Good morning. Good morning to everyone. Thanks for being here. Welcome to the Talanx Capital Market Day 2024. If Hanoverians, and I'm not referring to the horses, but to the people that come from Hanover, travel to Bavaria, something must have happened. Why are we here today? First of all, I'll tell you why we are not here today. We are not here today to present a new strategy, because our existing strategy is still valid, and it's working well. It's working so well that we were able to outperform. We were able to outperform on two dimensions. We were able to deliver the targets we initially had set for the financial year 2025, not only a year earlier, but we could also deliver significantly more than we had initially promised. That's why we're here today.
We will tell you how we did that, and we will tell you what lies ahead. With that, I hand over to Torsten Leue, our CEO. Torsten, the floor is yours.
Good. Thank you, Bernd, and a warm welcome from my side. You know, you mentioned already, if you would ask me something like six years ago, you started as CEO, and please, did you sign a paper now where it's written that you triple the profit, you make billions more revenues in the company? I would immediately sign any paper you want. So, and really believe me, I'm so happy and proud to work with such people together here. Some of them sitting on the stage, some you've seen yesterday. It's really a culture of trust where those people around me try to outperform. And this is, for me, beautiful to watch. And we have here two, three people we brought here for you today. After I tell you a bit about the update of where we stand, Jan, this is our internal Mr. Resiliency.
He always sees things I never see. So, he thinks, he said always, "I see the unexpected, unexpected." So, even don't ask me what it is, but he's our Mr. Resiliency. Besides, we have, and he will tell you much more about how resilient we are now. Besides, we have Wilm and Nicolas. Wilm is heading the Retail International portfolio. And those two gentlemen with their team brought the HDI Int to the next level, the HDI Int of the Retail International portfolio. You will see the numbers, and it's really a significant player now. So, these guys made it so far. So, I will present you later on. So, let's go into basically the topic, which I want to get three messages only to you.
You know, the one message is, as Bernd said, we outperformed the targets, basically due to a new level of the primary insurance we have reached now, via M&A, but as well via organic growth. The second message is, well, showing you really resiliency, and we are very transparent with resiliency. On each balance sheet position, we give you the information we have. So, it's not talking about resilience, but showing resiliency. The third message is, due to this, we give you new targets now, which you have seen probably yesterday evening, and tell you a bit more background about these targets. First message is, so far what we have said is, these were the targets, you can read them. I don't run through, but basically the 25% was a number we gave you starting with the cycle 2023- 2025.
When this thing is working, now it's working. 10% ROE is our long-term strategic target. We always say significantly above. For us, it's the idea of showing really something over a long, long time above 10%, significantly above. Reality shows in the cycle we are now. It's 12.9% in 2022, and you see 16.6%, and we forecast more than 15%. After nine months, by the way, it was above 19%. We are far above, and you will see that we are quite comfortable with that area of above 15%. That's just not to confuse when we say 10% always above is like long-term view in the company. Second target we have set, the 1.2 - 1.6. This was above 25%. As Bernd said already, this is earlier and higher. We talk about actually about 50% growth.
It's a significant double-digit growth per year, which we could achieve. Again, later on, we'll tell you how we did it a bit more. Therefore, we have to come actually up with new targets, as I said. With dividends, again, we said as well, 25% to two-year to 250, and again, one year earlier and higher with 270 we will now propose to the general meeting for this year. Basically earlier and higher, that's the message what we have achieved. Going a bit more to the details, like, the growth in the reinsurance sector is 8%, probably according to the markets. Hannover did a good job here. The primary insurance was growing with 35%. This is not only due to the acquisition. More than 1/2 of this is organic growth.
So, double-digit organic growth, actually 20 percentage points out of the 35 percentage points is organic growth. So, Liberty is one thing on top of it. So, this machine is running organically double-digit, the primary insurance. More importantly, as the bottom line, so the bottom line with 60% on the reinsurance side, I think good growth on the bottom line, but nearly 100% on the bottom line for the primary insurance. So, really, in many markets, you could really grab profitable market share. And now comes the second message. How resilient, and everybody talks probably about resiliency to match future volatilities and who's better positioned and so on. So, we show you transparency. Our resiliency since Hannover started, I don't know, 10 years ago even more, to show you resiliency. And each quarter, let's say, each year you have this question, I suppose. This is the numbers.
We showed you since 2019, for example, Hannover has now in 2023, EUR 2.1 billion, which is 5% of the total reserves. You know, those resiliency was in the best estimate. And the primary insurance, we nearly doubled it since 2019 from EUR 0.7 billion- EUR 1.5 billion, and here even higher, 8.8 resiliency compared to the total reserve of the primary insurance. So, basically saying is, when you only compare 2022 with 2023, it's EUR 1 billion more resiliency we could add to the company. And therefore, the quality of the results in that cycle, we believe, are quite reasonable. That next level of the primary insurance basically is explained in a way that, you know, when you started, this figure's not here on the slide, in 2019, we started with 30% and not resilient primary insurance. Now we are on the level of 47, very resilient.
You have seen the 8.8% of total reserves, basically nearly 50/50. This is for us a very good, again, resiliency, because diversification pays off in these times. I will talk now a bit more about the primary insurance, because reinsurance, I mean, you have separate capital market days, so you know Hannover Re. Let me talk a bit about this piece of the 47%, nearly 50%. Again, diversification is important in this piece. In the primary insurance, half of this is Corporate & Specialty, which is former industrial lines. We call it now Corporate & Specialty. Roughly 50% comes from here. Actually, this was our original of the company 120 years ago, this kind of business. We founded it later in the 1960s, the reinsurance. Original was this, and they are 50% of the primary now.
Then we have roughly a bit more than 50% retail business, which is perfect for, you know, balancing it out and good for our capital model, you know, because it's diversified, excellent in the model. So, that means capital efficient if we make profitable retail, adding to that. Then we are diversified when it comes to the markets, because we believe 50% we have mature markets and 50% somewhere else, be it in mature markets, but you see North America only 10%. This is basically for us markets where we believe outside of Europe will grow faster than the European markets. And with our market share we have in the regions, which are not dominant. We are, let's say, dominant in industrial Germany. We are now dominant in Brazil, but many markets not. So, we believe, and I'll show you later now the business model.
Being in that market position, with our business model, we can grab profitable growth quite significant. You have seen the double-digit growth since many years, and this will continue, we believe, because of the position and our business model. We are a focused P&C player, so we don't do much life, only in Germany, Italy a bit, but basically 88% is P&C business. We stay with the focus, and probably this will increase up to over 90%, because we grow much faster in P&C business than in life business. So, we are a P&C player. So, the headline is diversified and focused P&C player. I talked about business model, and 93% of our portfolio is cost leadership. You know, the numbers are significantly, because when you, for example, incorporate in specialty, we have 7 percentage points better cost ratio. So, this is a huge margin you can have.
It's huge in all our flexibility of the markets. It's not just that you have higher margins, but as well, you're much efficient to the client, because we have many structures of basically, yeah, which can basically make the process slower. We don't have. Just to give you one number, we have 300 people in the Talanx Holding and 20 people, whatever, 8,000 people now outside of the holding. So, it's a very lean model we drive here. For us, it's always important that the world is complex, but we don't want to have complexity cost so much within the company. Try to make the things easy, be fast, that's what the client likes, and don't get too much bureaucracy on it. So, 300 people in headquarters, 28,000 people outside, and we don't want more in the headquarters.
We stick to a very disciplined number here, because it's about prioritization and not about adding always, you know, bureaucracy. So, here for 90% reinsurance, you know as well, they have 3 percentage points advantage. So, this is a huge driver of outperformance, cost advantage. We don't have it in Germany. We have to work hard on that. But 93% on our portfolio is a business model of leadership in the costs. And by the way, very difficult to copy. Then we have three different distinct profiles where we go. So, first profile is a global player, which is a Corporate & Specialty. You know, in 2018, we had about half of the business, EUR 4.5 billion. Now we have EUR 10 billion. And meanwhile, we have something like 5,100 and more than six international programs.
So, just a few players who can serve that market, worldwide clients in 175 countries that we have achieved now. We can play this game of global play really. And what nicely was done here as well, therefore we call it now Corporate & Specialty. You know, we had grabbed some joint venture with Hannover Re together to make the specialty player. You know, and it was EUR 1 billion we started roughly. Now we have EUR 3 billion there. So, it was really creating or doing growth synergies within the group. And therefore we call it now Corporate & Specialty, because this is basically 30% already now in the lines of business specialty. And by the way, probably from Hannover Re, you know this former CEO, Ulrich Wallin, he's still very active in that place. He loves it since five, six years working.
Basically, as an underwriter to support us to be profitable here, 30% again comes already from here. So, this is one place, a global player. Then we have Germany. You know the environment better than me, probably. It's a quite challenging environment, especially in the motor business. I'm very happy I'm not large there in this motor business, below 1%, and a very interesting market going forward when it comes to profitability. So, we are small there, and this is a stable play for us. They're a very stable dividend player, significant as well to us, especially in the life business. So, that's a stable play. Where we want to grow really in those markets, and not globally, but we stay in our target regions where we have said we don't open other target regions. So, focus is key. Therefore, focus diversified P&C player. We stay there.
We add EUR 4 billion. And again, this was half Liberty, but 1/2 was organic growth. So, 75% growth, but 1/2 of this comes organically. So, the growth machine, and as I said, the markets we're in, the market positions we have, and you know, the business model runs that we can grow really double-digits. And this is not a number, I think, since at least a decade, this portfolio is growing double-digits. You know, it's not like just, you know, last two years. So, it was really growing, growing, growing. With the same thing, like with the cost leadership in those markets we are in, it's easier than you don't have the cost leadership to grow profitable.
Now comes a bit, and Wilm and Nicolas will tell much more about just the teaser for them, because I think it's always the truth when you say merger acquisition is always acquisition is fun and merger is hell, you know. So, this is a fun part I present here now, and they will tell you there's a hell part how to integrate with this. So, basically, we bought the company, as you know, and now we are number two in Latin America. So, it's a really significant position. Number one in Chile, number two in Brazil. Soon, I would say number seven now, but number five in Colombia. This is significant. This is a very nice position we can grow up. These markets are sometimes you feel Latin America, wow, this is not so much in the focus of attention.
It's very volatile, you know, political environment and so on. But you can, with such a position, very stable results. Actually, the whole portfolio, the whole Retail International portfolio we have, I would say since 10 years at least, we always had a combined ratio of 95%. I can't remember another figure than 95%. So, very volatile markets, highly diversified. It's now 50/50, by the way, Europe and Latin America, but still 95%. So, if you see just a few numbers, you would say, what a boring, mature market is that? Only 95% over 10 years. So, therefore, I think it's very interesting to see, yes, it can be on one side very volatile as markets, but the results with us don't show it. And sometimes you see very mature markets and they're very volatile due to regulatory environment or other things.
So, what I just want to say, I love this region. It's a growing region and with huge growth potential. They will tell you much more how big this growth potential is. Correct? You know, they're a fan of the region. Important is in the merger, the first two years, maximum, you have to do the merger. If not, it will never work out. Key is culture. And to create a culture, you have to be very clear that you change the systems, the people, whatever you have in mind, the IT, as soon as you can. It's actually the most valuable time is between signing and closing, that the day of closing, you announce the things, right? That's what they have done. Again, they will tell you more, and the result shows you, they said EUR 80 million, we want to have net contribution after financing cost in 2025.
Result is they do this, but again, one year earlier and over EUR 80 million, so higher. I will not give much more teaser on that one, but basically this is outperforming much more than we thought. And you know, in the merger is, and there was written attrition under control. It's important that you don't lose the markets, because you only think internally what you're doing, you know, fighting, whatever. They have increased of 6% of risks. So, the two separate companies a year ago, now a year after, we increased together the risk with 6%. So, this is growing market share even. Then you have a better combined ratio. We have combined ratio planned with, and they're partially, this is because of the results now, we have planned below 100%. Now we are below 90%. So, much better performance.
Talanx, we have already realized, not even one year is over, those colleagues and team have realized 40% already of cost synergies they planned for. So, that's what I want to see. Two years, they have time. Basically, after one year, they have really gone a very far way to do that. So, this is on a good track. And you will see then this was just a teaser for later on. So, probably for me, this is the most important slide, because numbers you can read, and you read probably already, this is the most important one. So, what is Talanx about? This is a business model where we have diversification, as I said, so always the 50/50 in mind, you know, be it on the reinsurance. So, basically two strong components, reinsurance and primary insurance on the same level now.
Being very resilient, we showed you the number. First diversification. Second is we really try in the primary insurance, as I said, diversified focus P&C player. So, that is really what we're doing, and we will continue doing that. Cost leadership, I said, 93% of portfolio is cost leader. And believe me, when you work with companies, it's so difficult to copy. When you have not the cost leadership to get the cost really out, not so easy when you have them. Resiliency is something I showed in several ways, and Jan will tell you much more about it. It's not just about building up more, let's say, conservative reserving. It's about asset management, let's say, how much you will realize unrealized losses. He will tell you on that position something more, another teaser on this. So, as well as about diversification. So, we can have many, many positions.
For example, we have as well a low beta approach and investment side. So, we build resiliency in each position we can imagine in order really to see in the future when volatility comes that we can match it in relative better terms. Last point is entrepreneurship, and that's a bit different. You know, Hannover Re says somewhat different, and this is, I think, what is relevant for the whole group, because we allow decentralization. We allow that people work in our company with that approach against 300 people in headquarters, that they have a responsibility and accountability together, and this is a really different business model, and we don't go for cross-country synergies, because we don't see them. It's very difficult to grab. Sometimes it's very easy on paper to see centralization, but in reality, it's very tough to grab them.
This creates energy when people feel really responsible and accountable for their own entity, and therefore we call it entrepreneurship, you know, and I don't like dotted lines. I don't like matrix structures. I don't like centralized complex structures. This is not the way we want to do the business, and this creates a performance culture, because what we believe is, first we have to trust that we go to Brazil as an example, and there are good Brazilian people who can work. I don't need seven experts there. I believe in the Brazilian market. If I don't do this, I should not go there. I just have to make sure that the boundaries are right and that checks and balances are in place. That's clear, normal, and we have that. But I have to trust them that they believe it's my company and they want to outperform.
You know, that is a different culture what we can see. And you know, nobody of us knows the future, you know. And we try with modeling to predict and control the future. That is normal. We do the same. But this is like things are changing so fast that it's more better than have a culture of sense and respond. So, making sure to have a culture where you know that you're a resilient place, whatever numbers you have created, but then to make sure that you can very fast adapt. And this is our culture, culture of trust. And by the way, trust is a sum of experience. One experience wrong is wrong for the whole culture. So, we really have to pay attention that we find characters which live our values, and if they don't, they should live somewhere else. So, this is our performance culture.
We measure this. Transparency is one of the values we need, so we really want people who don't give us some strange reporting, but it should be measured. This figure is interesting for me because 88% participation rate worldwide, so quite high, 85% score as well, better than the financial services players as a benchmark, but this is one number, you know. More important is to work with that, to work concretely in the departments to see how we can improve, what was wrong, what is better, and so on, and we really have a lot of activities around this, and this counts. The score is just a number. Number is a number. The way to do it, to prove it, that's what's key, well, this is the results. You know that we are a bit better than the peers with 96% total shareholder returns in 2023.
Coming to the third message. The third message is new midterm targets. You have read them. Bring us to the next level. The first is the message, as I said. Now we're going to 12% long term, significantly above you. Within the cycle in 2027, we feel very comfortable above 15%. This is the slides which will indicate you. Next year, you know already we forecasted EUR 2.1 billion. Net income is already in the numbers, so you can imagine anyway. This is the first one, return on equity. The second one is, well, we have said the 30% up now. Whatever comes out this year-end numbers, 1.9, whatever it will be above, on that basis, 30% more. Basically what we're saying is double-digits EPS growth per year. That's what the number shows. First, net income.
Second, in the message we gave out, the 50%, well, on the increased level of 270 basis points, not 250 basis points, so 270 basis points, this is the basis. On that basis, we will get an increase of dividends of 50% to EUR 4. So, we don't give you payout ratios or other things. We give you a clear number you can have now. This is EUR 4 in 2027. And we say as well, always higher than last year. So, we do it on the same level. We always, this goes always up, not plateauing. So, this is the message for the dividends. So, summarizing it, these are new targets here. Basically, the number 30 and the number 50, and now more details for this behind resiliency and details. Thank you, Jan.
Thank you, Torsten. So, good morning.
It's a pleasure for me to be here with you and to provide you with some color why we are so confident on the targets Torsten just has set out. I'm standing here on behalf of the CFO community. That's a group of extraordinary people I'm proud of, and we strive to manage our earnings growth with lower volatility, and yes, Torsten, we are passionate about resiliency. Why? In this uncertain world, resiliency matters, and it's supporting the growth of Talanx in particular in the business with institutional clients. A strong balance sheet matters. So, but how do we shift gears to the next level? From my point of view, there are two building blocks. One is our business model with profitable growth and cost leadership and diversification and some other ingredients. Second building block is capital management, the strong balance sheet with the resiliency embedded and capital efficiency.
This then creates, combined in the right way, value creation for our shareholders. We are monetizing the growth of Talanx with lower volatility. Let me dig into the building blocks first and to give you some color on why we are so confident. First of all, and Torsten has already highlighted it, we are cost leader in 93% of our businesses. If you look at the numbers here, they are quite significant if you compare that to our peers. Okay, we have to admit for 7% of our business, we are not yet cost leader. We have to work on it. We do not only work on the 7%. We also work consistently on the cost leadership in the other segments to maintain our position there, because we believe, and we are passionate about this, that being cost leader is the most sustainable competitive advantage.
And it's good not only for hard markets like we are in. It's also very good for soft markets. So, second, diversification. You framed it as a 50/50 company, 50% reinsurance, 50% primary. And within primary, we have a shift, a 50/50 in between retail and Corporate & Specialty, and also with regard to the markets. So, we are very well diversified. Why does it pay off? I'm just stating the obvious. If you are a P&C player, you have global diversification that pays off in lower cost of capital, yeah? And this really matters to us. Third thing in our business model, we are actively managing the volatility, which is embedded in our business. The volatility, which is derived on the one hand side from the insurance business and from the other side from the investment part.
Within the insurance business, we have built up during the past years up to EUR 3.7 billion resiliency, which is embedded in our best estimate. And to be honest, I would be surprised when you see the next external assessment by Willis Towers Watson if the number is not higher, yeah? So, we are really backed currently by a very hard market, but we were able to do so, and we can absorb volatility on the insurance side having these resiliencies in place. The second thing what you can see right here is also on the investment side. Okay, we have to live with some volatility. I do not have to explain that to you for values through P&L assets and so on. But with regard to the interest rate movements, what you can see here, we have seen a shift in the interest rate.
2022, interest rates went up, and we used it to realize losses. In total, they accounted for roughly EUR 500 million in net income for the group. We did that in order to lock in higher interest rates. We just turned over new bonds with higher interests, and this will provide us with higher ordinary income in the years to come. This will support our earnings growth in the future. With regards to our investment strategy, I just want to repeat what I've always said. We are, first of all, looking to take more risk on the insurance side because we can diversify insurance risk much better than market risk, yeah? So, it's more capital efficient to focus on insurance risk.
Therefore, we have set ourselves a limit, and this will remain in place that we will never have more than 50% of the overall risk bearing capacity allocated to market risk. So, that is always we are in favor of the insurance risk. And this then translates into our investment strategy with more than 80% invested in bonds and out of that, more than 93% invested in investment grade. All of this translates into a balance sheet, which is pretty strong. What you can see here is that we have a solvency ratio always above 200%, and we feel very comfortable with the range we are currently in. The ratings are stable. And given that we are less exposed to market risks, we can also see that if we compare ourselves in the sensitivity to what interest rate changes, interest rates up or down.
We will have less effect on the capital adequacy ratio and the solvency. The same is true with regard to movements of credit spread, like you can see here and in the footnotes you see with whom we have compared ourselves. This also translates into something where we can show much lower volatility than our peers, which is the volatility of our solvency capital adequacy ratio. What is displayed here on the chart is the five-year average, or not average, five-year quarter- by- quarter, the standard deviation of the solvency ratio. What you can see here, and we compare ourselves with the same peers here, is that our standard deviation is much lower, which reflects that we have a much more stable development.
Having this business model, managing actively to reduce volatility in the business, this translates also when it comes to capital efficiency into a position where you can take out a slightly higher debt leverage ratio compared to your peers. So, this is calculated here according to the S&P way. Some of our peers have added to the equity the CSM and the risk adjustment. I think this is pretty appropriate. Then this number would be 23%, just to give you a comparison if you compare us with peers. But what you can see here are two things. First of all, we have for both Talanx Group and also for Hannover Re, we have this internal threshold of 35% leverage ratio.
But then, given that we have the ultimate parent company is a mutual, we also have a leverage ratio on that one, and this is always below the peers because we are the conservative ones, including the mutual. And this provides us, I have to add also with an additional advantage. So, we can go for that to be more capital efficient. The maturity profile of our financing is very well balanced. And with regard to our financing mix, we are a little bit proud on. We have issued the first Cat Bond now. Hannover Re was a company who introduced Cat Bonds, but this was many years ago, and they helped us to place this Cat Bond who is transferring earthquake risk from Chile to the capital markets.
It's quite important for us to diversify our retrocession structure for Chile because we are a market leader with more than 17% market share there, and we want to grow further also in this country. Torsten just set out, we want to deliver higher dividends, 50% increase. And I'm Mr. Resiliency, as you nicknamed me. So, my people and I, we take care of making sure that dividend always up has some buffers. The buffers we are looking at is the Dividend Reserve Factor. In German, it's a local statutory account of the holding. It's Gewinnvortrag. So, and we want to have more than 1.5 x dividend in this buffer to ensure that even in adverse developments, we can deliver on our always up and can deliver our promise we've just set out.
End of 2024, we will be just around 1.3 x dividend, but end of 2025, we will be above 1.5x. I'm pretty confident that we will achieve that. Where is the money coming from, and this may come to some of you as a surprise, so with regard to the net income contribution, we've seen a significant increase by primary insurance to 46% of the overall net income, but still the majority of net income is derived from Hannover Re. When it comes to cash, it has become different. With regard to cash, more than 50% is derived from the primary group. You may not ask us as a majority shareholder of Hannover Re; is this a problem that they are not giving enough dividends, but as long as they provide us with a return on equity of around 20%, I think we are pretty fine with that one.
You can see that really the cash potential within the group has changed significantly. Why is that so? During the last strategic cycle, we promised that we want to increase the remittance ratio out of primary from 44%-60%. For the two years of the cycle, which is shortened now, we have delivered clearly above 60%, and we want to remain in this area. We want to continue to finance organic growth also, yeah? This is the area we are looking to be in. Looking at the total shareholder return, and Torsten has had his slides as well, you see on average the peer group performed 77% last five years. We did slightly more with 128%. Looking at the proportion, where's the total shareholder return coming from? The dividend contribution is pretty much the same.
So, we did better with regard to the price book multiples, as you can see here. Looking a little bit deeper and where we stand today, it's not from yesterday. It's the end of November. We were above EUR 20 billion market cap, and this is just the price chart. So, this is 85% because Torsten read the total shareholder return in your slides. And you can see here above EUR 20 billion, nice increase. If we then dissected into the two different parts, Hannover Re and primary group, and translated to what PEs are the different parts of the group traded, then we have this obviously 15%, around 15%, around 15 PE for Hannover Re, and this then translates to a PE for the primary group below six, which may give some upside potential for the future to come. Let me summarize.
We are very confident that we can deliver on the targets Torsten just had set out. It's because of our business model that we are so passionate about cost leadership, about diversification, about resiliency management. It's because of capital management, because we have a very strong balance sheet. And we have really, we are also passionate about capital efficiency and capital upstream to deliver on the dividends. And therefore, we will monetize the growth of Talanx with lower volatility to the peers. Yes, we can not preserve volatility as a whole. There will be some volatility, but at least we are confident that we can do it with lower volatility compared to the peers. And so, that's where we are. And you should keep in mind three messages. First message is earnings up 30%. Second message is dividend up 50%, and it's within three years.
Thank you so much for your attention, and now we are ready to take your questions.
All right, thanks, Jan. So, we were a bit faster, so you see we like speed, but that means we have a bit more time to handle your questions. For our virtual participants, please use the hand raise feature to notify that you want to pose a question, and we try to chime you in. If technology fails, you know where to find my IR team, and we are happy to take your questions offline if technology fails, and then I open the floor, so put the heat on for questions, Michael.
Thank you so much. The three questions, you said number five, Colombia. I wonder if you can, have I missed something? The second is on resiliency. How much are you adding this year?
Or maybe you can give a HDI Int or a way of thinking about it. And then the third one is how much money in 2027, so not today, would you have extra to fund deals? I worked out somewhere around EUR 2.5 billion, but my math is never very accurate, and it's difficult to know how much of the retained earnings is cash and how much you can borrow back from HDI. Thank you.
Good. So, I would say, didn't you start, and then Jan comes with the money.
So, Colombia, we will show you a little bit more details in the coming presentations. But Colombia, we're currently number seven in P&C.
We're number two in Motor, and the difference to the number five in P&C overall is not that far away, so that we are confident that we can reach the top five position even organically over the next years.
But Michael, my mindset is already number five, so.
So, when it comes to resiliency, then obviously the jury is still out. There will be an external assessment by Willis Towers Watson on the year-end numbers. And so, I cannot give you a number because it's really an independent actuarial assessment. I just can tell you the numbers will be out in May, and I would be very surprised if the number is not higher than the numbers you are already aware of, this EUR 3.7 billion.
With regard to cash, well, EUR 4 dividends by 2027 means that there will be EUR 1.033 billion dividend payment in 2027 out of a profit of EUR 2.5 billion or above EUR 2.5 billion net income. This provides you with certain room. But to answer the question, I think you were aiming at a little bit about the firepower we have, yeah? The firepower is much, much bigger, yeah? Given that we have all the financing facilities in place which we could use, so some billions, we have firepower. But we will consistently just add, let me add one thing. Discipline is key for M&A, and we so this is what we were unsure.
Okay, so Ismael Dabo from Morgan Stanley had a question?
Morning. I think in the past, your ideal target for a split of net income was about 50/50.
Just wondering for your strategic plan going forward through 2027, what do you think the ideal split is? And my second question is, I was just wondering maybe if you could talk about some of the underlying drivers of your net income targets going forward. If not through 2027, at least through 2025, will you have a little bit more visibility? Thank you.
First I start, and Jan, please continue. So, first is the targets are clear, totally inorganic, not included. So, really, we believe it's a growth coming organically, and logically comes more from outside of Germany. This could be one figure, and Jan will tell you more about the details how we see the portfolio composition. But basically, the 50/50 is always a range we like. So, it's around 50/50 reinsurance and primary insurance, yeah?
It can deviate, depends on the years, but this is more or less an orientation for the portfolio position. And Jan, more details.
Yeah, by 2027, we expect Corporate & Specialty to be clearly above 20% net income contribution. Also, Wilm and his team will deliver more than 20%. Retail Germany will become slower, but not that you see slower absolute, no lower absolute numbers. It's simply they are not growing so fast compared to the others. And Hannover Re will be slightly above 50% by 2027.
So, very boring, around 50% growth.
Roland, Roland Pfänder from ODDO BHF.
Yes, good morning. Could you speak about your reinsurance protection looking at Latin America? So, what are the maximum losses, possible losses there? Where are the attachment points? So, what's your cover on these risks?
So, let me take that. So, overall, we have relatively low attachment points.
We have a very conservative reinsurance structure, especially with regards to the net cat situations. Just to maybe give you an example, we had the significant flood, which actually nobody had foreseen in Brazil. The total net loss that we took from that is EUR 10 million, which was very well digestible for our team, and keep in mind that we have had a very large market share in that region, given that we are the leader in the south of Brazil. So, and that is actually true for the other countries as well. We have overall, also in Chile, also in Colombia, also in Mexico, a relatively conservative reinsurance structure.
Any further questions? Checking the screen. No one's on screen. Michael? Michael Huttner.
I'll ask again on cash because I really do feel I wasn't given an answer, and I don't think it's. I feel a bit frustrated.
So, on the cash, maybe you can explain it in terms of the holding company because clearly you have a lot of visibility there with the dividend ratio, and you say clearly above 1.5 . On Retail Germany, clearly you're working on costs, and I'd be interested to hear how much benefit, because since 2014, Retail Germany has just gone through one cost program, one after the other, and it's difficult to understand whether these can, how much success this one will bring. So, if you could just talk a little bit about that. And then the last question is, as you mentioned, life in Germany and Italy. I just wondered if you can explain a little bit how that fits in the group structure, whether it's more the cash that you like or the distribution or something. Since you're mainly a P&C company, thank you.
Starting with the last question, yeah, what you exactly said, life is interesting for dividends. And we are one of the leading bancassurers as well in Germany, and in Italy some bancassurance, and this is a business we're doing because we are basically as well a B2B player in many markets, and this is history, and this is good cash contributor. Therefore, we like it. With Germany, you're totally right. That's what I said before. To get a cost leadership is not that easy if you don't have it, yeah? And we try since many years, and now the market environment is even rougher, as you have seen, with the claims inflation, especially in Motor.
We have more consequently to refocus the thing, and what we are strong in Germany is, in the retail part, is SME and the Freiberufler, as we say, you know, we're thinking Freiberufler, but Freiberufler in German. And that. Professionals. Professionals, okay. And there we want to focus much more now. And that has to be much more consequent because we have to find this business model in that environment because we believe this environment in the future, seeing as well the market consolidation, give you for example in Germany, the strongest player are the HUKs. These are mutual companies with very good positions and a special situation in Germany. So, the margins are very tough to get there. Focus on those areas where we have, let's say, a competitive advantage, and that's what we're going to do.
Cash position, I mean, that will maybe before Jan will answer this. I mean, don't be frustrated with cash. We'll give you the forward dividends in 2027, and what we have in the backyard, Jan will tell you now.
Yeah. First of all, with regard to Germany, cash contribution will be around EUR 200 million for years to come. I think this was the number you were looking for. We are managing various buffers. The most important one is really this Dividend Reserve Factor, which we have on a holding because we have a holding structure with a rather small reinsurance entity embedded in the holding. The majority is really coming; it's then on the balance sheet derived from the dividends, which were upstream from the entities below. Therefore, the Dividend Reserve Factor really matters to us.
Still frustrated, Michael?
No, because you answered the question. Is this answer okay or still?
All right, so next question we have from Nick, Nick Johnson from Deutsche Bank.
Good morning. Thank you very much. A question on reserve resiliency. How much earnings volatility do you think you can absorb by using reserve resiliency? Is it possible to quantify that? Maybe a bit more in general about how you think about using that reserve resiliency. Thanks.
We will use reserve resiliency in the context of the overall market movement. I think it would be not sensible to make use of all of it, so, but Willis Towers Watson provides us with a number which they believe is the best estimate from their point of view, which is absolutely the lower level.
We have a very outstanding reputation with the regulators in the world providing for a very prudent reserving approach, and this is also helpful to support the growth in the countries because then the management can always focus on the market, on the customers, on the distribution, and do not have to spend so much time with the regulators. So, I would never go to the lower end, to be honest. So, give you a number, at least I think there should be a minimum always of EUR 500 million resiliency given the size, and by growing the companies, this number will also grow.
Helpful? Okay, good.
Okay, and then there's a question from Hadley Cohen from Morgan Stanley. Do you have a mic? Sorry.
All right, thank you very much. Is it possible to give a bit more detail around the earnings growth trajectory to 2027?
What are your, I guess, underlying assumptions between margin given where we are in the pricing cycle and what have you, volume growth, what your expectations around investment returns are. I know you've locked in a higher proportion at higher rates, but bond yields are moving in one direction at the moment. So, just get a bit more granularity on what drives the earnings growth over the next few years. Thanks.
Okay, then let's start with the top line. Top line growth will be rather single-digit growth figures top line-wise. Interest rates, we put in our plan the forward rates, and looking at the interest rates as of today, it's roughly 10 basis points below what we see today compared to the assumptions which were embedded in the plan.
With regard to the cycles, we haven't stressed it so much, but we are a very well-diversified company as a whole. We are participating in different insurance cycles, yeah? Obviously, looking at 50% profit contribution coming from reinsurance is the most important one for us, but the others are also different, and to give you a very concrete example, if you look at Germany at the current status, it's a soft market in Germany, but you in South America have a hard market, so we are balancing that. Therefore, to give a general view on where's the market going is rather challenging, and you needed to split it up to regions, to segments, to lines of business.
Overall, we believe we are in a pretty hard market, and we do not expect it to get harder, rather remaining on that level, and maybe our cost leadership position will come into play in order to protect margins.
Okay, so now we have a question from one of our virtual attendees. That's Bhavin from HSBC. Bhavin, great that you are following us online. So, hopefully, technology works. Unmute your mic and fire your question, please.
Hey, good morning. I hope I'm audible all right. Thank you for taking my question. So, maybe I have three questions from my side. The first one would be again on your net income guidance for 2027. It would be helpful if you can provide how should we think the progression towards 2027.
Would it be more linear in nature, or should we expect to be more front-end loaded, and then probably it scales up in the later years? The second one would be on your revenue guidance that you mentioned to be somewhere around 8%. Could you just provide a breakdown of the revenue trajectory going into 2027 by different segments? How should we expect revenue for corporate specialty versus Retail International versus Retail Germany? And the third one would be on your cash remittance guidance. So, obviously, we have seen 60% for the primary line. Should we expect similar sort of remittances going into the next three years as well? Thank you.
Okay, I think all the three for me. So, first, with the net income part, EUR 2.7 billion, EUR 2.5 billion, I'm sorry, for 2027. How do we achieve that, and what is the growth part?
Well, as I said, I'm very proud of the CFO community. We will try to manage earnings growth, yeah? So, if the year is better, maybe there's more resiliency to build up, and if the year is worse, maybe less. So, I think the best assumption is a linear path. Out of that one, I know I could offer you two different models also, a progressive and a degressive way, but take it simple, linear. Then, with regard to the revenue growth, we expect nice revenue growth, so above the group average from Corporate & S pecialty and from Wilm. I want to add in local currency. With regard to Wilm's portfolio, we are a little bit more dependent on the FX exchange rate if it comes to revenues. There, this is what we expect. Germany should remain stable, yeah?
The remaining part, Hannover Re, you've heard in their information, and I think the most, if you go for January and listen then to the renewal call, you will get more information there. Finally, with regard to the remittance ratio or the capital upstream, we want to remain in a range of 60%-70% remittance ratio out of primary group. But looking into the details there, there's obviously that we take much more money out of Germany. The profit contribution of Germany in the past year was 7%, but the cash contribution 14%, to give you a feeling. Much more out of Germany, a little bit less from Wilm because we want to further grow the business and be flexible here. To give you some color on that one.
Okay, another question from Hadley.
Sorry, thank you very much.
Apologies if I'm covering old ground, but I mean, you guys and Hannover are very good at squirreling money away in resiliency, and you just mentioned that you will try and manage the earnings growth trajectory. I mean, given that you're already pretty much at the maximum of what you can be in terms of resiliency on the reserves side of things, can you just talk a little bit more about where else you can be resilient? I mean, is it a case of realizing losses on the investment portfolio or what have you? What are the sources of resiliency effectively beyond the reserves?
Yes, I do so. Let me start with a statement here first. If we do prudent reserving, that does not mean that we will show less profits. We just show them a little bit later, yeah? So, we will show the profits.
We will let the shareholders participate, so no worries about that one. Now, about the sources where you can build resiliency. You're pretty right. We reached, with regard to the resiliency embedded in the best estimate reserving, at some areas already the upper end where it starts to become not capital efficient, and this trade-off, so we have also upper limits for resiliency building in the best estimate liabilities because we want to remain capital efficient. Also, given that our auditor is also attending, it has to be in a certain range according to the accounting rules, and it will be in this range. What are the other pockets you can make use of? Yes, it's realizing losses on the bond portfolio due to the interest rate increase.
Second, it's also all the legal issues you have in an insurance company, and you can take a very conservative approach. This is what we are currently doing, also in the area of investments and so on, where we can build something more. The tax positions are there where it can be more prudent than others. So, there are quite some more positions. The most important one is the resiliency embedded in the best estimates, but there are also some other pockets to be served, yeah? And yes, there is a risk of volatility, but it's a risk of volatility to outperform.
So, Nick, Nick Johnson.
Can I just follow up on that? So, Hannover Re are doing quite an innovative reserving to take out some of the volatility in IFRS. I'm just wondering if you're doing something similar on the primary business.
I think this IFI approach pretty much makes sense with the GMM approach in IFRS. So, for the primary group, except for the reinsurance at top of it, we are still using the PAA approach. Therefore, this is a little bit less appropriate there.
Yeah. We have another question from one of our virtual participants, and the question comes from Ryan Weir. Ryan, please unmute your mic and go ahead.
Hi, perfect. Thanks. Can you hear me okay?
Yes.
Great, thank you. I guess my question was, what does the funnel of M&A opportunities look like in LatAm, CEE, rest of world? I guess most of us will be familiar with Europe and North America, so I'd love to see or hear how you see opportunities in those other markets.
And slightly tied to that, what would trigger you to want to move inorganically in those markets versus growing organically, as you've been able to see very strongly? Thank you.
We'll continue. So, basically, what we said, the area of inorganic growth is, well, Wilm's portfolio and his team, and as well in the Corporate & Specialty, that we especially in the specialty business, we believe we can have some profitable niches in markets like the U.S., which is the biggest market industry anyway, with 50% worldwide, so that we go for niches there. Those are the areas where we like to invest inorganically, and one of the biggest part is Wilm. Please tell us about the situation.
So, let me start by saying at the moment, of course, we are very much focused on delivering on the Liberty transaction and doing the integration work.
That said, at the same time, we're continuing with all our business development activities that we've done throughout all the years. So we are very interested also in continuing to grow inorganically in Mexico, for example. We do have further appetite. As probably you know, we said this before, also in Europe, Italy is a nice market for us. We like it very much, especially on the P&C side. So there are further things that we're doing, and it's not only M&A, so it's not only purchasing, it's also partnerships. We will give you some more details later on in the presentation that also there we are continuously advancing our footprint on this. And this on top of what we presented to you in terms of pure organic growth that we're doing in any case.
Okay, so Ish, and then we have Michael again.
Hi, sorry.
Just following up on the specialty comment and organic opportunities and certain niches. I guess, could you provide a little bit more color on what sort of niches and specialty that you guys are looking at? I guess even particularly in the U.S.
Yes, markets were just very on top of the cycle regarding pricing, so we're very conservative. Again, as Jan mentioned before, it's always the disciplined M&A. We are looking to, the idea would be more synergistic. We go to MGA markets, we make some acquisitions, we buy something, we make some joint ventures in these niches we want to occupy. We take care that we don't go too much to long-tail business, rather mid and short-tail, and we try as well to find this portfolio building up really as well a diversified picture as much as possible in the niches.
All right, so Michael has another question. Michael.
On Turkey, could you talk a little bit? Because I think you've got a huge position there, but it doesn't appear in the slides, and I think the stability is actually better now.
We still have Turkey, and then we'll tell you more on.
Thanks for the question, Mike. Yes, we are roughly having now a EUR 1 billion book in Turkey, and we're getting more and more happy with it because it has turned nicely profitable again. Macroeconomics has helped, higher interest rates, and even a positive real yield has been achieved right now again.
But actually, what we did is we worked a lot on the technical excellence, so repricing, re-underwriting, managing our portfolio in a different way, keeping the focus on MOD business, and also with the acquisition and joint venture that we have with Fiba, that is actually also nicely contributing on the life protection side and also on the non-motor business growth, which is also nicely profitable. So, yes, do expect a nice contribution also out of Turkey in terms of profits this year.
Okay, so final question before we break for a quick coffee. Any further questions? Michael. So, Michael is holding us up.
Yesterday, you explained the incentive is linked to the total return and share price. The only risk I can see in that is that, you know, in those cartoons, the person goes over the cliff and doesn't actually know it.
At some level of share price, I think it becomes overvalued, you see. Is there another incentive which effectively says, no, we don't go for just share price, but something more could be more sustainable? Because if the share price continues doubling every year at some stage, you kind of think, you know, next is down.
Well, as you know, our system is regulated. There's a lot of requirements you have to do. One of these is that you have the long-term view on the incentives. So, we have to wait four years. So, it's not something that we look quarter- to- quarter. Really, it doesn't make sense.
We have always not just a strategic anchor shareholder, which we have, which allows us a very long-term view, but as well that our incentive scheme is totally aligned with those anchor shareholders, but as well as the long-term views of four years. Whatever the share price will be, I mean, believe me, I mean, yes, we like incentives, but we like to really make a better company out of it. Whatever comes out of it. I told you at the beginning, if you would have asked me, you know, we doubled whatever the share price, yes, okay, fine. That is good, very motivating. The important thing is how to do it, and then we will see what comes out of it. If I would come in the morning to see every day where's my share price, I mean, I would do the wrong job.
Okay, so then let's have a quick break for a quick coffee. We reassemble here in 30 minutes, so 10:30 A.M., and then you will hear more about our Retail International business and the status of the integration of our LatAm acquisition. So, see you in a bit. Thank you for attending so far. All right, thank you. So, here we are back again. Actually, some of you may know that I'm serving in a dual role at Talanx AG. In addition to my IR job, I'm also doing M&A, trying to be helpful when the company embarks on transactions. And as we have learned from Torsten this morning, acquisition is fun. So, I can assure you, I had lots of fun with Nico and Wilm when we did the transaction.
Now you will hear a bit how it feels being in hell when Wilm and Nico tell you a bit about not only HDI Int in general, but in particular where we stand on the integration of our most recent acquisition in LatAm. Wilm.
Thanks very much, Bernd. It was actually a lot of fun to work with you on that transaction and on the others as well. Good morning also from my side. It's a great pleasure for me to be here. Let me start by saying when I arrived in the Talanx group four years ago and Torsten asked me to bring Retail International to the next level, I actually liked already the mandate very much. But I wasn't quite sure if what he said is also going to be really behind it, the support of the group, the teamwork that you described to me.
I'm happy to say right now, I really felt it. I felt the support of the group when we really needed it, not only in the Liberty transaction across the whole group, but also in the other situations that we did to move to really to the next level. It's a great pleasure for me as well to be here with Nicolas. What we will do here is give you a bit of a view on who are we actually now as Retail International, who have we become, and second, where do we stand on the implementation of our strategy of HI Next 2025 . Then Nicolas will take us more into what's the LatAm business looking like and how far ahead are we in our integration of the Liberty transaction. Let me start by giving you an overview. This you have already seen.
We have now become a quite substantial top and bottom line contributor to the group, so roughly 20%, and we want to maintain that also in the future. Second, why are we so excited? And I'm very much excited to have a growth mandate, especially in markets that do have growth already by themselves, so what you see here is the total market size of our Latin American businesses and our European business that we're in, which are roughly EUR 160 billion market size, and when you look at it, what the insurance penetration is and the expected GDP growth over the years, we do expect that these markets really pick up further size, roughly EUR 100 billion overall.
Overall, we are already in quite sizable markets, and we expect them to continue to grow because of the macroeconomic growth as well as the increasing insurance penetration, which we've already seen over the last years starting to pick up. Secondly, we are very focused. We are focused on Latin America. We are focused on Europe. These countries that we are in do matter to us, so we really take care. Even Torsten is asking me about how's it going in Latin America on a regular basis to really know that we're taking care and moving us forward. What you should know as well, the business is quite sizable. I showed you that EUR 9 billion overall in revenues and a good contribution net income, but more importantly, it's many small risks that we're having.
It's roughly 40 million risk contractual relationships that we have all across these countries, which we're managing with 14,000 employees and with a large and vast network of agents and brokers. And on top, which you don't see here on the slide, are the relationships that we have through our partners, meaning banc assurance partners and others. We are quite diversified by now ourselves. When you remember four years back, we were quite dependent on our Polish business, on Warta, which has done for many years excellent jobs and continues to do so. Now we are much more diversified as Retail International ourselves. Europe represents roughly 50%, Latin America the other half. And when you see now, Brazil is almost the same size in revenues already as Poland, and we are starting to see also other countries in Latin America like Chile, like Mexico, like Colombia to also picking up.
Also in Europe, Italy and Turkey have become more relevant to us already now. On the other side, not only on the geographic scope, also in terms of lines of businesses, Torsten has already showed this slide. Motor is also rather short tail. The bigger chunk is MOD. MTPL is the other part, and we have now already a sizable non-motor and life protection book as well. I'm very happy to have this team. This is the team that started off the journey a good four years ago. Nicolas is here. He will speak more about Latin America. He is passionate about growth. I'm as well. He knows Latin America extremely well and has been working in this for many years and has really brought it to the next level.
Christian Müller has continued the drive that we already have in Europe, also in these growth markets that we're working in, not only in Poland. We've made a significant step up also in Turkey, and he has made a significant contribution. And Oliver Schmidt is our Mr. Resilience, if I may say so, supporting Jan in his endeavor to make sure that we stay disciplined and resilient in all our areas, also in Retail International. Where do we stand in our promise that we set out also in the capital market there in 2021? We promised to you a return on equity that should be above 10%. We're already there with a good 14% at the nine-month numbers. You've seen that and also to be expected until the end of the year.
The top line growth has been very strong with a good 14%, so significantly above the double-digits that we wanted to grow, and one of the big challenges, as I said, was to become more diversified, also in a regional mix, and the 50/50 split that we have now reached is really helpful on that, so one year ahead of schedule and even more than we expected. This was the slide I presented to you also in 2021 on our strategy, so the title of the strategy was already HI Next 2025, so bring ourselves HDI International to the next level, and the two key targets were the profitability and as well the growth, meaning being a top five player in our core P&C markets. We were at the time only in Poland in that position.
Now we are in four of our core markets, meaning not only in Poland, but also in Turkey, in Chile, and in Brazil in a top five position. And how did we want to do that? And that strategy still is valid today. We're focusing on four key pillars, strategic pillars to drive these two ambitions forward. One is technical excellence. We want to continuously be below 95%, and there I actually mean also in local GAAP. That's why our ambition is to be significantly below 95% in IFRS terms. You see where we are today, and we'll give you more details. Second, we want to diversify more, not only in terms of regional split, but also in terms of lines of businesses. That's why we set out to grow a non-motor business significantly, and we've done so from a good EUR 1.1 billion now to EUR 2.7 billion.
Thirdly, we are continuously working on our digital transformation. This is not only happening since GenAI was invented. We have been working on digital transformation for many years and continue to do so. One key element is the reach that we have, reaching clients in a digital fashion, not only in a traditional physical sense. That is important to us, and we have now 70 million clients in reach. The M&A, I will talk about also a little bit more here, the transactions, acquisitions, and partnerships that we've done over the last years. So, let me go a little bit deeper in each one of those. Torsten already said before, we have been as Retail International a growth engine for a number of years.
We have already been double-digits since 2010 when Torsten actually had my role, had grown it significantly, not only in revenues, but brought it also to a good profitability level already in 2020, and we've been able to increase that over these last four years. A good double digit growth accelerated in revenues and actually the double in terms of net income that we have achieved here and expect to achieve until the end of the year. In terms of growth, also that Torsten has mentioned, when you look at 2022, since then we've added EUR 4 billion of insurance revenues. EUR 2.4 billion come out of the acquisitions that we have done. A good EUR 1.6 billion comes out of organic growth. That's an organic growth of 14% over the last two years.
As I said, we reached four out of our five core markets at top five position. Number two in Poland, number four in Turkey, number two in Brazil now, and number one in Chile. Also Mexico, we improved from 11 to nine, but there is still room to grow. We do want to do more on that front. Overall, this didn't only lead to a top two position in P&C in Latin America overall, but also being the leading motor player actually in Latin America. For us, yes, these markets could be perceived as being volatile. However, when you look at it, our combined ratio has been extremely stable over the years. The only slight bump that you see was in 2022 when we really had extraordinary inflation after the pandemic and the pickup that happened there across the world with 97%.
Otherwise, the average is really 95%, and we're continuously working to improve that also going forward. We're expecting to be around 93% in 2024, and that, coupled with the growth of the insurance revenues, has then helped and defined actually the growth on the net income side, which is basically tripling since 2015 or even 2020. Second, technical excellence is not only an absolute number that we're looking at. We do also want to compare us continuously vis-à-vis our peers. So here you see the overview, the combined ratio difference that we see compared to our peers in our core markets, and in general, we are somewhat better than our top five peers in those markets. So we're comparing ourselves to the top five that are in that market present, oftentimes especially local players that are very strong.
We do have still something to do in Mexico where we're slightly above and do believe that we can further improve, and Brazil, I would say, is just at the start. Do take into account that there are also integration costs already embedded in there, and the further synergy pickup will come over time, so we do expect to further improve on that front as well. In terms of diversification, as I said, in revenues and also net income, we are now almost a 50/50 player between Europe and Latin America, and maybe even more importantly, we have more than one real earnings engine. What I mean with an earnings engine, that's a country, an entity that can provide at least EUR 50 million of operating profit. We have now Warta that has continued to grow strongly, as you see here on the right-hand side on the chart.
Italy has become relevant in terms of contribution of earnings, but also Turkey, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico are picking up. So we're getting to the situation that we have really sizable companies that are providing real earnings. Let me talk a moment about digital transformation. And the first part when we think about digital transformation is, as I said before, what is the reach that we have to get to our clients in a digital fashion? Here you see an overview of our most important partnerships that we have, some for quite a while, like Banca Sella, some relatively new, like Banco Estado, Fiba, Millennium, also Banco Inter, which have clients of in total 70 million. And with these, we have exclusive partnerships in different durations. And you see they're already providing about EUR 500 million in terms of revenues.
But what I'm actually most excited about is this is only the start. If you have a bank with 30 million clients and at the moment we're having 30 million of revenues, this is only the start of the penetration that we can do. So we see this as a still untapped growth potential that we have and that we can further work on since we have just started to have these exclusive partnerships. The second topic of digital transformation, apart from leveraging, of course, data for pricing, for managing our claims in a better way, is also improving our efficiency. So we are looking at how do we stand in terms of productivity, what's the insurance revenue evolution compared to the number of employees we have, and we have there a good improvement over time.
The same is, of course, looking at the expense ratio, the cost ratio that we have. Is that improving as well on a continuous basis? This is not a one-time effort. This is a continuous effort with a number of projects in all our entities ongoing. Of course, with the transactions that we've done, the synergies that we expect also will pay into a lower cost ratio over time. Here, as Torsten mentioned, we want to continue to be a cost leader. You see here on the right-hand side the comparisons to our peers in those markets. In all our five core markets, we are a cost leader and want to continue to be so. No? Thank you. Finally, I want to just give you a quick glimpse on our M&A and partnerships track record. We are very much focused on bolt-on acquisitions.
We are focused on these two regions that we want to deliver and then want to continue to grow. Most importantly, of course, was the acquisition of Liberty Seguros, given its size and the strategic importance it had for propelling us in Latin America. I'm quite happy to say when you look at it now, including the 2023 returns that Liberty actually already provided, we have quite decent price book and price earnings multiples if you compare that to the average that you've seen in that region. It, of course, makes a difference if you pay a decent price, but you don't overpay, and Jan keeps us very disciplined on not making mistakes on this. Despite the enthusiasm that Nicolas and myself might have, we are staying there very, very disciplined, and you see this in these multiples.
My messages to you overall are, one, we are and want to continue to be a growth engine, and we have significant potential ahead of us because we're in attractive markets and we're continuing to do also disciplined M&A. We will continue to thrive with a good profitability due to our cost leadership position and the focus on technical excellence, which is crucial in P&C, and we do believe that also with our diversification and the resilience that also Retail International has embedded in our best estimates, that we can also continue to provide that with very stable combined ratios, even slightly improving over time, and with that, I'm happy to hand over to Nicolas to give you more impressions on where we stand in Latin and with the Liberty integration.
Very good.
Thank you very much, Wilm. Good morning, everyone. I'm very excited to be here to talk about our Latin American business. I joined HDI International about four years ago, and back in that time, the main reason I joined the group was because I saw a level of energy, of entrepreneurial spirit, of drive when I had the interviews with Wilm, with Torsten that really made the difference. I really liked the culture that the company had, and the second element to it is I saw a true commitment of making Latin America a real growth and success story, so that made it for me. I thought this was the right challenge, and I'm very proud of the results that we've had in the last few years, and I'm excited to show you kind of what our journey has been in the last three, four years.
So let me start by talking about the insurance market itself. This is brief, only a couple of slides. Latin America has a sizable, growing, and very profitable market. We've seen double digit digital growth over the last five years. We've seen very attractive ROEs in the market if you look at the main countries, which is rare to find in more developed markets. We believe that going forward, there's substantial growth potential as the penetration of insurance products is rather low in the region, even though it's growing. We've seen this nice evolution, but it still has a lot of space to catch up and a lot of upside. You can see the underlying key indicators in motor and non-motor; there's always upside and opportunity to keep growing the insurance penetration in the region.
A very good platform if you have the right assets, the right operations. Let me go now to our performance in the region. We've evolved quite positively in the development of our business in Latin America. From 2020 - 2023, we had a double-digit growth of top line, and we were able to triple the net income. This was done mostly out of organic business. We did multiple things in order to achieve this, but I wanted to highlight three of them. First, we did a big effort on strengthening our local top management. I will talk shortly about some of our CEOs in the region and give you a brief CV of them. Second, we improved our technical competitive advantage versus peers, and this one is very important.
You saw in this presentation that now we have roughly a bit less of a 6% competitive advantage versus peers in Brazil. Four years ago, we had a disadvantage of 5 percentage points. This is what will lead into a real competitive advantage and will enable us to keep growing. And finally, we improved our expense efficiency, peer scale, peer diversification. Again, Wilm shared some of the numbers in case presentation. On top of this, let's say organic development, we saw the impact in 2024 of the Sompo and Liberty acquisitions, which enabled to accelerate the profitable growth while still continuing on a path of decreasing combined ratio. Keeping that path and moving forward.
The transactions that we had made it possible for us from going from a mid-size position in Latin America to now being the new number two player in P&C in Latin America. As Wilm well mentioned, we're the leader in motor insurance. I would say what's most importantly is the strengthening of our competitive position in each one of the countries we operate. We now became number one in Chile. We're the second largest player in Brazil, and we strengthen very seriously our position in Colombia. Actually, as Torsten mentioned, we're number seven. Actually, the distance to number five and even number four is not that far, and we're really confident that we can move this needle. Well, as Michael, you asked, our target is to be number five or beyond.
So yes, we gained relevance, let's say, from a country perspective, but also we gained strength in our core lines of business, being motor and non-motor, even in life protection. Just to give you some color, there's many numbers here, but just to give you some color, if you take, for example, SME insurance in Brazil, we came from roughly nowhere to being the number three player in the market with 10% market share. I can share similar figures for homeowners. So we're really improving our scale, our ability to invest, our ability to diversify our business, and take advantage of the opportunities that Latin America has to present. So let me talk a little bit about the integration that we're going. As you well know, any integration, it's dependent on the quality of team you have on the ground.
We believe we have a fantastic team on the ground with Eduardo in Brazil, Felipe in Chile, and Chico, Francisco in Colombia. What I can tell you of them, they all have a vast experience in insurance in their countries. Torsten touched upon this. These are not experts that are coming from abroad trying to understand the markets. They really know deeply each one of the markets. Second, they've been through mergers in the past, so they have post-merger integration experience themselves, which is very valuable at this stage. One other element, which is not on the page, they have the drive, the energy, the will, the skill to go for this and make this a success, which I think is very relevant. I'm very fond of this team. I'm excited to have them on board.
If you ask me, this is a main leading indicator of the quality of the results that will come in the future. I can talk about them, or I can talk about the team that's beneath them, which is a truly fantastic team. Talking about results, what has this fantastic team made so far in terms of the Liberty integration? We had a net income after financing cost target on 2024, roughly zero. That was on our plan, based on our business plan that we built at the time of the acquisition. Now we can say we were able to deliver more than EUR 18 million in net income, actually one year before that we had it on the plan. As you can imagine, there's a lot of things that happen in an integration.
We had, I don't know if it was Sella, as Bernd mentioned it, it was a lot of work. But I would say there's three things I would like to highlight. First, we kept attrition under control, which, as you know, is very critical in any integration. Second, we're able to have much better technical performance, improved loss ratio, improving combined ratios overall. And third, we were able to accelerate the execution of synergies and implementation of synergies. So let me go into each one of these points briefly. In terms of attrition, we were able to sustain the GWP in the three integration markets. Even in markets that were coming out of a hard market and entering a soft market, the three markets are going through that cycle in which prices are decreasing.
We were able to sustain our GWP while growing the number of policies that we have, and this is the example of motor. So we did by focusing and doubling down on a broker relationship, launching a new brand in Brazil to capture the volume and the goodwill that the Liberty brand had, and leveraging the best practices of both companies to be better at pricing and underwriting and claims. The second element is we're able to deliver a much better combined ratio than we had in the plan. It's really impressive. Honestly, it went over our own expectations, but the technical performance of this company has been absolutely fantastic. And finally, we're able to capture synergies faster than we had planned. Today, we have 40% of total long-term synergies already captured. This is not run rate. This is in year 2024. Run rate is a bit higher.
We've already digested 70% of restructuring costs. So that's already has gone through the P&L. Not all consumed some part of our provisions, but it's very good that we're ahead of plan also in digesting the restructuring costs. And we were able to reduce our headcount plan by 800. So I would say all in all, a very successful up to now integration. The plan is going great. We're ahead of plan. So all in all, quite good. So three messages to keep it in three, as we all did. First one, Latin America is an attractive, fast-growing, profitable margin, profitable market. Second, we have been able to accelerate the performance, which has been doubly accelerated by the Liberty acquisition. And finally, the Liberty integration is doing very fine, and we're able to deliver results and integration ahead of plan. So with that, I leave it to your questions.
All right. So, next round of questions. Thanks, Nico. The first one from Ismael Dabo from Morgan Stanley. And for the virtual participants, again, please raise your hand, hand raise feature, and I try to sneak you in. Ish.
Hi. I guess maybe more of a question for Wilm. I think you, I guess what I'm trying to get my head around is maybe your target combined ratio over the plan period, right? You guys were targeting around 95% for 2024. You're running at 93%. Just trying to figure out, given that we're going into softening markets in a few regions, how we should think about that target going forward versus growth. And then I guess the second question is, I was hoping that maybe you could describe maybe Latin America, maybe because I'm more European U.S. focused a decent amount of time. Maybe some of the market dynamics in the different regions, maybe in terms of profitability, rate versus loss trend, which regions are growing faster than others, i.e., Chile versus Brazil versus Argentina or Colombia. Thank you.
Sure. Let me start with that, and maybe Nico will step you on also on the individual markets, so our target remains to be below 95%, and what you should have in mind as well is that we stay significantly below 95. That is our ambition in IFRS terms, in local GAAP terms. We also want to be below 95%, so I would expect to be continuously on the level around where we are today, so that is our ambition going forward.
And in terms of the markets, of course, Latin America is a big region and there's many commonalities, but also with differences. If you look at the growth pattern of the different countries, let's take a five-year period. Brazil has been growing low double-digit numbers. Chile, roughly the same. Colombia, roughly the same, between 12% and 13%. We've seen a little bit less growth in Mexico on the, let's say, high single-digit area, but honestly accelerating in the last couple of years. So overall, I would say double-digit for the region, but with some differences.
Roland.
My question on Liberty combined ratio technical results. It was much better than you indicated in the beginning or were planning for. So what were the drivers? Was it pricing? Was it underwriting behavior? So what drives this very fast improvement?
Let me maybe start and you add on it. I think honestly, overall, there are a number of factors that played in there. I think we should mention as well, the market turned much more quickly around. It's all short-tail business, so we were also helped by the market momentum. But that said, the business that we took over that was already managed by Liberty in 2023 was already with the pricing actions being taken, with the claims management actions that we're taking, with the cost actions that we're taking also on the Liberty side, helped us already to have also as a starting base a better portfolio, and that work continued, so what Nico I think described correctly is all of these elements, not only one action that helps you to stay in the market and keep those combined ratios and to continue to improve them.
I think it's all these three factors. So market momentum, second, better than expected books that we already got, and the continuous work that continued after that.
Michael.
If Michael has to start first, and then we go to Hadley.
So you're big in three, maybe four markets in LatAm, but some of the acquisitions are in markets where you're not big, and the map shows lots of other countries. So would you be selling those? And or is the ambition to grow each market to be a kind of top five? And then just going back to Europe, and you mentioned Italy a few times, is there anything concrete in your mind, or is it just kind of still thinking, oh, it would be nice?
Michael, thanks for the question. So we are very happy with the footprint that we have, but you know that we have a core market strategy. So the key markets that we really focus on in Latin America, also due to their size and now the position that we have, is especially Brazil, Chile, and Mexico, and I should add Colombia into it. So we've taken the ambition from Torsten also there to get to top five. The others, we're happy where we are at the moment, but the focus is really on those four core markets. And then on Italy, we're continuously looking. You know that there's quite some movements that are always happening, also on the banking side, quite a number of things are happening. Sometimes this opens up new opportunities. We're continuously monitoring and investigating the opportunities there, but nothing to report at this point in time.
So then we have Hadley from Morgan Stanley.
Thanks very much. At the beginning of your presentation, you mentioned that there's been effectively an 11-point difference in your cost disadvantage, now your cost advantage over the last four years. I think I can understand how your cost advantage works in the corporate specialty book, but can you just explain how you've managed to improve it so quickly in LatAm and how much room for further improvement potentially there is to go on that? And I guess linked to that, as I understand it, the LatAm market for the most part is a broker-driven market. So how do you, I don't know, incentivize the brokers, or how do you keep customers coming back to HDI? Is it simply you offer them a lower price than everyone else because you have the cost advantage, or what else are you doing that sort of keeps customers on your books?
And then my final question is around Mexico, which I think is, you're relatively underpenetrated relative to where you want to be. Can you get there organically, and if so, how, or what are the sort of growth ambitions there? Thanks.
Sure. Thank you. Yeah. So on the first question, it's really the evolution of the combined ratio, not just the expense ratio, which improved a lot compared to our peers. In fact, if you look at the Brazilian market, all peers in the last three years have improved their combined ratio by seven points, eight points, but we improved much more. And really, it was, yes, about cost consciousness on the expense side, but a lot of work in the pricing and underwriting. We invested a lot to improve our capabilities in pricing. And I think that's where most of the value came out, really driving loss ratios to the correct level. So that's for your first question. And in the case of broker relationship, there's not a single bullet.
You need to be priced in the market, and your price needs to be reasonable with the risk you're taking in order to be competitive, but actually, service to a broker, it's absolutely critical for them to have a platform they can easily operate. There's transparency of the commissions that they're getting. It's not a hassle to look at them and/or to calculate them, and having a fluid relationship with them and, let's say, hassle-free, it's very important, and of course, commissions play a role, but you cannot grow your way with higher commissions because that will hurt your long-term perspective and your combined ratio, so you try to keep in the market with a better service and with prices that are in line with your value proposition, and that makes it. Many times, the brokers are concerned about the services that their clients are receiving.
Finally, in Mexico, we do have that ambition. You got it absolutely right. We're willing to grow in Mexico, and we're actively looking at opportunities there are to grow organically, inorganically via M&A, and also, let's say, inorganically via partnerships, which is also a nice lever to pull.
So we have Nick Johnson from Deutsche Bank with further questions.
Thanks very much. So scale and market position, clearly very important to you. You talked a lot about cost efficiency and having an advantage there. Can you just talk a bit about whether scale gives you an advantage on the claims side of things as well?
Absolutely. Thanks for the question, Nick. I would almost say this is even more important and gives us also now for the future, given what we're doing in Latin America, an even better advantage. Because just imagine you have much more data available. You can do pricing on a much more granular level. To be very practical, in Brazil, we've doubled the number of cars that we are insuring. With that, suddenly, we have not only in the south of Brazil the position to have very detailed granular models that we can use for our pricing. We now have it as well for São Paulo. We have it now as well in Rio de Janeiro. So we got a much better ability with our pricing teams to be better and more competitive in our pricing.
And second, on the claims as well, of course, we have now a better reach to the networks of garages, to the assistance. We even have now an assistance company that is at scale in Brazil, and that is actually significantly improving already today the NPS that we can offer to brokers and clients because they enjoy a better service from that as well, given the scale and the services that come with it. So all along, the cost leadership helps on that as well. But I would say the bigger impact, and that is still to come as well, and will help us potentially also if a market would be softening a little bit further down the road to stay in the ranges that are mentioned before in our combined ratios, that is going to help there significantly.
So Roland had a question.
Could you maybe compare motor and non-motor business in terms of technical profitability, strategic behavior? And as you mentioned, you want to expand especially also in non-motor. Is it sold differently? So what initiatives are you driving there to bring the share up?
Yeah. Thanks, Roland. So non-motor, if you look on the longer-term cycle for us, the non-motor business that we're doing in retail in SME usually has a slightly better profitability combined ratios than actually our motor business. Now, that said, what you've seen in Latin America, especially in Brazil, we still have a very large motor share, and with the profitability, there is around 89%. Now, at this point in time, that is not completely true, but on the average longer period, when you look at it, non-motor is not only attractive just for growth, but it's actually also diversifying well and offering even better combined ratios through the cycle. How do we want to gain that? One is going out further to our agents and brokers to offer our services and products to them. But on top, you've seen the number of partnerships that we have added.
Most of them are very much focused on P&C and especially on the non-motor part, including as well life protection. And also these partnerships will help us to further grow the business also in non-motor.
So, Charles Graham from Bloomberg.
I'm just wondering at group level, how do you think about currency risk? I mean, can we expect to see a hedging strategy, or are you going to hedge anticipated profit contributions or dividend contributions or the balance sheet? How do you plan for that?
Good question. Jan has the answer.
There are two components. One is we do not want to have FX risks on the local balance sheets. We hedge the liabilities in the currency there. The second one is we are willing to accept volatility from the earning flows out of the countries because hedging costs are pretty high, and the diversification in the group as a whole is pretty good. If you look at the group as a whole, you may be surprised that 32% or above 32% of our premiums are derived in U.S. dollar, and Euro is just 27%. Then all the other currencies like the Brazilian real and so on are on our British pound, our Aussie dollar, and so on. And the zloty, of course.
All right. Michael had further questions.
Thank you. Talk a little bit about the partnerships. I think you mentioned on slide 60, the numbers of customer reach is lovely, but the number of premiums is lower. And I just wondered, I mean, I'm used to in Italy, Unipol, their partnerships, they get really serious amounts from their partner banks. Here it looks as if partner banks don't seem to take you very seriously.
Michael, that's a very good observation, but let me just give you some more color. Apart from Banca Sella, where you see on the two million clients, we have a decent revenue on that already, which is already existing a bit longer. All the others, if you take Santander Auto, is basically a greenfield operation that we started in 2019, 2020. And if you compare that to a normal startup to be after three, four years at the level of EUR 50 million of revenues, nicely profitable, I should add, very nicely profitable, then that is actually a great job that the Brazilian team has done there. And the others, I would say this is still growth potential. So Banco Estado, we started to do the transaction in 2021. It started operationally in 2022, Millennium in 2023. Fiba was also just started operationally in 2023.
So we are just starting the whole journey of further penetrating now these partnerships that we have. And they are all long-term relationships, minimum 10 years, sometimes even 25 years. So this is for us, that's why I mentioned it more, this is still untapped revenue potential and growth potential that we can have there.
Follow up?
Yeah, follow up.
Michael, with a follow up, and then we go to you, Nick.
In Europe, we have this Danish Compromise. Is that a risk for you in those countries?
To be seen. So as you know, the Danish Compromise has just been perpetuated. It existed before, but now it has been perpetuated. What we see so far is that potentially some of the European banks that are now revisiting their strategy to banc assurance are doing that at the moment, especially in Europe. To be seen if some of the European banks that are also present in Latin America, if that has any impact on them. What I can say so far, however, what we see mostly is that they're most interested in the life insurance business. The P&C may be a little bit less so, but to be seen. I would love to have a more level playing field because for us, that is a bit of a disadvantage in these partnerships games. But at the moment, we don't feel threatened.
So then we have Nick Johnson from Deutsche with further questions.
Thanks. Yeah, just to follow up, second question. Can you just talk a bit about the regulatory and societal landscape across the international markets? I mean, for example, I understand that motor insurance is actually optional in some markets. Are there any sort of tailwinds or headwinds on the horizon from a sort of regulatory and societal point of view across the markets?
That's a very good question. It's not so easy to answer because you need to look at it country by country, actually. But I would distinguish Europe and Latin America a little bit because in Europe, you do have the situation that, for example, MTPL is compulsory, and you already have also, for example, in Poland, a quite good penetration rate on that front. In some of the markets, the regulatory environment actually is also compulsory to have, for example, a motor insurance, for example, in Mexico. That said, it's not necessarily enforced. So today, only 30% do actually buy the insurance. And that's why we believe also from that angle, at some point in time, this will also kick in as we've seen it also in our European countries and more mature countries.
Over time, regulation might think this is actually a good benefit to the society to have, for example, motor liability in place. That said, there are also, for example, SOAT or SOAP in Chile, which is a bodily injury cover that is already very well penetrated that exists, for example, in Colombia and Chile. So it depends a little bit on the markets. But in general terms, I would say that is still an avenue for growth for us as well because it might be tightening, and that is beneficial.
Okay. So then Bhavin is there with questions. Bhavin, unmute your mic and go ahead, please.
Thank you, again. Actually, on my side, the first one would be on the reserve resiliency situation for the Liberty business. So when you acquired this book, how did the resiliency of this book look like? Was it already near the Talanx standard, or you used the better underwriting quarters to boost some of this resiliency in the course of the year? The second one would be on Poland. You have talked about Latin America, but if it would be helpful, we can just talk about how should we think about the underwriting profitability in Poland going forward, given we have seen a challenging MTPL market over the last couple of years. But how do you see that evolving going forward into your plan period? And the last one, very quickly, would be on your net income visibility of the group of more than EUR 80 million for the Liberty business.
What would that number look like on a very normalized basis, assuming full realization of synergies and excluding any restructuring charges? What's the normalized earning capacity of the group probably going into 2027? Thank you.
Thanks for those questions. Maybe on the resiliency side, Nicolas, do you want to start on what we did there and what we found in Liberty?
So when we acquired the company, of course, we did a full due diligence, and we had our auditor look into the reserves, and we found the company perfectly well reserved, and we received a fully reserved company. So that's the situation on Liberty.
Yeah. And I think what we can add is we do expect also what we did also on the opening balance side to be at the reserve level as we had run also our HDI businesses going forward. So we were happy with the situation that we found. On Poland, you are right that there was in the market the need to adapt the pricing. I would say that Warta has been a bit on the forefront of that. So we have been increasing in MOD and MTPL our prices already for quite some quarters. And we are quite happy with the profitability that we are seeing there. At the moment, we are actually seeing that the market is reacting also more strongly on the uppricing that is required. So do expect a continuous growth of Warta at the profitability levels that you are currently seeing.
The last question, I actually didn't fully capture it, what you asked on the net income realization. Can you repeat that question, please?
Right. We just wanted to better understand the normalized earning capacity of the Liberty business, given currently you have more than EUR 80 million contribution to the group for 2024. But obviously, it includes some restructuring charges and partial synergies. So assuming a full realization of synergies and excluding restructuring charges, how should that normalized contribution look like?
Yeah. What we have said on that, we stick that in 2027. We do realize 120 million of synergies at that level. We do expect, I think that I can share already for 2025, a contribution. I think Torsten has already said it before, above EUR 100 million after financing costs for the group. That's what we expect for 2025.
Great. Thank you.
All right. Further questions. Michael, can we get the mic to Michael, please?
Just very quick, just on the same. So if you assume or you use your 2025 estimates for the Liberty transaction, what's the P/E?
The P/E that we showed you? It was nine points. 9x , sorry, 9x .
9x zero.
No, there was 2023 numbers, taking just 2023 numbers and putting them in relationship to the purchase price.
What would they be with the actual numbers?
That I need to calculate. I don't have it at the moment. I can give it to you later.
Better.
We follow up.
But definitely better.
So we have lower multiple.
So we follow up with that one. Are there any further questions? Roland.
Regarding investment income in Latin business, what is the share of investment income of net income falling to the bottom line? So are you more dependent on investment income in the high yields you get there? Is it on an average level historically, or how would you judge this?
That's normal, pretty normal. You have higher interest rate levels there. It's a good news if you look at the market, the real interest rate. So the difference between nominal interest rates and inflation is also positive there, and you're right, therefore, the net investment and net insurance finance and investment income is higher in the Latin market compared to the other markets we're in.
But what you can think maybe of is the business is more short tail. Given it's more short tail, however, the higher interest rate compensates for that. So it's roughly then with the technical result or the insurance service result, 50/50.
Okay. Final round of questions. Any further questions from the audience? Checking the screen. No questions from the screen. Any further questions? So no further. Michael.
This is something which I worry about. So my colleagues in my team are fantastic. And I always worry whether there'll be a position left for me next year. Now, the management talent you've shown us, which is here, and which we met yesterday, is astounding. But again, it's always the question was, "Ooh, I'm presenting to my colleague, but I might not be here next year." Is that a cause? It's a really stupid question, but does that cause you stress and you kind of think, "Well, I'm making decisions to make sure that doesn't happen"? I mean, the way you can do it is simply make acquisitions where you need to be more present, basically.
So are you talking about the local team, the team in the country?
Well.
Go ahead.
No, I would say one of the things we do is we move very fast on people decisions so that you don't linger around on those decisions that put people uncomfortable. So on day one, after the acquisition, the day we closed, we announced the entire leadership team of each one of the countries. So that takes, let's say, uncertainty away. Of course, if you're level four, it will get to you later. But we try to move really fast in order to give some certainty to the people. And of course, all of these are tough decisions, but they need to be made.
And maybe on a group level, maybe it's a bit maybe not exactly what you're asking for, but culture is strategy for us. And culture is done by people and talents. And we have to be very sure that besides the fast decisions, that underperformers, let's say, should be transparently shown, and then we have to make changes. And this will be very fair, very open, but this is the energy we need in the group. And we take a lot of care about this. So if you ask me, I mean, taking care of the right people at the right place, we have a lot of discussions about it in the group. And as you can see as well, let's say, for example, I know a really new CEO coming from the global segment and so on.
So, starting from the top to make the example that we look for the best talents to the best positions we need. And this is much more than in the past where we're discussing openly to get different feedbacks, who could be the right person, and so on. So it's a lot of time consumed here because that's about culture.
So last opportunity for any further questions. If that is not the case, then Torsten, concluding remarks, over to you.
Yes. Do we have lunch after?
Yes, we do.
So we have an early lunch now because I'm very short. So thank you very much. I mean, everybody of us likes to really see into the future. And what else can I say? That culture is important, and it's very difficult to transfer what we are living in the company culture of trust, where people really go the extra mile. And this is basically, besides the numbers you can read, you don't need to sit here and watch us for two hours to see how passionate we are about to deliver the three messages I gave you. First, we believe, and it's always a question. Nobody knows the future. And then we ask, where's the next growth? Where do you get the growth from? It will come. If you have a culture and market position and a portfolio diversified, it will come.
I don't know exactly where it comes from. I'm sure there's momentum we have. We have a competitive advantage we see. Our business model we explained to you. So I could draw you nice numbers, no extrapolating. It will come differently anyway. But what I know is the momentum is there. That was the first message we would like to give you. And the second is the volatility. Everybody tries to minimize it because we always like to see up, up, up, up. We like it as well. And we make sure with Mr. Resiliency that we deliver on that one. We were very prepared for whatever cycle will come. Everybody asked the question how strong the cycles will be and so on. It will be cycles anyway. We are prepared thinking through the cycle, and therefore we are prepared many years for that cycle, whatever comes up.
These are the final numbers. Numbers are numbers. It's only the output of people working together with the people business. And therefore, good question of Michael before that we really take care a lot about talents. And you will see how many talents will join us in the future because you always like to be on a successful ride at the end of the day. These are the numbers. We are passionate about it, but numbers are just numbers. We are people. Thank you very much that you joined us, spent the time with us. And sorry, it's a very early lunch, 11:30 A.M., but why talking more? Just doing it. Thank you very much.