Good morning. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I warmly welcome you here at the ICM, the International Congress Center Messe München, right here in Munich. And of course also good morning to everyone online. My name is Nikolaus von Bomhard , and as chairman of the supervisory board, I hereby call to order the annual general meeting of Munich Reinsurance Company and in accordance with the articles of association, assume the chairmanship of the meeting. I note that all members of the board of management and the supervisory board are present. The minutes of today's annual general meeting will be taken by our notary public, Mr. Jens Kirchner , who of course you all know very well at this point. He's sitting right here to my right. You may contact him via the speakers registration desk.
The annual general meeting was duly convened in accordance with the notice published in the Federal Gazette on March 19th, 2026. We've set up a document area right here on the upper level of the foyer. In this document area, you can view all documents relevant to today's AGM, including the notice of the meeting, the annual reports, and the remuneration report for the year 2025. The documents are also available on our website, www.munichre.com/agm. You will be able to find them there in the document section. Please familiarize yourself with the organizational notes leaflet, which is also available right here in the entrance area. This leaflet contains important regulations regarding the annual general meeting and particularly regarding participation, the exercise of speaking and voting rights, and the seating area. These regulations are binding for the meeting unless I expressly amend them here today.
The entire meeting, including the general debate, will be streamed on the investor portal. Shareholders and their proxies can follow it there using their individual login credentials. Now, the opening of the annual general meeting, my speech, as well as the speech by the chairman of the board of management, will also be publicly streamed and broadcast via our website. This public broadcast will end before the general debate begins. Now, during the general debate, you may speak on the items on the agenda. If you wish to do so, please submit your request to speak as early as possible at the Speakers Registration Desk right here in the room. It is over there. I just pointed to it. Please present your admission ticket to our staff at the Speakers Registration Desk and indicate which agenda item or items you would like to address.
Ladies and gentlemen, with this I would now like to call order, to order agenda item number one. This is the presentation of the adopted annual financial statements, the approved consolidated financial statements, and the combined management report for Munich Reinsurance Company, Aktiengesellschaft in Munich, and the group, as well as other reports for the 2025 financial year, as announced in the notice of the meeting. With reference to the Supervisory Board's report, as its chairman, I would like to highlight a few topics that we addressed, of course, with particular vigor in 2025. Generally, I can say that even in the past fiscal year, the Supervisory Board supported the Board of Management when it comes to working with the company.
The work of the supervisory board in the last financial year was particularly coined by our future corporate strategy, of course also the geopolitical challenges as well as the digitalization initiatives. The supervisory board, of course, paid particular attention to our growth strategy, which was Ambition 2030. Of course also its main economic drivers. Mr. Jurecka is going to speak about this in more detail in his comments. Also in the past financial year, the company, of course, faced enormous geopolitical challenges. Outside of the risk analysis, the geopolitical challenges were also a tremendous factor on our global business as well as, of course, the capital invest of Munich Re. We also analyzed the acquisition of Next Insurance in the United States.
This acquisition, which takes the long view in strategic terms and has its roots in an anchor investment made several years ago, yet again underscores the company's commitment to digitalization and technology-driven business models. Again, this is another aspect that Mr. Jurecka is going to address in his comments. The personnel committee initiated some very important changes to the board of management while the nomination committee made preparations for someone to succeed a supervisory board member due to leave. I will provide details on these personnel matters separately at the end of my remarks. The various activities pursued by the supervisory board and its committees are described in great detail in the report of the supervisory board, starting on page 189 and following of the latest annual report. For that reason, I'll keep today's comments brief.
Already at previous annual general meetings, I have stressed how important good corporate governance is to the company and how careful Munich Re is to set a good example in this respect. This makes me all the more delighted to report that the German Association for Financial Analysis and Asset Management, or DVFA for short, once again ranked us among the leading DAX 40 companies this year. Once again, confirming Munich Re's excellent corporate governance. Speaking of which, I would like to address a topic that is close to my heart and one that I cannot always understand the public debate upon. As you know, we as a company sometimes also go against the trend. I'm specifically talking about the role of former board of management members of listed stock corporations serving on the supervisory board of those very same companies.
In 2009, the German Stock Corporation Act was amended in a move to strengthen the impartiality of supervisory boards. Since then, former board of management members have had to wait two years before joining the company supervisory board. I believe that this is the right approach, and it is also the one we followed when I personally stepped down as CEO. This so-called cooling-off period has proven effective in practice. Recently, however, I've noticed more and more investors and some proxy advisors that are fundamentally opposed to former board of management members joining supervisory boards if the intention is for them to serve as a chairperson. I am skeptical of such a categorical stance on this issue which goes far beyond the requirements of stock corporation law.
In my opinion, the statutory separation between a board of management and its supervisory board ensures adequate impartiality, at least here in Germany. As you know, there is no such separation in, for instance, the one-tier Anglo-American system. There you have to, of course, discuss this question and matter completely differently. In this discussion, we can see two main issues emerging from the debate: the demand for an impartial chair of the supervisory board on the one hand, and the need for outstanding expertise within the supervisory board on the other, or supervisory committees in general. The question is whether this concern about sufficient impartiality is really justified. Now, personally, I believe, and you may already know this, I believe that these objections are unfounded.
The two-year cooling-off period under stock corporation law ensures the impartiality of a former board of management member serving at the helm of the supervisory board. They are really gone for two years. I can say from my own experience that this period is long enough to allow individuals to distance themselves sufficiently from the company's operational affairs. The German Corporate Governance Code also supports this assessment by providing for a corresponding cooling-off period as best practice. Even the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, so basically our supervisor, recently confirmed in a circular that a two-year cooling-off period for members moving from senior management to a supervisory body ensures the necessary impartiality. No distinction is made between ordinary members and the chair.
Assertions that a previous position on a board of management prevents someone from living up to a completely different responsibility on the supervisory board are thus not really persuasive, I must say. I also must say this is my personal opinion as well. Now, in my view, this notion disregards the fact that the supervisory board is subject to significant checks and balances in the first place. First and foremost, there are the employee representatives who often appoint the deputy chair in co-determined supervisory boards. Another corrective mechanism is the impartial chair of the audit committee, who, according to the German Corporate Governance Code, ought not to be the chair of the supervisory board either.
In fact, demanding that former board of management members, especially the CEOs, should fundamentally be barred from chairing a supervisory body leads to discontinuity and wastes indispensable expertise. Now, this cannot be in the interest of the shareholders who have only limited insight into the day-to-day running of the company, and I'm saying this with all due respect. I firmly believe that large stock corporations can only perpetuate in the long run the success stories they have written over the decades and maintain the resilience that comes with that if they can cultivate their institutional memory. Alongside innovation and the willingness to embrace technology, both stability and continuity play key and decisive roles in a company's success.
In the financial services market in particular, and especially in the somewhat opaque field of reinsurance, industry expertise and the ability to make sound judgments regarding development cycles and business trends over long periods of time are truly crucial. The chair plays a key role in this process. Their experience with the company allows them to ensure that an appropriate balance is struck between the interests of staff members and shareholders. Ladies and gentlemen, good corporate governance requires thorough supervision. Now, this can only be achieved if members of supervisory bodies know exactly what to look out for. Former board of management members are ideally placed to do this. As such, intentionally accepting a supervisory board chair who lacks such expertise would in fact be negligent. Again, this is my personal opinion.
With this in mind, I advocate, again, not a huge surprise, trusting the judgment of legislators, supervisory authorities and the German Corporate Governance Commission and not opposing scenarios in which a former board of management member becomes a supervisory board chair, provided this serves, of course, the interests of the company concerned. I believe it is fair to expect that the individuals concerned can, and indeed will, grasp the considerable change in role associated with their move from management to the s upervisory board. If you ask Mr. Wenning , who's of course here with us, of what he's doing right now, he probably would tell you he is currently cooling off.
You know, depending on the echo, depending on the developments of what I just told you, and depending on our discussions, the two of us, but also of course the supervisory board, will make a decision until the end of the year as to how we're going to proceed forward. Thank you very much. This is very encouraging. Thank you very much. That completes my relatively long foray into corporate governance and these very special and specific topics. Allow me to now return to today's agenda. As already announced last year, the supervisory board is proposing, based on a recommendation put forward by the audit committee, that the AGM appoint KPMG AG Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft Berlin or KPMG for short, as the external auditor for 2026 financial year.
We all know them, of course, from, you know, back in the days if you've been with us for long enough. The decision to change auditors is the result of intensive discussions between the audit committee, the entire supervisory board and the board of management, followed by a tender process that Munich Re conducted in the 2024 financial year, which was quite extensive, if I may say so. I mean, also by way of it being in 2024, you can see how long it took. The qualifications of the auditing firm and of the audit team were key criteria that the audit committee and the supervisory board took into account as part of the selection process. This was all exactly what we were looking at throughout this entire tender process. Incidentally, EY was also shortlisted alongside KPMG as part of this process.
Now, after an in-depth evaluation and discussion of the tender offers, the Audit Committee recommended that the supervisory board propose KPMG to the Annual General Meeting as the new external auditor. The supervisory board has therefore endorsed this recommendation. In addition, KPMG is to be appointed as the auditor of our sustainability reporting for the 2026 financial year as well. As was the case last year, this resolution is of course subject to the proviso that the national legislator requires the AGM to appoint an auditor for this purpose in the first place. The relevant legislation transposing the EU Corporate Sustainability Directive has not yet been adopted in Germany to this very day, so this is still just a proviso. Coming to the Remuneration Report, agenda item six. As in the previous years, this was prepared in accordance with the statutory requirements.
Of course, beyond that, it also contains a number of voluntary disclosures, again like in the previous years, meaning that I believe in its 38 pages, it provides comprehensive and transparent information on the remuneration report to members of the board of management and the supervisory board. However, as the report is available to all of you shareholders, I will refrain from going into more detail at this point. Now I'm moving once again to more staff changes. In the middle of the last year, we announced major changes at the helm of the company. Following Mr. Wenning's retirement for personal reasons on the 31st of December 2025, the supervisory board appointed Christoph Jurecka as his successor with effect from January 1st, 2026. On behalf of the supervisory board, I would like to extend my most sincere thanks to Mr. Wenning.
During his decades of service to the group, including, of course, eight years as CEO, almost nine years as CEO actually, his accomplishments were truly remarkable, as reflected yet again in the impressive financial statements for 2025 that we will be discussing with you today. Mr. Jurecka, of course, is a true expert of the insurance and reinsurance group. He took over the reins as this proven expert at the beginning of the year at the board of management. Of course, such a change triggers other changes. In this case, of course, we are talking about the CFO. Mr. Buchanan then stepped into the role of CFO. You're going to be experiencing him firsthand today because certainly he's going to answer some questions. He became the Chief Financial Officer to succeed Mr. Jurecka.
Born in South Africa, Mr. Buchanan joined Munich Re in 2011 and served as Chief Financial Officer of the reinsurance group from 2017 to 2025. He will be addressing you in German today. Now, Mr. Johnson was appointed to the board of management as Chief Technology Officer on August 1st of last year. This was a new division which we've never had in the group, as far as I know. This was just for technology. Born in the U.K., he has been working for the group since 2017. In 2023, he was appointed to the board of management of ERGO Group AG as Chief Technology Officer, in addition to his role as head of the IT organization of the reinsurance group. Now you understand why we have this division, because for the very first time, it is now actually across the entire business activities.
It is now bundled in one person in one position. These changes to the board of management, we believe, have set the course for Munich Re's continued success. Furthermore, of course, we are also voting on a new shareholder representative to the supervisory board today. Because as of today, we are bidding farewell to Mr. Booth, who has resigned from his position with effect from the end of today's AGM. We would like to thank you, Mr. Booth, for nearly 30 years of dedication to the company across all kinds of different functions, including as a board of management member and a long-standing member of the supervisory board for 10 years. Of course, we wish you all the very best for the future. This is, of course, a serious benchmark.
We are pleased to propose a new supervisory board member to you for election, and we are very happy to propose Frédéric de Courtois, a proven expert in the international insurance industry, who is going to hopefully become a new member of the supervisory board. He understands German. He speaks German, but of course, in a business context, he prefers English, so he is going to address you in English. Please.
Thank you very much, Mr. President. Good morning. I am very sorry that I only speak a little bit of German, and therefore I'm going to speak in English. Good morning. I am Frédéric de Courtois . I'm 58. I'm French. I live in Paris. I'm European. I'm married, and my wife is a university professor teaching historical garden restoration. Quite far from insurance. We have three children. I'm a football fan. Here let's discuss. I think we can agree on two facts. It was a very good match, and the next one will be even more interesting. I'm a tennis fan.
I'm a tennis fan and I'm a tennis player. I'm reading a lot. I'm interested in too many topics. Business-wise, I'm a telecom engineer. I am an actuary. I've worked in four countries. I have to confess that my first job was in Germany, close to Cologne and Düsseldorf. I worked there 1.5 years. It was long ago. My German will recover. I've also worked four years in Japan, 14 years in Italy and 15 years in France. Basically, I'm the man of two big insurance companies. I've worked 28 years at AXA and I've worked five years at Generali. My last jobs over the past 19 years have been CEO of AXA Italy. I was CEO of Generali International Business.
I was General Manager of Generali. Then I was Deputy CEO at AXA and I was in charge of finance, risk management, strategy, technology and insurance topics, so underwriting claims and pricing. I'm also chairing Insurance Europe, which is the European Insurance Association. I've left AXA end of March, so I'm a free man. My main purpose now more than ever is to contribute to our society and help build a better world. Munich Re is a great company, I'm very grateful and honored to be proposed for a supervisory board seat. If you vote for me, I'll do my best to support and challenge the management team and contribute to Munich Re next successes. Thank you very much. [Non-English content]
Thank you so very much, Mr. de Courtois. You can already tell I don't know who should be more happy, if it's he should be more happy or we should be more happy. He's truly quite something. I can also tell you, and I don't believe that this is a secret, Mr. Zimmerer, who has been chairing the audit committee in a very committed manner for a few years now, and I've mentioned this previously as to who can be the successor of whom. You know, he was also somebody who came from outside. He was also a heavyweight. Mr. de Courtois is sort of warming up already for this exact task, the chairmanship of the audit committee. I believe this is, of course, a very important position, and that's why your vote today is very meaningful as well. Thank you very much, Mr. de Courtois.
Having said that, let's talk business. Mr. Jurecka, over to you for the very first time today. He is now going to report to us on the 2025 financial year and provide an outlook on the current fiscal year. All the best.
Dear shareholders, welcome to the Munich Re's Annual General Meeting also from me. Now, I'm very pleased to welcome you today for the first time as the Chair of the Board of Management. Now, standing here is a great privilege, and in the almost 150-year history of our company, I am only the 10th CEO. Now, this shows just how deeply rooted continuity, long-term thinking and responsible leadership are at Munich Re. In 2025, we added yet another milestone to our history because on an annual basis we were financially stronger than ever before. At the same time, we achieved all the targets of our multi-year Ambition 2025 strategy program. Now with the presentation of our new strategy, Ambition 2030, the path to sustain our success story well into the future has been laid.
Let me start by looking at Munich Re's position at the end of 2025. Munich Re is in a excellent financial condition. Our net result in 2025 was EUR 6.1 billion. That is a level of earning that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. As part of our strategy Ambition 2025, we surpassed our annual target five times in a row, and we still had sufficient latitude to even strengthen our reserves. We didn't just clock up record results, but we also further secured our earning prowess. The net result is certainly the most meaningful indicator of our financial strength, but by no means the only one. With Ambition 2025, we had set ourselves midterm targets up to the end of 2025. Each single one of these targets has been achieved or even outperformed.
For return on equity, we had set ourselves an increase anywhere between 14%-16%. In fact, it went up by 18.3%. For our earnings per share and dividend per share, we had penciled in an average growth of at least 5%. In fact, these values rose by an average of almost 20% per year. Looking at the solvency ratio, we defined ourselves a target corridor of anywhere between 175%-220%. At the end of 2025, it was actually far higher at 298%. Also, our non-financial commitments were fully honored. One aim was to increase the proportion of women in management positions across the group to over 40%. Now today, this figure stands at 40.5%.
We made significantly faster progress than originally planned with the decarbonization of our investment and insurance portfolios, which is also relevant from a business perspective. Our success benefits all our stakeholders, clients, staff, and even society as a whole. It also benefits you as shareholders. For 2025 alone, we are returning via share buybacks and dividends EUR 3.5 billion to you. That amounts to nearly 90% of our net result. Subject to your approval, of course, we will then increase the dividend to EUR 24 per share. That's an increase of 20% over the previous year and compared to the dividend level at the start of Ambition 2025, it actually comes up to a 120% increase. Also the share price reflects our excellent business performance.
As part of Ambition 2025, that is from the start of January 2021 through to December 2025, your value has more than doubled. The shares more than doubled. Thus they significantly outperformed both the German stock market index and the European Insurance sector as a whole. All in all, our total shareholder return, that is the combination of dividends and share price increases to 180%. Dear shareholders, so far for the bare facts and figures, which are remarkable in their own right. Now, if you consider the circumstances under which we achieved these results, they become even more impressive because implementation of our Ambition 2025 was not done under conditions of a laboratory. They were really done in a period that was characterized by a number of major crises.
In 2021, we were still feeling the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. In 2022, Russia's attack on Ukraine sent shock waves through the capital markets, which in turn led to high impairment losses in our investment business. Inflation also rose sharply. Claim payments became significantly more expensive for insurers in some cases. We had the hurricane Ian that caused some of the highest claim expenditures in history. In 2023, geopolitical tensions reached a tragic climax with Hamas's attack on Israel on the 7th of October and a subsequent escalation of the Middle East conflict. In 2024, we saw the 3rd most expensive year ever in terms of insured losses from natural disasters. Our property casualty reinsurance business proved to be very robust here. In 2025, the U.S. protectionist foreign trade policy caused turmoil on the global financial markets.
We experienced considerable currency losses due to the sharp depreciation of the US dollar. Of course, there were also, well, some positive and bright developments. The attractive market environment, the so-called hard market in the property casualty reinsurance gave us tailwind, and we took full advantage of that tailwind. We also benefited over the years from the rise in interest rates. Nevertheless, the fact that we were able to generate a steady increase in results in such an unpredictable economic and political environment was anything but self-evident. Rather, it was the result of our strategic foresight and our operational excellence. In the context of Ambition 2025, we made the decision to more intensively diversify our business. We've achieved this by expanding life reinsurance, primary insurance, and specialty insurance alike.
The increasing contribution to earnings from these less volatile lines of business makes our net result less susceptible to fluctuations overall. In turn enables us to better offset extraordinary burdens, as I just outlined, in individual lines of business. This principle, however, only works if all business areas are operationally healthy and efficient. That was and is the case. Let me illustrate this with the development of our business fields and segments in 2025. I will start with primary insurance. ERGO has consistently achieved profitable growth in recent years, and in 2025 generated a profit of around EUR 920 million. Year-on-year, this represents a significant increase of around EUR 100 million. As a result, ERGO clearly met its annual target. Developments in the international business and the German domestic market was very gratifying.
ERGO once again significantly increased insurance revenue in its international markets in 2025. Its combined ratio was at a very good 90%. Particularly high was the growth in the property casualty insurance business, above all in Poland as well as in the Belgium health business. Also contributing was the full acquisition of the Norway-based health insurance provider, ERGO Forsikring , in 2024 and the U.S. based Next Insurance in 2025. Both these companies were fully recognized in the 2025 figures for the first time. With the acquisition of Next, ERGO entered the world's largest insurance market and thereby laid the foundation for further profitable growth in the coming years. In Germany, our business with life and health insurance products developed well. For example, revenue from supplementary insurance, such as supplementary dental plans, increased significantly.
In life insurance, demand increased for our modern pension products and biometric covers. Winners of multiple awards. In the property casualty business, our focus was on ensuring profitability of that business. As a result, premium growth was more restrained. The combined ratio was at an outstanding 88.9%. Which brings me to our Reinsurance business. The contribution to earnings from reinsurance increased by EUR 300 million to EUR 5.2 billion. Insurance revenue fell from around EUR 40 to about EUR 38.7 billion. One of the main reasons for this was less favorable exchange rates. As you know, we write a great deal of reinsurance business in U.S. dollars. In fact, the United States are our largest single market. Accordingly, the effects of a weak exchange rate are plain to see.
We cannot influence currency trends, we can take rational business decisions. The market environment then (inaudible) reinsurance is becoming more competitive and against this backdrop, we are prioritizing profitability over volume. In 2025, we deliberately discontinued business that no longer met our return requirements. The excellent combined ratio of 73.5% in the property casualty reinsurance segment underscores the quality of our underwriting. It was another 4 percentage points below the already very good figure from the previous year. None of our direct competitors achieved this level of profitability. The segment's results ultimately totaled EUR 3.3 billion. Of course, we also benefited from a favorable major loss outcome because not a single major hurricane hit the U.S. mainland in 2025.
The absolute peak risk for reinsurers did therefore not materialize. Nonetheless, 2025 was not a year of low losses because no one could forget that record-breaking fires in the Los Angeles area at the beginning of the year. Overall, annual insured losses from natural disasters in the global market once again exceeded $100 billion. We also benefited from below average major loss expenditure in specialty insurance. The combined ratio for global specialty insurance, or GSI for short, was an outstanding 85.9%. Its contribution to the net result was EUR 562 million. Here, GSI, for the first time, is reported as a separate segment within the reinsurance field of business. The segment's size and its importance for our group really justified this step. Unlike in traditional property casualty reinsurance, growth plays a major role at GSI.
The specialty insurance market is broadly diversified and offers considerable growth opportunities. We offer insurance solutions, for example, for renewable energy, for satellites, for works of art, or for vintage cars. That is just a small selection from our product portfolio. In recent years, GSI's insurance revenue has grown by around 10% annually. In 2025 it was slightly lower than in previous years at EUR 8.6 billion. However, this was due to the already mentioned negative currency effects that I had, as I mentioned before. We also saw very pleasing profitable growth in the third segment of the reinsurance business, namely in life and health. At this point it is worth taking another look back here because when we started our Ambition 2025 strategy, we started with a normalized total technical result of EUR 550 million.
That was in 2020 and under the IFRS 4 reporting standard. At the time, our target was to achieve EUR 850 million by 2025. In the end, and under the reporting standard IFRS, we achieved EUR 1.7 billion, which is more than 3 times as much as in 2020 and exactly twice times as much as we had projected for 2025. Our remarkable development was of course due to major transactions involving life portfolios here. In recent years, we have observed a structural change in the life insurance market, particularly in North America. Here you find that entire portfolios of life and pension insurance policies are transferred from primary insurers, for example, to optimize capital and often by involving specialist asset managers.
Munich Re identified this trend early on and reinsures this risk of portfolios transferred in such major transactions. We have thereby generated more than EUR 3 billion in new business value from major transactions since 2022. Another profit driver are reinsurance solutions to optimize our clients' balance sheets. Here in 2025 we enjoyed sustained high demand. The claims experience into traditional business, that is namely when we assume biometric risks was slightly higher than expected in 2025, but it was still within the scope of expected random fluctuations and is absolutely no cause for concern. In other words, our life business is healthy in every respect. So much on our insurance business. Let us now turn to investment, which is of no less importance in our business model.
In 2025, the capital markets developed positively, but we do not rely solely on favorable market conditions, but we aim to realize additional earnings potential through active investment management and that is something we once again succeeded the previous financial year. In the short term, we again consciously accepted losses on the disposal of fixed interest investments in order to shift investments to higher yielding securities. Moreover, we benefited from the positive equity markets. Over the long term, we will continue to expand our alternative investments as we did in private equity and infrastructure in 2025, for example. Thus, we managed to increase the group's return on investment by more than 30 basis points last year's, improving it to 3.2% in 2025. Dear shareholders, our group's success has many faces.
To be precise, it is 43,982 faces, because that's how many staff members we employ worldwide. I cannot honor every individual achievement here and now today, but I would like to take this opportunity on behalf of the board of management and with all of you here today to thank our entire workforce. Esteemed colleagues, you are the backbone of our success, and I am very proud to be part of this team. My heartfelt gratitude therefore to all of you. That brings me to the end of my review of last year. I'd like to take a look at what's ahead of us. Before us is our Ambition 2030, we want to continue our chosen path and actually set our sights even higher. I had already emphasized the significance of diversification for our business model.
In the coming years, we will place an even greater focus on becoming a diversified insurance group that offers reinsurance, primary insurance and specialty insurance at scale. Doing so, it will enable us to enhance both the absolute size and the relative stability of our net result. That is the essence of our strategy. As part of Ambition 2030, we will significantly increase the individual contributions to earnings from life and health insurance, reinsurance from ERGO and from the global specialty insurance. At present, these fields of business currently account for around half of our net result. Our goal is that by 2030 they shall rise to around 60%. This will make us less dependent on the results generated by property casualty reinsurance, which will of course remain a major backbone and pillar for our group, but not the only one.
That will be a decisive advantage, especially against the backdrop of the currently more competitive market and property casualty reinsurance. The peak of the hard market of attractive market conditions seems to have come and gone. Prices fell slightly in the most recent rounds of renewals. However, we are coming from a very attractive position and therefore prices remain at a good, at a solid l evel. Given the global price trend, we hardly expect any growth impetus in the midterm. Instead, we are quite deliberately discontinuing business that no longer meets our return requirements. Thanks to our broad positioning, it is much easier for us than for others. What's more, it allows us to manage the cycle in property casualty reinsurance more flexibly.
Depending on the appeal and attractiveness of the markets, the contributions to our net result from property casualty reinsurance will increase or decrease. That is the true strength of our business model. For life and health reinsurance, for ERGO and for global specialty insurance, we expect strong revenue growth and even higher profitability in some areas. We will expand promising business initiatives and tap into new markets. Alongside it, we also want to increase our investment income. We will continue to expand alternative investments in such areas as infrastructure, renewables, real estate or private equity while doing all this and exercising a sound judgment. Another key component of our strategy is cost efficiency. With Ambition 2030, we have set a specific group-wide cost target for the very first time. We want to achieve total savings of EUR 600 million by 2030.
AI, artificial intelligence will play a key role in this because AI not only helps us to operate more efficiently, it actually enables innovation. Especially for us as a data-driven group, it is essential to deploy AI strategically. There's no one who can say exactly today what the technology will be capable of in five years' time. It's one thing that's certain. If you do not get to grips with it today, you will lose your competitive edge tomorrow. Increases in revenue and profitability and efficiency as part of Ambition 2030 ultimately translate into key three targets. First, we aim for a return on equity of over 18% by 2030. We want to increase our earnings per share of more than 8% per year. Our solvency ratio shall remain consistently above 200%.
For you as shareholders of particular interest in all this, for the first time, we are making an explicit pledge to return capital. We plan to increase our total payout ratio from an average of 75% over the past five years to over 80% per year. That means that we will return an even greater portion of our net result to you in the form of dividends and share buybacks. For the current fiscal year, we have earmarked a net result target of EUR 6.3 billion. Dear shareholders, I would like to end my speech by returning to a more fundamental topic. Obviously, we are pleased with rising profits, and of course, you are happy about rising dividends. I do not think this is the only reason you've invested in our company.
Just as I did not become CEO of this company solely because I wanted to increase its value. Munich Re and insurance in general stand for much more than that. Especially in today's world, it is important to recognize the social significance of our industry. We live in an unstable world. Established certainties are beginning to crumble and falter. Risks are intensifying. People have the feeling that there's nothing that they can rely on anymore. The war in Ukraine and its humanitarian, economic, and security-related implications are just the latest instant in that shift. Insurance, of course, cannot resolve geopolitical conflicts or economic crisis, but our services help companies and people around the world to protect themselves against risks and make due provisions for the future. We offer the certainty and a sense of security.
Allow me to use an image to illustrate our role in the world. Insurance is society's immune system. Insurance protects, mitigates, and enables progress. Just as the immune system protects the body from life-threatening diseases, insurance protects people or companies from potentially existential losses and keeps the entire system working. Just as the immune system remembers pathogens it has encountered, making the body more resilient, insurers learn from past incidents. We can encourage sensible decision-making, enable prevention, and thus boost society's resilience. Just like the immune system allows the body to function smoothly and to move freely, insurance makes it possible to take the requisite risks to achieve growth and progress. Insurance grants a sense of security. Only a strong immune system is effective, and only an effective immune system can protect an organism.
In the same way, our financial strength and prowess and our excellence are essential for us to fulfill our role in society. As CEO, I will do everything in my power to preserve our financial strength and performance. Together with the hearts and minds of the 44,000 colleagues who make up our group and the claim to provide our clients with the best possible support in an ever-changing world and strengthened and buoyed by the trust you, our shareholders, have placed in us. With that, thank you very much for your attention.
Yeah. Thank you very much, Mr. Jurecka, for your concise and very fitting, very calm and muted overview of the 2025 financial year and the outlook. You also just said thank you. I would like to co-sign this also on behalf of the supervisory board. I would also like to take the opportunity to specifically and separately thank the members of the management board, as well as all employees around the globe for their great personal commitment. Because of course, as Mr. Jurecka said, it's all greater than the sum of its parts, and everybody did their best. Once again, we had an excellent business result, as we could of course see from the reports of 2025. Again, from us right here and from everyone behind me as well, thank you very much. Now, Mr. Juricka is sitting next to me.
We have one very small thing. Please do say something on the development of the share capital and on the acquisition and the use of treasury shares. Over to you.
Clearly. Thank you, Mr. Bomhard. Because based on the authorization granted by the AGM, the management board has decided, with the approval of the supervisory board, to acquire treasury shares by and until the next AGM in April 2026. To acquire (inaudible) shares o n the stock exchange during that period for a maximum of EUR 2 billion over the stock exchanges. Now, between the 15th of May 2025 and the 10th of April 2026, a total of 3,674,952 shares of the company were duly acquired, representing a proportionate amount of the share capital of EUR 60,532,293. No, sorry. EUR 605,329.32, which corresponds to 2.81% of the share capital and a total purchase price of EUR 1,999,999,855.005. The repurchased shares will be duly retired.
Since the share price is so high, we have to take it back and back, right? Thank you very much, Mr. Jurecka. I would like to now inform viewers following our annual general meeting online that the public broadcast ends here, as I mentioned in my initial remarks. I would like to thank you very much for your interest. Shareholders and proxies who are logged into the investor portal may continue to follow the proceedings of the annual general meeting online