Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the full year results 2022 conference call and live webcast. I am Alice, the conference call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be listed on remote and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Mr. Philipp Gmür , Group CEO. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, madam. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our analyst conference call on the full year results 2022. Within the next 30-40 minutes, we would like to go through the detailed informations on our business development and the key financials of the reporting period. Let me first give you a short introduction and overview. Afterwards, I will hand over to our Group CFO, Annelis Lüscher Hämmerli , who will go through the financial figures. I would like to give you an update on the implementation of our strategy, Helvetia 2025. After my presentation, Annelis Lüscher Hämmerl i and I will be pleased to answer your questions as always. Now I ask you to turn to slide number four with the title, Highlights at a Glance. Helvetia looks back on a successful 2022 financial year.
I would like to highlight three aspects of the past year in particular. First, our strong core business. Second, our resilience of the balance sheet and the business model. Third, to talk about our growth opportunities. Let me start with our strong core business, which backs the sustainable dividend. Helvetia's business volume grew by 2.66% at constant foreign exchange rates. The main growth driver was the non-life business, broadly supported across all segments and all lines of business. We are also very satisfied with the development of the technical results. IFRS results of CHF 600 million and CHF 14, highest net income ever recorded by Helvetia. What are the reasons for that? First, the technical performance, and second, of course, we also benefited from the sale of Sa Nostra Vida.
On this basis, we are proposing to the AGM a dividend increase by 40 Rappen per share to CHF 5.90. At the same time, we are increasing our cumulative dividend ambition until the end of the strategy period by 10% from CHF 1.5 billion-CHF 1.65 billion. Second, our reinforced resilience through financial strength and diversification has been proved once again. As of the beginning of January, the estimated SST ratio remained at a high level of over 300%. At the same time, we could improve our business mix through the sale of Sa Nostra Vida. In the meantime, our non-life is even more important than it used to be before. All that confirms the resilience of the business model and of the balance sheet. Thirdly, we are seizing growth opportunities as part of the Helvetia 2025 strategy.
One of the highlights is that the fee business is performing strongly. The strong growth is a real pleasure, and at the same time, the fee business already contributes almost 5% to the group's net income. More on this later from Annelis Lüscher Hämmerli . As I said before, we also increased the share in Caser. This allows us to benefit even more from the profitable development of Caser in Spain. At the same time, the non-life business is gaining more importance within the whole group. Furthermore, we made selective acquisitions in growth areas. This includes, for example, the expansion of the health and care ecosystem in Spain. Let me conclude. We successfully grow within the last few years, and this successful growth goes on and will be continued. More on the strategy implementation at the end of the presentation.
For now, I would like to hand over to our CFO, Annelis Lüscher Hämmerli , who will present the key financial figures. Please go ahead.
Many thanks, Philipp. Also from my side, I would like to welcome all of you to our conference call today. Within the next 25 minutes, I will give you more detailed information on our financial performance in 2022. We will use a short version of the presentation for this conference. The full slide deck, as always, with additional information, is available on our website. Let's start with an overview of the key figures of Helvetia's performance in 2022 on the next two slides. Let's start with slide six. No, sorry slide five. The full year 2022 results demonstrate that Helvetia is well on track to achieve its strategic financial targets. In a challenging environment, this once again proves the strength and resilience of our business model. Helvetia generated a strong IFRS result after tax of CHF 614 million.
This corresponds to a return on equity of 11%. This is at the upper end of our target range. That success was based on a persistent robust technical performance in both non-life and life, and supported by a one-off gain from the sale of Sa Nostra Vida. In line with our strategic ambitions, fee business continued to grow significantly. Fee and commission income increased by 12.4% at constant exchange rates to CHF 377 million, meaning that we have achieved our target of generating fee income of more than CHF 350 million. Fee business contributed roughly 5% to the group's net income if we exclude the one-off gain from Sa Nostra Vida. At 94.7%, our combined ratio is on a good level in view of rising inflation and a number of nat cat events in the past year.
This reflects the good quality and beneficial diversification of our portfolio in non-life. We are working hard to achieve our targets. Increasing profitability is key to us. Our progress is reflected, for example, in the improved cost ratio. The new business margin in life amounted to 3.3% and thus exceeded our target range, a fact that demonstrates our good positioning and successful focus on profitable growth in life business. The business volume was at CHF 11.1 billion. On a currency-adjusted basis, this is an increase of 2.6%. Growth was driven by the non-life business, which showed a strong organic increase of 9.4% at constant exchange rates. In the large majority of our country markets, the growth rate of our non-life business was above market.
We are thus further strengthening market positions in our profitable core businesses. I will give you more details on all these key performance indicators later. As you can see on the next slide, we are also well on track with regards to our financial and financial targets on cost efficiency and capitalization. Our strong results in 2022 are reinforcing our payout policy of increasing dividends. We made further strong progress on raising cost efficiencies last year. With cost efficiencies of CHF 91 million, we have almost reached our target of CHF 100 million. Nevertheless, we are continuing to implement several measures to increase efficiency in our operations in 2023 and ongoing. Helvetia's capitalization remains on an excellent level. This is demonstrated by the financial strength rating of A+ assigned by Standard & Poor's.
Our regulatory solvency measured by the Swiss Solvency Test continues to stay on an outstanding level. We estimate our Swiss Solvency Test ratio to be above 300% as of January 1, 2023, and to have slightly increased since the end of June 2022. The strong development of our core business and our outstanding financial strength form the solid basis for our payout policy of sustainable increasing dividends. We are also increasing the focus on optimizing the use of capital, which is continuously strengthening our long-term dividend capacity. We have made a one-off gain of CHF 102 million from the sale of Sa Nostra Vida last year. Our shareholders should benefit from these successes. Therefore, Helvetia is aiming for an even more attractive dividend policy.
For that reason, we are increasing our ambition for the strategy period until 2025, and now aim for a dividend distribution over five years of more than CHF 1.65 billion instead of CHF 1.5 billion. As a first step towards this, we propose an increase of the dividend by first 40 Rappen to CHF 5.90 per share for 2022. I will further elaborate on this later. Now let's go into the details. The next slide provides you with an overview of the net income after tax of the individual segments and business areas, as well as its main drivers. Helvetia generated a strong IFRS net income after tax of CHF 614 million in 2022. With macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainties, the market environment has been challenging.
All the more the 2022 result demonstrates the stability and resilience of our broadly diversified business model. The strong result was based on very robust technical results in both non-life and life, and the one-off gain of CHF 102 million from the sale of Spanish life insurance company, Sa Nostra Vida. In non-life business, the technical result increased compared to the previous year, proving the portfolio's earnings power. In a challenging environment, the non-life business benefited from the high quality and strong diversification of the book, which is reinforcing its resilience. In the life business area, the margin after cost showed a remarkable increase. In particular, the savings and risk results were higher compared to the prior year. In both business areas, non-life and life, our core business proved to be profitable and resilient.
The volatile financial market conditions in 2022 were reflected in the investment result. Therein, current income and the development of real estate were solid. Real estate benefiting from further reduced vacancy rates, especially in Switzerland. Let's now have a look at the individual segments. In Switzerland, Helvetia recorded a solid result of CHF 420 million. Technical results in both non-life and life increased compared to the prior year. In Swiss non-life, a substantial increase of the technical result was based on two main factors. First, the claims environment was more stable compared to the previous year, which means we recorded a lower claims burden from natural events. Second, ongoing efficiency measures and scale effects due to the profitable growth had a positive impact on the cost side.
In the life business in Switzerland, the margin after costs increased against the prior year. This was mainly driven by a stronger savings result, which benefited from a further decrease of technical rates. Net income of the Europe segment amounted to a strong CHF 269 million. The result in Europe was underpinned by a solid technical development in both non-life and life business, and benefited from the one-off gain of CHF 102 million from the sale of Sa Nostra Vida. Notably, Caser contributed a high CHF 176 million to the segment's net income, which includes the one-off gain from Sa Nostra Vida of CHF 102 million. In the segment's non-life business, the portfolio remained very resilient in view of increasing inflation and the further normalization of claims frequencies after the pandemic.
The profitable growth of the business was also reflected in scale effects on the cost side. In European life business, the margin after cost increased compared to the prior year. In particular, this was driven by a stronger risk result due to a better technical development. Net income of Specialty Lines amounted to 24 million CHF. The claims development of the segment was characterized by a number of nat cats, such as Hurricane Ian or floods in South Africa. In addition, temporary inflation effects had an influence. Based on its high diversification, the segment was able to absorb these effects and generated a positive technical result. Further, the technical results benefited from scale effects on the cost side due to the focused growth in an attractive hard market environment. The corporate segment considerably improved its result to -98 million CHF.
One of the main drivers was a strong technical result of the internal group reinsurance. It increased substantially after the group reinsurance had been impacted by elevated nat cat claims due to large storms in Central Europe in the prior year. Additionally, positive effects related to our own investment funds influenced the result, including non-recurrence of a one-off effect from the liquidation of a fund in 2021. Let me continue with the growth in business volume on the next slide. In 2022, Helvetia successfully continued to grow its profitable core business. We achieved a total business volume of 11.1 billion CHF. This equates to a currency-adjusted increase of 2.6% over the previous year. The growth was driven by a remarkable organic increase in the non-life business of 9.4% at constant exchange rates.
We were able to increase premiums across all market units and lines of business. Growth in non-life was above market in almost all country markets. Helvetia was thus able to further expand its market shares in this business area. In Switzerland, broad-based growth across lines of business led to an increase in non-life business volume of 3.3%. The main driver was traditional non-life business, which was growing stronger than the market average with a growth rate of almost 3.5%. Thus, Helvetia further strengthened its market position in a high margin Swiss core business. In addition, our online insurer Smile also made a notable contribution with a growth rate of 7.8%. In the life business in Switzerland, Helvetia continued to focus on capital-light products. We recorded a very successful development of investment-linked products in individual life.
The growth in this line of business was over 18%. Business volume in Swiss group life was influenced by an ongoing market-wide trend of a shift from full insurance to semi-autonomous solutions. As expected, this effect resulted in a lower business volume compared to the prior year in the life business in Switzerland overall. Helvetia is well positioned in this environment with its semi-autonomous products and flat rate risk solutions. As a result, the number of actively insured persons in Swiss group life increased in total compared to the end of 2021, despite the shift away from full insurance. In the Europe segment, Helvetia increased its currency-adjusted business volume in non-life in all country markets and all lines of business. The non-life business grew by 7% at constant exchange rates.
With growth rates between 5% and 10%, the increase in non-life business volume was above market level in most countries. This is demonstrating Helvetia's strong position in its core insurance business. In life insurance in Europe, Helvetia was cautious in underwriting traditional business in all country markets. Investment-linked business in Austria grew very successfully. Growth in Italy and Spain was influenced by non-recurrence of high single premiums in the prior year. At the same time, the volume of periodic premiums showed significant growth in these markets. Despite this, total life business volume in Europe was lower compared to the previous year because of the effects I just mentioned. The business volume of the specialty market segment again developed very positively. It grew by 20.2% at constant exchange rates.
Growth in this segment was due to increasing new business driven by our focused growth strategy in all three market units. In Specialty Lines and France, the international engineering business and marine were strong growth drivers. In active reinsurance, premium volume benefited from new property contracts, growth in new business lines such as life or credit and surety reinsurance and favorable price effects. Increasing prices positively influenced the growth in specialty markets overall. Rate hardening accounted for almost 40% of the segment's growth. Let's turn to the next slide. Helvetia has not only profitably grown its core insurance business in 2022. This slide shows that we have also achieved a strong development of fee business in line with our strategic ambitions to grow these types of income streams.
The group fee and commission income rose by 12.4% at constant exchange rates to CHF 377 million. This was mainly driven by two factors. First, Caser has further expanded its health and care ecosystem in Spain. Growth in this field was driven by further targeted acquisitions and the rebound of demand after the pandemic. The second main driver was third-party asset management. The successful capital increase in our Swiss Property Fund provided the basis for additional fee income. For the first time, we are also disclosing a profitability figure for the fee business. The fee margin on the right side of the slide shows fee income after deducting the related costs. It amounted to CHF 31 million before tax in 2022. This demonstrates the attractiveness and profitability of our fee business.
With this, we are moving to the net combined ratio in non-life. At 94.7%, the net combined ratio was on a good level, slightly better than in the prior year. In a challenging environment of rising inflation, a number of nat cat events, and the further normalization of claims frequencies after the pandemic, this proves the high quality and resilience of the portfolio. In particular, the stable earnings power of the portfolio is reinforced by its broad diversification and profitable growth. The resilience of our non-life business is demonstrated by the solid current year claims ratio, which only slightly increased despite rising inflation and claims frequencies after the pandemic. Helvetia is closely monitoring inflationary trends and continuously reviewing and adapting the pricing of its non-life policies.
Although claims from nat cat reduced considerably in Switzerland, the nat cat ratio was higher than in the prior year because of an offsetting effect from nat cat events in specialty markets. Specialty markets was impacted by a number of nat cat events such as Hurricane Ian or floods in South Africa. The development of reserves for claims from prior years is primarily attributable to the active reinsurance. It relates to an accounting shift because of the underwriting year logic the active reinsurance is using. This effect is largely compensated by a counter effect on the current year ratio. Excluding active reinsurance, the prior year development remains stable. The cost ratio improved considerably, mainly driven by the administration cost ratio. This is attributable to the ongoing successful implementation of efficiency measures.
Scale effects based on the growth in our profitable core non-life business benefited the ratio. On th e next slide, we will look at the new business margin in life. New business in the life business area developed very well in 2022. This demonstrates Helvetia's good positioning and successful focus on profitable capital-light business in life insurance. Helvetia has generated a new business volume measured by the present value of new business premiums of CHF 2.2 billion. In Switzerland, Helvetia increased the new business volume both in individual life and in group life. Overall, the volume was below the prior year figure driven by the Europe segment. Here the decrease was mainly due to non-recurrence of high single premiums in the previous year. The main contributor to the volume of new business were investment-linked products.
In individual life, the share of these capital-light products on new business further increased both in Switzerland and in Europe. New business generated in 2022 was very profitable, with the value of new business increasing by 17% despite the lower volume. Accordingly, the new business margin increased to 3.3% and thus exceeded our target range of 2%-3%. The increase was driven by a more favorable business mix and higher interest rates. Let me now move to cost efficiencies on the next slide. We have again worked hard and made very good progress on cost efficiencies in 2022. We have realized an additional CHF 52 million in cost efficiencies in the past year. Total cost efficiencies have reached CHF 91 million since the start of the strategy period.
We have therefore almost achieved our target of raising cost efficiencies in the amount of CHF 100 million. We are still continuing to implement several measures to increase efficiency in our operations. Notably, all segments contributed to this success. There have been two main drivers of efficiencies. First, we successfully implemented measures as part of the ongoing efficiency program. For example, in procurement or internal collaboration and organization. Second, the profitable growth we achieved in our core business resulted in efficiency gains. Both effects are also visible in the favorable development of our non-life cost ratio. On the next slide, let me add a few remarks on our capitalization. Helvetia's financial strength remains outstanding. This is demonstrated by both our regulatory solvency measured by the Swiss Solvency Test and the financial strength rating assigned by Standard & Poor's.
We estimate our Swiss Solvency Test ratio to be above 300% as of 1 January 2023. More precisely, we expect the ratio to have slightly increased since 30 June 2022, when it was at 310%. This figure remains on an excellent level, considerably above the minimum of 130% we have set ourselves. Our financial strength rating of A+ has been confirmed by Standard & Poor's in July last year. The target of A rating is therefore met. Our strong capitalization and the broad diversification of our business build a key asset of Helvetia. It reinforces our resilience, enables us to seize attractive growth opportunities, and supports a sustainable dividend payout. Let's have a look at the dividend development and proposal on the next slide. Helvetia pursues a payout policy of sustainably increasing dividends.
The dividend per share is to increase steadily each year or in exceptional years, remain at least at the previous year's level. In line with this policy, Helvetia has set itself the target at the beginning of the strategy period of distributing more than CHF 1.5 billion in dividends over the five years. In 2022, Helvetia made a one-off gain of CHF 102 million with the sale of Sa Nostra Vida. Helvetia intends to use this gain in a way that creates the greatest possible sustainable value. For this reason, part of it will be distributed to shareholders in the form of a higher dividend for the 2022 financial year. The rest will be invested in attractive growth opportunities along our strategy of profitable growth. Helvetia is also increasing the focus on efficient capital management.
With the sale of Sa Nostra Vida and our targeted growth in less capital-intensive areas such as non-life, investment-linked life and fee business, we are reducing the capital required to run our businesses. When investing in growth opportunities, we strive to deploy capital in the areas with even more attractive risk-return profiles. We are increasingly aligning the capital structure, capitalization and financial steering of our local business units according to economic considerations. All this continuously strengthens Helvetia's long-term dividend capacity. On that basis, Helvetia is thus aiming for an even more attractive dividend policy. We are therefore increasing our ambition for the strategy period until 2025 and setting a new target of distributing cumulative dividends of more than CHF 1.65 billion to shareholders.
For 2022, Helvetia's board of directors will therefore propose a regular increase of the dividend to CHF 5.90 per share. This leads to a very attractive dividend yield of 5.5% as of end of December 2022. I will finish my part of the presentation with a wrap-up of the financial highlights of the reporting year on the next slide. The financial figures of 2022 once again prove Helvetia's stability and growth potential. This is underlined by three aspects. First, we have a strong, profitable, growing core insurance business. Our non-life business showed broad-based growth in 2022, which was above market in most countries. Both the non-life and life business increased their technical results and proved to be very resilient in a challenging environment.
Second, Helvetia's capitalization remains on an outstanding level, and we further diversify our business by region, business field, customer segment, and income streams. This reinforces Helvetia's resilience and solidity. Third, we are continuously seizing attractive growth opportunities, for example, in capital-light fee business or in specialty markets, which currently experiences a very favorable market environment. All these positive developments encouraged us to increase our dividend ambition for our shareholders to benefit from the success of Helvetia. We now target the dividend distribution of more than CHF 1.65 billion over the strategy period. With that, I will now hand over to Philipp Gmür again.
Thank you, Annelis, for presenting the financial figures of the year 2022. Two years of our strategy implementation are completed. The half-time of the strategy period 2025 takes place in summer. We can already say that we are well on the way to achieving our strategic goals. On the next slides, I will give you an overview of the most important milestones of the past year. Let's start at slide number 18. With the Helvetia 2025 strategy, we are pursuing the ambition to be the best partner for financial security and to set standards in customer convenience and accessibility. In order to achieve this ambition, we have defined four strategic priorities. This slide provides an overview of the most important achievements for each strategic priority. The first one, customer convenience.
It is important to further simplify and automatize our customer convenience, our customer interfaces. We are focusing on front end and automation. An example of this is our chatbot, Clara, in Switzerland. We are concentrating on self-service services that are used regularly. For instance, change of address, proof of insurance for motor vehicles, notification of claims, and general questions. We are very satisfied with the number of users, but of course, this number cannot be directly compared with other chatbot services. At the same time, it is important to enhance the customer experience. One example for this is the simplified registration for Helvetia Seguros' customer portal. A artificial intelligence makes a comparison between the identification document and the face. Already around one in 10 clients is already using this new option.
Apart from the customer convenience, we are focusing on the right offerings. We want to launch new attractive investment solutions. We integrated our real estate fund into a tranche product in Switzerland. There was a great demand for exclusive access to an institutional, however, unlisted real estate fund. Helvetia Property Invest and the regular tranche product, Helvetia Value Trend, generated a total premium of more than CHF 190 million last year. Furthermore, we are enhancing sustainable products. In engineering, we have established an underwriting team with a focus on solutions for renewable energies and environmental technologies. Thus, we are responding to the increased demand for such type of coverage. A specialized team is the basis to keep up with the advancing technical development. The third initiative and the third priority, of course, is to profitably grow our business.
We were successful in strengthening our market positions. As Annelis pointed out, the driver was the non-life business. Currency adjusted, we grew our portfolio in non-life by more than 9%. Growth was above the market in almost all our country markets. Helvetia, therefore, was able to expand its market share successfully. Furthermore, we improved our business mix. We shifted even more to non-life business by selling our share of the Sa Nostra Vida and by our increase of our stake in Caser, which amounts in the meantime to 80%. The fourth strategic element is seizing growth opportunities. Let me give you two examples. We are going further with the internationalization of our online insurance company, Smile. Smile has been very successful in Switzerland, and therefore we launched Smile in Austria.
Last autumn, we started with household insurance products at the end of October. The operating business is going well, and our people in Austria are very enthusiastic about this initiative. The next step in Austria will follow by the end of 2023 by launching our so-called freemium model, which was a successful initiative in Switzerland. We are preparing our launch of Smile in Spain. A second example is our fee business expansion. Annelis already explained the impressive growth of over 12%. Our fee business contributes almost 5% to the group's net income. This shows the attractiveness and the profitability of this business segment. Of course, I would like to mention that we have also made progress in sustainability. This is also recognized by the independent rating agency MSCI.
They raised our ESG rating from triple A Sorry, from triple B to single A last summer. Let me wrap up and give you a short outlook. Helvetia achieved a strong performance in the past financial year. For us, three aspects are key. First, we want to sustainably grow our dividend. Second, we want to prove also in the future that we have a resilient business model, a financial strength, and a good diversification, which helps us develop our insurance group. Three, we are seizing different growth opportunities, and we want to do so also in the future. The year 2022 shows that we are well on track with regard to all those three aspects. On this basis, we want to create added value for all our stakeholders. This brings us to the end of the presentation.
Annelis and I would now be pleased to answer your questions. Thank you for your attention.
We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the touchtone telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question comes from the line of Thomas Bateman with Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, everybody. Congratulations on some fantastic results. As you say, record numbers. Three questions from me, please. Just on the dividend, clearly you seem pretty confident, and in particular, you're talking about improved efficiencies on capital management. Could you give us a little bit more color on where you see those synergies coming from? I think the subsidiary ratios were really high. The solvency subsidiary ratios were really high last year, and I expect them to be even higher. Maybe just a little bit more clarity on which geographies you see those capital management actions coming through.
On the extraordinary results in Life, I think on slide 30, could you split out for us maybe, you know, how much reserve releases, and how much of that is related to the Swiss BVG business and how much is individual business? The final question is just on the combined ratio. I guess H2 combined ratio is a bit above your target at about 96%. How do you see that combined ratio improving to get back into your target for 2023? Thank you.
Okay. Thanks for those three questions. I'm answering the 3rd question, then I would like Annelis to answer the 1st two questions. With regard to the combined ratio, we are pretty confident to very soon come into our target range. Why is that? First, we are making progress in our cost ratio, which you've seen already during the last two years. Second, our business mix is still pretty well focusing also on retail and SME. Third, within the last few years, we've been hit quite a bit by 1st the COVID, 2nd the nat cats in Switzerland, and 3rd last year, nat cat events, which were, you know, pretty specific in the specialty market segment. We are pretty confident and that we are, so to say, getting back to normal pretty soon.
If I could f ollow up really quickly. Just I guess the nat cat events, how big were they? How big was Hurricane Ian and South Africa floods? Specialty markets, they were obviously quite a strong combined ratio. It looked like Italy and Spain were the areas that were probably the weakest performers.
Let me come back to this question in a minute. Now first, I would like Annelis to answer the other two questions regarding the dividend and the extraordinary results. I get back to the combined ratio in a minute.
Yes. Thank you, Tom, for the question. I will start with the question on dividend and why we think or why we are convinced to provide an even more attractive dividend policy going further. We have always produced the net economic dividend capacity. How much capacity is in all the Helvetia units? We will now focus on bringing more of this capacity to the group and therefore available for direct dividend distribution. That's one point. The other point is that as always with excess cash production, it's always a question which interest group gets how much? How much do we invest in organic growth? How much do we invest in or how much do we distribute on shareholders? How much do we need for smaller inorganic purchases?
Also these questions were discussed in detail and we decided that Helvetia is on a good position to create an even more attractive dividend policy or dividend dividend goals. We always also buy the operating cash production where you see that the dividend is covered well with operating cash production. On your question regarding the Life profit on slide 30 of the long. I mean, I think I don't have the same page numbers. There is a slight confusion, but what I will comment is the slide Life earnings by source, where you first have savings results, fee results, risk results, margin after cost, extraordinary results, and so on. The savings result was slightly better than in 2021. Why is that? Due to further reserve strengthening which created a higher savings result.
Notable as well is the higher risk result which stems mainly from, let's say, volatility in or let's say normal volatility in mortality on the Swiss balance sheet as well as in Caser at the Caser balance sheet. This led to an increase in margin after cost. In the extraordinary result, there was a strong increase compared to last year. You may remember we did quite a large reserve strengthening last year. In German, it's called the so-called change to Summenstatistik. I'm looking to Philipp Schüpbach for the English name. It was a requirement in 2021 to change the reserving of the mortality tables. Regulatory, we would have been allowed to do that over several years, but we decided to do this at once in year 2021.
This effect did not repeat, of course, in 2022 because this additional reserving has now been done and we can in that sense forget about it. This was in group life, by the way, because you asked from group life and individual life. In individual life, we strengthened a little bit the resource further. We reduced the technical rate a little bit further in Switzerland. There are other, smaller effects, so like the roll-forward effect, but that are the main drivers in the result. Of course, also is the extraordinary sale or gain of CHF 102 million from the sale of Sa Nostra, which shows up also in the extraordinary results. That would be my comment to the live results.
Okay. Thanks, Annelis. I come back to your question regarding the combined ratio. Let's turn to slide number 13. There you see that the current year claims ratio, excluding nat cats, is 58.9%. The nat cat ratio itself increased by 0.4%. Now, what are the reasons for that? The better nat cat development in Switzerland was offset by a worse nat cat development in specifically in the specialty market segment. I'm talking about Ian, I'm talking about hailstorms in Southern France, floods in South Africa, and so on. Iron specifically was a claim in the lower two-digit area. Okay.
Thank you.
I hope that helped. Yes.
It did help a little bit. If I could come back really quickly, particularly on the capital management, you've been quite clear that there is some excess capital there. How much excess capital is sitting in subsidiaries? That to me, it feels like that's a core driver of why you're changing the dividend distribution target.
No, I wouldn't say that that is the core driver. I mean, the available dividend capacity you see on this slide on net economic dividend capacity. The, the driver is more the decision or the conviction of how much do we want to distribute to shareholders or we invest in organic growth and so on. The conviction is more how can we give back some of the gain we made from the Sa Nostra sale in a sustainable way to shareholders. This, we want to do it, as we said, over the strategy period. That's why we increased the, the target on the dividends from CHF 1.5 billion to CHF 1.65 billion.
It's always a decision, how much of the created cash do you keep to invest in organic and inorganic growth, and how much do you distribute to shareholders? This has nothing to do with where the cash lies.
Okay. Thank you.
Do we have more questions?
The next question comes from the line of Jimmy Fan with UBS. Please go ahead.
Thank you for taking my questions. I have two, please. The first one related to the operating cash production. This year, you find you had a CHF 400 million number. Could you tell us how much of that CHF 400 million is from the sale of Sa Nostra Vida? Also, a related question, obviously the gap between this cash production and the dividend payment is wider than previous years. Could you tell us what's your kind of preferred use for the excess cash you are accumulating at the holding company? Second question is on growth. I guess, could you give some color on the level of re-renewal pricing, rate change that you have achieved at one in various parts of your non-life, non-life portfolio?
I think in Switzerland, your peers have said they have been able to put some pricing in for one, and also it's been very positive on the reinsurance side as well. Could you also give a bit of color in that? Thank you.
Thanks, Jimmy. I suggest that, Annelis is answering the first question, and, I'm turning to the second one afterwards.
Yes. Thanks for the question on operating cash production. Operating cash production is to cover the external dividend as well as the external coupons we pay on the outstanding debt we have. Additionally, there is a strong focus on cash remittance and therefore, yes, the, let's say, the spread between operating cash production and the required amount for dividend payment may increase in the next years. Our clear preference is that we absolutely hold to our promise to be a reliable dividend payer. As we said, we increase the dividend year-on-year except in extraordinary years. We are very determined to continue to do that. The second priority or with what is left, let's say, our priority is to invest in organic growth.
As I said, this is a bit different than, let's say, 10 years ago, as we are now not anymore constrained through, let's say, a low asset ratio. The high asset ratio lets us consider all business opportunities where we have the possibility and where we have an attractive risk-return profile. Third, of course, we as always our M&A strategy has not changed. We are continuously screening the market for attractive opportunities. These are the, yes, the different possibilities. We do not comment the part of the dividend which comes out of the Sa Nostra gain in the CHF 400 million, but it's of course in the line Europe and in the line Life.
Okay. Now let's turn to the question regarding growth. There are different growth drivers in the, in the markets of course. As I said before, as a strategic priority, we've been setting forth to be best partner for security, setting standards, and in accessibility and convenience. What does that mean? We want to be present at any point of sale where insurance needs might arise. That's why we are, you know, that's why we have many different sales channels. Of course, we have agents, of course, we have brokers, of course, we have bank channels. Apart from that, we are happy to have online sales channels and many B2B2C partners. The second point is we are benefiting from new offerings, as I said before.
The third point is that we want to grow our and we did grow our non-life business along with the increase and the development of the GDPs in the different country markets. Fourth, of course, we have to cope with the inflation. We have in the different country markets, different regimes in place of course. In some country markets, you have for the main part of the portfolio, so-called index based policies. Which means that along with the index, you can increase the premiums. Then for some parts of the portfolio, specifically in motor in Switzerland, for instance, you have this premium adjustment clauses in place, which means that you may increase the premiums. At the same time, of course, the client, the customers are, they have the right to surrender the contract.
However, we see that we have a pleasing growth rate in motor in Switzerland, which means that we are pretty strong, strongly positioned in the market. There are different elements. Of course we also are benefiting from a hard market in the specialty markets environment. We may increase the premiums in the active reinsurance. We may increase the premiums according to the cycle in the marine business. I think we did pretty well last year.
Thank you. Just a quick follow-up on the growth topic is, because last year you achieved this 9.4% growth in non-life business, which is a very healthy level, I guess, like next year, are you confident that you can grow more than this number?
We don't give any guidance with regard to growth. You know, we have a pretty challenging geopolitical environment, a challenging macroeconomic environment. We, you know, we think that we can sustainably grow our business, but I would not stick to 9.4% for this year as well.
Okay. Thank you.
Are there more questions?
We have another question from the telephone coming from the line of Peter Elliott with Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. A couple of well similar topics, please, if that's okay. Just coming back on the life result and, I mean, specifically maybe on the topic of reserve releases. I mean, it sounds like, you know, business mix was driving yours. One of your competitors last week said that, you know, guidance given to the industry had caused it to release a lot of reserves in individual business, specifically because of the higher interest rate level. I'm just wondering if you also received that guidance and whether that had an impact or, yeah, how that translated into your business. The second thing, I also just wanted to touch on the growth. Maybe you highlighted in particular, you know, your more than 20% growth in active reinsuranc e.
I think that was about 6% at the H1 stage. It seems H2, you know, it's been sort of over 30% growth. I guess that comes at a time when quite a few are trying to reduce their exposure. Obviously, you've mentioned some reasons for the growth, but I'm just wondering if you can sort of, you know, give us confidence, you know, that it's sort of growing in a controlled way. I mean, as you say, you know, probably price increases are probably to come. Specific, I know you don't give a growth outlook, specifically for that business, you know, I'm guessing we should have a bigger tailwind in 23 than 22, maybe you could comment on that.
Finally, on the IFRS 17, I'm just wondering if you can clarify what disclosure we should expect on that and when we might get it. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Peter. I suggest that Annelis is answering question number one. I then turn to question number two. Annelis gives some flavor on IFRS 17. Would you start with the life?
Yes
The first releases.
Yes. For us, there is not such an effect like the one you heard last week. This presumably has to do with how the different companies are reserving under IFRS. Some are reserving using U.S. GAAP rules. Some like Helvetia, we are using the local GAAP rules of the relevant countries. In Switzerland, the Swiss local GAAP rules and so on. For us, you would not expect the same effect as the one you have seen last week. Regarding reserve releases for us, as I said, they were, for example, from roll forward effects. In Switzerland, they are about half in individual life and half in group life. I hope this clarifies it a little bit.
It does. Yeah. Thank you very much.
Now your question regarding the active reinsurance and maybe Annelis can then add some comments. You know, we do not communicate any growth target in the active reinsurance. However, we are, of course, carefully looking at the market developments. We think that the cycle is in favor of us. At the same time, of course, we are carefully looking at our exposures in the different geographic areas and in the different business lines. We are, for instance, lowering our exposure with regard to the liability share we have in our portfolio. We are really carefully looking at the development in the RE business. Now, maybe IFRS 17.
Yes. I don't know if you have seen it, but in the financial statement, in the appendix, we did disclose some IFRS 17 transition information regarding the opening balance sheet. We plan to disclose comparatives for full year 2022 and half year 2022 in, let's say June, July of this year. What did we disclose in the financial statement? We said that upon initial application of IFRS 17 as of 1 January 2022, we expect a reduction in the shareholders' equity driven by a shift of the valuation reserve for contracts with discretionary participation features from equity under IFRS 4 to insurance liabilities under IFRS 17. This is the part I'm sure you're completely aware of it, the part of equity which moves from equity to liability under IFRS 17.
This amounts to CHF 1.8 billion or 30% of equity. We expect the remaining shareholders' equity to decrease by 5%-10% due to various effects. Also we expect a CSM, a Contractual Service Margin, an initial application of IFRS 17 in the amount of CHF 4 billion-5 billion.
Great. Thank you very much. Are there more questions?
We have a question coming from the line of Anne- Chantal Risold from Octavian. Please go ahead.
Hello, everyone. You have really an exceptional SST ratio. My question is, do you plan there or do you see possibility to re-risk or take some more risk in your asset portfolio? That's for one. On the contribution from fee business, which is the first time you disclosed this. After two years in the cycle, you have already reached your targeted 5%. Here can we see that going forward, there will also be there a possibility that you adjust your target until the end of the cycle?
Okay. Anne- Chantal, I'm answering the second question, and then Annelis comes up with answering the first one. Yes, we are carefully looking at the development of the different numbers in the new IFRS 17 framework. There will be some accounting effects also concerning the fee business. That's why this number might change. If it does, we would come up with new targets in due time. Now turning to the SST ratio, Annelis.
Yes. Yes, the SST ratio is on a very comfortable level. Regarding the asset side, your question regarding de-risking, the point or the process is that on a yearly basis, we review the strategic asset allocation of the group and decide depending on risk capacity and a lot of other considerations and constraints, how do we want to adapt the asset allocation. This process has happened last year as always, and there were slight shifts, but only small shifts in the asset allocation plan. Maybe, you also recall that with the sale of Sa Nostra, we freed up additional asset points and we are actively managing these asset points in order to invest the risk capital, not only the capital, but also the risk capital to the benefit of the shareholders.
Do not expect our SAA to change dramatically. Not at all. These are only small, slight changes. Also I want to mention here that on our slide, which concerns the sensitivities, it's way at the back on page 51, we now also introduced a line which shows the sensitivity of, for example, interest rates on the whole SST ratio. Before it was only the risk-bearing capital effect. There you, for example, see that with increasing rates, so let's say the environment we had last year, we were gaining SST points, and this was mainly due to smaller target capital. On the risk-bearing capital, this now gets a bit technical. We are very well hedged, as you see on our duration gap, which is almost zero.
The target capital has a positive interest rate sensitivity, and that was one of the main reasons why, the SST ratio is on a such high level, in the last year.
Thank you for the explanation.
Are there more questions?
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Okay. If there are no more questions, I would like to thank you for your interest in Helvetia. As always, of course, ladies and gentlemen, we would be glad to answer your questions. Whenever you have some, please do not hesitate to contact our investor relations people, our head, specifically Philippe Schüpbach, and he would be happy to answer your questions and/or to hand over to Annelis, me or somebody else in our company. I wish you a good week, and I thank you for your interest. Goodbye.
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