Good morning or good afternoon. Welcome to Swiss Re's first quarter 2024 results conference call. Please note, today's conference is being recorded. At this time, it's my pleasure to turn the conference over to Christian Mumenthaler, Group CEO. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you very much, and, welcome to our analyst call. I'm usually not part of Q1, but I decided to join this time as it is our first quarter under IFRS, and this is my last opportunity to interact with you and say goodbye after eight years. So as usual, I'll make a few remarks, and then we'll get into the, Q&A. So first on IFRS, of course, this was a very challenging project with lots of efforts, and we're very happy to have made it finally. It will make us more comparable, especially on the life and health side. Of course, I think we're all still learning on, how, it works, and we're also learning that there's, some differences in how it's applied across the industry, but overall, clearly coming from a GAAP world, this will make us more comparable.
The biggest changes you're aware of, the first one is, shareholders' equity is up significantly to more than $21 billion. In GAAP, we had $16.something billion at the end of the last year, and hopefully, this alone will, you know, put all the questions around leverage, off the table. And then the life and health earnings are quite a bit higher, as you know, and as reflected in our targets. I think if I look across the industry, we're probably one of the companies who have profited the most from the transition from where we were. And that has to do with our book of business, where we were, you know, particularly strong and we're not.
The fact that we probably have used EVM to price the business and have parties to economically profitable business all over the book. And of course, we also benefited from the fact that going from GAAP to IFRS, we could basically reset the life and health balance sheet completely, as if we were buying it today. So we could reset the assumptions for the balance sheet, which is a good transition for us. On the results, we are very happy. Overall, we beat all the targets. There's a strong underlying profitability. The results contain the buildup of the uncertainty load we have disclosed in the Investor Day 2023. So a part of these CHF 500 billion that we will need to get to a more cautious position on the reserves.
There was one big man-made loss in the quarter, which is the Baltimore Bridge. We put around $100 billion in for that, but it's important to note that there's a high uncertainty around this number at this stage. We also increased the market loss estimate of the Italian floods from last year, from $3.3 billion-$6 billion, and that meant that we increased our reserves for $120 billion on this. And then there was a whole series of other man-made losses and also strengthening U.S. liability, which got us to the number that we could disclose. On the renewals, we're very happy. At this stage, you could see all the numbers. Year to date, it's a premium growth of 8% on the up for renewal business.
We have 10% increase in price, 12% loss costs increase, which is a combination of inflation and model adjustments. And of course, I wouldn't read it as too precise. There's uncertainty around all these figures, and I would describe the market as in equilibrium, in a certain plateau at this stage, as some others have described it. A few words around iptiQ. I think it's important to remember when it was created. When 10 years back or so, what was the environment? The environment was that, the interest rates were close to zero.
We were flooded with capital coming in, in search for yields in the reinsurance business, and there was significant anxiety and doubt around the future of reinsurance, and there was a lot of talk of disruption and disintermediation. At the same time, there was a peak in investments or a start of the wave of investments in Insurtech, with the belief that some of it could potentially disrupt the whole value chain. So in this uncertainty, we took a decision to put our bets on white label digital insurance. So not being a primary insurance directly, but building a white labeling operation with all the machinery and the pricing and everything that would allow clients or brokers or big corporates to enter the primary space. So we do regular review of our businesses.
I would see this as a... it was seen as a strategic option in case things go in a different direction for the core business. As you know, the environment has changed very significantly the last 1.5 years. We now have much higher interest rates with very low probability of something coming back as it was for, you know, zero for a very long time is an extreme situation. Prices are much higher. The outlook are good in the core business. At the same time, if you look at the Insurtech space, investments have gone down, valuations have gone down. Not much has happened in terms of actual disintermediation of the value chain.
Looking at all these facts together, we have come to the conclusion that while we have built something up that has some value and has more than CHF 1 billion premium and has good technology, it makes no sense to keep it as a strategic option because it's not gonna be used in under the scenarios we can see at this stage. So we thought it's only fair to communicate that to the market. This will allow us to look around to see who is interested in these assets, because I think it could be interesting for primary companies in particular, and be able to take all actions that we need and to maximize value of what we have at this stage.
So that's all I wanted to say as an introduction, and I'd like to, of course, thank you all for these last eight years, all the challenging questions and all the work you've put into analyzing Swiss Re. With that, I think I can hand over to Thomas.
...Thank you, Christian. Hello to all of you from my side as well. As always, we have John Dacey, our CFO, in the room as well. Before we start, just a quick reminder, if you could limit yourselves to two questions and then rejoin the queue. With that, operator, could we have the first question, please?
The first question comes from Kamran Hossain from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hi, afternoon. Christian, just as you know get the chance, just want to say thank you for all your kind of time, you know, kind of insights as CEO for the last eight years, but also for your time before that, running different parts of the business. You know, I certainly appreciate kind of all the time you've spent with us. Two questions from me. The first one is on the U.S. liability reserving activities in, I think, Q1. Now, my sense is that, you know, if I look back at last year, you know, you took some action at the time when you were on track to hit your numbers. You know, performance was good, and actually, these things seemed quite opportunistic.
I just wanted to kind of revisit that concept and just wanted to understand if, again, that was like a similar kind of stance that you took in the first quarter, or whether there was something kind of maybe slightly more concerning around that or not. The second question is just the, you know, the timeline for iptiQ. How should we think about this? Will numbers-- you know, will you look to kind of sell this in the near term, or are you kind of willing to kind of sit this out and wait just for the kind of best best approach or deal for for Swiss Re? Thank you.
Yeah, no, thank you, Kamran. I think on the first one, I think it's just always important to remember, goal number one for us is to hit the targets, and goal number two is to, you know, decrease cost of equity, decrease volatility, you know, be more on the more conservative end of the reserves. And you have to think of it in that context. Of course, there's no automatic formula. We always have to look at the realities, and we need to, you know, actually, to confirm what we see. So, in all the actions we took on the reserving side, there is somewhere it's we have to do it, absolutely clear.
There's some that is, it's better to do it, and there's some where there's more freedom to take it, but it has to make sense. There needs to be an explanation, what you're doing, et cetera. And so, there's, like, all the last quarters, there's a mixture of this in what we have taken. There is still a U.S. liability wave. It's certainly less than what was last year, and as you know, we put quite a bit of reserves in. Actually, our IBNR to total reserves have gone up slightly this quarter. And hopefully, it also takes some comfort from the triangles, which we publish only once a year.
I remember when we published them a year ago, there were several of you who analyzed that and came to conclusions that were actually in line with what we ultimately booked. So, you could see in the numbers, we need more. I think this time, I haven't read any report that goes in that direction with what you're seeing. So, and that's as far as I can go in terms of this quarter. And then iptiQ, of course, this will be up to my successor to manage, but you know, time pressure is never a good thing if you want to maximize for value. We have done similar things in the past, so there's things that you can close down quickly. There's things where you prepare for sale.
There's elements that are valuable and probably will be with us for a while, unless we have a good offer. So we wouldn't want to give out a precise timeline, because this will be, I think, contrary to the interest of shareholders. But the mentality of how we're going to run it is maximizing value for shareholders. So I wouldn't be surprised if, you know, the growth comes down, and so there might be some charges for restructuring, which we have planned within the target, so it should be absorbable in our targets. So I think at this stage it was important to be going to open so more people can work on that, and I'm sure you're going to get an update at Q2.
Thank you. Kamran, could we have the next question, please?
The next question comes from Tryfonas Spyrou from Bernstein. Please go ahead.
Oh, hi there, and just want to say thank you, Christian, from my side. Wish you all the best of luck in your next steps, and great to see you living in such a great shape. I guess two questions, maybe one for John, maybe two for John. Can you help us get a feel of how the combined ratio is sort of running when normalizing for the sort of negative PYD coming from Italian hailstorms, US casualty, and the man-made losses you described? And I guess I think the loss component is also running a little bit higher given the seasonality of our renewal. So I guess when stripping these items out, it looks like the combined ratio is actually running much better than the 87% target.
So any comments on what we should expect as a run rate, I guess, with the range of the year? And the second one, again, on P&C, the revenue. If I were to annualize the net revenue number, $4.6 billion, I get to $18.5 billion, which appears somewhat weaker than I had anticipated, given that it's also running below the 2023 full year figure, I think. I guess how to think about this going forward, given the growth you put on the books this year, should we expect this to turn more positive for the remainder of the year, when it comes to the top-line growth? Thank you.
Sure. Thanks for the questions. On the Combined Ratio, you know, again, in the first quarter, we had the benefit of de minimis Nat Cat losses in reinsurance. We've gone ahead and reinforced reserves in a couple different areas, as Christian has described. I think
... two things to keep in mind. One is the impact of this uncertainty reserves that we're putting on top of the positions are likely to be a little more impactful during the course of the year. Not anything dramatically, but yes, it would create some additional charges to build this extra uncertainty reserve. The other thing is, you know, we're in a somewhat volatile business. Our goal for the target is to be at 87 or below. And that's where I think we're comfortable guiding the market to today. It's coherent with the net income of $3.6.
We're getting a little bigger benefit maybe from discounting than we might have thought a year ago, or six months ago, but only very modest. So there's, you know, we've got one quarter done. Let's see how the next two come through and maybe can provide better and clearer guidance after Q3. But for now, we'll stay with the 87. The second question on the revenues. Overall for the group, we think the growth is probably about 8%... or sorry, 5%, between life, health and P&C. The P&C business is growing, and on the renewals, which is the treaty business, you saw the 8% growth rate there.
The P&C business continues to develop nicely with another, more than CHF 1 billion of premiums that have been booked here. So I'm not concerned about our revenue growth. I think we've got a positive momentum, both in P&C, but also across the Corporate Solutions book and to maybe a little lesser degree on life.
Thank you, Chris. Could we have the next question, please?
The next question comes from Simon from Vontobel. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. It's Simon from Vontobel. I have a question on the contractual service margin. The number that you're giving, the CHF 22.2 billion on page 20, is a pre-tax number. I was wondering if you could give us the after-tax number, or we could just take the corporate tax rate. I've seen the footnote for the leverage ratio, so I cannot work it out, but I just wanted to be sure. Related to that, some of your primary peers also deduct fulfillment expenses, so the expenses that are not directly allocated. Is there any chance that we can get that number as well, or is it immaterial, and really, I don't need to adjust the contractual service margin then any further?
Thank you.
Yeah. On the second piece, maybe we can have the IR team follow up with you, or my expectation is that the midyear on some of the disclosures we'll do, that might be more obvious to everyone. With respect to the CSM post-tax, I think, yeah, a reasonable position is to take the corporate tax rate on this. So a reduction from 22 to somewhere around 18 would make sense, is a modeling position.
Thank you, Simon. Could we have the next question, please?
The next question comes from Ivan Bokhmat from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good afternoon, thank you very much for the opportunity, and thank you, Christian, for the interactions in the past. I think a couple questions. First one, just on the P&C Re, as I look at the breakdown, you've provided an insurance service result. This experience variances line, maybe could we get a little bit more color on whether you expect this line to, on the long term, just trend to zero, or there are some extra additions that we should expect, you know, on an ongoing basis? I understand that it includes the PYD, it includes some other reserve additions, but, you know, what else should we expect that could be ongoing there?
And then the second question, it's just changing topic a bit, on Life and Health Re. I think one of your peers, actually yesterday, they were highlighting increased competition and margins in mortality business, especially in the Anglo-Saxon markets. So I was just wondering if you could perhaps comment on that and provide some of your views on mortality reinsurance. Thanks.
Yeah, happy to take these, Ivan. On the experience variance, yeah, I think you know over time, we would expect this to be plus or minus zero. This is maybe a little bigger deviation than you might normally expect to come in here. There's nothing structural which would sort of load this up quarter after quarter that I would see. On the other hand, I do go back to Christian's point, which is, you know, our first priority is to be sure that we're on track for our targets. Then, you know, over time, we want to be sure that the reserve position remains very, very prudent.
Again, looking at the March triangles, you've been able to judge yourself, and as Christian said, we've not heard anybody come back saying that this seems like it's still light. So I think we're comfortable where we started the year. And if we saw some positions or opportunities here in the first quarter, given the benign CAP position, so be it. But you should not necessarily model in a material negative for this on a going forward basis. On the life and health mortality, Christian also referenced that, in 2022 and 2023, one of the things we were able to do is to think hard about the assumptions that we had in our life book. Under US GAAP, they were fixed.
If you look at what our reported EVM numbers were, you would have seen some material adjustments that reduced the EVM profitability because we did in fact take a more prudent view on mortality, including in at least one Anglo-Saxon country. And so our experience here in the first quarter was coherent with what those adjusted assumptions actually were. And where we did see some deviations were sort of small numbers in a couple of different European EMEA countries. I don't see this as a trend, but we'll continue to evaluate quarter by quarter.
But I can't say that we have a confirmation of what other people might have seen in their own books, and it could be a different insured population. It could be some of the actions that we took in 2023 in particular.
Thank you for that question. I just wanted to quickly follow up on Triff's question. You had mentioned annualizing Q1 revenues. It's just important to note that we still have seasonality in revenues, so revenues are driven by expected claims. These will be higher in Q3, Q4. So you should—you can still expect high revenues in the later quarters. It's the CSM that is earned much more on a even basis.
Could we have a next question, please?
The next question comes from Freya Kong, from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon, and thanks for taking the questions. And also, Christian, wishing, wishing you all the best. First question on P&C Re, again, just normalizing for the negative experience variances. I'm getting to a normalized combined ratio of around 79% or 80% compared to the target of below 87%. Can you help me understand if there was an explicit allowance for net reserve strengthening in the guidance? Because at the time, I think you said there was not. And John, you also mentioned that experience variances should be around nil. Can you just help me gap the 7- to 8-point or bridge the 7- to 8-point gap? Is this something I've, I've missed, or was guidance just set very conservatively? Secondly, just on the net reserve strengthening, I calculated around CHF 600 million.
Can you give us some color on the split between underlying positive development, deterioration of historic large losses and strengthening and liability? Thank you.
Yeah. So Freya, I'm afraid we're going to frustrate you on the second one by not giving you a lot of detail on this. Again, even under US GAAP, where we had specifically access to prior year versus current year, in on Q1 and Q3, we didn't give that information. But in IFRS, we don't have that split in the data. So we're at the midyear, when we have a more full set of disclosures and comparables, there'll probably be more insight into that. On your first question, look, the book is running well, and it's been reinforced by the January and April renewals, where we've talked about achieving a gross price increase.
We've -- we're booking are costing important inflationary impacts and model changes in addition to that. But I think it's probably a little aggressive to say that the numbers you've come down to are what we expect. Actually, we don't expect that. We expect something higher, but 87 is the target for us to be at or below, and below might be within the realm of possibility. Q1 was below at 85 or 84.7. So I think we're... Let's get a few more quarters of IFRS reporting under our belt and the reality of how this is playing itself out, but so far, so good.
Thank you, Freya. Could we have the next question, please?
The next question comes from Derald Goh from RBC. Please go ahead.
Hey, hey, good afternoon, everyone. I guess firstly, just echoing my colleagues, thank you again, Christian, and all the very best. So my two questions. Firstly, the first one is on the new business loss component in P&C Re. The 185 million, it looks quite high if I look at it in terms of combined ratio points of 4 points. Now, does that partly reflect the new uncertainty in reserve, or is there something ongoing? And is that 4 points a fair proxy for the full year as well? And my second question, it's on investment income in P&C Re. So Q1 looks as though it's running at about CHF 600 million. Again, looks like quite a step up from last year. Now, is that CHF 600 million-...
Kind of this quarterly run rate for the rest of the year, please, or were there some kind of one-offs in Q1 to back off? Thank you.
So on the new business loss component, this is affected by the uncertainty loading that we're putting on all lines of business in 2024. And overall, we would expect a full year impact of sort of between 1.5 and 2 percentage points to come through. So, again, on a quarterly basis, there may be some noise on this, but overall, we won't be surprised if this remains a little bit of a drag, but just a little bit. And different than the experience variance, where we would, in fact, ceteris paribus, expect this to trend towards zero.
On the investment income, there was nothing really exceptional in the first quarter. Two things. One is, we're benefiting on shorter durations matched assets from the current yield curve. And, you know, on fixed income, the current investment yield is 5%, for new money. And, I think, you know, for the near to midterm, we should see our fixed income result continue to be strong. There's not been that much in the way of additional value. There's been a little bit of valuation on some of the private equity portfolios that came through in the P&C book. That's where those investments are held.
So that might have been flattering a bit, but we're fairly bullish on the continuation of a good investment result. There was nothing bad that occurred in the quarter. Nothing in terms of impairments, nothing in terms of material writedowns for us here. So I think not every quarter will be that clean, but as a starting point, I think we're in good shape.
Thank you, Daryl. Could we have the next question, please?
The next question comes from Faizan Lakhani, from HSBC. Please go ahead.
Hi there. Just reiterating what my colleagues have said, thank you, Christian, and congratulations on a great career. My first question comes to, is on life and health Re. When I look at the CSM release, it appears to be operating above the 7%-8% guidance this quarter. Could you maybe provide some view on why that would be, and if the 7%-8% guidance still holds for the full year? And just by extension, you mentioned that you have reset your assumptions in life and health Re, but I'm a little bit surprised to see still a fairly sizable adverse experience in the quarter. So if you could just maybe help me understand how to tie those two statements together. My second question is on P&C Re.
I apologize, I've come to a very different conclusion on the math to one of my colleagues on the phone. If I just look at the 84% headline number, you benefited from a very benign nat cat quarter. And even adjusting for the Baltimore Bridge and Italian hailstorm, I get to an underlying combined ratio of just below 90%. If I could just, you know, firstly, double check if that math is correct, and if that is the case, how do I bridge that to the 87% combined ratio guidance you're giving? Thank you.
Yeah, so Faizan, on the second one, I think we might follow up with the IR team, but my best guess is you're not including the benign impact on nat cats in the experience variance and other. And so that's a positive that would drop in there. And that might help explain how you get to a different position. On the first one on life and health, yeah, there was some negative experience, which I mentioned again, largely related to newly set up IBNRs, so assumption-driven on some of the EMEA countries.
We don't believe that this is necessarily recurring, but we saw some evidence that had us go ahead and book some pieces here. The CSM release of CHF 423, 2.2% of the year-end 2023 CSM balance, is slightly above the guidance of 7%-8%. Obviously, you get 8.8 if you annualize that. I think part of this is just a little bit of noise that might be coming through the first quarter, including you know, some adjustments probably on out of period numbers that might have dropped into the first quarter.
But I think the guidance we would still stand by is 7%-8% for the full year. And that's coherent with, you know, us landing net income at, or maybe a little bit above CHF 1.5 billion.
Thank you, Faizan. Could we have the next question, please?
The next question comes from Darius Satkauskas from KBW. Please go ahead.
... Hi, thank you for taking my questions. Firstly, thank you to Christian again, and all the best in the future. I've got two questions on casualty. So the first question is, I noticed that you stopped disclosing combined ratios for individual business lines, so we can no longer tell how your casualty business is doing. Are you able to give us an update on whether your casualty insurance combined ratio improved from 127% in full year 2023, or not? And can we expect more disclosure on this with half year results? The second question is, you recently changed the reserving approach and guided your ambition to add CHF 500 million net of tax to the loss picks when you write new business.
If I think about your reserve position development, in the first quarter, in very simple terms, such as what you've added to the new business loss picks, minus what was absorbed by the back book strengthening, do you think you were able to add anything in the first quarter? Thank you.
So, Darius, I'm not quite sure I understood the second question. So, why don't I try to answer the first, and then you can come back to the second. Yeah, we're not giving line of business combined ratios in the quarter. We'll see in mid-year disclosure what we might provide, but, I'm pretty sure you could answer the question yourself. I cannot imagine a way that you could have an 84.7 combined ratio for the group if the casualty combined ratio was not better than the 127 that you quoted earlier.
And the way to think about this might be on renewals today page, where you see, you know, casualty still, of the $15.4 billion that we renewed through April, casualty is $4.4 billion or a third of the book. So, it just, it would not make sense if we were still operating at those levels. So I don't think we're anywhere close to that.
And that's consistent with our view that, you know, we've decreased our casualty book, but still are pushing very hard, not only for better pricing in the primary market for casualty, broadly, U.S. liability in particular, but also, you know, a little different orientation on ceding commissions than what we've seen in the market. And until we see these changes, we'll continue to shrink our casualty position on new business. So can we come back to your second question? I was trying to-
Yeah.
Put the numbers together.
So thank you for the color. Very helpful. So yeah, my second question was just simply, I'd like to know if, if you were actually able to, overall add to the reserves in, in, you know, if I look in very simple terms, compared to what you were doing in the past, you were talking about having additional $500 million net of tax in 2024-
Right.
in your reserves, based on what you add to the, when you write the business.
Yeah.
But at the same time, there's a bit of pressure in your back book, and I'm just wondering, given the experience in the first quarter, what you added to the back book, was there anything left in the overall reserves, or did that offset the entire, you know, whatever you put in the new business compared to what you would have done in the past? Thank you.
Yeah, look, I think, again, the uncertainty reserve is on new business which we write. This is, you know, we'd started doing this in P&C Re last year on a select number of lines. We've expanded it to all lines, and as we've mentioned before, the Corso book has been doing this, effectively, for a couple of years now. And so, they're a bit ahead of the game compared to P&C Re, but I think we're confident that the original costing positioning is also, probably, achieving a level of prudence, as well.
And you see that, again, on the renewals, where we say the higher loss assumptions of 12%, far outstripping any inflationary impacts that we might find, but it also reflecting some of the our changes in modeling. And where a lot of that higher loss assumption has come is in the casualty lines of business, where we, you know, continue to question the primary pricing for this. So I think, that's one piece of the puzzle, and the other piece of the puzzle, you know, we closed the year in 2023, believing that our in-force book was well reserved, and that's the loss triangles that we printed already in March, where people have the data.
The fact that there were a couple, you know, a finite number of man-made losses, what Christian mentioned before, the Italian floods, increase as well, which, you know, were fairly specific, and I'd argue, non-recurring issues. The Italian floods, a little frustrating, that, you know, only deep into the first quarter did we get the information to be able to make those increased reserves. But I don't think that there's a, you know, there's no reason to believe that we've got other big holes we're trying to fill. We're simply looking for a level of prudency and conservatism that will, as Christian mentioned in the beginning, allow us to reduce, you know, future volatility.
And I think the question was just very narrow, I think, around did we do it? And yes, we did it. It's a mechanical process. It's uncertainty load. So all the new business that came in, we added the load on exactly as we had planned. It's just, it's not exactly a quarter of the $500 million, and we don't disclose the exact number because there's the, there's still business where this was not on, but it's earning through in this quarter. So it's, but overall, it's, yeah, it's. There's no doubt we just did it. It's a mechanical thing.
Yeah, okay. I apologize if I made it more complicated than it was.
Thank you, Darius.
Thank you.
Could we have the next question, please?
The next question comes from Vinit Malhotra from Mediobanca. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you. So, Christian, thanks and congrats on your move. Now, one thing I'd say, so from my many questions have been addressed, but there's one thing on the casualty, which, you know, the slide number 8, as John, you rightly mentioned, there's still $5.4 billion renewed casualty premiums. And, if I just look back at last year's similar data, the number was $4.4 billion. So, I mean, I'm just curious. Of course, I can see some maybe multiyear treaties, maybe India motor structure contract might have seen. But just looking at these numbers, it looks like casualty is still kind of, I wouldn't say increasing, but it's kind of, still got a long way to go because you're still adding to reserve.
I'm just curious whether you think some more, let's say, aggressive action is needed in casualty? That's just my first question.
Yep.
Second question, more a very numbers and a very quick numbers question. I picked a comment in the beginning of the call that discounting was positive effect at 7%. When I just look at the PNCV discounting versus IFE, so the insurance finance cost, I'm still getting sort of a drag of 70 basis points, assuming discounting was 7%, 7.0%. I'm just curious, is this calculation correct, do you think? Or, and, you know, obviously the effort is to find the underlying, but I'm just curious.
Yeah, I got the question, Vineet. Let me try and answer. So on the first one, under IFRS, we've included deposit account accounting contracts in this number in the casualty, which are sort of non-trivial in volume. What I can say is, you know, this $5.4 billion also reflects some major pricing improvements that we had. And so the exposure, we believe, is down unambiguously and down even more than the -4%, that you see vis-a-vis the up for renewal numbers. So that's, I think, what's causing the confusion when compared to the presentation of a year ago under US GAAP.
But we're shrinking this, and then obviously, casualty includes a series of businesses. The particularly problematic U.S. liability, and certainly U.S. liability with large corporate clients continues to decline, and I'd argue, declining aggressively. With respect to the discounting versus the IFE, for P&C Re, it's a, if I remember correctly, it's a small negative. I don't think it gets to the amounts that you said, but I have not tried to do that calculation. It's largely offset, and so also in Corporate Solutions, largely offset the discounting compared to the IFE. No positive impact, that maybe some of our competitors who started a year earlier than us were able to achieve last year.
No real drag, but we can follow up with the IR team on that.
Thank you, Vinit. Could we have the next question, please?
The next question comes from Ismail Sherif, from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Just want to reiterate what some of my colleagues have said. Good luck, Christian, on your next endeavors. For my first question, Corso results seemed especially good this quarter. I'm just wondering how sustainable that is, and if you could discuss any seasonality in the first quarter. I think you include some commentary around seasonality and experience variance, but yeah, just wondering how sustainable that result for Corso is throughout the rest of the year, given it was well below the 93% target. Sorry. Just coming back to the P&C reserves just one more time. I'm trying to figure out the additions that you made to US liability. Were they opportunistic, given the results and the book was so profitable, or was it a response to new incoming data?
Sorry if you mentioned that during the earlier questions, but I couldn't get any clarity on that.
Yeah, so let me try one more time on the last point, which is, you know, Christian did mention that the ratio of IBNR to reserves in this book modestly increased in the quarter, and I think that's what the way you should think about this. So, we've got assumptions that we've looked at and continue to be thoughtful about, you know, what ultimate costs might be, and we've booked what we've booked. On the Corso, the experience variance that you see on page nine did include some reserving for seasonality. We saw it was a quiet quarter on man-made in particular.
That's not usually the case, given the book that Corso writes, and so it may be that there's claims that will come in, it may be that there are other positions. But, you know, again, it's a well underwritten book, which has achieved important price increases literally over the last four years. We're comfortable that the reserves are in very, very good shape, and we'll see how the rest of the year plays out. But it's nice to have a good start, and, you know, there will be quarterly volatility here. We had one material in that cat loss related to the Japanese earthquake on the first of January.
But overall, a pretty benign loss experience for large losses, and we'll wait and see how the next quarters play out.
Thank you, Ismail. Could we have the next question, please?
The next question comes from James Shuck from Citi. Please go ahead.
Well, that's an interesting interpretation of my surname, but thank you for taking my questions and best of luck for the future, Christian. So my key question is, I did disconnect for a while, so apologies if this is repeating. But I just wanted to return to the experience variance outlook. So you're suggesting that that should be neutral going forward. You significantly increased the reserving adequacy, so my understanding is that it's 60-80 percentile and closer to 80 at this point. You're also adding the uncertainty load. So why shouldn't we expect a positive development of that going forward? That's my first question.
Secondly, on iptiQ, I'm a little bit perplexed about what's really changed here, aside from interest rates and funding costs going into the InsurTechs . A couple of years ago, you presented pretty confidently about what a great business case it was. So I'm just surprised to hear the pivot today, and I'm supposed to hear a little bit about what's changed there, and if you were to sell it as shares, you know, will we get that money coming back to us? What would be the SST impact? Is there required capital associated with it? Thank you.
Yeah. So, on the first one, James, I think when we are at regime with the uncertainty loading, there's reason to suspect that the experience variance probably could trend positive. We're not at regime at this point of time. And so I think the way to think about this is, we are well reserved, and we're... So, at this point in time, I'd say we trend towards neutral on this. And, you know, if we find ourselves with redundancies that are systematic and, you know, we see unambiguous releases coming forward, then we'll make adjustments in the guidance. But for now, we're not at that point. On iptiQ?
Yeah, that's, that's obviously up to me, because you're absolutely right. I was strongly promoting that. And, so I'm not sure you were there at the very beginning, but, you know, there was a time where there was a significant anxiety around reinsurance at low interest rates and capital floating in. I remember 2017, after the big, Nat cats, for example, in the US, pricing really didn't react. So it was really a question of what, how is this whole value chain going to develop, and where will we play as industry in the future? And that's the time I would argue you need to start to build strategic optionality and think about different places in the value chain and have options other than the, the ACP, for example, space.
What has changed is really in the last, I think, one and a half years, is a very strong interest rate increase, ending this, huge phase of nearly zero interest rates, stopping the, capital flow, which was relentless, coming from outside into the reinsurance business. So that means the corporate is much more secure. And the other thing that has changed is that on the, InsurTech side, while things are developing, they're developing more slowly, and there's no real disruption to be seen. So the question is not whether it fundamentally can be a good business or not, is a question of, does it-- is it part of our long-term future? Does it fit with us? And there, I, I have to say, I think in a, in another context, the sense was, yes, this is an optionality, strategic optionality we might-- we need.
In the current context, I think the honest answer is very hard to see a future where we will need this. So it's more honest to say, "Okay, let's be open that this is not a fit with us for our long-term strategy, future, and manage for value." It doesn't consume a lot of SSC capital. So it's not. I mean, I can't foresee, you know, huge impacts on us or positive impact going forward. So this is gonna be managed for value. And yes, I mean, that's basically it. Of course, in hindsight, you might always say, "I prefer not have bought the option and done it." I think at the time we felt this was a, there was a very strong case for it.
Thank you, James. Could we have the next question, please?
As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press Star, followed by one. We have a follow-up question from Kamran Hossain, from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hi, just one more on iptiQ. I recall last year, the earnings impact was expected to be so 2023 was -$250 million. Can you just remind us when it was supposed to break even? Kind of whether this has changed under IFRS 17. And actually whether with, you know, the decision to, kind of think about what to do with the business, whether that would have an impact on kind of, you know, potentially drag on earnings over the next couple of years. Thank you.
Sure, Kamran. So you're right. The $250 million was a charge related to 2023. We expected a better result, less negative for 2024, and the first quarter was on track for that, and the break even at the end of 2025. And I think, you know, the reality is, iptiQ today is a collection of a number of discrete businesses across different geographies.
And the unwind of this is a reasonably complex operation, though, as Christian alluded to, some businesses which you know we think unambiguously have value and a different owner may be able to leverage it in a much more important way than what we see ourselves being able to do. Other pieces of this may well end up not of interest to other markets, and we'll see, as we've done with other initiatives in the past, we'll manage them for value through a closed block basis. And that's what the future looks like.
There could be some restructuring charges in coming quarters. We've evaluated the likelihood and the magnitude, and there's nothing that we think gets in the way of us hitting the overall target of $3.6 billion for net income. So, we'll look not to ... to minimize what the, you know, short- to mid-term cost of this is. Is we do the restructuring and look hard to, as Christian said, maximize the value for shareholders with the assets that we have.
Thank you, Kamran. Could we have the next question, please?
We have a follow-up question from Ivan Bokmat, from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Hi, thank you very much. Just a small follow-up. I think you've mentioned that this reserve addition, it was both IBNR and case reserves, and most of it, of course, reserves related to pre-2020 business. Maybe could you provide any color on how the cohorts after 2020 have been developing? Is there anything to flag for more recent years? Thanks.
Nothing to flag post 2020. We again, last year when we did some material reserving across the board, we included some of the more recent years in those reserve additions. We didn't see any need or have any evidence indications from any of our clients that there's any potential issues there. And with the pre-2020, obviously the older years of the soft cycle are finishing, or not finishing, but you know, much further developed in the 2013, 2014. And it's the more recent years in that cohort of 2017, 2018, 2019, which probably are still have the larger exposures that we and the industry are working through.
Thank you, Ivan. Are there any more questions?
So far, there are no more questions. I hand back over to you for closing remarks.
Thank you to everyone for your questions. Should you have any follow-ups, please do not hesitate to contact any member of the IR team. With that, thanks again, and have a nice day.
Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect. Goodbye.