Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the SCOR P&C January 2023 Renewals Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded. There will be an opportunity to ask questions after the presentation. In order to give all participants a chance to ask questions, we kindly ask you to limit the number of your questions to two. At this time, I would now like to hand the call over to Mr. Yves Cormier . Please go ahead, sir.
Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to SCOR P&C January 2023 renewals. My name is Yves Cormier, Head of Investor Relations, and I'm joined on the call today by Jean-Paul Conoscente, Chief Executive Officer of SCOR P&C, and Romain Launay, Deputy Chief Executive Officer of SCOR P&C. Before we start, I would like to remind you that SCOR full year 2022 results will be presented on the 2nd of March. When it comes to the Q&A session, we will only be able to refer to the renewals information that is provided in the press release or in the slides. Can I please ask you to consider the disclaimer on page two of the presentation. Now I would like to hand over to you, Jean-Paul.
Thank you, Yves. Good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to share with you the outcome of the January 1st, 2023 renewals. As a reminder, these renewals represent a little less than 70% of our reinsurance portfolio and almost 50% of our total annual P&C expected gross premium income for 2023. You'll find more information in the slides and press release distributed earlier today. I won't go through the slides. I wish to present you a brief overview of our achievements. We are very satisfied with the outcome of the reinsurance renewals at January 2023. These renewals marked a decisive shift in the reinsurance market dynamics. For the first time in almost 20 years, there was an imbalance in demand and supply in the Cat market, which led to market resetting with bargaining power in favor of reinsurers.
While the market rupture was limited to CAT, market hardening was generalized, driven by an increasingly volatile environment, continued unsatisfactory results for reinsurers, and sustained high CAT loss activity. As announced during our Investor Day in November 2022, we tackled this round of renewals with a sole objective, to improve the expected technical profitability and the risk-return profile of our portfolio, leveraging the favorable market conditions. Our approach is underpinned by two key principles, optimizing capital allocation between lines of business and increasing portfolio diversification and technical results resilience. Underwriting actions led to a number of changes in both the profile and the profitability of our portfolio. Looking first at our portfolio profile, we pursued the rebalancing of our portfolio while optimizing the overall risk returns.
We expanded our Global Lines footprint in what we view as segments yielding superior returns on capital. Our Global Lines EGPI grew by 11%, excluding agriculture. In that segment, we shifted the book to its non-proportional structures. On CAT programs, correlate the charge in pushing for and obtaining increased ceding retentions, reduced frequency coverage, aggregates proportional covers, and tighter terms and conditions. Driven by the objective to reduce climate sensitive volatility of the portfolio, we reduced our one in 250 year Nat CAT PML by 14%. At the same time, we also reduced our exposure to inflation sensitive lines. This led us to reduce our footprint in U.S. casualty and motor proportional business. In these lines of business, we view the market improvements as insufficient for the expected increase in loss costs driven by social and economic inflation.
The impact of these actions on expected profitability has been significant. We achieved an average rate across the portfolio, an average rate increase across the portfolio of 9%. Excluding the proportional portfolio, the rate increase achieved was 24%, including 35% for property Cat. This exceeded our revised forward-looking view of loss costs. The combination of these actions, reducing some business and increasing rates on others, led to a 2.5-3 points improvement in the expected net underwriting ratio with a 12% control reduction over EGPI. I would now like to provide some additional details on three areas of note, the impact of our actions on the EGPI, how we led the property portfolio renewal, and the impact on expected net profitability.
Starting with the impact of our actions on the EGPI, we implemented the strategy outlined in November of reviewing and remediating targeted underperforming client relationship segments. Most importantly is the combination of our two actions. Firstly, reducing what we want to write less of, and secondly, significantly increasing on business that we like. Taking a firm view of the need for improvement, we reduced or non-renewed 29% of the premium up for renewal, dominated by a small number of large premium volume relationships. The most significant segments impacted were proportional treaties across U.S. casualty, property, agriculture, and motor. What is crucial to understand is that excluding these remediation actions and the impact of higher ceding and CAT retentions, we grew the rest of the portfolio by 23%. 70% of this growth came from rate increases and 30% came from increased shares and new business.
Despite these strong underwriting actions, our client relationships remain strong as we review as a consistent market with required changes communicated early in the renewal process. We maintain a strong franchise in Europe and Canada and continue to see attractive opportunities in the European region. We grew the proportion of this region by six points versus 2022. From a line of business perspective, we continue to see excess rate adequacy in engineering, cyber, marine and decennial and targeted these segments for growth. As a result, we increased the share of Global Lines in our renewal portfolio by seven points versus 2022. Zooming in on the property renewals, we had roughly EUR 1.6 billion of property premium up for renewal at January first.
Following up plan announced as early as Monte Carlo in September, we significantly reduced proportional and aggregate covers, redeployed the capacity to CAT XL programs, increased the retentions on property CAT XLs, pushed for high double-digit Rate on Line increases, and negotiated terms and conditions that restrict the coverage which had been extensively expanded during the past 20 years of soft market renewals. We pushed market retentions towards the one in ten year return period across the portfolio globally, resulting in retention increases ranging from 60%-150% in major markets outside the U.S., and over 30% increases in the U.S., which generally had higher attachment points.
Looking at Rate on Line which represent the price increase per unit of exposure before adjusting for underlying exposure change, the increases achieved were the largest seen in over 20 years, with an average increase exceeding 70% on our North American portfolio and reaching almost 45% on our European portfolio. While pushing for these significant changes, we also revised our forward-looking view of CAT risk, incorporating an average inflation of over 10% in Western Europe and the U.S., and increased frequency and severity trends due to expected climate change effects. These changes should allow us to keep up with a fast evolving environment while positioning the bulk of the portfolio away from the most frequent type of events.
Through these actions, we reduced the overall CAT limits deployed by 9% year-over-year and decreased our net 250-year PML by 14% after incorporating our revised view of risk. The combination of these actions, reducing business that we don't like and growing a business that we like, allowed us to reinforce a forward-looking view of risk and obtain improvement exceeding our expected loss costs. The net impact and improvement of 2.5- 3 points of our expected net profitability across all lines of business and geographies. We achieved this while also delivering a more resilient portfolio with less climate sensitive volatility and a significant improvement of our net risk return profile. Through these successful renewals, SCOR is confident that the current P&C cycle will continue.
We're actively preparing the upcoming 2023 renewals and remain well positioned to take full advantage of an expected positive market environment. Omar and I will now take any questions you might have.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Jean-Paul. With that, we can start the Q&A. Can I please remind you to limit yourself to two questions each.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, press star one to ask a question. We will pause for just a moment to allow everyone an opportunity to signal for questions. We do have our first question from Andrew Ritchie from Autonomous Capital Management. Your line is open.
Oh, hi there. Thanks for the presentation. I just wanted to explore slide 9, particularly the which talks a little bit about the upcoming renewals. Maybe Jean-Paul, just give us a sense as to where you still feel there are... You've written on the slide margin improvement opportunities. I'm not sure what areas would be incremental. You also say on that slide, additional capital available for deployment. I'm not sure what you mean by additional capital. Is that because of capital that wasn't deployed at 1/1 or are you anticipating raising or finding additional capital in some form or another? Maybe just clarify what you mean there. The only other question was on could you just talk a bit through the outwards retro experience at 1/1?
I think your net margin improvement of 2.5-3 points is net of any increase in retro. Just clarify that and clarify the shape of the outward retro. Thanks.
Thank you, Andrew. On your first question for the upcoming renewals, we do see opportunities to further improve the risk, I'd say the risk-return profile of the portfolio. Compared to the January 1st ones, which are very heavily focused on Europe, the April and June/July are focused on regions which already have been gone through significant remediation actions last year. So we think that, you know, the market cycle will continue as it has in January, and that therefore there'll be interesting opportunities for us to continue to improve the portfolio. In terms of the, you know, the capital available, what we meant to show there is that we still have the capital required to write the business that we want to write.
We're not, you know, constrained by capital currently in terms of business opportunities. On your second question on retro, we, you know, we expected a very difficult retro renewal season, which was the case, and it was actually made more difficult by Hurricane Ian. We have a very good diversification of retro between traditional and ILS markets, and that allowed us to purchase the retro that we needed. You know, on the CAT side, having written less CAT business, we also purchased less retro limits. And yes, you're right, the 2.5- 3 point improvement is net of retro, including the retro cost.
Is there any significant change in your non-Nat CAT retro? I mean, for example, you know, it was discussed in the past that you've grown more into man-made risk away from Nat CAT risk, but in the past, you were very comfortable there was a lot of retro capacity available for non-Nat CAT to lay that off. Is that still the case?
We bought all the capacity that we were looking for. It was a difficult market in all segments in terms of reinsurance or retro, but, you know, capacity was there at an increased price, but as anticipated.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Next question, please.
Our next question comes from Vinit Malhotra of Mediobanca. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good afternoon. Thank you, Jean-Paul. Just two topics as promised. You know, you've mentioned about Europe and Canada, and Europe being much more a focus area, but I'm also seeing a dramatically strong reduction in European wind PML, even I think stronger than the U.S., from just the looks of it. I'm just curious whether you could update us a bit about the European wind PML, but also any commentary you might have on the CAT approach. I understand that you reduced pro-in proportion in CAT XL, but anything specifically what you would like to add would be welcome. Second thing I'm curious is the obviously U.S. casualty and motor were kind of being talked about, but credit and surety as well has been listed.
That's a line that, you know, I think I remember you got into quite involved way after the great crisis. I mean, it's just, it's just surprising that you're taking this aggressive stance here. Can you just comment a bit about the reasoning behind that, please? Thank you.
All right. Thank you, Vinit. On the first question in European windstorm, it was really driven by actions on a few programs that were big drivers of European wind capacities. As you know, we support some of the large European companies that have not just European wind, but also global programs covering, you know, European wind and U.S. wind and other perils. Some of the actions we took on those programs had a significant effect on the overall European wind capacity. Also, the move of the retention, as you can see in Europe, is where there was the most significant move. That, that put us at a more higher level in terms of PML consumption.
So just-
That's the main reason for.
So just-
Sorry, go ahead.
It wasn't intentional. It just happened along with the portfolio.
Yeah. Yeah, it was intentional. Yes.
Okay.
On your second question, credit and surety, you know, we Following COVID, there was a lot of concern about the line of business which have not materialized. At the same time, the credit insurance companies have done significant improvements to their portfolio. We consider the underlying business is still attractive. As we, you know, have a forward-looking view of the economic situation and see a heavy headwinds with regards to recession. We think that the, you know, this upcoming environment required some improvements on the underlying reinsurance firms that we were not able to achieve in many instances. Therefore, we took some actions to reduce our shares. Here it was more curtailing our shares on these programs.
In terms of premium, the overall premium income for credit and surety remained stable compared to last year. The share decreases were compensated by premium increases on the primary side.
Okay. Thank you very much, sir.
Thank you. Can we go to the next question?
Our next question comes from Thomas Fossard of HSBC.
Yes. Good afternoon, everyone. Good morning, Jean-Paul. One question would be related to the guidance regarding the profitability of the accident here, so the 2.5%-5%, sorry, 3%, profitability improvement. Can you help us to link this with your current guidance of a 95% combined ratio? Obviously, there is no mention on any combined ratio guidance in your release this morning. Any view on that would be helpful. The second question would be related to the EUR 358 million of additional SCR booked at nine months in your Solvency II for operating capital deployment.
It looks a very high number already at that time. Now looking at your minus 12% AGPI, it looks very, you know, too high number or maybe there is something that we missed in terms of understanding or would that mean that actually there would be a significant release of this potential growth that did not materialize fully at 1/1. Yeah, also any comment on that would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you, Thomas. On your first question regarding profitability, what we're presenting here is the front book underwritten in 2023 at January 1st. That should be compared to the assumptions we had for the front book underwriting on January 1st, 2022. The portfolio takes a couple of years to be earned through on a financial year basis. This should provide you some additional comfort that we can restore profitability and achieve a net combined ratio of 95 or below. Of course, these numbers would be different on the IFRS 17. Regarding the second question that you had on the SCR, the volume decreased, as you may have noted, the assumptions such as view of risk have increased.
There's no direct translation into the SCR that is, that we can derive from that. This should not be taken as a signal that capital will be released. As usual, we'll communicate the Solvency II metrics as part of the next quarterly results disclosure, then we can, you know, discuss the topic further at that time.
Maybe Paul, one more, which might be related to my second question. Could you explain us why you drove the decision to further shrink the property CAT PMLs by 14%? I think that at the investor day back in September after having achieved a 21% prediction, I think the message of the group was to say probably we've done what we needed to do, maybe what we can say well on this. Thank you.
Yeah. I think with the increased view of risk, you know, what we want to do is give better certainty of achieving our CAT budget of 8%, achieving our net combined ratio target of 95%. Through that, you know, that forced us to take some tough decisions on a number of programs, and that's what led to the PML reduction. I think the CAT market is, you know, as good as we've seen it in a long time in terms of the underlying metrics. Still, the portfolio is CAT, so it has significant volatility as well. What we're trying to do is get the right return for that volatility and manage the volatility.
Excellent. Thank you.
Thank you. Can we go to the next question, please?
Our next question comes from Freya Kong of Bank of America.
Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. First question. You've undertaken significant portfolio rebalancing at January renewals, AGPI down 12%. Should we expect to see further rebalancing or restructuring over the coming renewals, or would you say that the vast majority of this is now complete?
Secondly, you've talked about conservative forward-looking claims inflation assumptions, which drove you to be more cautious in casualty and motor proportional. How comfortable are you with the claims inflation assumptions on your existing reserves? Did the Q3 reserve charge adequately cover this? Thanks.
Thank you. On your first question of the rebalancing, as I mentioned before, there's, you know, the portfolios that come up for renewal for the rest of the year have already gone through significant remediation in the past. We'll have. You know, the market remains hard in our view for those renewals, but we'll have to see the extent to which terms continue to improve. We believe that there's still opportunities for us to attract, you know, good opportunities, and there may not be as much remediation needed as there was in January 1st.
With regards to your second question, related to inflation, the, you know, at January 1st, the claims inflation ranges that we use range between 4% and 14% depending on the geography and line of business, with the highest inflation observed, is in the U.S. and Europe. There is no easy reconciliation with the reserve strengthening, as this was assessed across all underwriting years on top of the inflation assumptions that were already included in the reserves. I think the underlying assumptions are consistent. You know, I think it's difficult to do a direct comparison.
Okay. Thanks.
Thank you. Can we go to the next question, please?
Our next question comes from Kamran Hossain of J.P. Morgan.
Hi. Good afternoon. A couple of questions. First one is just on the retro spend. I know a couple of people have asked about this already. Maybe could you just give us the absolute change in retro spend year-on-year, just as a percentage or a few absolute terms? Just interested in that and how that might feel versus last year. The second question, coming back to the, I guess, the change or the improvement in the underwriting. Obviously, it's very positive news. I think it's good for SCOR and good for the industry. I think I was interested in your comments around an increased view of risk, which again, I don't think is, you know, solely related to SCOR, but it probably suggests your 95%, towards 95% last year is probably the wrong starting point.
Again, the 103% that you're at in the nine months, again, is probably the wrong starting point. I'm just trying to get an idea of where we should kick this off, you know, where we should actually be thinking about for that 2.5-3 points to earn through over the next couple of years. Because I assume if you're running at 95% and then you had 2.5-3 points, you probably would have kept a bit more business. Just interested in that and any color on that. Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you. On the retro spend, we don't communicate the figures you're looking for, but to give you a rough idea of the price increases year-on-year, for our peak perils on the CAT side, the price increases were between 20% and 30% on the per occurrence layers. That's to be compared to the, you know, the Rate on Line increases we got on the business we accepted. That was, you know, the figures I presented previously. You know, and of course, on the retro side, there was less proportional and less aggregate available, as, you know, we had signaled before and anticipated.
On your second question, again, repeating what I said before, you know, what we see here is the underwriting year 2023. Really what we're focused on is achieving the net combined ratio of 95 that we indicated previously. That's really our focus.
Okay. Okay. Fine. I got it.
Thank you. Can we go to the next question, please?
Our next question comes from Benjamin Cohen of RBC. Benjamin Cohen, your line is now open. You may now ask your question.
Yep. Sorry, I was on mute. Afternoon, everyone. Two questions, please. The first one is just your comment on slide three that you've strengthened your relationship with clients. Maybe some insight into that, please. I mean, seeing how that, you know, it seems as though you've gotten the rates that you wanted while also cutting volumes. So how have you strengthened those relationships? Or, you know, how are you managing it precisely? The second one is just on that improved risk return profile. I wonder if it's possible to quantify it somehow. I think there was a slide at the nine month stage where you showed the probability of exceeding a 95% combined ratio is 14% lower versus 2022. Is there an updated number to that?
I mean, any other way of quantifying that improved risk return profile, please? Thank you.
Yeah, thank you. On your first question, yeah, the relationship with many clients has been improved because I think we came out very early with what we wanted to do and we were very clear starting at the very beginning of the renewal season in September about the changes that we needed and how we would deploy our capital. I think initially we may have been one of the early starters of in terms of announcements. As renewal progressed, we remained very consistent compared to some of our peers that, you know, changed course towards the end of as the renewals progressed.
The feedback we got from clients, I'd say after the renewals that, you know, we were a tough market in terms of negotiations, but consistent and reliable. I think this is what clients are looking for in terms of a long-term partner, is somebody who's consistent and reliable. That's the feedback we received. With regards to your second question, I think, you know, we tried to provide some of this on slide nine of the presentation. The improvement, and again, this is based on price and based on underwriting year, not financial year. We see the improvement in the risk-return profile, double-digit in terms of, you know, what we had last year. We haven't done the calculations you're referring to.
You know, this is just on the renewals at January 1st. We'll have to, you know, see the renewals for the whole year and how the year progresses to give you that type of information.
Got it. Thank you.
Thank you. Next question, please.
Our next question comes from Ashish Musaddi of Morgan Stanley.
Yeah, hi. Thank you. Can you hear me?
Yep.
Yeah. I just have a couple of questions, if I may. First of all, can you just give us some moving parts on your capital? If I look at your disclosure, I mean, what you're saying is basically you have cut property CAT, and you have cut some of the casualty lines and motor lines, which I would be thinking is like heavy capital intensive business. Where you have added is typically Specialty Lines, which I would be presuming that it is relatively less capital intensive. Can you give us a bit of dynamics as to how the capital has moved? It feels like net-net, you would have end up consuming less capital compared to previous year. Is that a fair assessment or would you say I'm missing something on that? That's the first one.
Also the PMLs have come down on whatever exposure you have. That was the first one. Secondly, clearly from a very low base, I mean, you have increased the cyber exposure, significantly 40%. Now, part of that is pricing, but it looks like you are expanding on a, on exposure basis as well on cyber. Is this something that we should be thinking forward, that this is a line of business where you're looking to get a bit bigger? Just because there are few players who are now trying to say that this is a business line where they would try to reduce exposure, whereas you have started to grow. Any thoughts on that would be helpful. Thank you.
Yeah, thank you for your question. On your first question, the update on the capital will be provided at the Q4 results at the on March 1st. As I mentioned previously, you know, the translation into SCR is not so straightforward because, yes, there's less business, but there's also increased view of risk. The you know, how that all translates will be presented by Fabian Uffer at the Q4 results. In terms of cyber, this is a line of business where we remain prudent. I'd say, you know, we have a very controlled process for deploying capacity driven by internal, external models.
You know, the main concerns we have are systemic events that may trigger, you know, a large part of the portfolio. Actually, the growth that we achieved was really primarily driven by rates, rate increases. Rate increases that were, you know, much more significant than what we had anticipated. Because of that, we shifted our portfolio more towards proportional than non-proportional. In the past, we had a mixture between proportional, non-proportional and cyber is our stop losses. We non-renewed a few of those stop losses and redeployed that capacity to proportional treaties on the cyber side.
There was a lot of improvements as well on the reinsurance of those cyber proportional treaties with event limits that we viewed as attractive. The overall PML on cyber actually decreased because we were able to buy some retrocession cyber capacity for the first time this year. Even though the premium is growing in that line of business, our risk appetite is slightly diminishing at the same time.
Okay. Thank you. That's very clear. Thanks.
Thank you. Can we move to the next question, please?
Our next question today comes from Darius Satkauskas of KBW.
Afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. First question, do you have any indication if we should expect some changes in strategy given the change in management? Any color here would be helpful at all, in terms of, you know, how you think about upcoming renewals compared to what you've done now. Second question is, I'd like to get a bit more color on the answer you provided to Kamran. Since you're talking about the improvement in rate, can you clarify what's the base for this improvement? I mean, you guided to 95% at your invest day two months before the renewal, so unless the renewal did not meet your expectation, why should we not think of 95% as a base?
My last question is, are you able to give some color on whether you used this renewal to increase your reserve cushions at all or are you showing the full benefit in the margin improvement? Thank you.
Thank you, Darius. On your first question, the change of strategy, I mean, we have a plan for 2023. You know, as I mentioned on the P&C side, what we just achieved on January first represents about 50% of the overall expected premium income for 2023. You know, for the rest of the year, we'll execute our current plan. When Thierry Léger joins us on May first, he will define, let's say, the medium-term strategic view at the AGM. The change of strategy, if there is one, will be announced then. Right now. In the meantime, we implement the plan as we have it today. In terms of profitability, again, you know.
I'm sorry, but I'm going back to what I said before, is the rate comparison that we achieved at January 1st, 2023 is compared to the portfolio that we, you know, that was up for renewal coming from January 1st, 2022. The 9% is comparing underwriting year 2022 in January to underwriting year in 2023 in January. You know, how that flows in the financials will take time. You know, we feel much more confident that we can, you know, achieve the net combined ratio that we had provided as a indication before. Your last question I'm not sure I understood it, would you mind repeating it?
Yeah. Thank you. I'm just trying to see if you can give us some color whether you used this renewal to increase your reserve cushions or, you know, is the margin improvement essentially what we're seeing, is it everything? Then just to follow up on the second question. I mean, there's nothing unusual to the earning pattern, right? The improvement should be earned over the next two years, right? Thank you.
Yeah. In terms of the, just going back to the profitability on earning, you know, the earning pattern should be very similar to the past. Even though the shape of the portfolio has, you know, has moved a little bit towards Europe and towards Global Lines, the earning pattern should remain very similar. I don't think you'll see any difference there. In regards to the reserve, I think, you know, the new business that we write doesn't really have an impact on reserve per se. What we have included is a revised view of risk on the business that we're writing to ensure that the pricing we're obtaining has more resilience. That will affect probably future reserves going forward.
The starting point from a pricing point of view has an increased view of risk compared to previously.
Thank you.
Thank you. Can we go to the next question, please?
Our next question comes from Thomas Fossard of HSBC.
Yeah. Thank you for taking my two additional questions. The first one will be related to the move from EGPI to growth return premium. I know that growth return premium won't be there in 2023, but I mean, it seems to be that you're starting with -12. So in terms of projection for the full year, looks like the consensus is shooting for 5% GWP in P&C in 2023. Optically, this is showing a quite significant gap. So maybe you can help us to bridge, how, you know, we move from EGPI to growth return premium, given the business you've written already last year. The second question would be related to your agro book.
It seems to be that you have taken significant restructuring here. Can you say a bit more? I think that was almost a return on a primary basis. Could you go through what you've done, if you keep growth or reduce growth and increased retrocession on it, or, I mean, yeah, anything you could say because looking at the numbers, it seems to be that the reduction, the absolute reduction in terms of premiums is around one hundred million EUR. I saw that actually the book was much bigger than that and that actually the cut you were expected to do would have led to more premium cuts. Maybe I'm missing something here. Thank you.
Yeah, yeah, thank you, Thomas. In terms of the, the move from EGPI to gross written premium, again, this is through the earning of the current year and the previous underwriting years. The January 1st renewal basically earns, you know, throughout the year, about 55% by the end of the year. You know, we don't provide a guidance right now into the gross written premium. I think it's a discussion we can have further at the Q4 results here. We're just focused on the renewals. On your second question on agro, I think the piece you're missing is in terms of our portfolio, our top two territories in terms of premium exposures are Brazil and India.
We have, you know, the major markets, for us, the following markets, like the U.S., China, Europe, Canada. Those are the territories that renewed at January 1 st. India and Brazil, for us, are renewals at April 1st. You'll see the full effect, once we finish those renewals in April.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next question, please.
We will now take a question from Iain Pearce of Exane BNP Paribas.
Yeah. Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking the questions. Firstly, on the 2.5- 3 points of improvement you talk about, you define that as part loss ratio, part external charges. I think we've seen some peers in the U.S. talk about savings on commissions. I just wondered if you can give us a split of the loss ratio or external charge impact of that 2.5- 3 points. Secondly, on liability, the 24% reduction for casualty and motor combined, can you just remind us how you take a view on investment income, and whether that has had any impact this renewal season, given that you'd think the economics could have started to change materially for these longer lines of business? Thank you.
Yes. Re-relating to your first question, we saw some movement on the reinsurance commissions, but they, you know, on casualty, of about 1- 2 points, you know, on property proportional. Overall the movements that we're expecting should have been greater in our view. The overall impact to the two and a 1/2- 3 points coming from commission reductions is very small. It's really driven by rate and repositioning of the portfolio. With regards to your second question, yes, of course, you know, investment income is, of course, looked at, from an overall profitability perspective, and it's looked at across the duration of the life of the claims duration.
You know, we're also looking at potential volatility coming from those lines of business. We believe the, you know, paying commissions that are in the 30s for this type of business, despite the, you know, the enhanced investment income you receive is not sufficient compared to the capital that's required. That's what drove basically our underwriting actions on those lines of business.
Okay. Very clear. Thank you.
Thanks. Can I go to the next question, please?
Our next question comes from Kamran Hossain, J.P. Morgan.
Oh, yeah. just got two quick follow-ups, just both from assumptions actually. first one is on the Nat CAT budget, where if I'm not mistaken, and please forgive me if I am, I think you said the Nat CAT budget's unchanged at 8%. I think you showed in the presentation you cut property cat limits. can you maybe kind of help us to understand those two things? Because I guess theoretically, assuming your 8% was the right level, then that probably should have dipped down, but maybe it's just a sign of excess prudence. That's question one on assumptions. the second one is coming to kind of assumption governance. You know, insurance is simply, you know, lots of it is assumptions. could you maybe talk about how that's changed in the last year?
Now I look back to last year when you had 0.5 percentage points of improvement at the combined ratio. It doesn't feel like it quite came through. You know, obviously, we've got to wait to see how that, how that happens or if it does or if it doesn't. Could you maybe talk about the assumption-setting process and the governance around that? Thank you.
Yeah, thank you. On your first question, you're correct that we're keeping the Nat CAT budget at 8%. Our view of risk last year was in line with that budget. You know, as you know, we're not meeting our Nat CAT budget in 2022. This has led us to take a number of actions, including a review of all our pricing and risk assumptions. This is answer of your second question is we've done throughout 2022 an in-depth review of all portfolios and trying to understand where the underperformance was coming from. This led us to review our view of risk. On the Nat CAT side, that's what we've done as well.
We feel that, you know, we're in a better position to achieve the 8% this year than we were last year. Regarding your second question on governance, you know, this is involving the P&C teams, the risk management teams going into in-depth reviews of all the, you know, all the portfolios, loss drivers and profitable to understand if our view of risk needs to be revised.
That's great. Thanks so much, Jean-Paul.
Thank you.
We do not have any more questions. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's question and answer session. At this time, I would like to hand the call back to our speakers for any additional or closing remarks. Thank you.
Thank you very much for attending this conference call. Investor relations team remains available to pick up on any questions you may have. Please don't hesitate to give us a call. As a reminder, SCOR will hold its full year 2022 results presentation on March 2nd. I wish you a very good afternoon.
This does conclude today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.