Good morning, or good afternoon. Welcome to Swiss Re's Nine Months 2025 Results Conference Call. Please note that today's conference call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Andreas Berger, Group CEO. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much, and good morning, or good afternoon, to all of you. I appreciate that you're taking the time today to listen to us and also to engage into a, hopefully, very vivid Q&A. Before our Group CFO, Anders Malmström, walks you through the details of our Nine Months Results, I'd like to start with some brief remarks, as usual. After another strong quarter with a profit of $1.4 billion, we're pleased to report a net income of $4 billion for the first nine Months of 2025, corresponding to an annualized return on equity of 22.5%. This puts us very well on track for our full-year net income target of more than $4.4 billion. We benefited from exceptionally strong P&C results in the third quarter, helped by a low burden of large claims.
These amounted to around $200 million in the quarter, well below expectations across P&C Re and Corporate Solutions. The result of a second consecutive benign large loss quarter is that both our P&C units are tracking well ahead of their respective targets. This is the principal reason why we're in such a good position at this point in the year. You've heard me stress our two key priorities, and they are unchanged. Firstly, deliver on the more than $4.4 billion group net income target, and secondly, increase the group's overall resilience to improve long-term delivery. Now, on resilience. This journey started with a complete turnaround of Corporate Solutions and the implementation of a new reserving philosophy, which we subsequently extended to P&C Re two years ago. We also successfully addressed P&C Re's in-force U.S. liability reserves last year.
This year, we've been focused on further improving the resilience of the third business unit, Life & Health Re. After three quarters, Life & Health Re's net income stands at $1.1 billion, which is actually a quite solid result and a very important contribution to group's earnings. Life & Health Re's result has been too noisy. As mentioned at our half-year results, we continue to focus on reducing volatility in smaller portfolios, where experience has lagged expectations, thereby producing negative variances to our expected results. These negative variances are unacceptable, even as our largest portfolios, including U.S. mortality, perform in line with expectations. In the third quarter, we therefore decided to partially accelerate efforts to strengthen the resilience of the in-force book based on detailed reviews of underperforming portfolios. Some of these are still ongoing and will be completed at the end of this year.
We have full confidence in reaching the group's net income target of more than $4.4 billion over the year. Given how where Life & Health Re stands after three quarters, and given our focus on resilience, we feel it is prudent to flag that in a base case, we're likely to fall short of the $1.6 billion Life & Health Re full-year target. We will do what's required to get this business to produce results closer to expectations. At this point, and I emphasize, we do not expect significantly outsized impacts from Life & Health Re in the fourth quarter relative to Q3. You heard me emphasizing not. We will update you on this on December 5th at our management dialogue event, and we're looking forward to that. Let me also briefly touch on new business CSM generation across our segments.
We remain focused on disciplined underwriting as profitability continues to be our priority. To re-emphasize again, we do not have a top-line target. New business generation remains resilient with a new business CSM of $3.9 billion for the first nine months, slightly down from last year's $4.2 billion. The decline versus last year partially reflects the more challenging pricing environment that we are facing in some lines of business in the P&C business, but also in Corporate Solutions. It also reflects our continued focus on portfolio quality, including the setting of proven initial loss assumptions. Overall, we are still satisfied with the margins we are able to generate across the businesses. Importantly, we continue to maintain discipline on terms and conditions and attachment points. I look forward to presenting further details on our group priorities at the upcoming management dialogue event on December 5th.
On that date, we'll also announce our financial targets for 2026. I'll be joined by our Group CFO, Anders Malmström, to provide an update on key topics across our businesses, followed by then an extended Q&A session. I think with that, I'm happy to hand over to Anders to give you more flavor.
Thank you, Andreas. Again, good afternoon or good morning to everyone on the call. I'll make a few remarks on the results we released this morning before we go to the Q&A session. Andreas has taken you through the highlights of our overall strong results for the first nine months of the year. Let me add a few further details. On revenues, the group's insurance revenue amounted to $32 billion in the first nine months, down from $33.7 billion last year. The $1.7 billion decline has a few major drivers, most of which were already highlighted in the first half of the year. At Q2 2025, we had indicated that group revenues in the second half would be around $1.5 billion higher than in the first half.
In line with this guidance, Q3 revenues were around $600 million higher than the average quarterly revenue in the first half of the year, reflecting the increased claim seasonality. While Q4 is also projected to be higher than Q1 and Q2, we now expect revenues in the second half to be slightly below the $1.5 billion previous estimate, primarily due to our continued focus on portfolio quality in P&C Re. As you have heard from us by now, we do not manage for top line. Let me move on to the insurance service result of our businesses. In P&C Re, you will continue to notice a decline in the CSM release versus last year's period. The $2.1 billion release in the first nine months is down from last year's $2.7 billion.
This decrease is driven by the earn-through of prudent initial loss picks, including impact of new business uncertainty allowance and slightly lower margins. Experience variance and other, which captures all variances relative to initial reserving assumptions, contributed positively by $549 million in the first nine months, including $447 million in the third quarter alone. This quarter's positive experience was mainly attributable to large NATCAT losses that came in $678 million below expectations, bringing year-to-date favorable NATCAT experience to $900 million. In addition, P&C Re benefited from a one-off risk adjustment release in the third quarter in the amount of $170 million. Against this very favorable backdrop in the third quarter, we selectively added to both current and prior year reserves. Year-to-date, we have added around $300 million to our current year reserves in P&C Re.
Nominal prior year reserves releases stand at around $150 million for nine months, which means we added around $100 million in the third quarter. Please note that no further actions have been necessary on the U.S. liability portfolio we strengthened a year ago. On the back of all the pieces I just described, P&C Re reported a very strong combined ratio of 71.3% in the third quarter, resulting in 77.6% for the first nine m onths, well below the 85% target we have for the year. Moving on to Corporate Solutions. The nine months CSM release of $668 million is above last year's $628 million, driven by higher in-force margins. Experience variance and other was positive at $111 million. This reflects favorable large loss experience and a positive prior year reserve result, partially offset by an allowance for potential late claims reporting.
Large NATCAT claims of $60 million came in below expectations for the first nine months, while large manmade claims of $282 million were slightly above, partially offsetting the favorable NATCAT experience. Corporate Solutions continues its track record with a nine months combined ratio of 87.1%, below our target of less than 91% for the full year. Finally, on Life & Health Reinsurance, as Andreas mentioned, we decided to partially accelerate our efforts to strengthen the resilience of the in-force book, following detailed reviews of underperforming portfolios. This resulted in negative assumption updates hitting the P&L in the amount of around $400 million for the first nine months, whereof $250 million in the third quarter. The large majority of the third quarter's impact related to selected health business in the EMEA and ANZ regions.
The fact that this hits P&L mostly reflects the onerous nature of these portfolios under IFRS, and this makes it particularly important that we strengthen them sufficiently. We have also seen negative claims and volume developments of approximately $250 million year-to-date, primarily in the third quarter. Q3 was mostly driven by the Americas region, which had a relatively poor quarter in terms of experience, driven by volatile large claims. Importantly, over year-to-date claims experience in our largest portfolios, which includes the U.S. mortality, which was strengthened before our transition to IFRS, continues to perform in line with expectations over the first nine months. Despite all of the actions and impacts, Life & Health Re has produced a net income of $1.1 billion in the first nine months, with $280 million achieved in the third quarter.
While some of the assumptions reviews also affected our CSM balance, in addition to the P&L, our CSM overall remained unchanged at $17.4 billion compared to year-end 2024, supported by attractive and prudently priced new bases and favorable FX impacts. A few words on investments before concluding with SST. We benefited from a strong investment result with a return on investment of 4.1% ahead of last year's 3.9%, supported by strong recurring income standing at $3.0 billion in the first nine months. We estimate the group's SST ratio at 268% as of 1st October 2025, 11 points higher from where we started the year. That is why I will leave it for now, and I am happy to hand over to Thomas to kick off the Q&A.
Thank you, Andreas. Thank you, Anders. Hi to you from my side as well. As usual, before we start, if I could just remind you to limit yourself to two questions, and should you have a follow-up question, please kindly rejoin the queue. With that, Operator, could we start with the first question, please?
Thank you. The first question comes from Kamran Hossain from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hi. Afternoon. A couple of questions. The first one is just on the life side. I think the commentary you've given around quantum in Q4 versus Q3 is helpful. Just wanted to clarify a few things. When you say it's not going to be a much larger quantum than Q3, I'm just trying to understand whether you mean the $250 million you flagged or the $450 million negative experience in Q3 standalone, because there's quite a difference between the two numbers. Any kind of clarification on what that comment meant slightly more precisely. The second question is, in terms of portfolios left to review, can you maybe talk through the proportion you've got left to review, like what proportion this is of life reserves? How meaningful is this?
I'm hoping you're going to say a low number, but I just kind of wanted to hear what you say on that. Thank you.
Thanks, Kamran, and hi. Maybe I should give Anders the first words on the size, and then I might jump in to give you a bit of background then.
Yes, sure. Kamran, just on the when we talk about outsized or not outsized impact in Q4, we basically mean the $250 million impact that we saw in Q3. That is what kind of puts it in a box. It is not much left. It is a few portfolios that we have to go through, need to finalize that, and yeah, by the end of the year, we should be done.
Yeah. Maybe just to give you the perspective, the bigger picture. We have three phases that we looked at, and that's exactly why we come to that small number in comparison. Phase one was introduction of IFRS. That's where we addressed the large portfolios, in particular, critical illness in China and U.S. mortality. Then we had, as a second phase, mid-sized portfolios that also have been digested. Now we were turning the attention to the remaining smaller portfolios that are distributed across the regions and also lines of businesses. What we needed to do is really to address the individual noise in those many small portfolios that, in total, are actually quite modest, but we needed to address the accumulation of this noise.
That is exactly why we took this view now, and that is the background to the question that or the answer that Anders gave you. On the details of the regions, I think we will give you more details in the management update on the 5th of December.
Thank you. Kamran, could we have the next question, please?
The next question comes from Andrew Baker, Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Great. Thank you for taking my questions. First one, just on the insurance revenues. I hear what you're saying on you don't manage for top line. Are you able to give a bit more detail on which areas of the business has led for the, I guess, slight change in view in the second half? Obviously, you previously said it was sort of $1.5 billion. You're expecting it to be higher than the first, and now it seems like slightly below that. Just any more color there would be really helpful. Secondly, are you able just to confirm how much of the uncertainty allowance you've added so far this year and what you expect this to be by the end of the year? Thank you.
Okay. Maybe I take then the first one on the revenues. Maybe just to give you a bit of context again, and I think maybe it's a bit repetition from the first half, but overall, when I talk about $1.7 billion year-over- year lower, $1.5, I think we already told you. First of all, it's the pruning actions on the P&C Re side, which is about $500 million. It's the termination of an external retro transaction on the Life & Health Re side, which is $400 million. It's the non-renewal of the Irish Medex business, which is about $400 million, and it's the sale of the P&C, EMEA, iptiQ , which is about $200 million. That explains basically the majority of that.
Overall, the remaining piece is then really coming from the P&C side where we had this NDIC feature that we talked about, the netting of the commission that we did not do before that, and then just continued just management of the business itself. I think that explains it. I think that should be clear now.
On the uncertainty loads, I think this is a prudency measure. We're not quantifying it.
Thank you, Andreas. Could we have the next question, please?
The next question comes from Shanti Kang, Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hi. Yeah, thanks for taking my question. It is just mainly on the Life & Health side. I understand that the L&H miss today will not derail the group net result target, but I think it does raise a couple of questions about the run rate into 2026. I am just curious whether or not the adjustments today will adjust the forward view on the run rate of the Life & Health book, i.e., if that is a structural concern today that we should be thinking about. Just given the fact for the last six quarters, we have had a number of assumption updates.
I get that you're saying that you'll complete that in the full year this year, but do we need to take some more caution on our assumptions for those into the next year, i.e., can we get a bit more comfortable, do you think, about there being no more updates or repeats in future? Thank you.
Maybe let me do the intro and hand over then to Anders. Maybe just to clarify, we could have let the noise continue. That is another option. We could have made our targets also in Life & Health. That is the one option. Again, we want all our business units to look healthy across all portfolios. We want all business units to play their role that they play in the portfolio of Swiss Re group. We would like to see the diversification benefits come through over time and consistently. Life & Health is decorrelated to P&C. That is the strength of our portfolio. Within the P&C, CoSo is not so correlated to the P&C Re business because we buy external reinsurance. We think we have got a pretty clean setup at group level with all three business units.
That's why we want all units to play their role and also to have a healthy portfolio to play optimal role.
Maybe just to add to what Andreas said, I mean, I think it's really critical that we get that through. Now that's the last phase of we started with large portfolios, and now we're doing the small ones. By the end, this is done. We're going to give an update on the target and the expected run rate for the next years at the management dialogue. That's where you can also then expect a bit more details how this will perform going forward.
Thank you, Shanti. 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. My first question would be on Life & Health as well. Maybe you could talk in a bit more detail about the underlying reasons for deterioration in those health portfolios. Maybe there are any common drivers in these markets that develop negatively and what would make them unique compared to the better performing ones, just to see if there's some trends that we can monitor from our side. I mean, my second question, Anders, considering you suggested that the Q4 adjustment will be smaller than $250 and your run rate is still quite comfortably getting you above $4.4, I was just wondering if you consider taking any additional steps to add prudence in Q4 beyond the run rate that you have shown so far.
If you could just highlight a bit more color on the movements in reserves that you have done year-to-date by portfolios. Thank you.
Okay. Let me start on the health side. This is, I mean, all the actions are really driven on health portfolios in EMEA and then APAC. I think one that I can actually highlight is Australia. You might have seen also the press release that we put out that in Australia, we are actually pausing new business because the environment is just not sustainable. This is a market issue. This is not a Swiss Re issue. This is a market issue, but really driven by the environment that we have higher claims than what we expected. That is why we paused that business. I would say that is the core. We give you more details then at the management dialogue also on the other portfolios, but that is a key element here.
We're not afraid of actually stopping or pausing a new business if that's necessary because it's not sustainable in the market. I think overall, when you look at the reserve development, I mean, I can reiterate what Andreas just said in the beginning. I think we have two main objectives. One is to meet our financial targets, and the other one is to then strengthen the resilience. We've done that already, I think, year-to-date. You can see that clearly. P&C, we talked about. Life & Health, we also P&C, we also used the benefit of having a risk adjustment release in Q3 of $170 million. We immediately kind of repurposed that because we also had a very positive development coming from the NATCAT. All that together helped us to put more resilience in the balance sheet. It has nothing to do with the U.S. casualty.
It's completely different to that, but we took the opportunity now. Very strong NATCAT results, risk adjustment release to strengthen the balance sheet that I mentioned in my opening remark.
Thank you, Ivan. Could we have the next question, please?
The next question comes from Iain Pearce, BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Hi. Afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. They're all on new business CSM. When I look at the new business CSM for the non-life divisions, if I just look at Q3 standalone, they're down by 30%-35%. I'm just wondering if you could run through why there's been such a big move. I know it's not a massive quarter for P&C Re, but for CorSo, it seemingly is quite a big quarter on new business CSM. Why are they down so much on Q3 standalone? Same for the life business where clearly ex-Medex, it still looked like the new business CSM would be down quite a lot. Just trying to understand that as well. Any comments would be really useful. Thank you.
Just quickly, before Anders answers, this Medex that was mentioned here, not Life & Health, that's actually the Cor So Medex business in Ireland where the minus $400 million was stated.
Yes. I think CorSo is clear. I think Andreas mentioned it. It's really the Medex business. On the Life & Health, I mean, it can be a bit lumpy here because Life & Health, obviously, it also depends on the transactions. Didn't have transaction Q3. Year-over-year, we were slightly down, actually, compared to Q2. We're up. I think overall, I'm actually pretty pleased with the Life & Health CSM despite having not had transactions. I think obviously when you have transactions, you have additional CSM. On the P&C side, I would say it's mainly driven by the property prices that are coming down that we see. Other than that, we're pretty comfortable with the new business that's coming through.
Yeah. Let me make a general statement again on this top line, growth aspect versus profitability, bottom line view. The reason why we do not put out growth targets is because, and I repeat myself again, in our industry, there is no problem to grow. If you want to grow, you can grow. We learned our lessons, by the way, ourselves also in Swiss Re. The importance is here to manage volatility and to manage cycles. This is critical. Our customers, the cedents, but also the corporates and the public entities, they rely on us being resilient even in the stressful market cycles and market environments. That is why we put the emphasis really on the healthy portfolio and also on growing the bottom line, which is that forces us also to find attractive growth pools where we can then go after.
That's the general statement I wanted to make.
Thank you, Iain. Could we have the next question, please?
The next question comes from James Shuck from Citi. Please go ahead.
Thank you. And good afternoon. I'm probably going to go over a couple of areas again, if you don't mind. On Life & Health Re, I think on the call last time, Anders, I was kind of asking you about the outlook for the experience variances and loss components, which have been negative previously. Obviously, we've got the same thing coming through just now. You previously indicated you'd expect those to trend to zero. I presume that the actions you're taking today means that that trend should actually accelerate. Really kind of just getting an insight into that kind of glide path to getting to zero. Should we expect 2026 to be a clean slate in terms of the experience variance? I kind of think linked to that, it's kind of the CSM amortization rate is much higher than the 8%.
I think when I last previously, you suggested that it would come down. It was not clear to me why it would come down. Obviously, you have guided eight. It is running around 10. I am just keen to get an outlook for the amortization, please. Secondly, it was also actually on the P&C new business CSM, which is obviously down very sharply in the third quarter, as Ian highlighted. Yeah. I understand what you are saying about not having top-line targets, but on the other hand, margins are very good and should be able to deploy capital incrementally. If I look at your target capital over time in recent years, you have not actually managed to deploy any incremental capital over the last two or three years.
I'm kind of wanting to get an insight, particularly on that P&C Re new business CSM in terms of the outlook there. I appreciate you might return to this at the management dialogue today, but I think it's an important point to try and get this feel for are you still able to grow your earnings through a soft cycle? Thank you.
Yeah, sure. Maybe James has started on the Life & Health side. I think you're absolutely right. I mean, the whole objective of what we're doing here is to reduce the experience variance, and it should come to zero. I mean, you will always see normal volatility. That's clear over the quarters, but the volatility for the full year should be close to zero, if not actually positive. That's where we're going to go in the long run. That's why we took these actions. The other reason also, I think when we looked at these portfolios, all assumption changes here went through because it's onerous business. It's even more important that you take these actions upfront because you don't want to have that noise in the P&L. I think that's really the driver.
On the CSM release, on the CSM amortization, I think we mentioned them a couple of times now that we're running higher than the guidance we gave you. I think this is something that we will address at the management dialogue. We'll give you full guidance where we're going to expect that coming forward because we need to make sure that the guidance is what we see. We saw a higher release than what we guided you to. On the P&C new business CSM, that's down year-to-date. I mean, maybe another just I think you mentioned this before. Your colleague mentioned it before. We obviously talked now about a smaller portion that was renewed in Q3. Because until Q2, the CSM was actually in line with previous year. Now you see it coming down from a small portion that got renewed.
Mentioned, of course, it was driven by the prices. It was driven by the casualty pruning that we still continue on a relative basis. I think casualty overall, I think we're fine now with the market positioning. I mean, look, the outlook, I think we will see. We're very comfortable with the margins that we're writing. Andreas mentioned that before. We're still in a good position, but we manage to margin, and we just don't manage the volumes. Actually, in our view, that's why CSM is a good measure. That's why we're also explaining it to you that way because it talks about value. It doesn't talk about volume. It talks about value. Obviously, it reflects if you have business mix changes in the business where you basically move to the more profitable ones. That's exactly what we did. I don't know, Andreas.
Yeah. I mean, I can maybe just report out quickly from the discussions I have on the renewal side. We're just in the midst of the negotiation. I do not have any indication to panic. We're still in very healthy territory. I am very careful to guide you here because we're in the midst of the discussions, but you can already sense that I am not pessimistic here about the outcome of the renewal. It is very constructive and in cases even, I would say, for me, quite optimistic. Let's see. The teams are working hard.
Thank you, James. Could we have the next question, please?
The next question comes from Vinit Malhotra, Mediobanca. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good afternoon. Thank you. I mean, some of these topics have been addressed, so I will just have maybe one theoretical question, really. The fact that we've had two good quarters on CATs means obviously the targets are achievable easier, a bit easier. I would say, was that one of the reasons why this Life & Health review was initiated, or actually, you would have initiated that even if Q2 and Q3 were normal CAT quarters? Because in that instance, it might have been that the targets would have been a bit more difficult to reach. I'm just curious about that. Also, one question, if I can ask on Corporate Solutions where the price cuts is a bit worse, - 7 on just quick check of 3Q.
Could you comment on how the inflation or business mix or something else is changing to get good numbers on CorSo, which obviously are held by CATs, but I understand even the underlying is good? Could you explain a little bit about the margin management at CorSo with - 7% pricing? Thank you.
Yeah. Just maybe quickly on the first one. Yes, of course. I mean, we're doing quite well at group level. That helped us to take the decision on the Life & Health actions. This is very clear. By the way, we're consistent with all the meetings that we had before the call in the last quarters or months where we continuously were telling that resilience of the group is really one of our two priorities. Should we be in a position to do that and still make our group target, why wouldn't we do this? I'll bring this, what you call, theoretical question to a very concrete action now. On CorSo, I think CorSo, like all other companies in that sector, have produced very good numbers. They're in a very healthy margin space. If you see slight reductions on rates, that's the same as in reinsurance.
We're still very, very healthy in the long-term pricing adequacy, as we call it. I'm not nervous about this. Now, what's the focus of CorSo? CorSo doesn't want to play in this very commoditized space where the pricing pressure is really increasing due to increased competition. CorSo wants to play their advantages in the differentiation, international programs, and alternative risk transfer. I think this is a sweet spot because some of the very large corporates take premium out of the market and manage it via their captives. There, they need support through alternative risk transfer tools and solutions. The same, actually, also you can see in the reinsurance market. The very large players think of taking business, reinsurance premium out of the market and try to find structured solutions, maybe some access to alternative capital solutions, etc.
Here, we are best positioned to give not only advice, but also solutions, and those also generate revenues. Overall, for us, not a situation to be nervous in, but we're observing, obviously, and we're growing in areas predominantly where they're not correlated with the lines of business that have a stronger decline in rates.
Thank you, Vinit. Could we have the next question, please?
The next question comes from Will Hardc astle from UBS. Please go ahead.
Oh, hi there. The first one is just coming back to something we've discussed a bit, but just trying to verify that $250 million outsized comment is a bit relative to that. Are you saying it's not much chance that it can escalate further from this $250 million already done or another $250 million? And just to be clear on it, have you moved up on an actuarial margin basis, or this is still best estimate still? Coming back to the $1.5 billion higher revenue to H on 1H, FX hasn't really changed too much. I guess you knew the parameter deviation already. Of the reduced number that you're thinking about now, how much of that's been a bigger NDIC impact and therefore maybe a combined ratio offset, or is it purely organic growth driven? Thank you. Okay.
Just to confirm what we said on what we meant is that for Q4, because we continue to clean up in the Life & Health, the smaller Life & Health portfolios, you should not expect an impact that is bigger than the impact we saw in Q3. To your question, to be very precise, this would be on top of the $250 that we see. It is not more than $250 in Q4. That is, in a way, what I would expect. Now, we have not done it. We are not fully done. We are going to give you the final update at the management dialogue. That is where you should then see much more details. That is kind of the direction of travel that we are telling you as a floor.
On the revenue side, yes, I think once we have the final run rate now, I think we're fully on this new with the full adoption of the NDIC methodology that we introduced last year. So you should then see, based on that, a smaller revenue just for the same business on a relative basis, which has marginal impact on combined ratio. That's absolutely correct.
Thank you, Will. Could we have the next question, please?
The next question comes from Ben Cohen from RBC. Please go ahead.
Hi, there. Thanks for taking my questions. I had two questions, please. Firstly, on the Life & Health side, could you talk a bit more about the areas in where you did see new business CSM growth? I think you flagged U.S. mortality and health and longevity in EMEA and specifically, I guess, the reasons why you feel confident to kind of grow those business lines, but perhaps particularly with regards to longevity. My second question was, in CorSo and P&C, I think on a nine-month view, the expense ratios rose reasonably materially year over year. Were there some one-off features in there? Do you need to do more to address costs because of the top-line pressures that you're seeing? Thank you.
Okay. Maybe I start on the Life & Health side with the new business CSM growth areas. I think you will continue to see new business CSM growth on mortality, the classical mortality that we write. That is still a big driver. We have a lot of contracts there and this new business coming in there, which is good. Longevity is, I would say, a new area that for us became quite important, and we saw some traction there during the year. It is something that will develop. Would love to do more in the U.S. on the longevity side. I think the problem there is just I think people need to start to realize that they actually have an issue because the local RBC framework in the U.S. does not really reflect that, and you do not have a longevity chart.
I think the discussion we already have with clients is that this is a topic that will come over the next few years. Asia is a growth driver where we will see CSM growth, in particular, also on the health side after we have fixed all of the issues on the inforce.
Maybe on your expense ratio, the increase of expense ratio is not business-driven. The reason why in Q3 we've got 3% year-on-year increase, that's mainly due to restructuring costs. We have restructured parts of the businesses. For instance, in CorSo, we've decided to exit the aviation business and concentrate the underwriting on the reinsurance side. There were costs attached to that, the restructuring costs. We had a slight increase in volume-driven commissions. It's due to shift of some of the businesses, in particular, when you go into businesses that are more volume or facility-driven, and also specialty lines, those have elevated commission levels. Also, slightly the lower insurance revenue is starting to grow. I think that I would look at it.
Now, we do not look at a quarterly basis for the expense management side because overall, we see a very positive trajectory by reducing, actually, the expenses because the actions that we took now are coming through, and we see it in earnings through then also. I actually applaud then CorSo to address these things in a situation where CorSo was really performing very, very well. That is the moment when really to address those things. You will expect the expense ratio going down. Remember, we put out the number bigger than $300 million cost savings targets overall, and we are very, very well on track to achieve this. Even alone this year, we are exceeding the $100 million. We are well on track to achieve this by 2027.
You will provide details on that separately?
Absolutely.
Thank you, Ben. Could we have the next question, please?
There are no more questions from the phone.
There seems to be maybe one more.
We actually lost him, so he probably decided not to ask the question anymore.
Thank you very much for all the questions and your interest. Should there be any questions outstanding, as always, please do not hesitate to contact the IR team. With that, thank you for attending the call and have a good weekend.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.