Ladies and gentlemen, shareholders, good morning. Welcome to all. I am very happy to be welcoming you here today for the SCOR annual general shareholders meeting. This is the second time I am here before you. This shareholders meeting is yours. It is the perfect opportunity to have a discussion between the shareholders, management, and the members of the board. Thierry Léger, our CEO, is sitting next to me, and he will be giving you a much more in-depth presentation of what we have been done. I also have Claire Le Gall-Robinson, who is the Group's General Secretary. I am also very pleased to have here in the first row the members of the board. You know that I depend a lot on the members of the board. We work on the principle of team spirit, teamwork, and they have certainly done this in 2024.
I am also thrilled to be welcoming new candidates for the role of a director of the board. Claire, maybe we could begin with the constitution of the bureau and the opening formalities for this meeting. Perhaps first of all, I must declare that this shareholders meeting is now open, and we will constitute the bureau. We have two shareholders here who have the highest number of votes have accepted to be the scrutineers, [Thibault Lubenet for Covéa, and François de Varenne. I suggest that the tellers will appoint Claire Le Gall-Robinson as secretary of this shareholders meeting. As with previous meeting, this meeting will be recorded, and you will also be able to log onto it on SCOR's internet site. I think that we have some non-shareholders who are here today. We have some journalists. Welcome as well.
This is a public meeting, as you know. Just one little formal thing I must say. Freedom of expression is at the very heart of this meeting, but we must also respect the law, be it the law of the press and the media or of any types of other offenses such as libel or slander. I would also like to inform you that we have a bailiff that has been appointed by the group and who is here with us today. There is a second room where some of the shareholders can listen in, and they may also speak to us from that second room. Claire will tell us the number of shares that are represented. We have 72.47%, that is 129,587,354 held by around 2,900 shareholders. The resolutions will be read out just afterwards.
This meeting is an ordinary meeting for the ordinary resolutions 1 - 17 and an extraordinary meeting for resolutions 18 - 35. You all know the rules. For the ordinary meeting, one-fifth of the shareholders holding voting rights and one-quarter for the extraordinary resolutions. For adopting these resolutions in the ordinary part of the meeting, they are adopted with a simple majority. For the extraordinary resolutions, we need two-thirds of a vote by shareholders present or represented. With 72%, of course, we have more than one-quarter of the shareholders holding voting rights. So I declare that we have the quorum, and this meeting is now open. Claire, there are different documents that were made available to the shareholders before this meeting, either here in headquarters or was sent out to them if they requested them.
Yes.
The laws that are stipulated by law have been handed in before this. We have the presence sheet and the annexes. We have the invitation to the meeting, the letters that included the assembly's agenda. We also have the brochure with the draft resolutions, as well as a more detailed explanation of the resolutions. We have the URD documents that are available, as well as SCOR's activity report, the reports and certifications of the statutory auditors and other documents that have been sent out or that are made available here to the shareholders in accordance with the code of commerce .
Thank you very much, Claire. Let's begin with an introduction. I will give you a short introduction as to where SCOR stands today before leaving the floor to Thierry. I would, of course, like to begin by taking stock of 2024.
In 2024 undoubtedly was an ordeal for SCOR. However, I think that it's in crises that we discover ourselves, and we discovered that our company was solid, that it had a high capacity to react in real-time, and, I believe, to take the right decisions for the company's future. 2024 was, for us, a perfect illustration of what we want to do, to work as a team, to allow us to take what may be difficult decisions in some situations. But we will have come out of this far stronger and therefore re-armed to be able to seize the opportunities of the future. As you know, in 2024, our Life & Health performance was particularly poor, but the balance sheet, on the contrary, was robust. I'll get back to that in a moment.
In the second half of 2024, we did an in-depth review of our Life & Health portfolio. I think that as soon as we saw that the results over the first half of the year concerning that portfolio were simply not in line with what we had wanted, that we launched the review. The review was possible, thanks to the board and the directors. After the end of the third quarter, and a lot of hard work that was done by all of our employees during the summer period, we were able to finalize this review, which was afterwards examined by an outside consultancy firm, and it's based on their results and their report, that we took a look at exactly what we could do to overturn this situation and to get back on an even keel.
There is one very fundamental thing in all of our activities, and that is our solvency ratio. Our solvency ratio reflects our possibilities of standing up to our long-term financial obligations. At the end of 2024, the solvency ratio was 210%, which is in the upper range of what we are hoping for. It's between the range of 185% - 220%. The exceptional impact of Life & Health , therefore, has been absorbed, and SCOR's balance sheet has remained very sound. The results that were published in the fourth quarter of 2024 are extremely satisfactory for our three activities, life, P&C, and investments, and further confirm that we are going in the right direction for a very efficient future. One or two words concerning governance. Governance has played its role. I know that in the past, a lot of you have asked questions about the efficacy of governance.
But thanks to excellent, transparent, trustworthy communication between the board and the different managers and the Executive Committee, we were able to come up with these good results. We were able to take rapid and consensual decisions. If the governance is working so well, it is largely because of the board members. They spend a lot of time, a lot of energy ensuring that the board takes the right decisions. I, therefore, would like to thank them very warmly for this, and particularly, of course, the chairs, men and women of the committees, who have a slightly heavier workload than their colleagues because they have greater responsibilities. The board is going to continue to evolve, to progress, always looking for that fine line, that fine balance between the skills of its members. This year, we have stressed the skills of the different business lines.
Vanessa Marquette will talk to you in greater detail on this later. I, dear shareholders, I am determined, I am motivated to continue to carry out my role as the Chairman of the Board to my best abilities if you renew your trust in me as Chairman of the Board today. In line with the work that we have done on the Life & Health portfolio, we have also revamped our strategic plan Forward 2026. Thierry revealed this to you in December, and it is based on our economic value right up until the end of 2026. We have, as from 2023, managed to achieve our objectives, a growth of our economic value of 9% over the next two years, a solvency ratio in the optimal range of between 185% and 220%, which was necessary for distributing the dividend, and a return on equity greater than 12%.
This is what we have committed ourselves before you, and it is the company's objective to stick to these objectives and perhaps do even better. Our fundamental pillars, the basic pillars, are at the heart of our strategy. You can see them here. There are four. The mastering of risk and capital. Very special attention is paid by Thierry and his teams, for an optimum capital allocation using all of the best measures that we can in order to exploit the data that we have along all of our business lines. In SCOR, we have a remarkable franchise. It has been acknowledged throughout the entire world. We have an expertise and know-how that is also acknowledged internationally. Despite our size, we are present throughout all of the markets that count in the world.
This, thanks to our teams, thanks to our subsidiaries, our offices, our employees who transport for us all of this expertise, who are flexible, who are listening to the needs of our clients all the world over. The second pillar is the showcasing of our data, making sure that it is properly used. We have risk managements, resource managers, and anything that we do, any of our activities cannot be done without data. We have improved the way in which we are exploiting our data, thanks to an organization that is well-adapted and thanks to the right technological partners. Thirdly, diversification. This is one of our strong points. This diversification allows us in our jobs to mutualize risks worldwide.
Based on the markets that we are in, based on our profitability, which is one of our essential criteria, we are always looking for the best balance between our activities of life, health, or P&C, or other forms, and we diversify ourselves as much as we can geographically. Lastly, sustainable development is still at the very heart of what we do. In an international arena that is more and more uncertain, I think that it is no mean feat to say that we are still on the right track for the moment. Management has the entire trust of the board that I preside over. We are going to continue to follow on with our strategic plan along the lines towards the objectives that we have established. Just one very quick word on the dividend policy.
If we have faith in the future, then this has to be reflected in the dividend. We have tried to maintain our dividend policy, although times were extremely harsh, in order to be able to distribute to you a dividend that is stable and that can be predicted. We have the right conditions to suggest a dividend of EUR 1.8 per share for the financial year 2024, and this is a resolution that is put before you today for your approval. Lastly, just a quick word on our reason for being, our raison d'être. I think that more than ever before, as you know just as well as I, the upset economies have meant that there is more and more risk today. The world is a risky world. This is forgetting things such as, or setting aside more geopolitical risks, emerging risks, climate risks.
But this is at the very heart of what a reinsurer is there to do. We have to play a major societal role, allowing all societies to better withstand these risks by mutualizing them. We have to be capable of anticipating them, mastering them. That is what makes a good insurer, and that is what makes SCOR. We are perfectly positioned to make the most of these opportunities, thanks to our improved mastery of risk, thanks to the competence of our CEO and his team, thanks to the fact that we are now focused on what is essential, capital allocation, for example. I think I speak for you, Thierry, as well. Thanks to the men and women that we have working in the field and who are taking the right decisions at the right time.
That is what is going to be SCOR's strength, and that means that we will be able to continue to merge art and the science of risk. I will conclude very rapidly by saying that I firmly believe, even more so than last year, that SCOR has the wherewithal to continue to roll out its strategic plan until 2026, and to get back this year into the leading team of reinsurers. Our strategy is simple and clear. Its implementation is disciplined. Market perspectives are favorable. In order to achieve these ambitions, we can lean on the power of our brand, on the force, the strength of our franchise, on the expertise and the commitment of the managers and the employees, and on our capacity to bring tailor-made solutions to international clients.
It is thanks to these major aces that we have, that I would like to thank all of our teams, all of those who are helping us today make SCOR a success. Thank you very much, and I will give the floor to Thierry
Merci, Fabrice.
Thank you, Fabrice. Hello to everybody. I am truly delighted to be here before you today. First of all, because it is my third time in less than two years as CEO of SCOR. I will be celebrating my two years in SCOR this Friday. As Fabrice said, SCOR has gone through a very arduous time in 2024. It was a difficult year. We have overcome these difficulties. We have shown that we are extremely resilient, and this also, thanks to our employees who showed that they were dedicated to SCOR, and they poured all of their energy into SCOR. It was remarkable. We would like to thank, first and foremost, our employees for everything that they have done over the last 12 months. Thank you to you all. Let me now just take a closer look at the 2024 results.
Fabrice glossed over some of these, but I would like to underline the excellent performance of our non-life business. Our P&C business, with a ratio of less than 87%, we obtained first-class results, and this shows that our P&C results are in an extremely rosy cycle. For investments, we continue to have stable and positive contributions, and we have a good financial yield that are in the upper part of the range that was laid down in our strategic plan. For Life & Health , you can see that we have been hard hit. We were surprised by the review of our reserves that created a loss for the group that was of almost EUR 350 million, and that was in Life & Health . If you allow me perhaps just to leave out this review of the assumptions.
Had we not had it, the result would have been EUR 450 million, almost what we had laid down in this strategic plan. Our return on capital was 0.1%, obviously far lower than what we expected in the strategic plan. But there again, if you exclude the exceptional events in life, that yield would have been 15%, which would have been excellent. For the growth of our economic value, we actually saw this decrease of more than 6% in 2024. There again, excluding the life exceptional results, we would have had a growth of 9.8%, so that would have been higher than what was laid down in the strategic plan. To conclude for 2024, the results that we had that were published were not as high as what we had foreseen, but we have done the necessary for SCOR to be able to move forward.
Given the discoveries on the life side of the business in 2024, we took very strong decisions. We immediately launched a three-pillar plan. First of all, we had to get our reserves back to the right level. We have reviewed hundreds of assumptions in life. We also recruited Milliman, which is an outside company, and that showed us that at the end of 2024, our results are at a best estimate. We took very strong decisions concerning new business as well. We introduced a minimal margin for all new business, and we have changed the composition of new business. We are going to slightly decrease traditional business, which normally has margins that are less than all of the others, and we are going to increase more than expected longevity.
We have added in the composition, certain financial solutions that will create new business that will be of a much better-quality concerning profitability and diversification. Throughout all of this year, this new business is going to be added to our stock, and in the next 5- 10 years, it means that our stock will be of a much better quality than what we have today. The third pillar are the policies in force. As you know, more than 90% of the life results come from policies that we already have on our balance sheet today. It is absolutely vital for us to improve our processes and all of the data that has to do with the policies that are already in force. We have made a decision to realign the compensation of our employees to the results of the policies in force.
I think that with these very decisive measures that we have taken, we will be able to recover profitability in our life business. I also like to take a step back and take a look at how we have progressed over time. This is SCOR over the last 12 years. In dark blue, you can see our investment yields. You can see the positive and extremely stable contribution of our investments into SCOR's results throughout the entire year. In light blue, you have the technical results, that is the results of life and non-life. You can see that up until 2026, this contribution was positive. Then from 2017 to 2022, most of the years, that was negative. Here we are talking about hard markets and soft markets.
In 2023, the market changed quite abruptly. You can see that the technical result increased very strongly and again began to be a positive contribution to all of the group's results. Here, too, if you look at 2024, excluding the life incident, the results would have been the same. Our return on capital is extremely high today. We are in an extremely attractive cycle in P&C business, and we intend making the most of it. The P&C cycle is one that has been going on for several years now, but it's truly in 2023 that we found its highest point. Stability in 2024, a slight drop in 2025 due to an offer that was greater than our supply.
If you look at investments, you can see that the rate of reinvestment remains high and therefore overall in 2025, despite the decrease in non-life prices, we're still in an attractive environment. Obviously, we keep a very close eye on geopolitics. SCOR today has not been impacted by the geopolitical environment. We can see in particular, we keep a very close eye on inflation, and we believe that there is going to be a hike in inflation, particularly in the United States, and we've decided to adjust the price of our products for the June, July renewals because inflation will be slightly higher than what we expected. As I said as well, these rates have been dropping since the beginning of the year. I'm particularly satisfied by SCOR's renewals.
You can see that thanks to our strategy, which is to profitably and in a diverse manner, increase our business, we have been able to maintain the technical quality of our business with these prices. This is an excellent result, which has also been fueled by the practices that are put into place by our retro ceding companies. All of this to say that for the third consecutive year, SCOR has been able to renew business in non-life that is of an excellent quality. We've also talked about resilience. Fabrice talked about resilience. I'm going to talk about resilience again. There is nothing better than to show the resilience of a group than by showing their solvency ratio. Take a look at the last 10 years. This ratio has always been in the upper part of SCOR's range, which just shows the long-lasting resilience of the group.
You can also see in green that at the end of 2024, the ratio was at 210%, 1% higher than what it had been in 2023. This despite that considerably negative impact of the Life & Health review, a drop in 30 points. So we had to offset that loss of 30 points. This was possible thanks to SCOR's balance sheet, thanks to the capital creation and new business, but also thanks to very proactive actions that we rolled out in order to keep our solvency where it should be. So that was for 2024. I'd like now to move on to our strategic plan for 2026 and tell you a little bit exactly what we are doing business-wise and what types of operations we're doing as well. Here is the strategic plan. It is divided into two.
We want to create value, and we want to modernize SCOR. Creating value means allocating a maximum amount of capital to the non-life business so that we can make the most out of this very promising market, a very buoyant market. We have divided all of this up into four pillars for modernizing the platform, capital allocation, and three others. For capital allocation, SCOR today is allocating its capital in a very dynamic manner. We have defined some 40 portfolios in life and non-life, and we are keeping a keen eye on these portfolios, on their profitability, on whether we need to create liquidity in order to create capital. Then these portfolios are again examined so that we can maximize profitability, capital creation, and liquidity creation of the portfolios in their entirety. I believe that SCOR is going to be able to make this into a true cutting-edge advantage.
The second pillar are our risk partnerships. The idea here is to monetize our franchise and our know-how. We do this by having, on the one hand, our balance sheet, but we also have partners. If SCOR can underwrite a larger share than what we actually want to absorb in our balance sheet, we turn to our partners, and they can profit from our knowledge, our brand. For that, we receive a commission, which is a positive income for the group, and which is also a further diversification for the group. We would like to enhance this type of business. The third pillar is that of asset and liability management. For those of you who are beginning to fall asleep in this room, I would remind you that A&L management is at the very heart of the operations of any insurer or reinsurer.
When I arrived in SCOR, our management was relatively static. It was not absent, but the A&L management was static. For today's needs and for tomorrow's needs, we need to take this one step further and become dynamic. So we have recruited a new A&L team, and we have already managed to partially improve our balance sheet when compared to the different changes in the exchange rate and in interest rates. These are always volatile, fluctuating, and it is against these fluctuations that we would like to strengthen our balance sheet. Maybe also, it is this know-how that is going to allow us to underwrite business that we would not have been able to underwrite today. The fourth pillar today is tech and data. You all know that data is what it is all about. We have an enormous stock of data.
At the same time, we have thousands of scientific profiles. We employ them. They are capable of integrating the data and analyzing this data. So it is absolutely natural, given all of that SCOR sees great advantages, great opportunities in artificial intelligence. We think that we will be able to improve our productivity and the quality of our operations and processes. But at the same time, and I think that this is also going to create value, it will also help us to improve our underwriting. This is what I am showing you here.
It is not the future. It is what is happening today. It is the present. It is a product that is called AI Assistant that SCOR is going to develop, thanks to the development of AI. It is something that we use ourselves, and it is a product that is sold to our clients via SCOR Digital Solutions.
It is a tool that allows an underwriter to actually look or to read 50 or 100 pages. It could take one minute or just a few minutes for AI, whereas it would take over an hour for a human underwriter. This means that the underwriters can just base themselves, can concentrate on the real issues that must be looked at in business. It is quite clear that SCOR's ambition is to make data and AI one of the elements that will differentiate us in our long-term strategy. I think that I will have some very lovely stories to be able to tell you about all of this in the future. Quite apart from these four pillars, we are also investing in the excellence of our operations, that is in the quality, in the productivity of our processes.
We have today in our strategic plan, defined an objective of EUR 150 million in savings for the group before the end of 2026. I am satisfied to be able to tell you today that we should be reaching that objective at the end of 2025, and maybe just at the beginning of 2026. We are a year earlier than what we ever expected in the plan, and we might be able to go even further than EUR 150 million in 2026 and thus reinvest a certain amount in our technology and in new business. I am very, very happy with that. I am very happy with the progress and the excellence of our operations. As Fabrice told you, in SCOR, everything turns around our raison d'être.
If you combine art and the science of risk in order to protect companies, it is quite clear that climate change represents one of the biggest risks for all of our companies throughout the world, all companies throughout the world. SCOR is continuing to invest in the transition towards renewable energies. Let me show you three concrete examples on the screen. First of all, we have a product called Restore. This truly is a SCOR product, and it allows us to insure projects for ecological restoration. The second is investment in a startup that produces sailboats that will be able to carry goods thanks to simple wind. The third is a consortium that SCOR has created and that we are managing, and which allows the creation of more capacity for any project that has to do with renewable energy.
Now, obviously, the geopolitical environment is currently not a favorable one and is not going to do much to help us avoid these climate changes and the risks of climate changes. We, today in the world and in Europe, are in a phase of rearmament, hoping to be able to stand tall before a lot of risks. We have set up in SCOR an ethical and environmental committee that I chair, and we discuss there anything that has to do with energy, security in France or rearmament. Anything must go before that committee, and it is that committee that decides whether yes or no, we will engage in certain business. It is up to this committee that looks at ethical, societal, and environmental aspects of risk to look at all of the ins and outs before the group decides to do this business or not.
I'd like to end by talking about two things that are very dear to me. First of all, SCOR's brand. This brand is a top-quality one. It is highly visible. It is something that gives us access to all clients throughout the world. It is our franchise that does that. It gives us access to all insurance and reinsurance projects throughout the world, and it gives us the possibility to put a price, to put a rate on any business around the world. There are very few companies in the world who have this type of franchise or this type of access to the world markets, but we in SCOR are one. I see an enormous potential in our franchise. I see a top-rate franchise, and a second level of other companies with franchises that are not quite as strong, as widely dispersed as ours is.
I think that we'll be able to make the most of this in the years to come. The second subject that, again, I hold true to heart, and that is SCOR as a choice employer. In SCOR, we look after real problems. We look after problems in society, of insurance companies. We find solutions. In order to do all of this, we do it thanks to our teams. We work with teams, people who come from the four corners of the Earth, who have studied in entirely different disciplines, and we do it here in person. We have lovely offices in one of the most beautiful cities the world over. I think that SCOR has a great amount that can be offered to its employees. SCOR has always been very clear when it comes to diversity.
We think that it is in diversity that you find the potential to innovate and to surpass yourself. We therefore have adopted a strategy that is very clear concerning diversity, and we are also functioning on a meritocracy basis and on equal opportunities. It is quite natural in this context to see that the number of women who are now working amongst the top 200 people in SCOR, 30% of them are women, and we hope that this figure is going to increase as the years to come, as it should. To sum up, I think, in fact, I know that SCOR is well-positioned, and I'm looking towards the future with great confidence. Thank you.
Merci. Merci.
Thank you very much, Thierry, for these encouraging prospects. I will now give the floor to Vanessa Marquette, but first of all, we will have a video.
[Presentation]
[Presentation]
Dear shareholders, I am going to present my report. I will present the work of the nominations committee in 2024. Then I will look into more detail in the evaluation of the board organization, which I led a few months ago, the composition of the board, which is changing this year with several people joining and others leaving, and the composition of the board committees. First of all, let me talk about what we did in 2024. 2024 was mainly devoted to the preparation of the future of the board. A whole generation of board directors is soon to leave the board. Therefore, it will be completely different in the coming years.
The committee, therefore, tried to anticipate the coming departures, looking for new directors, looking at the composition of the committee so as to prepare the succession plan for the chairs, whose term of office will end in one and two years' time. I will start by talking to you about the evaluation, which was the basis of our work, and the main conclusions of this evaluation are to be found in the SCOR URD. in 2022, the board of directors entrusted Egon Zehnder to conduct this evaluation. In 2023 and 2024, this evaluation was conducted internally under my lead and under the supervision of Augustin de Romanet. I based my work on a number of questionnaires sent to the directors by the general secretariat, as well as on individual discussions that I had with the various board members.
The results of this evaluation is that, overall, the directors are very satisfied with the board composition as well as the way it operates under the chairmanship of Fabrice Brégier, who managed to generate a climate of trust and exchanges and collaboration. The directors noted as well that a number of comments made during the 2023 evaluation have been heard, and some progresses were made. Finally, they also observed that the board could be strengthened in the specific area of insurance and reinsurance, following the death of Denis Kessler and the retirement of Claude Tendil. So the profiles of Diane Côté and Doina Palici-Chehab, who are candidates to become directors, and that of Jacques Aigrain, as an observer and a non-voting director, have been selected in order to meet these expectations, and I will come back to this.
The directors are, moreover, satisfied with the way the nominations committee has worked, and they also appreciated the recruitment work conducted this year. They actually expressed the thought that maybe we should merge the nominations as well as the compensations committee, and you will see what our option is. This brings me to talking about the composition of the board. The board composition as well as the composition of its committees complies with the AFEP-MEDEF Code recommendations and, more generally, is very much in compliance with the very highest standards, in particular, in terms of gender equality and independence. However, this composition is evolving, for after the death of Denis Kessler and the retirement of Claude Tendil, two further directors are going to leave SCOR, Natacha Valla and Zhen Wang.
This marks the beginning of a board renewal cycle, which will continue in the coming years with several departures which will take place. There is no renewal of directors who have been with us for more than 12 years and who, therefore, lose their independence. The nominations committee thought about how we should have the board composition evolve, and it looked for candidates. This is how we have, first of all, decided to unanimously suggest to renew Fabrice Brégier, our chairman, Martine Gerow, and Fields Wicker-Miurin. Fields Wicker-Miurin, as you know, is impacted by the rule of non-renewal for board members that have reached the 12-year limit, but the board decided to make an exception for her, given the role she has played in the group governance, and therefore she will cease to be independent following this current AGM.
Natacha Valla and Zhen Wang have decided not to go for the renewal of their term of office. They are both very busy and have lots of other activities. Moreover, Zhen Wang does not want to work remotely, and over the past few years, it was very difficult for her to come to Paris to attend the board meetings. We would like to warmly thank them for the work they did within the board over the past few years. Finally, the two employee board members, Marc Büker and Pietro Santoro , were renewed for a three-year term of office at the past meeting. One point with regards to the external candidates. The committee launched, since the beginning of 2024, the work on the definition of a standard profile, which was communicated to Egon Zehnder, which is a leading international recruiting firm.
They established a list of candidates that were then confirmed by Fabrice Brégier and then myself. Three candidates were taken into account, Diane Côté, Jacques Aigrain, and Doina Palici-Chehab. Diane Côté is a specialist in risk management. She is 61 years old. She is Canadian. She was a chief risk officer at the London Stock Exchange from 2012 - 2021, and now she is currently a director of Société Générale. We suggest that she becomes a board member for a first two-year period. Doina Palici-Chehab is a specialist in insurance and reinsurance. She is German. She is 67 years old, and she spent most of her career within AXA, and she represented the employee shareholder at the board of directors of AXA. She has left the activities that she had within the board of AXA so as to avoid any conflict of interest.
Finally, we suggest that we appoint an observer, Jacques Aigrain. He is Swiss. He is 71 years old. He is a personality in the world of finance and reinsurance, and in particular, he was Swiss Re's CEO. He is currently non-executive chair of two major listed groups, and he is also the director of a third listed group, which is incompatible with being a director at SCOR. Therefore, he is going to stand as an observer at the board of directors for a period of one year, following which he will join SCOR as a full-fledged director.
The table on the screen shows you the composition of the board following our AGM. As you can see, it is still consistent with the best market standards, with 50% women and over 80% of independent members, and it is very much open internationally, with about two-thirds of directors who are from foreign countries.
Now, let me talk a little bit about the composition of the council's board's committees. The nominations committee, in particular, recommended that we merge the nominations and the remunerations committee. It then also recalled a number of key principles, namely that the committees have to be chaired by independent directors. Secondly, all non-executive directors should be members of the audit committee or of the risk committee or of both, taking into account the maximum number of members per committee. Also, the new members of the board, during their learning phase, will be members of both committees. Now, following these principles, we have reshuffled a little bit of the composition of these committees. The newcomers will join the audit committee, the risk committee, and the strategic committee. Diane Côté also will join the sustainable development committee, and Doina Palici-Chehab, the nominations and compensation committee.
Augustin de Romanet will leave the risk committee, and Thomas Saunier is the only member of the nominations and compensation committee who will not join the mixed committee that I will chair. The chairmanship and the composition of these committees remain in compliance with the provisions of our rules of procedure and follow the best market practices. This concludes my presentation, and I am at your disposal to answer any questions you might have.
Thank you very much, Vanessa. Before I give the floor to Fields, of course, I would also like to join you in the thanks given to the administrators, to the directors, and those also who were elected by the employees. I think that with the proposals made today, we're going to have a very motivated and very efficient board with a number of additional competencies in the area of insurance and reinsurance.
I don't want to be the one that has the most expertise in this area, and it's good that I am challenged once in a while. I think that, therefore, our board will be reinforced in these particular areas. So Fields, who's the chair of the Compensation Committee, who's soon to leave it, but she has given a lot to our work.
Well, dear shareholders, as you know, for the past 12 years, I've had the honor of sitting in SCOR's board. If you decide to continue trusting me with this function, I will cease to be independent following this AGM, and I will, therefore, leave the chair of the Compensations Committee, which I've been holding for the past four years.
Vanessa Marquette will be the head of this joint Nominations and Compensations Committee, of which I will be a member, and we will continue our work there for ever more transparent and demanding remunerations policy. This presentation marks really the end and the high point of these four years at the head of the committee, and I hope that, just like the compensation of our managers, it will be simple and legible. Let me first start by presenting to you the eight resolutions which will be presented at this assembly. Six have to do with say on pay, ex post and ex ante say on pay. The first three have to do with the 2024 compensation of our managers, paid in compliance with policies approved last year with overwhelming majority.
The next three have to do with the 2025 compensation policies, and mostly they are similar to what we had for 2024, in compliance with the commitment we made last year on this particular point. Finally, the last two resolutions aim to distribute shares and stock options to the managers and employees of the group. Here again, these delegations are similar to what we had last year. Altogether, we have eight resolutions which will be presented to you this year. In other words, three less than in 2024, which is also due to the remarkable stability that we have in this SCOR governance today. First of all, I will present to you the 2024 compensation for the chair and the CEO. Fabrice Brégier, as chair, received EUR 600,000 compensation.
To this, you have to add EUR 128,000 that were paid to him as director, as well as the usual benefits linked to these functions. Thierry Léger received a fixed amount of EUR 1,250,000, to which you have to add a bonus of EUR 816,250, which corresponds to an achievement rate of 65%. The board noted that the CSM review had a very major negative impact on the group result, and therefore, the 2024 ROE, which accounts for 40% of the bonus, is zero. However, Thierry Léger managed to mobilize his teams, motivate them without forgetting about these very brave decisions that he had to make to improve group profitability. Therefore, the leadership criterion has been achieved at 100%.
Beyond the bonus issue, I would also like to draw your attention on the vesting rates for performance shares and stock options, which were given last year, which will also be penalized by the 2024 Life CSM review. Let us now look at the 2025 compensation policies. I was mentioning before that they are similar to what we had in 2024. The director's compensation policy has been extended to the observer, Jacques Aigrain, who is going to be voted on by the assembly. We suggest not to increase the EUR 2 million envelope given to the board. As to the observer member, we suggest that we pay him a compensation equal to half that of the directors, which has remained unchanged since last year. Let us now look at the president policy, which also remains unchanged.
We have a fixed amount of EUR 600,000, as well as the benefits that you already know, the advisor, the assistant, office, and car. The compensation policy for the CEO has also not undergone any major change. Now, despite the impact of the CSM review in 2024, the group confirmed the relevance of the assumptions and objectives of Forward 2026. Therefore, there is no reason why we should modify the performance criteria, nor the targets, or the appreciation scales that were decided in 2024. Only two targets will be more demanding. The target regarding expenditure control, which has decreased to EUR 1.243 million, and the ESG targets that apply to LTIs. Both the social criterion linked to gender equality, to which SCOR remains very much attached, as well as the environmental criteria regarding carbon intensity, have been kept and updated with ambitious targets for the end of 2027.
The TSR scale, which was voluntarily agreed to by the CEO in 2024, is also directly integrated into our 2025 policy. The achievement rate will be zero for anything below the median. Finally, I would like to attract your attention to the fact that, as we did for employees in 2024, we have decided to remove the stock options for the CEO and members of the Comex. They will get an additional 10% o`f performance shares. Finally, quickly about employee shareholders, we would like to ask you to renew the resolution which authorizes us to give out performance stock to managers and employees. In order to preserve flexibility, we would therefore also like to renew the resolution relative to stock options. The envelopes remain the same. This concludes my presentation, the last one as Chair of the Compensation Committee.
I would like, again, to say how satisfied I was with the work accomplished by your committee. I would like to thank you for your support to the compensation policies for our managers that we want to be fair, demanding. It is a very precious support for us, and it testifies to your commitment with us. Dear Vanessa, I wish you a lot of success as Chair of the Mixed Committee. Thank you very much for your attention.
Thank you very much, Fields. You see that the compensation policy overall is very stable. Fields and the committee did a remarkable job over the past two years to really completely revamp our policy, make it more transparent for you, more performance-oriented, with a number of impacts, obviously for our CEO, which are highly negative, as you can see on the pay.
But also internally with all of our senior managers, but which also has a very dynamic and motivating impact as well. I would now like to give the floor to Augustin, who is the Chair of the Sustainability Committee.
Good morning, everyone. The seven-member Sustainability Committee had an attendance rate of 100%, and I would like to congratulate all members on their involvement. The committee's mission remained unchanged as compared to last year, but this year's work also covered the preparation of the first sustainability report, which replaces the extra financial performance declaration in the universal registration document, which was published during the first quarter of this year. This report, known to some of you as the CSRD report, is the result of considerable effort on the part of the teams, both in terms of process development and content, in line with highly prescriptive European standards, as you know.
With regards the reports published in 2024, the committee reviewed the elements of the 2023 extra-financial performance declaration, as well as the sustainability report, also covering the year 2023. These documents serve as a basis for the extra-financial rating agencies, which use them to substantiate the information provided by SCOR in the dedicated questionnaires. The committee examined the elements of the group's sustainable development strategy and reviewed amendments to the sustainable development policy, so that this published document reflects the group strategy. At its meetings, the committee also analyzed the group's non-financial performance elements, which cover the progress of the group's sustainable development strategy in relation to its ambition and targets. And finally, we also analyzed the group's ESG ratings published by the main non-financial rating agencies.
Now, with regards the preparatory work on the first sustainability report, there was a mandatory training session for all board members that took place in spring of 2024 in order to master the new challenges in terms of transparency of information and the responsibility of the various board committees for the content and production processes of this new report. We also closely monitored the work involved in the double materiality analysis, the conclusions that were validated. I would like to remind you what this actually means. Materiality is something that is material. But in European language, it actually refers to the importance. So double materiality is double importance of things, the importance of the company in its environment, the impact from inside to outside, and also the impact of the outside on the inside, in other words, climate change and loss of biodiversity loss.
It is a European specificity to require this double materiality when ISSB, for instance, would like to come back to simple materiality. We closely monitored this, and we validated the conclusions proposed by the experts with the positive and negative impacts, risks, and opportunities identified during this analysis determine the information that we publish in the sustainability report. This informs the reader about the material extra-financial issues for SCOR, but only for what is really material. In other words, we select the points that we report that we feel are sensitive. We have to identify the impacts, the risk, and the opportunities in a precise manner. We consider that the analyses have been documented in accordance with the requirements of the European Transparency Standards for Non-Financial Information, the ESRS.
So, 2024 was an important milestone for SCOR, as some of the environmental targets have been set for the end of 2024. I will now focus more specifically on SCOR's climate strategy. Last year, I spoke at length about the theory of change developed by SCOR to ensure that the actions we take for the environment have an impact on the real economy and not just on our underwriting and investment portfolios. Let me remind you that this is based on three types of actions on our part. First of all, targets for reducing our carbon footprint, both on underwriting portfolios as well as investments.
Secondly, a strategy of engagement with our clients and the companies in which the group invests, which means that when our sales force goes to talk to these people, they look at these particular topics and ask the clients to modify their behavior as relevant. Thirdly, a strategy for deploying underwriting activities that support and promote the transition, and in particular, low-carbon energies complemented by investments in the transition to a low-carbon economy. Sorry, I forgot to show you this slide. I am now going to tell you what we have already achieved in our climate strategy. The first element of our climate strategy is reducing carbon intensity, and our first target concerns the investment portfolio. In other words, the investment in equities and corporate bonds. You know that at SCOR, we have tens of billions of investment.
As a reminder, SCOR joined the Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance in 2020, which is an alliance aiming at reaching net zero. We have set a first intermediate decarbonization target applicable to private equity and bond portfolios, which is set at 27% reduction by the end of 2024, compared with the reference year, which is 2019. This target is in line with the trajectory validated by science, which makes it possible to reach net zero by 2050 by limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius following the IPCC scenarios. In recent years, in order to reach this objective, SCOR has reallocated its portfolios to select the most ambitious players in the most carbon-intensive sectors. To this, we add our strategy of targeted exclusions, in particular in fossil fuels.
We have more than achieved our 27% reduction target because, as you can see here, the figure is 39% of reduction of our carbon intensity for our private equity and bond portfolios. I think we should be very proud of this achievement, and we should congratulate our teams. We need to continue our efforts, and I will tell you about the next steps in a few moments. Beyond investments, we also had an ambitious target of reducing the carbon intensity of our own activities, the activities of our employees, of our heating, travel, and so on, by 45% by 2024 compared to 2019. Which we also have exceeded because we have achieved a 47% reduction. This meant that we had to be highly disciplined on traveling, and our job is all about traveling.
As an old friend of airplanes, I am full of admiration for the efforts made by the company to bring this air travel under control. This is a considerable result. Let's talk now about the next steps. Over the past two years, we have gradually extended our theory of change to underwriting, and we now have intermediate targets for our activities, for underwriting, investment, and also our proprietary operations. Most of these targets were set for 2030, in line with the regular requirements of the CSRD, which I outlined at the beginning of my speech. 2030 is also an important milestone in the carbon intensity reduction trajectories which are defined in the scientific reports, notably that of the IPCC, which is really our compass. In terms of reducing our carbon footprint, our targets for 2030 are very clear and are based on what science tells us.
23% reduction in the carbon intensity of SCOR's business solutions portfolio of European companies with a reference year, which is 2022. 55% reduction in the carbon intensity of the private equity and bond portfolio, with 2019 as a reference year. Finally, 50% reduction in the carbon intensity of our operations, also with 2019 as a reference year. This is the figure that I was referring to before. You see that we have already reached a 47% compared to 2019. If we want to develop our business, travel more, therefore, and continue reducing our carbon intensity in our internal operations, we have to really work on it. Our climate strategy is therefore being rolled out gradually. To date, we are in line, if not ahead, of our overall strategy, which is a medium-term and long-term strategy.
It's interesting to look at results year- on- year, but it's not always very relevant when we're talking about decarbonizing underwriting or investment portfolio. The world does not move in a linear fashion, and we need to integrate uncertainties without ever losing sight of our goal of becoming net zero by 2050. Our sustainable development strategy goes beyond climate-related objectives. We have also made a commitment with regards to biodiversity. We signed the Finance for Biodiversity Pledge back in 2020, and our objective is to contribute to halting or even reversing the loss of biodiversity by 2030 for our investments. This is a very complex undertaking because unlike the climate crisis, which is a global crisis linked to greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, biodiversity is a much more fragmented issue, calling for specific responses to a multitude of specific subjects.
Biodiversity loss is one of the consequences of climate change, and biodiversity is part of the solution to the climate change crisis. We have already set targets related to deforestation, and we also practice collaborative engagement with companies in the investment portfolio through investors' coalitions. We also continue our work to identify the best means of action to help halt the loss of biodiversity. However, whether for climate or biodiversity, it is absolutely essential for us to not promise something which is beyond what we can achieve. It is necessary for us to describe the limits of private action and to also stress that without any decisive action on the part of governments, the world will not be able to meet the 1.5-degree global warming limit or the objective of halting biodiversity loss.
SCOR does everything it can to contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gases emission and putting a halt to biodiversity loss, but we have to recognize that this is way beyond our sole means. Thank you very much for your attention.
[Non-English content]
Thank you very much, Augustin. We are now going to move on to the report from the statutory auditor, if there are no observations that you wish to make on the different reports that have just been given.
Well, thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, shareholders, good morning. On behalf of the statutory auditors, I would like to give you the results of our work on the consolidated and shareholders' accounts. There were 11 reports made this year and 12 attestations. The first is on annual accounts, consolidated accounts, sustainability information that we have talked about, and also on agreements. There have been no observations, no reserves in the audits. There were three that we did have an observation on, the evaluation of insurance premiums and the evaluation of the type of participation. We have one observation on the management report and the lack of information on payment periods.
This is something that involves the entirety of the insurance and reinsurance company. This is not just unique to SCOR. We also ended with a report on the solvency ratio. If we move on to consolidated accounts, we also emitted a certificate without any observation, one audit on the active deferred taxes that appear on the deficit on the balance sheet. The consolidated accounts respect the European format, ESEF. There was one report on different agreements. We simply talked about the continuing of the agreement that was signed in 2021 with a transactional agreement between SCOR SE, Covéa, and Covéa SGAM. The last report for this general assembly is the report on sustainability. This is something that is new. We are now also doing a mission whereby we have to do this report, and this will be found in the Universal Registration Document, the URD.
This is governed by the ESRS standards on one hand and by European taxonomy on the other. Therefore, we have concluded that there are no reservations. We formulated two observations with a link to the paragraphs whereby you can find the information necessary. Don't forget that this is the very first year that this report has been published. That is it for the ordinary general assembly. It will be much quicker for the extraordinary part of this meeting. There were seven reports that were drafted on different delegations that have been given to the board of administration relative to the capital and the valorization stock market valuation. We have looked at the different reports that have been sent to us by the committees. We have no observations to make, in particular because the final conditions of the operations that are ongoing have not yet been finalized.
That is what you can see in the following slides. You don't need to read all of these, but they correspond to each of the resolutions that you have in the extraordinary general assembly. Thank you very much, and that's it for me.
Thank you very much. Thank you very much. That concludes all of our reports. We're going to move on to our questions. We have received written questions. They have been sent in by a shareholder, Reclaim Finance, and we've come up with replies that are available on our internet site. We can now move on to the oral questions, please. Would you just introduce yourselves before you ask a question?
An individual shareholder. Concerning the management of your financial assets, you've seen that AXA has actually moved its assets to BNP. Do you have any intention to do that type of thing?
That was my first question. The second, you have had an enormous loss on Life & Health in 2024. That was always your preferred sector of business before. It's based on knowing your clients, knowing your policyholders, and your data. You've said that you have a very excellent data policy. You should not have that type of loss if you are truly in control of your data as you say you are. Third question, offshore business. The CEO said that SCOR is involved in offshore business. We can see that today, offshore business, be it in Germany, in England, or in France, is a catastrophe. It's going to cost EUR 40 billion in France simply to handle offshore wind farms. I'm not certain that this really is the future that we should be aiming for. Look what's happened in Spain and Portugal.
They have just had a 24-hour electricity blackout, and nobody knows why it occurred. I think that there's a probability that renewable energies were involved in that blackout. Are you involved in that? Because that's going to cost you a lot if you have to cover claims for that blackout. I think that these blackouts are going to occur everywhere now because this renewable energy that only works intermittently is a great risk for us all. Thank you very much.
Thierry?
Well, thank you for those questions. Thank you for those questions on asset management. It's true that we look very closely at what's going on in markets, but you must understand that each company has its own challenges, has its own points of view, and SCOR's assets are far fewer than those of AXA or Generali.
Generali's thinking about doing the same thing, but they are much bigger than we are. They have more assets than we do. Our assets today are in line with our engagements in life and non-life, but we don't have that many, and we would prefer to keep them close at hand with a very dynamic Asset and Liability management. We think that that would be more profitable for the way that SCOR operates. This is something that we will be reviewing regularly. However, for the moment, we're quite happy with the way we're doing things, and we're quite happy doing them ourselves with our current model. You said that there were enormous losses in Life & Health , and you've criticized the fact that obviously we didn't master our data as well as I said.
In life business, if ever there were to be a perfect piece of data as to who was going to die and when, then I think that the Italian market would have been the first to have taken advantage of that, but that's not the case. We simply don't know what happens in Life & Health . There are a lot of societal changes that have to be considered when you're estimating the longevity, the lifespan of people. There are lifestyles that change, and all of this is extremely dynamic. It's quite normal to review these hypotheses quite regularly as we did. I can but say to you that things will probably even change in the way we do business tomorrow. Yes, data can always be improved.
Our ambition is to continue to work on that, to improve that, particularly in Life & Health , and we've begun to do that last year. We are seeing the changes that we have brought about bearing fruit in the data that we have, which should be able to help us to improve the way of using the data, the things that we know, and maybe to better estimate what we don't know, which is at the very core of reinsurance business. Then you talked about offshore as well. I think you're talking about offshore wind farms. Is that right? Yes, renewable energy. One could say that the advantage of wind is that it's 24 hours a day, night and day. You always have wind somewhere in the world. I think that this is still a very stable resource today.
If you could combine it with how to stock all of that energy, it would be perfect. You know that we are developing a lot of different forms of stocking, storing wind energy. In Switzerland, during the night, they actually use the energy to pump water up into the hills for the day when they're going to need that water, they can bring it back down again. I think that if we're talking about our nuclear energy, we have a very stable nuclear energy today. I think that renewable energies are less stable today. I do think, or rather, I thought that I had understood what happened in Spain. It seems that it might be because of nuclear power plants and not necessarily because of renewable energies. Nothing's certain as of yet. We'll have to wait for the final conclusions.
If that is the case, then we're going to have to find new ways of rendering our nuclear power plants safer. You are also asking me whether we have insured what happened in Spain. Part of it will have been insured by us, but I don't think that a nine-hour event with the metros that stopped and people who are unable to get home is truly going to create a very huge reinsurance claim. I don't think that that's the case at all.
Thank you very much. Any other questions?
Three questions. We have a resolution. We are going to buy and also cancel certain shares. These shares are shares that are for the employees and for the directors and officers. Apparently, there are 4 million shares that are either performance shares or stock options that have been planned, so that's a lot of shares.
They have been planned in the future for the directors and officers and for the employees. In the past, how many of these share buybacks were actually done and what were the results of it? Secondly, the Nat cat bonds. These are engagements that are taken with financial partners who will lend to SCOR on predefined criteria, if I've understood rightly, or is all of this already in the balance sheet? I haven't properly understood. I don't know exactly what these cat Nat bonds are. Thirdly, the cleaning up of your life class of business. Were these for claims that were predictable, or are they for final claims, the figures you gave us?
Well, thank you very much. I'll take the first question. I will give you offline, of course, the detailed information concerning share buybacks.
The mechanism is a bit like that of compensation for top management, but also the same for the staff compensation. We have a policy whereby we want the staff, the employees, to be aligned on what shareholders are expecting. So they get a significant share of performance shares. We've done away with stock options. That was something that was a little outdated. It was complicated, and we're just focusing on performance shares today. What is also suggested is to avoid dilution, and that's why this buyback mechanism exists. It means that the shareholder can, in this way, avoid the effect of dilution. That's what I can say about the first questions that you asked on that policy. A question without mic.
You have reason. It's clear in the resolutions.
The share buyback that you are talking about is a mechanism that is not forbidden in our distribution, our payout policy. We have defined a policy that is to guarantee a dividend of EUR 1.80 as soon as we have the capacity to do it and finance it, quite apart from our financial performance. That is what we did for 2024. We have a possibility of doing better, either with regular dividends or exceptional dividends, and there is also a possibility to propose a share buyback this time. We are not talking about that capacity here today. We will clarify all of this to answer your question in greater detail with figures from the past.
For the two other questions, first of all, the cat Nat bonds. These cat bonds, as they call them, function as follows.
SCOR, because we have a lot of knowhow, creates a fund, invites investors to invest in that fund, and then they invest that fund in cat bonds that are issued throughout the world. The SCOR-issued cat bonds are actually ones that are issued by all sorts of reinsurers around the world. It is with the information that we have, the knowhow that we have, that we find, or we make up the right composition of cat bonds, to put in the fund where the investors fund. It is not a loan to SCOR. However, for this service, that is a service we render unto the others, we do receive fees, and it is a source of revenue for us that helps us to enhance our diversity, and it is very stable. It is something that we invest a lot in because we believe in it.
Today, we are amongst the world leaders in this area. Your last question. If what we did in life is for the moment foreseeable, predictable, or is it final? Accounting-wise, it is final. We took on board, we took into account today, under the IFRS 17 accounting standards, claims that might happen in 40 years' time for premiums that we have not yet received. That also answers some of the questions of the gentleman who asked a question about data before. You can see that we have to do a lot of extremely long-term predictions and forecasts today. Estimates. It is very difficult to estimate what is going to happen in 40 years' time. I would remind you that what happened in the balance sheet in the second and third quarter of last year is final.
Whether there might be changes, positive or negative changes, in the future, may be, but for the moment, it is final. Question asked without a microphone. There is no possible carryover of provisions at all. There won't be any. Not definitive. No, not definitive. Because apart from those that have already had an impact on our results, the rest of it is all hypothetical. We have had a look at all of these hypotheses, these assumptions. Hundreds of assumptions have gone under our radar over the last year, and we continue to look at these possible hypotheses, possible scenarios. Most of the time, we try to find a best estimate. We think that in the future, everything will offset itself and we will level out again. If I knew all of that, of course I would include it in my accounts. Thank you very much.
Do you have a question here on the left?
Bonjour. Ariel Le Bourdonnec. Hello. Ariel Le Bourdonnec from Reclaim Finance and also a shareholder. I am sorry, I am not going to ask a question on SCOR's economic performance. I can understand why some of the shareholders here today are preoccupied. Before you arrived in SCOR, Mr. Léger, the group had almost EUR 300 million in net losses in 2022, notably explained by the effects of climate change and natural catastrophe, which I prefer to call climatic catastrophe. Faced with the explosion of these natural catastrophes, SCOR, but also other reinsurers, Swiss, Munich amongst others, has chosen to drastically increase the price of these catastrophe treaties for their insurance policyholders. More than 70% for the catastrophe treaties in the States and more than 40% in Europe.
I can understand that a reinsurer increases its prices, but I am wondering as to some of the activities that SCOR is continuing to do that is actually increasing these climate risks of the SCOR. We heard about the sustainability for SCOR. My question will be the following: how do you explain that SCOR has not yet committed itself to stop cover for new LNG terminals? This is something that is extremely serious for the climate of the world. Could you please answer that? I would like at the end of this meeting to hand you a letter from our organization, Reclaim Finance, calling upon you to be more courageous. You should be stopping some of the activities that are just worsening the problem, and it is going to require a lot more courage on your part in this time of such difficulties.
To Thierry.
Thank you. I will give the floor to Thierry to answer this, but I may say a few words first. I know that you are very much attached to actions to fight climate change, and you are right in saying that LNG indeed is a fossil fuel, fossil energy, and therefore using it less would be a good thing. We share this vision that you have. This is also the reason why Thierry will explain in more detail the measures that we are going to take. This being said, today is 2025, not 2050.
In 2022, 2023, a number of things have happened in Europe with embargoes, for instance, in particular, that led to considerable pressure on the price of fossil fuels without any possibility to immediately have a substitution product, which meant that we have to have additional LNG terminals so as to replace the gas that used to come from Russia. We are playing our economic part. We are aware that what should be logical in this transition would be to be even more firm on our criteria. We also integrate criteria that go way beyond GHG emissions, in particular, criteria related to operations for the production of GNL. We also have to look into the interest of these countries for which we insure those projects.
This is the general thought on this, but we are well aware that we will gradually have to support all countries, accompany all countries, not just France and not just Europe, towards this transition so as to be able to keep to this objective. There are very few industrial groups that are set to meet the 1.5-degree objective. If each company had the same conscience as us, we would be able to keep to that objective, to that target, which for the moment is in dire straits. I do not see what I can add to this.
I could say that 4,000 SCOR employees share your concern, not because it is part of our raison d'être, but also because they are people who live on our earth, and therefore they share your concern. We have our objective to be net zero by 2050.
There are several consequences for this. Fabrice just mentioned that, and Augustin also described this in his presentation just before. The reduction of carbon intensity in underwriting and investments, for instance, but also the fact that we want to abide by the 1.5-degree target of IPCC. In 2022, the world was very different. We thought at the time that by 2025, we would be on a slope where greenhouse gases emission would decrease. Today we are confronted with the policy of a number of states which lead to an increase and not a decrease of GHG. Augustin mentioned this before. If we were to stay on that particular course, then as a company, being part of a worldwide system, it would be very difficult for us on our own to resist this trend.
We completely depend on actions that are taken elsewhere to be able to reach our objectives. Several times we also mentioned the needs for LNG. I fully agree with you that it is a non-efficient source of energy. We have the gas that comes in through pipelines. Gas pipelines, yes. This is an efficient way to transport natural gas. It still is a non-renewable energy, and liquefied natural gas goes through a whole processing chain, which makes it even more harmful to the environment than gas which is transported in pipelines. This being said, in Europe, we have to face the reality, which is that we no longer get the natural gas from the pipelines as was the case in the past. Therefore, we have increased the use of LNG, and SCOR intends to contribute to energy security in Europe.
Therefore, w e set up this ethical and environmental committee where all of this business will be studied from the environmental and ethics perspective to see whether we want to go that way or not. Again, I believe that this is a very efficient process that will allow us to take into account all the various elements that are very dear to our heart.
Thank you. And of course, we will read your letter with great care. There is a question without a microphone. If it is very briefly, go ahead.
This will be very quick and thank you very much because I see that some shareholders want to reply following your reply. I understand that all of this, SCOR holds to heart, but if you read your report today talking about energy. In Europe, we have not stopped being dependent on Russian gas. We continue to be dependent on LNG.
We bring it in a liquid form in different terminals that do not fall under European sanctions. So one-third of European gas is still coming from Russia. Today, we are facing threats to our energy security. More than half of these terminals are only used up to less than 50% of the maximal capacity that they could be used for. So these new LNG terminals are things that SCOR possibly is not going to be renewing in the past, but you do still have some whereby you are still reinsuring them. Are you going to reinsure the new ones knowing that they are not safe?
Thank you very much for having clarified the question that you asked.
It is not just a question about certain forms of Russian gas that have not fallen under the sanctions, but this is something that we are thinking about, and we will answer your message as well. There is a gentleman up the back on the right-hand side.
I would like to come back to the accounting business. Reinsurance business is a long-term business. The indicators do not vary extraordinarily from one year to another. You are saying that you are a risk specialist, but I do not understand, looking at these accounts. Mr. Léger, you have been here now for two years. In 2023, those risks should already have appeared. Somewhere when in the board meeting, there is an audit committee, is not there? So how on earth was it that the audit committee validated the 2023 accounts?
I think that it is something that has been going wrong for a long time.
Today, now, as in 2022, we voted on the accounts, but today, I think that this makes it very difficult for us to trust you. My second question is, could you give us the first results for the first quarter of 2025?
I understand why you have asked that question, because we asked that question of ourselves as well. When I said that we took decisions without waiting to do a review, and when we took a much closer look at what was going on in 2024, we all said to ourselves, "Why on earth did we not do it earlier?" The reason we did not do it earlier is because in 2023, our risks, such as we perceived them, were not to be found in that portfolio. That Life & Health portfolio was giving us the cash flow performance that we were expecting. There was nothing to warn us.
There was no warning. It does not mean that we did not want to revise that, to review it. We were going to review it, but we had not yet done it, and there was no forewarning sign. Maybe the IFRS 17 made things worse as well, because today, as Thierry said, we have to look at performance over all of the contracts, and even a tiny contract that loses just a few million in a year but that lasts 40 years, if you look at that over the long term, that will have a considerable impact over the long term but will be minimally visible in the short term. in 2023, when I became chair and Thierry became the CEO, we did have warnings on P&C.
That was the portfolio that we were worried about, and we were able to benefit from good market conditions to strengthen our controls.
We also took measures that were precautionary measures that we announced to the market, the famous buffers that we reconstituted, increasing our reserves so that we were still in the best estimate, but at a more comfortable level. We announced that to the market. We did that, and that was the 2023 priority. In 2024, we continued to do that, and I think that I can say, subject to Thierry's approval, that we are now very comfortable in the P&C perimeter. We have now overhauled the life perimeter, and I think that is why I can say that we are back. The market has placed even more trust in us. It is true that there was mistrust, and that is quite normal, but we did the work that needed to be done. As Thierry said, this is a very long-term business that we are in.
We need to do regular reviews and overhauls, but we fully believe, we are confident that what we have done will allow us to develop the value that we have promised. As for the results of the first quarter, there are only two or three people who have a vague notion of what the results will be. It is far too early to be able to give them to you now. I think it is on the 7th of May that we will be publishing our 2025 quarterly results. You have another week that you have to wait.
[Non-English content]
I'll take one last question, please, because we're a little late.
I ask my question in English. I can understand French, but prefer to ask this question in English. My name is Herman Krekelberg. I'm an ex-employee of SCOR. Before 2009, I worked many years for Swiss Re, also when Jacques Aigrain was CEO there. Actually, I'm very surprised to see now this proposal to nominate Jacques Aigrain, because I was still there at Swiss Re. Actually, to make a long story short, under the CEO-ship of Jacques Aigrain, Swiss Re went almost bankrupt because of his ideas and actions on all kinds of financial instruments. The share price went down from CHF 60, CHF 70 to a minimum of CHF 12 .5 . Actually, Swiss Re had to be rescued with a multi-billion loan coming from the United States. I think it was Buffett.
Also from a personal personality point of view, my managers were very much afraid to enter his room because he was shouting and very aggressive, throwing them all corners of the room. I'm wondering why such person should enter now the environment of SCOR, for which reason?
Do you mind if I answer in French for the.
I can now follow your French, yes.
I will be answering in French. This concerns our proposal to appoint Jacques Aigrain sensor and before becoming a member of the board, given the performance of Swiss Re back in the years 2008, 2009, when he was at the head of that great group. It's true that the financial strategy hit difficulties due to the market in 2008. There was no more liquidity. It was relatively catastrophic, and Swiss Re, at that time, suffered great losses. We are aware of this, but I can say that it is through hardship that one learns lessons. Jacques Aigrain is a great person. He's a great character. He knows a lot about the world finance and geopolitics, and that will be extremely useful for us.
We have had quite a lot of discussions, and we can see that he is still very familiar with the sector, and he is also a non-executive chair of two big listed companies that are performing extremely well. I think that all things given for the board, Jacques Aigrain, first as a sensor and then as a director, would be of great help for the board and for myself. Well, I suggest perhaps we will stop there. We have taken note of your proposal. We do not entirely agree with it, but you can therefore vote as you wish to vote, and we will leave it at that.
[Non-English content]
We have taken note of it. I suggest that we bring this Q&A session to an end. I am sure that it could have lasted a little longer. I am very sorry. But let us move on now to the nitty-gritty of this board meeting, the vote on the resolutions. We have a final quorum of 72.48%, over 128,000 shareholders held by 2,973 shareholders. Thank you very much. We will now move on to voting on the resolutions. You have received the invitation that arrived on 28 of March and last 11th of February . Claire, please, could we move on to voting on these resolutions, please?
Thank you very much, Fabrice. I think that we have a very short video that is going to show you exactly how you use your black boxes.
[Presentation]
[Presentation]
[Presentation]
Well, let's begin with the ordinary resolutions. Number one, approval of the financial statements for the year ended December 31st, 2024. Voting is open. Voting is closed. Approved 99.93%. Second resolution, approval of the consolidated financial statements for the year ended December 31st, 2024. Voting is open. Voting is closed. Approved 99.93%. Resolution three, allocation of net income and determination of the dividend for the year ended December 31st, 2024. Voting is open. Voting is closed. Approved 98.14%. Fourth, statutory auditor's special report on agreements referred to in Article L225-38 of the French Financial Code. Voting is open.
[Non-English content ]
Voting is closed. Approved 99.93%. Fifth resolution, approval of the information related to the compensation of corporate officers referred to in Article L22-10-9 of the French Commercial Code. Voting is open.
[ Non-English content ]
Voting is closed. Approved 92.10%. Six, approval of the fixed variable and exceptional compensation of the total compensation and benefits of any kind paid or awarded to Fabrice Brégier. Voting is open.
[Non-English content ]
Approved 91.77%. Seven, approval of ex post say on pay for Mr. Thierry Léger. Approval of fixed variable and exceptional components, total compensation benefits for 2024. Voting is open.
[ Non-English content ]
Voting is closed. Approved at 92.91%. Eight, approval of the 2025 compensation policy for directors and observers ex ante say on pay. Voting is open. Voting is closed. Approval with 92.34%. Nine, approval of the 2025 compensation policy for the Chairman of the Board of Directors, ex ante say on pay. Voting is open. Voting is closed. Approved with 91.80%. Number 10, approval of the 2025 compensation policy for the Chief Executive Officer, ex ante say on pay. Voting is open. Voting is closed. Approved 92.92%. 11, renewal of the term of office of Fabrice Brégier as a director of the company. Voting is open. Voting is closed. Approved 93.60%. 12, renewal of the term of office of Martine Gerow as a director of the company. Voting is open. Voting is closed. Approved 76.33%. 14, appointment of Madame Fields Wicker-Miurin, sorry, as director of the company. Voting is open.
Approved 90.15%. 14th resolution is the appointment of Diane Côté as a director of the company. Voting is open. Voting is closed. Approved with 98.24%. Number 15, appointment of Doina Palici-Chehab as a director of the company. Voting is open. Voting is closed. Approved with 98.25% of votes. Resolution 16, appointment of Jacques Aigrain as an observer of the company. Voting is open. Voting is closed. Approved with 95.40% of votes. 17th resolution, authorization granted to the Board of Directors to carry out transactions in the company's ordinary shares. Voting is open. Voting is closed. Approved with 98.19%. We move on now to the extraordinary resolutions. 18, delegation of authority granted to the Board of Directors to take decisions with respect to capital increases by capitalization of profits, reserves, or additional paid-in capital. Voting is open. Voting is closed. Approved 99.85%.
Resolution 19, delegation of authority granted to the Board of Directors to decide to issue shares and/or securities giving immediate or future access to ordinary shares to be used with preferential subscription rights. Voting is open. Voting is closed. Approved 95.62%. Resolution 20, delegation of authority granted to the Board of Directors to decide to issue the shares and securities as part of a public offering other than those referred to in Article L411 of French Monetary and Financial Code, without preferential subscription rights and with a compulsory priority subscription period. Voting is closed. Approved 92.91%. 21st resolution, delegation of authority granted to the Boards of Directors to decide to issue, as part of a public offering referred to in Article L411-2 of the French Monetary and Financial Code, shares and/or securities giving immediate or future access to ordinary shares without preferential subscription rights. Voting is open. Voting is closed.
Approved with 90.76%. 22, delegation of authority granted to the Board of Directors to decide to issue shares and/or securities giving immediate or future access to ordinary shares to be issued to one or more persons specifically designated by the Board of Directors without preferential subscription rights. Voting is open. Voting is closed. Approved 91.08%. 23rd resolution, delegation of authority granted to the Board of Directors to decide to issue shares and/or securities as consideration for securities tendered to a public exchange offer initiated by the company without preferential subscription rights. Voting is closed. Approved with 96.89%. 24th resolution, delegation of authority granted to the Board of Directors to decide to issue shares and/or securities giving immediate or future access to ordinary shares within the limit of 10% of the company's share capital without preferential subscription rights. Voting is open. Voting is closed. Approved 93.33%.
25th resolution, authorization granted to the board of directors to increase the number of shares to be issued in the case of a capital increase with or without preferential subscription rights. Voting is open. Voting is closed. Approved 89.52%. 26th resolution, delegation of authority granted to the board of directors to issue warrants exercisable for ordinary shares of the company without preferential subscription rights for shareholders in favor of categories of beneficiaries meeting specific criteria with a view to implementing a contingent capital program. Voting is closed. Approved 97.45%. 27th resolution, delegation of authority to issue warrants exercisable for ordinary shares of the company without preferential subscription rights in favor of categories of beneficiaries meeting specific criteria with a view to implementing an ancillary own funds program. Voting is open. Voting is closed. Approved 97.46%. 28th resolution, authorization granted to reduce the share capital by canceling treasury shares.
Voting is open. Voting is closed. Approved 99.9%. 29th resolution, authorization granted to the board of directors to grant share subscription and/or purchase options to employees and executive corporate officers of the company. Voting is open. Closed. Approved 97.28%. Resolution 30, authorization granted to award existing ordinary shares of the company to employees and executive corporate officers of the company and affiliated companies or groups. Voting is open. Voting is closed. Approved 94.89%. Resolution 31, delegation of authority to carry out a capital increase by issuing ordinary shares reserved for the members of the company's employee savings plans. Voting is closed. Approved 99.13%. 32nd resolution, it's the total maximum amount of capital increases. Voting is open. Closed. Approved 96.59%. 33rd resolution, amendments to Article 11 of the company's articles of association to allow for written consultation of members of the board of directors. Voting is open. Voting is closed.
Approved 99.89%. 34th resolution, amendments to Article 17 of the company's articles of association to adjust observers' terms of office. Voting is open. The voting is closed. Approved 99.86%. The last resolution concerns the powers to be attributed. Voting is open. Voting is closed. Approved 99.89%.
Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Claire. Thank you very much, shareholders, for your vote, for your trust. We have ended with our agenda, and I declare this meeting now adjourned. Thank you very much.