Swiss Re AG (SWX:SREN)
Switzerland flag Switzerland · Delayed Price · Currency is CHF
123.45
-0.85 (-0.68%)
May 8, 2026, 5:30 PM CET
← View all transcripts

Earnings Call: Q1 2026

May 7, 2026

Andreas Berger
Group CEO, Swiss Re

Thank you very much and good morning or good afternoon to all of you. I appreciate you taking the time to join us today. Before our Group Chief Financial Officer, Anders Malmström, walks you through the details of our first quarter results, as usual, I would like to start with some brief remarks. We made a strong start to 2026, delivering a net income of $1.5 billion in the first quarter. This represents one third of our full-year net income target of $4.5 billion and positions us well for the remainder of the year. The annualized ROE for the quarter amounted to 24%. All business units contributed to this result, also helped by a good investment contribution. Both P&C businesses delivered strong underwriting results, supported by a low level of large losses in the quarter and excellent underlying profitability.

This allowed us to post a strong overall result while also strengthening the balance sheet. Turning to the market environment and P&C Reinsurance renewals. The April renewals confirmed the continuation of the trends observed in January. Our focus on prioritizing portfolio quality over volume remained unchanged. This is what is required by cycle management. Competition has intensified, especially in non-proportional nat cat. Here, the nominal price is down high single digits for our overall nat cat portfolio through the year-to-date renewals. Casualty and specialty lines show a more balanced overall price development picture. Within casualty, liability experienced notable rate increases, though we remain cautious, with motor also seeing rate improvements. Overall, we have achieved a nominal price increase in the mid-single digit range for our casualty portfolio year to date. Within specialty, competition has picked up. Nominal rates rose across the majority of sublines.

As a result, the nominal price is slightly up for our overall specialty portfolio. Through the January and April renewals, we have successfully defended our market position and relevance, and importantly, maintained underwriting discipline and terms and conditions. That's key for us. Our client franchise continues to be in an excellent position. Specifically, in the April renewals, we saw stable demand and panels in Japan. In the U.S., nationwide clients increased demand, and we participated. In certain markets, an influx of new capacity led to materially lower adequacy, and we decided to reduce exposures. India agriculture is an example where such actions can have a disproportionate impact on volumes. Some new aggregate covers were placed. Here, we maintain our cautious stance. What does that mean in terms of the overall renewal outcome? The April renewals represent a relatively modest portion of our overall business at 12%.

Combined with the January renewals, overall nominal prices, pricing has been flat despite the noted pressures in property nat cat. When taking into account prudent increases in loss assumptions, the net price change stands at a - 4.4%. Overall volume is down slightly at -2%, primarily driven by the nominal property rate declines and by the stated reduction in agriculture business. Overall, the portfolio quality and outcome of the renewals remain supportive of our 2026 financial targets. This also means that renewals have progressed broadly as we expected when we set the targets at the end of last year and communicated it also to you. We expected a more challenging 2026, this is clearly what is happening. This is simply the nature of our industry, therefore, you will continue to see us applying discipline and cycle management.

Subject to loss event development, we expect similar trends into June and July. This means high demand but continued pricing pressure. Accordingly, at this point, you should not expect us to write higher volumes. We will remain focused on defending the overall price adequacy and quality of our portfolio. Turning to Life & Health Re. The first quarter has provided encouraging signs that the actions taken in 2025 are delivering the intended outcome. The business is now on a very strong footing, let's say on a stronger footing, as evidenced by clean earnings delivery in the quarter, supported by a positive experience variance for the first time, by the way, since our IFRS transition. This supports our confidence in achieving the $1.5 billion-$1.7 billion net income target for 2026.

Let me also touch on new business generation across the group. The main driver of the year-on-year decline is the impact of the general renewals in P&C Re. In addition, the contribution from Life & Health Re in the first quarter was more muted, which reflects the inherent variability of underlying transaction activity throughout the year. By contrast, new business CSM in Corporate Solutions remained broadly stable year-on-year, which is a very solid outcome in the current environment. CorSo benefited from more favorable reinsurance conditions in the external market, as well as the inclusion of the P&C Re's Credit & Surety business. This partially offset the risk-adjusted rate decrease that we saw in Q1, and which amounted to around -5% for our overall portfolio.

While CorSo is clearly also having to manage downward price pressure, in particular in property, we continue to see underlying growth in our strategic assets, as we call them, and focus areas, including international insurance programs and alternative risk transfer solutions. Looking ahead, our goals remain: delivering on our financial targets and the group's overall resilience. Against the backdrop of geopolitical turbulence and an increasingly challenging market environment, our P&C businesses will remain focused on disciplined underwriting. In this context, we expect Life & Health Reinsurance to make a growing contribution going forward. At the same time, we remain focused on cost efficiency. With that, I'll hand over to Anders for a closer look at the financial details of our financial first quarter results. Anders, over to you.

Anders Malmström
Group CFO, Swiss Re

Thank you, Andreas, and good morning or good afternoon to everyone on the call. Andreas has taken you through the highlights of our overall positive first quarter. Let me add a few further details before we move to the Q&A. P&C Reinsurance reported an insurance service result of almost $800 million, well above the prior year level. The increase was mainly attributable to favorable experience variance, which captures deviations from initial reserving assumptions. In the quarter, we saw positive experience variance related to both current and past services. Just as a reminder, under IFRS, this broadly corresponds to what we previously referred to as current year and prior year development.

The positive experience related to current services was around $100 million, primarily reflecting large nat cat losses coming in $276 million below expectations, partially offset by reserve additions of slightly more than $100 million in IBNR form to cover potential late attritional losses. Andreas mentioned that we strengthened the resilience of the balance sheet. In the quarter, we achieved a positive experience of around $130 million related to past ex-services. This includes around $450 million of positive reserve developments. In light of geopolitical uncertainties associated with the ongoing Middle East conflict, we decided to retain most of these benefits and established around $400 million of IBNR reserves to address potential inflationary impacts, of which $350 million in P&C Re.

On the back of these elements, P&C Re reported a strong combined ratio of 79.5% in the first quarter, comfortably within its target of below 85% for the year. Let me also briefly touch on new business CSM before moving to Corporate Solutions. New business CSM amounted to $1 billion, compared with $1.4 billion in the prior year period. As we indicated with our full year results in February, we expected the general renewals to translate into a roughly 3 percentage point increase in the nominal combined ratio compared to the up for renewal portfolio. The year-on-year reduction in new business CSM of around $350 million is largely consistent with that expectation. Turning to Corporate Solutions, the business unit delivered a strong combined ratio of 85.1%.

The related insurance service result was $286 million, supported by a CSM release of $192 million, broadly in line with last year. Experience variance and other was positive at $146 million, primarily driven by a favorable experience related to past services across all lines of business. In addition, Corporate Solutions benefited from lower than expected large nat cat and man-made losses, largely offset by the usual IBNR allowance for potential claims seasonality due to late reporting. New business CSM remained broadly stable, supported by resilient new business generation and the inclusion of about $40 million from P&C Re's Credit & Surety business, partly offset by a more challenging property pricing environment.

As a reminder, net new business CSM is subject to seasonality, with the majority of the reinsurance program incepting in the first quarter, while assumed business is written more evenly throughout the year. Turning to Life & Health Re, where we see the impact of the actions taken in 2025 coming through. The net income of $491 million reflects underwriting margins from the large in-force book, favorable experience, and a solid investment contribution. The insurance service result increased to $547 million and includes a CSM release of $379 million, corresponding to an annualized release rate of around 9%, in line with our full year guidance. The result was also supported by positive experience variance of $60 million, primarily from the U.S. mortality portfolio. A few words on the top line.

Group insurance revenue is down $371 million versus last year, primarily due to P&C Re, where the overall renewals outcome and reduced ceding volume updates represent the main drivers of P&C Re's 8.5% decline. On a net basis, P&C Re's revenues are down by a more modest 5.7%, as we lowered our external retrocession in nat cat. Further, iptiQ revenues contained in group items have reduced by $192 million due to our withdrawal progress on that business. Life & Health Re revenues are up by $240 million, mainly due to FX tailwinds, while Corporate Solutions revenues are down $77 million. Excluding the impact of the discontinued Irish Medex business, CorSo's revenues are up by around $100 million, which includes an FX tailwind.

We also benefited from strong investment results with an ROI of 4.6%, supported by disposal gains of $159 million, primarily from real estate sales, while recurring income remained healthy at $1 billion. Lastly, on capital, we continue to maintain a strong capital position with the group SST ratio estimated at 252% as of 1st of April , above our target range. With that, I will leave it here and hand over to Thomas to open the Q&A.

Thomas Bohun
Head of Investor Relations, Swiss Re

Thank you, Anders. Thank you, Andreas. Hello to all of you from my side as well. As usual, before we start, if I could remind you to limit yourselves to two questions, and should you have any follow-up questions, please rejoin the queue. Could we have the first questions, please?

Operator

Sure. The first question comes from Kamran Hossain from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Kamran Hossain
Analyst, JPMorgan

Hi. Good afternoon. I've got one topic with a couple of questions. Really kind of intrigued about kind of your attitude towards, like, building prudence at Swiss Re. I know we talked about this at the IR day, and not wanting to push too hard, but what was behind the decision to post such a strong Q1 combined ratio? Obviously, you know, kind of discounting went in your favor. Like Cat, you've done some stuff anyway, but could you have done more, given you're probably a little bit earlier on your kind of reserve build journey than some peers? Kind of, you know, could you have added more telemetry? The second question is just on reserve releases in the quarter.

In the commentary, you mentioned I think it was $450 million of reserve releases in the quarter that you offset with the kind of inflation-related Middle East, the inflation as a result of Middle East-related charge. The $450 million, was that substantially higher than you had expected? Because for me, that does sound very high for a quarter. I just wanted to understand whether this is just positive development or something else happening in the background that means this could be a higher number going forward. Thank you.

Anders Malmström
Group CFO, Swiss Re

These two questions, in a way, are the same question. They hang very much together overall. Maybe just to step back. When we talk about reserving, when we talk about prudent approaches, I think we're very clear that we're always gonna reserve at the higher end of the best estimate range. That's a philosophy, how we reserve, how we set also loss picks. You also see that now in the renewals. The loss pick that we set are prudent. They reflect basically exactly to be at the upper end of the best estimate range. That should then also in a normal quarter, they should then also come through to the reserve releases.

That's exactly what you now saw in Q1. The $450 million is a solid number. We don't really give hard guidance, but we show evidence, and we see that every quarter, how this reserve is now developing. That's on purpose. It's absolutely on purpose. To your point about then also more technical questions like discounting and all the things. These are more consequences of that. The discounting is not higher per se this quarter, it's only higher because of the additional reserve that we put up for the Middle East. You basically allocate it to all the different lines, including liabilities. We just put it everywhere. Because you have a long-term liability business, that's where then the discounting is higher. It's a consequence of the reserving.

It's not the reason, for the good result. I think overall we're very happy with that. It actually shows that the whole framework is now working and is coming through. It's a, it's a good outcome.

Thomas Bohun
Head of Investor Relations, Swiss Re

Mm-hmm. Thank you. Kamran, could we have the next question, please?

Operator

The next question comes from Will Hardcastle from UBS. Please go ahead.

Will Hardcastle
Analyst, UBS

Hey there. Just thinking about the P&C Re business CSM. Clearly, that was materially low, and you said it aligned with your expectations when setting those full-year targets in December. You link that with about 3 points of combined ratio deterioration. I guess the question is, if the June and July renewals, if we see this continued trend, and let's say that pushes us beyond the 3 percentage points combined ratio guidance, is that then starting to say it's a bit worse than we anticipated for 2026 and beyond? Of course, a lot of this I guess the other part of that is how much of that $1 billion new business CSM flows into the current year earnings versus what goes into future, thinking about extrapolation of that.

The second one, I just wanted to quickly come back to Kamran's question there on the $450 million of experience variance. It's a really large number. Is there any, I guess one-offs within there? I mean, I presume you're not trying to make us think that that's a run rate from here. I guess any color of sort of abnormality within that $450 million would be very helpful.

Anders Malmström
Group CFO, Swiss Re

Okay. Let me start on the new business CSM. As you rightly state, I mean, the 3 percentage point combined ratio impact is exactly in line what we see now in the new business CSM. Our view is that everything else equal, we'll probably see a continuation of what we have seen at 1/1 and 1/4. We have no indication one way or the other. There's the other point I want to make here. I mean, this really reflects also a very prudent loss pick that we put in. The 4.4% that you see here, I would say, I mean, that goes back to the discussion we had before. That's a very prudent assumption.

That's obviously reflected in the new business CSM. We don't try to manage new bus CSM. We let it go through, and then once we see the reserve development, you should then see it come through in the form of reserve releases. Which leads me directly to your second question. To be clear, in this $450 million, there is no one-off in it. This is just the reserve development. It also allowed us now to say, "Okay, I think we see the uncertainty in the world. We see the Middle East conflict that it creates volatility. Let's take a prudent approach and put some of that money to the side for inflation that we will see somehow." Mm-hmm.

You will see an inflation impact coming from the higher energy prices, coming from the disruption on the supply chain. We don't know exactly how much, we don't know for how long this is gonna last, but this allowed us now to take that approach as well, to then continue that prudent approach.

Thomas Bohun
Head of Investor Relations, Swiss Re

Thank you, Will. Could we have the next question, please?

Operator

The next question comes from Shanti Kang from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Shanti Kang
Analyst, Bank of America

Hi. Afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. I was just reading the U.S. primary results over the last few weeks. I noticed a number of the primaries are increasing their limits and being able to negotiate more favorable terms on their reinsurance programs. This morning on one of the London Market names, we heard for the first time that there's been a bit of modest slippage in terms fees. I was just curious to get your take on that. If there is any slippage, where is that focused? Is that on attachment points? Is that on wordings? You mentioned a bit earlier the return of agg covers in specifics. Any color on that would be really helpful. Thank you.

Andreas Berger
Group CEO, Swiss Re

Yeah. Let me take maybe that question. I think we have been very clear. Terms and conditions structures remain stable. We have also heard of maybe individual cases where aggregates suddenly were a topic again. I think we will apply discipline, and that's what I said also in my initial remarks. We stay very cautious here, and we don't see a reason why this should be supported. We also have heard also from primaries certain individuals who were referring to rates shooting down in certain markets, in particular E&S. Here I can assure you, we're observing the whole situation. We're reinsuring some of it. That's why we're very attentive here.

I can assure you on the CorSo side, it's a very, very limited activity and exposure we have there, mainly or almost exclusively in property. With a very low volume of around $200 million-$150 million revenues coming from that area. We're observing it, obviously, as a leading reinsurance market, but we're very cautious.

Thomas Bohun
Head of Investor Relations, Swiss Re

Thank you. Shanti, could we have the next question, please?

Operator

The next question comes from Andrew Baker from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Andrew Baker
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Thank you for taking my questions. First one, just on the P&C Reinsurance revenue. You mentioned today sort of renewals were broadly in line with what you're expecting coming into the year. Yet it sounded like or it looks like the results today is lower than what it sounded like you were expecting at the December management dialogue event last year. Can you just help me understand sort of where that delta is? What the decline was versus what it sounded like you were previously expecting, and also how we should think about insurance revenue developing for the rest of the year. On the Life & Health Reinsurance side, it was obviously good to see the positive experience variances come through today. I can see that's driven by U.S. mortality experience.

Are you able to give us an update on the experience variances related to the previously underperforming portfolio, so Australia, Israel, South Korea? Were they positive, neutral or negative? Any color there would be helpful. Thank you.

Anders Malmström
Group CFO, Swiss Re

Yeah, sure. can do that. Maybe just back to your revenue question, and also I think I mentioned that in the opening remarks. It's really two drivers, huh, on the P&C Re side. One is the renewals outcome, and the renewals outcome is pretty clear. I think as Andreas also said, it's on expectations. Then the second one is the ceding updates. You can maybe say the ceding update came in a bit lower than what we expected, and that's something you don't really know until you actually get the underlying data. That's really the two drivers and nothing else there. On the Life & Health Re, absolutely, we have very positive experience now in the U.S. mortality front.

All the other portfolios are absolutely in line with expectations. There's nothing else there, which is exactly what we expect and which is a good outcome.

Andreas Berger
Group CEO, Swiss Re

Maybe for the outlook there, you were referring to it. Look, we're gonna go through the next renewals, and we told you, we expect that the trend holds. I would also highlight that there are opportunities in the market. Yeah. It's not all gloomy. It's mainly a property and nat cat topic. We see increasing demand, in particular also through the crisis in various parts of the world. There's not only a downside, there's also an upside. We see heightened activities around infrastructure investments, increased resilience of nations, of critical infrastructures, and that's where we're definitely gonna participate, you know. This will land up in obviously the treaties. If the primaries are participating on a single risk basis, we participate through the fac business. That definitely will then grow with the investments, but also with CorSo.

I think, you know, one should focus on the areas where there's healthy opportunities while we keep the resilience of the Group.

Thomas Bohun
Head of Investor Relations, Swiss Re

Thank you, Andrew. Could we have the next question, please?

Operator

The next question comes from Ivan Bokhmat from Barclays. Please go ahead.

Ivan Bokhmat
Analyst, Barclays

Hi. Thank you very much. I've got two questions, please. One is on the investment results. Maybe you could talk a little bit about the investment disposals that you've seen this quarter and how the pipeline looks for those type of gains or perhaps some other form of true ups later in the year. How should we think about it? Another question is just about the $400 million of Middle East reserve that you have established. Maybe you can give a little bit of color of how much of that related to pure inflation impact and how much of that could be the direct impact from the conflict. Thanks.

Anders Malmström
Group CFO, Swiss Re

Yeah. Let me start on the investment results. Maybe just to step back. The overall investment result with 4.6% is obviously higher than what you would usually expect. Recurring investment is 4.1%, and reinvestment, new investments are 4.3%. It's really driven by the disposals on the real estate. This is a one-off. You should not expect that to come in the future quarters. And also we don't have anything that we would guide you to for additional investment gains. Importantly, I think we have a very strong recurring investment results of 4.1%, and this will continue to be that. And that's higher than what we had in previous years due to the repositioning of the portfolio.

On the $400 million reserve, this is an inflation. It's an IBNR, first of all. It's an IBNR for impact that might come as a second-order impact from the Middle East war. We have very negligible first-order impact, we're not really exposed to any claims coming directly from the war. It's all about the second-order impact, which really means it's the inflation driven by higher energy prices and also disruptions in the supply chain.

Thomas Bohun
Head of Investor Relations, Swiss Re

Maybe the driver of realized gains was real estate.

Anders Malmström
Group CFO, Swiss Re

Sorry, I forgot that. Yeah, the driver of the realized gains was real estate and disposals in Switzerland.

Thomas Bohun
Head of Investor Relations, Swiss Re

Thank you. Ivan. Could we have the next question, please?

Operator

The next question comes from Chris Hartwell from Autonomous. Please go ahead.

Chris Hartwell
Analyst, Autonomous

Good, good afternoon, and thank you for taking my questions. First question is just I sort of wanted to come back to the P&C Re combined ratio. The deterioration you're expecting from rate. If I look at the year-to-date premium and also the renewals data from both January and April, I mean, there does appear to be I assume there would be some duration lengthening through that book, and casualty is either flat or growing versus particularly property and nat cat shrinking. I'm wondering if or what we should be thinking about combined ratio development just because of the sort of duration impacts there. Second question, the expense ratio in P&C, obviously ticking up.

With volumes coming down, I was wondering beyond what you've already said about cost initiatives, is there anything more that, you know, you could be thinking about to try to protect the combined ratio from an expense side? Thank you very much.

Anders Malmström
Group CFO, Swiss Re

Okay. Maybe a first question about the combined ratio on the P&C Re side and the lengthening of the book. We don't really see a lengthening of the book, nor the doors. Also from the renewals side, there's no reason why the book should lengthen. The only reason maybe that's why the discounting is a bit higher are these additional reserves that we also attributed some of them to the liability book. Other than that, from the pure renewal and development of the portfolio, there's no lengthening of the book. On the expense ratio for the P&C, it increased mainly for two reasons. One is just the decline in revenues, clearly, and then the other impact is FX.

This is no underlying development there from an expense perspective. It's purely driven by the by basically by the denominator of the ratio.

Thomas Bohun
Head of Investor Relations, Swiss Re

Thank you. Chris, could we have the next question, please?

Operator

The next question comes from James Shuck from Citi. Please go ahead.

James Shuck
Analyst, Citi

Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. I'm sorry, but I just wanted to return to the P&C Re insurance revenues again. The gross revenues are down 8.5%. Still, I hear what you're saying about the some of the contributing factors towards that. The premium, the renewals year to date down 2%. This time last year, we were up kind of 5% or so. I'm just struggling to kind of square that with the gross revenues being down 8.5% at this point, even with the changes to the ceding notifications. Secondly, can you just unpick the P&C Re new business CSM fullness?

It's down 30% year-on-year. Presumably, there's some positive effects in that. What's the constant FX number? And is there any contribution from changing to discount and rates in that? I guess what I'm getting at is, you know, if you're saying kind of 3-point increase in the combined ratio leads to 30% decline, is that a good rule of thumb going forward? Every point is about 10 points of that new business. Thank you very much.

Anders Malmström
Group CFO, Swiss Re

Maybe on the first one, maybe one thing I should just clarify wasn't maybe that specific before. When I talk about renewals, we obviously always talk about the 1/1 renewals. What we also need to reflect here are the renewals that happened still during the second half of 2025. Obviously, we never had a renewals update explicitly, but this also goes into that calculation. Mostly happens during the later part of the second half of the year. That's also reflected in the revenue. There's some transactions there that have very low margin, but that have a higher revenue. If we had some reductions there, but it has very little bottom-line impact. That should also be reflected in the revenue development here.

The P&C Re new business CSM calculation. For you, I think the way to think about it, if we have this new business coming in with a lower premium or lower margin, we said it's about 3 percentage points on combined ratio. That translates with the revenue we have about $350 million. I don't think just in percentages, you think in dollars. Then you reduce that from the CSM, new business CSM that we had the year before. Because premiums overall are the same, pretty much the same. You have $350 million less. That brings you exactly to the number that we disclosed now in Q1.

Thomas Bohun
Head of Investor Relations, Swiss Re

James, just on the other renewals, on the revenue development, Anders already mentioned the ceding updates, which are, of course, true up of the renewal information from last year, where the underlying volumes are lower than initially expected, particularly on quota shares. Could we have the next question, please?

Operator

The next question comes from Vinit Malhotra from Mediobanca. Please go ahead.

Vinit Malhotra
Analyst, Mediobanca

Yes, good afternoon. Thank you. For me, the first one is just on the retrocession changes. you know, I've seen the nat cat YTD down 11% growth, but only 4% net. It looks like a pretty big shift happening there. Could you just comment a bit about what was done and what are the implications of that? Is it creating more risk-taking or is it margin management?

Looking like a big shift. Second thing is just on the Corporate Solutions. You know, this last component of -$77 million, it's quite big, and you commented it's because of A&H business. I'm surprised. I thought it could be a generic issue with maybe pricing or is there any other drivers there or for the A&H business material enough to bring such a large component change? Just curious on that, please, as well. Thank you.

Anders Malmström
Group CFO, Swiss Re

Okay. Maybe I start on the, you know, the impact then from the retro. We talked about that in previous meetings, also at the management dialogue, that we reduced the retro just because we believe it's good business and we can keep it on our reserves. That's why the premium decline actually netting the, the lower retro is a decline by 4%. If you take the gross number, it's 11%. That's really the, I think that's the answer. We just kept more of that business on our books, whereas in the previous period, we retro'd it out again to the market.

Maybe on CorSo, this is the Accident & Health. This is maybe, Andreas, if you wanna give.

Andreas Berger
Group CEO, Swiss Re

Yeah. I.

Anders Malmström
Group CFO, Swiss Re

You can say.

Andreas Berger
Group CEO, Swiss Re

I can confirm, Accident & Health remains a strategic priority. It provides still the diversification benefits. That's the reason why we have it. It reduces the overall average expense ratio. What you see here is that in the U.S. in particular, you had some claims developments. You know, this reflects also the actions that we took here. You saw large claim activity in this book, which we haven't seen before. We don't see it as a trend, but we have seen it in 2025. This is something that we then addressed. You should also know that the short-tail nature of this book, can actually help us to correct and to introduce corrective actions and then bring the recovery very, very quickly.

That's happening as we speak here in the book. I wouldn't look at it as a continuum or a trend.

Thomas Bohun
Head of Investor Relations, Swiss Re

Thank you. Vinit, could we have the next question, please?

Operator

The next question comes from Ben Cohen from RBC. Please go ahead.

Ben Cohen
Analyst, RBC

Good afternoon. Thanks very much for taking my questions. I had two on the Life & Health Reinsurance. Could you give us a bit more color in terms of the pipeline that you see that gives you the confidence that kind of Q1 was just a bit of volatility in terms of CSM? I guess related, because of the outlook that you have, do you think that you will actually be able to keep new business CSM at least flat this year? Indeed, do you think that the stock of CSM in Life & Health Reinsurance will actually grow over the course of a year? Thank you.

Anders Malmström
Group CFO, Swiss Re

Look, I mean, I think first, I mean, it's clear that on the Life & Health side, the new business is always a bit lumpy. Obviously, you have the flow business, which is steady, which we have, which is good, but then you have transactions, and transactions can be quite volatile. That's exactly what happened here. We had very good transactions in the first quarter last year. Now it's a bit less. I think we will see, actually, that over the next three quarters, we're gonna catch up there. We have a good pipeline that's coming through. We target, we mentioned that before, CSM sustainability, absent any large transactions. That's very important. Absent any large transactions, CSM sustainability, that's our main objective here.

I can't go into details, obviously, but I think that the pipeline is pretty good. Maybe also to mention here, the longevity transactions that we published in, we talked about in, I think it was in March, is not yet reflected in these numbers. This is an April 1 transaction that will then come in Q2. Maybe the last point to mention here is also, you might have seen the announcement yesterday that we now hired a head of transactions for Life & Health Reinsurance.

We combined all of that, so that's an important development now that we put more emphasis going forward now also new business on growing the business and also through transactions, which now that the business is on good footing, I think is the right next step.

Thomas Bohun
Head of Investor Relations, Swiss Re

Thank you. Ben, is there a follow-up question?

Operator

We now have a follow-up from James Shuck from Citi. Please go ahead.

James Shuck
Analyst, Citi

Well, thanks for the opportunity. With the balance sheet kind of in a strong place and the core earnings now on a much firmer footing, you haven't really done any M&A in recent history. Just kind of, what are you thinking about in terms of the pipeline here? I know, I know you want to grow the Life & Health Re business proportionally. Is there potential for kind of M&A? Would you look to do closed book sort of transactions or something on the open book? Thank you.

Andreas Berger
Group CEO, Swiss Re

I mean, we can repeat what we always said. We are well established with the three business units. We have a very nice diversification. We see opportunities in the market. Despite the cyclicality or the cycle management aspect of it, that there's still a line of businesses where we can see opportunities. Also geographically, definitely we can see opportunities. Now, having said that, you know, we're always very clear. We have analyzed the areas through our target liability portfolio approach and have looked at where would we focus on growth, you know, attractive growth and profitable growth organically, and should there be an opportunity to do bolt-on acquisitions like we have done with the QBE credit insurance portfolio that we took over, then we will do so.

It adds nicely to the current portfolio, to the credit insurance book, which is a straight credit where we were underweight, and it diversifies nicely. If at all, you should expect something like that, you know. Nothing. We don't need an M&A. We're not a distressed buyer. We have actually a very solid portfolio, and we can weather the storm, in the markets.

Thomas Bohun
Head of Investor Relations, Swiss Re

Thank you, James. Are there any more questions?

Operator

There are no more questions from the phone.

Thomas Bohun
Head of Investor Relations, Swiss Re

We'd like to thank you for your interest and for your questions. Should you have any follow-up questions, please, of course, do not hesitate to contact any member of the IR team. Thank you again for joining the call. Have a good rest of the week.

Operator

Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.

Powered by