Hello everyone. Good morning. Very warm welcome to our Q1 2023 earnings call. I have the pleasure to be here with our CFO, Christoph Jurecka. I'll hand over to him as usual for his opening remarks. Afterwards, we will really have plenty of time for Q&A, given that's probably more important than usually, having just introduced IFRS 17. My pleasure to hand it over to Christoph.
Thank you, Christian. Indeed, it's a big pleasure for me to, for the first time, present quarterly results according to a new accounting standard, IFRS 17 and IFRS 9. Additionally, we will also present full year 2022 and Q1 2022 numbers according to these new metrics. As Christian said, we can imagine that there will be more questions than usual, there's enough time today to answer all the questions, and there will be plenty of opportunity to asking them. I can only encourage you to whatever you have on your mind. Please ask, and I'll do my best in answering the questions. I'm convinced that you will join me in appreciating the high amount of transparency IFRS 9 and IFRS 17 will offer compared to the old regime. Admittedly, the transition confronts us with a lot of new information.
As always, I will not go through the slides, but I will start with opening remarks to allow more time for Q&A. I will first focus on full year and Q1 2022 before I then will focus on Q1 2023. Let's start with 2022 and have a look on slide 29 of our deck, where we compare the full year 2022 net result under IFRS 17 to IFRS 4. The IFRS 17 result is, as you can see, substantially higher than under IFRS 4, standing at EUR 5.3 billion, where the IFRS 4 number was EUR 3.4 billion. First to the new methodology, a positive deviation was certainly to be expected, as IFRS 17 results tend to be slightly higher compared to IFRS 4 for us.
Aside from the various methodological differences across all segments, which we discussed already, I would like to particularly mention the earlier profit recognition in Life & Health reinsurance. Second, the 2022 IFRS 17 result is also impacted by temporary effects due to the unprecedented increase in interest rates during 2022. This is reflected in Property-Casualty reinsurance earnings, where the difference to IFRS 4 is the biggest of all segments. In 2022, we benefited from discounting of new reserves with high interest rates, which was, and only partially offset by the unwind of old reserves, discounted at the very low interest rates locked in at transition. If you want, the timing of the transition was just ideal in a way that until then, the very low interest rate has been locked in.
With the transition, suddenly the interest rates jumped up and thereby highly increasing the P&C net income. The obvious question then is why do we guide for EUR 4 billion net income in 2023 when the last year was already at EUR 5.3 billion? That's probably the most obvious questions anyway. The answer to these questions is given on slide 30. I think most importantly, I can confirm and underline again that we expect the strong underlying performance of all business segments to continue in 2023, translating into a further operating improvement. As, for example, shown in the very pleasing renewal results in January and also in April. The investment result is expected to increase compared to 2022, which was negatively affected by the volatile capital markets.
Aside from these operating developments, more one-off-like adjustments have to be considered as well. First of all, we do not expect a recurrence of EUR 0.7 billion of currency gains. Second, the above-mentioned benefit from interest rates in Property-Casualty reinsurance. Basically, the impact from the high discounting and the low unwind. This effect is expected to be about EUR 1 billion lower in 2023. Compared to a positive net effect of approximately EUR 1.5 billion last year, that's the absolute amount. Based on the current interest rates, we now expect a tailwind of about EUR 500 million in 2023. The effect is not gone, it's only significantly smaller. Please note that this figure is highly dependent on interest rates, which were still somewhat lower when we did the planning for 2023 back in 2022.
Furthermore, as communicated with our outlook, we have made some conservative assumptions in our planning to cover the uncertainty of the first-time application of IFRS 17, which we again made explicit also on the slide. Before I turn to 2023, please allow for a final remark on last year's number affecting Q1 earnings in 2022. Q1 2022 was exceptionally strong, supported by benign major losses and a positive currency result. In Q1 2023, it was exactly the other way around. Our result was burdened by above average major claims and by currency losses. However, we had a successful start to the year as we benefited from a strong operating performance once again and a good investment result. Hence, we posted a very pleasing net income of almost EUR 1.3 billion, significantly above our pro rata guidance.
We exceeded the pro rata targets, not only in that headline number, but across all business fields and segments in a variety of KPIs and targets. It's particularly also true for the return on equity, which amounted to 17.3%, which is already above our target or our guidance in our Ambition 2025 for the year 2025. I think that's another proof point how strong the performance was in the first quarter. Now let's look at Q1 in more detail and let me begin with the investment result. The investment result came in at 3.0%, and we posted with that a return which was significantly above our full year guidance. At 3.8%, our ROE was particularly strong in reinsurance, driven by just a few disposal gains.
We continue to benefit from the higher interest rates. The reinvestment yield increased remarkably to 4.4%. Despite the generally expected higher volatility under IFRS 9, our ROE came in at exactly the value of the running yield. In other words, all other positions, including mark-to-market effects on equity and derivatives, or also disposal losses on fixed income, almost completely offset each other in this quarter. For the remainder of the year, we will continue to deliberately accept disposal losses in fixed income, as the reallocations will lead to a subsequently higher running yield due to higher reinvestment rates. Turning to the business fields and starting with reinsurance now. The Life & Health total technical result of EUR 320 million was above the pro rata annual ambition. The release of CSM and risk adjustment was in line with expectations.
Experience variances were slightly negative, driven by expenses and U.S. mortality. The total technical result would have been significantly higher without negative currency effects of minus EUR 66 million in FinmaRe business, reflected in the result from insurance-related financial instruments. I'd like to underline that we consider this an accounting mismatch, as the related hedging activities are recognized in the currency result. On an underlying basis, our FinmaRe business continues to grow and perform successfully. The CSM stands at EUR 10.6 billion, and this is a small decline compared to year-end, driven by a shift from CSM to risk adjustment as a result of the annual parameter update in the models. As both CSM and risk adjustment represent future profits, we do not expect any margin deterioration by this shift.
It's important to note that the CSM from new contracts reflecting a new business generation, which was particularly pleasing in North America. The CSM from new contracts exceeds the release through P&L. Property-Casualty reinsurance, as you saw, we posted a combined ratio of 86.5%. Major losses amount to 16.4 percentage points and exceed the average expectation of 14%. I'd like to add, they also include negative runoff from prior years. The single biggest event was the earthquake in Turkey with EUR 0.6 billion of claim. This loss then is discounted with the high Turkish interest rates, it contributed to a relatively high discount effect, which was around 8 percentage points in the quarter.
That's at the higher end of the 5 to 9 percentage point guidance we provided at our analyst conference in February. The underlying performance remains healthy as we earn through the margin improvements of the recent renewals. A normalized combined ratio of 85.1%, which is better than our guidance, allowed us to use the better than expected discount to cater for claims uncertainty by prudent loss bookings. We've deliberately decided to use the benefit, which is 3%, 8% discount, -5%, 5 to 9, -5% in the guidance. The 3% difference, we decided to use that for prudent loss bookings. Obviously, we did not perform a reserve review. Therefore, at this point in time, it's just prudent bookings. The reserve review will be conducted, as always, in the fourth quarter.
In terms of growth, we continue to strongly expand our business. Insurance revenues increased by more than 13%. Speaking about revenues, this brings me to the April renewals, where we increased premiums by 11%, seizing opportunities at, again, an excellent profitability. In particular, we expanded the Nat Cat business with material rate increases. Overall, the risk and inflation-adjusted price level further improved with an increase of 4.7%, including portfolio mix effects related to a higher share of Property XL business. In addition, we achieved material improvements in terms and conditions, like higher attachment points and stricter wordings. In primary insurance, ERGO delivered a pleasing net result of EUR 219 million, which is also ahead of the pro rata guidance.
The German P&C business came in strongly, while the international business suffered from large losses, also Life & Health Germany posted net earnings somewhat below the expectation. Let's start with the latter. German Life & Health business delivered a net result of EUR 41 million in Q1. The total technical result even exceeded the prior year level. However, net income was burdened by non-directly attributable expenses in the life new book. The CSM increased due to positive operating changes. Please note that in this segment, new business generally will not be able to compensate for the release of CSM. In Life, as you know, the back book is in runoff. In Health, our new business strategy focuses on short-term PAA business without CSM. In P&C Germany, we achieved a strong technical performance with a combined ratio of 81.2% in Q1.
We benefited from very low major losses and positive seasonality of acquisition costs, which will catch up in Q4. For PAA business, IFRS 17 allows to fully expense the acquisition costs at the time of the sale of the policy, which for our ERGO Germany business is often in Q4. Thereby, we get a quite significant quarter volatility of the combined ratio. Q4 heavily burdened, the other quarters are having much less acquisition costs. The investment result contributed to the very high net result of P&C Germany of EUR 166 million. The ERGO International business, the total technical result increased overall compared to Q1 2022, and the Life & Health business was in line with expectation, reflecting CSM and risk adjustments releases dominated by the Belgium Life & Health businesses.
The P&C result fell short of expectations with a combined ratio of 95.4%. Poland had to digest major losses from single events, where an intra-group benefit from reinsurance of around two percentage points is not reflected in the IFRS numbers and not in the combined ratio due to consolidation. Legal protection business and also seasonality effect in Spain also contributed to the weaker combined ratio. Let me explain the seasonality effects in Spain. There's a health business there, in regularly and you could solve and see that over the last years already, the winter months, the claims are much higher in the winter months. The majority of the result is being earned in summer. The business in Greece was, by the way, performing well. Our figures now also include business operations in Thailand.
We, for the first time in the P&L show our Thaisri business in Thailand, where we now hold 75%. The segment net result came in lower than expected for ERGO International at EUR 12 million, burdened by non- 直 接 attributable expenses, relatively high taxes, and a negative impact from net financial result, also reflecting investments in insurance joint ventures. Some remarks on capital management. The group's economic position remains very strong, with a Solvency II ratio of 254% in Q1. Please note this includes the full deduction of EUR 1 billion in share buybacks, which will then be conducted now in the course of the year until the next AGM. We deduct the full amount already this quarter. I would like to conclude now my opening remarks with the outlook for 2023, which remains unchanged.
We are still anticipating a net result of around EUR 4 billion. As already mentioned in our pre-release, surpassing this target has become more likely due to the strong Q1 result. As we still have three quarters to go, we decided not to change any other outlook KPI either. It's just early in the year. With this, I'm at the end of my opening remarks. There's a lot of additional information and improved transparency visible in our slide deck, which I recommend having a particularly close look at this time, given the changes in accounting. I look forward to answering your questions, but first hand it back to Christian.
Thank you, Christoph. Not much to add from my side. My usual housekeeping remark, we are happy to go right into Q&A. As always, I would like to ask you to limit the number of your questions to two per person. If you have further questions, please go back to the queue. With that, I hand it over to Francine.
Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we'll begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by one. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star followed by two. Anyone who has a question may press star followed by one at this time. One moment for the first question, please. Our first question is from Freya Kong from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Thanks, thanks for the presentation. Two questions, please. The 86% combined ratio guidance was set assuming a discount benefit of 5%, but if this is actually 8%, this means your rate adjusted guidance should be around 83%. Are we right in assuming that this entire 3 points you have invested into higher loss picks, and given your unchanged guidance, it sounds like you will do this for the rest of the year? Secondly, how should we think about the increased conservatism in your loss picks? Is this due to lower confidence in the 2% margin improvement that you expect to deliver? Or is this a one-off reserve building exercise in 2023, meaning we should see a bigger improvement in margins in 2024? Thanks.
Good morning, Freya. Thanks for the questions. In indeed, in our guidance, if you would have done, if you did the math, 5% discount was the number included in there. Now, we had 8% this quarter, a 3% difference, the 3% have been used 100% for being, you know, more conservative in the basic losses. We have higher loss picks there. The question is, why did we do that? No particular reason, just we wanted to be conservative. It's the first quarter only.
If we would not have done that, the combined ratio would have come in at around 82%, significantly below the guidance, and we just didn't see any good reasons why we should start into the year with that. It's still a long time to go in the year. Therefore, you know, being a little bit of conservative is probably close to our DNA, particularly in a quarter where the results are very good anyway already. Giving the uncertainties in the environment, being a little bit on the cautious side anyway, is something which, you know, I would never blame me for, let's put it that way. Looking forward, we don't know what we do.
We could either you know, improve the result, or we could continue to book in a conservative way. Why should we take any decision today? That's just not necessary. We will carefully observe the performance over the next few quarters. We'll look into our reserves, how conservative we are already, if any additional buffer would make sense at all or not. You know that we traditionally are very, very much on the prudent side. The question is also how much we can do on that side, how conservative can you be. It will also depend on performance and on the actual development in the next few quarters. Nothing I could predict today. All options open.
The next question comes from Kamran Hussain from JPMorgan. Please go ahead.
Hi. Morning, everyone. Two questions from me. The first one is on the renewals. I'm just trying to square the 4.7% risk-adjusted rate increase at April versus the kind of just over 2% at 1/1. Just based on the kind of, you know, I guess the commentary, what we've heard, it sounded like actually January was more, more positive than April. Just wanted to understand kind of what's the difference between those two numbers or am I missing? Is it just kind of, you know, you'd already trued up assumptions last year or something at April? The second question is coming back to combined ratio guidance. Obviously you flagged the impact of Turkey in the quarter, you know, as pushing discount rate up a little bit.
I assume even though it's a, you know, material loss, it wouldn't have been that huge in the quarter. Should 8% continue as the discount rate kind of going forward for the rest of the year? Or should it look a little bit different? Should it move maybe not back to five, but slightly closer to that level? Thank you.
Thanks, Kamran. Renewals, I think I have to work on my enthusiasm, being the CFO. If there, I mean, if there was anything to be read into my comments that we were less excited about 1/4 than about 1/1, that would be completely wrong. I think we are equally happy with both results. If you look into the numbers, they have pretty much followed the business mix. We have a higher portion of CAT business in 1/4 traditionally. It had to be expected that the numbers look higher. The amount pretty much follows the CAT proportion or the business mix development. We continue to be very happy with our renewal outcome.
By the way, also continue to be very optimistic for the upcoming renewals, given just the market environment, how it presents itself to us. Again, very happy with the outcome and very good renewal result. The combined ratio guidance. I mean, the combined ratio, indeed, 5% was in the guidance. Now it was eight. The full year, though, was also at around 8%. As you can see, the numbers fluctuate quite a bit. I mean, we gave a range of 5%-9% in our outlook presentation to somewhat indicate how big the range potentially could be. It depends on a number of factors. It depends obviously on the interest rate environment. That's obviously the major driver.
As you could see with Turkey, interestingly, it also depends on where your loss is set. In Turkey, obviously interest rates are much higher. You also do you discount with Turkish rates. Interestingly, in the first quarter, this Turkish rate effect did compensate the overall lower yield environment which we had compared to Q four last year. If you would have looked only at the yield environment, you probably would have expected even a little bit lower discount effect, which then didn't realize. The main driver for that being that a significant part of our losses sits in Turkey this quarter. There's many drivers. Ethics could be another driver. Obviously, it has to be closely monitored. We all lack experience.
We all didn't see so many quarters yet in IFRS 17. I think it will be interesting to jointly observe how the development is going to be going forward. Again, there is some deviations always possible, just only due to the fact that the losses will arise here and there and in different geographies, different currencies and different interest rate environments.
The next question comes from Andrew Ritchie from Autonomous. Please go ahead.
Hi there. Thanks. Thanks for the additional disclosure on IFRS 17, full year 2022. The first question on the investment return, as I recall, your guidance for full year 2023 incorporated some expectation of realized losses on fixed income, partly to accelerate the reinvestment. I can't see evidence of that in Q1. That might be because there's offsets from other things that have positively moved. Kind of just update us on your thoughts on is that still a plan? You know, is there still some expectation of some realized losses as the year goes on, as things stand today? Maybe the environment means you've accelerated your sort of, your planning on investment return. The second question, just on life re.
I mean, the mechanical release of the CSM and risk adjustment, that alone would get me to your sort of technical result guidance. Then on top of that, I'd add in the fee business, which in itself was depressed in Q1, as you said, from FX. Why stick with the EUR 1 billion technical result guidance? It just looks mechanically really challenging, unless you're assuming a high degree of caution on some negative item I'm not considering.
Thanks, Andrew. I'll start with the first one. Yes, we always said we wanted to, first of all, not restrict trading activities of our investment colleagues too much, and therefore would allow them to realize losses once they occur in the fixed income space. In the first quarter, fixed income realized losses amounted to EUR 189 million. There was an effect. Going forward, we explicitly, I think I mentioned it already, we explicitly want to make it very transparent that we will continue to do that and maybe even intensify that. That's clearly something we would like to continue to look into, and it will only strengthen how, you know, how quick we benefit from the high yield environment.
In a sense, in our view, it would make a lot of sense, particularly in an environment where the overall results are very good and at least in line with the guidance or above the guidance. That's still on the agenda and completely unchanged. Life Re, I mean, there are various angles how you could look at our guidance. I mean, you could look into the numbers of this quarter. You can add back the FX, and if you then take it then times four, you are significantly above EUR 1 billion. You would also look at the prior year numbers. If also there, as you said, the CSM release plus risk adjustment release already would be significantly above EUR 1 billion. Then there were some negative variances which then brought it down back a little bit.
Also there, you would immediately end up with significantly higher numbers than EUR 1 billion. I think the only justification I have is that we are extremely conservative here and cautious. There have quite a bit of leeway for negative variances which might occur, but we have no indication at this point in time at all that they will occur. It's really only conservatism and caution. Sometimes in life re, you know, we have big treaties, things can also develop quickly. Sometimes you have a big treaty and you are in court, and you get a ruling and it costs you a triple-digit number. It can happen. It's not unseen, but it can happen.
So I, and I think I'm just saying that to, to, you know, to show that we are not ridiculously conservative, but we are very conservative. Indeed, there's a significant upside. Why didn't we change it in the guidance already? I mean, I, I think, the same like with many other KPIs in the guidance as well. Q one, we would not do so. It's just one quarter into the year. A lot can still happen. Some of the KPI looks as if they were very easy to achieve. Others less so, others may be even challenging. In Q one, we would never change it really.
The next question comes from Tryfonas Spyrou from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. I have two questions, please. The first one is on April renewals. Obviously, this came in quite strongly at 4.7% rate increase.
I guess you previously said that this number is close to what should we expect as an improvement to the combined ratio from Munich Re. If we were to weigh that given April is around 8% of the total sort of P&C renewals, that would suggest another 38 basis of margin expansion on top of the sort of 2.3% reported in January, which obviously accounts for a bigger proportion of the book. Is that a fair reflection? Do you now sort of expect some higher margin expansion than before, given the strong April renewals? That was my first question. Second one is on P&C Germany. You mentioned the discounted impact of 5%. I was wondering if you could help us with a similar bridge as you did for P&C re combined ratio.
For instance, is this in line with what was factored in the guidance of 89%? I guess, could you perhaps help us understand a little bit how big the lower large loss impact was to help us get again, a better feel for the underlying combined ratio? Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you for the questions. First of all, renewals, thank you for the question. It gives me the opportunity to outline our methodology, I think again. The numbers as we show them here, they are all fully risk-adjusted, which means that any inflationary effects, any model changes, any reflection of climate change, of adapted risk models in whatever line, it's all fully deducted already from that number. It shows only a margin improvement on the volume which has been renewed at a particular date. You can basically take the price or the margin improvement price change as we disclose it, times the volume at renewal, and this will be a real margin improvement.
We fully can be fully added to our technical result in P&C re. That's how the mechanics works. If you look historically into these price chain numbers as we communicated them and historically how then after these price changes later on the combined ratio moved in reality, you'll find quite a good correlation between those numbers. Obviously there's always uncertainty with that, but I think the past gives quite a lot of evidence that we generally are quite good in these estimates. That would be my remark on the renewals. Overall, we're very happy with that margin improvement, very high. Again, for one seven, we do not have any indication why this should change at all.
We think the environment will continue to be very positive, particularly of course in the Nat Cat business, Property XL, which was also to a significant extent the driver this time. combined ratio, ERGO Germany. Yes, discount 4% here. First question is why is the discount in primary business smaller than in reinsurance? There is a number of reasons for that. The most importantly, the business is more short tail and also the amount of reserves you have to hold given the heavier risks are in reinsurance. The amount of reserves is relatively spoken a little bit smaller, which brings you then with it to a discount effect and currencies are different and so on. The business mix is just different.
You have rather 4% discount instead of the eight we saw in reinsurance. How does now the 81 relate to the guidance of 89 in P&C Germany? Well, the most significant difference, I think, is the seasonality I was mentioning before on acquisition costs, where a lot of the acquisition costs are expensed in the fourth quarter, where a lot of the book is renewed and you fully expense the costs once you write the new policy in the PAA methodology in IFRS 17. That's an option you can choose. You don't have to do it that way, but ERPO chose to do it that way. You fully expense acquisition costs at the point of sale. That's one core driver.
Another core driver of the difference is that we had very good large or very low large losses this quarter, which was another significant driver. Generally the performance has been very good this quarter also when it comes to basic losses and the overall profitability. There also has been a certain reduction of the loss component. If you add that all up, it was a very good quarter. Don't take the 81% for granted for the full year as there is the seasonality effect on the acquisition costs, where in Q4 we would expect the combined ratio to be significantly higher of course.
The next question comes from Will Hardcastle from UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi there. Thanks for taking the call and all the disclosure. First of all, can you, and sorry if this is going over old ground, but can you help me to understand just how we come to that 5%-9% discount guidance from a bottom-up approach and what duration we should be thinking about, for example, and the build of risk-free plus what I guess? Would I be right in thinking the Turkey uplift is maybe worth 1-1.5 points or so versus your previous guide? Secondly, just thinking in P&C Re, looking at the investment gains on slide 51 from disposals, what was the EUR 190 million or so related to? Just on that slide, is that 3.1% regular income a fair run rate, or was it inflated somewhat?
Thank you.
Let me start with the second one. The run rate is a fair reflection of the regular income. It mostly includes interest on fixed income instruments, but always a few dividends as well. But it is really a running yield which can fluctuate a little bit due to the dividend seasons and stuff like that, but not a lot. On the realization, I mentioned already we realized some losses in the fixed income space due to normal portfolio trading activities, nothing spectacular. On the other hand, there were some realized gains in reinsurance P&C, as mentioned before, and they were in the alternative investment space. Infrastructure and real estate.
The first question, the range, 5%-9%, obviously, is related to different interest rate levels. It is roughly, I think, a 3%-5% interest rate range, which is then reflected in the 5%-9%. Duration depends also on, always on business mix. As a rule of thumb, takes something between two and three , maybe 2.5. Then as we saw in this Q1, it will very much depend on where the losses sit to some extent, currency and interest rate environment in various geographies. Again, the difference between, for example, ERGO, primary insurance and reinsurance is significant.
By the way, there's also a methodological difference between GMM approach and PAA approach in IFRS 17, and I stop here, but if you're interested in that, you can ask me. There's a number of drivers in these discount rates. I think we'll all get used to it, how much they move in reality. In any case, I would expect them to be much more stable compared to what experienced last year, where due to this unprecedented interest rate in change in the environment, as of a sudden, you end up having discounts between 4% and 8%, where in the past it has all been 0. Clearly it should be much more stable around the numbers as we see them today.
The next question comes from James Shuck from Citi. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Slide 30, just keen to understand the P&C combined ratio that you're showing here. You've got the full year 2022, 83.2, and then that normalizes in the comment to 86.6. Keen to understand what the moving pieces are in that normalization, please, in particular, the PYD on an IFRS 17 basis. Also within that 86.6, are there additional things that you can call out for us? I'm thinking of the discount rate effect and the release of the loss components. That's my first question. Second question, more general one really around your Nat Cat appetite at this point.
If I look at the PML from full year from the annual report for 2022, so U.S. windstorm, I think it's gone up to about $10 billion or $12 billion. I can't quite remember now. Over the years, that's a big number in relation to your, to your book value, and it's probably doubled over the last few years or so. That number I think is updated for kind of 1/1 renewals, but I don't think it's updated for your expectations going into April or the June, July renewals. My question is really around, you know, how much appetite do you have in that, in Nat Cat? I mean, in relation to book value, it's getting quite a big number.
If I was to look at it only in relation to your P&C book value, that would make you very heavily skewed towards nat cat in the overall book. Keen to understand the progression of that PML, and just thoughts around exposure in general, please. Thank you.
James, thank you for the two questions. First, the normalization of the combined ratio. I think the methodology is as we outlined it on the slide. We normalize for the loss component change, which is generally should be neutral over the year. If not, prices are changing or interest rate levels have an impact also on the loss component. The loss component change is part of that calculation. As in the past also, the reserve releases, which are now 5% in the expectation compared to four in the past, but that's completely unchanged. The increase is driven to the different volumes we have in Insurance revenue versus premiums in the past. That's also unchanged.
Then we have the normalization for the large losses, be it on the nat cat side or on the man-made side, together 14%, 10% of which are nat cat, 4% are man-made. If we normalize for all those effects, we end up with the 86.6%. What is not normalized for in these numbers is the discount. We had a long debate internally when we set up the whole methodology, if we should also normalize for discount or not. Finally decided against it because our expectation was that generally the discount should be more stable than the other drivers, maybe.
The more you normalize, I mean, I wanted to avoid to finally ending up in IFRS 4 combined ratio again, and by, you know, taking back all the IFRS 17 changes. I mean, we have to at some point also just to, you know, just to accept that there is a new standard now. Therefore, no normalization, but we will also always mention the combined ratio. If you want to add that piece of change in addition to the normalization as we do it, you can also do it on your own. What else? In prior year, what I can say is that the discount is the same order of magnitude than today.
At least if you compare the prior year 86.6%, what we have this year, which came in a little bit above 85% in the first quarter, then there is no difference due to different discount. That's completely comparable, which shows that we earn through the higher renewals we had recently, and that the operational improvement is clearly visible also in our numbers. Nat Cat appetite, second question. Indeed, we are obviously enjoying a hard market and expanding our business into that hard market, so volumes go up. There's always, and that's a methodological information I start with, but I'll come back to the strategy in a second.
There's always an overlay from FX you should be aware of. A lot of our CAT exposure is written outside of EUR. If currency goes up or down, exposures follow the currency development. If you look at the U.S. dollar development last year and then again into the first quarter of this year, you will see or you can deduct from that there was a significant portion of FX also in the CAT development which you have been referring to. There was additional growth to FX. Now as FX came back again, the US dollar weakened, it's now significantly dampened also by FX movement. This FX overlay always has to be kept in mind.
Other than that, indeed, strategically, we are going as far as we can when it comes to cut exposure. For some perils, we are getting close to our risk budget, so to the upper limit of our risk budgets. A hard market is exactly the point in time where you should do that, because now is the time to make money with that business. In a softening market, we would, of course, deliberately decrease it again, and then, obviously be lower than when it comes to exposure, but also in relative terms when it comes to our risk budgets. As a reminder, these risk budgets are peril by peril for us. Obviously, they depend on the capital we have.
Obviously Retro plays a role, and Retro is different from one peril to the other, so also differently reflected in the various budgets. It's a very, very detailed and sophisticated framework. We are not simply just expanding the risk limits or the risk budgets, but we are managing to optimize our portfolio within the boundaries of these budgets. I think that's what I can tell you on the Nat Cat appetite. For 17, we do not see any restrictions for the strategy.
The next question comes from Derald Goh from RBC. Your question, please.
Morning. Morning, Christoph. My first question, actually two sub-questions within that. It's on your basic PYD. Firstly, can I quickly check what was the risk adjustment released within that? The question is, within that, just basic PYD again, what were the pluses and minuses by lines of business? Maybe could you also talk about any changes in loss cost trends that you're seeing on your current year? I'm thinking about motor and casualty in particular. The second question is just in your mid-year renewals. Are you seeing any early movers at this stage, either from the primary or reinsurance side? Thank you.
I started the first one. The second, I have to ask you to repeat it, please. I didn't really understand it. Maybe you can you just ask again the second one, then I'll answer both.
Yep, yep. It's just in terms of your current year loss cost trends, are you seeing any changes over Q1 or maybe on a year-to-date basis? I'm thinking about motor and casualty in particular.
Yeah, sure. Okay, thanks. Very clear. The PYD, as we show it in our numbers, does not include the risk adjustment at all. That's just the reserve development. To remind you, we are using the PAA approach so that the risk adjustment is probably a little bit of lesser relevance for us in P&C than what it would be for us in our Life & Health business or also like it would then be for competitors using other approaches in IFRS 17. For us in P&C, we try to, you know, to make it as simple as possible, and the PAA is much simpler. What we show is PYD is just reserve related.
More or less the same figure which we would have shown you last year, with the difference that we are talking about discounted reserves now. Other than that, it's really the reserve movement we're showing on a PYD. We had a positive basic loss reserve release in the first quarter as always. Not that completely common. That, that's what we would expect anyway, because as you know, our strategy is to set reserves initially at the higher end, what the possible best estimate would be. To then enjoy eventually if we have this positive run-up, which we have had in the past, to then enjoy the positive run-up of the basic losses. That, that's the basic loss piece.
I mentioned earlier also that on the large losses we had some negative PYD, but that large loss piece is to maybe give a little bit color around it, nothing really spectacular. It happens, in one quarter it's a little bit negative, in the other quarter it's positive. It's just day-to-day business, I would mention that. Also nothing really specific and also nothing too material. Loss trends, your second question. I mean, first of all, I have to make the big disclaimer that in, you know, in many markets we are not the best one to be asked that question, as we always lag behind the primary insurers getting that information. Often, our claims information is based on what primary insurers deliver to us.
Of course, there's the exception of markets where we are acting as a primary insurer as well. As you know, we do that as ERGO in many European markets. We have some U.S. primary business as well. So we do have some first-hand information. In other markets, we really rely heavily on the primary insurers and sometimes get the information rather late. What we see though is that obviously for motor lines of business, inflation is a topic in some markets, as had to be expected anyway. That's also not really new. That's something we I think said in Q4 already. Back then, if you remember, we also strengthened our reserves to prepare for scenarios like that. Now Q1, do we see any particular new information?
No. No, not really, because a single quarter is probably anyway not enough information to, you know, to see something significantly different. What we see is more or less in line what we expected. Maybe to add that already, then nobody else has to ask, also the IBNR we set up back in Q4 for inflation, that's still there and we didn't make any use of it in the first quarter.
The next question comes from Vinit Malhotra from Mediobanca. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you for this. Some of my questions have been addressed. Can I just ask on the discounting as such? It's a bit of a broader question, not one to specific. Given all the positive news and you're literally having to hold back on producing such a good combined ratio, and partly helped by discounting, I mean, do you sense or do you see any risk? This is maybe a broader question.
Sorry, Vinit, can you speak a bit louder, please?
Okay. Sorry. Maybe my phone. Can you hear me now better, please?
That's better. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Sorry. My first question is on the discounting, which is so powerful and, you know, having such an effect that you're literally having to hold back on your combined ratio. What's the risk that such a positive interest rate-driven effect could have on underwriting behavior, you know, maybe within your firm, within the market? If I'm an underwriter and I'm listening to this call, I'm thinking, okay, already things are so good, partly because of the timing of IFRS 17 and the reported combined ratio is so strong. Is there a risk that, you know, there could be some laxity coming in? Are you managing it? Are you watching out for it? That's a bit of a theoretical question. Apologies, it's not very specific.
Second thing is just on the discount rate again. I'm quite interested to hear this Turkish situation where you have used a discount rate of the Turkish risk rate, but obviously reporting this loss in euros. I would have thought that maybe you would have considered using the IOPA rates or some other, you know, European measure because you're counting this loss in euros. Has there been a discussion about whether the Turkish discount rate was to be used? Secondly, can you also provide the Turkish discounted loss number, the Turkish earthquake? Maybe because that's what we should compare to peers, because otherwise it looks quite high at EUR 600 million. Thank you.
Yeah. Let's start with Turkey. The EUR 600 million is the nominal amount to start with that. I think the general rule is just we use the discount rate in the currency in which we owe the claim. It's not like that we sit together and have a debate which one to use. It is just the currency in which we will have to pay the claim is defining the discount. Now your more general question. I mean, margins are good. Now with IFRS 17 they look even better as the presentation changed. I think we discussed it a number of times already. Now we have combination in the 80s, before they were in the 90s. The difference only being that Insurance revenue now is defined differently than in the past.
There is a big amount of different representation in the now even better looking numbers. Of course, due to the discount, the economic reality is also better transparent and better visible than in the past. Yes, there is an element that we look even stronger. Also my commentary initially was that we had a very strong quarter, and we are doing well operationally. There is this element of as a reinsurer, we are doing well currently. Now what does it do to the underwriters, to the market? I mean, first of all, you have to make sure internally that you are not getting complacent. That's something I can assure you we're doing regularly.
Push for price increases where we can get them, and where we think they are necessary. Don't forget, I mean, the loss numbers have been significant over the recent years, so we should not celebrate too early. Even last year with Ian, the industry loss was still very high. It's too early to say, "Look, I mean, they are making so much money, it's hard for them," you know. That's also the, you know, the communication internally, obviously, that it's by far not enough. We have to earn back what we paid out as wage losses over the last years. That's the first element. Internally, we shouldn't be complacent. The other element is how do our clients react?
If they see combined ratios in the mid-80s from us, obviously it would be at least, you know, potentially a starting point for them to tell us, "Look, your prices are too high. You make too much money with us." Then again, I mean, that's not how the conversation usually goes. First of all, the way we do pricing is obviously not based on IFRS. It's of course not uncorrelated what we are doing in IFRS, but we have a pricing view and a management view which is different, and which is unchanged to the past. There's no disruption in that. I think that's important. Secondly, of course, we train our underwriters.
We explain them that this very low number, and now in IFRS 17, has something to do with the way we how we present the numbers. I'm pretty sure they're all very well capable of explaining their clients why the numbers now look lower as they did look last year, but why this is not a change in profitability, but just a change in presentation from an economic standpoint. Then thirdly, we're in a hard market anyway, and this is of course extremely helpful in the current context. The price elasticity is of course different in a hard market compared to a soft market. The reason for primary insurance to buy protection are not immediately 100% price related. Obviously, they, of course, they're always happy to pay less.
The demand is driven by the wish to get the protection. This is, you know, a very healthy driver for us to increase volume and to continue to enjoy the very positive market environment. That's why I think your question is still relevant. We have to be careful here. I think we are and we will be able to manage it going forward.
Next question is from Hadley Cohen, from Morgan Stanley. Your question please.
Thank you, good morning, Christoph. Just a couple of question I have. First of all, I mean, clearly combined ratio underlying basis is better in this quarter. Would you attribute it to the earn through of this year rates, or would you say that big part of this improvement is still coming from past year rates rather than this year rates, just because it's just first quarter? I guess that's one thing, I'm just trying to understand, because the rates are likely to go up even further, in the coming quarters and probably in 2024 as well. Just want to understand where this 86% or your 83% is heading towards, in the near future. That's the first thing.
Just, related to that is, I mean, we have noticed that there is some big capital raise announced by one of the Bermuda insurers yesterday. I mean, how do you read that capital raise? Do you think that will put pressure on the, on the pricing, or do you think it's actually because it's a traditional player, there is not much of risk around that? That's the first element about thinking about margins. A second element is, where was that? Is it possible to get some color on this IFRS 17 to Solvency II walk? I mean, I guess you had given a slide on, in appendix about how IFRS 17 earnings, the slide number 55, earnings is moving into Solvency II.
I mean, would be great if I can get some color on what is this OCI change, and CSM change, et cetera. Would be good to get some color on that. That would be great. Thank you.
Sure. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for those questions. First of all, indeed, the renewals are not all earned immediately, and we still benefit from the good renewals last year, which are still being earned to some extent this year. This year's renewal will then also not only affect this year's numbers, but also next year's numbers. That's obvious. Are we concerned by the capital raises? No, not at this time. I mean, eventually, at some point, the market will soften again anyway. I think it's by far too early to speak about that now. If there is capital flowing in here and there, yes, okay. The question is also the margin expectation.
As long as this continues to be on healthy levels, we are not concerned at all. Then more generally, what we currently see is a flight to quality anyway. Us being the market leader, we get a lot of additional demand and business opportunities just because in times of higher uncertainty, many clients just want to go with the safest possible reinsurer. I'm therefore not concerned at all. If you were to ask me that, I would say the hard market will for sure continue this year until year-end and probably also go into next year. Clearly, that's too early to tell and will depend on capital inflows and so on and so forth. I presented in walk to Solvency II.
That's a great question. I love it, because it gives me an opportunity to start a little bit earlier already with answering the question. How did we implement IFRS 17? I think that's very important. We implemented in a way that we chose assumptions wherever we could to be 100% identical with Solvency II, to get the maximum possible consistency. We have the exactly same interest rate curves, for example. We have the exactly same reserving assumptions, reserves. We have the exactly same mortality, biometric assumptions, you name them. It's all identical wherever it can be. Therefore, you would expect a huge or a large amount of consistency wherever possible. Obviously, there are areas where it's not possible.
If you're talking about setting up a loss component, for example, in IFRS 17, that's something which is not existent in Solvency II. Obviously, there are other areas as well, or the methodology for risk adjustment is different to the methodology for the risk margin in Solvency II. There are remaining differences in the methodology. By the way, if you ask me by far too many, because if you now, I come back to your questions, if you then look at the reconciliation from one to the other, you'll find them that the differences are pretty small. As they are so small, immediately the question comes up, is it really justified to have two sets of numbers, which is always a source for confusion internally as well as externally.
By the way, it's a lot of work of deriving both sets of numbers. Finally, as you can see on that mentioned slide 55, numbers are quite similar, with the exception of a few methodological differences. Now I'd like to comment a little bit more what the differences are. For Solvency II, everything, so every so the economic change, the change of economic equity is 100% economic earnings. There's no differentiation if a change is OCI or if a change is in a P&L or if it's just a change in the CSM or in the present value of future profits. Yeah. It's all economic earnings, all just shown in one single number. Whereas in IFRS 17, it's spread across these three categories.
You have the CSM change, you have the change in the OCI, and you have to change in the P&L. Therefore, you have to add the three, and then you have to add the difference between risk adjustment and risk margin. If you add them all up, you can see that on the slide for full year 2022, you get a pretty good alignment between economic earnings of EUR 2.8 billion and the IFRS 17 numbers. It is very consistent with the unexplained or other effects of EUR 0.5 only. The same on the balance sheet, where also if you take the own funds according to Solvency II, and then you take out the CSM after tax, you are very close to the IFRS 17 equity.
There the same holds true, that basically the two sets of numbers are extremely well-aligned. Again, this is particularly true for us as all the assumptions have been made identical wherever possible. Don't expect it to be the same for all of our peers. Secondly, this is a full-year slide. There might be differences in seasonality between the two. The differences might be bigger in quarters one or three compared to what we see for full year. Frankly, these seasonality effects and the differences in seasonality are something which we are also still investigating. I hope that answers the question, but I could continue for longer if you wanted.
The next question is from Henry Heathfield from Morningstar. Please go ahead.
Sam, good morning. Thank you very much for taking my few questions. Just three kind of broad ones if I can. I'm sorry if they're not specific enough. On the investment result, the yield is obviously looking really, really strong. I was wondering if you could comment a little bit around kind of the asset mix that's driving that, whether it's changed an awful lot, whether there's been any alteration within the credit of the investment portfolio or whether it's kind of really remaining from this last year. Secondly, you spoke a little bit about Thailand in ERGO Primary.
I was wondering if you might give a little bit of a flavor around what the expectations for future international growth are in ERGO, whether Asia is a really, kind of, a really key theme for you or emerging in Southeast Asia. The last one, just on the discount rate being used to discount the P&C re-liabilities, and the, you know, that's being the discount rate within the currency that the losses occur.
I was wondering if you might help a little bit on the illiquidity premium build up, because surely the IOPA curve, you can get the illiquidity premium from the IOPA curve. Now am I wrong there? Thank you.
Sure. Thank you. Well, asset mix changed. Nothing spectacular, really constant investment strategy. Reinvestment are being done into fixed income instruments, which on average continue to be as safe or as conservative or as high rated from a credit rating perspective as in the past. From one quarter to the other, it can fluctuate a little bit, particularly if investment volumes are low and you do a little bit more of corporate bonds, for example, then reinvestment yields can fluctuate up or down a little bit in a single quarter. The stock of our overall investment is not changing a lot really. Particularly not in this quarter. It has been very stable. Asian strategy for ERGO.
ERGO has been active in Asia for quite some time now, probably up to 20 years. Most of the Asian business is structured in joint ventures due to the regulatory environment in the markets. I would say the significant joint venture is in India, where ERGO has, in the meantime, in P&C, a top five market position, and I think I get it right now. If I get it right now, one of the top two private P&C insurers there, together with their joint venture partner, HDFC. Another Asian activity of ERGO is related to China, where ERGO is having two joint ventures. One is a Life business, the other is a P&C business. In Life, ERGO is holding 50%. In P&C, it's just below 25%.
Two joint ventures in China. Thailand in the past, was also a joint venture where ERGO did hold less than 50%, so did not have control, and according to IFRS language, so we weren't able to fully consolidate it. ERGO was now able to acquire additional stakes and we have now 75%. Also, one other local player has been acquired now by the Thailand entity. Now we hold 75% of this ERGO Thaivivam entity and have control now. Therefore, for the first time now, they also in our full P&L.
As long as we do not fully consolidate them, their results are shown as part of the net financial result of ERGO International. That's where their results show up. As soon as we fully consolidate them, you have a complete technical result. You have a combined ratio. You can see them as the European entities as well. That's the reason why for Thailand, there's also a combined ratio on the ERGO International slide in the back. And by the way, it's for exact the same reason I was mentioning for ERGO Germany. The seasonality of acquisition costs, it's a little bit high this quarter for Thailand with the 113%.
This has to do with the significant growth this entity is currently seeing, and therefore a lot of acquisition costs had to be booked in Q1. Therefore, the 113% in Thailand is elevated by this acquisition cost effect. I think that's what I can tell you on the Asian market. AGCO has a small entity in Singapore, which is owned by 100%. I think that's why the one I didn't mention so far. That's what I can tell you on the Asian AGCO business. Discount, again, we use exactly the same discount rates as we use for Solvency II, which means for entities where we use the volatility adjustment, we then also apply the volatility adjustment for IFRS 17 purposes. For the majority of our entities, we don't do that.
Therefore, for the majority of the entities, there is no illiquidity premium. If there is a positive VA, and if we apply it for Solvency II as well, then we use this also for IFRS 17. As you know, the VA in recent quarters has always been very small, so it's a very small amount of illiquidity premium, if at all, we are having in our numbers. Again, it's not a decision we take. We just take the IOPA decision and the volatility adjustment from IOPA.
Next question comes from Jochen Schmitt, from Metzler. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning. I have one question on the investment result on slide seven, the fair value change on equities of EUR 250 million. Could you explain why there was not any higher effect from listed equities accounted as fair value through P&L in Q1, given the market movements? Was this due to hedging or were there any offsetting effects within this number, for example, from the re-revaluation of private equity? That's my question. Thank you.
Yeah, I think I can be very quick here. We hedge our equity exposures and as soon as markets go up then you lose on your hedges. That's the effect.
We have a follow-up question from Miss Kong. Miss Kong, please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you. Could you help us give some guide on how you expect the EFY to develop, given it's still currently depressed by the unwind of low locked-in rates at transition? Does this mismatch only exist because of the transition and should it normalize going forward, i.e. your higher discount benefits and your technical result should be more or less offset by higher EFY? When can we expect this to stabilize? Secondly, if I can you help us understand the concept of the change in loss component which benefited your combined ratio in Q1 and also in 2022? Why is your expectation zero for the year? Thanks.
Sure. Thank you. I, yeah. I start with the first one. I think it's a very relevant question, so therefore, I try to be as quick as possible, but I also try to be precise here. Your question was, how will the fee develop going forward? Let me expand the question a little bit, because what I showed you in what you see in the deck on what I was talking about also, if you look at the prior year number, 2022 full year result 5.3, which reduced this then we get to the EUR 4 billion guidance. What I showed you there is a minus EUR 1 billion effect due to change in discounting versus OCI in the Property-Casualty reinsurance segment.
There you see an insignificant effect, reducing the benefit we have from discount versus unwind from the past. This effect, as I mentioned in my introduction, reduced from EUR 1.5 billion to around EUR 500 million this year. Last year it was EUR 1.5 billion benefit in Property-Casualty reinsurance from these interest differences. This year, only EUR 500 million, and next year it's going to be even less than that. I cannot be more precise than that because these numbers are highly interest rate dependent. To just give you a rule of thumb, a 100 basis point interest rate movement would mean a EUR 500 million pre-tax movement as well. These numbers will heavily depend on how the interest rates move, but our current expectation, EUR 1.5 billion last year, EUR 500 million this year.
This number is the difference between discount benefit and the OCI. The OCI in itself, I can answer you that question as well, but don't look at the OCI standalone because it always, in our view, has to be seen in the context, in the context also of the discount benefit. In 2023, we had an OCI of EUR 1.5 billion. Sorry, EUR 0.5 billion, and we expected, yeah. Let me look up the number. I'll take that later. I think, oh, in 2022, sorry, EUR 1.5 billion. Yeah, there we are. EUR 500 million OCI in 2022, which will go up to EUR 1.5 billion in 2023. That's the direction indeed. Yeah. Okay.
We have another follow-up from Mr. Ritchie. Mr. Ritchie, please go ahead.
Hi there. Sorry. You just need to clarify in the answer to your last question that we need to think about the trajectory of investment income versus the OCI as well. I'm assuming, so the sort of, you know, to what degree the investment income running yield will accrete at the same rate as the OCI expense. Maybe clarify that. Sorry, my other questions were, I, sorry, I should know the answer to this. The CAT loss number you gave, the nominal number, is about 16 points of insurance net revenue. Your 16 points large loss load or the 14 points is on a nominal basis. I thought it was discounted, but it actually appears to be nominal. The discount effect from the CAT appears where? I'm confused on that.
My only other question was, how do we interpret ERGO Life and Health Germany? I mean, the technical result, looks really strong, and some elements of it look quite sustainable, particularly the large CSM release. Then there's these non-attributable expenses or some other noise. What do we do with that division? Thanks.
Thanks, Andrew. First of all, yes, indeed, also the interest, or the running yield has to be, you know, the investment yield has to be also seen in the context of the EFE. That's true. I was referring to the technical result before, where the difference of the two is relevant. You're right, of course, we will also benefit going forward from the higher yields, as you could sort of see in this quarter already. There is though, this one-off kind of effect, which is particularly strong currently as we locked in a transition to very low rates and the new interest rates jumped up so much. That's why we're always looking into the technical result and how these, you know, one-offs there reduce over time for, by EUR 1 billion from 2022 to 2023.
Those are large numbers in the technical result. That's why we have been highlighting them so much. You're completely right. The discount plays a role there as well. By the way, also the change in loss component, I think that's a question of why I didn't answer. I can quickly do that as well. loss component reduces also, it's also interest rate dependent. It's discounted. Then, of course, it depends on pricing levels. If prices go up, you have less loss business group of less loss-making group of contracts, a lower number of loss-making group of contracts. Therefore, with increasing prices in the market, the loss component should go down as well. At stable price level, it should be stable as well as with stable interest rate levels.
The loss component can move up and down depending on interest and on price. Andrew, your question on the large losses, the numbers are discounted numbers. So the 14 as well as the 16% number is fully discounted. The question on ERGO Life. First of all, if you look at the total technical result as we do the accounting now, and that relates to all our segments, not only ERGO Life. We allocate into the technical result expenses exactly in line with the definitions of IFRS 17, which means only directly attributable expenses. So directly attributable to an insurance or reinsurance contract, only those expenses are part of the technical result. Everything else is outside of the technical result in our other result.
Therefore, in general, there is quite a significant negative contribution from the other result in all our segments. That's of course then also the case for ERGO Life and Health Germany, but also for the other segments. That's normal, and that's not spectacular, nothing outstanding, so I would not have comment on that. There's an additional comment for ERGO Life and Health Germany I made. This additional comment was that we have additional non-directly attributable expenses in the life new book business, so higher than expected expenses, which was an additional track on the result in this quarter of that segment, on top of what you would have expected anyway. Therefore, to answer your questions, probably two components.
First of all, if you look at the relatively high total technical result at ERGO Life and Health, there always has to be deducted a certain amount of non-directly attributable expenses. In the other result, that's completely normal and there's probably a higher number than in the past. The difference between technical result and net income is probably higher than in the past because this, in this cost definition, IFRS 17 is rather narrow. That's normal. Then on top, there is as always, also in the past, there's current developments in the actual quarters. There's higher expenses than expected or lower expenses than expected. This is then the actual performance commentary you saw on the slide, where this quarter, the life new book business had higher expenses than expected.
We have another follow-up from Mr. Hardcastle. Please go ahead.
Hey, thanks for the follow-up. Can I just clarify something on that 8 points of discount and the Nat Cat load? Is it effectively 8 points then? Because you've already taken some component within the Nat Cat number, so Turkey shouldn't actually be affecting that headline. Just trying to understand that, if that makes sense in terms of that walkthrough. The actual question, so sorry. You mentioned there's also an adverse development on that prior year cat, I think, if I understood your comments. Could you just quantify or state which cat that relates to? Then just thanks for publishing the P&C reserves. Always helpful. Can you just guide me where I should see the inflation caution in the motor reserves? Because all the back years seem to be developing pretty favorably across both motor prop and non-prop.
I can see that the non-prop 22 loss booking was materially higher year-on-year. Is that where the caution's been taken, or is that just experience? Thanks.
The last one is a little bit too specific that I could spontaneously answer that. I think we have to take that offline. Sorry for that. On CAT, I'm not sure if I 100% got the question. I mean, I can only reconfirm the numbers are all discounted. But the discount is pretty stable versus year-end, that's not a big source of fluctuation, particularly not in a large loss area where we normalize for. I hope that answers the question. Otherwise, please follow up. PYD, we only would quantify a number like that if there's something really extraordinary would happen there, which is not the case this quarter. Generally, it's up and down every single quarter.
Therefore, we refrain from giving any details there.
Next follow-up from Mr. Shuck. Please go ahead.
Oh, thanks. just a very simple one from me, actually. I was hoping that IFRS 17 would lead to a certain amount of consistency and improved transparency between companies, and particularly reinsurers. You seem to have taken a different, elected to take a different approach on the P&C re side, in choosing the premium allocation approach. Can you just guide us through why that was the case? Obviously, we lose a particularly useful insight, which is the CSM new business margin, of comparing that year-over-year between reinsurers. Any insight why you've chosen to differ versus some of your peers would be helpful, please.
Sure. I mean, to start with, I mean, I also did follow the disclosures over the last days, I have to say. I mean, it's, it's really interesting and, and by the way, also fun to observe what everybody's doing now with these new disclosures. It's interesting, and probably much more for, for, you know, a follow-up conversation in a few quarters from now than to comment extensively today because I think it's all early days still. I do think comparability has improved. As soon as the dust settles a little bit, there will be much more similarities in the disclosure or are already today in the disclosure than what we had in the past.
If I look, for example, into some of the charts, how CSM movements have been explained by our peers and then look into our disclosure, I think it's pretty similar in many cases. Therefore, I'm quite optimistic. Then to more specifically answer your question, also the PAA versus GMM approach in P&C. I mean, bottom line is very similar. There's not a big difference in there. There are some timing differences sometimes. I think discounting is different. That's something which somebody should maybe be aware of. More generally, I think it's pretty similar. Representation is different.
There, I think it's a matter of taste finally, if you prefer having a CSM for a short-term business, which I personally always sometimes have a little bit difficulties how to really interpret in the context that you also have a loss component then. You have a loss component, you have a CSM, all for short-term business. It's also not so simple. The PAA has other advantages. It's, it's closer to what we did in the past, so it's maybe easier to digest initially. Also there, the loss component and the discounting, so also some differences. It's probably more a question of taste what you prefer of the two. The reason why we did choose the PAA is a very simple one, though.
not these highly sophisticated and theoretical discussions, but a very simple one. The reason was that it was much cheaper for us to implement the PAA, it was simpler. We did have to adapt less systems than otherwise. That was the reason.
The next one is from Mr. Spyrou as a follow-up. Please go ahead.
Oh, hi. Thanks for the follow-up. It just, it relates to solvency.
Sorry, we can hardly hear you. Can you please speak a bit louder?
Oh, hi, can you hear me now?
Yeah, let's give it a try. A bit louder, please.
Yes. It's on solvency. I appreciate that you deduct the buyback, which is around 6 points. I was wondering if you could give a bit more color on the moving parts. Where I estimated it, you had around maybe six or seven points of capital generation that would have offset that 6 points from the buyback. Any color on why sort of solvency looks fairly lower than the full year level, that would be great. Thank you.
Yeah, sure. I mean, the major driver is the deduction of the buyback. I think everything else, not very spectacular. We had positive operating earnings, also economic earnings in there, which then were more or less completely offset by some tax effects and some other effects. Seasonality, I think I mentioned that in different context, is different in the economic earnings on the Solvency II space compared to IFRS 17. A lower portion of the result is realized in Q1, at least in the way how we do the Solvency II calculations. Therefore, probably that might be one of the reasons why the number is not higher. The STI is pretty stable. All in all, nothing spectacular, really.
The next one comes from Mr. Goh from RBC. Please go ahead.
Thanks for the opportunity. A couple of quick follow-ups on Life & Health reinsurance technical result, please. They both relate to slide 19. I appreciate there's a lot of conservatism in the EUR 1 billion guidance, but I'm just trying to get an underlying picture on two things. The first one is on U.S. mortality. Can you say what was the total impact from negative experience in Q1? Is there any more color you can share on this, whether it was just underlying excess deaths, and is there a risk of this dragging into future quarters from things like late reporting? The second one is on that fee income from FinmaRe.
Adjusting for the currency effect, looks like it was about EUR 120 million, which is about double what it was Q1 last year. Is that a fair reflection of the growth potential here, or are there any one-off seasonality effects to consider? Thank you.
The second question, I don't see any seasonality. I think the business is growing in a very attractive and constant way for quite some time now, many years. So that, I think that's just the ongoing development. Indeed, if you would adjust it for FX, the number would be significantly higher. So yeah, that, I think that's just a very good performance. Like, on the mortality in the U.S., I mean, first of all, I think, if you look at the disclosure, we're talking now about effects which would not have even been visible in the old IFRS 4 world.
I, this is again, the advertisement, for how good IFRS 17 is because we're talking now about tiny little bits of performance up and down, which otherwise in IFRS 4, with locked-in margins and locked-in reserves would not have been visible at all. That's a big advantage already. What's happening here is that we're talking about really slight deviations. It's not a lot. We of course see a big improvement in the COVID space. We still have COVID IBNR, which we did not release yet, so we are still on a cautious side there. Therefore, if we would include the COVID piece, then the mortality deviation would immediately look different, obviously, because then, also the starting point of the expectation would have to be explained in a different way. I think that's it already for now.
Obviously, U.S. mortality, we need to continue to observe that closely. I mean, that's something you can also take out of the press, that mortality generally in U.S. population is still elevated. There's always a difference between insured portfolio and the general population, so it is not one-to-one at all in the way how one moves and then how the other reacts. Still it's something we have to and we do observe and we do so for many years already as we have a big mortality book like many other reinsurers as well.
Mr. Musadi, please go ahead with your follow-up question.
Yeah, thank you. Just a couple of follow-ups. If I look at slide number 22, this is just for clarification. I mean, last year, first quarter, the basic loss ratio was very low, 52%. This year is high. I guess this is just the EC gap, which you mentioned that last year there was a positive impact of EUR 1.5 billion, now it will be only EUR 0.5 billion. Just to get clarify, this is the same thing, and I'm not missing anything. Second thing in, on ERGO German Life, if I look at the CSM release, I mean, it's a big number, like around EUR 1 billion, which is 10% of CSM. How do we think about the duration of this?
My gut feeling would have been like, okay, German Life should be relatively high duration. I mean, 10% release sounds pretty high. Is this a recurring number? If that is the case, should we keep expecting that this number keeps going down at a very fast pace as well?
I mean, I'll try answer the first question. I'm not sure if I got the second one. The first one on the basic losses is basically, the answer is you can't really compare prior year and this year because the threshold between basic losses and large losses has been increased, as you know. In the past, the large loss would start at 10 million, and now it starts at 30 million. The basic losses are defined differently this year compared to prior year, and we did not restate for that effect. I think that should explain a lot and particularly highlight it's not comparable to look at basic losses prior year to basic losses this year. The CSM release.
Yeah.
Try to give the answer, and you can follow up on that. I mean, the general guide is we say around 2% per quarter or 8% per year. The same for Life & Health reinsurance as well as for ERGO. The point is a little bit that this, on the ERGO side, depends on the excess, so the excess yield or the excess investment income, which is being generated. First, the whole calculation is done in a risk-free way, and then excess return adds to the release. Also all the numbers like the new business contribution, all based on risk-free interest rates, are relatively small.
Then only in the release, the bigger release based on real world investment yield is being shown in the P&L. To give you order of magnitude, it can be a factor of two. The risk-free release could be by a factor of two smaller compared to the full release, talking about ERGO Life and Health Germany now. There's not no such effect for reinsurance Life and Health because there's no savings business. Be careful, that's not the case for reinsurance. There is this effect for VFA business, so most importantly, ERGO Life and Health Germany, and then also for some of the businesses in ERGO International.
Yeah, that's clear. Thank you.
I'm sorry. We have one follow-up, because we had a couple of people who didn't get the numbers with respect to slide number 30, where we explain the walk from last year's earnings to this year's outlook, specifically with respect to the EUR 1 billion figure for P&C reinsurance. Christopher will repeat the numbers again. Yes, indeed. We have a EUR 1 billion impact, as shown on the slide. I'll show you now year by year what the benefit, the interest benefit in P&C reinsurance was. I start with 2022. We had a benefit of EUR 1.5 billion after tax, and the components are discount effect EUR 2 billion, EC EUR 500 million to be deducted from that, and EUR 500 million loss component release.
2023, expectation is a EUR 0.5 billion effect still. Discount EUR 2.2 billion, EC EUR 1.5 billion. The difference between the EUR 1.5 and EUR 0.5 is the EUR 1 billion you see on the slide. 2024, we expect the numbers to go down further. I also repeat my disclaimer I made before. These numbers are all highly interest rate dependent. A shift in interest rates of EUR 100 million could mean EUR 500 million difference in these effects.
There are no further questions at this time. I hand back to Christian Becker-Hussong, who's along for closing comments.
Thanks to you all for joining us and for the lots of questions. Happy to follow up on the phone afterwards. Thanks again for joining and hope to see you all soon. Have a nice remaining day. Bye-bye.