Good morning, ladies and gentlemen in Munich, and welcome to our telephone conference of Allianz regarding the financial results of the first quarter 2021. As usual, our CFO, Giulio Terzariol, will guide you through the results, and thereafter we have a question-and-answering session, and I will now hand over to Giulio Terzariol.
Thank you, Holger. And as usual, I'm very happy to present the results of Allianz for the first quarter. And let us begin with slide number three, and you will see that we had a very good start in the year 2021, and the income curve is flat, but this is not surprising in view of the COVID situation.
This particularly affected the P&C line, but in asset management, on the other hand, we see a dynamic development of the operating revenues at EUR 3.3 billion and is improved by 45% as compared to the previous year and is above our forecast. You know that our forecast was EUR 12 billion divided by 4 at EUR 3 billion, and that's to say we are clearly above the forecast. In all segments, all segments have actually made a contribution to this good result. Combined ratio in P&C is about 93%, and this is in line with the target which we have set. The new business margin in life business is almost 3%, and the new business value increased by a two-digit rate. Now asset management here in this segment, we have EUR 40 billion net funds inflow because the income ratio is below 60%.
So altogether, it is really a very good underlying performance in all lines of business. And then annual surplus EUR 2.6 billion, and this means 80% above previous year's level. So it was a very good start to the year 2021 and a very good basis for the development this year. And now slide number five. Here on this slide, you see our capitalization and particularly the solvency ratio. Solvency ratio is 210%, and this means an improvement of 3 percentage points compared to the level at the beginning of the year. And it is adjusted for by the repayment of the RT1s, and here you see an improvement of 7 percentage points. So it's a very clear improvement and a very good solvency ratio. The sensitivities are more or less unchanged compared to the level which we had at the beginning of the year.
Slide number seven, here you see, as usual, the development of the solvency ratio, and here you also see the driving factors. And what is very positive here is the organic capital generation, + 9%. This figure is before dividend payments and before taxes. If we actually exclude dividends and taxes, we have a growth rate of 4 percentage points. This is above the expected level of 2%. And this means a very good development. And then we also have positive market effects here, particularly interest rates increased, and this made a positive contribution to the improvement of this ratio. And here you see the capital management actions, and here we have the dividend payments, and we also deducted the AT1, and altogether 210%. And I think this is very good, and we have a very good organic capital generation. And this leads me to the individual segments now.
This is slide nine. Let me begin, as usual, with the growth rate. Altogether, the internal growth rate was - 1.6%, and if we adjust it for by Allianz Partners figures, it will be 0.5%, so this is more or less a flat curve adjusted for Allianz Partners and mainly travel insurance here, and in this segment, COVID had a very severe impact. We also see here a negative impact from COVID in general, and also the revenues of many of our customers, and this is a basis for the calculation of our premium in car insurance. We also had to grant discounts, and this explains why the growth rate in the first quarter is lower as we would normally expect, and we also believe that the corona situation is more or less behind us and that we will reach a growth rate of between 2%- 3%.
I will not actually cover the individual units here in detail. Just a few things here. Individual lines 10.5%, and there was pressure on the pricing side, particularly the personal business. And on the other hand, commercial business. In commercial business, we are restructuring, and we want to increase profitability. In Australia, +5%. This is good, and this is a very good dynamic development in retail or personal business and in commercial business. The price momentum is stable everywhere. There's only one exception, namely Italy. In Italy, the competitive pressure is particularly severe, but as you know, in Italy, we have an excellent combined ratio. And the price increases regarding AGCS +22%, and this is applicable to all business lines. And we believe that these price increases, right? So the situation in the insurance industry is moving into the right direction. And this is the situation regarding revenues.
Now slide 11. This is the development of the operating profit. Altogether, we actually improved by EUR 500 million. This improvement, the improvement regarding operating profit, is due to the improvement of the combined ratio. Here you see an improvement of nearly 5%. The loss ratio for the current year improved by about six percentage points. This improvement is due to three factors. In the previous year, we had the negative impact of COVID, about 2.5%. This year, the COVID impact regarding combined ratio is neutral. Now, natural disasters, NatCat, last year it was above our expectations, and this year it's a + 2%. A positive deviation this year. Now the underlying performance. The performance is better by about one percentage point, and this stems from AGCS because the profitability is better than in the previous year.
Now, the cost ratio is also improving, and though we did not actually increase premiums, but we have an improvement of 30 basis points, and now the runoff result is declining by 1.6%. And I can say here in this context that we were very conservative, and we want to be prepared for the situation after COVID. And we will probably see some interesting developments also regarding the loss ratio in motor business, 90%. Well, the combined ratio here is in line with our target, and I would also say the quality of the combined ratio is very good. So we are very satisfied with the development regarding P&C. And now on slide 13. Here you see the breakdown by unit combined ratio in Germany at 98% and very strong, and the quality of the combined ratio is also very good.
In France, we are slightly above previous year's level, and there is still a negative impact from COVID. And this explains the situation. And now England. Here in England, you see a very good combined ratio below 90%. And the reason is that NatCats in England, that the rate is very, very low or was very low. And in England, we have a very low loss ratio regarding motor business. And we have a very good combined ratio. Here you see Europe and Spain, Italy, Australia. Okay, Australia is above our expectations, better than previous year. In Australia this year and also in the previous year, we had a higher NatCat impact. And if you adjust all this, Australia has a combined ratio of about 93%, I would say. And this is a normalized profitability, which is in line with our expectations.
Now, further comment on AGCS, 98% combined ratio. There is also the target for 2021. And this figure contains 3% negative impact of COVID. So adjusted for COVID, the AGCS performance would be 95%. Altogether, as we predicted, we are on a very good path regarding AGCS. Now, Euler Hermes. Here the combined ratio below 80%. This is very good and is in line with the fact that we do not see any insolvencies. Altogether, it is a very good situation, many good combined ratios in many units. Now here, slide 15, the capital investment result has improved compared to previous year. What is the reason? The reason is the development regarding equities. We have more profit and earnings from associated companies. The current yield regarding fixed interest securities is going down, but this is not a surprise.
So altogether, I would say everything is in line with our expectations, and was very positive in this quarter was the equity development. This was very positive. And I'm talking about the revenues generated by our associated companies. And now life insurance business. Altogether, the net production was very solid. Here you see a growth rate of 8%. And the growth rate is from Italy mainly. And here you see a very good growth rate regarding German Health's APKV. This is driven by methodological change. And here you see the United States, a growth rate of zero adjusted for currency exchange effects. And then the growth rate would be 8% in the United States. You see that many of our entities have increased premium. And there's also an increase in the new business margin of 2.7% from 2.7% to 2.9%.
So not only net production could be improved, there's also an improvement of the new business margin. Now, this improvement of the new business margin is from protection and health. And particularly in France, measures were taken in order to make the business profitable. And from my point of view, the development of capital efficient products is very good. Here you see the new business margin declined by 20 basis points, but it dropped by 20 points, though there was an adjustment of the economic frame. So we were able to actually accept or cope with this actually negative impact. And we are also actually deciding on measures. And the figure will be better in the second quarter. Okay, so a very good situation regarding the production and also regarding the resilience of new business margin. And this leads me to slide 19. The operating profit.
Altogether, an improvement of nearly 50%, EUR 400 million. And while this is easy to be explained because the performance last year was negatively impacted by the volatility in the capital markets, but the EUR 1.2 billion operating result is better than we expected, namely we expected EUR 1.1 billion operating profit per quarter. And there is another factor. All business lines have contributed to this increase. And here on the right-hand side, you see it broken down by the business lines, and they have all an improvement as compared to previous years. So altogether, a very solid performance in our life insurance business. And I would say the new business margin is good and strong, and our portfolio delivers very good results. Now, having said that, now on page 21, as usual, we see the picture by units.
I would say that the new business margin is very solid in most units and definitely very strong in the U.S., in Asia-Pacific, and also in Eastern Europe. We have a very strong new business margin, which is also the reason why we decided to do this deal in Poland. In Italy, the new business margin appears to be weaker, but it's very good with unit-linked products, so with that 1.5, we are happy, and I would say that the only country where we have to work a bit more is France, but you can also see we've achieved an improvement versus the previous year in the operating profit, and in all major units, you see that we've got a better profitability as in the previous year, which particularly is the case in the U.S. Profits were quite low last year.
Now, this year, under normal circumstances, our performance is coming back to the expected level, maybe even better to what we have expected. But also generally in life insurance, we receive a good picture as regards to profitability. And then on page 23, so the investment margin is at EUR 1 billion or even above EUR 1 billion. What happened? So the current yield and the net of the minimum guarantee stays stable. That is quite important, which shows how we consistently reduce our guarantee. And clearly, last year, we had massive impairments, whereas this year we practically don't have any impairments any longer, which leads to a gross margin of 17 basis points. And after the participation of the policyholders, we ended up with 20 basis points. And if you combine that with the increase of the reserve, that leads to EUR 1 billion plus investment margin.
Together with the increase of the loading, that leads to a strong operating profit of EUR 1.2 billion for the quarter. That means also very good results in life insurance. Now let's move to asset management. On page 25, where we definitely have a great message here. In total, we have EUR 2.4 trillion of assets under management, which is the highest volume in the history of Allianz ever. I don't think this will not be the end of the development. What also is good, the success comes from all areas, comes from PIMCO, comes from AGI. As you can see, it also comes from all asset classes in all regions. That is a very good picture. I would like to emphasize that in Asia, in the meantime, we have more than EUR 200 billion assets under management.
So in Asia alone, we are a very strong asset manager. On page 27, we're showing the drivers for the development for third-party assets, EUR 38 billion net inflows in total. It's not only PIMCO. We are quite used to PIMCO having EUR 20 billion net inflows. But this time, AGI also has a very strong performance with EUR 12 billion net inflows. And that is the highest level for AGI. And if you look at the net flow split based on classes or regions, all asset classes, all regions have made their contribution to that development, which is very good for the diversification of our net inflows. And one more comment on the market movements and FX exchange. Generally, if you took these two drivers together, we could talk about an increase of EUR 25 billion because of these parameters.
On the whole, we are lying at EUR 1.8 trillion of assets under management. That's important because that's a very good starting position for the second quarter. On page 29, obviously, when assets under management grow, we get more income. We grew by 9% internal growth adjusted by FX exchange. In particular, we in AGI, we see a 15% growth rate, but also PIMCO + 6% is still very good, very good results in both units. The fee margin remains stable in AGI. Actually, it's declining in PIMCO by 3 basis points. This is a launch of a closed-end fund. If we bring this closed-end fund to the market, we have to pay certain fees upfront. Of course, that will be reflected in the KPI. After that, we will definitely also get revenues and income.
So totally speaking, this is a rather good story. And that will be reflected in more profits in the future. And adjusted by these effects, so the fee margin at PIMCO would have been more or less stable. Now, on page 31, the operating profit has increased by 10%. So if you take out the FX effects, the growth rate would be 16%. In PIMCO, we see a flat tendency, but that's exactly where the FX exchange rates have this negative effect. So if we adjust the figures by the FX effect, the growth rate would be 8%. And PIMCO, and since it made this investment in closed-end funds and in AGI, the story is rather successful. Altogether, almost EUR 200 million operating profit and a cost-income ratio of 61%.
Basically, what we've seen in AGI, so revenues have increased by 10% and costs have gone down by 7%, which explains AGI's performance, so very good results for the quarter, both in PIMCO and in AGI, and that is definitely a good starting position for the second quarter, so we look forward to the results, and we look forward to the second quarter already now. Page 33, operating results for the corporate segment. We see an improvement of a total of EUR 100 million, which relates to seasonality if you want, or exchange rates have been fluctuating. It's somewhat better than the expectations, but I would always put these figures into perspective because there's always a certain seasonality, and on page 35, the annual surplus lies at EUR 2.6 billion, which is 18% above the previous year level, which is due to the improved operating result.
We also in the first quarter saw practically no impairments. The restructuring costs are slightly lower. The restructuring costs have been down. The effective tax rate is slightly higher than the first quarter 2020, but still lower than we would normally expect. Our expectation would have been 25%, but this year and also last year, we had a few special effects. EUR 2.6 billion. This figure should not be taken or multiplied by four, but we can definitely be happy with the performance that we've rendered in the first quarter. Summarizing, truly a good start into this year. On page 37, you can see the overview. Revenues are very good. The operating profit is very good. Also very quiet situation on the capital markets. Capital base is really strong with a solvency ratio of 210%.
As always, for this great performance, I would like to say thank you to our great employees. Having said that, I would like to accept your questions.
Thank you, Giulio. Now we come to our Q&A session. First of all, we're going to hear the questions and answer the questions from the German line and then from the English line. In order to register, please press star five on the telephone or in the web call. You press the telephone button. Once it has been answered, please press asterisk five or the web figure. And then you can also now we have the first question from Stephan Kahl from Bloomberg. Mr. Kahl,
yes, good morning. Obviously, you can hear me. I just have two short questions. One relates to the protection and commodity credit insurance. And to what extent has this been reflected in results?
Yeah, and there have not been any bankruptcies and the premiums have been referred. And the second question was in PIMCO. There was a small restructuring effort in the unit in Munich, and some positions have been relocated to Munich, to London. Will there be more relocations, more restructuring efforts in PIMCO? I would like to know that.
Thank you very much. For the first question for Euler Hermes in general, in the quarter, almost EUR 40 million profit was transferred. And the previous year, there was roughly EUR 100 million. So that means a lot of profit was transferred since the beginning of the corona crisis. That's fair because the government took over the reinsurance. But from 1st of July, we're not going to have these agreements anymore. But the requirement for that quarter was roughly EUR 40 million operating result that we've ceded.
The question about restructuring at PIMCO, I mean, you always have these restructuring at PIMCO, which actually is normal to have these activities. I think there was more attention in Munich, but you need to understand PIMCO is a highly dynamic organization, and that's why it is quite normal that they always check where they can find the best location and where you can be most efficient or how to better serve the customers. And I would say there are no programs at the moment, so you can assume that PIMCO always keeps on taking these measures. And like I said, it's a highly dynamic company.
Thank you very much for that.
Thank you, Mr. Kahl. Next question, Mr. Hübner from Reuters.
Good morning. I also have two questions. The first question was not really explained in detail today, Allianz Direct.
This is what I would like to ask about. What is the current situation? What is the status? What have you planned? I mean, there are declines in revenues. And what are your plans for the future? And the second question relates to the outlook. There were some expectations, of course, that maybe after the very good first quarter, that you will actually delimit or cap your outlook. And what are the reasons that you haven't done so yet? I mean, if you extrapolate, if you use the first quarter for the rest of the year, you would be above your forecast. Thank you very much.
Let me start with Allianz Direct. Let me give you the figures for the quarter, and I will then come back to Direct in general. So in the quarter, the growth rate was negative at Allianz Direct. It was a - 10%.
Of course, you have to differentiate here. -25% in Germany. In Holland, it was +10%. In Italy, we had a - 10%. And then this has a lot to do with the following, namely the focus on profitability. We have this aggregation system, and the profitability was not good enough, so we withdrew a little bit also in Italy. And this explains why the premiums went down. And we just wanted to have a very good start and a very clean start. And also the IT platforms which we wanted to develop, it is implemented in Germany already. It is implemented in Holland, in Italy. In Italy, we also had a launch of the website in the first quarter of this year. And we will then migrate to the platforms in the course of the year. And this is a very important strategic initiative for Allianz.
I do not measure the success of this initiative in one quarter only. It is a strategy designed for a couple of years. We have just laid the foundation. In the future, we will further develop the business on this foundation. This was Allianz Direct. Now, the forecast or outlook. I mean, it is philosophical that we do not adjust our outlook in the first quarter. I think this is still a little bit too early. As you might have noticed, the underlying performance is good, and there are very good indications. It would be philosophical, or it is philosophical that we do not adjust our outlook in the first quarter. A lot can happen. You can well assume if the situation remains as it is, we will have good results at the end of the year.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question is from Mr. Michael Flämig from Börsen-Zeitung. Mr. Flämig, please go ahead.
Good morning, Mr. Terzariol, Mr. Klotz. I have some questions. The first question is the P&C after COVID, and then Allianz, and then transparency in the field of P&C. You said that the run-off procedure was very conservative in order to prepare for the time after COVID. And is there anything else regarding the motor segment and Allianz Direct in the annual report? You could read that you actually mentioned the establishment of some offices and companies in some European countries. And is it your plan that you actually integrate and then transparency? Transparency. Well, you actually broke down the quarterly results. But what are the reasons?
Some time ago, you have tried to abolish the quarterly reports because investors said, "Well, there's a virtual AGM, and the company is rather conservative." And now you have introduced in your product, and you do not publish the respective figures. Now, Allianz Direct, the following could be noted. The number of customers in Germany was not mentioned. I mean, this is ridiculous because it is included in the annual report. Now, my question is, what is your opinion, particularly regarding the transparency?
Let me begin with your first question, P&C, and the runoff result. Well, we have taken very cautious measures. We know that the loss frequency or loss ratio in motor business will go up after COVID. And this also means, and of course, also prices will be adjusted.
But maybe that there will be a distance between the loss ratio and the loss trend and that the premium might go up. There's always a delay in this development. And we want to be well prepared for this. And we want to be able to actually bridge this timely distance. And this is the reason why we take cautious measures. There is no other reason. And now, direct insurance, what are our plans? Well, the idea is, and I'm talking about IT and business platforms, and we want to have a very good solution, a solution which will be implemented in various markets. And this also has to do with the legal situation. And the situation is different in the various countries. And we need to do further analysis. And what is very important is the creation of the IT platform and of the business model.
And this will determine how we will align ourselves and in which entities, in which form, in which legal form. And now, transparency. I think we offer a lot of transparency in our reports. We state the figures. And well, in this case, we didn't do this, but this was not an intention. And we thought the figure was not that relevant. But transparency is very important to us. And this was not an intention that you did not actually state the figure.
Thank you very much. This was it.
Thank you very much, Mr. Flämig. The next question is from Friederike Krieger from Versicherungsmonitor. Mrs. Krieger, please go ahead.
Hello. Can you hear me?
Yes, we can.
Very well. I have a question regarding the corona impact. You already stated it was not a really big impact this quarter.
Can you give us a figure, please? And then the German business. I'm very much interested in the business in Germany. Well, we had some decline in revenues here in P&C, and what are the reasons? And then new business, new life business. You also had a decline. And in the area of health, there was an increase. Can you please explain the reasons for this development?
Let me begin with the impact of COVID. And the COVID impact in this quarter was not very, very severe. And of course, I can give you further details. Business interruptions. Well, we had a loss of EUR 100 million. And this came from France, and a little bit came from Germany and Ireland. So interruptions of operations. And then entertainment. And I'm mainly talking about AGCS, namely EUR 30 million.
Our profitability regarding travel insurance and credit insurance is not on our usual level. This also has to do with revenues. This does not only have to do with combined ratio, but we have EUR 50 million less profit than expected. Altogether, EUR 200 million is the impact. On the other hand, as we know, in the area of motor, the loss frequency is lower. So altogether, it is. Well, I might say zero. COVID. I think the situation is not that bad anymore. It is manageable. It is much better than in the previous year. Germany, P&C. Let me say the following: commercial business. In commercial business, the figure is neutral. In the personal lines, it is a little bit lower. They are all together.
I wouldn't be surprised if the growth rate in Germany would be around zero in the course of this year. Of course, there are also seasonal factors which have to be taken into account, and there are also accounting effects, so altogether, there will be a movement towards zero. And now, APKV, this is more or less a methodological change which we made. Well, if you take the net value of the production, you can calculate the premiums of the future. And well, our model stopped after 40 years, but there's also life after 40 years. And we have an additional growth rate regarding APKV. And if we come back to the previous method, then the growth rate would be 3% to 4%. So I hope I could answer your question. I asked you about life insurance. Why there was this strong decline? No, no.
We did not change our calculation method. You're talking about Allianz Lebensversicherung, life insurance. Okay, the development is good. And we have put the focus on this transformation. The 100% guarantee products, and now we have products with the lower guarantee. And in the previous year, when we had the capital light products, the contribution was 60%. And now we have 45%. And we know we will end up with 25% at the end of this year. And you see, this is how the production is developing. The new business margin, 2.5%, is also good. So altogether, we are actually walking into the right direction. And we are satisfied with the development of Allianz Life Business. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Now, the next question is from Carsten Hoefer, DPA. Mr. Hoefer, go ahead.
Good morning, Mr. Terzariol, Mr. Klotz. I have two very short questions.
One question concerns Allianz Direct. What does it mean, focus on profitability? What do you really mean by it? Do you actually do not accept customers if they are not solvent? And then the asset management, PIMCO and AGI. And well, last year, there was actually a pent-up consumption. And do you assume that growth regarding asset management will become weaker once people start spending their money? This was it. Well, what does profitability mean here in this context? Well, does it mean the combined ratio is 100?
Well, I mean, the answer is quite simple. You always have to look at the combined ratio of Direct. It's not above 100. And we always try to find out where we can make money and where we cannot make money. And there are certain segments, particularly certain distribution channels. And in those distribution channels, the combined ratio was too high.
And we also have to actually take into account the acquisition cost. And the acquisition costs were too high, to put it into a nutshell. More than 100% is not the right answer. And now, PIMCO and AGI, well, of course, there is also a market trend. And we benefit from this market development. Altogether, I would say the following. The net inflows will not be that strong all the time. And it will happen that we will have a quarter where the net inflow will be negative. But in general, the tendency regarding asset management means that there are savings. And institutional investors, but also private investors, will look for solutions in the asset management area. And I think we are very well aligned and prepared. We can offer all products, fixed income, multi-assets, equity, alternatives. And we are also represented in all regions. This is also very important.
Bear in mind, in this quarter, we actually got 60% of our net inflows from the United States, and 30% are from Asia. So we are very well diversified, as you can see, very well aligned. And of course, I assume that in the long term, we will actually be able to tell a growth story in the area of asset management. Ja, it comes so.
The next question comes from Christian Schnell from Handelsblatt. Mr. Schnell.
Yes, good morning to you. I have one question on AGCS. So in the first quarter, you said that you went back into the black. That was also the declared target for the entire year. So economists expect a larger wave of these bankruptcies, not only in Germany, but also worldwide. Will this also be having any consequences for AGCS that they might come back to the black?
The bankruptcy wave for this year. Not so many people do expect that. That there is so much support from the government that we don't going to see a bankruptcy wave maybe in 2022. Probably we might have problems in 2023 or 2024. But still, your question is justified to what extent such a wave of bankruptcies might cause problems for AGCS. The only area where AGCS could be affected by a wave could be the D&O insurance. But I also need to say we are very careful, specifically in the US. We are very careful in the D&O insurance because that's definitely a point that we have on our radar screen. That's why we're going to be even more careful with the D&O insurance in the US, in particular. So on the whole, I would say the 98% of AGCS is very solid.
So we can start from that statement, which also means that we also get some headwind, and we can cope with some headwind. So the idea is that we achieve 98 if we are lucky. That is the assumption that is a solid 98 combined ratio, which also means that we get some headwind here or there that we can cope with. Plus, of course, yes, there are always challenges, but definitely there will always be matters that might go into the other direction. You need to consider when the economy goes back on track, then automatically we will get more contributions. So there will always be balancing out situations. It's not only one direction we're going because the world is always more colorful than we think.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Schnell.
Now we come to the last question from the German line from Stefan Weiher from DPA-AFX. Mr. Weiher.
Yes, good morning, Mr. Terzariol. I also have a question. I hope that I haven't missed it. Maybe you have said something already. On the Suez Canal, AGCS expressed how this will develop in terms of a claim for the insurance industry. Can you say what is the overall claim and to what extent that Allianz is expecting a burden and how this impact will come from the transportation insurance and how the payments would be made?
No, we don't see any impact for us. So we did not insure the vessel. Theoretically, there could be an impact, but that would be rather limited. We don't see any things like business interruption. But I can say for us, there's no consequences that are worthwhile mentioning.
So as regards to the impact for the industry, allegedly, there's a big claim from the government in Egypt. But I must say, I do not have the latest information on how the negotiations are running. So the only thing I can say, this topic is not relevant for Allianz.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Weiher. And now we're turning into the English line. And we are having the first question for the Financial Times. The questions and answers will be asked in English. Questions will be asked in English and also answered in English. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Two different areas I'd like to ask about. Firstly, on coronavirus, what management actions have you taken to kind of reduce the COVID bill this quarter compared to the first quarter of 2020?
Whether it be that kind of exclusions and policies or, yeah, any actions you've taken there. And also just give me a flavor, maybe if you can give me some color on the growth impact, particularly in the U.K., there's a big growth impact at the top line. And then secondly, I want to ask a question about Greensill Capital. Obviously, you learned in the past was an important insurer, Greensill Capital's supply chain finance. I wondered whether there was any remaining exposure there or whether there were any wider lessons you think that Greensill Capital's collapse has for insurers of supply chain finance and appetite in the market to insure bank or non-bank supply chain finance arrangements. Thanks.
Okay. No, thank you for your question. If I understand, the first question was about what we are doing on the coverage for business interruption, yeah?
And then I think you had a focus on the U.K., okay? Yeah. Perfect. Yeah, sure. Avenues or anything that fell into that number? Yeah. No, absolutely. So what we have started already last year basically was to change conditions to make very clear, especially in the U.K., where the impact of the business interruption has been significant. We have changed the policy right away. And then clearly, as we go through the renewal, we have implemented these changes. So from this point of view, our exposure on new business to any pandemic is significantly reduced, and it is progressively going to zero. So that's what we had done in the U.K., and we had done also in all other legislation where we thought we need to change the policy warning.
In the sense of impact in the U.K. coming from court decision, I would say that we should be well reserved. So we put a lot of reserves at the end of last year. So from that point of view, we don't think that we have any significant exposure to adverse court decision. It could be that we see something, but I would say we are taking a conservative view on that one. If you ask me countries where we might still see some development on business interruption, Australia, and France. These are the countries where we see a little bit more uncertainty at this point in time. In other countries, I would say that we shouldn't see significant developments that might be negative. On Greensill Capital, Euler Hermes didn't have exposure to trade insurance, just some fidelity insurance, but this is not coming into place.
So from that point of view, we don't see any exposure from Euler Hermes on that one. And in general, to your question whether this can change the way we are looking at insuring some transaction, I would say it doesn't change that because we have always been very careful. And it tells you, for example, that Euler Hermes has not extended credit insurance for that kind of business. So I think we have always been cautious. And from that point of view, we know that we need to pay attention. You need to have very strong underwriting in place. Clearly, every time something happens, you add to your experience. And the best way to learn is learning from mistakes of others, not from your own mistakes.
But yeah, this is just, I would say, something where you can learn more about how to look at things in the future, but it doesn't change fundamentally the way we approach the business. Sure. Some other big insurers of trade credit, Atradius and Coface, never insured Greensill Capital, obviously couldn't get comfortable. So Euler Hermes did obviously historically think that these kind of supply chain finance arrangements were more insurable and that the risk transfer was adequate. So there's no change to that. You're still a company like Greensill Capital that's a non-bank lender providing kind of supply chain finance. Yeah, there's no kind of change to that. No, we don't have a fundamental change. Clearly, we are very cautious, but we are not taking decisions now. We are not going to do this kind of business at all. Yeah.
Just, sorry, there was just one other thing which was around the COVID-19 growth in revenues. The growth in revenues in the U.K. was kind of negative, shrank year on year. I just wondered whether at the top line, what the impact there was. I would say there are two components. One is in personal. We see a reduction of premium and also a little bit of volume. Clearly, there is pressure on the premium side because of the discounts on motor. Just the frequency is very low, so you try to give price back to the policyholder. We also know however that frequency is going to go up. Clearly, we give some discounts or some reduction in premium. We tend to be a little bit more disciplined, if you want, than others.
So at the end of the day, you have the effect of a little bit lower premium, but also we are losing some volume. We believe that our status is going to pay off in one, two years down the road. But right now, clearly, we see the growth is suffering. And then the other component is, which is a combination, our AGCS in corporate business. Clearly, the turnover companies is lower, so this has an impact on the premium. Then we also, anyway, try to get price increases because we want to increase the profitability there, and this can also cause some volume. So if you ask me if I should split the, but that's a rough indication, impact of COVID on the growth rate of U.K., I would say the half of them might be because of COVID.
The other half is in reality us pruning the business.
Thank you very much.
Welcome.
Thank you, Ian. The next question comes from David Walker, InsuranceERM. Please go ahead, sir.
Can you hear me? Yes. Great. Thank you. Just two clarifications, please, and two questions. Total COVID costs in Q1 for the group of EUR 200 million. And then Euler Hermes handed EUR 40 million to governments as a result of the support schemes. So just clarification of those two numbers. I wonder if you're disappointed that Euler Hermes had to hand money to the governments because of the support schemes not working as they were designed, perhaps. And then a second question, Mr. Terzariol, the Zinszusatzreserve, how much Allianz Lebensversicherung put into the ZZR in 2020? And your opinion on that? You've expanded your investment margin, but you're still having to pay into this enormous stockpile. Is that necessary?
Yeah. So basically, first of all, on the clarification, the impact of COVID in total is zero, but EUR 200 million was basically without considering for the frequency reduction motor. So if we take the total impact on our results, it's zero. If you just look at the impact coming from business interruption, entertainment, and also lower revenue basis in travel and in Euler Hermes, then you get to the -EUR 200 million. But it's important that you understand in total, it's a wash. On the EUR 40 million of ceded profit to the government, if I'm disappointed, yes and no, sure. But on the other side, I think it's fair. At the end of the day, you make an insurance contract because that's what the government has done with us. And so part of the risk was on the government.
I think that if you take a risk and the risk is not materializing to a certain degree, I think it's fair that the government is, or the insurance company in this case, let's call it this way, is making profits. I'm not necessarily disappointed. If you ask me, I have better this way than carnage of insolvency. I think it's fair. There was a decision that at the end of the day, I was reasonable at that time, and so we shouldn't complain about the consequences. On the ZZR, I can tell you that last year, we put about EUR 2 billion plus of ZZR in Allianz Lebensversicherung. That's more or less the number that we put on a yearly basis. Just for you to know, the amount of ZZR at the end of 2020 was about EUR 17 billion.
That's basically part of the way the business has been run now since many years. So it's nothing new. And as you see, we can definitely support this build-up of the ZZR. If you look at the profitability on the local account of Allianz Lebensversicherung, Allianz Life, Germany is very strong. And also we expect the profitability to remain strong and also to be growing. So the business model is such that we can afford the build-up of the ZZR and still create profit and remittances for the shareholder.
I guess the question, Mr. Terzariol, is that the GDV, BaFin does not expect anyone to use it until, what is it, 2032. So you've got another 11 years potentially or more of not using it. But every life insurer has to find money to put into it, selling investments or other reserves. Is that a good idea?
Okay.
By the way, we fund the ZZR. In reality, you make an investment income, and part of this investment income goes in the ZZR. If you wouldn't put the money into the ZZR, you would put into the policyholder free reserve, so at the end of the day, it's still money that is supposed to flow to the policyholder one way or the other, so I'm not sure I understand your question, but just the dynamic is you create an investment income. You basically have the guarantee that you need to fund. You fund the ZZR, which is a sort of additional guarantee. And then the rest goes into the policyholder free reserve, if you want to call it that way. In the absence of the ZZR, you will just put more into this free reserve to the policyholder.
So the funding dynamics is, yeah, and the consequences are eventually that you are running with a higher, if you want, guaranteed reserve and a lower free reserve. From a practical point of view, I can tell you it doesn't make, in my opinion, a big difference. It gives more stability in the system. That's what I will say.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, David. The next question comes from Ben Dyson from S&P Global Market Intelligence. I cannot read the media. Please go ahead, Ben.
Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Yeah, just really, I was wondering if you could clarify. I'll ask again, but on the EUR 200 million COVID impact, noting that the net impact is zero. But just if you could give the breakdown of that again, because I missed some elements of it.
So there was the EUR 100 million from business interruption, I think EUR 30 million from event cancellation, if I heard correctly. But yeah, if you could give the full breakdown again, that would be great. And yeah, just as a follow-up to that, you mentioned that there may be some further business interruption claims coming through. But just interested if you could say what other areas of uncertainty there still is around ultimate coronavirus claims for Allianz and when you expect this to stop being an issue for the results.
So looking at the breakdown of the EUR 200 million, we say EUR 100 million, about EUR 100 million is business interruption. EUR 30 million is entertainment. That's AGCS. Then I would say EUR 50 million, you can say between Euler Hermes and Partners. And then we had EUR 30 million, I would say whatever.
So, guys, we have other 30 million of different lines of business, right? So that's the breakdown you were looking for.
Yes. Thank you. Okay.
So otherwise, the other question was where we see uncertainty because of COVID. So on all these business interruption issues, okay, I talk about that. We might see still some uncertainty, especially in France and the U.K., sorry, Australia. Otherwise, I wouldn't say that in general, from a loss point of view, we see issues or significant issues in other areas. Entertainment, clearly, is always something to keep an eye on because if we have continuous lockdowns and assuming we wouldn't have the Olympics next year in Beijing, there will be potentially a loss. But I would say that beside these two areas, business interruption and entertainment, there are no major concerns. We discussed before D&O.
This is something that one wants to clearly have an eye on. But fundamentally, I would say that we are going back to business as usual on many of these lines of business. The thing that we need to watch, but there's more a consequence of what is happening in motor, is how frequency is going to go up when we go back to normal and especially how the price environment is going to adjust to it. So that's something that clearly we need to watch and how fast the competition is going to react on increasing frequency. I was talking before about the U.K., where we tend to be more conservative in the way we are approaching the premium right now. So this is definitely a dynamic they play on, which eventually is going to adjust.
But fundamentally, first, you go through some kind of transition where agility is going to be very important.
Okay. Thanks very much. And just a quick follow-up on the D&O. Why do you in particular need to keep an eye on that going forward?
Because the issue is going to be one day we might, you might get insolvency. When you get insolvency, people, shareholders going to have a lawsuit, and then this can create a situation where the D&O has to respond. And especially in the U.S., that's the national champion of world champion of lawsuits. You might see some interesting trend. That's the reason why we say on D&O, especially U.S., you have to pay attention.
Got it. Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
Thank you, Ben. The last question from the English line comes from Sam Casey from Insurance Insider. Please go ahead, sir.
Good morning.
Thanks for taking my question. I was wondering if you could explain in a bit more detail what were the drivers of profitability in AGCS, which lines being performing the best, and also what your outlook is for that segment for the year, including in terms of any potential growth.
Yeah. I would say when I look at the AGCS, we see good rate increases across the board. So I would say that the combined ratio is below 100, I would say, in all lines of business. So it's a widespread improvement. And we have been taking massive rate increases. We did a lot of re-underwriting last year. So that's also important. We just shed also more than doing just re-underwriting, we shed some block of business completely. So now we see that the profitability is rising across the board.
And now, indeed, also we think we are coming to a point where we can also, in a disciplined way, obviously, expand our appetites. So we feel pretty comfortable with now the level of performance that we are achieving. And so in a prudent way, in a selective way, we want also now to start looking at growth. We are going to be cautious in financial lines in the U.S. That's an area where we're going to remain cautious. But I would say outside that area, we think we're at a point where we can start looking for growing the business again.
Great. Thank you.
Welcome.
Thank you, Sam. We are coming up against cuts. We got your line on the line. Let's do the last question from Christian Hetzner. Mr. Hetzner. Mr. Hetzner, the line should be open.
For the Hermes business, you mentioned that you don't find that particularly attractive. You want to avoid that kind of business in general. Are you talking in general about supply chain financing? And secondly, there was a comment from Mr. Greensill yesterday during his testimonial to the Treasury Select Committee where he was talking about lessons learned from a regulatory perspective. And he mentioned that solvency regulations effectively require insurers to deepen economic cycle problems by withdrawing coverage exactly at the point when a business needs it most of all. I know that on the banking side, they've tried to address this issue, the cyclical buffers as part of the model of financial regulations. Do you feel that this has not been sufficiently addressed from a regulatory perspective when it comes to insurers? Thank you. Yeah.
So on the second question, I would say, yeah, I would say in the banking system, there's been more thinking about that topic. I think also because the banking system might be more systemic. So from that point of view, I think that's the reason why there was more thinking. To a certain degree, anyway, when you look at, for example, the new proposal of EIOPA about a long-term guarantee review, they are thinking a little bit about some mitigation mechanism, at least on the interest rates. One could also say, okay, why don't create some additional cautionary system on other economic parameters? I would say, yeah, we are a little bit behind the banking industry, but I think it's also because we are an insurance company. We are in the insurance industry, not the banking industry.
From a systemic point of view, there is a little bit of a different relevancy, if you want. On the specific issue of Greensill, I would say, in general, supply chain finance, insurance, and so on, I would say that we tend to be very cautious. And then it's always clearly a decision that you take case by case. But that's definitely not an area where we have substantial appetites. And clearly, this situation of Greensill is going to provide additional information about how you need to look into this kind of business. Or sometimes also you need to think about what kind of business might be having the same dynamic and how you want to approach that. So we take a cautious stance, but again, it's always eventually a decision that you take case by case. And I'm just asking further about that.
There was something, an aspect of the business that you really tried to point out about artificial intelligence and machine learning being used to project future cash flows based on historical and current data straight from the company's accounts. And that was his method for providing this supply chain financing at a particularly low cost of capital. Is that one of the aspects you mean in terms of not having a large appetite for this business? And just to get back also to the regulatory issue, certainly many parts of insurance are not systemic for the economic impact. But credit insurance, I would argue most definitely is quite critical when it comes to economic effects, particularly when the cycle is turning. So maybe there in that particular part of the business, there is a need to address this issue. Yeah.
So on the first one, I would say, yeah, you can use artificial intelligence. Sometimes you can just use intelligence. This might help you, not all common sense. This might help you too. But anyway, we are doing extensive use of artificial intelligence at Euler Hermes. But I tell you, sometimes common sense might be the best approach to a business decision. On the other topic, you raise a good point, by the way. But I would say on that one, you need to look at the ecosystem. So we might not have the entire system of governance around that. So we might not have this kind of countercyclical movement of parameters in Solvency II. But on the other side, you saw that basically in a crisis situation that happened in 2008 and that happened also now, then you had this kind of agreement with the governments.
Right now, I would say there is a sort of system in place. So it's not a very new situation like the corona crisis happened. You need to start from scratch because there is experience from what happened in the past. So it's also relatively easy then to come up with this kind of solution. So when you look at the system in total, you just look at the Solvency II regime, but then you look at what kind of conversation we have with the regulator, with the politician. You see that overall, we have been able as an industry to provide coverage. So I think the system is still working when you look at that on aggregates.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Chris.
Thank you, Christian. So that was our last question. [Foreign language]
Now we're at the end of our Q&A session. We don't have any further questions, and therefore we are ending our today's telephone conference. Mr. Terzariol and myself say goodbye. Thank you very much for your participation. Until next time, stay healthy. Have a nice day. Goodbye.