Good morning, and welcome to Allianz Third Quarter Results Web Audio Conference. The conference is scheduled to last up to 90 minutes today. As usual, our CFO, Giulio Terzariol, will guide you through the quarterly results and will then take your questions. I hereby hand over to Giulio, please.
Thank you, Holger, and good morning to everybody. I'm pleased to present, as always, the results for the third quarter of Allianz. Before we go into the third quarter results, as usual, we give also a short update on the picture for the nine months. Overall, we had a very strong set of results for the nine months with an operating profit of over EUR 10 billion. This is driven particularly by property-casualty, but I will say that all segments have contributed fairly to the operating profit, subject really to the current market condition. When we look at the property-casualty segment, we have a combined ratio, which is basically stable over the last year level. We are benefiting here from higher premium growth, and also we have a much better investment results.
In the life segment, we can see that the new business margin is significantly improved compared to the one that we had last year, and also it's a good new business margin at a very good level. We have a lower production. That's not unusual in an environment like this, but as you see, the value of new business is higher compared to the level of value of new business that we had last year. Finally, in asset management, yes, we have outflows. That's not unexpected in an environment like this. When you look at the operating profit, we have basically EUR 2.4 billion of operating profit, which is very stable compared to the level that we had last year. That's a strong positive sign. All in all, very good results for the nine months.
As you know, we have revised our expectation for 2022. Now we expect to end up in the upper half of the range of our outlook. With that, I'd like to move to page 75, where we have the snapshot for the third quarter results. The narrative is more or less the same, that of the narrative for the nine months view, with very strong results in property-casualty and with a nice resilience in life and health, and asset management. On top, you see the net income is very strong at EUR 2.5 billion, and that's driven by the operating profit development. But also, we had some realized gains below the line. A strong picture for the third quarter.
I was told this is the highest operating profit for a third quarter, and as you see, it's also improved over 7% compared to last year. Now we come to the solvency ratio. The solvency ratio, slide seven, is at 199%, which is a good and comfortable level. This is before the deduction for the buyback that we have announced last night. After the deduction of the buyback, we are still at a very good and comfortable level of 197%. The sensitivity have improved compared to what we had in Q2, and I'm referring here to the sensitivity to the equity market. In Q2, we had a sensitivity of -20% for a drop of the equity market of 30%.
Now as you see, we are at minus 17%. There is an improvement, which is also a function of the risk action that we have been taking. A stable level and also a reduced sensitivity to the equity market for our solvency ratio. Clearly we continue to deploy capital in an efficient way. If we move now to page 9, this is the evolution of the Solvency II ratio for the quarter. As you see, we continue to generate capital on an organic basis. On a pre-tax and pre-dividend basis, we have a 7 percentage point of capital generation. If you adjust for taxes and dividend, that's a good 2 percentage point of capital generation that we should be able to create on a quarterly basis.
For the quarter, you see that there is a negative impact coming from the market movement. This has to do with rate volatility, with a drop in the equity market in Q3, and also with some twisting of the credit spread. These kind of movement clearly are volatile, so sometimes they can be positive, sometimes they can be negative. What really counts at the end of the day is the ability to generate capital on an ongoing basis. From that point of view, we are starting from a good level of Solvency II, and we can always rely as we move forward on a steady capital generation from the underlying performance. That's on the solvency ratio evolution. Now we can go into the segments at page 11. We start, as always, with the property-casualty segment.
You can see that we had a very nice growth in property-casualty of 9% if you adjust the numbers for FX and for consolidation. If you take the total growth, is a total growth of 14%, so a very strong number. If we look at internal growth of about 9%, the driver there is especially price. So 80% of the number is explained by price changes, which is a clear indication that we are taking action clearly to offset the inflation that we might see coming in our claims. What is also good in this picture is that basically all OEs or almost all OEs are contributing to the growth of the segment.
You can see that across the board we are taking action that are leading to this growth in premium. That's a very good picture also because it's not just coming from a few entities, but because it's coming from basically almost all entities. If we move to page 13 on the operating profit development for the quarter, you can see there is a nice improvement of over 30% compared to the level of last year or about EUR 400 million or over EUR 400 million expressed in absolute euro terms. The improvement is coming both from underwriting and also from investment income. If we focus first on the underwriting results improvement, there are basically two drivers.
One is the improvement in, or the increase in, premium that we saw before, and the other reason for the improvement in the operating profit or underwriting results is due to the, combined ratio, which is lower compared to what we had, last year. If you look then at the components of the combined ratio, we see that we are benefiting from lower net CAT compared to the, third quarter 2021, and also we have a higher run-off. From that point of view, clearly this has helped the combined ratio. I can also tell you that we are very prudent on the way we choose the loss pick for the accident year 2022, where we are setting specific provision for inflation.
The bottom line here is that the quality of the 94% combined ratio is, in my opinion, very good. That's the main message that I want to bring across. Ninety-four, very solid combined ratio with increasing level of premium. When you look at the picture by companies at page 15, you can see that a lot of our entities are providing very good combined ratio. This applies, this is true for Germany, France, Australia, Eastern Europe, Italy, Switzerland, AGCS, Partners considering their business model, 96.8% is a good combined ratio, and also Allianz Trade. You can see basically almost all our entities are providing very good results. There are a couple of exceptions like Latin America, which is driven by Brazil.
We see a stabilization there and also in the United Kingdom. Also the combined ratio is higher compared to what we were expecting. This is driven by some one-off, and also it's driven by some inflation impact which is coming through. What is positive, both in the case of Latin America and U.K., this is not an idiosyncratic situation for our entities. This is something that we see in the broader market, which is also indicating that most likely we're going to see a nice improvement moving forward because clearly the marketplace will have to react. Bottom line anyway, the majority of the companies is providing really healthy combined ratio, and this is in my opinion very, very strong picture.
With that, I would move now to page 17, where we see that investment income is also significantly higher compared to what we had last year. We are speaking of an increase in investment income of about 36%. When you look at the current yields, you can see that that number is now more than 10 basis points better compared to what we had last year. What is really eye-catching is the development of the economic reinvestment yield, which is now at 3.5% compared to 1.3% one year ago. This means that we are going to continue to see strong investment results as we move forward.
This is going to be definitely a driver of operating profits improvement compared to what we had in prior year. Overall, bottom line, very strong results in P&C: growth in premium, a stable combined ratio, increase in investment income. The quarterly operating profit was EUR 1.7 billion, which is well ahead of the outlook of EUR 1.5 billion per quarter. We also believe that this performance can be repeated in the future. This is a strong underlying performance which is not driven by one-off. With that, I'd like to come to the Life segment, where we have also a positive message. When you look at the new business margin, the new business margin is for the quarter at the level of 4%.
That's really an excellent level. All segments are contributing to the growth to the increase in new business margin. When you look at the present value of new business production, this is down compared to last year. Here we should do some adjustment because last year we had a big contract, a corporate contract coming from Allianz III, plus there are some technical things that should be adjusted for. If you do that, the present value of new business premium reduction will be more like minus 10% instead of minus 30%. The fact that it's down not surprising in an environment like that. Clearly, investor policyholders are going to be a little bit more conservative.
From that point of view, we see a little bit less sale of unit-linked business and also single premium is down compared to the last year level. This said, our focus has always been on margin rather than pure growth. From that point of view, this is a picture we are very comfortable with, and we really like the 4% of new business margin, which is also something which is going straight into our Solvency II calculation. This is a number which is relevant because it's contributing to the organic capital generation of our Solvency II calculation. With that, if we move to page 21, the operating profit is about EUR 200 million lower compared to the level of 2021.
Here we need to also remember that in 2021, the capital markets were very favorable. From that point of view, last year we had rather the positive volatility coming through the numbers, where this time we have rather the negative volatility coming through the numbers. As you see, when you look at the one of the major driver for the drop is due to the guaranteed savings in the annuity business, where you see EUR 200 million less of operating profit, and half of that EUR 200 million is due to the VA business in the U.S. that we know is particularly volatile.
Considering the market condition, I view the swings as totally normal, and I will say that making over EUR 1 billion of operating profit in this kind of environment is a sign of strong resilience. With that, at page 23, on the value of new business, new business margin, first of all, you see similarly to what we saw for the combined ratio, that the new business margin is basically improving across the board. When you look at the value of new business, it's down by about 17%, but this is due to this large contract. When you adjust for the large contract of last year, in reality the value of new business is up 2%. Again, a good underlying development.
When you look then at operating profit, as you can see here, we have seen the drop because of the VA business in the USA, and also the operating profit of Allianz Leben in this kind of environment has been a little bit softer because of the lower harvesting results. Overall a good set of operating profit. This leads me to page 25. That's indeed a very positive picture. Yes, the investment margin is down by four basis point, and that's because of the harvesting, which has been negative this quarter compared to usually the expectation of a positive net harvesting. What is really important in this slide is the differential between the current yield and the minimum guarantee.
If you look at that in Q3 2021, that differential was 51 basis points, and now we are speaking 57 basis points. This is really the underlying performance because the harvesting can be clearly volatile up and down. What counts over time is that this differential is going to be healthy, and as you can see, is going up. I also look at the annualized number. In 2020, the differential between current yield and guarantee was 1.8%. In 2021 was 2%. By the end of this year, we should be at 2.2-2.3%.
A swing of 50 basis points within two years on EUR 500 billion reserves is about EUR 2.5 billion of profit, if you want, which we are going to share with the policyholder, obviously. It gives you the idea of the extra cushion that has been built up in the last two years by the work that we did on our products. Overall, positive development in the life segment with a new business margin of 4%. A very healthy development of the differential between current yield and guarantee. The underlyings are good, and clearly in this quarter we are paying some price in operating profit because of the volatility, but still we have achieved an operating profit which is in excess of EUR 1 billion.
With that, we can go now to the asset management segments. Overall, the assets under management have been relatively stable compared to the level of June. You see a drop of 3% here, but this is basically explained by the transfer of the AGI US assets to Voya. If you adjust for that, in reality the drop in assets under management will be only 1%. When you look then specifically at PIMCO, you can even see that there is a flat development of the assets under management. Overall, despite all the volatility in the capital markets, the asset base has been relatively resilient.
When we look then specifically at page 29 to the development of the third-party assets under management, you see that we had about EUR 20 billion of outflows. Thereof, three quarters are coming from PIMCO, one quarter is coming from AGI. In this kind of environment, it's not unexpected to see this kind of development. I would even say it's relatively moderate. If you think that PIMCO has basically 1.4 trillion, sorry, of assets under management for third party, 50 billion is really not a big amount.
When you look at the delta or the netting or market and dividend and the fixed and others, you see there is a EUR 24 billion drop, and this is basically all explained by the transfer of the AGI US assets to Voya. With that, if we move to page 31 on the revenue. The revenue are resilient, indeed are basically flat over the level of last year. Clearly, we are benefiting here from the appreciation of the US dollar, but at the end, at the end of the day, the US dollar is also an economic parameters, no different from the equity market development or from the interest rate stream. From that point of view, this also counts in our math. Basically flat revenue.
What is very positive is the development of the third-party assets under management margin, which is slightly up compared to what we had one year ago. The point is, yes, we have outflows, but there is a little bit of a tendency to see outflows in mandate with lower fees. So from that point of view, there is also something to consider makes a difference if you lose on more assets on higher fee mandate as opposed to lose assets on lower fee mandate. So that's also something that is helping the resilience of our results. When you go to page 33, you can see that the drop in operating profit was 10%. If you adjust for the performance fees is about 8%.
Here we should really keep in mind that the third quarter of 2021 was almost at the peak of the capital market. That's we are going basically from the peak to, I don't know whether it's the bottom, but definitely to a situation which is much different compared to what we had one year ago. When you look at the performance of PIMCO is more or less stable compared to what we had one year ago. In the case of AGI, you can see a drop. The performance in 2021 was extremely high. I would say that with EUR 178 million of operating profit in the third quarter of 2022, that's a very good result for AGI.
If you annualize the number, you will get to a very strong operating profit. Overall, I would say in asset management, clearly the market conditions are a little bit challenging, but at the end of the day, we have EUR 800 million operating profit. Our outlook divided by four is EUR 850 million, and this assumes the performance fees are spread equally over the year, which is not the case. In reality, we know that we get more performance fees towards the end of the year. Basically at a operating profit of EUR 800 million is consistent with our outlook, and now we're going to see clearly what happens in fourth quarter based on the market volatility and also how much performance fees we are going to get.
These numbers are trailing very closely our outlook that we gave you at the beginning of the year. Corporate, it's significantly improved, page 35, compared to last year, and this is driven by high investment income. The driver of high investment income in the interest rate level, which is higher dividend, and also we have some inflation in bonds in our corporate portfolio. So this all explain the majority of the nice improvement that we see in our corporate segment. Now we come to page 37. On the below the line items, as you see, we had about EUR 650 million of realized gains. These realized gains are driven by the transaction of the disposal of AGI US to Voya, and also we sold a participation minority stake in a bank in Croatia.
On the other side, impairments are a little bit more elevated in this kind of market condition, but the net position, we netted two items together, is positive compared to last year. This, together with the increase in operating profit, leads to a shareholder net income which is 17% higher compared to what we had last year. With EUR 2.5 billion of shareholder net income, that's a very strong performance for the quarter. With that, I come to the end of my presentation. Very strong set of results, strong underlying. As you know, we have revised our expectation for the remainder of the year that we are going to end up in the upper half of the range. We have EUR 2 billion of buyback for 2022. If you adapt this to the EUR 4.5 billion of dividend that we paid in May, that's EUR 6.5 billion of remittances. Definitely a strong set of results. With that, I'd like to thank, as always, our employees for the excellent job that they do every day. With that, I would open up to questions.
Thank you, Giulio, for your explanations and, indeed, a great set of results. Before we go into the Q&A, let me remind you, if you want to ask a question and you joined via web audio call, please press Talk Request. If your question has already been answered, press six to withdraw. If you joined via telephone, please press five to raise your hand and to signal that you want to ask a question. I give you a few seconds' time, and then we start with the Q&A.
Our first question today comes from Herbert Fromme. Your line should be open.
Yeah, thank you very much. I've got three questions. One is, what effect does Structured Alpha have on your 2022 results? Your share price for the year so far is -7.9%, and that's worse than major rivals. Munich Re is +8%, Zurich +12%, AXA +0.3%. Only Generali is in minus. Why is that? Why do shareholders not trust you? I would like to know, you more or less shut down Syncier, your IT subsidiary. What kind of write-down was needed there? Perhaps you can enlighten us on the full software problem, ABS. What does this cost Allianz, and what write-downs can you expect on that?
No, thank you for your question. On Structured Alpha, the Q3, there was basically no impact on our numbers because of Structured Alpha. The only part would be clearly, you can always consider the gain that we posted. That could be a consequence of Structured Alpha. Also now we are running, I mean, the gain of about EUR 300 million. That would be a consequence clearly of the Structured Alpha situation. Also, basically in Q3, AGI has been running with a new setup. From that point of view, we would have had maybe EUR 20 million more operating profit in the case we had kept the asset that we disposed to Voya. There is no basically meaningful impact on the operating profit, I would say, of the group for Q3 due to Structured Alpha.
Regarding your question about the development of the Allianz share price compared to the competition. First of all, we need to say that clearly the Structured Alpha situation had some impact on our share price. Also, as you know, it's always difficult when you compare point to point, because if you take a different reference time, then you get to totally different results. Usually I don't take a very short period, I take longer period. I'm sure that if you look for a period with outperformance of Allianz, it's not going to be so difficult to find that. It's very important that you know you consider different time reference, and then you can get a better judgment whether there is a underperformance or not.
I can tell you that from 2015 to August 2021, the outperformance of Allianz compared to the index, the insurance index, was about 50 percentage points, if I'm not wrong. It's only a matter of reference point. Then on your question about Syncier, and then you had a question about ABS. Syncier is a venture that we started basically in 2018. You know, sometimes things are working better than others. We decided that eventually this was not an initiative that could be successful. We decided basically to stop that initiative. I think that's totally fine that a company, a group of our size is going to try different things.
As I said, sometimes things are working, sometimes things are not working, but I don't see anything bad in that. Regarding the ABS software, there is no ABS software is doing what is supposed to do. We are implementing the ABS software is already implemented in most companies. As you know, we are driving the homogenization of our business model, our IT infrastructure. We already did that. We try to harmonize the IT architecture, and there is no kind of concern about any depreciation ABS software at all.
How much did Syncier cost you?
Sorry?
How much did Syncier cost you?
Well, look, I tell you again, I can tell you for this year or for this quarter, I think the impact of Syncier was largely about EUR 10 million.
The whole investment fund was written off or written down in some way, wasn't it?
There's definitely an investment where we have, at the end of the day, a loss. There is no doubt. That's a part of doing business, trying things, and some things are working, some other things are not working. When you look at our operating profit, let's say right now we have record operating profit. Basically, we are set to have record operating profit. Last year we had record operating profit. You need always to put things in perspective. That's the reality that as we try a lot of things, some things is successful, some things might not be successful. The bottom line is that in 2021, we posted record operating profit.
Based on what we are seeing right now, we think we are going to have again record operating profit in 2022. We just had, based on what I was told, the best operating profit of the third quarter. Then clearly we can always start talking about all the things which are going well, and we can also talk about the things which are not going as well. Okay, thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from Michael Flämig from Börsen-Zeitung. Michael, the line is open.
Hello, Mr. Terzariol and Mr. Klotz. I have two questions, please. One to the outlook, one other to the harvesting. To the outlook, you have quite a way to go to reach the middle point of the new target range, EUR 13.9 billion. What are the factors to be so optimistic in the last quarter in a quite recessionary scenario? The second one, you said you made a lot of harvesting with substantial losses and impairments. Why did you decide to do so? Is it because of the market environment or with a view on the solvency ratio? Thank you.
On the harvesting, you mean there was negative harvesting in Life. This is coming basically just from the IFRS accounting, you know, where when you have the value of the equity holding that you have goes either below 20% compared to the book value or stays below the book value for more than nine months, you need to do a depreciation. That's basically what the IFRS accounting says. This has been driving the majority of the impairment. This was not an active selling equity and realized impairment. Also, in our case, because of the Solvency II, we are keeping some derivative position, which is clearly providing economic hedge.
From an accounting point of view, you get a mismatch. There is also a little bit of an accounting volatility there. No specific decisions, more the consequence of how accounting is applied. As you can imagine, a capital market creates volatility up and down. To a certain view, accounting is going to reflect the volatility. Sometimes accounting can even exacerbate that volatility due to accounting mismatches. Nothing really where we should be concerned about fundamental impairment. The only exception would have been the impairment at the beginning of the year related to Russia. That's the only thing which is really systematic as opposed to pure volatility. On the other question, which was about the outlook, that's the way we see the situation.
In property-casualty, we had a EUR 1.7 billion operating profit. Based on what we see right now, this is something that's definitely repeatable. As always, we don't know what net cat might be doing, but you should keep in mind we have also an aggregate that could give us a protection in case the net cat activity is very pronounced in the course of the next 6 weeks. We know that we have a strong investment income, and also we see that from an underlying combined ratio, we have a good view of what the underlying should be.
Fundamentally, you know, clearly, I'm not saying that we're going to have EUR 1.7 billion of operating profit in P&C, but this is something that's could be a reasonable expectation at this point in time, then we will see. That's number one. On the Life side, I will say the following. First of all, part of the reduction operating profit compared to our expectation is coming from the VA business in the U.S. Technically speaking, this is driven by higher hedging cost. There is a point when the markets are going down, the hedging costs are getting lower. It's a technical issue because the guarantees are, once they go more, they are more in the money, there is less need to hedge.
There is less, I would say, the hedging is less costly. That's basically a consequence of just how the liabilities are working. Also, at the same time, we think that we're going to have some positive unlocking coming from Allianz Life. From that point of view, and also I would say regarding other companies, the majority of the impairment have come through basically in Q1, Q2. Fundamentally, we expect to see better results in Life in the fourth quarter. Then in the case of asset management, yes, the markets are tough. From that point of view, also the assets under management that we have right now are a little bit lower compared to what we had on average in Q3.
On the other side, in Q4, we also get performance fees. Now there is always clearly some uncertainty around the performance fees, but we still expect to get more performance fees compared to what we had in Q3. That's also an element to consider. As you saw, throughout the year, our corporate segment has been much better compared to the outlook that we had. We expect also in fourth quarter, the corporate segment to be better compared to our outlook. Basically, I would say we should expect similar performance in property-casualty, and we would expect to see better performance in asset management and Life in Q4.
Okay, great. Thank you very much.
Welcome.
Thank you, Michael. Our next caller is Sam Casey from Insurance Insider. Sam, your line is open.
Okay. Can you hear me okay?
Yeah.
Could you talk about what impact you think Hurricane Ian might have on the pricing conditions in the commercial market, both in terms of the lines of business you operate in, but also in terms of reinsurance buying too?
No, thank you for the question. First of all, I want to say that for us, Hurricane Ian was not a big event. At the end of the day, we have less than EUR 100 million of impact coming from Hurricane Ian. Coming to your specific question, we know that on the insurance markets right now the market is hard, so we definitely expect to see an increase in premium that we need to pay to our insurance companies. The Hurricane Ian can be just again a confirmation of this trend. I don't think it's going to make a huge difference because we already based on the conversation we were having before Hurricane Ian, we know that price is going up.
Clearly, you know, this can just strengthen, maybe confirm that trend, but I don't think it's going to be a big game changer unless you are completely exposed to that area. That's a different story. For us, we are not really affected by Hurricane Ian, so I don't think it's going to have an impact at all for our conversation with the insurance companies. In some cases it might have an impact. Overall, I will say we are right now in a market where we need to expect that we are going to pay a higher insurance premium for 2023. That's part, by the way, of the way we are also setting our pricing. From that point of view, I don't think we are going to have any surprise.
We have a very clear view of what the condition might be for 2023 at this point in time, plus minus as always some range. Fundamentally, I think we know what we should expect.
Great. Thank you.
Welcome.
Our next question comes from Ben Dyson from S&P Global Market Intelligence. Ben, your line is open. Hello, Ben. Your line is open.
Hello. Can you hear me okay?
Yes, we can.
Okay. Great stuff. Sorry about that. Yeah, I just really wanted to ask about the impacts of inflation really. I mean, we've seen a couple of impacts in the pricing and the results this time around, but I was just wondering if there were any concerns about reserving with relation to inflation and whether that particularly for long tail line you were going to have to increase reserves.
Yes. We don't have major concern in the sense of, first of all, especially, for the time being on the long tail line, we don't see real inflation coming through. Clearly this can change over time, but keep in mind that, for that kind of things, we'll have also inflationary bonds on the other side. They should be potentially an offset. What we do, however, is we are setting specific reserves for inflation in general. This is also for the accident year 2022. From that point of view, we don't have concern because we are taking action anyway, that already in our reserve, which already flowing through the numbers.
When you look at our 94 combined ratio for this quarter, you need to consider that we put into this number a sizable, we'll say, reserve for inflation. From that point of view, you know, we are not just naively thinking that inflation might not have an impact, but this is already included in the numbers. What is also important is, as you see, the premium growth has been substantial. This is premium growth coming from rate changes. That's clearly a nice offset to the inflation, and I can tell you that rate changes are going to accelerate as we go into Q4 and also into next year. From that point of view, we are going to get more rate changes and not less changes.
The third point is we always focus on inflation, but you know, there is a lot of something that we can do on the claims handling too. It's not like you see inflation, you need to consider this one to one as this is going to impact the claim severity. The combination of we are already taking action in making sure that we build reserve for inflation. The fact that we have rate increases which are substantial, the fact that we are going to have even larger rate increases, and the fact that we are taking also action on the things we can control to mitigate the claim severity, they should position us well to be profitable in this environment.
Also keep in mind just in the quarter, we had about 200 million more, 150 million more investment income, 150 to 200 million more investment income compared to our plan. There is also a big offset coming from there. I give you another example. We were thinking that we are going to achieve the mark of 58-59 billion of NPE by 2024. We are already there as of now. This is also clearly, as long as you have a combined ratio, which is way below 100, this is also a positive for the operating profit development of the company.
Okay. Great. Thanks. Sorry, I have a quick follow-on question from Sam's question about reinsurance. Just interested if the price increases that you're expecting on the reinsurance side will prompt any changes to your reinsurance buying strategy and whether you may have to buy less in certain areas.
We are doing some refinement to our strategy, but I would say fundamentally we are not changing, let's say the program. We are doing some changes. If you ask me, sometimes you can get more aggressive on some position, other position you can get more conservative. If you ask me, we are getting more conservative on the amount of program that we are going to purchase. Some tweaking up and down. Fundamentally, a little bit more protection, and we know that we are going to pay a little bit more of a premium. But you can put this also as part of managing the inflation.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Welcome.
Thank you, Ben. Our next question comes from Alexander Hübner from Reuters. Alexander, your line is open.
Yeah. „Vielen Dank." Thank you very much. I have some detailed question. First one on Russia. You had said before that you're expecting the closing of your sale of your Russian business in Q3. Now it's rather Q4 or even Q1 next year. What's happening here? Can you elaborate a bit on that? The second one is on Voya. As far as I remember, you had said that some more than $100 billion in assets under management are affected by that move. Now I'm seeing that it looks like it's only $42 billion or something. What has happened here?
The last question is, Nord Stream, on this incident, the blow up of the pipeline, are you as an insurer involved in this in any kind as an insurer? Thank you very much.
Okay. Thank you for your question. Maybe let's start from the last one. Basically, we have almost no exposure to the Nord Stream, so it's completely immaterial. Let's say the answer is no. We have some exposure, but we are speaking of a very small number. We don't think by the way it's going to materialize, but anyway, we're speaking of a very little number. On the Voya transaction, you need to consider that we have about EUR 61 billion of assets which are still included in our numbers because we are not managing the assets in the sense of basically the investment management is with Voya, but we are administering the funds and also especially we are distributing the funds.
The point is that we are not necessarily getting the same amount of profitability that we were getting before. We are still getting a sizable profitability from that. That's the reason why in reality you need to take the EUR 42 billion, but then you need to add up about 60 billion to come to the EUR 100 billion. For Russia, the point is clearly, you know, you need to go through negotiation and approval processes, and so this can take time. If you want to volunteer for the negotiation with the authority, you know you can do that. As you can imagine, this can take some time, and we are now controlling the process.
Basically the train has left the station, so at the end of the day, just a matter when we are going to get the approval. From our standpoint, there is no second thought. That's basically just going through the process.
Okay. Thank you.
Welcome.
Thank you, Alexander. Our next question comes from Olaf Storbeck from the Financial Times. Olaf, the line is open.
Hello, can you hear me? I'm dialing in from the webcast.
Oh, very good.
Yeah. I also have a question, a follow-up question on Russia. I mean, how likely is there any probability that this whole process might be derailed by kind of the regulatory or the lack of regulatory approval and potentially the fact that you won't get it as it's kind of now dragging on longer already than you expected? Could you maybe also slightly elaborate a bit on what the actual obstacles are, what the issues are that needs to get resolved? Thanks.
Yeah. Okay. I don't think there are any obstacles, just the process of selling companies can take time. That's often the case. You know, sometimes you can take up to one year to sell a company. In this case, if you remember, basically this is something that is coming from April, May, and this is even a more special situation. It's not unusual that it can take a long time to get to a transaction. Think about when we did a transaction in Poland, it was February or March, and we ended up closing the transaction in November. You can imagine that was a little bit easier compared to closing down this one. It's not unexpected that it can take up to one year. To your question, whether there is a likelihood, I'd...
You never know in life, but I would say this is not our working hypothesis that we might have a problem. There is nothing really unusual. It can take really up to one year. It's still something normal. If you go beyond a year, then I would say this becomes a little bit unusual. A time of one year approval is not unusual at all.
Okay. Thanks.
Welcome.
Thank you, Olaf. Our next question comes from Julie Steinberg from The Wall Street Journal. Julie, the line is open.
Hi. Thanks for this. I wanted to follow up about PIMCO outflows and see if you can elaborate a little bit more and your outlook as rates continue rising?
Sorry, can you repeat the question because that was PIMCO outflows, and then what did you say?
Sure.
Yeah.
Yes, if you can elaborate on the PIMCO outflows and then give us your outlook as rates rise.
Okay. Besides from the PIMCO outflows, yeah, what we see right now is clearly a reflection of the uncertainty. You know, think about that. If you are a bond investor or somebody who wants to invest in potentially in bonds, or then clearly you're going to expect for the right timing because right now you might say rates are going to go up, so I stay a little bit on the sideline. From that point of view it's not unusual. You know, we see the rate volatility is very high right now. We see this in our Solvency II model. That rate volatility was like 50 basis points at the beginning of the year.
Now we're speaking of, I believe something which is much higher, which is closer to 90 basis points, just to give you an idea. There is a lot of uncertainty right there regarding rates. Once this uncertainty is going to go away, and this is going to go away once there is no more conversation about whether central banks are going to raise rates or not, then at that point in time we're going to see flows coming back. I believe we are not just going to see flows coming back, we're going to see strong flows coming back. You have also to consider that the accretion of the assets under management is much stronger. It's going to be much stronger.
Fundamentally, sure, right now we are seeing the downside of this changing rates, but eventually we are going to see the upside. What is also important to notice, PIMCO had just this EUR 100 million of operating profit. They had one point eight billion of operating profit. The profitability of the company is very, very strong. We are speaking of EUR 1.8 billion of operating profit for nine months. I would say once the stability comes back, we will see a lot of growth coming starting from a very strong level. About rates expectation, I am not. You know, nobody can really predict what is going to happen to rates.
I believe that central banks have to walk a fine line because they have already increased rates significantly, and there is a point where additional rate increases can really harm the economy. On the other side, clearly they need to keep inflation under control. I would say they need to walk a fine line, future rate increases might be less sustained compared to what we saw so far. If you ask me, but that's just a personal opinion, I believe that by the Q1, Q2 next year, we are going to have better clarity and more stability coming to the system. Honestly speaking, nobody really knows, so that's just my personal view.
Got it. Thanks very much.
Welcome.
Thank you, Julie. Our next question comes from Stephan Kahl from Bloomberg. Stephan, the line is open.
Yes. Hello to everyone. I just have one last remaining question. Can you give us a better sense of, you know, what the net effect is from actually transferring those AGI US assets to Voya? On the one hand, you have this one-time positive effect that you booked last quarter or for the third quarter, the EUR 500 million, and then you also have restructuring costs. I think those stretch over, like, a number of quarters. But what is actually the net result of all of this? What will you gain from actually transferring the assets to Voya?
Okay. No, I understand your question. Yes, the restructuring cost that we encounter of a little bit more than EUR 150 million. You need to tax effect that. I would say that, you know, you could take the EUR 300 million gain because the number you quoted, you know, we. But let's take the EUR 500 million because that's fair enough, and then you should run against that number, I would say after tax, about EUR 150 million of restructuring, because we're still going to see some restructuring moving forward. That would be a good representation of, if you want the one-off impacts due to the gain and also the restructuring that we are incurring from, for the transfer. That could be a good representation.
Did I get it right? The net effect would be something like EUR 300 million.
Yes. Something like that. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Thank you very much.
Welcome.
Thank you, Stephan Kahl. For now, our last question comes from Jean-Philippe Lacour from AFP. Jean-Philippe, the line is open.
Yes. Hello. I have two and a half question, if I may. So, the previous question addressed to PIMCO and the withdrawals related to the interest rates, you would have the same answer for Allianz GI, I presume. Maybe you can just confirm this. Secondly, how do you explain that euro and yen had such a slight impact on your accounts when we speak of insured loss of about up to $40 billion alone for Florida, according to Fitch. This third question may be beyond this call, but we have recently seen acts of slight vandalism on works of art by climate activists. I'm wondering if that generates new reflections on the level of insurance of this kind of works. You're already insuring, but okay, you have enough for.
You have seen maybe new customers contacting you about ensuring this kind of works of art or any other works you could be a target of these activists. Thank you for these answers.
No, thank you for your question. The last one, I'm not aware of anything, so we might double-check, but at least it didn't come to my attention. On the Hurricane Ian, the point is our business profile is not so much pronounced in over there in Florida, but also, we have a reinsurance program. You know, a lot of our business there is specifically reinsured, so this explains why the loss for us is less compared to others. Business profile, but also a lot of the exposure there is reinsured. On the question regarding PIMCO and AGI. Yes, what I say for PIMCO is also true for AGI, but we need to keep in mind AGI is a little bit of a different business profile.
As PIMCO is definitely a little bit more exposed to the positives and negatives of rate swings. This applies anyway clearly also to AGI, but to a little bit less degree. In general, you know, if you speak about asset management, and I'm not just speaking for Allianz, I can speak also for the sector. Really in a situation like 2022, you are going to see flows going down, but eventually, you know, investors will come back. That's fundamentally true, which is relevant for all kind of asset managers.
Thank you.
Welcome.
Thank you, Jean-Philippe. There are right now no further questions in the line. Last possibility, press talk request if you want to place another question or star five on your telephone.