Good morning, everyone. I am joined today by our Group CFO, Anders Malmström. He will give you a quick overview of Swiss Re's nine months results for 2026, and then we will be happy to take your questions. Anders, over to you.
Thank you, Elena, and good morning, everyone. We delivered a strong performance in the first nine months of 2026, achieving a group net income of $4.2 billion. That is an increase of 3% compared to the same period last year, and reflects a strong contribution from each of our three business units. We delivered this result while supporting our clients, paying out approximately $27 billion in claims across the group.
The result benefited from lower-than-expected natural catastrophe losses in the first nine months of the year. Despite the overall low experience, we did see increased activity in the third quarter. That included severe earthquakes in Colombia and Japan, wildfires across Europe and North America, and damaging hailstorms in Europe. In total, large natural catastrophe losses in the third quarter across our P&C businesses came to $494 million, including approximately $250 million from the earthquake in Colombia.
Despite the more active risk environment in the third quarter, our P&C Re business delivered a net income of $2.2 billion in the first nine months of the year. That is a small decrease relative to the prior year period, but a strong result in absolute terms. New business CSM, which measures expected future profits from contracts written during the period, declined compared to the previous year, reflecting the more competitive pricing environment. We are in the middle of the January renewals discussions now, so I would like to say a bit more about the market. Our discussions with clients at industry conferences around the world confirmed that market conditions vary significantly by geography and line of business.
Pricing pressure is generally greater in markets with fewer losses, particularly in property NatCat, while additional capital is increasing capacity and competition. Our teams are well-prepared to navigate the current market dynamics. We are staying close to our clients and brokers, identifying attractive opportunities and supporting them not only with capacity, but more importantly, with our expertise and solutions.
Let me give you two examples. We worked with a California-based property insurer that wanted to grow while managing its wildfire exposure. Our P&C Re and Risk Data Solutions teams developed a solution to monitor wildfire risk concentrations in real time, allowing the insurer to grow premiums significantly while keeping potential losses from major wildfires broadly stable. In another case, we helped a U.S.-based insurer launch a new homeowner's product, providing the data and analytics needed to assess risks and support its expansion. Within three years, the business grew from zero to more than $150 million in annual premiums.
The partnership has since expanded into other parts of the insurer's business, creating further commercial opportunities for Swiss Re. We're also using AI to bring our risk knowledge closer to clients, from supporting faster and more accurate underwriting decisions to improving claims handling. We're using AI to make it easier for clients to access our expertise and solutions. All of this illustrates our approach: staying close to clients, understanding their needs, and finding new ways to support them.
Even where we reduce our exposure in certain areas because the expected returns no longer meet our requirements, we can often find opportunities to expand our role elsewhere, and we are pursuing those opportunities with ambition. Turning to Corporate Solutions, our commercial insurance business continues to deliver consistently strong results. While Corporate Solutions is also exposed to P&C market cycles, it has different risk drivers, a different portfolio mix, and renewals spread throughout the year. This provides additional diversification at group level.
We're strengthening this further by continuing to expand in targeted lines. In the third quarter, we completed the acquisition of QBE's global trade credit and surety business, providing an additional source of earnings less dependent on the property market cycle. We're also expanding in attractive growth markets. Today, Corporate Solutions announced a strategic cooperation with Old Mutual Insure in South Africa.
This builds on similar partnerships with GNP Seguros in Mexico and Bajaj General Insurance in India, which we announced alongside our half-year results. This partnership growth platform is an important part of Corporate Solutions' strategy to scale its business in these markets by combining our global underwriting expertise and capabilities with the local market knowledge and distribution networks of established partners. Now, turning to Life & Health Re. This business unit delivered an increased result in the first nine months.
Life and Health reinsurance has very different characteristics from P&C Re. Many of the contracts we write are long-term, and the earnings pattern of the business is driven by factors such as mortality, longevity, and the performance of our existing portfolio over many years. In total, Life & Health Re has a CSM balance of $16.6 billion, which we expect to release gradually as earnings in future years. This year's performance also benefited from favorable experience, particularly in U.S. mortality, although we shouldn't assume that such developments will repeat every period.
New business CSM in Life & Health Re was lower than in the prior year period, primarily reflecting fewer large transactions alongside a more selective approach to new business, in particular in the APAC region. We continue to invest in our transaction capabilities to strengthen our position in this market. We see attractive long-term opportunities, particularly as insurers look for solutions to manage their life and longevity risks. Moving on to our investment results. Swiss Re has a substantial investment portfolio, and the recurring income it generates is another important contributor to the resilience of group earnings.
In the first nine months of this year, that amounted to more than $3 billion. We've benefited from the higher interest rate environment over recent years, as we've been able to reinvest at attractive yields. Our reinvestment yield for the third quarter was 5.6%, the highest figure in many years. Because our portfolio turns over gradually, the benefits of those higher yields continue to support our investment income. Now moving to our efforts to simplify Swiss Re and improve how we operate.
We are reducing complexity and duplication, simplifying structures and processes, and making deliberate choices about where we focus our resources. This helps us to make decisions faster, work more efficiently, and engage even more closely with our clients. As we have increased our ambition in these areas, we have also identified opportunities for greater cost savings. Earlier this year, we raised our cost reduction target to $500 million in annual run rate savings by 2028, and we continue to make good progress towards this goal. At the same time, we continue to invest in strategic areas, including underwriting, data, and AI solutions, and client engagement.
Today, we announced the appointment of Lori Goltermann, who will join Swiss Re as Chief Commercial Officer for Corporate Solutions, a newly created global role. Lori will lead Swiss Re's enterprise-wide strategy for corporate clients, governments, and distribution partners. She will bring together Swiss Re's specialized underwriting, risk expertise, technology, and global reach to drive sustainable, profitable growth. Finally, let me say a few words about capital and our financial targets. Our strong performance in the first nine months puts us well on track towards our financial targets for 2026.
We are also approaching the completion of our $1.5 billion share buyback program. Looking ahead, we are realistic about the market environment, but we have strong foundations with three complementary business units, high-quality portfolios, solid recurring investment income, and a clear plan to simplify our operations. Demand for risk protection continues to grow, and we are pursuing attractive opportunities while maintaining our underwriting standards. Our priorities remain unchanged, delivering on our financial targets and the group's overall resilience. Given our strong performance in the first nine months, and subject to large loss activity, we expect to place increasing emphasis on strengthening the group's resilience in the fourth quarter. With that, I would like to hand back to Elena.
Thank you very much, Anders. We will now open the lines for Q&A. As a reminder, it would be great if you could limit yourself initially to two questions, and if you have more, please add yourself to the queue again. Operator, could we take the first question, please?
Sure. As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. The first question comes from Ben Dyson from S&P Global Market Intelligence. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I have a couple, if I may. The first one is on the full-year profit target. Obviously, you are at $4.2 billion for the nine-month stage and $4.5 billion or more for the full target. Just interested in why you are not raising the profit target, and if that is anything to do with the resilience build-up you just mentioned in the fourth quarter. If you could say more about that would be great. Then the second question I have was just around the higher experience, positive experience variance in P&C Re.
Some of that has come from lower NatCats and some of it has come from reserve releases. I would just be interested if you could say a little bit more about what has happened there, particularly on the reserve release side, and whether you can give any split between how much of the benefit has come from lower NatCats and how much has come from reserve releases. Thank you.
Absolutely. Look, I think on the first one, I can reiterate what I said before. I mean, we really have these two objectives. One, achieve our financial targets, but also we want to maintain or even increase the group's resilience. I think it puts us now in a good position with $4.2 billion after three months, target of $4.5 billion. We want to be prepared for the future, and so that is why I think now in Q4, we put more emphasis on the resilient side. That does not mean we will not also make sure that we achieve our financial targets here.
But I think it is always this combination. You want to think longer term and not just for one year. But achieving of the target, well on track, and then we now go into Q4. On your second question about the split between, call it short-term benefits from lower NatCat, but also the longer term on the reserve releases. It is a mix. I think for the first nine months, we had lower NatCat, which comes through.
You will actually hear more than also in the afternoon in the analyst call if you go in there. But we had very positive reserve development, particularly on the property side in previous year periods. So it is this combination that made up the result. So it is not just what we call good NatCat luck. It is really also, call it prudent reserve assumption that then over time release.
Thank you, Ben. Let us take next question, please.
The next question comes from Nathalie Olof-Ors from AFP. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks for taking my questions. I would like two things. I would like to see if you could give us an indication about the heatwave and fires that fall during the summer. These are not large events as like an earthquake, but how do these events filter through the losses that Swiss Re has to cover? How are they influencing the expenses for natural catastrophe? I would like to see as well, you say that for the nine months, the large catastrophes are lower than expected. Can you give us a bit color on the hurricane season in the North Atlantic?
Yes. Maybe I start. I think overall when we talk about NatCat, I mean, we have obviously, as you mentioned, with different sources. I mean, it's the earthquakes which are truly random. I don't think there's any kind of trend here. I mean, we had a few earthquakes. We had Japan, we had Colombia. We also had Venezuela, but just there's very little insured there, but that's very random. Then we have the more, call it trending NatCat, or developing NatCat areas like the heatwaves, like the wildfires. That's where we, I mean, obviously that's where then insurance and reinsurance comes in. During the summer, we saw a lot of these, particularly I was in Europe.
I think what we need to then, what people then need to understand, the heatwave per se is not an event, but then there's consequences. These consequences then go into the property insurance, can be agricultural insurance, depending where it goes. Sometimes it's not even insured, so even if you had an event. That's an area I think we also need to make sure we educate people about the risk they have being exposed to these two events.
Because for, take wildfires. I mean, wildfires in Europe haven't been that prominent, and a lot of that is actually not insured, and so, but has significant consequences. So that's that. On the NatCat in total, I think you wanted to understand a bit kind of also from a numbers perspective. So we have a budget, what we expect, and in the first two quarters, we had very little events, but in the third quarter, we actually had quite material event. We were still below the budget, but it was much higher.
Also hurricanes, I mean, you talked about hurricanes. We had this one hurricane. It is a Q4 event, so it's not in the numbers yet. It's early days. You don't need many, you need one severe, and that severe can have significant damage. So maybe that gives you a bit kind of the color of overall where we are.
Precisely last year, there was no hurricane that hit, that made landfall in the U.S. last year. So last year was exceptionally low, but how does this year compare so far to last year, but also to previous years?
Last year, we didn't have landfall in the U.S. We had a significant hurricane. We had Melissa, which hit Jamaica and a few of the islands. This year, we had Isaias in Q4. Look, again, I think it's not just a matter of how many hurricanes we have, and clearly we know with El Niño, we have less Atlantic hurricanes right now, but we can have It very much depends where it makes landfall. That can be very volatile. You don't need many hurricanes to have a severe event. For us, it's really important that we can support the clients here when something happens, that we are here. But it is a volatile business, so some years you have more, some years you have less.
All right. Perfect. Thank you.
Thanks, Nathalie. Let's take the next question, please.
The next question comes from Marleen Kaesebier from Reuters. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you. I was just wondering also on NatCat, if you could give us a little bit more information on how much of the losses of the $640 million of the nine months came from the third quarter?
Yes, I can give you the exact number. The majority came from third quarter. Give me just one second.
Thank you.
Yeah, I think it's about. Let me just look it up. Let me come back on this one, because I don't have it.
Thank you.
Right. Yeah.
Do you have any other questions, Marleen? Otherwise, we will get back to you with a number later.
No. Yeah, that was it for me. No, thank you.
Okay. Thanks. Let's take the next question, please.
The next question comes from Thomas Pohl from AWP. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning. Just following up the catastrophe events. Just from a local perspective, can you say something about the hailstorms in Switzerland? What did this cost you, and how did you see this situation?
Yes. I mean, first of all, the hailstorms in Switzerland were very significant. It was not just Switzerland, it was Germany and Italy at the same time, but it was one of the big events that we had this year. We don't disclose the exact number from a reinsurance perspective, but it had impact on reinsurance. I mean, for the total industry, I think the number I recall is about CHF 1.5 billion that has been published just in Switzerland. Part of it goes to the cantonal portion, and the rest goes to the private insurers, but it also had an impact on the reinsurers.
Okay. Thanks.
Thanks, Thomas. Let's take the next question, please.
Once again, to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone. The next question comes from Jonathan Progin from Finanz und Wirtschaft. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi. Thanks for taking my question. I have two. Just an additional question on the hail losses in Switzerland. I mean, these were significant in terms of they were kind of new, they were slow-moving, it was an unusual time in the morning on a Friday, I think, and there was no rain before the hail event. So, it was also very, very big in terms of geographic reach, right? So, my question is, has this been in the models of the insurance or reinsurance industry before, or was that kind of like a new event that wasn't seen before in terms of modeling?
So, what does that mean for your risk landscape in Switzerland in terms of hail losses for the future? And then the second question on the share buyback. You are approaching the completion of the current share buyback, and I remember back in February, you presented a new framework for your share buybacks, and you added additional share buyback as well, so totaling to $1.5 billion. Now, based on your resilient performance, good performance and resilience now, currently, can we maybe read into it that you will also present or launch a new share buyback in February or even in December on your management dialogue event? Thanks.
Okay. Maybe let's start with the hail and the models. I mean, as you say, this was a very significant event, but it also was very local. So, it had local areas that were hit very, very hard, and just a few 100 m next to it, nothing happened. I think our models do see these events, because, I mean, we had it now in Switzerland, we have seen it in other areas. And this year, we had very significant hail in Canada. I think we had some significant hail in Australia. So, our models do see that, and so this is not extraordinary in that sense. I mean, it is extraordinary now here in Switzerland, but it is not extraordinary in itself.
On the share buyback, look, I think we are going to give an update, a general update, 4th of December about the kind of future targets, but also capital management plan. So, I think you probably have to wait until then, until I can give you an update. Yep. I can just also come back to the questions about the large NatCats and for how much we had in Q3. So, we had $471 million NatCat in Q3, and that compares to a budget of $773 million. Just back to the question we had earlier.
All right. Thanks, Jonathan, for the question. Let's take the next one, please.
We now have a follow-up question from Ben Dyson from S&P Global Market Intelligence. Please go ahead.
Hi. Yeah, thanks for taking the follow-up. Yeah, just the first one was, I guess, a quick follow-up on the first question I had on the resilience in Q4. I was just wondering if you could say a bit more about that and what sort of resilience it is, I suppose. If that's going to be, I guess, reserve strengthening, and if there's any particular areas that you're looking to build resilience in, or if it's more of a general resilience that you're looking to build there. The second question I had is what was just on the January 1 renewals.
I'd just be interested if you could say a little bit more there about the discussions and whether, in particular, you're facing any pressure to lower attachment points on property catastrophe business, and I guess, from your perspective, whether there's any flexibility in that this time around. Thank you very much.
Okay. Yeah, so back to your resilience question. Look, I think we're more talking about general resilience, and that can be broad. I mean, it can be that you accelerate fixed income losses to then increase your future investment income, but it can also be that you strengthen the balance sheet on the reserving side. It's not about specific, it's more about general resilience and putting us in the best position for the future. On the January 1 renewals, look, I mean, it's early. I think conversation has started. We still see the discussion mostly on price, so terms and conditions are broadly stable, so we don't see huge changes there. Look, I think literally the conversation started now, so that's what I can tell you now.
Okay, thank you.
Thanks, Ben. Let's take the next question, please.
For any further questions, please press star and one on your telephone. Ladies and gentlemen, we have no more questions from the phone. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Elena Logutenkova for any closing remarks.
All right. Thank you very much for joining today's conference. If there are any further questions, please reach out to Media Relations. There will be an analyst call in the afternoon as usual, and you are welcome to join that in listen-only mode. A reminder that we will be publishing our targets for next year on December 4th. Thank you very much and goodbye.