Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Allianz's full year and fourth quarter 2024 media conference call. Thank you for joining us today. My name is Frank Stoffel, Head of Financial Communications and Valuation Relations, and I'm here at our headquarters in Munich with our Chief Executive Officer, Oliver Bäte, our Chief Financial Officer, Claire-Marie Coste-Lepoutre, and our Group Head of Communications, Lauren Day. Today's conference call is scheduled for 75 minutes, and as usual, we will answer your questions following our presentations. With this, it is my pleasure to hand over to our CEO, Mr. Oliver Bäte.
Yeah, good morning, everyone. Thank you for your interest. Cheers from cloudy Munich and a pretty volatile stock market today, so we hope to create some optimism for all of the traders that are worried about the world and in NVIDIA and all the U.S. stocks. Allianz has had a record year 2024 again. We've had a fourth quarter that topped all numbers that we've ever produced in a single quarter, certainly in the fourth one, so we're very happy where we are, and we look into the future with confidence. Now, some of you will later ask, and therefore, how is your outlook to be interpreted, so we certainly get to the mechanics of that in a second, but before that, let me just share with you some of the highlights of the year before Claire-Marie takes you through the details.
On page A4, I'm going to mention all the pages that we go through. We are highlighting the key figures for the year that was just passed. We had an outstanding year again, more than EUR 180 billion in revenues, double-digit growth in that, 9% growth in operating profit to EUR 16 billion, EUR 10 billion in core shareholder net income, another double-digit growth, dividend per share growing even stronger at 12% with a proposed dividend per share of EUR 15.4, makes us one of the top dividend payers in the world, and a very strong solvency ratio where sensitivities have been much lower and are now much lower than they have been before. That's a very important thing to remember at this point. Claire-Marie will talk about it. It's not about the height at the level of solvency.
It's also about the sensitivity of the solvency number after shocks, and that level is much better than what it's been for many years. And our return on core equity is, sorry, the core return on equity, that's the more precise way to put it, is at 16.9%, up 80 basis points, and clearly at an all-time high. We have therefore ventured to call a EUR 2 billion share buyback yesterday after closing of the market because the position of the company is so strong that we can already do that at the beginning of the year, and that confirms our commitment beyond dividend, the EUR 6 billion that we have, almost EUR 6 billion that we have, to the very high level of capital repatriations that we have been proposing and envisaging at the Capital Markets Day. So it's fully consistent with what we have said.
Page A5 is an interesting picture, I personally think, if you look over the last 10 years, because we don't run Allianz from quarter to quarter. We need to think about decades as we run the company. We've been moving from EUR 125 billion- EUR 180 billion. So that's significantly ahead of what was seen to be very ambitious targets in 2021 with EUR 160 billion operating profit, clearly beating the 14.5 plus as a target from in 2021. And we've also gotten to a very ambitious target of EUR 25 earnings per share that we outlined in 2021. So despite the aftereffects of COVID, massive spike in inflation, rates up, lots of volatility, delivery has been very strong, which again allows us to increase the growth in dividends per share by 12.6% relative to the 2021 baseline that we had for our third.
Very nice to see in many of these KPIs, growth dynamics have clearly accelerated, and we'd like to keep it that way. Financials are an outcome. They are an outcome of a strong enterprise. What we typically look at is how customers think about us because they drive our success together with our employees. On page A6, you see the numbers for Net Promoter Score, brand strength in employee satisfaction. On employee satisfaction, we have now developed into the industry benchmark, both in terms of employee motivation and Work Well, and that's reflected in many awards that we're getting. We're going to stay there because only with outstanding people you can offer great customer service, design great products, and run a successful enterprise. Very happy. You would say critically, what happened to Net Promoter Score is slightly down from the year prior.
We have to acknowledge that because of the required strong premium increases due to much higher average claims, customers are very concerned and they're not happy. So despite massive investments in brand, in products, and customer service, we saw in one or two large entities inside of Allianz a dip from loyalty leadership outperforming slightly down. We're taking it very seriously, as by the way, it tells you that the numbers are actually analytics and not bullshit. Sorry for my French. But it's really important that we make sure we keep on growing the performance, and we have ambitious plans to do that. Again, only customers that trust us are going to recommend our products to their families and friends and will make us grow, and that remains the objective. Page A7 gives you another very important insight into what drives Allianz success.
It's the current way how we split the business between Property-C asualty, Life/H ealth, and Asset Management and highlights some of the various elements. We've seen a lot of growth in all of the segments from the customer side, improvements in business margin and productivity, and making sure that we get the proper rate for the risks that we take. So all segments have been growing profits systematically. And it's very important to see this is not a comparison to the prior year, but a six-year horizon that we've actually taken in order to show what has happened from the year before COVID, because that's sort of the baseline today. And it shows that through COVID, we've been growing earnings. And I hope that not just in property, casualty, and life, but also in Asset Management, we can accelerate the growth in earnings going forward.
Now, page 8 gives you an overview of the strong engine we have in property casualty. It highlights the excellent growth momentum that we've had, and we have separated that for commercial and retail. You see that in both segments, double-digit growth. You see the strong profitability in both areas, retail and commercial. Don't forget that we've had a super cycle, a positive one in commercial. A lot of performance pressure in retail fleets and SME. And even despite the high inflation, we're doing it really well, reestablishing ourselves as the number one property casualty insurer globally. Therefore, we're looking forward to strong ambitions around EUR 9.5 billion operating profit for 2027 that requires us also to grow revenues approximately between 6% and 7% per year. Page 9 takes a similar look at the Life and Health business.
Double-digit growth in the value of new business, stunning 18% at very healthy 5.7% new business margin. We believe in difference to others that gave up on this industry over the last few years and saying life insurance is something we can only do maybe as protection. There is unabated and growing demand for retirement wealth management solutions. We've completely redone our product suite to offer both great value to consumer and to shareholders. That success story is going to be continued. I think many people do not have that on their radar screen yet, and it comes from an optimized split between what we do in health and protection and in unit-linked products that have some sort of a guarantee, and that journey has been on for a decade now and is showing its result.
Now, on top of that, we are very conscious of the capital efficiency in our business, particularly in the United States, as we announced in the fall another innovation with Concert Re, where we now have a scalable, not just in force, but net what we call new flow reinsurance solution. It was the first, and there is going to be more of these types of structures to come. The first initial capital release will be $500 million, but we expect more of these structures to come in order to grow earnings and cash distribution, but not increase the capital consumption over time for capital-intensive businesses. So the target is to get to approximately EUR 6 billion in operating profit by 2027. And that means operating profit growth from unit linked and protection has to be around 7%.
Now, for those of you that are quick with numbers, you say, shouldn't we be much higher in terms of operating profits? You may be aware of that most likely this year we're going to lose the operating profits and revenues from the joint venture we have had successfully over many, many years with UniCredit in Italy. So that takes the operating profit a little bit down just to explain the EUR 6 billion number that you're having on page A9. Let me turn to page A10, Asset Management. We've had very strong inflows last year. Remember, most flows in Asset Management have been going into sort of low-cost or standardized index solutions. It's not true for Allianz. We have seen third-party net inflows almost quadruple, and that's really important. And we have reached EUR 1.92 trillion in terms of AUMs.
The operating outlook, if you adjust for the volatility in the performance fees, so the underlying earnings growth was 11%, so much more than the 4% that you see because we need to see and acknowledge that performance fee realization is pretty lumpy. We had significant ones in 2023. We had significantly less in 2024. And it is also driven by very strong continuous focus on productivity. Cost-to-income ratio at 61.1% is outstanding for the business mix that we have. So ambitions are to get about EUR 4 billion in operating profit by 2027, acknowledging potential volatility in the market. Some may think that this is highly conservative, but we are aware that we have lots of geopolitical volatility that may translate in market volatility. So this is what forms our outlook.
We're expecting about an 8% third-party AUM geometric growth rates, again, all due to the strong performance of both pillars. We have a fundamental belief, and let me turn, please, ladies and gentlemen, to page number 11. Our value proposition that we spend a lot of time developing through the years 2017, 2018, and 2019, just before COVID, that we want to be the trusted partners for protecting and growing the most valuable assets our clients that have, that may be actually their families and their health, is more important today than it's ever been. On this page, you see the most successful advertising campaign this country, by the way, has ever seen. We believe that hopefully Allianz Insurance or Hoffentlich Allianz versichert is today more relevant than ever. Now, why is that?
Because we are not ignorant of the perma-crisis elements around us, whether that is countries and societies polarizing, cold and hot wars, resurfacing climate change, really accelerating demographic change, having enormous costs with aging societies on our social systems that will become undefendable at some point, and technology adding a lot of disruption to our lives, not least through cyber threats and social media abuse. So we feel that in this environment, our societies, our clients will turn increasingly to strong institutions like Allianz. That's why we believe we can grow faster than the underlying economies grow that we operate in. Now, let's get a little bit more specific. We don't have the time today for a deep strategy debate. We did it as part of the capital markets. I'd like you to, if you have the time and the interest to go back to those things.
We've been trying to be very concrete. We believe we have huge opportunities from two sources. In general, the protection gaps in our societies widening and the retirements opportunities fast, growing very fast, drew a number of fundamental drivers, whether it's under protection of our properties and assets, the multiplication of new risks like cyber and NatCat. We've been talking about it. And certainly not least, spiraling healthcare costs that in many countries look like they're out of control. And we have many opportunities to help our societies and our clients to deal with these trends. The same is true for the retirement side. In an environment where governments have always an interest to artificially keep interest rates low in order to keep their debt burden to be manageable, our clients need higher risk-adjusted return solutions. We are working very hard to make them available.
The same is to fund underfunded pensions in a way that is sustainable and helping our clients with the acceleration of general wealth transfer that is going to happen over the next 10 to 20 years as the baby boomers, me included, are starting to retire. So opportunities abound. We need to capture them through this one value position, what we will in the future call two world-class businesses, protection and retirement, and a number of value accelerators that I'd like to spend a few minutes talking about. The most important transformation that we have been undergoing, and that's far from being completed, to move from a world-class product and product service provider to more a holistic view and service to customers. As we embarked, we have really done it first customer and process-focused.
It's now high time to integrate it across products and services into value propositions for consumer segments, and we are going to drive them through three things: smarter growth that we believe we can capture organically, first and foremost, in particular through better work on customer retention, not just outstanding acquisition, reinforcing the productivity journey that we've been on for a number of years to make our products much simpler, where they can be simpler and much better in terms of service, where we can invest in service quality and strengthen the resilience of the institutions far beyond financial KPIs that are already good, but organizationally, because shocks will come to the system and they will come to societies, and we need to be resilient in light of them. Let me give you a little bit of detail by turning to page A14.
Here, we would like to show you how we plan to uplift growth over the next three years by winning more new customers, increasing cross-selling, and reducing churn that we all say on a net basis of 0.5 percentage points. You will say, "Well, that's not a lot." In fact, in order to achieve that, let me show you on the left-hand side what is really required and how does this change. When you go back to the years 2017 and 2019 pre-inflation, underlying dynamics on price were 2%. It has increased to 7% due to high inflation 2021 to 2024. And in terms of going forward, we want to balance that much more strongly with growing the volume side of things, actually doubling the growth from volume over the next three years. So that's quite something, even though the numbers may look small at prima facie.
Now, productivity has been a success story for Allianz since the year 2018, where we reached 28.7% at the time. We've been bringing down the expense ratio on P&C by four full percentage points until 2024. That on average means 30 basis points per year down. And we will not stop here. We will continuously drive the ambition that's by our business on average 30-40 basis points going forward through continued simplification process, digitization, and particularly trying to scale things across borders. Still something we're wrestling with because of the legacy in IT. Many, many, many decommissioning programs are paying into the equation now. Most of the retirements will happen this and next year within Allianz. We will also then amplify further the impact of GenAI and other elements. They, for the first time, allow us to do things differently.
As a reminder, digitization in Allianz was in insurance, by the way, was often hindered by the lack of the ability to process unstructured data with a new large language model. That's, for the first time in our history, profitable. And it's not just an issue, ladies and gentlemen, for cost. It will also drive the productivity up on the loss ratio side through better prevention, claims management, and value-added services, which are the key differentiator we believe we can offer. Now, resilience, last but certainly not least, there's many things to talk about. I'd like to turn your attention to the right-hand side of page A16. What you see here is relative to the prior year per year end, not just the solvency ratio, but the sensitivity of the solvency ratio to shocks. Look at the combined stress test in the third row from the bottom.
It basically shows that we are improving our resilience to stark shocks, and that is something we're going to go and do more of. Therefore, with a view on page A17, ladies and gentlemen, we are increasing our ambitions on the financials and on the health indicators, whether that is around three-year EPS growth from 5-7 to 7-9. This is just restating the numbers from the CMD, operating capital generation, return on equity. You say, "Well, you're already there with 16.9." Again, it is going to be an interesting time to work through and making sure we honor a minimum 75% payout on register. That's already we've proven today and yesterday evening. On the customer satisfaction side, we need to continue our journey to have 60% of businesses as the new baseline, and we are doubling down our efforts to achieve that.
Last but not least, you will say, "What the number on IMIX is flat." Once you are the industry benchmark, it's very hard to push it. It doesn't mean we don't have anything to do, but it's no more around raising the number, but working on leadership and keeping working on diversity and other items that make us strong. With that, that's the overview. We are turning our page to page 18, where people believe we are. Some of the commentators today said we are very conservative. If you want to see a mechanical view on how we think about that, it's literally a tradition in Allianz where we take the last year full result, the EUR 16 billion as the base for the next year with a low and a high. Of course, this may look conservative, but we are operating into a difficult environment.
And let's not forget that number is 8% higher than the outlook of last year. So, of course, we are a very ambitious management team. We have very ambitious employees, and we're trying to beat your expectations. And with that, I'm handing over to Claire-Marie. Thank you very much for listening.
Thank you very much, Oliver. Good morning, everybody. So, as mentioned already by Oliver, we have achieved in 2024 a very strong performance, and we have reached record results on multiple dimensions from our Life and Health business volume to operating profit to net income or ROE, now standing at almost 17%. More fundamentally, what I think is that those results demonstrate two things for me. First of all, our ability to navigate a complex environment, tapping into the resilience of our business model. And secondly, our constant focus on value creations for all stakeholders.
Let me now go into more details on page B3, where you can see starting with group results that our total business volume is at EUR 180 billion, which is up 12%, and here, basically, all segments are contributing. Similarly, on the OP side, we are at EUR 16 billion, which is up 9%, and as well here, all segments are contributing to this performance. What I also think is very pleasant to see in our set of numbers is that our translation from operating profit to our record level of core net income at EUR 10 billion is very clean, and this is basically leading us to a core EPS of EUR 25.42, which is up 12% compared to 2023. On the P&C side, you can see a high level of growth and a record level of operating profit.
On the Life and Health, a strong demand for our product at a high level of new business margin, which is leading us to a record value of new business, which is up 18% compared to last year. On the Asset Management, you can see that our third-party net flows are at four times the level of 2023 at EUR 85 billion, which together with a strong focus we have had on expense management and the good margin we have maintained on our asset and our management is leading to an operating profit, which is up at EUR 3.2 billion for the Asset Management segment. Let me go to our fourth quarter on a standalone basis on page B5.
I think that the fourth quarter is very strong results and is demonstrating also the very strong momentum we have in our business that we have seen in the previous three quarters as well. On the group results, you can see the very high level of total business volume, which is up 16% compared to last year. You can see as well that this growth is stemming from all three segments. Our operating profit is at EUR 4.2 billion, which is high. By the way, this is the strongest quarter we have had for the year. This is as well a record operating profit level in a quarter for the Allianz Group ever. We have achieved this result with almost zero runoff on the P&C side and also a much lower level of performance fees versus last year on the Asset Management side.
Clearly, very strong performance in the quarter. On the P&C side, you can see our high level of growth, which is at 11%. That's as well our highest level of growth in a quarter for the year. And within that 11%, we have seen 5% of volume growth. Our combined ratio is at 94.7, which is higher compared to what we have seen in the previous quarter. That's entirely linked to the very low level of runoff that you can see at -0.4%, which is linked to the fact that we had such a strong performance on the investment result side and also on the attritional development that we are very positive that we use that as an opportunity to do some tactical reinforcement of our balance sheet.
This is overall leading us to a very strong operating profit for the quarter, which is up by more than 20% compared to last year. If I move to the Life and Health side, you can see as well a very high level of growth that is fully in line with the high level of growth we have already seen in the third quarter. This growth is of strong quality. Our new business margin is at 5.5, and this is leading us to a value of new business, which is up 17% compared to last year for the fourth quarter. On the Asset Management side, you can see as well our positive revenue growth, which is growing despite the lower level of performance fees compared to last year. Actually, last year was at the high end of what we traditionally see in terms of performance fees.
We have seen as well 17 billion of positive net flows on the third-party side, which have been stemming from both PIMCO and AGI. And this is leading us to an operating profit that is at a good level of more than EUR 940 million, which basically means if you look overall at this fourth quarter, it's a very strong base on which we can build as we move towards 2025. Let me move to our solvency ratio on page B7. So here you can see that our solvency ratio is up 3 percentage points compared to last year. As mentioned by Oliver, across the board, our sensitivities have reduced compared to 2023.
And as well, what I find very interesting is that if you compare our combined stress test, which basically brings a number of negative assumptions to the table, this one has halved compared to 2021, which basically means that after this strong shock, now our solvency ratio emerged above 180%, which is within our comfort zone. So clearly, it's a very strong indicator of the quality of the increased resilience of the Allianz Group. If you move to page B9, here you can see the full development of our solvency ratio during the year. You can see that we have a 20 percentage points of operating capital generation after tax, which is entirely in line with our expectations.
Actually, you cannot see that on the page, but if you look really macro, what has happened to our solvency ratio. We have generated this 20 percentage point, and actually we have paid out 17 percentage points under the shape or form of dividend and share buyback back to our shareholder. That basically is explaining the macro movement of the plus 3 percentage point of our solvency ratio. Our capital generation clearly will continue to be a focus for 2025. We will be working both on our earnings and on our capital consumption. For 2025, I expect at least 20 percentage points of operating capital generation. We are as well executing towards the 24-25 percentage point organic capital generation we have set as an ambition for ourselves as part of the Capital Market Day. Let's move to P&C on page B11.
Here you can see the strong level of growth of 8% we have seen during the year, which is across the portfolio mainly. Clearly, some of that growth has been supported by our hyperinflation country. If you look within the underlying, you will see that this 8% is made of both rates and volume and fees. Rates is 6% within that level. And if you were to compare quarter after quarter, actually you will see as well already as indicated by Oliver in his macro view that the rate momentums have been decreasing in the second half of the year, mainly fueled by UK and the AGCS. And we have seen some volume picking up. Full year, when you look at the line of business that you cannot see on this page, actually we have seen our highest level of growth in motor retail above 11%.
We have seen as well our MidCorp business growing also above 11%, which is a clear indication as well that our focus that we have given to us on the MidCorp business as part of our commercial strategy is actually also showing up into the numbers. On that page, you can clearly see that the growth is well spread across our flagship OEs. You can see that when you look at Germany, France, Italy. You can also see that when you look at Australia as an example. So Australia, just to give you a sense on how this growth is generated, Australia has been investing into new technologies, so new platform plugged to the brokers as an example that is very successful, award-winning, and is also contributing strongly to this high growth as an example. AGCS is down.
That's mainly related to the fact that in the current environment with rates going down, we are focusing our underwriting on our preferred line of business, and we have done some tactical reductions on financial lines and cyber mainly. On Partners, which I think is interesting because the growth here is at 3%, what we have seen is made of two parts during the year. First part of the year, we had to do some adjustments to our portfolios in particular, given the high effect of the inflation on the health side, but second half of the year, we have seen a lot of growth, and in particular, the fourth quarter has been very strong with 14% growth stemming up into the Partners' business. If I go to page B13, you can see that our operating profit is up 14%.
That's driven by both our insurance service results, so the quality of our underwriting, and the investment results as well. If you look to the year-on-year development of our insurance service result, it has been improving by 16%, and it's made of two components. The first one is the growth of our revenues, which you can see at the bottom right-hand side of that page, which has been growing by 8%. So we are earning the benefit of the growth into the operating profit. And the second one is the margin expansion as our combined ratio is improving and is emerging at 93.4%, which is at the lower end of our outlook range for the year. Clearly, what you can see in the development of the combined ratio is a split. We have seen positive improvement in the expense ratio as we are earning the productivity actions.
We see as well that our undiscounted attritional loss ratio has improved a bit. You had some negative effect of the New Caledonia and the Arch transaction into that one. So our undiscounted attritional loss ratio normalized is more at 71% to 71.5%, which is in line with our expectations. You can see slightly lower level of discounting, lower level of natural catastrophes at 2.4% for the year, which is lower compared to last year, and clearly a good result to achieve because if you look at the overall insurance market, the year has been emerging with a cat load, which is above the five-year average. For us, it's below. And clearly, you can see as well our lower level of runoff mirroring the lower level of natural catastrophes.
If I go to page B15, which is a very good page from my perspective, clearly highlighting the overall quality and the breadth of our portfolio. Here you can see as an example for the UK or for Australia, clearly the improvement in the numbers which are coming through as an effect of all the actions that the teams have taken there. You can see Germany also emerging with an operating profit growing by more than 17% or almost 18% despite the high level of natural catastrophes we have seen in the second quarter. You can see as well Italy, Central Europe, or Switzerland still with excellent level of combined ratio close to 90% or below 90%. AGCS has an operating profit that is down, mainly impacted by the runoff and the higher cat we have seen there.
On Allianz Partners' side, we see good, very nice growth of the operating profit by more than almost 11% and emerging fully in line with our Capital Market Day expectations. Let's move to page B17 and have a look at the investment results, which are very good, up 10%. We have seen on the interest and similar income EUR 5 billion of results, which is above our outlook. That's basically mainly linked to the fact that the rates have been more supportive this year, and we have also seen a bit of positive effect coming from the hyperinflation countries. Our interest accretion, which is basically us paying for the discounting of the year 2023, is fully in line with our expectation.
I think as well that for 2025, we will see slightly lower level of investment results as we expect a higher level of interest accretion as we have to pay for the discounting we have seen in 2024, and I also expect lower interest and similar income due to the fact that rates move slightly down, and also we expect lower level of support from the hyperinflation country, so let me recap on P&C. We are clearly well positioned for 2025 as we are going to build on 2024. In retail, we see growth in a supportive rate environment. In commercial, clearly the situation is to be a bit nuanced by entities, but the level of rates gives room for focused growth and also for tapping into some of our distinctive features like we have on the side of Partners. Let's move to page B19 on the life side.
Clearly, an excellent page where you can see the high quality and the breadth of the growth momentum on the Life and Health side. Our PVNBP is up 22% compared to last year, and we see this double-digit growth across the portfolio, which is clearly highlighting the demand for our product. Maybe what is also very pleasing to see is the German health PVNBP development that is almost at 35%, which is fueled by, as mentioned by Oliver, by the fact that we have revisited our products and we are offering high value for money and high customer service to our clients, which is also recognized in a recent press article on the topic. So overall, double-digit growth across the portfolio. This growth is of high quality. We have an excellent new business margin for the year, and we are growing in our preferred line of business.
This is leading us to a value of new business of EUR 4.7 billion, which is up almost 18% compared to last year. If I go to page B21, you can see as well that this high value of new business is translating itself into a high normalized CSM growth for the year at 6%, which is above our expected range, which is between 4% and 5%. What is also pleasant to see, if you look at the work in more detail, is that we have a very low level of variances for the year, which is basically at 0.4% of the CSM level. And this includes as well the update we have performed when it comes to the lapse assumptions into our business.
Our CSM release is in line with our expectations, and as previous quarter, our sensitivities are very moderate and basically almost unchanged compared to the third quarter. Moving to page B23, you can see that from the CSM release to the operating profit, there is still a little bit of noise associated to IFRS 17/9, but overall, we emerge with an operating profit of EUR 5.5 billion, which is also well above our midpoint outlook. On the right-hand side, our operating profit by operating entities is also developing very well.
You can see that the operating profit for Allianz Leben in Germany is basically plus 10%. The U.S. is slightly down, but that's linked to a technical effect. If you correct for this one, this is up by a bit more than 6%. But what I find very interesting when you look at this pie chart is the fact that 60% of our operating profit is stemming from the other operating entities, which is clearly demonstrating the quality of the portfolio.
Those entities have been growing operating profit by 7% year on year, and they have also been growing their value of new business by more than 18%. Let me summarize on Life and Health. Our results are very strong across the portfolio. We have seen a high level of growth, which certainly is a bit difficult to fully replicate going forward as we have seen some specific support into those numbers, but we see a strong momentum for our product. This growth is of high quality and is translating itself into a strong CSM growth, which will clearly support well our future profitability and create confidence for 2025. Let me move to page B25, looking at the Asset Management. Here you can see that our third-party assets under management are up 12% year on year, and this is stemming from positive development at our two asset managers.
In terms of net flows, you can see almost EUR 85 billion of net flows on PIMCO side, which is coming at EUR 82 billion from the fixed income side, which is maintaining PIMCO very clearly in the leading position in fixed income active market. We have seen as well on PIMCO side, EUR 4 billion of alternative inflows, which is also in line with our Capital Market Day communication. Now, the alternatives and the private credit platforms stand at almost more than $200 billion of assets under management on PIMCO side. On the AGI side, we have seen as well positive inflows in multi-assets and alternatives, mainly on infrastructure and real asset debt, which has been offset by some outflows in equity and two large fixed income mandates with low margins I mentioned already in the third quarter.
If I move to page B27 and you look at the revenues on the Asset Management side, they are up 3% despite a lower level of performance fees I have already mentioned. If you look at the revenues, which are linked to the asset under management, they are up 7%, and this is due to both the fact that the asset under management did develop positively, but also the fact that our both asset managers are doing a very good job at maintaining a solid margin level, which is not a given, I think, in the Asset Management industry. A good example of that, if you go into the PIMCO portfolio, is that today, as part of this stable margin development, we have the alternative business, which are now contributing to more than 20% of the revenues of PIMCO.
If you go to page B29 and we look at the operating profit development, you can see that our operating profit is at EUR 3.2 billion for the year, which is slightly above our guidance. Our operating profit, excluding performance fees, is up by more than 10% in 2024, and clearly, this performance has been supported by the strong focus that both PIMCO and AGI do have on productivity, so they are clearly leveraging new technologies both on the front end and on the back end to work on their cost income ratio, which is now emerging close to 61%, which is in line with our guidance. Just to give you a sense as well, if you were to remove the performance fees effect into that one and you do a fair comparison year on year, actually the cost income ratio of the group has improved by 150 basis points.
It means it's a lot of work in the underlying. Overall, both our asset managers are coming with strong contribution in 2024, and we have seen positive inflows at both PIMCO and AGI during the year. This momentum of inflows has been continuing in January, which clearly positioned us well for 2025. Let me skip page B31 and let's go directly to the remittances on page B33, where you can see that we emerge with a level of remittances at EUR 8.1 billion, which is a very healthy level close to 2023. We have a high level of net remittance ratio, which is above 90%, and that's clearly demonstrating the ongoing discipline that we have within the organization at managing our upstreams across the group.
The number is slightly lower compared to last year because we had less excess capital upstream compared to 2023, which basically means that our underlying remittances are higher for 2024 compared to 2023. If I go to page B35, from our EUR 16 billion of operating profit to the EUR 10 billion of shareholder net income, the line items are very straightforward. We see a lower level of non-operating profit items in 2024, and we have a tax rate which is at 25%, fully in line with our expectations, but higher compared to 2023. These allow us to generate a core EPS of EUR 25.42, which is up by more than 12% versus 2023. So clearly, we are very proud of this double-digit growth contribution in terms of value creation to our shareholders.
This came with a lot of work from all our employees, so I clearly want to extend a very, very warm thank you to all of them for the work and for the delivery in 2024. Let me move to the outlook on page B37, where already, as mentioned by Oliver, we are keeping our mechanical approach of setting our outlook in line with the previous year delivery. We are as well keeping a certain level of conservatism when it comes to the assumptions we are using to base our outlook, which I think is important to do. What is it that I expect in each and every segment? Maybe to give you a sense. In P&C, I expect to see growth. I expect as well to see an underlying improvement in terms of profitability, both from the attritional and from the expense ratio.
I expect as well to see a bit of a lower level of investment results, as I was already mentioning. On the Life and Health side, I expect to earn the CSM, also a slightly lower level of investment results, and as well, I allow for the deconsolidation effect of UniCredit Vita, as already mentioned by Oliver. On the Asset Management side, as it's always the case, we never make any market assumption and any assumption either related to the timing of the performance fees, so I just take into account the higher starting point of asset under management at this point in time. Clearly, our commitments from the Capital Market Day in December are unchanged, and the share buyback we have announced today will support our EPS trajectory, and it's a very clear sign of confidence as we move into 2025, so let me conclude on page B39.
The group had a very strong year in 2024 with record results on many dimensions. Those results demonstrate our ability to consistently deliver value in a complex environment. During the Capital Market Day in December, we set for ourselves ambitious targets. And as you can see on this page, and as you have heard from me when going through the numbers and as well from Oliver, our performance in 2024 gives us confidence on our ability to deliver against that ambition. And with that, I hand over back to you, Frank, for Q&A.
Thank you very much, Claire-Marie. Let's come to the Q&A session now. Before we start Q&A, please let me mention the usual housekeeping items. We will answer all questions in English, but if you're more comfortable to ask a question in German, please feel free to do so, and we will repeat it back in English for everyone else on the call to understand. If you want to ask a question during the Q&A session, press the talk request button on the web audio call or star five if you have joined via telephone. If you are on IP-based telephone, this may cause technical problems for you.
If this is the case, please email media.contact@allianz.com, and we can assist you with your setup, or we can take your question and ask it on your behalf. The first question of today comes from Alexander Hübner, Reuters. Alexander, your line is open. Alexander? Okay, Alex, we can't hear you. Can you please either dial in again or send us your question on media.contact@allianz.com? Next question, or first question, comes from Michael Flämig from Börsen-Zeitung. Michael, your line is open.
Thank you very much. Here's Michael Flämig from Börsen-Zeitung. I have two questions, please. Mr. Bäte and Mrs. Coste-Lepoutre, you emphasized the resilience that Allianz needs in these turbulent times. What else can Allianz do to increase this resilience? And the second one, Mr. Merz is currently receiving a lot of advice. What is your greatest wish for a future federal government? Thank you very much.
So maybe I start with the first question, and then I hand over back to Oliver for the second one. So on the resilience side, the way we are looking at it is very comprehensively, right? So we have a holistic way of looking at resilience, and we continue working structurally along those four dimensions, I will say. The first one is clearly around earnings volatility.
So the way we are looking at it is working on our portfolio management, on which there is always things to do, I will say. And clearly, as well, cycle management, which is a very important aspect of addressing our earnings volatility. The second one is around the way we are thinking about risk management purely, I will say. And here, I think we always try to be healthy schizophrenic, which is a very important way to look at the way we are operating the business overall. So we look at our accumulation, we look at our tail risk, and in the current environment, you need to stress test with many more different types of scenarios compared to what you may have to constantly challenge yourself, I would say. And then we also secure a very strong reinsurance program, which is a very important way of protecting also ourselves.
Then we always look at having a strong balance sheet. And also clearly, what we have done in the fourth quarter on the P&C side is going into that direction. So it's really securing a high level of reserves or a high level of good quality of your reserves. Also having a high-quality portfolio on the investment side that is well-diversified, of high quality, and also securing liquidity, which is also a very important dimension. Also, we mentioned in the Capital Market Day, right, that we constantly have some things that we put aside in order for us to be able to operate also if, as an example, something very important would happen or if markets would be closed, as an example.
The last dimension, which is super important for me as well when it comes to resilience, is around compliance and regulatory dimension, but as well around speak-up culture and the fact that we want everybody to feel accountable for the company and to own the company. That's a very important dimension in terms of culture within the Allianz Group as well. Those are the four dimensions we are structurally working on when it comes to resilience.
I keep this question on Mr. Merz very short. He's getting a lot of advice. I'm not sure he wants some additional ones from us, but the most important thing is that we get actual improvements on the competitiveness of the country and the trust of the working class, not of the non-working class, but of the working class into our governments, which means you have to fix the basic public goods, which are internal and external security, the sustainability of our social systems that are no more there, cost for pensions, healthcare out of control.
That also then makes our cost of labor hardly competitive, fixing infrastructure and education, an obvious one, and making sure we get finally control of unwanted migration into our social systems rather than into the workplace then. A lot of things to do. Good luck with that.
Okay, thank you very much.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Susanne Schier, Handelsblatt. Susanne, your line is open. Susanne, your line is open. We can't hear you, Susanne. Please dial in again or send us your question to media.contact@allianz.com. Next question comes from Florian Müller, Financial Times. Florian, your line is open. Florian, we can't hear you. Our next question comes from Maximilian Volz, PLATOW Brief. Maximilian? Okay, Maximilian, we appear to be experiencing technical problems. Our next question comes from Herbert Fromme, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Versicherungsmonitor.
Yes, I've got three short questions. One is commercial lines. When I see figures for AGCS and commercial in general, loss ratios are up, income is down. Is that a turning point we expect? I also would like a bit more background to your remarks on customer Net Promoter Score. This figure on page A6, where you say 72, does that really mean that Allianz has a Net Promoter Score of 72, so that 72% of our customers would recommend Allianz?
Or is that a figure that you used in earlier years, that in 72% of the markets, you are better than the rivals or the best among the rivals? If that is so, if that is the meaning of that figure, perhaps you could give us a real NPS for Allianz. My third question is, in a recent interview with Handelsblatt, you said that the problem of affordability of insurance kept you awake at night and that in future, customers will have to pay much more for insurance or would get less, especially in health. What is Allianz in its health lines doing in this respect?
Thank you, Mr. Fromme, for that. I'll start with the first question. Claire-Marie will pitch in in a second. You're absolutely correct, the number measures the percentage of markets that are either outperforming the markets or are true loyalty leaders.
We show two things, and the ambition for Allianz long-term is always to be the loyalty leader, the target that our businesses have. They have to be better than market average. We don't have one Net Promoter Score because between different markets, so for example, the United Kingdom and Germany, the numbers are not additive or multiplicative. So we do it for every single market. We can show you by market where we are. If you're interested, the team will follow up. So for example, in Germany, we are above market in property-casualty. By the way, after a lot of work, we used to be only at market average until 2024. In life insurance and in health insurance, we are loyalty leader and have been there for a while. So we do measure that by market relative to competition.
We also differentiate that by channel, for example, brokers versus agents. So we have details. We'd be very happy to provide some details on that. Again, the ambition is for everyone in Allianz to be above market. That is not everywhere the case. So we have very few, but some markets that are struggling with being above market, and that is a key focal point for us. Again, ambition is, and that's why we say to have 60% above market. In reality, moving most of us to loyalty leadership is the essence. These numbers can be volatile. As you correctly said, if you have high price increases and do not have the corresponding performance perception on, for example, product quality or services or brand, then we suffer, as we saw particularly in P&C. Thank you for the question. Claire- Marie?
Yeah. What is your NPS in Germany then?
It's very different between Life and Health, and P&C will give you the numbers. We'll look them up. The moment I have them from the team, I'll mention them to you.
Thank you.
So coming back on your question on the commercial lines, I think, so first of all, you are right that the combined ratio is a bit higher this year for commercial lines, for commercial overall, and that's entirely related to the fact that we had a lower level of runoff in commercial altogether. So that's connected to the cautious approach we have taken when it comes to the quality of our reserves overall, as we had the opportunity linked to the very good results we had in the fourth quarter that mainly came through into the commercial area. So if you look at 2025, we have not changed our views compared to the market day.
We expect our combined ratio to still be around or below 92%, and we also expect to continue seeing growth. You need as well to have in mind that within the commercial lines, we have Partners, as an example, or we have part of Partners because you have both retail and commercial within Partners. We have Trade, we have the MidCorp business, and we have the AGCS business. We have seen, I mean, strong development across those businesses and also good quality of rate developments. On AGCS side, you remember that in the third quarter, we did divest part, basically our U.S. MidCorp portfolio, which is explaining the main part of the reduction in top line together with the fact that with the cycle starting to soften, we are more cautious in certain line of business, which you see in the top line development of AGCS.
For the rest, it's purely the effect of runoff and higher level of NatCat this year that I was mentioning, which explains the slight deterioration of the combined ratio of AGCS, which is still at a very good level.
Herr Fromme, I have the numbers for the German entities, at least for the three ones. There's also Asset Management. So Sach is NPS 16 by September 2024. We always measured in the third quarter, 11% for Leben and 21% for Krank.
Should I start on Allianz?
Yeah.
I'd love to add one thing. Hi, Herbert. It's Lauren. You probably saw in Focus Magazine today their study on customer loyalty by sector, and we're very proud to be the highest customer loyalty and satisfaction as an insurer in Germany. So thank you so much. Maybe on.
The third question.
Sorry.
There was a third question on Oliver Bäte's remark that insurance becomes unaffordable and that people have to live with lower cover. He said that in interview, especially regarding health. My question was whether Allianz is taking action in that respect, i.e., reducing cover in its health companies.
No, what we try to do is to help our customers in many ways. We can take auto, but we can also help. I think it's relevant not just for health insurance, Mr. Fromme, but also for many other areas. For example, home protection against NatCat will be one, and parts of auto insurance are also getting very, very expensive now because of the enormous inflation in spare part and repair cost. You've had since before COVID in some repair shops a tripling of our rates, hourly charge rates in order to repair cars.
So as you know, you know better than almost any other journalist that the auto insurance industry is actually not making a lot of money at this point in time because of that. So there's a number of ways in auto. It's about the so-called steering tariffs. We can help our clients and not just Allianz, others too, by helping them through the repair shop process, making sure that the cost charge for repairing cars, the cost for rental cars, the cost for legal disputes get minimized. We, on average, through our steering tariffs, save about EUR 1,000 per casco claim that we give back to consumers in terms of significant rebates. There's still a question of, can I trust the insurers to do a great job for more? Does this come at the expense of a lower repair quality? The opposite is true.
If I may say, I don't know how popular that is these days everywhere, but we are also doing a greater job for the climate because when we use used spare parts rather than new ones, we not just save tons of money, but we have a much better carbon footprint. The same is true in healthcare. We can help clients now, and we would love to do a lot more with finding the appropriate doctors, getting appointments, not having to wait weeks to get an appointment, and then making sure that we steer them through the system. We'd like to do more of that, for example, for many medical procedures to check the appropriateness of the cost and the requirements before people actually go to the doctors. There's a lot more to be done in order to contain massive inflation.
It's also not true that the most expensive procedure is medically always the best. We know that for sure, and the third one that is very important to make sure that people use new means of technology, for example, telemedicine, to not always run to the doctor and actually check whether you need to go, and then once you go directly, go to the right one and not to multiple stations where you sometimes even get contradictory feedback, so there are a lot of performance reserves in the systems that we believe we can help our people with. On the home side is the same, so before you start building a house and then trying to find insurance first, does it really make sense to build a wooden house next to a river? Maybe a question that should be asked more often.
And then actually having a house in certain locations is one. And the second one is really making sure that protective measures are being taken in order to make sure. I'll give you an example. We help our clients determine when they have solar panels on their house, are they resisting hail? A lot of people are not asking themselves the question, is the stuff they're putting on the roofs actually able to withstand the forces of nature? So tons of stuff we're trying to help make sure that people don't even have the claim in the first place.
Thank you.
Thank you. I have the question now from Florian Müller from the Financial Times. Florian is asking about inorganic growth and specifically if there are any comments on the consolidation in the Asset Management industry, such as the AGI Amundi deal that had been reported, as well as updates on our thinking about growth in India.
Okay. So basically, on the Asset Management side, as we have mentioned, we really like our setup. We have two asset managers that are contributing with different types of strengths, both in terms of footprint, I would say, PIMCO being more U.S. exposed, AGI would be more Europe and Asia. And then product-wise, PIMCO being more fixed income, real estate, while AGI will be more equity, multi-assets, and infrastructure, as I was mentioning already. So we like and we see value in the way our two asset managers are contributing to our three-pillar strategy, which is very important in terms of diversification for the Allianz Group.
That being said, we always looked at opportunities to enhance that setup. So we are always open to looking at what could make sense. And we are, as mentioned in the Capital Market Day, looking at ways to expand on the Asset Management side as opposed to anything else in the current environment. And then I think the second question was on India.
India.
Yeah. We obviously are in the bounds of confidentiality. I can say three things. The first one is India is a super important market for Allianz, and it will remain so into the future. We are looking to improve the setup that we have in the country of India, and we are going to look forward to even more growth from that market. Everything else you'll find out in a couple of weeks.
Let me remind you, if you're an IP-based telephone, this may cause technical problems for you. If you want to ask a question, press the talk request button on the web audio call or star five if you have joined via telephone. The next question comes from Jean-Philippe Lacour, AFP.
But I do have Jean-Philippe's question that you sent as well, just in case things didn't work. I know it's hard. We'll rehearse again with everybody so it's easier for you. So Jean-Philippe's questions are: Can you provide an estimate of any losses by the wildfires in Los Angeles and its surrounding areas? And he has a question related to the Paris Olympics, which, and I quote, were a great success for the Allianz partnership. With what feeling do you look ahead to the 2028 Los Angeles Games as an insurance partner?
Do you foresee any particular challenges in ensuring these Olympics in a region that is so exposed to risks? His third question is, as of February 2025, several insurers, including Allianz, have initiated legal action against the French government, alleging negligence in handling the May 2024 riots in New Caledonia. Is there an update to provide on these claims, and what solutions are emerging?
Let me start with a nice thing. That's the Paris Olympics. Congratulations to France for outstanding Olympic Games, particularly with a very, very effective carbon footprint, i.e., using existing facilities rather than building a new city. I thought it was one of the most amazing things I've ever attended. Well done. Los Angeles, we're also looking forward. Indeed, it's a more challenging environment, and I hope that the fires are a lesson learned to reinforce local infrastructure.
As Herbert Fromme asked before, insurability also requires the proper investments in public and private security, having proper police forces, fire brigades, water things, and we are very hopeful that the city will take the lessons learned and prepare itself. We don't see at this point issues to provide as an industry cover for that, and we're happy to help make sure that the Olympic Games in Los Angeles are going to be a success. They have been there before, so the community has a lot of experience, and we're here to help. On the New Caledonia events, the numbers Claire-Marie can address just on a general perspective, insurance cannot cover civil war.
It's very important to understand that if public security doesn't work, i.e., the police force doesn't do its job, the military doesn't do its job, the fire brigades and immersion don't do their job, insurance markets cannot perform substitute functions for the rule of law and the governance. And that is what this dispute is about because there are significant evidence of implosion of public security and public systems working. And again, the private insurance industry cannot be held accountable for the failure of public infrastructure. In terms of economics, Claire-Marie will pick this up.
Yes. So on the wildfires, as you know, we will be exposed to this type of event via our AGCS portfolio and also our third-party business on the Allianz side. For us, we expect these losses to be a double-digit amount that would be well within our expected cat load for a month. So really no worries on that side. For New Caledonia, there has not been any particular further development to the loss that we had announced in the third quarter. And I think I can only re-emphasize what Oliver was mentioning. Just as a reminder, the New Caledonia loss was around EUR 200 million plus for us overall as part of the third quarter numbers.
Good. The next question comes from Maximilian Volz, PLATOW. Maximilian, your line is open.
Hello. Thank you for taking my question. Mr. Bäte, in summary, you said that in difficult times, prospective customers tend to favor strong brands, which is good for Allianz growth. Can you explain this briefly and at some length, please, how you want to differentiate yourself from the other brands? Thank you very much.
Hi, Maximilian. It's Lauren. Do you mind repeating your question for us?
Oh, yes, of course. Mr. Bäte, in summary, you said that in difficult times, prospective customers tend to favor strong brands, which is good for Allianz growth. Can you explain this briefly and at some length, please, how you want to differentiate yourself from the other strong brands? Thank you very much.
Yeah, great question. This is really interesting, and my comments referred mostly to the Edelman Trust Barometer and Trust Research, and that's sort of not Allianz Analytics. That's generally shared analytics. In times of high insecurity, people in many societies look for the strong institutions to help them protect themselves, and particularly in Western societies, the trust in politics and many institutions has suffered. The need to look for companies that help them protect themselves in many areas has come very strong to the fore, and we see that also in customer interest and customer loyalty.
If we have, for example, a lot more inbound interest than we can often field at the moment, right? And you see that in the onlines. We have about 2 billion inbound requests every year now, of which, by the way, this is a huge business opportunity. We can sort of serve just only a small fraction. And the way it really works is that loyalty. Mr. Fromme asked about how NPS really works. There's four components to it. It is the quality of the products and services as perceived by the customers. It is particularly service excellence in the moments of truth that really matter. It's the price perception. By the way, very interesting. It's not the price. It's actually the perception of price. And it's the strength of the brand.
Particularly in insurance, where you often don't have high-frequency contact with your product provider, the perception of the company, the perception of the brand often informs the purchase and the repurchasing decision. So having a very strong brand that is trusted by the consumers is super important. It, however, cannot substitute the performance on the other three dimensions. That is products, that is service excellence, and that is the perceived right conditions between price and value. And that's why I made the conditional remark on when we had to increase prices. You can immediately see it in the trust. So we need to get the balance right out of that. And so the answer to your question, how do we do it relative to others? We need to outperform on all four dimensions. Thank you for the question.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. It's 12:15 P.M. We have to conclude today's media call. Please reach out to the media relations team in case you have any further questions. We will report our financial results for the first quarter on May 15th, and we will look forward to continuing our exchange then. This concludes today's media call. Thank you very much. Goodbye.