that we postponed?
Oh yeah. So you want to, do you want to go first with this one?
No, but maybe we could repeat the question.
Okay. So James, can you repeat your question?
Oh, he's not allowed, but maybe he has already this one.
No, no, James, that's not possible. Okay, James first and then Derald.
I have 12 questions, please.
Okay.
So the first one was just on the onerous contracts. I was just keen to understand where those were at because you stopped disclosing what those were. And I imagine that's the source of the IFRS 17 volatility, and I think it comes from Israel. And if you are trying to focus on reducing volatility, then shouldn't you look to offload that contract?
On onerous contracts, maybe just a word. Of course it's a source of volatility since any movement on onerous contracts flow into the P&L, and not directly on the balance sheet. You know that at transition we have roughly EUR 0.2 billion of onerous contracts. You saw that in Q2 and Q3 we added EUR 0.4 billion on Israel. It's a good indication of the amount of onerous contract today at SCOR. Of course any change on any assumption on those contracts will flow into the P&L. On your question on the source of volatility, I would say of course this block of business which is classified under onerous contracts will bring potential volatility. Again, you saw it over the last few quarters. Volatility could be in both directions. It could be positive or negative.
I would say where we could have still volatility. Thierry mentioned that IFRS 17 is a standard that is more volatile than IFRS 4. I think we start to all understand it. So it comes from onerous contract, of course. There is the second source of volatility, let's say, be what we call BAU, the expense variance on a quarterly basis. We could have some noise here on volatility, and this one is expected, and we mentioned it during the inforce presentation. We could have volatility linked to management action, depending on the decision, the ultimate decision of the client. Let's say we propose a rate increase, accept yes, no, or recapture yes, no. Ultimately, the outcome is always positive for SCOR, but it could add some volatility, of course, in our KPIs.
But that for me would be the true three main sources of volatility of the Life business, under IFRS 17 today through the P&L.
Can I go with the first question then? Thank you. So can you just help me on the debt issuance? I didn't entirely hear what you said, but I think, and I haven't seen any press release, but I think you mentioned there's EUR 500 million issuance today. When I look at the slide, it shows a sort of squiggle, which kind of suggests that the stock of debt is gonna remain stable. That's the one. But obviously the economic value's kind of growing quite a lot. So I don't quite see how you increase 2-3 points by 2026 while keeping that sub debt level. I mean, even if you include the EUR 500 million today, it seems like that number's gonna go up.
If I'm gonna be at, you know, two-to-three points higher than 22.7% today, looks like you're gonna be issuing net debt of about EUR 1 billion. And what's the impact of that on solvency? 'Cause to the uninitiated like myself, it just seems like you're issuing debt to help with central liquidity and help with solvency and then therefore pay your dividend. But no, that's a skeptical view. I had a second question as well, but perhaps I'll come back to that.
Yeah. So maybe a few questions on this issuance of debt. So we have a call debt on RT1 end of 2025. The size is EUR 250 million. We lose the Solvency II treatment the 1st of January 2026. So with a probability of one, we are going to call this debt. So that's for sure. We think today there is a window of opportunity to refinance. The next window, let's say in the next few days, mid of next week, financial markets are closed for the year. Then in January, we will enter a restricted period on our side because I will start to have information on the landing of Q4. We will be in the closing process, discussion with our auditors. We'll have the renewal information. So we'll be in the blackout period.
Which means the next window of opportunity for us is early March after the disclosure of the annual account to assess if this is less risky today or more risky or less risky in March. I would not bet anything, especially, seen from a French CFO. So we use the slot. Don't see anything else. Now the size, EUR 500 million. We know, I mean, we are speaking with fixed income investors. It's a comeback for SCOR on the debt market. The last time it was, it was what, four, five years ago. It's a big comeback of SCOR. The minimal size of an issuance today is EUR 500 million. So EUR 250 million was too small. I need to think to fixed income investors and to buy them liquidity. We issue EUR 500 million.
You maybe saw it in the press release. We are going to do some debt management. So we are going probably to buy back. I don't know, but let's imagine EUR 100 million in the next few days. So the net proceeds at the end of the year should be close to EUR 400 million. So with those EUR 400 million, we will redeem our call what will remain at the end of 2025. But look at the debt pattern we've got. There is then a call in 2026, and we'll come back probably in 2026 or 2027 to refinance again to maintain. It's a change. It will take a few years to refinance with tranches with a minimal size of EUR 500 million. So now your last question on solvency.
Of course there will be an impact in Q4. That was not the objective because if we have issue in March, we will have also in Q1 or Q2 the same impact. If you say that we issue EUR 500 million net of, let's say, I don't know, but we will see. But I think it should be close to EUR 100 million, the number of people that are going to answer positively to the debt management proposal we are making today or on Monday. Impact on the solvency ratio should be eight points at Q4. Eight points.
Okay. That's very helpful. Thank you. My second question was on the solvency roll forward itself. So, there's been a number of things that have changed, and I'm trying to think about how the operating capital generation from, if I think about the own funds generation and the increase in SCR from the growth that you've got out to 2026. Can you just help me understand what is a normalized level of capital generation broken down into those two parts? I understand that you're really diversifying away that capital strain, but I'm keen to get a feel for, you know, how that ratio will evolve over the planned period.
I will give the mic to our CR O.
Yeah. Thanks a lot for the question. I, on a normalized basis, we expect to grow the solvency ratio maybe between 2% and 4% net of dividend, over the planned period in the next two years. But our goal is, as François said and Thierry, to be really in the upper part of the optimal range. So don't expect too much growth above what we dividend out and what we need for, obviously the growth of the business.
Thanks. Was that an annual number or a total number of the planned period, two to four points?
That's a total number.
Thank you. Can I go?
Yeah. Derald, you've been waiting for.
Hey, Derald Goh from RBC. So the first question is just on reserve buffers, both segments. Could you remind us why EUR 300 million is the limit for P&C and if there's an opportunity for you to build beyond EUR 300 million? And then on the life side, so it sounds as though you spoke about installing this temporary buffer, right, as you completed the review of just over EUR 300 million as well. So it sounds like you've retained that. Is that gonna be held on until a certain amount of time? And when would you release it and what you might use it for? The second one is just on capital returns. So your point about, yeah, maybe cash flow is being a bit lower.
Can you confirm that it doesn't impact your capital return plans, what you had, maybe also within that? Can you confirm that the capital return plans, because you spoke about excess returns through 2026, that hasn't changed as well? Thanks.
On your first question on the buffer, you know that this year we moved the buffer both for P&C and Life. It's booked through an add-on of the risk adjustment. So that's an agreement we've got with our shareholders. The objective of the buffer on the P&C and Life, on the P&C side and the Life side are a little bit different. So on P&C, we have indicated last year that our intention was to build at least EUR 300 million of buffer by the end of 2026. It's achieved after 18 months because we started in Q2, in July 2023. So I think it's a significant testimony of the performance of the P&C business. Do we have a target, a new target in mind? I would say no, not particularly.
It will depend a little bit now on the length of the hard market cycle on the P&C side. And what we said is that it's no longer a systematic strategy. It becomes opportunistic. So let's say if we still have excellent quarter, strong quarters, we will put aside. Keep in mind that those buffer, the intention is that we should use them when we will be in the soft cycle, during the soft cycle. So it's not for tomorrow, but it's for the next few years. So the key message, and if you have to quantify, let's say that EUR 300 million, if I were you, you expect EUR 100 million buffer each year, that's two points of combined ratio. So if we do less, you can understand how we finance one point of discount.
And why Jean-Paul and I, we say that we are confident on the fact that we'll deliver the 87% target. On the Life & Health side, it's different. It is different. We booked add-on in Q2. I mentioned also during the call in Q3 that we added still prudence also in the add-on, on the life side to manage the final uncertainty due to the usual closing process at year end and especially the final run of the internal model. Here, what we expect is that after the Life & Health review of 2024, and that's supported by the Milliman review, we expect a lower expense variance volatility. Again, there will be a corridor. We have in mind with Thierry what is an acceptable level of volatility. We don't know.
It will depend on the effect of loss component on an onerous contract, the BAU expense variance, and potentially the management action impact. So here, the add-on now, they are in place. They are not used to manage on a quarterly basis this volatility. They are here if needed to strengthen any underlying assumption, or maybe a source of volatility that was not detected before. So they are here just to manage over the medium term the volatility cycle on the life side, which is a little bit different from the objective on the P&C side.
If I may get to the P&C buffer with regard to the 300, you remember at the beginning we were a bit shy. We didn't really wanna tell anyone because we didn't want you to put kind of 300 into your numbers, right? You can see we didn't. We moved actually much faster, and so we were there. So your question was, okay, how far beyond? And yes, it's gonna be opportunistic. It's gonna be less than what we have done the last 18 months, but I think it's desirable for us to go higher. I think there will be a natural limit at some point.
It's probably, you know, you can look at what is our yearly net income and how much of that do we actually wanna have in the buffer, right? How much can we even have, right? At some point, it's gonna be limited, the upside. But I think right now, from where we are, let's assume you're around the 300. I still see a bit more as desirable, but it's not a must. So we would add if we can opportunistically, but we don't have to anymore. So anything more would make it, of course, more comfortable, but if only if the opportunity is there.
On your second question on capital management framework, I guess dividend policy, is the update on the net operating cash flow has an impact on the dividend policy? The answer is no. I come back on the message. On the P&C side, it's just a lag effect. It's nothing else. So again, keep in mind that 2027, we should come back to a normal situation where we generate EUR 1.2-1.3 billion of net operating cash flow. Again, net operating cash flow, right? So that's after allocation of investment revenues, less taxes, and expenses. So on the P&C, it's just a lag effect and there is nothing else.
On the life side, you said it. It will be among the top priorities of the next CEO of the business unit. It's a challenge. We target to be at break even in 2026, but that's not enough. That's not enough. And we want more. And we want more. So we are going to work on this. Now, to your question, in the group, we generate EUR 1.2 billion at least of net operating cash flow per year. I remind you, you can pay a dividend of EUR 300 million or 320 or 250 million. So it's not an issue. It's not an issue in liquidity. And I remind you that in a reinsurance company, access to the liquidity at the mother company is not the same challenge as a primary insurer. It's easy. We repatriate through dividend of our subsidiaries the cash.
We have internal retrocession. So we have many tools that the primary insurers don't have. So accessing to the cash that we've got in the group at the level of the mother company is really not an issue. So there is no impact and no fear at all on this side.
Thank you. I'll leave it to the potential for specials and.
Sorry.
Yeah.
Wait for the mic, please.
Hey, I think when you first presented the plan, you spoke about the potential for excess returns or beyond the ordinary dividend.
Yeah.
So yeah, my question was more related to that potential for those excesses within this updated plan.
I understand your question. First, let's demonstrate that we can grow the dividend, the regular dividend, each year, and then we will demonstrate as well that if we have an exceptional year, and that was the message of last year, if we have an exceptional year, we will share the good fortune of SCOR with our shareholders through special dividend or share buyback. But again, it's not linked here to liquidity. Keep in mind that it's coming from the two drivers of the dividend and the capital management framework. First, the solvency ratio above 185, and then we see if where it is within the range or above. Then we look at the growth of the economic value and the underlying drivers of the growth of the economic value.
Okay. Faizan, you're the, you're next.
Hi there. Faizan from HSBC again. Just want to fully understand the messaging around the buffer build and the combined ratio. So you mentioned it's not structural, it's opportunistic, and the fact that you could still see the buffers go up further. Does that mean that if you are below 87% on an underlying basis in any year, that you would rather show 87% or anything better than that? Just to kind of understand what does that really mean in terms of earnings. Second question, on the debt leverage side, medium-term, where do you want to be on that front? And can we say that the debt-related buildup in capital is an artificial level and that will come down over time rather than be distributable? Thank you.
So on your first question, on the buffer strategy on the P&C side, we are consistent with Thierry since July last year. So we don't change. So it's not. It's linked, of course, to the profitability of P&C, but that's linked also to the overall profitability of the group. The only message that is different is that it was systematic each quarter. You saw our body language at each call when we said we accelerated. You understood that we put more than one fourth per year. So the change is we become more opportunistic and we will decide on a quarterly basis subject to the P&C performance and the group performance. So you understood that we still want a little bit more, but if we can, and if we have the performance that can finance this.
So it's not, it's no longer an obligation. It's no longer an obligation.
We are not slavishly delivering on 86.9%.
Okay. I guess in some ways, will we be able to see the underlying profitability quarter to quarter given the fact that you're, you know, solving for a much bigger equation, I guess?
You should see more of that, yeah, in going forward. So we told you, right? We would still opportunistically build some buffers, but you should see more in going forward.
On your question on debt leverage, maybe I don't know if we can project the slide 63 on the screen. But you have the pattern of the call dates of our current stock of bonds at SCOR. So you see here we are refinancing the '25 call dates. But you see after the pattern, let's say it, it's a little bit strange to have such difference between the size of those various tranches. So again, the ambition is to start to please as well our fixed income investors. Minimum size of any tranche today is EUR 500 million. I don't know what it will be in two, three years from now. But you see, we are going to use two, three years before we deliver to fixed income investors what they like.
Again, I'm fully in favor of this. Expect that the financial leverage will be above the target we've got until today during two, three years. Because I need two, three years to stabilize this, I would say, strange pattern of issuance.
Otherwise, you would like it to move below 20, right? We have been clear on that target. But we stay above.
But again, the message is clear. It's not just one for one year. You see, I mean, I've got especially the 27 line to refinance, which has a strange size.
Thank you.
Anyone else? Yes, Vinit.
Sorry. Just back on the solvency. I have only one question, sorry. Just back on the solvency. So, you know, come from a slide 48, I think you have and the hedging strategy also impacting solvency positively. You have the bonds you talked about and, you know, the retrocession two points. So it's getting quite, quite nice and high. So what should, I mean, can we interpret just to be keeping it simple that if it's somewhere in the middle, we look for a flat DV, somewhere in the high, we look for a growing DV? And that'll be something, I mean, I'm hesitant to even ask this because of where we were a few months ago, but I'm just curious to hear what you could say on that.
Look, Vinit, I like your question. You know, as a CFO, end of July, the fear of the market and most of the question were your fear. And it was well flagged that we finish the year below 185%, so with no dividend. And I like to have the question today, are we going to do a share buyback or special dividend? That's it. That's your question. Let's look at the impact of what we expect in Q4. So you have two points, you know, that are coming from the full year effect of the whole account stop loss we put in place in Q3. So since it's a 10 points full year effect. So two points here. Hybrid debt, eight points. ALM, you see on the slide, it's a few points. Why it's a few points on ALM?
It's a good gain of the entry, the new methodology, since what we did this year on ALM. We are 40% of what we would like to do on ALM. You said sort of, I mean, we progressed since last week. What we did this year is reverse engineering. So we took the run of the internal model. We look at the SCR and we protected the interest rate sensitivity of the solvency ratio and the own funds through those simulations. So there is, when we put in place the strategy, and that's done, there is a good gain coming from the fact that we hedge tail risk into the SCR. So there is this impact here.
What remains to do next year on the ALM side is now to better understand the sensitivity of the solvency ratio or the own funds or the shareholder value under IFRS 17 per maturity per liquidity buckets. We are working with the CRO team, and that should be done, so that's the next level we want to reach on ALM. So ALM, say, a few points. A few, it's below five, but let's say two, three points. You have what you have, the capital generation mentioned by the net capital generation. Usually in Q4, it's not big, it's not the renewal seasons, and we may have the impact of some retrocession contract signed in Q4. So the seasonality here is more in Q1 and Q2. We have the accretion of the dividend, which is negative.
I invite you to look at the evolution of interest rates since the end of Q3, which as of today is going in a good direction. That's why we are confident on the fact that we should be in the upper part of the range at the end of Q4. Which mean what? We demonstrated the resilience of the balance sheet and the fact that we manage actively the solvency ratio. We absorbed 20 points of life finance impact this year.
Okay. Thanks for that. James, you're the next one.
Thanks, James of Citi again . Just on the cash flow point, so, I mean, it doesn't seem like you're cash constrained. You've got EUR 1.8-EUR 1.9 billion of central liquidity, and that will be boosted by the debt issuance, obviously. I'm just wondering, as my first question kind of, what is the practical implications of that kind of cash flow being pushed out? Does it actually impede you in any way? Clearly, the solvency is becoming, at least your own measure of solvency is becoming less of an issue when it comes to capital management decisions, but is central liquidity a constraining factor? And it's very difficult to know where you're trying to manage that number two and various arbitration cases and things like that, whether you need to keep money aside for that sort of thing. So that's one question.
A sort of associated question really is, are you still trying to get back to a AA level of credit rating? And if so, what impact does that have on the business? Because we'll see the argument where you get downgraded, it doesn't have any impact. So presumably it doesn't have any impact on the way up either.
Let's put it like this. The big message here has to be compared to what we said one year ago. Let's say it, SCOR was not super strong on assessment of cash flow, cash flow culture, etc. What you see here is the progress we made since last year. So of course, you see the fact that we reduced the projection, but look at also what we did. We have now in place a team. It's a centralized team that is reporting to me, which monitor liquidity, cash flow, internal retrocession, capital management internally for all the subsidiaries of SCOR's everywhere in the world. So we start to put this cash flow culture everywhere, and within any group of people at SCOR. It's a new culture. It's a new culture.
What I said also during the speech, my speech is that we progress a lot on, maybe things that peers are doing for years, but which are new for SCOR. We have progressed a lot on allocation of what we call non-technical cash flow. So, investment revenues, taxes, expenses. So it's done. So now I can guarantee you that you know that we provided on a quarterly basis for years, a liquidity. I mean, the cash flow statement. It was quite difficult to have reconciliation between what we published last year and this quarterly cash flow statement. I can guarantee you today that between this projection and what we provide on a quarterly basis, you can monitor. It's fully aligned with the definition of the same. So we progress a lot. We are not yet where we want to be, but we progress a lot.
And that's also the, I mean, the message I would like to send today on this, on this slide. Again, on P&C, for me, it's not an issue. It just, we moved by one year and we have an arbitration with a client. We can say it. So there will be, we don't know when it's going to pay. So it's just a lag effect on the, on the life side. We have to work on it. And that's part of the message of today. We change progressively the culture, the fact that it should be embedded everywhere, that we think cash flow and not only to capital generation. We have to think cash flow everywhere.
You will see each year. I will make a point on where we are, of course, on the assumption, because that's key for you to understand that the Life business unit when it will produce positive cash flow going forward. But it's also a message each year of where we are in this culture change on this, for me, very important topic.
On your question regarding the AA, I mean, first of all, it's not a target. And it's not a target because we do not need it to write more business. I told you tier one franchise here, our market share here, believe me, we can double the market share and we could still go further without the AA. It's not needed. So that's the first point, and that's really important. So nobody has a target in the group. I don't have one. Nobody has a target that we need to reach a AA. I think it would be stupid to set a AA target because you would suddenly start to direct certain decisions and actions to that effect. And I think it would be wrong to drive SCOR on the basis of S&P.
So we are today very, very comfortable with regard to our AA level of capital that, that we have and that we offer to our clients even without the AA, the AA, let's say, label from, from the rating agencies. However, personally, and I'm not the one taking the decision on, on this AA thing. Personally, I think by just doing what we do and by just executing on what we have heard the last two hours, I'm personally convinced that we will gain back the, the AA. But again, it will be an add-on. It will just be like the result of what, of doing the right thing and not be driven by it. I hope you would appreciate that.
Because I think the right thing to do for us is to create value for our shareholders and not to optimize everything, you know, on the solvency, IFRS, and S&P. But I can already tell you we are monitoring our AA capital and we have a lot of excess capital with regard to the AA level. So there's no issue there. So what we need to demonstrate is consistency also there, show that we can keep our tier one franchise, that our expected versus actuals or actuals versus expected are good and in order of that thing. These are all the right things anyway. Again, my conviction, we'll probably gain it back anyway, whether I want it or not.
Thank you. Nick on the left. Thank you.
All right. So, Nick Johnson from Deutsche Bank. Couple of questions, please. I seem to remember you mentioning in previous quarters that you do a deep dive on Life & Health reserves, a third of the book every year. Has the Milliman review sort of preempted the next deep dive work? And secondly, on the hedging interest rates and FX, so yeah, it's a good guy for SCR and solvency too. Just wondering if I've understood it correctly. Is it a bad guy for IFRS numbers? And if so, what's the quantum? Just check I've understood that. Thanks.
So on your first question on the deep dive, the deep dive we mentioned them in Q2. That was the focus of the acceleration of the review. We always said that each year we review 100% of the portfolio. What is new compared to the summer is the fact that we asked Milliman to review 100% of the gross PVFCF. It's done. So for them, there is no deep dive. They reviewed everything. Of course, we continue to monitor certain number of market line of business or assumption. We have now the add-on in place, and I explained the mechanism to use those add-ons in the future. So which means today we are at best estimate. Not only on the deep dives we mentioned during the summer, but again, on 100% of the gross PVFCF.
And the Milliman opinion is on PVFCF, risk adjustment, and CSM. I don't forget that that's on the three. On your second question on the SCR, maybe correct me if I did not understood well your question. So there is a good guy, and explain the reason why coming from the impact on the SCR, so on the solvency ratio. So the levers to now dynamically put in manage this ALM strategy. Of course, we first adjust the positioning of the investment portfolio to better match the cash flow profile. Then it's through, I would say, plain vanilla fixed FX derivatives or interest rate swaps. So it's almost done for Q4. They are all under IFRS accounting. So there should be no P&L impact.
Will?
Thank you. Will Hardcastle, so UBS.
There will be a CI impact, but no, no P&L impact.
Thanks. I'll go again. Will Hardcastle, so UBS. On the debt leverage, just coming back to an earlier question, just trying to think about where you'd ideally like to be long term, so beyond that, any ranges, any sort of thinking about tiering and whether you're worried about any sort of capital flexibility restrictions in that context. And then can we confirm that 2-4 percentage points solvency coverage, Jean, please? What's that, that's in aggregate for the two years. And does that include anything like economic variance assumptions as well, capital market assumptions, or is that purely essentially own funds generation and dividend? Thank you.
So thank you. Maybe the first question on debt leverage. Again, what we said last year is that we're expecting our financial leverage ratio to be below 20% at the end of the plan. So we increase again. It's not just for one year. It's for two, three years, the leverage ratio due to the fact that we start to put in place a new refinancing strategy. And you showed that on the slide. I need a few years to deliver to fixed income investors this strategy to commit on the financial leverage after 2027, which will be the main line. I think it's too early. I prefer to say it today. It's too early. It will be the next strategic plan. We will see in 2026 or 2027 where the market is.
Keep in mind that for us, for me and the way I see it, hybrid debt is part of the toolbox to optimize the regulatory or the economic capital under Solvency II. We added one tool in Q3 with the Whole Account Stop Loss. And then I think our role is to find the optimal allocation of various sources of solvency to capital. So that's what we did in Q3. Let's see the next strategic plan. I think it's too early to commit after 2026, especially given the fact that you saw it. I've got this strange line to refine, a strange line, small line of 2027 to refine it. And then beyond capital generation, you forget.
Capital generation, that's the 2-4% [that] contains the capital generation in own funds, as you have said. It contains the capital deployment or the increased SCR from the business growth and the dividend payout. But it doesn't contain any economic movements. I mean, what François and Thierry have said that with the new ALM framework, we think we reduce the sensitivity to our market movements. Already, that's what you're gonna see in Q4. But then when we refine, we will have probably more positive effects on that. And we should be below our risk budget that we have set for market movements on the solvency ratio.
Ivan.
Hi, Ivan Bokhmat from Barclays. I have two questions on the reserve buffer. One on the P&C side. I mean, it's very hard to compare among peers, of course, but maybe you could try to quantify it in terms of the percentile of where you are right now, and what exactly should we be looking at? Is it risk adjustment? Is it overall reserves? And secondly, perhaps a question that's quite similar in nature, but you've alluded to the Milliman's review of the life reserves as being the first of a kind in an industry. I just wonder how you benchmark yourself against peers. How does Milliman feel you benchmark against peers? And, you know, what are the criteria really?
So on your first question, so the way we approach the positioning of our P&C reserves is through the communication on the size of the excess reserve. So we are close. I still need to know which amount of buffer we are going to put in Q4. Let's say we are close to EUR 300 million. So just below or just above, but we are close to EUR 300 million. I guess you make a reference to one large Swiss player in the insurance industry, which published an interesting approach. We did the same exercise. So I know if we use the same methodology, you have pros and cons on this methodology. It's a distribution of the best estimate range. Let's see if it becomes a standard in the industry, and we will do the same thing.
I think it's a little bit early for us to disclose it. So at this stage, I prefer just to maintain our strategy and to communicate on the fact that we are, or close to EUR 300 million excess reserve on the P&C side. Let's see if we move to the Swiss approach when it will be fully audited on their side, and the methodology will be stamped. On your second.
You're pretty sure we would compare very favorably.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, see, I mean, we did the same exercise, of course. We always look at peers, especially when they are bigger, I mean, what they do. It's a start. It's a smart way to communicate the positioning of the reserve. And we look pretty well if we do the same thing. On the Milliman review, that's true that we asked them, of course, to do some peer benchmarking methodology. That's more for them and not for us, huh? I don't know, Fabian, if, I mean, it's so they don't share exactly what the positioning of peers since it's confidential. It's more for them to be sure that we are in line with what peers are doing. So that's part of their job.
So they know where we are compared to peers, and they can say, "You are aligned, but we don't know exactly where our peers are." It's, of course, a confidential information that they don't share with us.
Maybe one thing that you might have forgotten, but you will remember at Q3 we said that when we reviewed our internal review, we used external support for all three regions. So for each region, a different one, depending on the strengths that we saw, right? So we always use those that, in our view, have the best view. And what we got from those is very clearly benchmarks, with, you know, the industry, with our peers. So those benchmarks already flew into the first round of internal reviews. But we, of course, don't know what they mean even by benchmark, right? But it's industry peers benchmark. Yeah. So we get very clear views on where they think we should go a bit further, where others do it differently. And I think it's a very helpful exercise.
Any additional question? Yes, Derald.
Hey, just one last one. You spoke about, so I'm looking at Slide 47. You spoke about combining your capital allocation framework on both IFRS and Solvency II. What are the gaps today between those two frameworks, and is it impeding you from making any business decisions? And then also, could you speak about the gap between your Solvency capital model and the rating agency model? Is that gap being closed now with all these actions that you're taking? Thank you.
I think, I mean, what you should read, in this slide, is also the footnote. There is always a footnote message in the footnote. So up to now, that the SCOR approach was, on steering capital allocation, steering pricing, was mostly based on economic value added framework, in the sense of EV framework before IFRS 17. It's not the EV of the new standard IFRS 17. What we said today here is that we made a clear choice that as of January 1st next year, performance of the capital allocated on ex-ante basis and ex-post basis, so when we compare actuals versus expected, it will be measured only under IFRS. I think there is also one another big player that made the same choice, recently.
What we need still to enhance is, so which means that the pricing and the steering is still based today on the economic value added framework. We still need to define more precisely the capital generation framework. So that, that's here. So to assess the capital generation at business unit and portfolio level under Solvency II. So which means that what we said today is that we will only in the future, we have two standards, IFRS and Solvency II, and we are going to measure everything only on those two frameworks. And that's a strong message. We still need one year to deliver fully the framework. So correlated to your question, today, none, I mean, I don't see any decision taken at SCOR today where we look and we check the S&P model.
So the S&P capital model is not binding constraint on any of our decisions at SCOR today. Why? The good news was that, you know, that S&P, they were among the first rating agencies to recognize the CSM in their capital model. There is just one which is not recognizing yet the CSM that's AM Best. And you know that there is a lobby at the level of the CFO forum to convince AM Best, which is more U.S.-based, to recognize the IFRS key features. And there was something also I mentioned it, I think, during previous call, but it was a big success for SCOR. S&P to assess a SCOR financial strength was using the AAA anchor in their model. So for SCOR to be doubly rated, we have to disclose an amount of capital above the AAA level in their model.
Since the transition to IFRS 17, they accepted to benchmark us at the AA anchor level like all the peers in the industry, so it was a big success, so if you add this plus the recognition of the CSM, we are well above. I mean, the message of Thierry, I'm more strong, I mean, I'm stronger. We are well above the AA level of S&P today, so it's not a constraint, so we just need time for them to recognize that we are AA, and you know, you lose a notch in one night, and you need three years before you are upgraded, so we are just in this journey, but I don't see any decision today where we discuss the impact on the S&P model. It's no longer the case.
Especially after those two, and plus the fact we generate each quarter a significant amount of capital under IFRS, under Solvency II, and of course, under S&P.
And I didn't want to dismiss that, the value of a AA. I think it's a nice recognition for SCOR if you get it, right? I didn't wanna say I'm not interested at all. I'm just saying I'm not driven by it. But of course, it would be a nice recognition. Just one thing because you had another question, which is Solvency II, S&P, and I will go even further, IFRS 17. So all these frameworks have moved to a more economic basis. Both the accounting standard, the solvency standard, and the rating agency standard. All of them did the same thing. So from this variance of views, we have clearly today closed, not closed the gap, but we have moved closer on all three. But there's still significant differences between the three.
Even if all three are economic, I mean, even IFRS 17 and solvency too, act sometimes in still quite different ways. And same with S&P. But you know, S&P is a lot more aligned now than in the past with our accounting standard, for example. And that's very positive. Yeah. But we cannot say they are now aligned. That would be misleading.
Yeah. Okay. With this, Vinit, okay, that will be the last one because we got you've got a busy day, another busy day tomorrow. So it will be the last one if you want to answer the question.
Your case was starting tonight, so we're ready.
Vinit, you're the last one.
Thank you for your time.
Sorry. You know, sorry. Do you... can you hear me? So yeah, Vinit from Mediobanca. I just, sorry. I've understood the math on the amortization rate and financial solutions, and I fully sympathize with the logic of waiting to see that happen. Just if I can pick on it again from a slightly easier to understand angle. The nine-month life ISR was EUR 334 million stated by you as the underlying rate in the quarterly results. Annualized is EUR 445 million roughly, let's say. And after all the effort that is being put in, which is visible and which is making a huge difference, it suggests that we are not moving much away from that number, much above that number, because that's where the ISR is centering too. That's where things are coming to. So of course, the math is understandable because CSM is different.
But just from a very top-down view, it looks like is there some conservatism? Should we have expected more EUR millions of net profits from all the measures taken? Because it looks like we are standing still from where we are, though it obviously is not the case. So I'm just curious to hear that.
I think on the guidance or the assumption on the Life & Health insurance service result, we prefer to be conservative after what happened in Q in 2024. So let's see it. And you see when we communicate in zero point something billion, don't forget that you could have figures after the comma. So there is this nice trick in financial communication of funding numbers. It is true that we added a little bit of prudence in this assumption for a small amount of volatility on experience variance in the ISR, given what we said and the fact that there will be remaining volatility on the ISR.
It includes this. This assumption or guidance includes a little bit of buffer on the expense variance as well. Not a big amount, but there is a something, some.
Thank you. Thank you, gentlemen . Thank you, everyone. Thanks for your time. And, I think that now it's time to have a quick drink all together if you are still have time with us. Thank you.