Good morning, and Welcome to Allianz Second Quarter Results Web Audio Conference. The conference is scheduled to last up to 60 minutes. As usual, our CFO, Giulio Terzariol, will guide you through the quarterly results and will then take your questions. I hereby hand over to Giulio, please.
Thank you, Holger, and good, good morning to everybody. As you can see, we had very strong results for the first six months of the year. I will say, if I need to summarize the results, I will say that we see very solid performance in Property Casualty, and I would even say that in the commercial business, in Property Casualty, we see out-outstanding performance, and we see a nice resilience in our retail business. All this leads to a combined ratio, 92%, with a operating profit of shy, slightly shy of EUR 4 billion for the segment in Property Casualty. In the Life Health business, we see strong new business margin, and also we see that the in-force business is reliably delivering good profit.
All in all, we had EUR 2.5 billion of operating profit, which is in line with our expectation. In asset management, sure, the environment is a little bit tougher, especially because of the development in the course of 2022, but we have a nice contribution coming from asset management to our results of EUR 1.4 billion. We see also inflows coming back. In total, we had EUR 18 billion of inflows, especially coming from Ping An. We see also some momentum as we go into July. When we put all this together, we have an operating profit of EUR 7.5 billion, which is 15% ahead of the prior period. Also, if you look at our outlook divided by two, we are basically 6% above our outlook.
I think is a very good result for the first part of the year. When you look at the shareholders' core net income, you see EUR 4.7 billion of profit, which is 90% higher compared to last year. Here, clearly, we need to adjust for the impact of Structured Alpha in 2022. If we do so, we still get to a 15% increase in core net income, which is in line with the increase that we see for the operating profit. Very strong performance, I would say, across the segment, and especially a very strong operating profit and also a strong core income. That's the big picture as we look at the six months.
As we go into the second quarter numbers, I would say we see broadly a copy and paste of the performance for the six months, with strong delivery coming from property casualty. The operating profit is slightly short of EUR 2 billion. Profitability in life and health is in line with the expectation. Asset management is more or less in line with the profitability of Q1. The Core Net Income is at EUR 2.5 billion, which is a 23% increase compared to last year. Here we have three effects: the operating profit increase of 7%, we have less restructuring compared to last year, and also we had a more favorable tax rate.
Since I'm going to speak at length about the results of the second quarter, I skip directly to the next slide, which is the development of our solvency ratio. Overall, our solvency ratio stands now at 208%, which is a 3 percentage point of improvement compared to the first quarter of 2023, and even a 7 percentage point of improvement compared to 2022. We need also to consider that now we are reflecting the buyback of EUR 1.5 billion that was not reflected in the number of per end of March. The improvement, adjusted for the buyback deduction, is even more notable compared to what we are showing in these slides. Sensitivities are pretty much unchanged or exactly unchanged compared to what we had in the previous quarter.
Now we can go to the usual waterfall, where you can see that a substantial contribution to the increase of our solvency ratio is coming from the organic generation. That's exactly what we like to see. The market impact have been relatively flat. Under capital management and management action, you see, as always, the deduction for the dividend accrual. We have also the impact of the buyback, which was about 4 percentage point on the solvency ratio. On the other side, we had a net issuance of debt, and there was a positive 2 percentage point of impact. Bottom line is a strong solvency ratio at 208%.
Clearly, we have the capital flexibility that we can deploy in the remainder of the year or next year, as we always, always, always do. Now we come to the segment presentation, and I would say this picture, page 11, is really good. We can see a nice growth of 11.4%. There's nothing new, actually. We had also strong growth in Q1. If you remember, we had also good growth in the course of 2022. If you look at the split of the growth between the premium and volume, you can see that 7 percentage point of the growth is coming from price, and about 5 percentage point is coming from volume.
I would say volume is mostly driven by companies like Allianz Partners. We look at price, this is coming from especially continental Europe. That's a clear indication that we are reacting to the inflation that we are seeing. You can see this even better when you look at the rate change or renewal. As you see now, there is an acceleration compared to what we had in the second, in the previous year. These are all indication that we are taking action, clearly, to react to the inflation that we see, and this should bode well for the operating performance of the segment as we go into the second part of the year, and also as we go into 2024. That's a very strong picture.
You can see that we have a nice, good growth numbers and, and good renewal rate changes across all operating entities. Moving to the operating profit. The operating profit is up 11% compared to last year, or EUR 200 million, and this is driven by higher revenue. It's also driven by a slightly lower combined ratio, and also we have a higher investment income. When we look at the combined ratio, the combined ratio is basically a little bit improved compared to the second quarter last year. You can see that we have lower net cat load. On the other side, also, the run-off is lower, so I would say that the two position are basically neutralizing itself.
Overall, a 40 basis point of improvements, if you want, on the underlying combined ratio, even adjusted for run-off and for net cats. From that point of view, a solid performance. As you see, in commercial lines, we are at a very nice combined ratio of 86%. In retail business, we are running 95%, which is a resilient number, considering the environment, and as you see, is also pretty much consistent with the number that we had last year. Now, when we take a look at the performance by entities, I would say there are a few entities where there is some work to do, like in the United Kingdom, also in Australia, and to a certain degree in Spain.
We have a lot of companies delivering very strong results, and I would like to highlight also the strong performance at AGCS, with a combined ratio of 88% for the quarter. When you look at the six months, which is always a little bit more representative as opposed to just the quarterly slides, when you look at the six months, we have a combined ratio of 90.8 for AGCS. A strong performance in AGCS. That's not just AGCS. As I was mentioning before, in commercial lines, we are posting very, very strong results. Overall, a comforting picture.
As we look now at the other driver of operating performance at page 17, we can see that the investment results has improved by EUR 80 million compared to the preceding period, and here, clearly, we see the positive effect coming from higher interest rates. On the upper right-hand side, there is a so-called economic reinvestment yield. You can see that right now we are running at 4.6%. In 2022, the number was 3.3%. If I look back at 2021, the number was 1.2%. This gives you a little bit the idea of how much more investment income we are slowly, slowly accumulating. Clearly, this momentum is going to continue also as we go into the next quarter.
Overall, strong performance in PNC with a very solid combined ratio, growth in revenue, growth driven both by volume and by price, and then also we have a increasing investment results. Coming to the life segment. Overall, here, the main message on page 19 is that the new business margin is stable at a good level. That's really a strong level. Our target is 5%. We are running right now close to 6.2 for the quarter, close to 6% for the six months. We are very happy with the profitability of the business, and also volume is up. Here, the situation is little bit more volatile, so the growth is driven mostly by the United States.
In continental Europe, the situation currently is a little bit more challenging, but overall, when we put all numbers together, we get to a nice growth in present value new business premium, which translates into also a good growth in value of new business. At page 21, we are showing this new KPI, which is the CSM. The CSM, again, is a sort of present value of future IFRS profits. As you see, the normalized CSM growth, which is the sum of CSM coming from new business, from the expected enforced return, from the CSM and of the CSM release, this normalized CSM growth is 1.5%. If you annualize that number, you get to a CSM growth of 6%.
If you take the six months as a point of reference, and you annualize the normalized CSM growth to the six months, you get to a 5% growth in CSM. Why I'm mentioning this number? Because this number, it's important. There is an expectation that the future profit growth is going to be consistent with the growth in the CSM. Otherwise, economic variances have been slightly negative. This is driven by a fix, translation effects, and also by some valuation changes on real estate. Non-economic variances have been slightly positive, and the CSM release is at 9% of the CSM, which is in line with our expectations. That's a new metric. I personally like it.
It gives some insight into the development of the overall business, and what is also important, we see that there are, no, no major surprises. As we look into these new, metrics, things are coming broadly in line with our expectation. At page 23, the operating profit is at EUR 1.2 billion. Which is broad in line with our expectation. When you look at the six months, we are at EUR 2.5 billion operating profit, which is exactly our outlook divided by two. From that point of view, everything is going according to what we were expecting.
The comparison to prior period is not really meaningful in this case, and that's because we had some noise coming from the first time implementation of IFRS 17, as we had to do the comparative for the last year. The focus should be on the current performance, and as said before, this is coming in line with our expectation. I'd like to mention the ROE, which is basically at 15% level, so that's a strong ROE, reflecting the fact that our in-force book has a good quality overall. Coming to page 25, here you can see basically the operating profit development, the point that I was making before. In the case of U.S.A., you see a big increase in operating profit. This has a little bit to do...
This has to do with the noise coming from the first time implementation of IFRS 17 last year. Otherwise, if you adjust for that, if you look at the other companies, you can see that there is a overall nice stability in the development of the operating profit in Q3 compared to what we saw last year. In, I would say summarizing the results on the life side, everything according to expectation. That's totally fine because we know that we have a quality book overall, and also we know that we are pushing a business which is profitable, and also from a risk point of view, absolutely manageable. Let's come to the asset management segment.
Overall, you can see that the assets under management are basically flat over Q1 2023, and if you look at year-end 2022, we are up a couple of percentage points. Overall, we got stability in the course of 2023. This is not the stability that we had last year because of the big shock in, shock in interest rates. That's very important because this stability is going to help the profitability as we go clearly into the second part of the year. If we look at page 29, at the evolution of the third-party asse- assets under management, we see overall flows. They are coming from PIMCO. There was also an acceleration PIMCO towards the end of the quarter, and we saw also positive flows in the month of July.
We think that could be an inflection point, that we are going to see more flows as we go into the second part of the year. Otherwise, the market movement and the fixed movement was slightly negative, and that is mostly because of the US dollar depreciation. I said again, assets under management are stable, and this should clearly support the performance as we move into the second part of 2023. On the revenue side, the revenue side, adjusted for a fixed and consolidation effects, are 2% down. That's not unexpected, because here we are comparing second quarter 2023 versus the second quarter of 2022. What might be eye-catching in this slide is the reduction of fee margin at AGI.
This has to do with the fact that in the second quarter last year, we still had the AGI U.S. business. Now this business is not part of the group anymore, the fee margin is going down. On the other, on the other side, we have also less expenses. In reality, the impact on the total profitability of the company is not necessarily to be derived by the lower fee margin. Now, when we look at the operating profit for the quarter, we see basically a reduction of 7% compared to last year. I would say results are broad in line with Q1 2023 results. They are also in line with our expectation. The expectations have to be adjusted to the environment.
In total, for the six months, we have an operating profit of EUR 1.4 billion, and our outlook for the year is EUR 3 billion. Considering that we should see some more momentum in the second part of the year, and considering also that we usually get more performance fees in Q4 compared to the performance fees that we get in the preceding quarter, we are still positive that we should be able to achieve the EUR 3 billion of outlook for this segment. Now coming to corporate. Overall results are in line with expectation. They are lower compared to last year, but last year we had a strong benefit coming from inflation in bonds.
Inflation in bonds are generating less income, which is also potentially good news in the sense this could be an anticipation that inflation might come down. What is more important, the profitability is in line with our expectation, even a little bit ahead. If I look at the six months, the operating loss for the corporate segment is about EUR 300 million, and our expectation will be that we have about EUR 400 million of operating, operating loss. We are running a little bit ahead of our expectation also in this segment. Finally, we come to the core net income. The core net income has improved by 23% compared to the 2022 level. Here we have the increase in operating profit.
Another driver of the increase in net income is the lower amount of restructuring, and then also the tax rate has been lower this quarter due to some positive one-offs. When we combine all these three effects, we get basically to this nice growth in the core net income. When you look at the core net income for the six months, we are at EUR 4.7 billion, which is, in my opinion, a good representation of what could be a normalized level of core income. And when you adjust for, you know, the classical one-off, so noise that you might pick up due to different items. When you annualize the 4.7, you are at EUR 9.4, I would say EUR 9.5.
That could be a reasonable expectation for our core income on a normalized level. Coming to the end, before I get your questions, I will say strong delivery across, I will say all segments. Always clearly adjusting also for what the challenges might be coming from the environment. You see a nice increase in business volume, especially driven by property casualty. You see 15% increase in operating profit. That increase is also the increase in core net income once you adjust for the one-off last year. A strong solvency ratio, and as always, we continue with our deployment of capital. We announced a buyback in May 2023, and we are now proceeding with the buyback. Strong set of results.
We are also optimistic about the fact that we will continue to show good performance as we go into the second part of the year. For this good performance, as always, I like to thank the employees of Allianz, because that's the results of what they do every day. With that, I'd like to pick up your questions.
Thank you, Giulio. Before we start with the Q&A, let me remind you, if you want to ask a question and you joined via web audio call, please press talk request. If you joined via telephone, please press star five to raise your hand to signal you want to ask a question. Press star six to mute or unmute if your question has already been answered. With that, we take our first question from Stephan Kahl from Bloomberg. Okay, I hope the line is open. Just give us a few seconds to bring you in line. Okay, Stefan, your line is open now.
Okay. Once again, good morning from my end. A short question on the outlook. Some people expected you might narrow down your outlook for this year. For example, saying you will end up in the, in the upper half of your forecast range. Just wondering, why didn't you do so with the second quarter earnings? What, what keeps you back at this point, or why are you still cautious on, you know, not being more optimistic on your outlook for the current year?
Thank you for your question. We are, we are fundamentally optimistic, so from that point of view, we are looking positively into the second part of 2023. We usually don't change the outlook, so we do this in exceptional cases. It's, we change the outlook more towards the end of the year. You know, we tend to be always a little bit conservative and cautious, but fundamentally, if you ask me, it's hard to imagine that we are not going to end up in the upper half of the range. Something really unexpected should happen for us not to be there. Again, you know, we have a tradition not to change the outlook, so, so easily, so that's the only reason why we, we, we didn't do that.
Again, I want to reiterate that, at this point in time, based on the level of performance that we have achieved, and also considering how we, we see the next six months, developing, it's really hard to imagine that we are not going to be in the upper half of the range.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Welcome.
Thank you, Stefan. The next question comes from Herbert Fromme from Süddeutsche Zeitung Versicherungsmonitor. Herbert, your line is open.
Yeah, good day. Three questions, please. One is, we talked about commercial real estate during your last call. Mr. Terzariol, has your opinion changed on that, or are you still of the opinion that you are well covered there and have no losses to expect? The second question is, the Net-Zero Insurance Alliance, you and others left. Is it really so easy to bring Allianz and the whole leadership of the global insurance world out of a program where everyone thought that was a good thing? Does it need only a letter from a couple of prosecutors in the U.S. to drive you out of that? The third, 90.8% for six months on AGCS combined ratio.
We hear from industrial insurance buyers that they're very subdued about the situation, and the resistance is growing and the interest in captives. How long will this last, this beautiful world of a combined ratio below 91 and higher profits from investments?
Oh, thank you. I'm not sure I got the second. You have other questions, Fromme? Hello?
I, I got three questions I have.
Okay, perfect. I'm not sure I got the second question. Maybe-
The Net-Zero Insurance Alliance.
The Net-Zero Insurance Alliance. Okay, perfect. Sorry. Okay, on the first question about the commercial real estate, no, the position has not changed, and I would always differentiate between commercial real estate equity and commercial real estate debts. On the debt sides, we don't see any major, major issue because of the loan-to-value, which is about 55% because of the quality of the, of the portfolio that we have in commercial, in non-residential real estate, basically, we don't see any kind of default. From that point of view, we feel very good about the, the commercial debt real estate. On the commercial real estate equity, we, we will see some pressure, but we need always to remember that this is part of the life portfolio.
From that point of view, clearly in this case, there is a participation of the policyholder, which goes both ways. Over the long term, clearly, the policyholders are benefiting also from the development of the real estate, because you need to assume that this development is going to be positive. As the volatility comes in and out, the majority of the volatility impact is basically absorbed by the policyholder. I think it's something that makes sense, both from a customer point of view, from a shareholder point of view, and I don't see any major issue that we are going to have from a Allianz point of view. Real estate will continue to be clearly part of our asset allocation, knowing that clearly there is some volatility and there is some cycle.
Our position has not changed compared to Q1. On your question about the Net Zero Insurance Alliance, at the end of the day, you know, we have a fiduciary duty to protect our shareholders. From that point of view, it would not be responsible, you know, to not take the action that we are taking because, you know, the legal system in the U.S. or the political system can be very, very tricky. What is important, we can achieve our objectives regardless. It's not that we change our commitment to what we want to do, and I can tell you that we are spending a lot of time and resources and money in all this issue regarding sustainability.
We were going to do this, basically not being part of a alliance, because this is going to expose our shareholder to a risk that they don't need to take, and we can still achieve our objectives. There is no change in our commitment to do what we think is the right thing to do. On the AGCS, I, I, I like to see this combination forever. If I could have my, my way, I had to say that, what the team in AGCS has done has been remarkable. I would say the improvement that we see in the performance is not just because the market is stronger. It's also because the market is stronger, but that's also because of the good work that the team has done.
To your specific question about capital, capital coming, so capital coming in, and so on, I would say it's not going to happen so quickly. I think because, first of all, some, some participants had some losses. There is still uncertainty about the impact on their cat. Also, the funding has become more expensive. I would say that, at least for the foreseeable future, foreseeable future, I would say for the next 12- 24 months, I don't see pressure coming from there. Clearly, what is going to happen five years down the road, that's a different story. For the time being, I don't see this pressure coming.
This said, we also see that the, you know, a few years ago or last year, there was still a hard market. Now I would say the rate increases you are getting are more just in line with inflation. Also, if you don't pay attention, there are some lines of business where you might even see a weakening of profitability. Right now it's really time to really manage carefully the business in order to keep this kind of profitability.
Can I add one more question?
Yeah.
Could you comment on recent claims, events, and Allianz exposure, for example, Slovenia and Austria, and especially the Fremantle Highway, the ship that burned in the North Sea?
Yeah, I don't have. Okay, I can tell you, I don't have data now for Slovenia. Basically, we are not really strong in Slovenia. We are just a branch of our Croatian company. I would expect to see some, I would say double-digit million numbers coming from Austria. I, since you ask about net cats, one net cat that you didn't mention, but I think it's, it is not, not worth it to mention, is Italy, where we had a lot of hail. On that, we are going to expect to have over EUR 200 million of impact. All in all, I would say the first six weeks of the third quarter have been a little bit more intense, but, you know, that's part of our business.
In the first six months, we have been running at a net cat load of less than 1%. It is kind of normal that we might see some more net cats as we go into the Q3 and Q4. Definitely, in Q3, we're going to see a normalization net cat. At this point in time, I will say that the net cat load for the quarter is going to be definitely at the plan level, which is about 2.5%, and it might be even higher, depending on what happens in the remainder of the quarter. Again, this is kind of normal. On the boats, we don't have any meaningful exposure to the issue with the boat in Holland.
Thank you.
Welcome.
Thank you, Herbert, for your questions. Our next question comes from Michael Fleming, from Börsen-Zeitung. Michael, your line is open.
Mr. Terzariol and Mr. Klotz. I have three questions, too, please. The first one on AGCS on a broader basis. Mr. Terzariol, you said the performance of, performance of commercial lines is outstanding. Is this a level this business can deliver in the next quarters, too? The second one, restructuring expenses are coming down in the first six months from EUR 500 million to EUR 100 million. Is this only a snapshot, or do you see a trend to less restructuring expenses by Allianz? The third one, the AGI margin is down, too. You mentioned that there are U.S. exit-related effects. Are you satisfied with the rest of the AGI business, or do you see a need for improvement there? Thank you.
Very good. The first question, thank you for the questions. The first question was the combined ratio in integrated commercial. I would expect that we are going to see a strong combined ratio, about 90, could be 92. Yeah, it's like ±, depending on the situation, also as we go into 2024. From that point of view, there is definitely an expectation that this segment is going to provide a good delivery. As you know, we also put in together joining forces with this integrated commercial effort. This should lead to potentially higher growth. I believe before we see the growth, it's going to take a little bit of time, but there should also be a drive of performance down the road.
Clearly, by joining forces, we should also be able to get some efficiency, and also we should be able to get also some improvement in the technical results. Overall, the expectation is that we are going to have a strong performance in our commercial lines also as we move forward, not only in the second part of 2023, but also as we move forward into 2024. On the restructure, I will say yes, we are going to run Allianz at a lower level of restructuring compared to what we had in the previous year. Our expectation now is that the restructuring amount could be between EUR 400 million-EUR 500 million, and we've been running at EUR 800 million in the last year.
From that point of view, the quarter might be a little bit lighter compared to what you see on a normalized level, but fundamentally, the amount of restructuring is going to be lower. The reason is because we have already restructured a lot, so there is a point where you cannot continue to restructure, restructure, restructure. From that point of view, we have done a lot of work over the last five years. This said, we are still targeting to get an expense ratio improvement. You know, we've been able basically to improve our expense ratio by 2 percentage points over the last five years. As we look forward, we want to improve our expense ratio by about 30 basis points per annum.
From that point of view, we are still looking at improving our efficiency in the next in the next years. The last question was?
Margin.
AGI margin. I would say AGI, because, so your question was whether we are happy or there is room for improvement. There is always room for improvement everywhere. Even when we have a combined ratio of 90, we are still looking for how we can do a little bit better or how we can grow more. Fundamentally, that's always our attitude. I would say in the case of AGI, in reality, you know, we, we had set ourself a cost income target range of 65-67. I would say that we are. Basically, we expect to be at that level.
Where we see anyway, things that we need to look at, in the case of AGI is, you know, the amount of products that we have on the shelf, and whether all products that we have on the shelf have the scale that is needed in order to get to the right efficiency level. That's something that we're going to take a look, and potentially there is some room for improvement there, and this might help indeed to push the cost income ratio towards 65%. What we need to recognize, right now for asset managers is particularly tough, right? We are taking numbers basically almost at the low point of a cycle.
As we are going to see, I think, more stability moving forward and potentially more revenue coming through, we should also see that the cost income ratio are at least stabilizing, if not, improvement. There is some work to do, but that's normal. It is definitely not a Baustelle, let's put it this way. It's a very good business, providing good results, but clearly, we are going to look at the possibility to make the company even stronger.
Great. Thank you very much, Mr. Terzariol.
Welcome.
Thank you, Michael. Our next question comes from Cynthia Chong from Mallows treet. Your line is open, Cynthia. Cynthia, can you hear us? The line is open. If that doesn't work, I, I suppose we go for the next caller in the line, and the next one is Ben Dyson from S&P Global Market Intelligence. Ben, your line is open.
Okay, thanks very much. Just, I wanted to ask quickly about on the PNC side, you mentioned that there was a couple of countries where they might need some work. I think it was the U.K. and Australia were the ones that you mentioned. Field in what, what actions you're taking to improve results there. What you're doing there. Just wanted to, just, a request for a repeat of something you said earlier about the potential Q3 cat load. I, I missed a bit, had a bit of an audio dropout. I'm just wondering if you could say, If you could repeat what you said to Mr. Farmer about the, about the, the Q3 cat load, given the, given some of the events we've seen. Thank you.
Okay. No, thank you. I think you were breaking up. I believe the second question was on capital deployment, and I. If I understood it properly. Okay.
Sorry, the second question was on, on catastrophe load.
Catastrophe load.
Natural catastrophe load.
Ah, okay. Sorry. Now you were breaking up a lot. Okay, got it. Okay, sorry. On cat load, I just tell you, so I, I would expect, based on what we are seeing so far, that for, for the quarter, we are going to be definitely at a cat load of 2.5%. That's our net cat load. Depending on how the remainder of the quarter goes, we might end up even a little bit higher. Hard to say now, but based on what we saw so far, I think it's a pretty safe bet to say that the 2.5% on net cat load is going to be, to be achieved, unless we have a total absence on net cat in the last six weeks, which, you know, will be nice, but it's hard to, to believe.
As I was saying before, that's normal, and when you look at the net cat load for the first six months has been less than 1%. From that point of view, you know, even if we have a higher net cat load in Q3, this is going to be still looks to still be a relatively benign year, 2023. As always, we need to see what happens with the hurricane season. We don't have a major exposure to the United States, and also we buy rate at a relatively low level. From that point of view, unless you have an accumulation of hurricanes, that shouldn't be a big issue for us. Yeah, that's where we, we stand right now.
Expectation for the quarter is that we are going to be at the, at the budget of 2.5, and potentially, depending on further activity, we might end up higher. On the other question about Australia, the combined ratio in Australia is about 98%. We need to also recognize this is not a specific issue with Allianz, because when you look at the performance in the market, I would say that you can see there is some pressure there in motor and also in property. Your question is, what are we doing? We are doing substantial rate increases. From that point of view, you know, we are putting.
In the first half of the year, we put already rate changes, which were close to 10%, As we go into the second part of the year, the rate changes are accelerating. We have an expectation that the numbers are going to improve already in the second half of the year. That's not a case where we need to wait two years, right, to get to a better performance. Already, as we go in the second half of the year, we expect the 98 combined ratio to come down. The response to your question is clearly rate increases, because the pressure on the combined ratio is coming basically from inflation that has been pretty elevated in the case of Australia.
Okay, thank you very much.
Welcome.
Thank you, Ben. Our next question comes from Tom Sims from Reuters. Tom, your line is open.
Hi, there. I have a follow-up question on real estate. I see, if I'm understanding your report correctly, it looks like your asset allocation for real estate decreased a little bit. I was wondering if that is mainly from revaluations or disposals, or maybe both, and whether you would be expecting to maybe make some sales in the quarters ahead. If so, you know, where? Of course, we all know about the issues in the United States, but I would be particularly interested in hearing your views on the outlook for the real estate sector in Europe and Germany in particular.
Thank you for the question. I would say, fundamentally, we are not increasing our exposure to real estate, although opportunistically it might make sense to do so in certain cases, but it might be still a little bit early. We are also not decreasing our exposure to real estate, so we stay relatively stable, and that's very important. As we make our choices about ACA, we also clearly carefully select in which balance sheet we are going to put some assets. As I was saying before, the majority of our real estate assets are in the life business, where we have a huge amount of so-called discretionary benefit, which means if there is an impact on the valuation of the assets, also the discretionary benefit to the policyholder is reduced. We are speaking of about EUR 100 billion of these discretionary benefits.
We have a significant amount of cushion in the case there are changes to the valuation of our assets. In the case of commercial real estate equity, we see a little bit of a valuation reduction. It's nothing major. What we see is 3%-4%. We might expect to see something similar also as we go into the second part of the year. There is not a meaningful impact on our numbers, because, again, of this future discretionary benefit, because of the policyholder participation. That's very important to me anyway, to stress again the point. It's not that we say there is a policyholder participation, so we don't care. We really care about our policyholder.
We strongly believe that over the course of a cycle, it's very good to invest in real estate and so forth. We can ensure anyway, credit and stability to our policyholders. The mechanism in our life business is done in a way that the volatility basically can be neutralized over time, so the policyholder doesn't see this volatility come in the crediting rates. The crediting rates are stable. Over time, they are higher compared to running with a risk-free location. From an accounting point of view, a lot of this volatility gets cushioned. That's a little bit the recipe behind running a life life business.
There can be some pressure, but again, this is not going to be noticeable, let's put it this way, or a problem from a shareholder point of view and from a policyholder point of view. I think it's a good trade, what we do in investing also in real estate over the long term.
Thank you.
Welcome.
Thank you, Tom. At the moment, we don't have further questions. Just let me remind you, if you joined via web audio call, press talk request. If you want to ask a question via telephone, please press star five to raise your hand. I see no further questions coming in. That means, we had our last question from Tom. With that, we conclude today's earnings call. Thank you for your attention. We say goodbye and wish you a successful rest of the day, and for those who go on vacation, happy holidays.
The same for me. Thank you for your time, and have a good vacation if you're going on vacation. Thank you again.