Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining this conference call, presenting the outcome of the January renewal for our P&C Treaty Reinsurance book. As usual, I'll start with an overview before our Executive Board P&C Business Coordinator, Sven Althoff, goes over the details of the renewal's outcome. I'll then comment on the outlook for the year thereafter. Let me start with a few general comments on the market environment. Overall, I'd say the positive momentum we have observed in the last couple of years, and in particular in 2020, has continued, and we've seen another year of improving rate quality for the reinsurance industry. Additionally, the primary insurance markets have experienced a significant improvement in many geographies and lines of business.
In some cases, we've seen the second or even the third consecutive year of increased premium quality, which is, of course, particularly positive for our proportional reinsurance business, where we directly benefit from the developments in the primary markets. Drivers for these developments, as you know, were the higher-than-average loss experience in the past four years and the continued challenging interest rate environment. As COVID was a significant loss complex, but not a capital event in 2020 for the reinsurance industry, we're not in a disruptive market environment. We have seen capacity available. So I would call this an orderly renewal, and hence price changes were, in my view, overall satisfactory, but of course more moderate than some market observers had initially expected.
As always, the status of the cycle depends on the capacity and demand mechanism, and even though capital was available for the January renewals, this time the pricing power was more favorable to the suppliers, which largely acted in a disciplined manner. Therefore, the market firming was broad-based and accompanied by improving terms and conditions, particularly regarding pandemic exclusions and silent cyber exposure. As usual, the trends in this renewal did vary quite notably depending on geographies and lines of business when it comes to the level of pricing adjustments. In general, most dynamic developments could be observed in North America, in the UK, and in the specialty business classes. Finally, I'd say that this renewal has underlined that the reinsurance market was willing to allocate capital and to support their clients' needs, and has therefore shown the relevance of the reinsurance market in this turbulent environment.
Moving on to the Hannover Re renewal, I'd say that most of the described factors were also true for our own portfolio, with improvements in the primary market, reinsurance rates being adjusted up, as well as terms and conditions adding up to a clearly improved quality of the portfolio. Additionally, we at Hannover Re have continued to benefit from the flight to quality, which is a long-term trend in our business. Given our financial strength and the excellent market position, we could feel that trend again during the renewals. Therefore, I'm very pleased with the outcome of this renewal. The total price increase was 5.5%, and the risk-adjusted price change for non-proportional business was even higher at 8%.
Sven will show you in a minute that this brings our book to a level surpassing the risk-adjusted trade quality seen in 2012 and 2013 before the last phase of the significant market softening started. Looking at the premium volume, our book grew by 8.5% in a firming market. You've seen higher growth rates at Hannover Re in the past years. Our focus here was on improving the portfolio quality, and therefore the growth of our portfolio was mainly driven by price increases and less by an additional expansion of the P&C book. We also did not shy away from not renewing business or not fully renewing our lines where the profitability targets were not met by our underwriters' judgment. Additionally, the growth we have seen does not include our facultative business, structured reinsurance, and other non-traditional reinsurance business.
On top of this, we do expect to see some more growth opportunities in the upcoming renewals, as well as in the non-traditional lines. Last but not least, the demand for reinsurance was in some cases dampened by reduced reinsurance commissions and by the fact that some primary insurance premium is calculated on business activity, i.e., turnover or mileages, etc. In addition, we've clearly steered our risk appetite in the NatCat segment and were successful in diversifying the book outside of the US, where we were not willing to allocate significantly more capital. I'm particularly pleased with our team managing our retrocession. They successfully renewed the retro programs and placed the targeted level of coverage at a reasonable price, which is risk-adjusted, well in line with the reinsurance market, and could be absorbed by our own business portfolio.
Last but not least, the ability to grow our book and to achieve high profitability is also based on one of our key competitive advantages, namely our low admin expense ratio. Therefore, it is important for us to further build on this advantage. This is, in a nutshell, the development of this renewal, and I'm pleased to hand over to Sven, who will give you some more insights on our renewal performance.
Thank you, Jean-Jacques, and also a very warm welcome from my side. Today, we are reporting about the treaty business, which was up for renewal at the 1st of January. This represents a total number of EUR 7.7 billion of premium out of our EUR 15.9 million of premium. So overall, 67% of our treaty business and 49% of our total P&C business. On the right-hand side of the graph, you can see the regional split of our renewal portfolio. EMEA is of particular importance for us at the 1st of January, given that almost 90% of our total EMEA portfolio renews at 1st of January. And also, when it comes to the specialty lines, a very significant part of that business is also focused at around 1:1.
If you're interested in the details, you can see a slide in the appendix where we show the premium that is going to renew later in the year. From that slide, you will notice that when it comes to the Americas and the APEC regions, there are significant volumes to come at the 1st of April, 1st of June, and 1st of July renewal dates. Out of the EUR 7.7 billion of premium that was up for renewal, we non-renewed or ceding companies restructured business in the amount of more than EUR 700 million, leaving EUR 7 billion of premium that we actually renewed. After the renewal, this turned into EUR 715 million more, where the most influential part of this increase is actually the increase in price, which was 5.5%. This compares to 2.3%, which we had reported a year ago, so much more positive.
We had smaller contributions from the change in our shares and the change in the underlying premium from our ceding companies. With EUR 680 million, we could again show a significant amount of new business. This was very diversified, again, like in the last years, with particular emphasis in the German market this year and our North American portfolio and business coming from the London market. Overall, we grew the business by 8.5%, up to EUR 8.4 billion. As you can see, we had premium and price increases across all lines and regions, with the most dynamic development in the U.S. London market and specialty lines. The only area where we had a slight drop in premium income, despite positive price momentum, is our agricultural portfolio, and I will come back to that in a few slides to give you the reason why.
When we look into our business on a proportional and non-proportional basis, this slide is giving you more detail. So you can see that the proportional portfolio shows an overall price increase of 4.4%. All regions and product lines have contributed to this, and again, it compares favorably to the 2.1%, which we reported a year ago. On the non-proportional business, we have seen even more positive momentum with an overall price change of 8.8%. This is significantly higher than the 2.9% we had reported a year ago, and only slightly below the 9.9% we reported for our 1st of June, 1st of July renewals last year. But you have to remember that the 1st of June and 1st of July business last year was very involved in previous loss activity, so mainly in the US, Chile, and Australia.
At the 1st of January renewal, we have a much more diversified portfolio. The best price momentum we could see from a regional perspective coming out of the Americas, both North and South America, and from our specialty lines of business. Jean-Jacques already mentioned that adding our 8.8% of positive price development on the non-proportional business, this has been the most pronounced rate increase we could observe in the last 10-year cycle. Adding or deducting all the price movements we have reported over the last 10 years to you, this now brings us to a level exceeding 2011. Let me give you a little more detail when it comes to our various portfolios, starting with EMEA. In EMEA, the overall premium grew by 10.6%, and this is on the back of a price increase of 3%.
We had firming of the rates both on the primary side and on the reinsurance side. The most notable firming on the primary side was coming out of our UK portfolio. Reinsurance rates were firming across all geographies, and as Jean-Jacques already indicated, we were also able to improve terms and conditions. We have increased our share in the Lloyd's market with particular emphasis behind our wholly owned subsidiary Argenta. As you know, the flagship syndicate of Argenta 2121 is not a fully aligned syndicate, but we have now grown our participation behind that syndicate to more than 50%. Germany was a particularly successful renewal. As you know, our subsidiary E+S is one of the market leaders in that market. Despite this already very strong market position, we could again widen our client base and increase our participation on existing programs.
In North America, the premium growth was even more pronounced, with 15%, on the back of a price increase of 8.3%. Here again, we had very positive trends both on the primary and on the reinsurance side across both property and casualty. We could successfully introduce pandemic exclusions and, in very many cases, also silent cyber exclusions in our renewal portfolio, and this allowed us to materialize premium growth across both property and casualty lines. Also, Latin and South America was a successful renewal. Here, in particular, Chile again showed good levels of rate increase following the losses we had in Chile from the riots a year ago. On the APEC side, the growth was a little less pronounced compared to previous years with 4.1%. Here, the price increase is actually exceeding our premium growth with 6.1%.
We had successful renewal in Southeast Asia and Korea, where we were able to write more volumes of business at more attractive terms and conditions. But where we had a drop in volume was out of our mainland China portfolio, which, from a single territory perspective, is the biggest contributor to our APEC premium. And the reason behind that is twofold. Firstly, we did not achieve the levels of rate improvement that we wanted to achieve. And secondly, we have a few market dynamics in China, like the deregulation of the motor business, which has led to a reduction in our premium income from the Chinese market overall. Turning to the specialty classes, we grew our credit surety and political risk portfolio by slightly above 5%, with a very pleasing development on the pricing side, where we almost hit 10% as an overall increase.
This was a first step of a hardening as a result of the uncertainties linked to COVID-19. As you know, there are relatively few incurred losses in credit insurance at this stage, given the various government stimulus packages and monetary stimulus packages, plus the fact that in quite a number of the countries, credit insurers had backstop solutions from the government. But nonetheless, given the overall economic recession, we still have to expect a certain wave of insolvencies once those packages and protection mechanisms are phasing out. And given that level of uncertainty in this portfolio, we were able to successfully negotiate strong price increases. We have only very selectively grown our client and exposure base, given the background of the economic recession, but overall, a very pleasing renewal. In marine and aviation, the growth was a little more pronounced with 8.2%.
Again, very good pricing momentum with 11% of an overall increase. This was on the back of various losses, both on the aviation and on the marine side. So we were able to not only significantly increase the rates on the non-proportional business, but could also negotiate lesser commissions on the proportional structures. In both markets, we see strong momentum on the insurance pricing, so the quality of our pro rata book has certainly significantly improved. However, premium volumes continue to be more stable due to the depressed turnovers, given the COVID situation, particularly with that particular impact on flying activity and the airline industry. As already mentioned a few slides ago, on the agricultural side, we have dropped our premium income by almost 15%, despite the fact that we are able to show an overall price increase of 3.4%.
We had various developments in this particular portfolio, so good growth and increased shares in countries like the Americas, Eastern Europe, and Turkey, but a rather significant drop of our premium income in China. Here, the background is the fact that following the African Swine Fever China experienced at the end of 2019, the Chinese government decided to establish a state-owned reinsurer for agricultural perils, and they are given a priority cession before the open market. That priority cession made the overall premium pool for the open market significantly smaller, and hence resulted in a drop of our Chinese agricultural premium. When it comes to the non-treaty business, so the structured reinsurance and the facultative reinsurance, we wanted to give you a little bit of an insight of how we fared at the 1-1 renewal.
In structured reinsurance, we continue to see a very high demand for solvency relief transactions worldwide. We have been successful to close an exceptionally high number of new transactions at the 1-1 renewal. We lost only one contract, so good growth in our structured portfolio at 1-1. We expect that trend to continue throughout the rest of the year, and overall, we do expect a premium development in the lower double-digit area for this portfolio. On the facultative side, we are participating in the positive development on the insurance side. We have seen a significant slide to quality, so policyholders and facultative reinsurance buyers have been very security-minded, and there was a lot of demand for Hannover Re security, which we could successfully turn into new business opportunities.
In addition to the pandemic exclusions and silent cyber exclusions I have already mentioned earlier, we can also report further improvements in terms and conditions on the facultative side. So very often, we have seen increases in underlying deductibles and reductions in sub limits for certain exposures like non-damage business interruption coverage. Overall, the rate increase we can report is 8%, but up to 20% in territories like North America or product lines like particularly downstream energy. Summarizing our CAT renewal at the 1st of January, we can see that there was widespread improvement of our portfolio from a terms and conditions point of view in most regions. The most positive rate movement we can report from our U.S. renewals with about 10% risk adjusted. Europe and the rest of the world was ranging in the 2.5%-5% range.
Our premium, nonetheless, grew more pronounced in APEC and EMEA for the reason that was already mentioned by Jean-Jacques. Despite the fact that the strongest rate increase came from the United States renewals, we were not willing to dedicate more capital to particularly US wind coverage. So we are participating in the positive rate increase of 10% for that peril, but we have not seen this as an opportunity to significantly widen our exposure base on that side. Overall, we can report that we had diversified growth of almost 10% in our CAT portfolio. Coming to my final slide, on the retrocessional side, we had a rather positive renewal season. We were able to increase the limits that have been placed both in our aggregates on large loss excess of loss structure from EUR 200 million to EUR 225 million.
We have also placed slightly more of our whole account protection coming from EUR 325 million going up to EUR 337 million, where we have placed a little less as our proportional K-Cession, where last year we secured a paid-in capital of $680 million, this year $610 million. We could have placed more, but we did not wish to compromise on terms and conditions more substantially, also in light of the fact that the protected portfolio has been seeing good improvements on the incoming side. So overall, we have been able to place according to our net risk appetite targets, and the price adjustments we had to pay were fully in line with the price increases we achieved on the incoming portfolio. So from a net position, a very welcome outcome of our retro renewals. With that, I would hand over to you, Jean-Jacques. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Sven, for this overview. Now let me come to the guidance for 2021, firstly showing you the usual overview of the volume and profitability expectations. Just as a reminder, we're now looking at the financial year perspective. As we have 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 strong profitability in North America, EMEA, and specialty lines, but more importantly, all lines are expected to earn an at or above cost of capital level. Therefore, the overall picture is quite satisfactory from our own point of view. In terms of guidance, even though there are some moving parts with the development of the pandemic and the P&C renewals, I can confirm the outlook for 2021, already communicated last year in November.
In terms of volume, the renewals have confirmed our growth target, but we also have some important renewals later in the year, and there might be further opportunities to grow. Additionally, as Sven reported, the structured reinsurance and facultative business, which are not only 1-1 renewals, have a good pipeline for the remainder of the year. Finally, in life and health, we have a strong pipeline for new business, particularly in financial solutions, but it's too early to revisit our guidance for the year. Therefore, we left the volume guidance for the group unchanged, but there is probably more upside potential than downside risk, in my view. The return on investment is at 2.4%, as you know, taking into account the deterioration of the interest rate levels. We have maintained the group net income target in the range of EUR 1.15 billion-EUR 1.25 billion.
In P&C, we now feel much more comfortable with achieving our 96% combined ratio target, but this is also needed to offset the declining ROIs. This is also supported by the reserving for COVID-19-related losses we did in Q4 2020, which has significantly reduced the risk for further additional reserving in 2021. On the other hand, we have to expect further COVID losses in our life and health business group, in particular driven by the expected development in the U.S., at least until we see the positive effect from the vaccination campaigns. So I would expect Q1 and Q2 to be impacted with a significant improvement later on in the year.
We still do not see the need to change our group guidance, firstly as a part of this development was initially already included in the outlook, but secondly also because we expect to see a positive one-off effect in Q1 2021, triggered by a restructuring of the reinsurance arrangement for the ING portfolio. Altogether, this will help to mitigate the somewhat increased expectation for additional COVID losses. Regarding the dividend, we continue our policy of paying out 35%-45% of the group's net income as an ordinary dividend and consider an additional special dividend if we reach our profit guidance for the year 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, as you know, will be presented to you on March 11th.
At this stage, just a few comments on these preliminary 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%. This is predominantly due to the expansion of our P&C business, where we continued to have strong momentum in 2020. The return on investment is expected to reach 3%, which is well in excess of the 2.7% which we mentioned last time, benefiting from higher realized gains and a one-off effect from equity participation in the fourth quarter. The group net income of EUR 883 million is very satisfactory, and this, bearing in mind that we're looking back at an extraordinary year with total claims related to COVID-19 of around EUR 1.2 billion for the Hannover Re Group, life and non-life.
The P&C COVID loss estimates increased by EUR 250 million in the fourth quarter, which is more than we indicated in November. Here, we've taken a more conservative and also more long-term view on the loss expectations with further reserves added for event cancellations, credit insurance, and also long-tail lines like casualty. This also entirely explains the combined ratio of 101.6%, which would be around 97% excluding the exceedance of our large loss budget. The COVID-related losses in life and health were at about EUR 100 million in the fourth quarter, mainly from our U.S. business, which should be less surprising given the developments in this country. As usual, we will communicate the decision on our dividends in March together with the full details of numbers for the full-year financial results. At this stage, however, I can confirm that we expect to pay at least EUR 4 per share.
Regarding the decision on the possibility of a special dividend, we will particularly look at the expected growth opportunities over the course of this year as well as 2022, where we expect continuous growth momentum. Altogether, Hannover Re again proved its resilience and the ability to achieve solid results even in a very difficult year like 2020. We'll give you the figures in full detail on the conference call on March 11th, as mentioned. So with that, I close the presentation part and would welcome your comments, feedback, or questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin our question and answer cession. 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 0 and 2 to cancel your question. If you're using speaker equipment today, please lift a handset before making your selection. One moment, please, for the first question. And the first question is from Kamran Hossain, RBC. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Hi. Morning, everyone. Two questions. One on 2020 and then another one on the 2021 guidance. I guess, given your decision to take a more cautious view in the fourth quarter for 2020, could you maybe give us an idea of how much IBNR is as a percentage of total COVID claims and how material kind of this cautious view has been in changing that? So that's the first question. The second question is, I'm just really interested in the shape of guidance for 2021.
My kind of read of what you were saying this morning is that you feel more positive in P&C, but clearly excess deaths aren't going away in the near term. Are you now thinking about the guidance being kind of slightly worse in life, slightly better in P&C? And then I guess the second part to that question is, I guess one of the footnotes in your guidance talks about for 2021 excluding material impact from excess kind of mortality trends. But you've talked about Q1 and Q2 probably having those trends. So is that factored into EUR 1.15 billion-EUR 1.25 billion? Any thoughts about kind of the meaning of the word materiality would be really helpful to keep.
Very good. Maybe I'll ask Sven to give the percentage of IBNR at this stage.
Yes, we would expect we had additional losses reported from our ceding companies in the course of the fourth quarter. So one of the drivers behind our decision to increase our COVID reserves was to keep a robust level of IBNR similar to what we could report in the previous quarters. So the EUR 950 we are showing on the P&C side is still approximately 2/3 IBNR.
Exactly. And for 2021, Kamran, I'd say P&C, it's a bit early to say. I mean, the momentum we have on the price side is, broadly speaking, in line with our expectations before the renewals. We will need to see how much growth we continue to have, but certainly there is some upside. And some of the upside is not only price-related but also related to the pipeline of non-traditional solutions. There is good demand and good momentum there as well.
So depending on how it plays out, it might be within our expectations or ahead of them. So too early to say, I would say for P&C, for life and health, clearly the expectations for the excess mortality, particularly in the US, last time we talked in the fall, was a bit less than what we incurred. So Q4, roughly speaking, EUR 100 million. It may reflect what comes out in Q1. Possibly Q2, a lot will depend on the vaccination programs. Of course, the vaccinations are focused on the high-risk groups, so that might lead to a better effect on what we see in the first half of the year.
We also see that the delta between overall population and insured population continues to be quite material. We have an excess mortality on our US book of about 6% at this stage versus, roughly speaking, 15% in the overall population.
So this remains stable. So probably some more exposures in Q1, possibly Q2. But on the other hand, we have some positive one-off effect on our business, which will, to a great extent, compensate a possible higher exposure in Q1. And we continue to have very, very good momentum in the transactional space in financial solutions, which partly is reflected in our 2020 results. But I also see a very, very strong pipeline for 2021. So I would say, yes, possibly slightly worse in terms of COVID burden initially in the year, possibly, compared to what we said in November. But we have one-off effect and better traction than expected in financial solutions. So overall, I'd say the guidance can be confirmed, and the level of confidence we have in this guidance has been increased based on what we know.
Fantastic. Thanks very much for the answer. Thank you.
The next question is from Vinit Malhotra, Mediobanca. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thank you very much. So my first thing is that just a little bit on the exceptional disclosure on the structured book. One of the things I'm noticing in your outlook is that your profitability for structured reinsurance is now showing 2 positive signs. So I'm just curious, is this a function of supply and demand? Is it likely that we should think of a better combined ratio for the structured reinsurance going forward or in 21 at least? Any comment on that would be helpful. Second thing is, I just noticed the comment you made about the fourth quarter COVID claims. Could you just shed a bit more light on the casualty element you said? Was this driven by some COVID-related social inflation impact?
And secondly, also, would there be any growth in net disclosure that you're able to share now, or we wait for 11th March? And my third and final question, sorry, is on Sven's comment on US NatCat, where 10% pricing achieved but lower volume. Could you just share any more comments on that, please? Thank you.
Maybe I can say just a few words on the non-traditional business and ask Sven to comment on casualty and NatCat or also comment on structure. But I'd say this is the non-traditional space is a little bit different in terms of dynamics. What we see is continued demand, and I think the uncertainty on our clients' financials and strategic shifts create demand. So we see that increase in demand. It's not a segment which is totally in line with the traditional market in terms of supply and demand.
You need to look at it separately. So you don't have the same type of swings. It's more tailor-made. It's one-off.
So I would say that there is possibly a bit more demand, but we don't have the totality of the market. It's very difficult to know. A lot of the opportunities are created. They are not part of an existing book of business being renewed. So I would say very, very difficult to say at this stage. I would not really anticipate a significant change in combined ratio performance for our non-traditional book, but I would expect this increased demand to continue over the year.
When it comes to COVID and casualty, we still have very few loss situations reported from our ceding companies. So out of a certain prudence, we have decided to book a few additional loss ratio points across most of our casualty portfolio.
We have no insight into which particular area of casualty will be impacted by COVID-19. So we do, of course, expect certain losses to be reported under D&O coverages, for example. But overall, our approach has been a little more broad brush by increasing our ULRs in order to recognize this uncertainty, which in the end, in a few years' time, I'm sure will show that in some product lines, we will have been too high. In some product lines, we will have been too low. But overall, when it comes to casualty, we are comfortable with the reserving position that we have now established. On the U.S. wind catastrophe side, we have renewed a stable portfolio from an exposure base.
So we have not reduced our participation on the US wind side, but we had no interest in further increasing our participation in that particular peril for the reason that it is our peak peril by quite a margin from a net exposure base followed by US earthquake. And from a diversification point of view, we have decided already in 2019 that for us, it makes more sense to have other country peril combinations grow more significantly, i.e., catch up with our existing US wind portfolio. And that maybe in a few years' time, we start growing the US wind side again. But we didn't want to have this peak peril to basically exceed the other perils we can ride from a diversification point of view even more than it already does.
And Sven, the capital allocation to NAFCAT remains around 18% or? Could you say that again, please?
The capital allocation to NatCat, is that sort of stable as well at around 18% or has it gone up?
It's around 18%, slightly up from the 16 and a bit% in previous years.
Thank you.
And the next question is from Andrew Ritchie, Autonomous Research. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Oh, hi there. A couple of questions. For Sven, could you just give us some perspective on what you expect in later renewals? I'm sort of not sure to what degree some of those later renewals are loss-affected or not. Clearly, Japan is less loss-affected than it was, but in mid-year, some of it will, some of it won't. So just give us a perspective as to what you're thinking about those later renewals. The second question, I'm still quite judging in the US, your growth, was it casualty versus property?
Were you happy to grow both? Was there a bias in it? Just give us a sense as to how comfortable you are, particularly growing U.S. casualty. And the final one is, I think there's a very quick answer to this, but I'm assuming the reduction in the capital at the K-Cession won't materially affect the cession rate, which I think is 42% of your CAT exposed business. But I presume that won't change much. But you did mention that you're going to retain a bit more. So what will the cession rate be? Thanks.
Okay. Thank you for those questions. We are positive when it comes to the renewals at the 1st of April and 1st of June, 1st of July date. You're right, Japan has been a benign loss environment in 2020 from a NatCat point of view.
But at the same time, we had a very active hurricane season in the two previous years. And at least according to the conversations we had with our clients in Japan, we made it clear that the rate increases we achieved in 2020 is not 100% sufficient to cater for our new view on risk. So there is more to come at the 2021 renewal. This development may be less pronounced compared to last year, but it will still be a positive momentum. The U.S. had loads of NatCat activity this year. We had very significant tornadoes, the retro situation. We had a record high number of hurricanes, and one of them with Laura was of a certain significance. So overall, again, a situation where there was a lot of frequency, and that should keep the momentum positive on the NatCat renewals in North America.
Lastly, in Australia, I mean, Australia really had two terrible years on the NatCat side. Not all of that is completely priced in. We could see that with very few renewals in Australia. We had at the 1st of January renewal that there was strong positive momentum on the non-proportional business. I would see no reason why that momentum should not materialize again on the 1st of July renewals. Our growth in North America, Andrew, is very diversified. So we have grown in property. We have grown in casualty more or less to the same proportions. Part of North America is obviously also Canada. So in Canada, we have also shown significant growth on the motor side. So overall, a diversified approach with us not emphasizing property over casualty or the other way around.
So a rather similar approach compared to the approach we have taken in the last two renewal cycles. And finally, your question on the K-Cession, that dropped by approximately 5 percentage points to 37%. But as you have mentioned and as explained by me when I talked about our retrocessions, this comes at a moment in time when the incoming portfolio is at a much better rating quality compared to previous years. So from a momentum or cycle management point of view, we felt it's an appropriate moment in time to have the session drop a little bit.
Okay. Thanks.
The next question is from Thomas Fossard, HSBC. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Oh, yes. So good morning. I've got two questions. The first one would be relating to your one-to-one renewals and the impact of COVID-19.
Reading the reinsurance brokers' first take at the start of the year, it looks like some were saying that COVID-19 has been, to some extent, left aside of the renewals because of two complex issues colliding at the same time. So I'm a bit wondering if you believe that COVID-19 has been already reflected in the pricing through terms and conditions and exclusions, or do you think that potentially there could be some pricing momentum in the coming renewals to come or later in 2022, more to adjust specifically for the COVID-19 losses? So just better understanding of what has been the impact there. And the second question would be on the 4.4% increase in proportional.
I think that, Sven, last year you commented that usually when Hannover is showing this number on proportional, this is mainly the change in the ceding commission and that you're not taking a view on the underlying pricing change. Now you're showing 4.4 this year. So I get that 4.4 is not the only impact from changing ceding commissions, but maybe you can say a word on this. Thank you.
Sure. Happy to comment on both. To what extent has COVID been reflected in the renewal pricing? Here I have to report that this is a very diverse situation. In some portfolios, like the event cancellation portfolio, where coverage under reinsurance contracts is very clear, the impact of COVID was fully priced in. The reinsurance community has introduced exclusionary language on a going-forward basis. So the situation is very clear. In credit insurance, nothing has really happened yet.
So from an incurred perspective, there were relatively few insolvencies reported in 2020. So despite all that, there is, of course, significant inherent uncertainty in the further development of the economic cycle and hence the situation on the insolvency side. So when we negotiated the renewal pricing with our credit insurance partners, we talked about their perception, our perception, and came to a conclusion how this will turn out in the excellent years 2021, 2022. When it comes to the real-world insolvencies, we still have to wait and see. That's why we tried to phrase it carefully when we commented on our credit insurance renewals, that we see that as a first sign of hardening when it comes to COVID-19-related losses. On the catastrophe-driven business, I would say the situation is the most complex.
There are still discussions going on between ceding companies and reinsurers about aggregation of losses, number of events, and as you said, this is rather complex. And I would say that in more cases rather than not, therefore your comment is correct, that the COVID situation has been put to one side to be discussed at a later stage, but get the renewal done first and then deal with the COVID losses during the course of 2021. So from that point of view, yes, there may be further rate increases, but ceding companies may also be minded to maybe cede additional business, which they have not ceded historically in order to come to a good level of understanding of what was covered, what was not covered on the COVID side. So there may be more to come, but that situation is a little unclear right now.
When it comes to the price development of 4.4% on the proportional side, you're absolutely right that I commented last year that for the most part, we are reporting about the movement of the ceding commissions in our contracts, and only to a lesser part, we are reporting about the underlying rate momentum on the insurance side. So like in previous years, this is a mix, the 4.4% of mainly the development on the ceding commission side, but also allowing some of the positive price momentum on the insurance side to come through in our expected loss ratios for the proportional business. But our ULR assumptions on proportional business tend to be rather sticky.
So like I said, last year, when we have increases in rates and terms and conditions, we tend to only adjust them slightly downwards, but at the same time, and that's something I also said last year, if we have rate reductions, we also only adjust them slightly upwards. So we are not translating those insurance price momentums one-to-one into what we report under technical price development in our presentation.
Thank you, sir.
The next question is from Michael Haid from Commerzbank. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Good morning. Two questions. First of all, on the retro renewal, you mentioned it was successfully renewed. Can you talk a little bit how your retro protection changed year-over-year? I think you already mentioned K-Cession, but I would be interested in the rest of your retro. Second question on future claims inflation.
How much did it play a role in the 1 January renewals? We have seen significant expansionary monetary policies of central banks. So maybe we should expect more loss cost inflation going forward. Did you change your assumptions regarding future claims inflation going forward, or did you leave them unchanged? These are my two questions.
Okay. On the retro questions, as you know, K is a proportional reinsurance vehicle. The protected portfolios were kept unchanged. So with our peak catastrophe exposures in North America, Europe, Japan, and in Australia on the property side. And in addition, we have our marine and aviation export of loss business protected under K. So there was no change in that at all. And from that point of view, there are no structural changes to report.
The only change that we have to report is the change in the parent capital behind K, which I already did. On the non-proportional structures, there were structural changes in addition to the price changes I have already mentioned. In both vehicles, we have adjusted our retentions slightly upwards, which is in line with the exposure growth that we have shown over the last two years. You know that Hannover has grown significantly on the P&C side in the last two years, which, of course, also made our underlying exposure base grow. And hence, we adjusted our retentions slightly upwards. But other than that, the structure of our reinsurance or retrocession program is fundamentally unchanged. On the inflation side, when we priced the business on the P&C side, of course, inflation plays a role, but also the interest rate environment plays a role.
So on the inflation side, on the interest rate side, of course, we could only use much lower interest rates when it comes to discounting of premiums and losses, which was certainly influencing our pricing upwards. On the inflation side, we are trending the inflation assumptions we are having every year. And of course, we did the same again for 2021. So those were routine adjustments. And from that point of view, nothing unusual to report.
Okay. Thank you very much.
The next question is from Vikram Gandhi, Société Générale. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Oh, hi, morning. It's Vik from SocGen. Just a couple from my side. First of all, can you share what your view is on the potential BI impact from the UK Supreme Court judgment in other geographies like Australia and South Africa?
Separately, if you're seeing some headwinds coming in the U.S. as well from that perspective. Secondly, can you give us a feel of how your redundancy level in the P&C loss reserves should have developed by year-end 2019? Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you, Vik. I mean, of course, we have tried to understand the Supreme Court ruling not only in the U.K. context, but also when it comes to other common law jurisdictions like Australia and South Africa, which you have just mentioned. So I would say that we have tried to bake in the development we have seen in the U.K. also into those territories. But as you know, in both countries, you will have independent court cases. So therefore, it's not guaranteed that the local courts will take one identical position to what the U.K. Supreme Court has decided.
But as we sit here today, I would say we have tried to bake that development into our numbers when we looked at our year-end reserves of COVID-19. When it comes to the redundancy levels, I would say it's still a little bit too early to comment on that. And I would like to refer to our 1st of March call when we give the full year numbers and where we will certainly also comment on the development of our redundancy levels.
Okay. Thank you.
And there are currently no further questions. So as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press 0 and 1 on your telephone keypad now. And we have a follow-up question from Thomas Fossard, HSBC. Your line is now open again.
Oh, yes. Thank you.
Just wanted to check with you if you could be a bit more precise on this one-off positive that you're expecting from your reinsurance restructuring of your ING Re book . And either going to be Q1 or Q2, that would be the first question. And actually, let me check. Yeah. Sorry. On the dividend, why not coming with a clearer view today? I mean, what do you expect to be more able to understand or to forecast between now and the date of the publication of your full year number to be more precise on the dividend proposal? Thank you.
Thank you, Thomas. On the one-off effect, indeed, this is triggered by Voya in the United States selling its life in force business, which, as you know, includes Security Life of Denver, which has been ceded and will continue to cede the mortality business we acquired in 2008.
So therefore, on the mortality portfolio, nothing is changing, but the transaction led to some changes, particularly in the collateral structure and a transfer of assets with some fees, which will lead to the mentioned one-off effect. So that's something we're in the process of quantifying and will confirm that in due course. But it's a material change, and we expect this to be booked in Q1. And obviously, this helps compensating some potential increase in expected excess mortality impacting our book of business in the U.S. with a strong offset in Q1. On the dividend, of course, the situation is evolving. We reflected on the capital management. We still have some discussions to go in the coming weeks. And we wanted to have an orderly planned announcement as in prior years. We generally talk about the dividends in March.
Therefore, we opted for the 11th of March for final recommendation. At this stage, we feel confident about the EUR 4. That's why I said at least EUR 4 per share. And we'll consider that in the next few weeks. So that's the reason. I don't think there will be earth-shattering developments, but I think there are a lot of moving parts. We need to look into the capital plan from a solvency perspective, from a rating agency perspective. And that's why we wanted to give ourselves a little bit of time and to announce it as in the previous year with the March announcements and the conference call. That's it. So no uncertainty, if you want, but just validation exercise, which we're currently undertaking.
Okay. Understood.
Thanks. And the next question is from Vinit Malhotra, Mediobanca. Your line is now open again.
Thanks for the chance. Just curiosity on.
When are you able to break out the COVID EUR 950 million split into some of the lines that we could share, if anything? So that's my first question. Second thing is just on the comment on prudence on the reserving actions in COVID. I mean, if the IBNR ratio was 71% before, and it's now two-thirds, as you said, would it be expected that we should see the IBNRs go up because of prudence? So how should we read that? And in that same comment, are you able to also just discuss the retrocession mechanism of the COVID recoveries and whether it was helpful in fourth quarter, please? Thank you.
Could you repeat the last question, please?
So in the fourth quarter, was there any retrocession recovery because of this whole it was the IBNR were being allocated to individual treaties to get the K-Cession recovery?
Could you just comment on whether there was any recovery in fourth quarter from retro? Recovery on retro. Yeah.
Okay. I will try my best. Unfortunately, your line is very bad, so your question didn't come through very well. So starting with your question on the split of the EUR 950 million, I would rather refer to our call on the 11th of March, where, of course, we will give that full disclosure. But given that it's a preliminary result announcement today, you will appreciate that similar to what Jean-Jacques just has mentioned on the dividend side, we are still doing a lot of validation checks right now. So I would hesitate to give you a precise split, which may then be subject to small changes before the 11th of March.
On the prudence question side, if I heard your question correctly, you're right that we are coming from a 71%, and now we are at a two-thirds IBNR situation. But that, of course, has to be seen in the context of significantly more activity from our ceding companies advising their losses to us. When we look at that development, there was no loss advice in Q2. We started to see a little bit of a loss advice action from our ceding companies in Q3. But now, with the imminent 1st of January renewals, there was much more activity from our ceding companies making their case and presenting their losses to us. So that number has increased significantly during the fourth quarter.
So therefore, I would say the 65% we are going to report with the full year number comes from a much more solid base when it comes to underlying information from our ceding companies. So therefore, the level of prudence, even though the percentage number has gone down, should actually be up given the underlying quality of the information we have from our ceding companies. And on the retrocession question, again, hoping that I heard your question correctly, you will understand that given what I said initially about the business mix of our COVID EUR 950 million reserve, I'm also hesitating to give you a precise number now, but you will certainly see that on the 11th of March.
Thank you so much. Sorry for the voice quality. Thank you very much.
Thank you. No problem. Thank you.
And there are currently no further questions.
I hand back to the speakers for closing remarks.
Well, thank you very much for joining, everyone. I hope the session was informative and gave you valuable insight and background on the renewals. We wanted to convey the message that we're satisfied with the renewal round. It's an orderly renewal, as I said, and some continued momentum, which we will see further down the year, but also in 2022. COVID reserving is adding a level of prudency, and we wanted to take a longer-term view so that we can protect our performance in 2021. Therefore, we're confirming the guidance for 2021 and feel comfortable that we'll make it. We see momentum on the business side. We see rates continuing to improve in P&C. We see some good growth opportunities in various segments, particularly in non-traditional business, life and non-life.
Therefore, the outlook for 2021 is positive, but also for 2022. I think the momentum is a multi-year development. These are key messages. As we've said a number of times, some of the answers to your questions will be clarified on the 11th of March. Thanks for your patience on this. But we'll deliver some full year information and more granularity as we have our next conference call. Thank you all for joining, and talk to you at the latest on March the 11th. Thank you.