Ladies and gentlemen, we are very glad to welcome you all to our Helvetia Capital Markets Day. According to COVID-19, this pandemic produced many new words and/or meanings, such as hybrid. According to the dictionary, hybrid stands for two different meanings. A hybrid business is a company which has both an internet front end and its physical bricks and premises. Hence, Helvetia is holding its Capital Markets Day in a hybrid format. I say hello to all those being physically present in the Samsung Hall in Zurich, as well as to all those people joining us via video conference. Right at the beginning, I would like to present you our management team sitting here in the front rows. Since the last Capital Markets Day, there are three new colleagues who are joining Helvetia. Our new Chief Financial Officer, Annelis Lüscher Hämmerli, who joined Helvetia back in October 2020.
Martin Jara, our new CEO, Switzerland, who joined Helvetia back in May 2020. Last but not least, our new Chief Investment Officer, André Keller, who joined Helvetia in 2019 on April 1st. Let me turn to the program. After an introduction and a first view on Helvetia 2025 by our Chairwoman, we would like to present you our new acquisition in Spain, Caser. We want to elaborate our strategy, Helvetia 2025, along five different blocks. Namely, along the strategic priorities, the business segment strategies, the prerequisites for a successful accomplishment of our goals. We want to talk with you about corporate responsibility initiatives and last but not least, of course, about our financials. At the end and in between, we are ready to answer your questions in two Q&A sessions. Before diving into the program, let me just make three organizational remarks.
The first one, for all those people being present in this room, please make sure that your mobile phones are put on silent. For all those people joining us via the means of video conference, please make sure that your microphones are put on mute. Last but not least, I would like to remind you that this conference is being streamed. Now, I would like to hand over to our Chairwoman, Doris Russi Schurter. Doris unfortunately cannot be present today for personal reasons. However, she would like to share her thoughts with all of you with a video message. Please.
Ladies and gentlemen, in the next few minutes, I would like to share with you my thoughts on our new Helvetia 2025 strategy. With this strategy, we are pursuing a clear and ambitious goal. Helvetia wants to be the best partner for financial security. We want to set standards in customer convenience and customer access. I'd like to compare this ambitious goal with a mountaineering tour. Since I grew up in the mountains, this comparison is obvious to me. In fact, it takes staying power to reach a summit. The well-known successful alpine mountaineer, Reinhold Messner, once said, "When climbing a mountain, I never took two steps at once. If you want to shift boundaries, you have to do it slowly, steadily, and calmly, step by step. If you skip steps, you will stumble sooner or later." This also applies to our strategy, Helvetia 2025.
We have defined clear priorities for the path to the summit. First of all, we want to be present where insurance needs arise. We will continue to focus on the right offer and profitable growth. Finally, we want to seize the opportunities for new business models. For our three market units, Switzerland, Europe, and Specialty Markets, this means that we want to consolidate our position as the leading Swiss all-line insurer in Switzerland. The Swiss market is and remains very important to us. However, with the integration of the Spanish insurer, Caser, we succeeded in massively expanding our European business and making Europe a second pillar in our group. Helvetia will become, as a result, an even more European-oriented financial service provider. This Europeanization makes me personally very proud.
You will meet the CEO of Caser in person today and can therefore also gain direct impressions of what is a very valuable acquisition for Helvetia. Finally, in specialty markets, we are aiming for further profitable growth in international specialty insurance business and in active reinsurance. Our new strategy, therefore, is based on even broader diversification and thus sustainably increases Helvetia's success for investors, customers, employees, and all other stakeholders. A strategy always involves financial goals too. We have set these goals just as ambitiously, focusing on profitability, operational efficiency, and the sustainable ability to pay dividends. This will ensure that we remain a reliable partner for our shareholders in the future. We are aware that our mountain tour requires a lot of stamina and endurance, and we want to move forward step by step, steadily and quietly as Reinhold Messner defined it.
Thanks to a deep breath and the appropriate patience, I am sure that we will reach our goal, the summit. I would be very pleased if you would join us on this climb. I would like to thank you very much for your interest in Helvetia.
Ladies and gentlemen, allow me a short view back on Helvetia 2020. We are glad to conclude that we were keeping our promise in terms of growth, profitability, capital strength, and dividends. Of course, that's our aim for 2025 as well. We want to stick to our goals. Now, with our new strategy, Helvetia 2025, Helvetia is entering into a new era. From a Swiss insurance group with a couple of operations abroad to a financial services provider anchored in Switzerland with a strong footprint in selected European markets, global access through specialty markets, and tremendous opportunities around asset management and ecosystems.
Our group's profile changed within the last few years. Specialty markets and our European branches increased and thus also changed our group's profile. Talking about our group's profile, as you saw on this chart, the European segment increased from 32%- 38% in terms of volume within the last few years. What could better illustrate this enormous development than the acquisition of a 70% stake of Caser in Spain? Back in January 2020, just before the outbreak of COVID-19, we were announcing this transaction. Despite many challenges, but thanks to the trust of our investors, we could finance the deal and conclude the transaction by the end of June 2020. Caser did to many and to a great extent even exceed our expectations. Already for the first six months of the consolidation of this company, it paid off very well.
Who could better present this pearl in our group than our Caser CEO, Ignacio Eyries García de Vinuesa? Please, Ignacio, [Foreign language]. Welcome on stage.
Thank you very much, Philipp. For me, it's a real pleasure to introduce Caser and myself to all of you. Caser is definitely in the Spanish market, a first-tier leading actor with a well-diversified product structure as well as distribution centers. It has brings to Helvetia its strength on non-life together with bancassurance, as well as a long-standing experience on handling services related to the insurance ecosystems. As well, a very well-known, recognized, positively brand name, together with a long-lasting experience team. You can see in the chart that non-life accounts for 66% of the portfolio, and even non-life, the breakdown by products is a quite attractive one. Both multi-risk, with a stake of more than 32%, is well above the average market, but as well, the balancing presence of motor, small and medium enterprise, what we call corporate, health, and other lines brings a diversified and balanced portfolio.
As well in life, as you may see, 21% of risk premiums. In services, I would like to highlight how Caser, in the last 15 years, has developed its presence on handling first-hand services related to the insurance ecosystems. That means homeowners, mobility, life cycle, and health and self. If we get into distribution, not only bancassurance, but as well our presence in agents and brokers, more focused on agents than in brokers, as well as with special designed up-to customer agreements with large accounts brings as well a good diversification. If we get into bancassurance itself, bancassurance accounts for something like 50% of our portfolio in terms of premiums as well in profitability. It can be said without any doubt that we are one of the leading players in bancassurance, maybe among the three first one or the second one.
That has been built with a network of more than three branches, which in exclusivity distribute Caser products with a history of more than 30 years and 40 agreements where Caser has been able to adapt our business system to the specific needs of those different banks, both in terms of product, systems, remuneration, training, and most recently, through the signing of exclusivity agreements, which permitted Caser not only to guarantee relevant volumes of premiums, but as well sales under a much more profitable circumstance. That drove us as well to the co-creation of products that agreed the development of marketing campaigns and remuneration of the sales force elements.
In parallel to that bancassurance strength and non-life big and diversified presence, Caser has been able in the last years to diversify our portfolio through the building within those ecosystems I already mentioned, to the building of client-oriented products, such as the one I am introducing here. Let me explain some of the examples which are shown. Caser home insurance and Caser Mayores. It is the typical multi-risk product where it is mixed the coverage of a homeowner multi-risk with the increasing needs of aged people for services and dependency help at home within, once more, the life cycle of the persons. Together with reverse mortgage, when those people owning a home but lacking of the day-to-day cash can cash little by little their home and subsequently have a better pension scheme.
Auto insurance Coche por Coche, where the typical old car with very marginal end value in the case of a total loss, the indemnity is not paid as an amount, but as well as a similar car that the one that person is utilizing for whatever service he may need. All that diversification, together with the initial strengths I already mentioned, non-life, bancassurance, has permitted Caser, even in a year complicated as the year 2020 with the COVID slowdown of the market, to almost multiply by three the growth of the market, showing that those strengths permit us having, as I already mentioned, that first-tier leading position. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Ignacio. I would like to mention again in a nutshell, what are the three elements which make Caser a unique position in our Helvetia Group portfolio? There is the first reason, it's a very profitable insurance company with a highly profitable non-life portfolio. It is second, an insurance company which has unique market access, especially through the bancassurance channels, and above that, through new corporations and also new agents networks. It is three, a model company for integrating a whole bunch of different ecosystems initiatives into its business model, and thus scaling the insurance activities and improving and increasing the profitability. Thanks a lot, Ignacio. You have a very well-managed company. Now, let us turn to Helvetia 2025 and the current trends and opportunities. The world is changing, and so is the insurance industry, which mirrors all those developments around us.
The first one is the changing of the customer behavior. We want to even better focus on customer convenience within the next strategy period. A next trend we have to face is the question, do we have the right offerings in a low interest environment for all our customers? Given the many challenges our customers have, do we have the right answers in our product portfolio? We would like to talk about that as well. A third challenge is the pressure on margins, of course. Our answer is we want to even improve our technical excellence in order to ensure a profitable growth in our insurance portfolio, be it in life, be it in non-life. Last but not least, of course, insurance products, insurance policies might, to a certain extent, be or become a commodity.
However, we are sure that our counseling of customers, our approaching the real customer needs is paying off in profitability, in also more closeness to our clients. It's worth to invest in all those different developments. Of course, all what we do shall make sense. That's why we are really thrilled by our purpose. Life has its risks and opportunities, and we are there when it matters. To do so, we want to make sure that we are not only living our purpose, but on a day-to-day basis, pursuing our vision, which means to be the best partner for our clients. The best partner in financial security, setting standards in customer convenience and accessibility.
Of course, by the end of the day, all that we do shall also pay off in terms of financials for our investors and for our clients, because they are trusting in having their insurance policies with a company which is rock solid. Clear financial objectives and financial targets means that we want to make sure that the quality of earnings and growth is kept on a traditionally high level. We are achieving a net combined ratio between 92% and 94%, and a new business margin in life between 2% and 3%.
We want to increase our fee volume to as much as at least CHF 350 million by the end of 2025. The fee volume shall contribute to our overall group profit by at least 5%, thus helping to make our balance sheet even more resilient and mitigating our interest rate exposure in our balance sheet in the mid and long term. Furthermore, we want to realize operational efficiency gains in the sum of at least CHF 100 million. Of course, capital strength and dividends remain decisive in our industry and with Helvetia. Of course, we want to grow the business. Of course, we want to make sure that our life clients get their share. Nevertheless, we want to make sure that we keep our single A rating notwithstanding our growth.
We want to make sure that we can pay out at least CHF 1.5 billion to our shareholders over the next five years, and all that with a return on equity of between 8% and 11%. Making Helvetia 2025 a success story means living our purpose, pursuing our vision, sticking to our financial goals, of course, and making sure that overall, we are not only making happy our clients, but also our investors by ensuring the profitability of our insurance group. Now, I would like to dive into our strategic priorities. The first one is dealing with customer convenience. As I said before, the customer needs are changing over time, of course.
There is not the customer and the customer need. The customers and their needs are and remain hybrid, and it is our duty to make sure that we are coping with as many needs as possible in a reasonable way. We want to be best partner in financial security, setting standards in convenience and accessibility. What does that mean? We want to be present at all those different points of sale when insurance needs might arise. We would like to present you now at the beginning of this section, two videos. The first one dealing with Smile, the number one insurer in Switzerland, and the second one dealing with a very efficient tool for our clients in the marine insurance called PuMarSpeed. Please have a look.
Hi, my name is Pierangelo. I'm the CEO of Smile. Today, I'm going to show you why Smile is significantly contributing to Helvetia's strategic priority, customer convenience. Smile is a leading online insurer in Switzerland, the oldest insurtech, and the only insurance to be perceived by the Havas Brand Predictor study as a digital brand. From the financial point of view, we look back on a strong development over the past years and a record-breaking year in 2020, where we exceeded the top line of CHF 100 million and 150,000 customers in our portfolio without compromising on profitability, which is reflected in a strong combined ratio. Through this, we significantly contributed to Helvetia's non-life business, especially in the motor business. We have been named and awarded several times as the Netflix of insurance.
We truly believe that the only way to successfully compete in a digital environment is to reach a day-to-day relevance, just like other consumer brands as Netflix, Amazon, or Spotify. Let me now explain how we do that. First of all, and very important, customer centricity is our driver, enabled by technology and not the other way around. We redefine the user experience with the mobile phone in focus and harvest the mobile potential by being a service champion and following rigorously customer centricity, like addressing consumers by first name, introducing a subscription model, or gamification elements like Smile Drive Coach. We facilitate radical automation and turn data to value with a serverless technology and architecture in scope. We have ambitious plans, and by 2025, we aim to double our customer base without compromising on profitability. Based on our success from the past, we know we're going to deliver.
Simplicity, scalability, and customer centricity are the foundations of Smile and will drive us also in the future to harvest the pure digital potential. With a unique complementary business model to Helvetia and a differentiating value proposition, Smile does not only significantly contribute to Helvetia's strategic priority, customer convenience, but also ensures new sources of growth and income for Helvetia. Finally, thanks to being part of Helvetia, we can share our experiences across all parts of Helvetia, so that we can bring innovative approaches of Smile to scale in our core business.
My name is Pascal Barbato, and I'm responsible for the global marine business at Helvetia. Helvetia is by far the largest marine insurer in Switzerland with a range of transport insurance products tailored to the respective needs. Thanks to our international network, we offer worldwide solutions.
Our customers are logistic or transport companies, as well as manufacturers and traders with the need to ensure their own or third-party goods during transportations worldwide against loss or damage. To increase the customer convenience, satisfaction, and loyalty, according to our strategic priorities, we have developed together with our customers a modern online solution. In less than 120 seconds, our customers can insure the shipments online. Whenever they want, the system is available 24 hours, seven days a week, and worldwide. With one simple click, also an insurance certificate is produced if required. The user interface is so simple that no training at all is needed. We have integrated a speedy calculator for costs including taxes, that our customers have immediate information about the insurance premium. It is a cloud-based and future-oriented technology compatible with tablets.
Large data volumes are no problem at all, and also international insurance programs can be displayed. We have integrated compliance checks and a simple and secure login. The system can be adapted individually to all customer needs or country requirements. Even an interface can be created for other systems to avoid double entry. Hundreds of satisfied users are already ensuring thousands of transports with PuMarSpeed at Helvetia. For the future, we will further develop the system with new features and integrate new business lines like art insurance. PuMarSpeed is a unique solution and boosts customer convenience and therefore increases customer retention.
Apart from all those easy access tools which should make the life of our customers more convenient, we are also developing more and more tailor-made insurance products with added value. Here is an example of Helvetia France, a geolocation tool in yacht insurance. What is all that for?
It first helps all our clients prevent their damages because they know where their yachts are right at the thunderstorms. At the same time, it helps Helvetia mitigate their risks and better monitor the risks we have out there on the high sea. Now, let me wrap up. What we want to do around customer convenience is we want to reduce complexity. At the same time, we are sure that we are enhancing customer experience, and by increasing efficiency, not only helping our clients to have a more convenient access to Helvetia, but for Helvetia to lower its costs. By the end of the day, we want to live our brand promise: simple, clear Helvetia. All that shall, of course, pay off in terms of financials. Happy clients are clients who stay with Helvetia. Happy clients are clients who we can benefit from in terms of cross-selling.
Happy clients are usually clients who help us keep a high profitability. By becoming more and more efficient, we are lowering our cost base and thus helping ensure our profitability and at the same time giving our customers the good feeling that they're insured with a good, rock-solid company. By the end of the day, we want to make sure that all this profitability helps to pay our dividends and to keep Helvetia a rock-solid company with a single A rating, of course. Let me turn to the second strategic priority, to the right offering. As I said before, fit-for-purpose offering is key in order to make sure that our clients have the feeling and the security that they're insured with the right company. In a low-interest rate environment, it is a challenge to have this fit-for-purpose offerings, of course.
We want to make sure that our products and services are part of a comprehensive offering for our clients, that they come from a single source, and that this solution pays off not only for the clients, but also for the company. Now, talking about life business, I would like now to hand over to our Head of Pension and Life Business Switzerland, Hedwig Ulmer, and to André Keller, our Chief Investment Officer. They're interviewed by Susanne Tengler, our Head of Investor Relations.
Hello, Hedwig and Andr é . It's a pleasure to have you here. I would like to take the opportunity to talk with you about the life business in light of the low interest environment. I have prepared a few questions, and I'm curious what's Helvetia's strategy going forward and what is our value proposition. My first question is for André. The low interest environment is putting pressure on life insurance and therefore also on Helvetia. How is Helvetia responding to the low interest rate environment on the investment side?
It is true. The low interest rate environment makes it difficult to generate attractive investment returns by historical standards. For this reason, we started to diversify the investment portfolio more broadly in recent years and to increase the share of private market investments, mainly investments in real estate, infrastructure, and private debt. Even in the low interest rate environment, these asset classes still offer attractive return opportunities, especially compared to traditional investments.
Hedwig, what are the consequences of the low interest environment in terms of products and offerings?
On the offering side, we initiated the shift away from classic guarantees to investment-linked products years ago, both in private pension and in occupational pension. In the occupational pension benefit scheme, around half of the insured persons are already in so-called semi-autonomous solutions. This development will continue. We have also adjusted the occupational pension scheme as far as possible to the economic reality with low interest rates and increasing life expectancy and, for example, lowered conversion rates. Helvetia is first mover here. The other insurance companies are now following.
What are the opportunities of this situation?
The trend towards semi-autonomous solutions mentioned by Hedwig gives us the opportunity to make our investment expertise available to third parties, whether for our own offers at Helvetia Collective and Investment Foundations or for other collective foundations.
The state pension provision is perceived as insecure. The benefits of the occupational benefit scheme are increasing. As a consequence, the importance of private pension solutions is increasing. We fill this gap with savings and risk solutions. I see enormous opportunities for us here.
What specific positioning does Helvetia want to pursue in this environment then?
We offer life and pension solutions that enable our customers to protect the ones they love and a very free and independent life from a financial perspective. We offer products and solutions that give customers the necessary leeway to adapt them very flexibly according to their life situation. In doing so, we will increasingly combine asset management offers with classic insurance policies.
Naturally, we support the development towards integrated investment and pension solutions. With our Allegra Fonds, we have developed a first solution for different risk profiles. With the Helvetia Swiss Property Fund, we also launched our own real estate fund in 2020, which we will continue to expand in the coming years. The focus on investment solutions and services for pension and third-party customers will open up a new source of income for Helvetia in the fee business. These fee streams offer an attractive complement to insurance business due to their relative stability and high capital efficiency.
Another trend is sustainability. What is Helvetia doing here?
At Helvetia, we have increased our focus on integrating sustainability aspects into our investment activities, both in our own investment portfolios and in the product range in the area of pensions. For example, we launched Fair Future Lane in Austria, a unit-linked life insurance policy that invests exclusively in sustainable securities.
My last question is for you, Hedwig. Are you sticking to full insurance in the occupational benefit scheme?
We are convinced of the benefits of the comprehensive security of full insurance for a small and medium enterprise, but the price for the security is currently high in the low interest rate environment and the legal framework conditions. We therefore also see the advantages of semi-autonomous solutions. These offer clients with a good risk profile the opportunity to benefit from rising capital markets. Our customers have the choice between semi-autonomous solutions and full insurance, which is very much appreciated.
Hedwig, André, thank you very much for your time and your answers.
Hedwig just mentioned it, small and medium-sized enterprises are key for Helvetia. Why do we think that this target group is of a big value for us? We think that the SMEs are more and more in a sandwich position between the retail customers and the big corporates, and that's where our value proposition shall jump in. We have for you three different use cases from Switzerland, Austria, and from the third one, you will see it's like a surprise, where you see what our SME offerings specifically add as a value for our customers. Have a look.
My name is Adrian Kollegger. I'm the Head of Non-Life Switzerland. More than 90% of the registered companies in Switzerland have less than 10 employees. SME customers have other priorities than insurance. They are not experts, and insurance is a low-interest product for them.
Therefore, they rely on their advisor, and convenience is key. With more than 160,000 SME customers, the commercial non-life business is attractive for Helvetia. We are a strong partner for SMEs. We have a growing market share, see a high customer loyalty, and achieve good profitability, and there is further potential for profitable growth. To achieve this, we deliver on our strong proposition roadmap. We have launched a new SME service product that addresses customer needs much more precisely. With the service product, we are able to increase average premium per customer and differentiate ourselves in the market. In January, we started a strategic partnership with the IFJ, the Institute for New Entrepreneurs. This partnership is unique in the industry and further strengthens our position in the SME segment as expert partners. In late summer, we are going to launch our SME ecosystem, Atlanto.
Atlanto offers an integrated platform and marketplace for Swiss SMEs.
With this offering, we allow SME to reduce administrative workload and to have access to value-adding services. Atlanto is a unique value proposition in the Swiss financial sector, and we are very keen to its launch. We'll provide you with more information as soon as Atlanto has started.
Hello from Vienna. My name is Thomas Neusiedler, and I am the CEO of Helvetia Austria. Within our strategic target to deliver the right offering for our customers, we in Austria are focusing on small commercial business. This is based on our good positioning with our distribution partners, which we have built up over the last few years with the best partner approach. We are now further enhancing this market access to expand our SME business. The focus is on small businesses in almost all sectors, but also on larger commercial enterprises with a turnover of EUR 1 million and more.
SMEs with special insurance needs, such as cyber or special segments such as marine companies and SMEs with a need for transport insurance. Therefore, we have developed new products and services. We, in addition, are building on our existing strengths, close relationships thanks to our decentralized structure, building up SME knowledge among our sales partners, top service, and simple processes. In addition, we are increasingly relying on digitalization and automatization. This is how we differentiate ourselves in the market. Sharpening our profile in the commercial insurance segment will help us to deliver the Helvetia 2025 strategic ambition.
Hello, I'm Vincent Letac, CEO of Helvetia France. Until 2015, Helvetia France was positioned as a pure marine and transport insurer, known to be the number two in France and with the widest scope of offer. Helvetia considers the SME market as a profitable growth market. With a 20% market share and the best technical results among our peers, Helvetia was in good starting position to widen our offer outside of marine and transport to be able to promote ourselves as a multi-specialist insurer for medium-sized companies. Between 2016 and 2021, we have continuously extended our product range in order to best serve our customers and distribution community of 3,000 brokers. We aim to be preferred by the customers and the distribution partners for our excellent service based on knowledgeable and dedicated staff. We will also improve our position as a provider of international programs.
Our efforts have paid off, and our business volume has increased from CHF 235 million in 2018 to CHF 337 million in 2020. While our combined ratio has declined below 93%, showing that our technical results are excellent and that our cost ratios have remained well under control. We project that by 2025, our business volume will increase significantly, that our new business lines will constitute 50% of our business, and that we will be transacting with more than 4,000 brokers.
Ladies and gentlemen, you see that our SME initiatives throughout the group are amazingly underway, especially the last one we brought you as a surprise from France. Of course, all those initiatives shall be paying off in terms of financials. We are sure that the capital-light products help us to mitigate our risks in the balance sheet we have regarding the interest rate exposure. At the same time, it helps our clients to benefit from new, of course, value propositions. For the SME business, we are sure that this profitable customer segment is very promising for Helvetia because it is a segment where the personal counsel, be it by brokers, be it by agents, is still of a great value. There are not robots yet counseling our clients. Let me turn to the next strategic priority. It deals with the profitable growth.
If we want to develop our group, it is decisive to profitably grow our business. We want to benefit from our number three position in Switzerland as an online insurance company. We want to benefit from our strong footprint in the European countries in order to make the European segment the second strong pillar in our group. We want to benefit from the global access in specialty markets in order to make sure that we benefit in ACTI reinsurance and in many specialty lines such as engineering, marine, and art.
I now ask my three colleagues, Markus Gemperle, CEO Europe, Martin Jara, CEO Switzerland, and David Ribeaud, CEO Specialty Markets, to present their respective strategic plans. Please go ahead. Thank you.
In Switzerland, we pursue the strategic priority of profitable growth by increasing customer value and by actively managing our margins in product and in portfolios. How do we increase customer value? By getting more customers for Helvetia and by getting more Helvetia per customer. It all starts with the value proposition and the differentiation by customer intimacy and by customer convenience. Based on this, we can go and exploit the full potential of the omni-channel approach we got in Switzerland. This means simple sales processes and simple cross-selling processes based on and steered by advanced analytics that tell us exactly when it's best and how it's best to address our customers with our value propositions. To get the full potential of the growth and of the increase of the customer value, we also have to expand in our customer access to new customers by partnerships.
You will hear more about this in the B2B2C section afterwards. How do we optimize our margins? This on one hand means a clear focus and also a rigidity on cost management, overall on administrative cost. On the other hand, we have to stay on top of the market regarding our technical capabilities in pricing, portfolio management, and in claims handling. Martin Tschopp, our Chief Customer Officer in Switzerland, and Adrian Kollegger, Head of Non-Life Switzerland, will go into these topics now. Let's have a look.
Hi there. My name is Martin. I'm the CCO at Helvetia Switzerland, and a member of its executive committee. Profitable growth in our core insurance businesses, life and non-life, is a key strategic priority. Top-line increase stems from three main sources, pushing cross-selling and upselling to existing customers, achieving higher retention by superior customer satisfaction, and attracting new customers, of course. Rigorous outside-in thinking, combined with a data-driven approach and our distribution power, in particular, our strong tied agent network, are the foundation of our growth agenda. We aspire to differentiate ourselves through customer intimacy and convenience. Intimacy results from personalized customer address and customized solutions. Convenience from seamless end-to-end customer journeys and intuitive interactions at every touchpoint. I would like to illustrate the described approach with two specific examples.
At Helvetia, for instance, we launched a marketing campaign focused on pension planning, which was built on both our capabilities in data analytics and our tied agent sales force. Leads were sourced and pre-qualified by our data analytics team, while segment-specific go-to-market was designed by the marketing folks. The final results were convincing. We were able to increase conversion rates from leads to closing by an impressive 30%. As part of our mobile-first strategy at Smile, a lifestyle app was introduced. In addition to pure insurance functionalities, the app enables payment and mobility services. Drive Coach, for example, is an add-on service which analyzes drive style of a user, i.e., speed, acceleration, and braking. Collected data is processed real time, and an algorithm scores the driving and gives specific feedback on drive behavior.
Good driving is rewarded with Smile points, which can be exchanged to cash or donated to a charity. As a result, the customer considers the interaction with the app as meaningful, which increases loyalty of existing customers and hopefully attracts new ones. Both examples illustrate nicely that analytics is neither intuition nor gut feel. It is the result of consistent data gathering and rigorous number crunching. Consequent scaling of gained insights in all distribution channels is a key contribution to profitable growth.
My name is Adrian Kollegger. I am the Head of Non-Life Switzerland. The Swiss insurance market is quite saturated. Increasing competition puts further pressure on our margins. The digital transformation changes our business model. Cost discipline is of utmost importance, and the use of data will be more important than ever. With our non-life technical excellence program, we exploit the potential of data, stabilize and selectively improve our margins, and assure competitiveness. The program is based on two pillars, pricing underwriting portfolio management, as well as advanced claims management. Our technical pricing already integrates internal and external risk, customer, and market data. To stabilize or selectively increase our margins, we are building new pricing mechanisms using analytical capabilities. This strategy has been jointly developed with Smile. We are able to benefit from Smile's specific experience in this area and can scale it in our core business across all distribution channels.
Advanced claims management includes our efforts in digitization, automation, and straight-through processing, combined with the growing use of data and analytics. A good example for this is the automated processing of cost estimates submitted by the body shops in case of a motor claim. Cost estimates are processed automatically. An analytics service has been implemented to make the triage between straight-through processing and individual reviews by an expert. Through machine learning, we trained the service and achieved best results in detecting irregularities. We are more efficient and achieve a significant contribution to margin improvement. Next focus areas to further strengthen our excellent market position are fraud and the claims partner management. To summarize, thanks to our technical excellence program, we address all potentials to stabilize and strengthen our margins in the Swiss portfolio and thus enable profitable growth over the strategy period.
Since deregulation of our industry, we have learned that, of course, innovation in product and services, they are needed. They are not enough to sustainably differentiate in the markets. Therefore, Helvetia has implemented a kind of a change program, which we call the best partner approach, with the aim to create a specific proximity, also loyalty, to our sales partners. This means a lot in the organization, overcoming silos, a lot of commitment, a lot of accessibility also, especially in areas which are not used to work like this. If you are a successful sales partner at Helvetia, you are not just talking with some regional deputy sales manager, let's say, in Upper Bavaria. You are talking with the responsible manager in the German management team or even the CEO because you are important.
In addition to these, let's say, cultural elements, we of course, are also delivering hard facts like digital platforms, technical knowledge, local support, or specific offerings, let's say for SMEs and their owners. All this with the aim to create a alignment of interest together with our sales partners, an alignment of objectives on profitability of the portfolios, targeted segments, or growth to sustainably develop our core business. We have implemented that best partner approach in all our country markets, and I would now like to share with you a couple of examples out of different markets and different channels. First, starting with Germany and Austria.
My name is Volker Steck. Since January 2015, I have been the CEO of Helvetia Germany. I'm delighted to be with you today and to have the opportunity to share our ideas on how to sustain and accelerate profitable growth.
In addition to our tied agents who are part of our Helvetia family, we also work closely together with brokers who are our main sales channel. Today, I am focusing on our independent friends, namely brokers, with our best partner concept. All of our sales partners benefit from this. Those who work more intensely together with us benefit even more. Depending on the size and quality of their business volume, best partners gain more individualized services and comprehensive support. Brokers expect quick and high-quality responses to inquiries. This will be reached by key accounts and sales, fast policy issuing, quick claim settlement, and direct access to our team of underwriting specialists. Highly digitalized processes allow us to serve a growing number of brokers without losing personal contact. Individually personalized service and digitization complement each other perfectly.
In summary, fast response times, our personalized service, and best fitting offer, combined with competitive pricing, are an important argument for being a best partner with Helvetia Germany. We measure the success of a best partner approach by clear goals. We want to be ranked among the top five insurance partners for our targeted brokers based on sales volume. Thanks to our approach, we aim to expand our business in the next five years sustainably. Thank you for your attention and your interest in Helvetia Germany.
My name is Thomas Neusiedler of Helvetia Austria. Regarding our strategic target, profitable growth, Helvetia 2025, I'm pleased to present to you how we apply the best partner approach and what contribution we are making to the strategic initiative of profitable growth. Helvetia Austria offers independent agents various benefits. We stand out due to our short decision-making paths. Thanks to our size, we are very agile and can respond to agents' needs. This is particularly interesting for those agents who want a great deal of freedom to make decisions when advising customers so that they can play to their own strength. This best partner approach convinces many agents. In recent years, we have noticed a great willingness to transfer entire P&C portfolios to Helvetia. We have developed a structured approach to ensure the quality of the transferred portfolios and at the same time increase the loyalty of the agents.
This approach has been very successful. Helvetia Austria has been able to grow significantly above the market in each of the past years while steadily improving the combined ratio. For this strategic period, we have set ourselves the goal of growing again while maintaining the same profitability. This is our contribution to the strategic priority of profitable growth.
Of course, we have also implemented the best partner approach in Spain with excellent results at Helvetia Seguros within their agents channel, always a clearly best-in-class approach for bancassurance at Caser. On top of this, we are now approaching the Spanish market with two entities. The two CEOs, Iñigo Soto and Ignacio Eyriès, will now explain a bit more in detail how this works, especially also in the fields of digitization, product offering, and a bit specific, but for us, very important because very profitable, the burial insurance business. Both companies already today are very well-positioned.
Good afternoon. My name is Iñigo Soto. I am the CEO of Helvetia Seguros España, which is a company that has, among other values, a large and very loyal network of agents and brokers that has been consolidated over the years. The strong and close relationship that the company has with its employees and that network is our best competitive advantage. It is also our base for the ambitious targets of profitable growth that we have in the coming years.
My name is Ignacio Eyriès . I am the Managing Director of Caser Seguros. Caser grew together with the Spanish former saving banks, becoming a leader on the non-life bancassurance distribution. Nowadays, Caser has developed altogether agents, brokers, large accounts, and any type of distribution, having partners all around the different alternatives of our industry. In parallel, Caser has developed its presence in a large account of related to insurance services together with their life cycle. In other words, certified homes, hospitals, dental cabinets, the service and maintenance of buildings, and any added value related to the different ecosystems where insurance is present.
Built mainly in our network of agents and brokers, Helvetia Seguros has a strong competitive position in the burial insurance business, where we also have a significant volume of premiums. Through a competitive, innovative, and very profitable product, we have managed to reach a wide and diverse target in our market.
Caser's presence in burial has a long story. Coming from an historic agency network from a company Caser did buy. In the recent years, we as well developed our presence on telemarketing, bancassurance, and agreements with large accounts. That means that altogether, we can profit from the critical mass of having a relevant enough size of market presence in burial insurance.
The combinations of the volume of Helvetia and Caser will make the cost of the burial services more efficient. I am convinced that thanks to this cooperation, the burial business will bring steady and profitable growth far above our competitors in the coming years.
Caser has developed a unique expertise in anything that has to do with employee benefits, working compensation, and as well, pensions. Most recently, with the evolution of the markets and the habits of the consumers, we did introduce our Caser Asesores Financieros addressed to give information and to accelerate our clients on how to build the best offer.
In Helvetia Seguros all of the years, we have developed plans to train our agents in the fields of saving life business, also trying to give to our customer a personalized advice. Now we are working together to transfer the Caser pension capacities also to Helvetia network, what will bring us a better insurance offer in this kind of product. For the future, we have clear that altogether we can develop both niche strategies for given segments of products and clientele, as well as putting together our strengths, having a much more broad presence on the highly attractive high-income individuals savings management. Additionally, in the area of e-business, both Caser and Helvetia have developed their digital channels, offering an interesting variety of products.
We are aware that the change in customer behaviors requires us to develop a multi-channeling strategy, giving the customer, the users, the possibility to freely flow from one digital channel to a physical one, maintaining the features of the products and the price offers, and also giving priorities to our existing network of broker agents and bancassurance.
Our shared willingness to develop and investigate new opportunities of developing our presence based on digitalization drives Caser to investigate tie-ups with insurtechs, with online brokers, and new actors presence through the digital channel. That is fully compatible with our presence on traditional insurance commercialization, as well as with our will on keeping on developing the related services industry.
In specialty markets, we contribute to profitable growth by further developing existing business on the one hand, and by underwriting new risks in selected niches on the other hand. Leveraging our existing infrastructure and experience, we are selectively expanding our product offering. This leads to a diversified growth, an improvement market positioning, as well as a greater cross-selling potential. A few examples are the introduction and ongoing development of aviation, space, cyber, as well as dedicated coverages for renewable energies. We are developing our niches internationally, which we champion with a dedicated presence in London, in Singapore for Asia, and in Miami for Latin America. These offices put us closer to the relevant customers and risks and enable us to capture the significant growth potential available globally.
The business is acquired in close collaboration with our business units here in Switzerland, hence allowing us to deploy the full expertise and technical excellence of our group in all regions. Our longstanding lines of business also offer a great potential, in particular, in a currently very favorable market environment. We can indeed increase our shares on existing policies, write business we previously turned down because of unsatisfactory rates and conditions, or newly see thanks to our much better profile as an international player. Reto Koller, Head of Active Reinsurance, will now give you in his video statement an overview of how we are growing profitably in reinsurance. Other examples pertaining to engineering and aviation can be found in the Capital Market Day section of our website.
Hello and welcome. My name is Reto Koller. I'm the CEO of the Active Reinsurance department at Helvetia.
I joined Helvetia in October 2019. Before that I worked for more than 25 years in the reinsurance industry in various roles and functions on the buying and selling side of reinsurance. I have the pleasure in the next couple of minutes to talk to you about our contribution to the group's overall 2025 strategy. The focus lies on the topic of growth. Before doing that, I would like to answer the question. Why is Helvetia active in the assumed reinsurance business at all? On one side, it gives us access to international risks which are complementary to Helvetia's other activities. On the other side, we are able to contribute to the sustainable profitability of the group.
Active reinsurance writes a business volume of around CHF 730 million per year, and with that, we are responsible for 50% of the business originating within Specialty Markets. That's a clear demonstration of our importance to the overall international footprint of Helvetia. Let's move on to the 2025 strategy and how do we fit into that. We have started to being a following line reinsurer, and we will continue doing that. We have also been on an expansion strategy for the last couple years, and we will also continue doing that. The key focus for the next five years lies on the diversification of our portfolio. How do we do that? We have specifically specified five initiatives which help us to achieve that overall goal. Those five activities can be clustered in two categories.
One is the geographic dimension, and the other one is the product dimension. On the geographic dimension, we have the leverage aspect in mind when it comes to the diversification of our footprint in the emerging markets. That's Latin America and Asia. There we are leveraging existing platforms we have there in Singapore and Miami. On the other side, we have intensified our activities in the European areas, where we are underrepresented in certain areas like the Central and Eastern Europe part, as well as the Nordics. On the product side, we have clearly enhanced our activities and capabilities in the NatCat side, but we also have enhanced our capabilities in the biometric life re segment, and we would like to benefit from the attractive opportunities in the specialty lines.
With all that, we are able to produce a very consolidated business approach, and we are able to continue with the risk portfolio diversification, and which helps us to continue with our profitability. What's our ambition for the future and how can we succeed? Well, we aim to execute on our 2025 strategy by living up to our vision of being a long-term, value-oriented, technical competent reinsurer. We are supported by that by the Helvetia strong balance sheet and also by the experience and expertise of our employees. Together with that and our product dimensions, we feel that we have a convincing storyline to tell to our clients, and therefore we are able to succeed there. We also are currently benefiting from the favorable conditions in the reinsurance market globally. That is in particular on the rate side, but also on the terms and conditions side.
With all of that, we are convinced that we will succeed in the future.
Thanks to all of you. We are sure, and I mentioned it before, that profitably growing our insurance business is the backbone of our group, of course. We have to question ourselves, what is the profit contribution of all those different initiatives? The contribution lies in, first, the quality of earnings. It is decisive to even better manage our insurance portfolios in all the different countries, be it in non-life or life by, for instance, facing margin pressure, by new means of technical excellence, as we saw before. It is decisive to make sure that our portfolio, be it life, be it non-life, or be it the whole portfolio, is and remains well-balanced.
It is key, of course, to improve our operational efficiency in order to make sure that our backbone, the insurance portfolios, remain in best shape. Let us turn to the fourth strategic priority. It deals with the new opportunities. Of course, you seldom see in a balance sheet of insurance company a line which reads research and development. We at Helvetia, we are sure that the recipes of today might not be the recipes of tomorrow. That is why we want to explore new business opportunities anchored in a profitable insurance business with a resilient balance sheet. We have to make sure that we are facing the future and its tremendous opportunities around, for instance, ecosystems and asset management. What does that mean?
We want in different pillars go forward in trying new business models, in looking for new opportunities, and of course, in integrating all those new models into our core business. The first example we would like to share with you is the ecosystem Home and its anchor, MoneyPark in Switzerland. You will see in this video clip Martin Tschopp, our Chief Customer Officer and the Chairman of MoneyPark, together with Stefan Heitmann, MoneyPark's CEO and Founder.
Hi, my name is Martin. I'm the Chief Customer Officer at Helvetia Switzerland and the Chairman of the Board of Directors at MoneyPark. A key strategic thrust of Helvetia is to tap into new revenue sources adjacent to its core insurance businesses in life and non-life. As a spearhead to develop a corporate ecosystem around customer needs related to privately owned property, Helvetia acquired a majority stake in MoneyPark back in 2016. I would like to hand over now to Stefan, who will give you more background to our joint strategic vision.
Hello, my name is Stefan. I'm the Founder and CEO of MoneyPark. I have the pleasure to briefly share with you the very strong development of the last year, as well as our vision for the future. As Martin just mentioned, since 2016, Helvetia is majority owner of MoneyPark. MoneyPark is the anchor of the Helvetia ecosystem Home. We fit together very well, which benefits our customers, Helvetia's and MoneyPark's. We are closely interlinked in our core areas of expertise, mortgage advice, mortgage-related pension planning, and real estate. The year 2020 has shown that the ecosystem with MoneyPark as a strong anchor is already starting to prove itself very well. Despite COVID-19, it was MoneyPark's best business year yet.
Last year, we brokered well over CHF 3 billion mortgages from our over 150 different banking and mortgage providers out of our 20 branches, and together with our 300+ colleagues. The fact that demand for homeownership and the desire for a house is so high, especially in the current situation, has certainly helped us here. In 2020, we also took the next big step in our short history. We got directly into the business of supporting our clients in buying and selling real estate. Why? First, because the same values that guide us are still lacking in today's real estate market: transparency, independence, convenience, and also because we have thousands of customers looking to buy and tens of thousands that we financed over the time, some of them will eventually want to sell as well. We have created Switzerland's first big data platform, currently unique in its kind.
Compared to other offerings and platforms on the market, ours is by far the most developed and comprehensive, and we are constantly expanding it. We're currently unique in this market, and our offer provides a completely new type of real estate and mortgage brokerage services, helping customers from buying to owning and to selling, from price assessment to value development, from searching to financing. Going forward, we want to become the number one choice for any customer in Switzerland dreaming of their own house, and we want to be the number one choice for our customers in terms of getting all the information and all the data he or she may need to make his or her decisions. We want MoneyPark to become the information powerhouse in the Swiss real estate and banking market.
In doing so, we connect previously separated worlds and break down silos in the property owner's customer journey. Helvetia is a key partner for us in this journey. We see great potential going forward in this partnership. Many Helvetia customers deal with real estate. Many of them have homeownership issues and at some point, have questions concerning their homes. Thanks to the cooperation between MoneyPark and Helvetia, they will soon receive independent advice also in this regard. This is what MoneyPark is all about.
New opportunities. Apart from orchestrating an ecosystem home in Switzerland, Caser, as we've heard several times this afternoon, is orchestrating its own ecosystem around health and care in Spain, thus addressing new customer needs of an aging population, combining their needs with traditional insurance solutions and making a difference in the market. Have a look at the next video clip, how our people in Spain are orchestrating their specific ecosystem, health and care.
Good afternoon. My name is Miguel Azpeitia. I am the health business manager at Caser. My responsibility comprises the health insurance, our main activity in the field, but also all those other that complement and enhance it, what we call the health ecosystem. Let us start with the opportunity we foresee. Aging population and medical innovation will make us more relevant for the future. This context, providing complete services to our clients, forces us to go beyond insurance. This more customer-centric approach makes a difference in our value proposal. Health insurance complement the public system in two principal ways: faster access and personalized attention. Only 1/5 of the Spanish population have a private health insurance. To give access to more people, we have a product for every need. A balanced omni-channel distribution through banks, agents, brokers, direct sales, and affinities is a company's strength.
It also allows us to get to all the different types of clients. Focusing on families and SMEs requires an efficient communication with clients. Health products involve more than 20 x more frequent contacts than other insurances. Our Caser Health hub is in the epicenter of this servicing strategy. In telemedicine, medicine comes first. An actual medical center has an integrated team under the supervision of a competent medical manager. The access to patients' medical records, coordinated care, including medication, prescription, and control, a complete virtual hospital. Teleconsultation, video consultation, and medical chat are all different modalities of connection, but all be supported by the same medical staff. A powerful tool all along the care cycle from prevention to long-term care. Health insurance marketing has two implications worth to consider. Firstly, it's you and your family who will receive the care included.
Secondly, it has plenty of very important details to explain. Specialization is crucial. By deploying our own sales network, Caser has been able to focus on selected markets looking for growth potential and profitability. It also permits us concentrated effort in specific products, segments, and campaigns. The network is integrated by more than 250 tied agents working from 12 branches, contributing 25% of our sales. There's a great opportunity for insurance companies in dental care, not being covered by the public system. Private market is a large one, more than EUR 800 million and expanding thanks to the medical innovation, the longevity, increasing interest for oral health, and aesthetics. Seven years ago, we started deploying our own dental clinics chain, now integrated by 22 of them, to help develop dental insurance. More than 60,000 clients benefit from the best dental treatments through it.
Not everything can be easily included in an insurance. Caser can help with those other health interests, fertility, nutrition, wellness, physical activity, genetics, and many others. As a membership advantages club pushes two main goals, increasing loyalty of our health clients, being more present in their life, and making easier the cross-selling, permitting motor, home, or life clients approach to our health services. To make possible the use of private health with no insurance, more than 80 hospitals partner with us for a real turnkey service, coordinating the previous checks, the surgeon, operations theater, anesthetics, hospital, and post-surgical recovery, always with the best professionals and resources, fair and closed price, warranty, and support. Finally, we can conclude with our ecosystem model, insurance plus services equals more health. This is how the health ecosystem works, every part supporting each other.
Ladies and gentlemen, new business opportunities. Managing an insurance company also means thinking about what the future could look like, what new customer needs could look like, what our industry could look like. That's why we were investing and setting up a venture fund a couple of years ago. The Helvetia Venture Fund gives us access to new business ideas, new people, and new future. Have a look at the video clip of Michael Wieser, our managing partner for the Helvetia Venture Fund.
Startups are a driving force in global innovation. The Helvetia Venture Fund invests in early-stage startups that use new technologies, enter new markets, and provide new customer experiences relevant to Helvetia's core business. In general, Helvetia Venture Fund aims for a minority stake and invests on average between CHF 500,000 and CHF 2 million per financing round. Out of the 16 investments we have made so far, let me briefly introduce you to one. With FAAREN, Helvetia can increase its reach into the upcoming car subscription market.
Hi, my name is Daniel. I'm one of the founders of FAAREN. FAAREN enables automotive companies to offer car subscription services. We do this by offering a white label solution and a marketplace. For consumers, it's very important that car subscription means that it's an all-inclusive fee, and this also means that insurance is part of the all-in fee. This is why we are very lucky to work with the Helvetia Venture Fund as a VC investor, but also with the Helvetia Insurance Company as a pan-European corporation partner for the insurance part of this important topic.
The investment in FAAREN was made a few weeks ago. FAAREN and Helvetia are currently initiating the cooperation Daniel mentioned. FAAREN is a good example of how we take advantage of new opportunities. The investment gives us access to the car subscription market, which has gained massively in importance over the last year. After four years of operation, we are on track with our strategic goal to partner with a number of technology firms and to enable more future revenue for Helvetia. In addition, the fund also pursues financial goals. The Helvetia Venture Fund is performing well within good venture capital benchmarks. In the years ahead, we'll continue to focus on insurtech and proptech, and we'll increase our sourcing activities in Spain. In this way, we take advantage of new opportunities.
Life is actually full of risks and opportunities, and we want to be there when it matters, when new insurance needs might arise. It might be at the point of sale of a mortgage, of a car, or of a consumer good. That's why we were investing quite a lot in our B2B2C initiatives. Daniel Signer, the Head of Partnerships at B2B2C in Switzerland, is sharing in the next video clips a couple of his thoughts, also talking about a pioneer cooperation with the car of the year, Polestar.
My name is Daniel Signer, and I'm responsible for the B2B2C business of Helvetia, where we integrate our offering into the customer journeys of partners such as Media Markt, Polestar, or furniture retailers. Let me briefly show you how Helvetia is exploiting new opportunities in the B2B2C market and make sure that we are there when it comes to insurance, consequently thought from a customer perspective. How does this market actually work?
B2B2C models make tailor-made insurance products available to end consumers at the point of sale. Helvetia is therefore cooperating with partners like vendors or manufacturers and is thus present whilst the need to protect a good is greatest. This market is becoming increasingly important. On the one hand, because it allows vendors to offer additional service components to the customer. On the other hand, digitalization simplifies the sale of products by a third party. Helvetia offers innovative and tailor-made insurance products for goods and services in different industries, as for example, for electronic goods or sports equipment, amongst many others. In April, we entered into a cooperation with the Swedish electric car manufacturer Polestar in the Swiss market. Helvetia's motor vehicle insurance can now be concluded directly via Polestar's digital sales platform.
With this cooperation, Helvetia is also successfully positioning itself in the area of motor vehicles, a market that will change accordingly in the coming years as a result of changing mobility needs. Thanks to Helvetia Liechtenstein, it is our USP in the market that we can offer our partners tailor-made insurance products for their products across Europe and in Switzerland as well. Until the end of the strategic period, our ambition is to continue to grow profitably and to benefit from the increasing attractiveness and relevance of the market. A lean organization with minimal staff requirements allows us to ensure great economies of scale, and the very capital-light portfolio delivers positive results regarding return on risk capital. We will continue to expand data analysis skills and technical excellence to ensure that we deliver sustainable, profitable growth in this very promising part of Helvetia's business.
As you can see, this market is gaining importance and is very attractive. Helvetia is ideally positioned to take advantage of this new opportunity.
Ladies and gentlemen, of course, you could challenge all that and ask us, what's the burn rate of all that, of all those initiatives you're undertaking? We are not talking about burn rates. We are talking about profit contribution around all those different initiatives, starting with Smile, which is not a startup burning any money, but a number one insurance solution in Switzerland with a combined ratio below 90% and thus contributing to our overall profit. Talking about new business ideas, of course, it also pays off in getting new ideas, in getting new business models.
We want to make sure that all those initiatives are earning as much as at least CHF 350 until the end of 2025, and that the profit contribution is at least 5% to the overall group's profit. Let me quickly summarize. We were starting with the presentation of Caser, our new pearl in Spain, which is a very profitable insurance company, furthermore, having tremendous opportunities around its ecosystems, health, and care. Down there as well in Spain, this ecosystem is not coming out of any fantasy. It is working and generating profits. We then moved on in exploring our four strategic priorities, customer convenience, profitable growth, the right offering, and new business opportunities. Before having a break, we would now like to open for your questions. For that, I hand over to Susanne Tengler.
Thank you, Philipp. Ladies and gentlemen, you will now have the opportunity to ask questions on our strategic priorities. We have scheduled about 10 minutes for this session. I kindly ask everyone who is going to ask a question to introduce themselves by name. In order to give as many participants as possible the opportunity to ask questions, we kindly ask you only to ask one question at a time. We will start here in the room and then post the Q&A session to the live stream. In the live stream, I ask everybody who wants to ask a question to raise his or her hand, and please turn your camera on. We will start here with the questions in the room, and I would like to open the Q&A session to you. Who is going to ask the first question? Anne-Chantal, please.
Thank you. Anne-Chantal Risold from Octavian. We have seen the two Spanish CEOs just before on screen. See that there is the beginning of a synergy between the Helvetia Spain and Caser with the product exchange or information exchange. It would be interesting to hear more about what is the next milestone about the integration of Caser in the group?
I would like Markus, our CEO for Europe, and then Ignacio to answer this question.
Yes, thanks for that question. It is obviously not the first time that we have that question on the table. It is clear for the time being, we do have a 70% stake at Caser, so we are not the only owner of Caser. We do have our most important bank partners as shareholders still in the shareholding. Therefore, we will approach the market with two separate entities. We do have, of course, a specific plan to take synergies, of course, but not just cost synergies. We see a lot of opportunities to deal with that market. For the time being, we do approach with two entities in that market.
When Ignacio is coming on stage, I can tell you that on a group level, we already could leverage, of course, some synergies, for instance, in terms of internal financing, which is already concluded. We could finance at better conditions a couple of obligations Caser had within our group. Second, we are exploiting our group reinsurance policies together with Caser. Caser gives us, with its very profitable portfolio, new opportunities in better tailoring our reinsurance position as a reinsurance buyer for the direct insurance activities in Spain. There are a couple of other synergies on the group level. Now back to the market.
Thank you very much, Phil and Marcus. I think that with the adding of Caser and Helvetia Seguros, the position of Helvetia in Spain changed dramatically, not only on some products together development, but as well in anything which has to do with the market position. Bargaining power in front of providers, networks, actors, partners, gives us, Caser, the strong position of being part of Helvetia, having a solid partner, but as well improve our cost and bargaining and market position. We are playing like a first tier, number seven in non-life actor. That changes totally the name work for both of us.
Any further question? Yes, over there. Wait.
Yes. Good afternoon, Matthias Niklowitz with Handelszeitung. Do we have some more M&A plans like Caser in other markets around Switzerland? If yes, in which areas would you go? Which typical size would it be? A similar-sized object. Could you please give us some ideas on that? Thanks.
Thank you for this question. Of course, for the time being, it's about consolidating what we just acquired last year. If looking at M&A targets, we are focusing on those markets we are already in. There are no plans to go beyond, for instance, our European countries. If there are interesting specialty lines portfolios, of course, they are more on a global basis, but basically, we are looking for M&A targets within our European boundaries.
Any further questions from the room? Otherwise, I would switch to the live stream. Here I have one question from Will Hardcastle. Will, please turn on your camera and go ahead.
Yes. Hi, everyone. Hope you can hear me. Just really touching on the question on the commentary we made on the investment slide. Just trying to ascertain the perhaps the illiquidity premium currently being achieved on the private debt and how this has changed over the past 18 months, and also how do the credit ratings work on the private debt here? Is it internal or is it based on average rating?
I would ask André Keller, our Chief Investment Officer, to answer this question.
Thank you for the question. The illiquidity premium, obviously with the expensive monetary policy, has decreased over time. As all financial markets are highly valued, also the illiquidity premium has decreased, and private markets are more expensive as well. We still believe, considering valuations, that it's compared to traditional markets, attractive, but obviously expensive as well. The second part as regards to internal rating. We work also together with different advisors that support us in creating a rating, an internal light rating. It's non-rated in the disclosure.
Susanne?
If you have a further question, Will, you have to unmute again because we can't hear you.
Okay, I think I'm There we go. Can you just talk about how it's treated on SST? Is it given a blanket corporate rating?
In SST, it's mapped into a similar category like a BB.
Thank you.
On the live stream, I have no further questions at the moment. Again, in the room. Fabrizio Cattaneo, please.
Thank you. From Pictet Asset Management, maybe on the insurance business, the strategic priorities, maybe a bit of color on the relationship with Caser, since they seem they will be underwriting some of the business there, and the metrics that they use to be selective on the underwriting front.
If you are talking about the Active Reinsurance, there are no plans that Caser is underwriting Active Reinsurance. We are really sticking to a very rigid governance, so to say, in Active Reinsurance, underwriting every contract out of Switzerland. It's only the reinsurance, the Active Reinsurance department, which is underwriting reinsurance policies. Of course, there are, so to say, a couple of frontmen positioned in Miami or Singapore who do not have underwriting competencies, but they should have better access to the market. There are no plans that any of our business units or segments or countries, markets whatsoever are underwriting active reinsurance. Not at all.
Okay. I take a final question.
It is more about the synergy, sorry, of the group reinsurance as a buyer of reinsurance coverage. That is where we see synergies.
Okay. I take a final question from the live stream for that first Q&A session. We will have another at the end. The next question comes from René Locher. René, please turn on your camera and go ahead. We can see you, but we can't hear you at the moment.
Okay. That might be time for a break.
René, we take your question.
Sorry.
In the next round. Sorry for that.
Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, now it's time for a break. We suggest that we are coming back into this room at five minutes past 4:00? 10 minutes past 4:00?
Yeah.
Sorry?
10- 20 minutes.
10 minutes past 4:00. I would ask all those people joining us on the video stream that they are coming back maybe at nine past 4:00 so that we can start at 10 past. Thanks a lot, and enjoy the break. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to our second part of Helvetia's Capital Markets Day here in the Samsung Hall in Zurich. Welcome to all those being physically present, as well as to all those joining us via video conference. As we told you in our first section of this afternoon, we are glad to report and to conclude that Helvetia, looking back on 2020, was achieving all what we promised in terms of growth, profitability, capital strength, and dividends. Now we are looking forward to Helvetia 2025.
Helvetia is entering into a new era from a Swiss insurance group with a couple of operations abroad to a financial services provider anchored in Switzerland with selected strong country markets, giving a good footprint in Europe, global access through Specialty Markets, last but not least, tremendous opportunities around asset management and ecosystems. We were presenting to you our newly acquired pearl in Spain, Caser, which was already paying off in a great amount, which exceeded our expectations. We were presenting to you our four strategic priorities around customer convenience, profitable growth, the right offering, and new business models. Now in the next section, we want to present you our business segments. Helvetia is reporting its result apart from the corporate segment along three different segments, namely Switzerland, Europe, and Specialty Markets. Our organizational setup looks alike.
That's why I'm happy now that Martin, David, and Markus joined me on stage in order to present to you their respective strategies. Of course, all those strategic priorities shall now be operationalized in the different business segments. I'm glad to hand over to you, Martin.
Thank you, Philipp. Switzerland is the origin, and Switzerland is the backbone of Helvetia Group. It's our home market, and as our home market, it will be important also in the next strategic period. We set ambitious targets for the Swiss operations for the strategic period. To cope with these ambitious targets, we can build on the successes and the excellent progress we made during the last strategic period. We strengthened our core business. We grew in non-life up to a level of more than CHF 1.5 billion premium on a very profitable portfolio, and we shifted consequently the new business mix in life toward capital-light products. This strengthening of the core business will give us sustainable and strong profits also in the next strategic periods. In addition to the strengthening of the core business, we build up successful new business models.
You saw already Smile, the number one direct insurer in Switzerland. You saw MoneyPark, and you heard about the B2B2C business, where Helvetic Warranty is one strong anchor in. These new business models are ready to be scaled up in the next strategic period. These new business models and the services of these new businesses, we can integrate into our value proposition at Helvetia to differentiate from our competitors. The strengthening of the core business and the new business models will allow us to master the challenges of the current environment and to take our chances in the opportunities. We have to adapt to a more and more hybrid customer behavior that has been accelerated during the COVID-19 crisis.
We have to pace out new competitors by our value proposition for our customers, and we have to compensate the effect we see from the low interest environment and from the pressure on margins in non-life in the Swiss market due to the competition we are facing. To consolidate our top three position in this environment, we set three strategic focuses. One is to differentiate by customer intimacy and convenience. Second, to exploit the potential of our new business models and of our strong customer bases by more Helvetia per customer. Third, by working hard on our cost position and on our productivity to strengthen the cost position. You already heard from my colleagues in Switzerland in the different videos that we have a powerful range of measures in place to do so. These measures we can cluster in four clusters, and they contribute to the strategic focus areas.
We are further developing our value proposition and our omni-channel access for our customers. Recent examples for this are the new products in SME Adrian Kollegger presented before, or the relaunch of our motor product and its presentation in the direct business just yesterday, Monday, in the Swiss market. More is to come with the services in Atlanto for the SME business and with the enhanced services in our ecosystem home, with a strong anchor in MoneyPark. The second cluster of important measures is focusing on scaling up our technical excellence by portfolio measures, pricing measures, and in the claims handling processes, especially in the fraud detection part.
To grow our business, we are not only focusing on the value proposition and the omni-channel approach in our traditional businesses, we are also executing initiatives for new businesses and to go into new partnerships, as you saw in the B2B2C section. Fourth, it is important for us to keep an eye and to be clearly rigid on the productivity improvement by seamless processes to realize the cost reduction we integrated in our strategic plan. In a nutshell, we are convinced that we have the right measures in place. We are pushing forward their implementation in Switzerland, and by doing so, Switzerland will also, in the next strategic period, deliver on its promises in Helvetia 2025. Thank you for your attention.
Thank you. Momentum. Not exactly the word that you have top of mind thinking about Europe and Switzerland, but you should, at least at Helvetia. Some of you might remember last Capital Markets Day, when we just came out of an integration series in all our country markets in the starting blocks to implement a new strategy and most of all, a common culture. The results? I have to say I'm quite a bit proud what we all together have reached.
Growing above market in non-life and capital light life business, and at the same time improving year by year the technical margins. Ending up with an increase of the profit after tax of more than 50%, up to CHF 175 million. You see, we have quite a momentum in our European country markets. It is extremely cool, extremely motivating to work for a successful and winning company. How do we see the current environment? First of all, let me say that our retail and SME-based portfolios, our relationships to the sales partners, have also in the crisis, especially in the crisis, proven to be very stable. Even more, thanks to our best partner approach, we could still keep the growth path and at the same time reduce the lapse ratios. Thanks to efficiency measures, thanks to technical excellence, we also in 2020 could improve the technical margins.
A excellent starting position to profit best out of the upcoming growth environment. European and country recovery plans will boost economy, investments, and also private consumption. Sensitized clients are asking for a more comprehensive protection, individual as well as corporate. The COVID-driven pace that we see in innovation and digitization is offering new marketplaces for our products and services. Where do we see our strategic focus in that environment? First of all, let me say it is all about relevance, still or probably even more. Relevant for the independent sales partner, relevant for the individual client at the very concrete moment of truth. Could be a claim or a sales decision. It is not enough just to be somewhere among top 10 position in a market.
You have to be at the very top of a very short list, top three, probably top five, depending on the business, but in the very concrete situation. We have learned innovation in products and services important, a prerequisite, yes, but not enough to differentiate. Personal relationships, being there when it matters, trust, common objectives. In other words, our best partner approach. This is really what makes a difference. Yes, we do believe that our SME and retail businesses are local ones still. They are built on the same business strategy with the same business model, with the same underlying operational model to cash in synergies, of course, to establish common methods, extremely important, and to exchange best practices in the European segment. We do see four main fields for strategic measures.
Ongoing digitization initiatives to satisfy clients and partners' need for speed, transparency, connectivity, and at the same time, of course, internally, always improving efficiency. Integrated in our best partner approach, we will set an additional focus on SME and their owners, the entrepreneurs, to leverage our excellent market proximity into that segment. We use our ability to connect to individuals, partners, and ecosystems to develop new business models for insurance and services. Last but not least, let me say it is quite a challenge to grow above market year by year, especially with regard to profitability. Therefore, we are doing a lot, investing a lot, and keep on striving for technical excellence to safeguard our margins.
In a nutshell, profitable, well-positioned, growing retail and SME portfolios, a broad and performing market access, omni-channel proven ability to connect, and a best partner approach as the differentiating factor. That's Europe at Helvetia. Thank you.
In the last strategic period, Specialty Markets doubled its business volume while always delivering positive technical results. This was achieved thanks to targeted growth initiatives coupled with a disciplined underwriting approach. Had we not been disciplined, by the way, we would have grown much more.
Key enablers for this successful development were the introduction of new products, the recruitment of bespoke professionals in underwriting, and as a result thereof, an improved profile of Helvetia as an international niche player. This significant growth was met with the reinforcement of various technical and finance functions to further ensure technical excellence as well as an appropriate governance, i.e., safeguarding our margins. As previously mentioned, the currently positive market environment still offers growth opportunities. We therefore intend to expand our product offering and international footprint further. In addition, we will increase our effectiveness and make use of new technology to serve our business partners and customers better than we do today. Specialty markets accordingly aims at growing further, leveraging its technical excellence and maintaining a clear strategic focus.
You have already heard from Reto Koller and Vincent Letac how Active Reinsurance and Helvetia France are to develop their positions as competent and reliable business partners in their respective markets. They have great teams. I'm fully convinced that they will achieve their ambitious objectives. The third business unit in specialty markets, Specialty Lines Switzerland and International, is to strengthen its number one position in Switzerland as a specialty lines insurer and pursue the international development of its business. For this, we can rely on an agile team of dedicated professionals, excellent relationships with our brokers and customers globally, as well as the strong brand of Helvetia. That's a USP. We combined the strength of a big company, the financial strength of a big company, with the agility of an SME, and this is what has allowed us to grow and outperform the market.
In a nutshell, the overall focus looking at Helvetia 2025 relies on the improvement of business processes and customer experience, the extension of our product offering, selective international growth, always safeguarding our margin, as well as the controlled increase of our risk appetite.
Thank you very much to Martin, Markus, and David. Ladies and gentlemen, in order to make Helvetia 2025 a success story, we need some prerequisites. It's about people, partner, and performance. In the next two videos, we would like to share with you the thought of our Head of Human Resources, Roland Bentele, and of our Chief Technology Officer, Achim Baumstark. First, we would like to answer the question, what does it take for our employees to really contribute to the success of Helvetia 2025? Second, what does it take in terms of digitalization, for instance, to make Helvetia a best partner? Have a look.
My name is Roland Bentele. I'm heading the corporate center organization of the Helvetia Group. It's a pleasure to talk about our most important asset we have at Helvetia, our people. To enable the successful group-wide execution of our corporate strategy, Helvetia 2025, we invest into the following two key priorities. First, we invest into our culture. We promote our entrepreneurial and performance-driven corporate culture and align it across our group. This group-wide cultural identity is inspired by our three shared values: trust, drive, and enthusiasm. These values shape how we lead, collaborate, and organize value creation at Helvetia. We call it the Helvetia way. Second, we strongly invest into new skills that our employees will need in the future, such as working agile, digital, networked, and in a customer-focused way. All of them are pre-conditional to get closer to our group-wide vision of setting standards in customer convenience.
Furthermore, we continuously develop our leaders and employees and use our more and more international setup to share the experiences of our over 11,000 employees across our markets. Overall, as a recognized top employer, we expect a lot, and we offer a lot. We are proud of our effective organization and attractive workplace. With us, everyone can mobilize her or his full potential in contributing to our strategy, Helvetia 2025.
Hello, my name is Achim Baumstark. I'm the CTO at Helvetia, and as such, I'm accountable for technology and IT. When we talk about our new business strategy at Helvetia, we talk a lot about customer intimacy, customer convenience, efficiency, and ecosystems. Whilst we have already a number of innovative business models in place that fit that context, we do acknowledge we have to modernize our core businesses in order to live up to these strategic imperatives. Let me give you a couple of examples that hopefully demonstrate how we deploy technology to achieve exactly that. Firstly, and at the core of our technology strategy, we push very hard towards the cloud.
At this moment, we've already moved 40% of our corporate and Swiss application landscape into the cloud. The first wave of this push focuses on what we call the front domain, applications that are at the interface to our customers and to our sales force. These applications are being rebuilt into the cloud to provide superior user experience. As an example for this, the new offering solutions for motor and private customers are scheduled to go live just now at the end of June. Our second focus area is analytics, as most of our strategic goals heavily depend on better utilization of data. Consequently, we've already started to invest in a new analytics platform that brings along state-of-the-art analytics and AI tools.
It is built in a way that it helps us to deliver data more quickly to the analyst and deploy new insight easily back into our processes. This new platform has proven itself in a large number of use cases already in the areas of geoanalytics, churn value, customer value models, and others. For the new strategy, we've now started to rebuild our data warehouse landscape into a cloud-native data management solution, which will help greatly with data integrity and data quality. Together with the analytics platform, both will put Helvetia in a much better position to utilize data as required by our strategy. Thirdly, to make it all work as a whole, we put a lot of emphasis on integration. For example, we have already deployed modern data streaming technologies to technically decouple our applications while still being able to integrate our processes seamlessly across domain.
For the new strategy, we will now extend these integration solutions to stretch beyond the borders of the enterprise in order to offer better connectivity to partners and ecosystems. I am convinced that this will be a key capability of Helvetia in the future. In summary, alongside the new business strategy, there is a significant modernization effort with the aim to benefit from state-of-the-art technologies. I mentioned three examples: cloud, analytics, and integration. Thank you very much.
I was mentioning three prerequisites in order to make Helvetia 2025 a success story. It's about people, partners, and of course, about performance. We have been setting forth four strategic priorities. We have been setting forth three business segment strategies. We have been setting forth ambitious financial targets.
We have been setting forth a great purpose, a challenging ambition, a big vision, being best partner, being ready when it matters, setting standards in terms of convenience and accessibility. In order to cope with all that, we need to improve our own performance culture at Helvetia. We want to be measured by the results. We want to be measured by what we deliver on a daily basis. Let me add this, we are on the way of implementing a new compensation policy, which should get into force within the next one to two years in order to make sure that all that we do is in accordance with what our strategic goals look like. It's not only about, of course, doing business in a reasonable way. It's about technical excellence. It's about recruiting the best people. It's about developing our talents.
It's about living and not only talking about a performance culture. Of course, it's also about a long-time perspective in all what we do. That brings me to the next chapter this afternoon. It's about corporate responsibility.
Overarching all those strategies, all those plans, all those initiatives is, of course, the corporate responsibility. ESG, environmental social governance, shall not only be a buzzword. We at Helvetia are convinced that as an insurance company, we have to take a long time perspective in underwriting, in asset liability management, in developing our business in general. If not, we cannot survive. We are convinced that specifically for an insurance industry, specifically for Helvetia, it is decisive to live this long time perspective. We are proud that we did not start with all those initiatives yesterday only because it's in every day's mouth today, all those ESG criteria. We were implementing those criteria again and again within the last few years. Let me just talk about two accomplishments of the last few years. The first one deals with our reduction of the CO2 emissions with our carbon neutrality.
The second one deals with our MSCI ESG A rating. It's, I hope, for André, much more complicated to pronounce than to live. Those two examples are best showing that we are not starting right away, but that we have been undertaking a long journey in this perspective. For a deep dive, I would now like to hand over to our Chief Investment Officer, André Keller, who will explain his thoughts and his view on ESG, on corporate responsibility, and specifically on responsible investments. Please, André.
Thank you, Philipp. It is a pleasure to introduce you to Helvetia's responsible investment strategy. Over the past years, Helvetia has made great strides in adopting responsible investing and ESG criteria in the investment process. As we enter now Helvetia 2025, we have set two main strategic responsible investment goals. The first is an overarching goal to manage the Helvetia's investment portfolio with due considerations for sustainability risks and opportunities. The second is a specific goal to transition the investment portfolio towards a net zero emissions target by 2050. How are we going to reach these goals? The responsible investment strategy relies on four pillars. First, it will be the comprehensive integration of ESG criteria in the investment process with the aim to improve the long-term financial and non-financial outcomes. Second, stewardship. We will actively engage with companies and stakeholders on sustainable business practices and ESG issues.
Third, exclusions, which we will apply in specific areas. This is a strict measure which we will apply in areas where we see clear downside risks or violations of international conventions. Fourth, it is managing towards sustainability outcomes with the aim to create financial values while having a positive impact on people and the environment. For the coming years, we have an exciting path ahead of us, and our focus will be on carrying out a set of actions that are directly linked to reaching these two strategic goals. Let's start with governance and expertise. Comprehensively integrating ESG criteria requires a clear governance structure across the company and from the board of directors level to selecting individual securities, because this governance structure provides the framework and the boundaries to make ESG-considerate investment decisions.
As I already mentioned, ESG will be comprehensively integrated into our daily investment activities. This means also across the whole investment process. It means from setting strategic asset allocation over manager and fund selection to portfolio management and reporting. As an active owner, we will also engage with companies and interest groups on material sustainability issues. This especially relates to climate change, which is one of the greatest challenges facing the world today. Very important climate related action will be the transition of the investment portfolio towards the net zero emissions goal. For that purpose, we will define specific decarbonization pathways, which will guide the execution of asset class specific measures and actions.
Recognizing the harmful impact on the climate of thermal coal and unconventional oil and gas activities, we have developed a very structured approach which uses screening and exclusions in order to align the portfolio with our goals and requirements. Let me summarize. As a responsible investor, we believe that considering ESG criteria will lead to better informed investment decisions and thereby enhance the value creation of the investment portfolio. In carrying out this set of actions and this strategy, we will achieve another important milestone on Helvetia's responsible investment journey. Thank you.
Thank you, André. As you see, ESG is not a project which has a specific starting point and a specific end. It's like a long journey, and we are undertaking it and taking the challenge, of course. During the last sections, we were talking about many initiatives, many strategies, many new ideas, and we were always linking those different initiatives to our financials. In the next section, we would now like to go a step further in order to make you more familiar with our financial targets. For that, I ask Annelis Lüscher Hämmerli, our CFO, to come on stage and to present you our financial targets in depth way.
Thank you, Philipp. A warm welcome also from my side. As mentioned, of course, I will try to shed some light on the strategy with a financial eye. The aim of this last session is to give you specific key insights from the financial perspective. I will do that by explaining you one important aspect of each of the three financial objectives. Before, our center of attention was on the strategic priorities and how each of the business segments and market units is on the way of implementing them. Now, I will focus in my session on how the implementation will result in ambitious financial targets. In summary, I will focus on three key insights.
The first one is that in setting an ambitious combined ratio range and for the first time setting goals for fee business, we ensure not only to focus on profitable growth, but also to diversify our income streams towards fee business. This is keeping us not only profitable, but also more resilient for the future. The second insight is that an important part of Helvetia 2025 is to leverage on operational efficiency. We will do that by realizing recurring cost efficiencies of CHF 100 million by 2025. This will strengthen our competitive position. The third and important last insight is that we will increase the dividend by 50% compared to the last strategy period, or in absolute terms, we will pay out at least CHF 1.5 billion in these five years.
This, of course, will be based on a strong capitalization under S&P as well as under SST. By that, you see that our shareholders will benefit from the successful implementation of the strategy in the form of a reliable and attractive dividend. Let us dive in to these three key insights. Let us first look at the first key insight concerning the combined ratio range and the fee business targets. We want to achieve a combined ratio which is attractive to our investors. All business segments, Switzerland, Europe, and Specialty Markets, are contributing to this goal. To drive profitable business is key in our strategies, and the various initiatives you have seen mentioned by my colleagues sitting here or mentioned in the videos will contribute to this goal. In addition, of course, also our cost efficiency program is beneficial to the combined ratio goal.
Going forward, the result in Switzerland is important for Helvetia as a group, of course. However, the other segments, Europe and specialty markets, also contribute to the combined ratio goal. To ensure an attractive combined ratio in Switzerland, we have introduced two effective measures for the strategy period. We have launched strategic initiatives in the area of technical excellence and on the growth side. As already mentioned, we have introduced a cost efficiency program which should raise cost efficiencies of CHF 60 million in Switzerland. Note here that these initiatives with recurring impact will, to a certain extent, be offset by temporary effects, namely two of them. With the acquisition of Alba, Phenix, and Nationale Suisse, we have benefited from positive reserves effects in the Swiss business out of synergies with Helvetia. These special effects will expire in the strategy period.
In addition, positive effects from the settlement of the HWS, the whiplash reserves, are also expiring. Let's turn to the fee goal of this first key insight. In the strategy 2025, we are for the first time setting forth a fee volume goal. The diversification towards fee business combines today's customer needs beautifully with our capabilities and our offerings. I think this was demonstrated really nicely by Caser. Our fee business does not come from one source, but from four different sources, as you may have seen in our full year results. These four sources are. The fee business comes out of asset management through our third-party offering, it comes out of health and elderly care, as shown by Caser, it comes from distribution services, for example, from MoneyPark, and third, it comes from assistance services in insurance-related fields.
By strategically focusing on fee goals, we leverage and expand our core business. As a result, we ensure to be more diversified in our income streams and hence also less dependent on capital market developments. This was some more insight on the first key insight. Let's turn to the second one. By 2025, we aim to raise recurring cost efficiencies of CHF 100 million. This is illustrated here on the right side on the graph, where you see that we will raise these cost efficiencies in the way that our top-line growth is growing at a much faster rate than our costs are increasing. That is what we mean by raising cost efficiencies.
It is very important to note here that we do not carry out general cost reductions, but rather we reduce costs in a very targeted manner, and thus we enable ourselves to become more efficient but still be able to fund growth opportunities where we see a profitable business. We expect efficiency gains of around one-third being related to personal costs and around two-thirds being related to non-personal costs. The main measures to achieve our cost targets and cost efficiencies is the optimization of processes in our core insurance operations. Second, we will review our IT landscape, which will lead to decommissioning of some systems. Third, we expect some efficiency gains out of optimizations in the area of procurement. To sum up on the second insight, by realizing recurring cost efficiencies of CHF 100 million by 2025, we will strengthen our future competitive position.
Now let's turn to the third and last insight on capital and dividend. Helvetia has been and will be a very reliable and attractive dividend payer. For this strategy period, we have set the cumulative dividend until the FY 2025 to at least CHF 1.5 billion or 50% more than in the last strategy period. Our ability to generate distributable cash is demonstrated by the solid and sustainable operating cash production you see here on the right side in the last few years. Each year, Helvetia was able to fully cover its external dividend by its internal operating cash production. Our dividend policy has been, and still is, and will be to steadily increase the dividend year by year, or in exceptional years, to at least keep it stable on absolute terms.
Let me note here that for 2020, Caser has already contributed CHF 26 million to our operating cash production. Our sustainable external dividend is also backed by Helvetia's resilient net economic dividend capacity. Our net economic dividend capacity has been very stable even during COVID-19, and it covers our external dividend 2x-3x . It's on the right side in the graph on the bottom, the line. We are fully committed to the seamless continuation of our successful dividend policy. Of course, we are also fully committed to our ambitious targets of paying out a cumulative dividend of at least 1.5 billion for the next five years. Our ability to be a reliable and committed dividend payer is backed by a very solid capital position and strength. Helvetia's solid capitalization and disciplined balance sheet management is absolutely key.
This is reflected in our financial target for the strategy period, where we want to have a Standard & Poor's rating of at least single A. As the SST ratio can be subject to temporarily large fluctuations, we have decided not to communicate a target range anymore. However, a solid capitalization also under SST is absolutely key, in the next few minutes, I will show you how we manage the balance sheet and the SST ratio. Please note here that the lower limit of 130% remained completely unchanged, so nothing changed there. We safeguard and manage our solid capitalization by our asset liability management approach, where we are, most importantly, a liability-driven investor with the goal to maximize economic value. Second, we of course optimize on capital efficiency of different asset classes.
Third, we have to optimize under the given boundary conditions, such as tied asset coverage or other local statutory or regulatory constraints. This means that the SST balance sheet management is a continuous process, where we continuously develop measures to improve the ratio, should this become necessary. We also anticipate regulatory trends or new risks. Allow me at this point, a short side note on the graph on the left in the picture. Be aware that SST ratios and Solvency II cannot be directly compared. Yes, the interpretation is difficult. Why is that? For example, for our Helvetia European entities, the difference for the same entity between the SST solvency ratio and the SST solvency ratio is around 90 percentage points. That means that at least for Helvetia, it makes no sense to compare the SST ratio with that of Solvency II ratio of European peers.
The main driver of this difference is how the two solvency regimes are treating European government bonds. In Solvency II, the European government bonds, they do not get the risk charge independent of their credit rating. Under SST, European government bonds are treated as every other bond. If you have, for example, a Greek government bond, it gets a high-risk charge, and the German bund gets a low-risk charge. That's the main reason of this difference. Let me come back shortly to our asset liability management approach. As a liability-driven investor, as we said, we structure our asset portfolio to meet our life and non-life insurance obligations when they come due, and at the same time, we want to maximize economic value. For that, we have three main tools. We aim to keep the duration gap narrow.
This fits very well with our long-term nature of our cash flows. Second, we have a really close eye on the direct yield and on the interest margin on our life book. Third, as I said, we optimize the asset allocation according to capital efficiency. Using this approach, we then also take into account all the constraints there are on local statutory and regulatory areas. For example, we also optimize for Solvency II for our European entities. As you have just heard from our Group CEO, we also include responsible investment consideration. This allows us not only to manage physical and transition risks out of climate change, but also to adhere to our social responsibility, which is inherent in the long-term nature of the insurance business. What are my three take-home messages for you?
The implementation of our Helvetia 2025 strategy by our business segment Switzerland, Europe, and Specialty Markets will be measured and tightly tracked via our financial targets. This will ensure that first, we are profitable and resilient for the future through the focus on profitable growth and diversification into fee business. Second, we strengthen our future competitive position by ensuring operational and cost efficiencies. Third, we ensure an attractive and reliable dividend income by increasing the cumulative dividend by at least 50% compared to the last strategy period. With that, I hand back to our Group CEO.
Thank you, Annelis, for this insight into our financial targets. We would now like to open for a second Q&A session. For the technical details, again, I ask Susanne for her explanations.
Exactly. We will now have our final Q&A round, Q&A session, and we will proceed similarly to the first one. That means that we start here in the room and then hand over to the live stream. The first question in the live stream will then be from René Locher, who sent me his question by email because he has a bad internet connection, but I would like to start here in the room. Simon Fössmeier.
Thank you. Simon from Vontobel . Question for the CFO, also you. The financial targets by 2025 here will be pulled under IFRS 17. It is terribly hard for us to see if you actually achieve the target or not because everything will be different. I fully understand that you cannot set targets under a new accounting regime that is not fully clear yet, I was just wondering what your thoughts are. Question 1B, since I see the Chief Actuary, I might as well ask the question. In life insurance, do you see any long-term impact on mortality as a result from COVID-19? Is it too early to say anything? Thank you.
Okay, let's start with the, I would say, the easy question, IFRS 17. Annelis.
Yeah, sure. Easy. Good one. It's clear that some of our financial targets will be impacted by the new accounting standard. However, not all of them. For example, the S&P rating, also not the cumulative dividend, as we pay dividend out of the local results, not the IFRS. This is always important to note. We are at the moment, of course, in high times with our IFRS 17 project, like everybody else. There will, in my opinion, probably be a sort of translation at some point of the financial targets. There is no other way. We are at the moment not able to exactly say what the difference will be, but the definition of the combined ratio will slightly change. That's clear. In life, a lot will change.
The goal of profitably grow our business remains the same. Now, our Chief Actuary, Beat Müller, please come on stage so that everybody can see you.
The answer to the question 1B is easy. No. Maybe you have also read in a newspaper or heard in television or radio, for example, in Switzerland, we had a little bit more mortality last year in March, April, it had not been more than I think in the year 2018, something like that, where we had a lot of other things in the winter. We had a little bit more mortality at the end of the year from, I think, November to December. I think this has been a one-off effect, and we will not see because of COVID now a long-time effect on mortality. Therefore, no.
Okay, any further questions? Yeah, Niklowitz, please.
Yes. Thank you. Coming back to the IFRS 17 stuff, I've just one follow-up question in three parts. One is about the costs, two about external expertise, three question, do you feel comfortable to meet or to finish that project on time? Do you expect probably extension by one year or so?
Let me start with the third question. Yes, I feel comfortable with finishing on time and also on scope. It will be hard. We will not have, let's say, parallel runs covering several timeframes, but I'm very confident that we will manage it. Yes.
Cost?
On costs, I have to look to Susanne if we do comment on costs or not.
We have disclosed. We will come back to you. We have disclosed the costs, I think, last year, but in general, they are part of our project portfolio.
Yes, they are part of our project portfolio, and our project portfolio is after policyholders and shareholder split and after tax, it's around CHF 50 million- CHF 70 million per year. What was your question on expertise?
External expertise. If you are hiring people or it's about external expertise, if you have, for instance, external whatever, Big Four support and so on and so forth.
Yeah, sure.
Assume giving this cost base of double-digit millions.
Yes. This cost base is not only the IFRS 17 project, it's the whole project portfolio of Helvetia Group, just to be clear. Of course, as for every program, we have external expertise hired, be it really on the subject side, but also of course, on the project support and so on. This is no different to any other large project.
Yes, Mr. Cattaneo.
That's two for the next one. To change from IFRS 17 capital allocation policy, your dividend policy, I great appreciate it, and will absorb hopefully a good part of your remittance. If you were to make acquisitions again, I think the model of Caser is the model that we have to understand for the future, the type of financing that you had, or would you put aside some of the remittance for, let's say, a bolt-on acquisition strategy?
Well, it depends a bit on the size of the acquisition. Smaller size, of course, we are able to pay out of the pocket, but larger size, we would for sure look for an optimized financing such as it was for Caser.
Okay. Yes, Anne-Chantal, and then I move to the live stream.
I have a question more for the segment strategy. Basically, we've heard a lot about your product and niche. I read in your corporate brochure, you mentioned several times the cyber tailor-made product. My question is, what's your risk appetite in this domain? Also, if you can give us a little, what is also your risk assessment expertise in this domain? We have seen also in the U.S., one hacker or a group of hackers can just dry up the whole East Coast, and I guess the cost is probably difficult to estimate. What is your appetite and expertise in evaluating this domain?
I ask David Ribeaud, our CEO of Specialty Markets, to answer this question, and maybe our Chief Actuary has then to add a comment. Who knows?
Thanks. Yes. Cyber is a new lines of business, and many questions remained to be answered. What is a war exclusion in cyber? What is an event? Those questions have not been answered, and this is why we are very cautious when it comes to cyber. Nevertheless, our customers have a need, and we need to find the right balance between covering those needs and on the other hand, not exposing our balance sheet to inconsiderate risks. What have we done so far? In all the countries where we are present, we have developed cyber coverages for SMEs and for personal customers. With very limited coverages, however, they cover the need of standard customers. We are now also entering the space of more complex cyber coverages.
In Switzerland, we have a few large customers, but we're doing this very cautiously and gradually and insist on certain exclusions because otherwise, as I mentioned previously, it would expose us to very high exposures. We need to be in that space, but we need to do it very carefully.
Maybe only one additional remark. Also, we control the exposure to cyber very closely on Group level. That is to say, every quarter we collect data of every country, and there we have it really under control.
We were specifically also looking at so-called sleeping cyber coverages in different contracts. We are carefully looking at that really.
Good. I would like to pose the Q&A session into the live stream. There, just to remind you, please raise your hand and switch on your camera. Before, I have two questions already on my screen. I would like to read the one that René Locher sent me. He has a question on the Swiss market for Martin Jara, and his question is exactly like that. As Martin spent many years in the Swiss insurance market, I was wondering if he could give us some insight on how the Swiss non-life market has developed over the past years and what we should expect in the next 5-10 years, especially with regards to the combined ratio. Meaning, is the combined ratio that we saw in the past still sustainable for the future?
Yeah. Maybe I can start and give you some aspect about the combined ratio. As I mentioned in my speech, of course, we are focusing in Switzerland very much on an attractive combined ratio for our investors. This is achieved via various measures on the technical excellence side, on the growth side, and as you heard, also a large part of our cost-efficiency program will affect Switzerland. Also note, as I said, and it's important to repeat it here, we have temporary effects on the reserves running out, which will not be beneficial anymore in the future. They are beneficial now, but they're running out in the strategy period. These effects they are all important and reach. In total, on group level, we are very confident that our 92%-94% range is a very attractive range for Helvetia Group, for our business.
Thank you, Annelis. For the general development in the Swiss market, we see that the competition is much higher than it was some years ago when I experienced first the competition in the Swiss market. This comes from one side for a much higher competition, for example, also between brokers, because also there the market is now saturated and we see there in the SME business that the broker market is in a much higher competition or much more intense competition than it was before. We see new competitors that are entering the high margin market in Switzerland. There, I think we are very good positions as Helvetia, as we are the number one direct insurer, and we have all capabilities for omni-channel approach in Switzerland.
Together with the technical experience and the data analytics capabilities we have, I think we are very good prepared for this much more intense and also diverse competition we see in the Swiss market compared to just some years ago. This is my short in a nutshell conclusion on the Swiss market. Thank you.
Good. The next question comes from Peter Eliot out of the live stream. Peter, please switch on your camera and go ahead.
Thank you very much, Susanne. My question actually was on the expense savings, the efficiency savings. Thank you very much for the additional detail, Annelis. There's a lot of helpful information there. I guess the one thing that would still be helpful for me to understand is the extent to which we should expect the savings to be split between shareholders and policyholders. Perhaps how much of it is falling in life or non-life. I guess you also mentioned the review of the IT landscape. Obviously, we had some slightly disappointing update there at the half year results. I was wondering if you could give us any sort of update on developments there, whether you're sort of sorting third-party platforms, et cetera. There's a progress update there. Thank you.
Yeah, for sure. I can start with the first part of your question about the allocation of the cost efficiencies to different segment. We have just started the cost efficiency program. One of the points I mentioned where we see potential is, for example, in the optimization of procurement. However, the analysis there is just starting. Before we know which parts of the procurement deliver the savings. Only then we know how much is allocated to non-life and life and group and so on. At this point in time, it's too early to say what is affected and by how much. However, it's clear that non-life will be affected or will benefit, life will benefit. Some efficiencies will also concern group costs, for example.
The question dealing with IT. I would ask our Chief Technology Officer, Achim, to very quickly answer this question with regards to the IT landscape, where we are standing now and what's maybe the core of the question, how we dealt with what you were calling a bad surprise.
A bad surprise and a mishap last year. We have refocused our efforts to modernize the non-life landscape in Switzerland, and currently we follow a two-way approach to achieve that. First, we consolidate our back office onto just one contract management system and one claims system. Second, we freed up some resources to invest more on the front end. I mentioned front-end investments earlier. At the moment, we have heavy investments in improving our ability to live up to the ambition of customer convenience and better front ends to customers and sales force. The consolidation in the back office is centered around the idea to reduce complexity first and then potentially modernize on a more consolidated landscape. We have started to look at the potential replacement of the non-life claims solution, but that is just ongoing and is not yet decided.
Okay. The next question comes from Thomas Bateman from Berenberg. Thomas, please turn on your camera and go ahead.
Hi. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. Can you give any more details on the reserve releases? I'm just thinking how much they were contributing to the combined ratio beforehand. Following on from that, can you just talk about what the margin improvement is above loss cost inflation on Specialty Markets and reinsurance business?
The question about reserve?
Its prior year development.
Prior year development. Maybe Annelis, and then some explanations on the Specialty Markets given by David.
Yes. In prior year development, you can simplify it and say you have three main effects in there. One is from the growing of the active reinsurance and the different accounting logic there. The underwriting year accounting distorts somehow this number. Here on this slide, you see our prior year development, including active reinsurance. It's the gray area. Without active reinsurance, that's the green area. If you would then deep dive in the green area, then there's the positive effect from the normal runoff. What I mentioned in addition are the additional special effects we have from the synergies out of the past transaction of Alba, Phenix, and Nationale Suisse. They are also in there, and they are expiring. These are the three parts. The prior year development without the special effects, without active reinsurance, will still be beneficial, of course, for the combined ratio.
Now maybe David, please.
Yes. In the past year, we have seen significant rate increases, generally speaking. They vary a lot by business line and by region. We haven't quantified them exactly. What I can tell you is they range on average probably between, let's say, 10% and 15%. We will earn through these rate changes over the next few years. If you look at the combined ratio, it's impacted by different things. First of all, you have claims and they're volatile. Other than that, we also have new business that we're writing. As Helvetia, and we are a cautious company, we tend to reserve new business carefully. You have, let's say, a negative impact of the new business you write because you reserve it conservatively.
You have the positive effect of rate increases, which you are earning through, which will help us to maintain the attractive combined ratio or even lower it slightly. Do not expect any large swings, because as I said, you want to reserve new business conservatively.
Thank you, David.
Are there any further questions from the live stream? Currently I do not see any hand raised. If not, I'll give back to the room. We have one question here from Mr. Niklowitz.
Yes, my very last one for tonight, for today. Coming back to your SME business, I couldn't read my handwriting anymore, something with Atlanto or so. Could you please elaborate that a little bit more? What would you like to do? What would you like to offer?
It's a question which is addressing an initiative we are undertaking in Switzerland. That's why I ask Martin to answer.
Yes. We entered into a cooperation with the IFJ, which is the Institut für Jungunternehmen, where we developed a range of services we're offering to SMEs now. For example, the business case service. With Atlanto, we are going to enter in a more back-office servicing for SMEs, where we give them the possibility to do out of their accountants all their deliveries, for example, for the salary declarations, all the CRM support for smaller entities to execute, for example, on our platform, direct marketing campaigns with a tool that we provide them for a monthly fee. It is basically enabling smaller SME businesses in their back office from the beginning, and thereby making the links to our systems also that we ease the administration of the insurance business with us.
We give also the interfaces to other providers like CRM providers, so that they can easily access their services too.
In other words, you're starting to some extent, some sort of CRM hosting for SMEs and so on and so forth?
It is more an enabling. It is an enabling on the back-office services a typical smaller enterprise needs in Switzerland. CRM is one part of it and will be one of the first services we are launching on it. There will come other services like the declaration for insurance, for example.
Okay. We have another question.
On specialty market again, follow up. On the commercial side, on what was asked before, due to claim inflation, I understand correctly that you expect this positive development on the underwriting side of the new business to be kind of neutral on the combined ratio. What about the existing business and some inflation that could actually potentially create a raise on the reserves? If you could include that. Maybe 1 B, since the queue is not too long on the reinsurance side, you presented by saying you want to diversify on your underwriting strategy. Can you say where and how diversified?
David Ribeaud, again, our CEO of Specialty Markets.
Yeah, the second question, diversification. We saw that there are different initiatives, five, that aim at developing specialties within reinsurance, Nat cat business, and biometric risks in life reinsurance. That's something we didn't do. In addition, we want to increase our business volume in Asia through our Singapore office, as well as in Latin America through Miami. In certain countries where we are underrepresented in Europe, we also want to make a step forward. Nordics and some countries in Eastern Europe. With that, we would diversify geographically as well as in terms of product line. Something I should mention is that in the past, we have grown fairly significantly in U.S. liability. This due to different acquisitions and the restructuring of reinsurance programs of large groups.
We said, okay, this is too much U.S. liability business in terms of what we consider ideal, and we've now started to reduce that exposure. We have now renewed CHF 60 million less of U.S. liability business, and we nevertheless achieved a growth. That's what I said. Hadn't we been disciplined in terms of underwriting, we'd be looking at much more than CHF 1.5 billion today as PM. That addresses the second question. What was the first question again?
Maybe just on a follow-up on claim inflation.
Oh, claims inflation.
Yes, since you were kind enough on the U.S. liability, do you see there a risk? Now COVID is finished and the court in the U.S. will start again to work. Is there a risk? Do you see a risk in U.S. liability? Well, on the reserve side. Just follow up on the risks.
Risks? It sounds a bit mundane, but risks, assuring risk is our business. Do I see an extreme risk or a risk that I wouldn't want to take? No. I think the exposure is under control. However, I think we want a well-diversified portfolio, be it in terms of lines of business and geography, and that wasn't exactly the case with that U.S. liability business. That's why we're reducing the exposure, but not because we think it's going to develop negatively in the future.
Now, the first question related to claims inflation. As of today, we're not seeing any particular claims inflation. It's true that the price of timber have increased. Concrete, the prices have increased as well. There's a certain shortage, but that's something that's not unusual in the construction industry. So far, we have not seen any inflation materializing. We're fairly relaxed about that aspect for the time being. We're looking at it on a weekly basis, and we would react with price increases should we see that claims inflation is arising. Of course, we are very carefully looking at a reasonable business mix in the active reinsurance, not only in terms of business lines, but also in terms of geographies. We do not want to have the same exposures we have in our direct insurance business.
That's why, for instance, we are adding some Nordics where we are not active in the direct business. The shares we are usually underwriting, they're between 1%-5% maybe per risk. It's like 80% is a proportional exposure. It's well under control.
Okay, we have a follow-up question from Peter Eliot out of the live stream. Peter, please.
Thanks a lot for the opportunity. I just wanted to come back on Caser, actually. It's probably a very obvious question, but you mentioned that it exceeded your expectations. I'm just wondering if you could, yes, spell out for us the main areas that it has exceeded your expectations from before the deal.
Maybe it's me to answer this question rather than Ignacio, who was himself exceeding the expectations. It exceeded our expectations in different ways. First, we were positively surprised by the growth rates this company could accomplish even in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis last year. The growth rates they were able to bring is proof for very sound business access, be it through their banks, be it through many other cooperation partners. The second expectation which was exceeded, of course, was in terms of profitability and also the cash production Annelis mentioned. We knew about the earnings power, but within the first six months before we could really have a look at each and every single detail, it was very astonishing, the earnings power of Caser.
The third point is what we saw about integrating ecosystems into the core business, benefiting one from the other is just, I have to say that, great. We can learn a lot. We've not seen any kind of this in, for instance, other markets we are active in. It's really great what they accomplished.
That's great. Thank you. Could I be cheeky and have a quick follow-up on that, actually? It gives me the opportunity to ask on that cash number, which seemed great, the CHF 26 million. Just to be clear, that's for the second half of the year only? I'm just wondering how that compares because that sort of suggests a remittance ratio of must be around 100% or even higher. Are those the right numbers? How do we think about that?
No, not exactly. The CHF 26 million is really the dividend that has been paid out in 2020 for our 70% share.
We have no further questions from the live stream, we have room for one final question out of the room. If there is one left. If not, Philipp Schüpbach, my colleague from the IR department, and myself will always be at your disposal if you have further questions. With that, I would like to hand back to Philipp.
Thank you, Susanne. Thank you for all those interesting questions which are a great value for ourselves in order to know what your interests could look like. Ladies and gentlemen, let me quickly summarize this afternoon. At Helvetia, we are looking back at a, we think, a convincing track record concerning sticking to our promises. We were delivering again and again what we promised in terms of growth, in terms of profitability, capital strength and dividends. We are secondly proud of successfully integrating many different companies in different countries within the last few years.
Again, we think that our portfolio, our Helvetia Group, changed a lot within the last five years. We are on the way from a Swiss insurance group with a couple of operations abroad to a financial services advisor who is, of course, anchored in Switzerland with a strong backbone here in the home market, but with a strong footprint in selected European countries, with global access through Specialty Markets, and with tremendous opportunities around asset management and ecosystems. We hope that we could give you some insights this afternoon in what our plans look like. We are sure that making Helvetia 2025 a success story means first living our purpose, i.e. being there for our customers when it matters. Second, proving our vision, which means being best partner, setting standards in convenience and in accessibility. Third, pursuing our strategy, which means focusing and sticking to our goals.
Of course, most important for all our investors, keeping our promise, which means deliver what we are promising again and again. I like to repeat it, being a reliable dividend player and a reliable dividend payer, being a company which is rather under-promising and over-performing than the opposite. I thank you very much for your attention. I thank all my colleagues for participating in this Capital Markets Day. I thank all those people who were joining us on the video stream and, of course, all those people helping us with the technique and all those different tools here in this room. I would now like to invite all those who are still sitting in the room to join us for an aperitif outside. For all those who were joining us on the video stream, please, next time be physically present again here in Switzerland.
We would like to share our thoughts with you in person. Stay healthy and goodbye.