Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to today's Hannover International Conference call on the first of January 2022, P&C Treaty Renewals. For your information, this conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to hand the call over to your host today, Mr. Jean-Jacques Henchoz, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead, sir.
Well, good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining this call. Welcome to this update on our 1/1 renewal for our P&C treaty reinsurance book. As usual, I'll start with an overview before my executive board colleague, Sven Althoff, goes over the key figures. I'll then comment later on the outlook for this year. Let me start with a few general comments on the market environment. 2021 was again a challenging year for the reinsurance industry. Insured losses from natural catastrophes were also clearly above expectations last year and in recent years. Additionally, topics like the impact of climate change and rising inflation play an increasing role in the modeling and the pricing of reinsurance.
Going forward, the positive momentum for reinsurance rates is continuing, and the fact that we have seen significant price corrections since 2017 is confirming that underwriting discipline is prevailing despite the availability of capacity globally. Additionally, the primary insurance markets have seen further improvements in a number of geographies and lines of business, which is a positive for our proportional reinsurance business. The price movements in this renewal did vary quite notably depending on geographies and lines of business. In general, more dynamic developments could be observed in North America and Europe, reflecting loss costs in prior years. All in all, the quality of our portfolio is expected to improve again in 2022.
Moving on to our treaty renewals, I'd say that most of the described factors were also true for our portfolio, with improvements of primary and reinsurance rates adding up to a clearly improved quality of our book of business. Additionally, we continue to see healthy demand for Hannover Re as a reinsurance counterparty, supported by our financial strength and excellent broadening client relationships. I'm therefore pleased with the outcome of this renewal. The overall risk-adjusted price increase was 4.1%, and the risk-adjusted price change for non-proportional business was even higher at 6.1%. Looking at premium volume, our book grew by 8.3% in this firming market, and our focus, as always, remained on profitability and sustainable pricing.
On top of the growth of our traditional treaty book, we've again seen strong demand for structured reinsurance business, reflecting continued interest and increasing demand generally in this segment. Our facultative business also continues to grow, supported by improved pricing and reducing market capacity in this segment. As already announced, the sale of our equity stock in HDI Global Specialty has been concluded as of January first of this year. The associated agreed reduction in mandatory cession rates led to a decrease in premiums by around EUR 500 million. As a reminder, those three effects are not part of the numbers Sven will explain in a moment. Looking at our total P&C portfolio, including all lines of business, the developments are confirming our growth plans in line with our guidance for 2022.
The renewal of our retro program proved to be more challenging than in previous years as the capacity was tighter and retrocession rates reacted to the material losses incurred in recent years. Still, our long-standing partnerships have helped to secure sufficient retro capacity to steer our risk appetite to the desired level. Altogether, we leveraged our strong capitalization to increase our net position in an attractive pricing environment while maintaining significant protection for our portfolio with one of the largest retro programs in the market. In addition, we have further diversified our cat book outside of the U.S., in particular, taking advantage of the significant price increases in Europe. Last but not least, the ability to grow our book and to achieve healthy profitability is also based on one of our key competitive advantages, namely our low admin expense ratio.
Therefore, it is important to further build on this advantage. This is the development of the renewal in a nutshell. Now I'm pleased to hand over to Sven, who will give you more granular information on our renewed treaty business.
Well, thank you, Jean-Jacques Henchoz. Warm welcome also from my side. Today, as you know, we are reporting about the first of January renewal on our traditional treaty reinsurance, which is in sum total EUR 12.7 billion out of our EUR 19.4 billion of P&C premium. At the first of January, we are renewing roughly 62% of this business, which is EUR 7.8 billion. The renewal is of particular importance for the EMEA region, but also for parts of our specialty portfolios. Other areas like the Americas and APAC will also have meaningful renewals at the first of April and the first of July. In total, as Jean-Jacques Henchoz already mentioned, we managed to grow the EUR 7.8 billion of premium by 8.3%. The growth mainly came from our renewal portfolio.
As you can see, the amount of canceled business or restructured business in comparison with new business are leveling out, and the 8.3% are really resulting from our renewal portfolio. Here we have two main and significant drivers. One is the risk-adjusted rate increase of 4.1%, but also a very meaningful underlying change in volume of 5.9%, which, for example, on the pro rata side, of course, is driven by the continued rate increases we can observe in many of the insurance markets.
You can also see that our underwriting has been selective, so our change in shares was a minus 1.7%, which was a combination of our selective underwriting and in certain portfolios, also ceding companies deciding to take a little more into their net portfolios after a few years of very meaningful rate improvement. When you look at our various regions and product lines, you can see that the growth was again very well diversified. All the regions and all the product lines are showing a positive growth rate, and they are also all showing a positive price change. The main drivers of our growth were the loss-impacted regions like EMEA and North America, given the 2021 losses.
We also have a special effect in our Credit and Surety practice, where we are showing a premium change of 11%, which is mainly due to the run-off of the state programs that were in place during the early COVID years. When you look at our proportional versus our non-proportional business, you can see that the overall price change was a little less on the proportional side with 3.4%. On the non-proportional side, we can report an overall risk-adjusted rate change of 6.1%. Almost all regions and product lines are showing a positive pricing trend. The only exception on the price side is Credit and Surety.
Here, given the lack of insolvency activity, despite the economies going into a COVID lockdown situations, was certainly less than expected at the beginning of the pandemic, and therefore ceding companies on the proportionate business tried to get their ceding commissions back to pre-COVID levels. Other than that, we are showing a positive price increase in all other products and regions. This is now pleasingly the fifth year in a row, where particularly on the non-proportional side, we can report healthy levels of rate increases. When you look at this slide, it's important to remember that here we are showing the increases and/or reductions as reported in the various February renewal calls. We are not readjusting this curve to today's risk-adjusted level given model and/or inflation assumption changes, but those figures are as reported at the time.
Let me now give you a little more details on the regions and on the product lines. When we look at our EMEA portfolio, here we could increase our premiums by almost 10%. EMEA was, of course, particularly hit by the 2021 losses. The major flooding event which we had under the name of Bernd, but also the storm Volker hit the region very hard. We achieved price increases in the European programs affected by those natural catastrophe events, and those price increases were most notable for our German catastrophe business. We took that as an opportunity to further strengthen our market position in Germany while remaining selective in our underwriting approach. We took particular advantage on the property side this year.
Another area where we managed to grow our portfolio was our involvement behind Lloyd's syndicates from a trade capacity perspective. Here we took advantage of the improved rating environment in the Lloyd's market to further build on those positions we already had and slightly increase our shares in that respect. When it comes to North America, you can see that the growth overall is 7% with a risk-adjusted price increase of 5%. We kept an active portfolio management, so we didn't grow in all areas of the business, particularly on the proportional side. Some of the increases in ceding commissions we have seen led us to reduce shares. From that point of view, the overall volume is maybe not going up proportionally compared to the rate increases that are still achieved in that market.
Overall, the business was trending positive for us. We could also slightly increase our position in casualty business, but that was very much in line with the original rate increases we have seen. The risk appetite we have for the natural catastrophe business in North America remains stable. As you may remember, we have only grown our U.S P&C so wind business in the last three years less than proportionate compared to our capital base in order to improve the diversification in our overall cat portfolio. That trend continued also into 2022 despite the rate increases we have achieved for that business. One area where we have seen particularly high increases in insurance rates was the Cyber portfolio. Here, very often we see rate increases in the original market of 30% or higher.
We do see improved terms and conditions on the insurance side, which of course is both very helpful for our proportional book of business on the cyber side. Ninety percent of our overall cyber portfolio is actually proportional business. Therefore, those rate increases are very meaningful for our portfolio. For Latin America, 1/1 is not the major renewal. We see more renewals later in the year, particularly at around the 1/7 time. The business that did renew led us to renew a rather stable portfolio with also a positive pricing trend in those markets. The APAC portfolio, in line with our overall APAC strategy, grew again by 8.2%. Here, the loss environment has been relatively benign in 2021.
Therefore, the increase in prices we were able to achieve were still positive, but less pronounced compared to the previous years. As you can see, there's still a strong underlying growth in volume, of course, illustrating again that from an economic point of view, this is a fast-growing part of the worldwide economy with still a relatively low insurance penetration in many of the markets, and hence our strategic positioning to make certain that we are well positioned to take advantage of that growth. We have been particularly successful in the Southeast Asia region in executing that strategy. When it comes to mainland China, this market is still relatively competitive. Like in the last two years, we have seen relatively little as far as rate increases is concerned.
Therefore, we have decided to reduce shares in some of the proportional treaties in order to improve the profitability of our Chinese portfolio overall. That was certainly a challenging story to tell our Chinese clients. In the end, we managed to secure the shares we wanted to renew, and we were able to reduce some of the shares we didn't want to continue writing. When it comes to the worldwide product lines, we see a particularly high growth rate for our Credit and Surety portfolio, as I already mentioned, very meaningful with 11.2%. Here we have the effect of economic recovery after many of the COVID lockdown mechanisms, but also the run-off of the state guarantees for credit insurers.
Most of them were canceled by the first of July in 2021. Premium levels for our ceding companies are getting back to original pre-COVID levels as they don't have to pay the premium for those run-offs for those state guarantees any longer. Overall, a relatively stable portfolio, some movement in shares. We reduced our shares in a few accounts. On the other hand, we did find a good handful of additional opportunities. From that perspective, a good and stable renewal. Price changes were better on the non-proportional business. I already mentioned that on the proportional business, we had a slight negative, but still a solid positive on the non-proportional business. An overall risk-adjusted price increase of 1.3%. On the Aviation and Marine side, we continue to improve the overall portfolio quality.
In aviation, we started to see some selective growth opportunities again. This market has significantly re-underwritten their portfolios over the last three years. Today's rating environment that we can achieve on the airline and the product side is at a level where we start comfortable growing again. This growth, of course, is still very depressed by the lack of flying activity. I mean, of course, yes, it has picked up from the most severe COVID days, but it's certainly nowhere near the pre-COVID times. From that point of view, the premium is not showing the same growth rate as the rates behind that business. From a midterm perspective, we have a positive outlook for the aviation business that we write.
On the marine side, on the other hand, we are overall showing a small reduction of our premium. Here, some ceding companies used the opportunity after years of re-underwriting their original portfolios to take some of the business they used to cede on a proportional basis back into net account. On the excess of loss side, on the other hand, we were able to continue producing good rates of rate increase. Overall, Aviation and Marine combined, the risk-adjusted price increase was 5.2%, so a very solid number overall. Last but not least, we also continue to observe a very positive market environment for our agricultural business. The original demand from policyholders for those products keeps growing.
We are also successful in selling more parametric solutions, which is an important initiative for us from a protection gap perspective. Unlike last year, our renewal book in China was stable at this year's renewal. You will remember that we had a sharp drop in our Chinese agricultural business after the establishment of a state reinsurer in China. This year we are able to report that this has now stabilized. One area where we keep growing successfully is Brazil. Agricultural business, unlike most of the other classes, are not necessarily always renewed at first of January sharply, so colleagues are still negotiating first of January renewals as we speak today.
I'm able to report that we will be able to talk about a good pipeline of business opportunities which are rather concrete and in the making, but are not fully concluded yet. I expect that we will have further comment on that when we talk about our first of April and first of July renewals. Let me also talk a little bit about our structured facultative and CAT business in particular. As Jean-Jacques Henchoz already mentioned, we had another very successful renewal at 1/1 for our structured business. We see a continued high level of demand for tailor-made capital solutions. This year, particularly when it came to commercial short-tail business and personal lines business in the U.S.
This very often is driven by C-suite discussions, hence also the tailor-made aspect of the business. We keep being very successful, having worked on those relationships for a long period of time. At this one-on-one, we were able to conclude a very high number of individual transactions, well diversified from a geographical perspective. Overall, we now expect the premium for structured reinsurance to grow by approximately 15% over the entire year. The demand for our facultative solutions also remain very high. We clearly see a continued client quality here. At the same time, despite having much better market conditions today than a few years ago, our hit ratio has still not moved significantly.
We are still very selective, but at the same time able to show good levels of growth with 11% and an average rate increase of 5%, which is a little lower compared to what we could report last year, but still a rather healthy number. The CAT business overall is showing a 6.6% on average risk-adjusted price increase, so a little better compared to the overall number we were showing to you a few slides ago on the non-proportional business overall. We of course had to deal with inflation as a trend that was certainly also featuring in some of the 2021 losses very highly. We wanted to take that into account when repricing the business.
We of course have yet again looked at the model assumptions on climate change given the losses over the past two years. We had the actual losses in 2021. Particularly in the loss impacted areas, we very often achieved cash increases which were double digit and sometimes very high double digit. But if you then produce a risk-adjusted number, taking all these trends into account, we landed at a 6.6% on average, which is a good number.
As Jean-Jacques Henchoz mentioned, we used this renewal to also increase or improve our diversification by taking advantage of the positive pricing environment in EMEA in particular, which of course is completely in line with our overall cat strategy and the fact that we decided to keep our U.S. wind exposure stable at the same time. Overall, as you can see, the premium growth we are reporting was +25%, is significantly over and above the 6.6% of risk-adjusted rate change, which is giving you an idea on the impact the increased assumptions on inflation and model changes had on our renewal book. Last but not least, a quick overview on our retro program protection. As mentioned, it was a challenging renewal after the losses of the last few years.
Nonetheless, we managed to renew very meaningful capacities in all three of our main property retro vehicles, being K, our per event whole account protection, and our per aggregate renewal. Overall, we renewed roughly 70% of the limits we placed last year. This was subject to restructuring and repricing, as you would imagine, after the loss activity of the last number of years. For us, it was a balancing act, looking at payback obligations we have for our retrocessional partners, having a view on the profitability of the incoming portfolio. In a nutshell, we could certainly have placed more if we had wanted to, but we felt that the incoming profitability of our portfolio was strong enough or is strong enough to take more as a net retention.
At the same time, we also try to be fair to our retro partners by offering renewals, and we managed to keep most of the relationships also into 2022, which overall was a good outcome. It's still one of the biggest, if not the biggest retrocessional programs, in the market. At the same time, it's slightly reduced compared to where we were a year ago. With that, Jean-Jacques Henchoz, I would hand back to you.
Well, thank you very much, Sven, for this overview. Now, let me come to the guidance for 2022. Firstly, showing you the overview on the volume and profitability expectations. Just as a reminder, we're now looking at the financial year perspective. As we've seen in the 1/1 renewal report, in most of the markets and segments, we continue to grow based on the positive change in pricing and terms explained before. We expect particularly good profitability in Europe and in the Americas and the worldwide markets like credit and surety, aviation and marine, and also our facultative business. More importantly, all lines are expected to earn at or above cost of capital level. Therefore, the overall picture is quite satisfactory from our point of view.
With respect to our guidance, I can confirm the outlook for 2022, which we have already communicated last year in November. In terms of P&C volume, even though there are some moving parts, the recent renewals have confirmed our growth target. Additionally, we also have some important renewals later in the year, as Sven mentioned, and there might be further opportunities to grow. Additionally, as Sven reported, the structured reinsurance and FAC business, which are not only one-off renewals, have a steady pipeline for the remainder of the year. Finally, in Life and Health, we also have a solid pipeline for new business, but it's a bit too early to revisit our guidance for the year.
Therefore, we left the volume guidance for the group unchanged, but we're optimistic that there is upside potential in the course of the year. Our return on investment target is at 2.3%, as you know, reflecting the low interest rate levels in accordance to the duration of our investment book. We've maintained the group net income target in the range of EUR 1.4 billion-EUR 1.5 billion. As you know, the guidance is based on the proviso that large losses stay within our budget. Given the slightly higher retention, we've increased the large loss budget now to EUR 1.4 billion. We feel comfortable achieving a combined ratio of 96% or better for 2022.
We did not change the combined ratio target at this stage because the growth of our structured reinsurance business comes due to the comparatively lower risk transfer with higher combined ratios. Additionally, the costs for our retrocession have increased. Last but not least, we want to continue our conservative reserving approach, particularly in times with increasing inflation. For Life and Health, we have to expect further COVID losses in our mortality in force book, in particular, driven by the expected development in the U.S. in light of the Omicron variant. However, this does not lead to a change of our group guidance. Firstly, a part of this development was initially already included in the outlook.
Secondly, depending on the final calculation of the mortality development in 2021, there might be some relief from our pandemic retro cover. As we've explained at our Investors Day in October, we strive to provide a stable or growing base dividend and intend to pay a special dividend if we reach our profit guidance and have a comfortable level of capitalization. As usual, we publish at this time of the year our preliminary key figures for the previous year. The full set of numbers will be presented on March 10. As of today, I'll just have a few comments of a general nature on these figures. In terms of gross written premium, we were able to exceed our guidance.
In the end, we achieved a growth rate of around 12%, which is predominantly due to the continued expansion of our P&C client relationships across all geographies. The net income for 2021 of EUR 1.23 billion is within the upper range of our guidance, which I believe is quite an achievement as the incurred large losses in P&C exceeded the budget, and the Life and Health underwriting results of 2021 was further impacted by significant claims related to COVID-19. The return on investment is expected to reach a very strong 3.2%, which is materially higher than the 2.4% target. One of the components contributing to the significant outperformance was our inflation-linked bond portfolio.
As you know, we buy those as a hedging instrument for inflation risk in our P&C reserves. To achieve the desired hedging effect going forward, we have partly used the uplift in our investment returns to take a more cautious stance on inflation assumptions in our reserving at year-end, which had a visible impact on our P&C underwriting results. As usual, we'll communicate the proposal on our dividend in March, together with the details of our numbers for the full year financial result. At this stage, I can confirm that we will apply the refined dividend strategy I presented to you in October. In addition, I can confirm that the side conditions for the special dividend are considered to have been met, and that a special dividend can be regarded as very likely.
Altogether, Hannover Re again proved its resilience and the ability to achieve solid results, even in a very difficult year like 2021. We'll give you the figures in full detail on the next conference call on March 10. With that, let me close the presentation part, and Sven and I would welcome your comments or questions. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin our question and answer session. If you have a question for our speakers, please dial 0 and 1 on your telephone keypad now to enter the queue. Once your name has been announced, you can ask a question. If you find your question is answered before it is your turn to speak, you can dial zero and two to cancel your question. If you are using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making your selection. One moment, please, for the first question. The first question is from Andrew Ritchie, Andrew Ritchie. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Oh, hi there. Good morning. First question, just on the inflation topic. You mentioned that you revised some loss picks in Q4. Could you just tell us, is that on short tail or medium or long tail business? Is it just reflecting sort of short tail inflation pressures, particularly on things like on property lines and construction costs? And also in context of that inflation comment, Sven, you implied that it would be possible to go back to your previously reported price increases and adjust them for inflation as you see it now. In that context, what would the 5.5% you reported for risk-adjusted rate increases this time last year actually, do you think, turn out to have been given the higher inflation?
The second question on retro, am I assuming the K vehicle, the structure is the same, so it's a 42% quota share of your property cat XL book? Could you tell us roughly what the expected premium for that book is? I'm just trying to work out what the total loss absorbing capacity is of K this year. The fact that you've got EUR 300 million roughly less protection in retro, does that straightforwardly go into increased capital requirement or is it diversified away? Thanks.
Thank you, Andrew. Coming back to your first question, the inflation in relation to what Jean-Jacques Henchoz mentioned on the Q4 reserving exercise. Here we have taken slightly more conservative inflation assumptions more on the mid- to long-term portfolios, whilst keeping the short tail ultimate loss ratios relatively stable from where our actuaries would end up with their usual methods. The slight reserve change strengthening we have done in Q4 was more in our long tail portfolios. The 5.5% we reported last year. Sorry if you feel I implied that I have a number for you given today's assumptions. Unfortunately, I don't. It would be a Herculean exercise.
We're rerunning all those contracts, which are of course many thousands with new assumptions again. I reckon that's really a guess. That's not a scientific number. I reckon the 5.4% would be somewhere around the figure we are reporting for this year, given that cash increases have been there or thereabout from where we were a year ago. That's not a very sophisticated number, but it would not be 5.5% again. The K function or the K session is actually changing. I mean, the way it works is that we are calculating the capital required up to certain return periods for the business that is in K to determine the overall capital required.
The new capital behind K is a cession of roughly just below 30% for 2022. I have to come back to you on the premium number and happy to do so. I wouldn't be able to give you a precise number for K after the renewal. I have the number before the renewal in the top of my head, but that number would have changed. Rather than giving you a wrong number, we would rather come back to you when it comes to the subject premium under K.
And-
Yep, please go ahead.
Sorry. Yeah, I think you're about to answer the total capital question. Your increased capital requirement for property cat.
That's right. Which hasn't changed after the renewal. We could keep that unchanged. We are still within the capital allocated for natural catastrophe risk after the renewal, like we planned before the renewal. You can see most of that impact has diversified in a way. The expected utilization of the net cat budget has slightly increased, but the budget itself is unchanged.
Can I just follow up on the? If last year you still, with hindsight, still feel you earned margin above any change of loss cost trend? I appreciate the 5.5% wasn't 5.5% as it turned out, but it was still above zero. Is there still though an element of significant management overlay in how you recognize any of that improved margin because of the additional uncertainty of the loss cost environment? Do you see what I mean? There are two things going on. One is you've become a bit more conservative on your loss assumption. Secondly, you might have become a bit more conservative on when you would recognize improved margins. Is that a fair comment?
Yeah, that's a fair comment, Andrew. To answer your question in a different way, I mean, we still feel that the pricing we achieved last year in general was over and above our cost of capital. That view wouldn't have changed and it would clearly still have been a solid positive number for the portfolio as a whole. The development we are talking about both from an inflation and from a remodeling point of view, I mean, they are of course not hitting the entire portfolio to the same extent. So, we have taken more prudent inflation, for example, assumptions, for example, on our long tail portfolio. The sharpest increases we have taken is really on our short tail portfolio.
From a remodeling exercise, there was some positive correlation between high new asset inflation assumptions and remodeling at the same time. Of course, the European floods was the most extreme example in that respect. Where on average we can report, just to give you an idea, that our German cat-driven business saw original limit retention increases of roughly 20%. Roughly 15% more limit was purchased. We did achieve an overall capacity increase of almost 30% on that portfolio. Still, we would only report a risk-adjusted rate increase in the high teens for this. You can see that in a combination of higher inflation assumptions plus the remodeling, the impact was quite severe. Those are very few isolated cases in our portfolio.
Thanks very much. Thank you.
The next question is from Vikram Gandhi, Vikram Gandhi. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Well, hello, it's Vikram from Vikram Gandhi . Good morning, everybody. Three quick ones from me. First is on the cat book. 6.6% price increase is really good, but probably doesn't appear as strong in the context of the 25% growth. I hear what you say on the diversification in terms of increasing share from European business versus the U.S. It would be great if you can elaborate on management's thinking behind that and how you see that book developing over the rest of the year. Second is on Cyber. Can you help us with the amount of premiums on Cyber for FY 2021? I think the figure for 2020 was around EUR 300 million. The last one is really on the mix in terms of prop versus non-prop.
If I look at the split between the two segments based on the renewed portfolio, at the January 2022 renewal, it's about 70/30 versus 75/25 last year. I just wonder what the motivation could be to grow the non-prop book more strongly, given the inflationary environment, you know, alignment of interest, increased loss expectations on that cat, and so on and so forth. Any color there would be very helpful. Thank you.
Yeah, let me start with the latter. I mean, of course, on the non-prop side, we had full control of the pricing ourselves. At this year's renewal, we just felt that the pricing we were able to achieve was stronger on the non-proportional side versus the proportional business. On the proportional business, it was difficult to further increase ceding commissions or at times even to the opposite, ceding companies were negotiating higher ceding commissions very hard. Which of course was taking some of the additional profitability we see due to underlying insurance rate movement eaten away.
Another scenario which did happen occasionally is that ceding companies switched the pro rata for non-proportional coverage because they wanted to keep more of that business net and were only prepared to buy a non-proportional business. From that point of view, quite a natural development in an insurance market that is after a few years of repricing, finding a good technical level, that ceding companies start preferring non-proportional solutions over proportional solutions. We have seen that in our portfolio as well. On the other hand, when you look at the overall portfolio composition, Vic, you have to remember the growth numbers we were talking about on the Advanced Solutions business, which are higher compared to the traditional business.
Advanced Solutions business, at least the way we write it, tends to be almost exclusively non-proportional. So there is some excess of loss business in there, but the bulk of the premium is proportional. The overall split will not have moved significantly for the entire P&C portfolio. On the Cyber premium, Vic, I can give you underwriting year numbers. I don't have any good financial year numbers with me today, so that's something where we can follow up. But the Cyber premium we had for underwriting year 2021 was just shy of EUR 400 million. For underwriting year 2022, we expect to end up in the region of EUR 550 million-EUR 600 million premium.
A significant increase in our Cyber premium, but almost exclusively driven by the underlying insurance rate improvement. Overall, we kept our risk appetite for Cyber stable or even slightly reduced. One of the major topics we had identified for us when it comes to our proportional Cyber book was the either introduction or lowering of event caps or loss ratio caps or other mechanisms that are making this systemic exposure better to control from a scenario basis for us. Negotiating these topics into the contracts was not welcomed by all ceding companies.
We were successful for the most part, but we also lost some shares or some business because the ceding companies were not too willing to have these limiting features in their proportional contracts. On the cat book, as already mentioned, I mean, we always try to have a better diversification in our cat portfolio. Hence, again, the decision to keep our U.S. wind exposure stable. We used the opportunity of the significant repricing to particularly grow in the EMEA region, where we felt that the pricing over the last few years was not necessarily where it needed to be.
Despite the higher inflation assumptions and despite the remodeling we did, overall, this portfolio has certainly moved into a territory where we were able to and willing to grow, particularly in this part of the world. This is nicely diversifying away and does not translate one-to-one into increased capital requirements.
Okay. Fantastic. Thank you very much for the color.
The next question is from Will Hardcastle at UBS. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Good morning, all. Thanks for the questions. I've got two. First one on retro. You talked about over 70% of the limits year-over-year, and also what appears to be in that session as well from what was just discussed. I guess any guidance on the relative price year-over-year of your overall retro program? I know you said you didn't have the cat session one specifically. What about your overall retro spend? Has that decreased year-over-year absolute or have the higher prices and costs of that entirely eaten into this? And then on inflation is the second question. You mentioned there that it's on the mid- to long-tail lines. Is there any more specific color you can give, specific lines and geography perhaps?
would you expect this to result in higher absolute reserve buffers, or is this to be eaten into by the fact that you just expect an increased level of claims here from inflation? Thanks.
Yeah. Well, on the inflation side, we really have to differentiate between two topics. When Andrew asked a little earlier about the Q4 remark from Jean-Jacques Henchoz specifically, that's when I said, we put most of what we did in addition to what we have normally done into the long tail buckets. Pricing, on the other hand, is completely different. Here we have increased the short tail lines much more severely than we did increase our assumptions for the long tail classes, because we do expect return to lower inflation levels in the next few years. Not necessarily to the very low levels we have seen for a long time, but often we don't expect inflation to stay at the more peaky level where it is right now.
Therefore, we have taken a lower increase on our long tail business and a much more significant increase on the short tail business. Of course, given that first of January is the most crucial renewal for our EMEA business, this featured highly in our EMEA short tail portfolios. Even to a higher or significantly higher extent compared to our U.S. assumptions, because there we had a higher inflation for a longer time. The delta was not so pronounced compared to the Eurozone.
To stay with my German cat example, which I started a little earlier, I mean, the German cat business, for example, we would have inflated very close to the official building cost index in the low double digits at around 12%-13% area. That was very European specific. That was not a similar kind of delta for the rest of the world, where we did increase our inflation assumptions, but often only by a few percentage points and not so extreme like in the Eurozone for our EMEA business.
Okay.
Okay.
Sorry. No, I think on the inflation as well. Really, I was looking for on the mid- to long-tail lines as well, any more specific color on those that were strengthened specifically. I know it's different to the pricing perspective.
Well, I mean, we can talk about that in a little more detail when we are doing our March call. For now, you will not be surprised that the usual suspect of U.S. long tail business came to mind when we looked at our Q4 reserves. As a first pointer.
Thanks. Perhaps on the retro spend.
On the non-proportional protections, which as I guess really what you're referring to, of course, K, the premium reduces or increases with the cession rate. That of course hasn't changed this year. By us dropping the cession rate, of course, we will see less premium under K. But on the non-proportional business, we will have spent for 2022 a mid double digit premium figure less compared to what we were spending last year. Whilst from a rate on line perspective, we are still paying a little higher compared to where we were last year. The rate on line increased to some degree.
Most of the reduced cession also translates into less money spent on the reinsurance or retro premiums side. The price increases we were willing to accept on the non-proportional vehicles were rather in line with the cash increases we could achieve in the loss impacted part of our portfolio. EMEA and North America on average. From that point of view, on average, a double-digit figure, but certainly not eating away all the limits we didn't place.
Brilliant. Thank you.
The next question is from Kamran Hossain, J.P. Morgan. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Hey. Morning. Three questions from me. The first is just on the, I guess, on cat budget. It's moved from 1.1 to 1.3 to now 1.4. How much of that is exposure changes versus assumption changes? It seems that bits of retro has probably got something to do with that. And are there any big PML changes that we should note? The second one is just on Cyber growth. You've talked about 400 moving to 550 next year. Given where rates are on the primary side, that would suggest you know, pretty material reduction in exposure. Maybe you can talk through kind of what 550 would assume. And the third question is just coming back to inflation.
I really can't work out if this is, you know, you've hit your numbers baking some prudence, a Hannover Re way, or it's, an issue that we should really get more worried about across the industry. Could you maybe talk about whether you've actually had any experience or this is just, you know, purely assumption changes, based on the very cautious Hannover Re way of doing things? Thanks.
Yeah. On the last question. I mean, of course, when we look at the 2020 major cat losses, I mean, we did see a higher demand surge than we would expect under normal circumstances. I mean, many of the economies were just coming out of COVID lockdown situations. You had supply chain issues in the worldwide economy. Having those severe catastrophes certainly fueled the inflation on the building cost side. I mean, getting access to raw material and getting access to contractors was certainly more difficult compared to what we have historically seen. From that point of view, I would say it was a specific 2021 situation, given that economies were just coming out of the COVID lockdown situation and had supply chain issues in general.
Certainly when we priced the business for 2022, we were expecting that some of these structural situations would still also remain into 2022. That after the recoveries of economies and ongoing COVID pandemic, that we have to expect in the very short term that we will see similar situations also on additional cat losses in the near to interim future. We are not in a position to see any trends for the mid or for the long term in that respect. As you know, we are pricing business for the next 12 months on the property side and property cat side in particular. Therefore we are taking that heightened level of inflation exposure very significantly into account.
From that point of view, I hope that gives you an idea that it is.
That's great.
In our minds, right now, also a reaction to this very specific situation overall. On the cyber business, I wouldn't say that this is indicating that we had a sharp reduction in exposure. Yes, we had certainly some reduction in exposure, but we are writing a very diversified cyber portfolio. Not all what we are writing is the big ticket stuff, where the market is charging 50, 60, 70% more. We are also writing quite substantial amounts of more of the SME type cyber business, where the original underwriters, so our ceding companies, were using much less extreme measures on both the rate and terms and conditions.
From that point of view, yes, we certainly on a like for like basis have some less Cyber exposure than a year ago. Certainly not a sharp reduction. As I said earlier, overall, we feel that our Cyber risk appetite overall remains more stable than that than we would say we reduced it over the entire portfolio. Could you do me a favor and repeat your question on the CAT budget side?
Yeah, it's just, I guess the budget's moved from 1.1 billion to 1.3 billion at Q3, and now it's EUR 1.4 billion. I guess the 1.3 to 1.4, is that purely kind of exposure changes given the changes in the, in your own protection? And are there any big P&L changes that we should be aware of?
Yeah. Okay. Well, when we talked about the increase to 1.3 million, I explained at the time that most of this was really underlying exposure change given our growth of the business. We added a little bit of portion to make it 1.3 at the time. The proportionate amount given the underlying exposure change would have been slightly below EUR 1.3 billion. It was more a rounding up exercise than anything of significance to get us to the EUR 1.3 billion. The reason why we now go for EUR 1.4 billion for 2022 of course has a variety of factors. We continue to see the growth in our business.
As Jean-Jacques said earlier, we also expect that our 114 and 115, 114 and 117 portfolios will continue to grow, so we are preempting some of that growth. Another factor is, of course, the fact that we have bought a little less retro than we did a year ago. It's a combination of factors. From a P&L point of view, you should not expect a significant change. As I said, tailwind from a growth perspective is a very stable portfolio, and the one part of our cat portfolio which we grew significantly was EMEA due to the price changes. But at least in my mind, that should not move the P&L needle significantly.
Mm-hmm. Thank you, Sven.
The next question is from James Shuck, Citi. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. First question is around the SCR. I think you talked quite a lot about the increase in that gap in diversification benefits, particularly coming from EMEA. I'm just keen to get some kind of guidance around how you expect the SCR to grow in 2022, either at the total level or and/or just relating to the P&C re-underwriting profit side of that. Just trying to balance the increase in the SCR with what we're seeing coming through on the top line and what you're communicating about that CAT budget, that'd be helpful, please.
Secondly, I guess the growth that you're putting on the book and what's different this year is it's coming more from new business and less from an increase in share. You've actually reduced share across many of the lines of business and the regions. I've always thought that a key part of the argument of Hannover Re's growth is increasing that share and deepening that relationship with clients. Just surprised to see that declining at this point. Would welcome some comments around that, please.
Finally, I appreciate it's still quite early in terms of closing Q4, but it would be helpful to get some kind of guidance around the Life & Health re potential losses from COVID mortality, just in the fourth quarter. If you're seeing late reported claims coming from regions such as South Africa, for example. Thank you very much.
Yeah. Let me start with your second question. I mean, when we talk about new shares and canceled shares, you know that there's always also the additional comment in those brackets that we talk about restructured programs. As I said, we saw some movement from clients changing their programs, program structures often enough by less pro rata and more excess of loss. This would form part of our restructuring definition. Maybe you can see a slightly higher new business production in the numbers compared to previous years. Quite a bit of that is also driven by clients rethinking about what is their ideal program structures.
It's not necessarily new business or new clients we have written to a much more significant extent compared to the past. More often it would be a situation that we are insuring the same clients on a rather same portfolio, but in a different fashion. From that point of view, I cannot confirm that we have completely changed our mentality that we are writing less of the existing business and more new business. Of course we have to react in situations where clients are having a rethink on how to best buy reinsurance on the existing portfolios. This hopefully gives you a little bit of a flavor.
James, on the SCR question, we're not able to give you precise information. We'll take it up offline and possibly give some more colors around it at our next call. In terms of, you know, Solvency II ratio, you know the latest numbers. We probably were a little bit down in Q4, but it's a bit difficult to give you precisions on this at this stage. We'll take it up.
I guess if I can, I will return to that. It'll be helpful. Just in terms of if I think about the increase in underwriting SCR in the P&C re business as a proportion of the premium, is that likely to remain stable in versus 2021, or do you think it will increase?
Well, I mean, before diversification, but that will not help you a lot with your real question. Before diversification, of course, the premium risk is going to grow given the growth of the business. As Jean-Jacques said, we have to come back to you with a more robust answer after diversification because-
Okay.
Quite a bit of that will actually diversify away.
Okay, that'd be helpful. Thank you. Just on the Life and Health re losses in Q4?
Again, a bit early to say. We want to give you the full granularity on the tenth of March. What I can say is that we continue to see Life and Health excess mortality the last quarter. The geographies we've mentioned earlier remain the same. Predominantly the U.S. market. We also had South Africa as a market affected by COVID claims and to some extent also some Latin American markets. This remains the same and you'll see some loss activity reflected in the Q4 numbers. Going forward, very difficult to predict, of course.
We have some cause for optimism because of vaccination progress, because the Omicron variant does seem to be milder, and authorities starting to consider going to some more normalized ways of work, et cetera. There are some positives. On the other hand, you never know if there is any new variant coming. The range of outcome is still pretty high for 2022. You know, we have this pandemic cover in place, so this will also be something which could benefit the 2022 numbers by offsetting any potential claims we might incur in the new year.
We'll give you the exact numbers at the next call on the tenth of March.
Yeah. Okay. Thank you very much.
The next question is from Vinit Malhotra, Mediobanca. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning. Thank you. I hope you can hear me clearly.
Yeah.
Just thanks. First question is on the guidance of combined ratio, which is unchanged. I'm just trying to understand three drivers, and if you could help me, it would be very useful. One is obviously we've seen the structured reinsurance growing, and then you mentioned continuing reserving on inflation. But then there is also cat growth where with the lower retro might be an assumption that you're retaining more of the margin. Is it still that it's a conservative answer that the guidance is unchanged, or is it that you see the positives and negatives are balancing out? Any more clarity would be very, very useful today, this morning. Second, just to clarify on inflation, please.
Sorry if I haven't understood so far, but what could be the reasoning to increase long tail assumptions just because you are seeing supply chain or lumber costs or construction costs increasing? Unless you see this reading through to medical costs or other things. You also said that it feels like inflation will reduce at least a little bit. I'm just curious about the long tail reserving charge for inflation. Last question, please. Just on the facultative, there is obviously more demand. This might imply to structure as well, you're saying the market conditions are better, but you're still seeing lower pricing than last year. Is it just because last year was too good, or is it still a conservative view that this might even improve? Thank you.
Let me start with the facultative question first. Vinit, yes, the demand is very strong still. On the other hand, like in the primary business, I mean, we are very often talking price increase on price increase on price increase over the last few years.
Therefore, I mean, it's not necessarily a surprise that we see some slowing down if we look at the average rate increase year-over-year. The 5% we were mentioning in the presentation, that's of course on top of the 8% we achieved last year. Therefore the portfolio or the quality of the pricing continues to increase, which of course we see as a positive. As you also will appreciate, I mean, it comes at a level on clean business, so business that didn't have losses over the last few years. Luckily, we have more of that business than we have loss-laden business.
There comes a level where it's difficult to push for even more price without making the buyer do something about the demand. From that point of view, we are not surprised that we see this slowing down. The environment we're in, and we can only repeat that time and time again. I mean, we are talking about the disciplined market. We are not talking about a hard market. We still have very healthy level of capacities in almost all regions or product lines with only a very few exceptions. That's still the market we are in.
On the inflation side, I mean, we are naturally looking at various baskets of inflation when we look at the short tail versus long tail exposures. The reason why we have also already started increasing our inflation assumptions for the long tail business, apart from the usual medical inflation, which is always there, so that's not new. What we have to take into account that in an environment of higher levels of CPI inflation, we will have to expect that there are certain levels of wage inflation following the CPI inflation.
That wage inflation then of course will have an effect on, for example, bodily injury claims, where one of the mechanisms how to calculate compensation for victim is wage level. That's sort of the trends. The mechanism how CPI or raw material inflation will eventually also end up in influencing the long tail part of our business. When it comes to the 96 combined ratio guidance. Yes, you are right. This remains unchanged. We would still guide for 96 or below combined ratio. And it's really and you already mentioned a few. It's really a variety of factors making us keep the combined ratio target unchanged compared to last year.
I mean, you know that our ULR picks are not necessarily moving one to one with the pricing we are seeing in the market. There is always a time lag when we are ready to translate a positive price movement also into lower base ULR assumptions. That of course, in a more inflationary environment, has not made us accelerate this translation. From that point of view, if anything, maybe a little more conservative than in last year's environment. In addition, we hopefully have explained that there's a difference between cash increases and risk-adjusted increases. Of course, we also translated some of those model adjustments into our ULR picks.
We have increased the major loss budget, which of course is including man-made, and it's not only net cat, but we've increased that by EUR 300 million, which of course is a significant number. From that point of view, we would say it's a mix of continued conservatism, but also in a way, having enough best estimate assumptions in there by basically saying that we can increase our major loss budget by EUR 300 million without changing our combined ratio target. Hope that gives you a little bit of a flavor where we are coming from.
Yeah.
structured-
Sorry, please.
Structured reinsurers, of course, you mentioned it earlier on. I think it plays a role as well because the pipeline is very good.
Yes. Just as you mentioned, the quality of portfolio is better. That statement is still valid independent of whether combined ratio guidance has changed or not, right? That's something.
Yes. No, I definitely think that we have a higher comfort level. We wanted to have some level of prudence given the trend, particularly the inflation discussion we've had. There is some optimism on the development and I think there is some upside. We don't want to jump to conclusions in early February. We'll see how things develop. I'd say there is some level of prudence in these numbers. The quality of the book is most definitely better than in prior years.
Thank you very much.
The next question is from Vinit Malhotra , Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and good morning. I just have a couple of questions. First of all is on the growth number. I mean, the guidance that you're giving is like north of 5%. I mean, last year you did 13%. Now, clearly that could be a very strong year, I agree. If I look at the January renewal, premiums are up 8.5%. And if I understand correctly, you're still saying that the pricing could still continue to move higher, albeit at a lower level over the year as well. And there are some businesses like structured insurance, which you're thinking like will be up 25%. So why just 5%? I mean, what are we missing? Which is the line of business where you'll be contracting?
Which would be the line of business? Or is it just you're being a bit cautious just because it's the beginning of the year? That's the first question. Secondly, CAT pricing is up 6.5%, if I understand correctly. Is it possible to get some color as to what would be the breakdown between U.S. and Europe? Because if I understand correctly, you mentioned at one point that Europe was up 13%. Does it mean that U.S. CAT was not really up a lot, like maybe very low single digits? Any color on that would be very helpful. Thank you.
Maybe just a word on the growth outlook, Sven, might complement, but indeed there is an element of caution in there. What you need to consider, I mean, this is a number for the total business, and this includes life and health. That explains also that it's not totally in line with what we're seeing here. The growth will be slightly higher in P&C. Might be a bit below the 5%. You know, the premium volume are not exactly the driver of earnings power and profitability in life and health, so it's probably less relevant.
We took the 5% for the total portfolio, and a lot of the differential is due to Life and Health.
Okay. That's clear. Thanks.
When it comes to CAT pricing, on the risk-adjusted basis, we felt that we have achieved the best increases in the EMEA region, closely followed by our U.S. book. It's really the two parts of the world where we had the big losses in 2021. In my mind, the reason why the EMEA increase was a little more pronounced compared to the U.S. increase is that we had more loss activity in the United States over the last number of years. Therefore, again, often we had a situation of significant rate increases on top of significant rate increases, which was less pronounced in the EMEA region over recent years.
Where if you remember in previous calls, we reported that, yes, we did achieve increases in EMEA, also on CAT, but nowhere near the levels we, for example, achieved in the last few years in the U.S., Japan or Australia. Therefore the base from which to start was in relative terms a little lower, and hence the sharper increase. Those are really the two regions that are driving the overall increase in CAT pricing. While the rest of the world was really paying for the increased underlying exposures plus some of the higher inflation assumptions. The needle didn't move that significantly for CAT pricing outside the loss impacted areas.
Thank you. Just like one follow-up on the CAT budget. You mentioned that this has increased EUR 300 million year-over-year. Has it gone from EUR 1.1 billion in 2021 to EUR 1.4 billion in 2022?
That's correct.
Okay. Sure. Thank you.
We talked about the 1.3, which was a first step already in November. We explained at the time that this was following the growth of our business. You have just mentioned the significant growth rate we were showing in 2021. That was explaining the big EUR 200 million step. Hopefully I gave you a good answer earlier. What were the drivers behind the additional EUR 100 million.
Yeah, that was clear. Thank you.
The next question is from Thomas Fossard, HSBC. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. Quick question for me. On the mix, property versus casualty, maybe I missed this point, but how the book may have changed at 1-1 in terms of mix of business. Make it simple, property versus casualty. The second question I had is given the growth in CAT, but CAT book being more diversified than it was before and lower retro, how should we think about the volatility profile of your P&C book. I mean, should we expect slightly more volatility or, I mean, it's broadly unchanged. Any comment on this would be helpful. Just on the cat side, I think that last year you indicated that you had 18% of your economic capital allocated to property cat.
Can you provide us with the updated number? Thank you.
Yeah, happy to do so. On the overall mix of the business, you should think in terms of this being rather stable.
Mm-hmm.
There was relatively little movement on the traditional business. If anything, given that this is where we have seen slightly stronger risk-adjusted and cat rate momentum. There could be a small move towards more short tail class. This really would be a relatively small movement, not nothing of true significance. Again, a more stable client, a more stable portfolio, both from a product and but also from a regional point of view. Again, all the regions contributed to our growth at first of January. When it comes to volatility, I mean, given that we have decided to buy some less retro compared to previous years, you can expect that the volatility will have slightly increased.
On the other hand, the quality of the incoming portfolio we are writing should have a higher inherent profitability, and we are spending less on retro. So from that point of view, I would say slightly improved volatility, but also with a higher upside potential for upside, given the better quality of the portfolio and the lesser spent on the retro side. On the net cat budget, could you please repeat your question again?
Yeah. That was related to the economic capital allocated to property cat. I think that last year you provided a number of 18%, which was slightly up from 16%, if I'm right, back in 2020. Just wanted to have this number updated if you can.
Yeah. Sure. Thank you for that. Indeed, we were talking about a movement from 16.8% to 18% last year. In the meantime, we have changed our metric and how we are measuring our net risk appetite, so I would not be able to give you an apples-to-apples number. What I can tell you on the other hand is that our net cat risk appetite has not increased in comparison with our increase of our capital. In relative terms, our risk appetite will have stayed unchanged. As I said, we are using a different metric today, so therefore, I cannot give you the apples-to-apples number compared to the one I mentioned last year.
Thomas, we will keep that in mind and come back to you when we have the number.
Sure. No worries. Thank you.
The next question is from Roland Pfänder, ODDO BHF. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Mr. Pfänder, we can't hear you at the moment. Perhaps you're on mute.
Okay, hopefully it works now. Good morning. In your presentation, you referred to active cycle management. I would be interested which business lines or areas are getting more problematic, and you might shave away. I think you mentioned some business in Asia, maybe also U.S., and maybe you could elaborate on this a little bit more in detail. Secondly, on the Life and Health reinsurance, is it possible actually to reprice your mortality covers you are actually signing in the current year to cover up some of the COVID losses you incurred during the last two years? Thank you.
On the cycle management, it's really various bits and pieces. There is not the one product line or the one region where we would say the portfolio is not performing according to our cost of capital. I mean, I gave you the example of some of the Chinese proportional property business. We talked about U.S. property business. We have also, at times, given the loss ratio caps we wanted to introduce or lower, have only offered smaller shares on certain cyber quota shares. It's really a relatively representative mix of our overall portfolio, where we take those decisions case by case, and there is no strong pattern coming out of this.
What I can say is that our taking these measures has been a little more pronounced compared to previous years. Which is also a result of the fact that ceding companies, given the strengthening of their earnings capabilities, have at times been very hard in negotiating certain positions, which at times didn't work for us according to our modeling of the business. It's yeah, the usual technical underwriting we are doing in combination with, at times, also more bullish ceding companies, given how they look at their business.
On life and health, of course, you don't have the same opportunities and leverage to reprice. Of course, these are longer-term exposures. On the in-force, largely not possible. That might be possible on other lines of business. Disability income, for example. The leverage we have is really on new business. And this is not a material part of course of the total book of business on a financial year basis. This differentiates very much the situation in the P&C lines. Of course, in Life and Health, you can work with the clients on underwriting standards and make sure that the primary side looks at development.
Basically on the in-force, the exposure is there and you cannot reprice the mortality business.
Okay. Thank you.
We haven't received any further questions, and this concludes the question and answer session. I hand back to the speakers.
Well, thank you very much. Very briefly, a quick summary. I think we covered the ground very well. We wanted to convey the message. We're satisfied with the renewals. They were in line with our projections. We see a disciplined market. Outlook, as mentioned, unchanged in terms of guidance. We have some uncertainties. We have inflation, loss costs, COVID, in Life and Health. On the other hand, the quality of the book is increasing. The growth outlook is very good, and the pipeline is steady in traditional but also in non-traditional lines. Possibly some upside, but we decided not to change our guidance 2022 at this early stage in the year. Last but not least, dividends.
I mentioned that prerequisites for dividend payments are met. This means a base in line with our approach, but also a special dividend. This will be a proposal to the supervisory board and to the AGM later this year. We're very optimistic about that. With that, I conclude the call, and thank you very much for joining it today.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your attendance. This call has been concluded. You may disconnect.