Good morning or good afternoon. Welcome to Swiss Re's Annual Results 2020 Conference Call. Please note that today's conference call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to John Dacey, CFO. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and good afternoon or good morning to those of you calling in from the Americas. Welcome to today's Q and A call. Joining me from Swiss Re are Philip Long, our Chief Actuary and Thomas Bowen, the Head of Investor Relations. Today, we published the 2020 Annual Report, Which includes our EBM results and our Swiss solvency test reporting. We also published our P and C loss ratio development triangles and our sustainability report.
As last year, we have prepared a presentation focusing on the most relevant points of our disclosure, and we will briefly take you through this in the next few minutes. 1st, on the economic results. On Slide 5, we report a negative contribution to economic net worth A $434,000,000 in 2020. This includes a pre tax COVID impact of $4,600,000,000 Excluding COVID-nineteen, we would have reported a strong contribution to economic net worth Of $3,300,000,000 On Slide 6, we provide an overview of the key differences between this economic result And our U. S.
GAAP net loss of $878,000,000 The largest difference was a Strong new business generation life and health reinsurance, which is recognized in the EBM profit upfront. EVM also benefited from more positive investment income since it reflects the mark to market gains on fixed income as well as equities. On the other hand, the EVM calculation captures an ultimate view of COVID-nineteen, which is more than what we would have reflected And the U. S. GAAP Earnings for 2020.
Details of the EVM figures and how these break down into the performance of each business segment Can be seen on Slides 7 to 11. Moving on to the section of the economic earnings track record. We've demonstrated significant economic earnings strength over time, providing the basis for our capital generation, Our dividends and the reinvestment capacity of the group. As you can see on Slide number 14, We have generated on average $2,900,000,000 of economic earnings per annum over the last 5 years, Generally a challenging time for the industry. This has been driven by strong EVM profits from new business, Representing the value of new business written in each year after reserving for our cost of capital as well as the regular capital cost releases This is for underwriting and investments.
While there can be movements from prior year developments or other items such as debt and taxes, These are expected to average close to 0 over the long term. On Slide 15, we show that the EVM profit from previous Excluding the impact of COVID-nineteen amounted to a negative $1,800,000,000 Significantly more than the 0 we would expect on average. The large majority of this figure relates to non underwriting items Such as capital costs, counterparty credit risk and asset liability management. Lower interest rates impacted all three of these negatively. Note that there is a partial offset of $500,000,000 reported in the investment result, thanks to a long duration position we took To help mitigate the effect of lower rates.
In addition and importantly, note that the net impact from actual reserve movements across the group Today, we also published the group SST ratio as of the 1 January 2021, Which stood at 2 15%. This includes the proposed regular dividend we expect to pay in April. As shown on Slide 18, the SST ratio is well within our new target range of 200% to 2 50% in spite of the impact of COVID-nineteen And represents a very strong level of capitalization. This is especially true if you factor in the low level of interest rates that existed at the end of the year. The increase in long term rates during the Q1 of 2021 has lifted the group SSD To approximately the midpoint of the range, in spite of some modest rerisking of the asset portfolio.
On Slide 19, we show the moving parts from the group SST ratio. You can see the modestly negative contribution from our economic earnings, The strong positive impact of closing the ReAssure sale, the impact of capital we deployed into the business, Some increases in supplementary capital and the attractive level of repatriation to shareholders. The biggest negative driver, however, It was a combination of lower interest rates and higher market volatility in equities and credit spreads. This increased our capital requirements without actually impacting the network of the firm. Having an SST target range allows for these types of passive impacts both upwards and downwards.
I'd also like to point out Slide 22, on which we highlight our financial flexibility, particularly through our prudent approach to leverage And the strong access to diversified funding sources. This continues to include the $2,700,000,000 of contingent capital, which does not currently Count as SST Capital. We have updated the overview of dividend up streams to the group For you on Slide 23. Note that the $4,000,000,000 of liquid funds we have at the group level at the end of 2020 Indicates a very comfortable position. I'd like to conclude my introduction with some comments on our reserves.
The materials we published today include, as usual, the P and C loss ratio development triangles. While we leave the detailed Analysis of these to you, I would like to observe that our overall reserving confidence has increased, thanks to reserving and underwriting actions taken by the group, Particularly on the casualty business. This is supported at year end by higher IBNR levels. Corporate Solutions is also showing clear evidence of improved experience. Finally, on sustainability, we continue to make progress towards achieving our net zero ambitions across underwriting investments and our own operations.
As part of this, we have announced this week our intention to reduce the carbon intensity of our investment portfolio by 35% By 2025, on the underwriting side, we are accelerating the phase out of thermal coal. And on operations, Swiss Re has become the 1st multinational company
With that, I hand it over
to Thomas, who will introduce the Q and A session.
Thank you, John, and hi to all of you from my side as well. As usual, before we start, I'd like to remind you to limit yourself to 2 questions And then feel free to rejoin the queue if you have any remaining questions after that. With that, operator, if we could please take the first question.
The first question comes from the line of Andrew Ritchie with Autonomous. Please go ahead.
Hi, there. I just wanted to explore a bit more the confidence you're stating that you believe your reserve buffers I've gone up. And you mentioned the higher IBNR. I mean, if I look at the stock of IBNR and calculate it out, I mean, it has gone up about €1,900,000,000 but most of that is in property lines. What I would have expected the IBNR to be very high given COVID, there's maybe about €400,000,000 in casualty.
So I guess I'm trying to understand why do you feel The IBNR levels have gone up so much ex COVID. And is it not just, I mean, one would have expected the IBNR to go up as it has done for a lot of your peers So just a bit of granularity behind why you're making the statement so strongly. The second question, I'm a bit confused. I'm just not clever enough to understand fully your EVM go forward. I'm just a bit confused what exactly happened with the capital costs in the Life business that was a significant negative.
And I presume that means it would be a bigger Unwind of capital costs in future years. Thanks.
Thank you, Andrew. Filipe, would you like to take the first question around reserving?
Yes. Hi, Andrew. Your observations are correct, but maybe I can just wind back a little and Just tell you about our philosophy and what we did during this year, including on COVID, I think that may be helpful. You know we do we have a best estimate philosophy. We don't have any prudence explicitly in our margins.
But where there is uncertainty, we do maintain more caution in reserving. In reserving, we do put more weight on recent experience, particularly for liability. The higher social inflationary environment, and by doing so, by putting more weight, That's mechanically or actually, it's not just mechanically. We do look at it properly. Implicitly, this high inflation is projected into the future.
Now if I think about COVID, any COVID related Lower than normal reporting, let's assess whether that happens on a portfolio by portfolio basis. And if we do believe that there is lower than normal reporting, we will ignore This is setting our development factors, yes, for results. We people talk about good COVID secondary impacts. A lot of our seedlings talk about that. We do not allow for this generally because we consider what they say, but We set our own IBNR.
We only recognize favorable development when it emerges from the actual versus expected of losses reported to us. When we think of COVID impacts, they are due to, let's say, reduced exposure, claims not happening or A slowdown in claims processes, let's say the courts are closed. We look at historical E versus E against Maybe 1 or 2 standard deviations. We try to isolate noise versus any abnormalities perhaps due to COVID And we look at these portfolios bottom up. So for example, we may release reserves for property Because it's an exposure issue, if the fire doesn't happen, the fire doesn't happen.
So we can release some reserves there. Well, we don't necessarily do it for liability or accident and health where we see lower reporting because of the claims and operating environment slowdown. Then we move on to the more recent underwriting years. We have you may observe some strengthening in HQR. Actually, it's quite heavy strengthening for Underwriting years 2018 2019, there we have chosen to move away from what was costed.
And it's really because we're not slow to take action when we feel we need to. When we look at underwriting in 2020, which is And we then feel that actually rate adequacy is better. We see pricing improvements allowing for social inflation. We saw the pruning of large corporate risk. And for CorSo, we don't have umbrella and access on surplus anymore.
We see look whether limits are reduced appropriately or Terms and conditions have improved. And of course, we observed that the market rate hardening from the second half of twenty nineteen increasing to 2020. So we feel 2020 underwriting year is lower, but we feel comfortable. We do have higher indicated IBNR levels, of course, a lot for property due to COVID. But even if I strip out COVID, We have higher IBNR levels in most, if not all of lines of business.
We also tried to perform unadjusted chain order calculations and try to look at it against Our book reserves, we see an increase in the chain weather indication compared to last year, but we see a bigger increase in our book reserves So there's a bunch of different sense checks we have. And we also look at Coverage of survival type ratios, IBNR will pay in the year. And we remain within the 60% to 80% personnel overall. So Again, there's comfort there. So I don't know if I've kind of told you a bit of a long story, but I do feel A lot more comfort given the uncertainty around social inflation and those aspects This year relative to last year as things progress.
So that's all I have to say Thomas.
Thank you, Phil. That's a lot, I think. And I'm pretty sure that you answered Andrew's first question on multiple dimensions. On the second question, Andrew, your instinct is exactly right. There's a higher capital cost from the 220 bookings Of the new business of $1,000,000,000 we would expect that to unwind.
It reflects a combination of Where the rates were, but also the duration of the business that we brought onto the book.
Thank you, Andrew. Could we have the next question, please?
The next question comes from the line of Vinit Malhotra with Mediobanca. Please go ahead.
Yes, good afternoon. Thank you very much. So the first question is just looking at the impact at this topic of U. S. Liability and social inflation given the Hi.
I'm just curious in I mean, as simple words as possible. I remember the comment that U. S. Liability is adequate to result and I checked this morning maintained at that level. Do you The social inflation getting much worse with COVID or sort of stable?
And you said that we do Factor in higher inflation going forward, higher associated inflation. I'm just trying to understand the drivers because When we read from the outside, we hear about out of court settlements because people don't want to drag on court cases, it's going to take longer. So I would have thought that social inflation topic might even have some of the things, but I'm quite curious to hear your thoughts. And second question is just on the life New business profits from the EVM. So if I look back a few years, they've been sort of steady at Roughly €1,000,000,000 level minus last year and which had a big pickup because of some transactions.
But It's at the level that we should be thinking about and also I'm surprised a bit that none of the COVID losses happened From the Life new business of 2020, I mean for a prime reinsurance, I can understand that maybe, but From your reinsurance perspective, is that something we should have expected? And any comments on the license business Okay. Thank you.
Why don't I try to answer both those and Philip might want to Come in subsequently on the U. S. Liability after that. But our view is that Social inflation continues to be a material force in what will be a Higher cost of claim settlements in the United States. There may have been some respite during the calendar year 2020, but we don't believe that this is in any way Making a material dent in the long term trend.
We have not assumed an acceleration Of that trend because of COVID, but simply a continuation and with no obvious And in sight, so we expect us to be increasing the cost of settlements year on year for the future And we've reserved according to that expectation. I think Anecdotally, we have heard that in 2020, claims adjusters have been able to settle Claims with cash payouts, especially for more modest sized Awards, my expectation is where there were large legal Battle is brewing, especially, but not only those funded by consortiums, They have continued in the same way and there may have been some slowdown of payments or settlements or decisions because of The logistics of courts operating during the Pandemic, but again, we don't see this is going to be getting better and our reserves reflect that. With respect to the Life New business, your question is $1,000,000,000 plus or minus A reasonable place to be. The answer is probably yes. I do Point out that on the U.
S. Premium side, the U. S. GAAP premiums, this It's a business which continues to grow. We write new business at increasing levels year on year on year.
So I would hope Over time that $1,000,000,000 will also grow, but it's a single digit percentage, not anything dramatic that we see. So I think you should assume that franchise building continues and we look forward to On the COVID losses themselves, this is just the nature of the bookings with In the EVM framework, the vast majority of the losses also in the P and C side show up in prior years rather than in 2020.
Thank you, Vinit. Could we have the next question please?
Or maybe before Philippe, did you want to add anything to the first Part on U. S. Liability, social inflation?
No. Just to reiterate what you said, I think we remain cautious about social inflation. You can see it that we have increased the a priori loss ratios that will That has a big impact as determining what our underwriting year 2018 2019 results would be. At the same time, like John says, of course, 2020 has been a strange year, and so we have been very cautious in view of that. Anecdotally, of course, as Joan said, and you too, I think the smaller cases may have Got settled quicker, but I don't think that the larger cases, I think people are also waiting out.
So We have just continued to remain cautious on that front overall.
Thanks, sir.
Thank you, Philippe. Could we have the next question, please?
The next question comes from the line of Ian Pierce with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. Just following up on the liability book. I'm looking at the ultimate loss ratio for 2020. You booked that at 95%.
Obviously, you're sounding quite cautious on sort of continued social inflation trends. So I'm just wondering with the re underwriting actions that you're taking in line exits, Do you expect that ultimate loss ratio for 2021 to come down into a more acceptable level? Or with the trends that you're sort of highlighting, it sounds like been quite a bit more negative and there's quite a lot of work to get from that 95% down to an acceptable loss ratio. So I'm just wondering if you could comment on sort of appetite for liability business going forward. And also on liability, if you could provide A percentile level of confidence, I think, you provided on the in the past for U.
S. Liability reserves as well. That would be really useful. And then a second one just on COVID losses. Based on the losses that you've included within the SST, it looks like you're estimating about 200,000,000 Dollars in life and health, based on the sensitivities you provided, that looks a tad low Given U.
S. Exports mortality, so I'm just wondering if you could comment on expectations there as well.
Sure. Ian, let me try Both of those. With respect to the casualty portfolio, we've showed a month ago that we had Actually shrunk materially on the January 1 renewals 17% in spite of material price increases on casualty. And the reduction was especially strong with respect to large corporate risks Where we're down more than 50%, actually just in the course of 1 year, I think. So we do have that more conservative portfolio.
Philip also mentioned the aggressive withdraw We've made in 2019 on CorSo of these risk positions. I think the challenge when you look at Target loss ratios is they're a function of the premiums earned and as the prices in the primary market continue to go up very strongly For U. S. Casualty, there is an ability To correct here, and we think those price increases are absolutely necessary. In some places, they may be sufficient And other places that probably not, and that's one of the reasons why we came off some of these risks.
I'd also say that there There's to be a little bit of exuberance in the primary side about how important these price increases are And some attempts to adjust the commissions related to the reinsurance covers on them, which we think is not appropriate. We think we need to continue to get fairly price covers in place and We'll see what happens. So I think the underlying improvement in prices is An important dynamic, we will see what that actually plays out in the loss ratios, but we will We continue to be an important player in this market, but with a market share, which is more in line with what we might Expect of Swiss Re and not at all any overweight positions. Your second question on COVID, the Actually, if you disentangle the EVM numbers, you'll probably come up with around €300,000,000 of expected Life and health COVID losses in the EVM calculation with the sensitivity that we gave A month ago, we believe that's still valid, which says for every 100,000 excess deaths, The charge to the group, ceteris paribus would be about $200,000,000 pretax. I think the actual number of COVID deaths in the Q1 It is unfortunately very high in the United States.
January was probably the worst month ever, I think, on I identified COVID deaths in February, not much better. We are seeing some important improvements Now in March, as the rollout of the vaccines seems to be correctly focused on the high risk populations And instead of 4,000 deaths a day, which is the numbers you saw in late January, We're down plus or minus 1,000 over the last week here. So let's see how this goes. But your instinct that $200,000,000 would feel light for what we've actually seen is probably coherent with what the numbers are today versus what they were in December when we put together VBM Calculations.
Thank you, Ian.
Could we
have the next question, please?
The next question comes from the line of James Shuck with Citi. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning, good afternoon, everybody. So many of mine have been asked that actually. So I just had a couple more left. Firstly, just if I look at the breakdown of the PYD historically between kind of property, casualty and specialty, And we've talked at length about casualty and properties pretty self evident.
But in recent years, casualty specialty lines have seen Material releases over the last 2 years, those have gone away. We're actually now seeing these small additions. So can Just outline a little bit of what's happening on the specialty side in terms of trends, please. And then secondly, it's my favorite question. I think I've asked Before, John, I'm going to ask again.
I'm just intrigued about the prospects of frequency benefits On the P and C Re side, in particular, one would have thought that with less economic activity and Less goods being transported around the world, that might actually lead to reduced frequency. So just leaving aside social inflation I'm thinking about some of the underlying trends driven by economic activity. Thank you.
Philippe, do you want to take the first question around specialty reserves?
Yes. I'm trying to kind of sort of specialty includes Aviation and Marine, and I think you know of a particularly large aviation loss, which hit us. So That's an issue. And some of the nat cats also will hit the specialty line in terms of the marine lines. We have had some large man made losses also.
So we've just had A couple of years where certain net cats and land rate losses have hit us harder than normal
And I was going to say the large aviation loss probably explains most of what you've seen On that, James. With respect to the frequency benefits, We take some comfort from The Q4 reporting of the primary industry on their experience As they closed out their years, but we've yet to see real data come through to us That would justify a strong view that there is a frequency Benefit for reinsurance, obviously, the one which is blatantly obvious everywhere is on motor. That unfortunately does not benefit us very much given the nature of our the motor covers that we do have in place, But to your point on general economic activity, In some ways, there was this reduction, but more on the service sector, more on travel and leisure And frankly, a little less on places where heavier industries, Homebuilding, construction, other lines. So we'll look for it. If it comes through, that'll be Good for us and I'll be the first one to credit you for correctly anticipating it.
But right now, it's not in our numbers.
Thank you, James. Could we have the next question, please?
And the next question comes from the line of Thomas Fossard with HSBC. Please go ahead.
Yes, good afternoon. I've got one question related to your liquidity or cash buffer, Which you quantify at €4,000,000,000 I'm a bit surprised by this number because computing your Cash buffer from the full year 2020 account and using the numbers you presented a couple of Weeks ago and using the equity of the consolidated And restoring the principal investment, I was getting more a number around EUR 2.5 €1,000,000,000 So just wanted to reconcile the €2,500,000,000 and the €4,000,000,000 presented on the slide today. And maybe if you could indicate how what the cash buffer that Sir, you are aiming to keep, if there is any? And the second question will be related to any comments that Would like to do regarding maybe the Q1 claims environment, regarding Texas, but also maybe regarding Potential direct or indirect exposure to greenfield, the following. Thank you.
Sorry, I took my mic on. So I think it's Page 23 that you're referring to with respect to the liquid funds. I think This would have been coherent with the guidance that we had a month ago. Obviously, These funds are net of the dividend That's being paid next month. And so we're again, our view is this is robust.
We Don't have or haven't communicated frankly a target number, but this is unambiguously above it. So I think I just reiterate to say that we're very comfortable with the overall group's liquidity and with the liquid funds that's already at the group level, Your second question was asking for any information we might be able to share On either the winter storms in the Southeast Texas in particular or the Greensill. I'm green. So what I can say is we've not after Looking across the businesses, we've not seen material exposures to us That would be triggered by what we understand today is the scale and scope of this problem. So we're Continuing to work with some of our primary insurers to see if there's anything through the reinsurance book that might have been Caught up in this, but at least with the investigations as they stand today, we've not seen anything significant.
With respect to Texas, I believe it's just premature to say anything. I think it's and I know We're all a little frustrated that we don't have a number that we would normally have after a big knockout event. And now it's It's been about a month, but what's important to note here is that there's not a model for this loss, Right. We're not talking about floodplains. We're not talking about historical wind patterns.
We're not talking about a fault line where we've got the earthquake Damage zone mapped out with detailed models. The damage That was caused especially in Texas was related to the Provision or the interruption of power to homes and businesses. And to the degree that, that interruption of power then led to damage inside the homes and businesses and or the inability for businesses to move forward It is a function frankly of understanding exactly the level of Installation of the building as well as the positioning of the internal Plumbing and water tanks and the heating was natural gas And or electricity and the whole thing just makes it highly, highly complicated. What we have seen on top of that is The risk that this a little bit like the wildfires in California becomes a challenge of who's responsible. And in particular, the opportunities or likelihood of subrogation and to what degree the Energy Providers and the famous Texas grid player ERCOT Assumes or is forced to assume responsibility for some of these losses and then it becomes a casualty loss Rather than a property and business interruption loss, but this was a major event.
There were more than 4,000,000 residents without power in the There were 13,000,000 households that were without water or potable water for some period of time. There were actually rolling out digits in not only Texas, but we've calculated a total of 14 states. And so There's a lot to uncover here. We'll obviously have a number in our Q1 results when we come out on April 30. If we know something more definitive before that and we think it's important enough to share with the market, we would, but otherwise, Our teams are just working very, very hard with the primary companies to try to come to some reasonable calculation both for the industry and for us.
Thank you, Thomas. Could we take the next question, please?
The next question comes from the line of Vikram Gandhi with Societe Generale. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good afternoon. Good morning, everybody. Just one question from my side and that's on Life and Health Business. Given your guidance about some potential noise on the U.
S. Life business expected in the next couple of years, And that's the U. S. P and D business. I wonder how should we think about the position in EVM.
I believe it's already accounted But would be great if you can confirm that?
Vikram, your assumption is correct. When we made some major changes in adjustments in the portfolio, I think in 2013, 2014, We've already made some moves as we felt appropriate in EVM. And while we've done some true up over the years, It's largely in place there. And so the pressure is on the U. S.
GAAP accounts and that's why we've said that we expect COVID aside for us to be able to maintain or reach the targets of 10% to 12 percent return on equity for the Life and Health business in the next few years, but we're likely to be towards the lower end of that.
Thank you, Vikram. Could we take the next question, please?
The next question is a follow-up from Mr. Ritchie with Autonomous. Please go ahead.
Hi, there. Sorry, it's me again. Simple questions, I think. Well, actually not simple, but not that controversial. The volatility impact on SSD was significant.
I mean, it's significant because Even though some market factors improved in the second half, you still had quite a big market impact in the second half of 2020. How quickly Does that volatility I mean, on the big assumption that we have sort of normal ish levels of volatility, whatever that is, From say now, how quickly does the volatility kind of uplift drop out of the, I guess, it affects the target capital? Second question, I noticed in the annual report, there's quite a lot of new disclosure about Average annual expected losses by region, I think that's new, maybe that isn't new. Is that reflecting The latest portfolio shift as at oneone or is that more historic?
So Andrew, on your first question, it's a you're essentially Asking when volatility reverts to the mean, when does the SST volatility charge Drop out or actually reverse as well. I think We don't have a good answer for that to share today. If we do ahead of The mid year announcements, which I guess we do in September, we'll Try to bring that to the market, but I agree with you that it was a large number, but it just reiterates that even if Markets are recovering, that volatility is a challenge for us. And reiterates one of the reasons why we felt that this range of 100 to 250 made a lot of sense. On the second one, I think those expected losses should be viewed as
Probably
not including the January 1 renewals. I don't think we had time to Bring that forward. We can follow-up and confirm that. But I don't think a January one would Change that much in any case. The in force book is what the in force book is here and we've got Well, there were obviously some adjustments in the lines of business.
I don't think geographically we've got a Real shift here. So you should feel comfortable going with that.
Thank you, Andrew. We could take the next question, please.
The next question comes from the line of Simon Forsmeyer with von Trobbel. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. John, 2 more general questions, if I may. The first is on IFRS 17 and EVM. I assume that IFRS 17 is much closer to EVM than U. S.
GAAP ever was. And I'm just wondering if It's right to assume that EVM results are a good indicator how results will look like under IFRS 17. Now I know it's 3 years out, but if you have a gut feel, I'd appreciate that. And the second question is, you're going to get a new chairman At the ATM, and it almost feels like a monarchy is ending. I'm just wondering, in your personal view, what do you think the new Simon will change.
Thank you.
So Simon, On the first question, your understanding is correct that IFRS 17 It is likely to bring a much more economic view to the reporting That we will do for our accounting standards than U. S. GAAP does. I think it's premature to assume that EBM is a good proxy for it. There are unambiguously important differences between EBM And IFRS 17.
We will, as we approach the implementation of this, Provide your guidance and indications of how you should be thinking about our accounts, the balance sheet and the P and L And we'll dry run 2023, as you would expect, to be sure that we're Tracking any novelties. The interesting thing there is because we are coming from U. S. GAAP and not from IFRS nine, We will likely be bringing this on for a consolidation at the group level a year after many of our peers have already started reporting. So you'll get a sense from the marketplace of how this is looking before you'll get it from us, I think.
Your second question, I think I'm probably not going to have much to say other than I'd encourage To listen when our New Chairman speaks and get a strong sense from him of what his priorities will be. Thank
The next question is a follow-up from Mr. Malhotra with Mediobanca. Please go ahead.
Yes. Thank you for a good opportunity, sir. Just coming back to the annual report P and C Reinsurance section, the outlook says The upcoming renewals will show further market hardening but decreasing momentum due to increasing competitive environment. Do you think that this is sort of I mean, you have been a bit more vocal about the competition Since maybe November as well. But do you see that this is a bit worse competition for FreeCall Japan and Florida ahead of us.
So is it much worse than you thought? Or is it just reiterating this trend you've been always thinking about? Thank you.
Yes, Vinit, I don't think we've got a more pessimistic view. I think We've suggested that on U. S. Casualty, we may be more cautious Then some players in the marketplace, I think on property, we continue to see The primary market making important price improvements literally around the world And we would expect those to continue and we'll see renewal by renewal. Observe that one of the specialized player in Florida just recently announced a need to Due some restatement and some negative impact on their loss picks.
So it may be that There is a recognition a further recognition of the need for rate in Florida when that renewal comes in June. But we're working with our clients in Japan as we speak, but also there's a few other important People that will renew on April 1, we'll give you an update of that on April 30 of how that has gone. And we expect That the market will continue to show a hardening during the course of 2020.
Thank you, Vinit. Could we take the next question, please? Otherwise, if there's no more questions, Thank you very much for joining today's call. If you have any follow-up questions, please reach out to any member of the Investor Relations team, thanks again. Thank you to operator.
Back to you.
Thank you for your participation, ladies and gentlemen. You may now disconnect.