I will now hand over to your host, Andreas Brandstetter, to begin today's conference. Thank you.
Thank you very much, and hello. Thank you for interest in joining us in our call concerning the preliminary results 2022. Very interesting year, which gives the proof of our very strong underlying insurance technical result. We'll have seen on slide four that we have some major impacts on the negative side as far as the asset management is concerned. On the other hand, we could more than compensate it by incredible strong performance in the insurance technique, especially in Q3 and mainly Q4 2022. If you move on to slide five, a few comments on the P&L.
An overall growth rate of around 3.9%, split it into, on the one hand, 4.3% growth in Austria, one of our two home markets, followed by roughly 3.5% in CE. Already now addressing the issue of the price indexation, around one-third of this growth rate, so of the overall 3.9% is supported by the price indexation, of course, as you know, mainly from the P&C business. Insurance benefits, a very good development, especially in Q3, mainly Q4, due to various factors. On the one hand, a very, I would say, still positive, basic, underlying portfolio in the retail business. This is something what you heard from us already in the previous quarters and years.
This means that not only in Austria but also in CE, we made a very strong progress as far as the pure insurance business, the technical quality of our retail portfolio is concerned. This allowed us to digest, on the one hand, the major claims in the amount of more than EUR 240 million overall by the overall year, mainly, of course, coming from corporate business. We also could digest more than EUR 100 million negative impact from weather-related claims. We see an amount of around EUR 115 million which hits our P&L coming from weather-related claims. It's not as much as 2021, but it's the third highest amount in the last 20 years.
We have a strong support, of course, by runoff results, because in the first six months, following a very strong negative, especially coming from large claims, we might have been a little bit too conservative as far as the second half of the year is concerned. We also had very good benefits coming from our external reinsurance corporations in this year, 2022. Investment income, we'll tackle it in a second. We see impairments in the amount of roughly EUR 140 million by the year-end, coming from mainly Russia, around EUR 100 million and around EUR 40 million from Ukraine. Around EUR 30 million coming from RBI and something like EUR 160 million from illiquid fund certificates. Partially offset by realized gains.
However, we are around one-third below the level of 2022 as far as our net investment income is concerned. Earning before tax, as a consequences of all this, have been rising in the amount of around 10%, up to EUR 422 million. Due to a very low tax ratio in the amount of roughly 7%-8%, our consolidated profit is a level of EUR 383 million. Similar as in the previous year to similar as 2021, our proposal to the AGM by the beginning of June will be therefore a dividend level of EUR 0.55 per stake. Moving on to slide seven, a comment on our two operations in Ukraine and Russia.
You know that both countries are not really relevant for either the premium side, for the top line or for the bottom line, for the profit of the group. Starting with Russia, immediately after the war started, roughly one year ago, we made clear that this is not the future market for UNIQA. This means that we stopped basically all relevant new business. This means we have a constant loss of premium, we have a constant loss, of course, of clients. Our portfolio is shrinking. We have around EUR 60 million of premiums in Russia, which means this is less than 1% of the overall group's top line, and the profit contribution is something like EUR 25 million.
If you put this into relation to EUR 422 million, you see the contribution is, I wouldn't say irrelevant, but it's very, very limited and very slow. About the future, we keep on repeating what Kurt mentioned in the previous calls. We are evaluating all options, including sale of the company. Of course, as you will understand, there are a lot of circumstances and considerations which we have to keep in mind. Just that you know, reconfirming we are evaluating all options, but that the business itself is shrinking from day to day. Ukraine, a different perspective. Absolutely clear this country has a huge potential. We are up and running there. You see that we are still serving around 1.6 million clients.
We didn't only pay claims in the previous years, we haven't been only up and running. We even collected new premium. Even if the market was shrinking, even our company, of course, was shrinking due to the war, we could attract new clients, both on the retail and on the corporate side. This, I think, is a very interesting sign. Our workforce basically is back in the country at a level around 95%. On the peak in March and April last year, we had around 25% of our workforce being fleeing to Poland, to Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania. This changed. They almost returned, all of them, except around 5, 7%.
There's a clear position from UNIQA that in this country where we are number two on the market, we have full dedication too. This means there's not only a strong wave of, I would say, solidarity running through the whole UNIQA group, if it's about supporting Ukraine, it's also clear that this market has a huge upside potential for us in the future.
Just reminding you to one fact, one person living in Ukraine before the war was spending around EUR 45 per year on insurances. EUR 45 per year, whereas in Austria, to give you a corresponding number, it's around EUR 2,000 on insurances per year. I think this shows also, on a long-term perspective, the huge catch-up potential of this country. Having said so, we may head on to the detailed results, and I hand over to Kurt, our CFO, and invite you to join us on slide nine.
Ladies and gentlemen, talking about the growth of UNIQA on page nine. We see quite a good growth of 3.9 percentage points. This despite high inflation and price increases in all of our countries. If you divide this growth to Austria, it's about 4.3%, and international business, 3.4%. On a stable FX position, international growth, like to like, this is close to 4 percentage points in that relation. We see no big lapses, so in that case, also a stable position on our clients. Indexation was a topic in all, in our business lines, P&C as well as life, and also in the health business.
Differently from the proceeding, in Austria, because of 10-year contracts, normally in the retail business, differently than in the international business. We would say more than 95% of our clients took the indexation on their policies. Page number 10, the cost ratio improved down to 27.2 percentage points. In that case, we are clearly below the average inflation within UNIQA Group. This was due to a good cost controlling and good cost management in all our business units. What you see also here, the quite good development of the other operating expenses since 2020, from EUR 632 million down to EUR 548 million.
This despite of investments of EUR 45 million, which are more or less in accordance with our IT program, UNIQA Insurance Platform. The combination was already mentioned by Andreas, you see a quite impressive development in the last quarter with a claims ratio of 54.9%. It's likely the same that we had in 2021, so in that case, it's not a single position. We have this on the one hand, also in the other years, retrocession was one thing, lower frequency, and also to mention, is a very sustainable base claim development within the year 2022. The P&C business itself, so in that case on page number 12, ends up with a good success and good profit of EUR 68 million. We talked about the most important implications.
In that case, we go on to the health business on page 13. What jumps to the eye is the development of the cost-benefit ratio in the fourth quarter. This has to do with higher claims and claims handling costs because of more people going into the hospitals and also inpatient and outpatient tariffs. In that case, we had to pay more. Plus that we also took the position in the year to strengthen a little bit our reserves in the health business by EUR 10 million, which is also embedded in this number. Life, on page 14, suffers of course from the investment situation and from the impairments clearly visible on the investment results. On the other hand, we had a good development on our reserve level and on the reserve development.
Coming to the investment activity on page 15. Besides that, what you have already heard, so we had impairments in total on the group of EUR 380 million in 2022. Besides the already mentioned impairments on Russia and Ukraine bonds and RVI, on other bonds on EUR 190 million. Everything according to the increase of the interest rates. We had no credit impairment or we had no other topics that we have to safeguard. In that case, it was everything related to the increase of the interest rates. According to our portfolio, which is 80% of current bonds or corporate bonds, we have here this impact of the increasing interest rates directly in the P&L.
What you also see is that our equity position lowered by EUR 1.1 billion. On the other hand, we achieved an average interest rates on the portfolio of 2 percentage points. The new money yield is 4.25 percentage points over the group on euros. We have a solvency ratio which is around 245 percentage points by the end of the year. With this, we come to the outlook of 2023, which Andreas will give you short guidance.
Which just contains three small points at the end. Thank you, Kurt. Not repeating about the dividend proposal of EUR 0.55, but saying that first, this is due to various reasons, a transition year. You know, that we are expecting we have IFRS 9 and IFRS 17 in front of us, which keeps us quite busy. Certainly interesting development to see first results in Q1. Second, you find us still ongoing very optimistic about the resilience of our insurance technical portfolio. We are happy that we can serve currently more than 16 million clients in our 18 markets. We've been attracting around 300,000 new additional clients in the previous years. If you add then the clients which we have in the pension schemes, we have around 17 million people who trust our company.
I think this is a very interesting and reliable and positive, constant development. You heard about the constant improvement of our combined ratio. This is the reason why Kurt and me and the whole team, why we are very optimistic about the resilience and the robustness of our insurance business. Is your own second comment. The third comment, will be no surprise for you, but same as 2022, we are hesitating giving you a clear outlook because there are so many uncertainties around. None of us expected or most of us didn't expect at least a Russian attack one year ago. One day later it happened, right? We do not know what it will mean for energy situation. We do not know what it means for delivery chain.
We do not know what it will mean for inflation in Europe, in our markets, and basically the whole world. We do not know what's going on in Asia, what kind of global uncertainties we are facing. This is the reason why there remains a significant uncertainty in capital markets. In summary, all of this, no outlook, but a very clear positive estimation about all those things which we can influence ourselves. This is basically our core business. Thank you for listening to us, and Kurt and me, we are very happy now to answer your questions.
As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question on today's call, please press star one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star two. The first question comes from the line of Jakub Lichwa of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hello there. Thanks for holding this call. One question I have is on the portfolio values or the book values that you have or the market values really of the Ukraine and Russia exposures. Do I understand correctly that you essentially marked those down about 10% only? That'll be question number one, and that's on slide seven. If that's the case, like, can we get a little bit more context? 'Cause I mean, obviously, you know, Ukraine and Russia bonds are below those levels. Just wanted to understand what exactly is behind this valuation, please.
Yeah. Thank you. The market value of our portfolio only on the Ukrainian bonds is EUR 88 million by the end of the year, coming from EUR 126 million on the beginning of the year. This is what we have. The distinction, what you have to take into consideration is that we have to distinguish between home country and non-home country bonds in Ukraine. That, that means those who are lying in Ukraine and those are lying outside of Ukraine. Also the question is which currency that we have, euros, Ukrainian hryvnia or U.S dollar. Differently, to those classifications, we took then the impairments of those EUR 39 million that Andreas mentioned.
You cannot count these overall bonds because we did a classification depending on currency and depending on the home country or not home country principle.
Can you say whether there is actually an observable input into those bonds or is it just estimated values for these? I mean, are they like, say, traded bonds? I would imagine these are.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. The bonds are traded.
Yeah.
The bonds and the market values are according to, I don't know, Bloomberg or other systems.
Okay.
It was not an own model that we defined here.
It's the official data that we used for this.
Okay. This will be some corporate bonds, I presume, it cannot be government bonds.
Mixed.
Mixed. Okay. I mean, just because, you know, Ukraine bonds, I think, are trading below $0.20 on a dollar. That's why it seemed like quite a bit of discrepancy to have a market value again at.
What you also have to take into consideration that around the same amount, EUR 40 million, that we put into the on the OCI because of the accounting treatment.
Okay. Okay. I mean, yeah. I mean, I guess, you know, what followed was just like, you know, obviously this is just a subset of your investment portfolio, which seems to be a little bit, you know. Some other peers, not peers, but issuers have written off the value of these bonds. It seems to be fairly, I don't know, I wanna say aggressively marked. That's why I'm just wondering if how the rest of the investment book is, whether that there is any read across to how you mark the rest of the investment book. Okay. There are observable inputs and the marks are in Bloomberg. That's, that's fine.
The second question, if I may, I know you've listed things like, you know, in terms of the planning uncertainty and sort of operational uncertainties. I mean, it's, you know, obviously goes without saying that there is a lot happening in the world. You know, I can see why you're sort of hesitant to give the outlook. You know, having said that, you know, the geographies which are problematic, if you will, and, you know, you said Ukraine presents an opportunity in the future, but Russia, they account for, like, less than 10% of your earnings before taxes. That's one thing. I would imagine the situation in Asia that you mentioned, inflation in Europe, I mean, they will have some sort of effect.
I was just wondering, what are the P&L lines that you are most concerned about? You know, it would seem to me, for example, that you have reported fairly stable combined ratio, and I'm not... You know, I guess inflation can feed a bit into that, into that. I don't know whether you're expecting, you know, the general market to have impact on the premiums written, again, or the underwriting conditions. Just trying to think whether is there a guidance that you can give, let's say, ex-Russia or ex-Ukraine, or you would prefer still not to?
No, I think the answer is quite simple. We're not so much, let's say, cautious about our core business. I try to figure it out. We are more cautious about developments on the macros, and therefore the capital market. Having said this, you know, if you just, if you look on the last two years, 2021, 2022, following two years of Corona, while, you know, we have been so, let's say, unclear first what Corona might mean, meaning how robust is the business? Will people still buy insurance? Will we will see a wave of cancellation in our, on our book, meaning in the retail business or in the corporate business? This didn't happen, right? It did not happen.
Yeah.
In two Corona years. It also did not happen last year. We have been quite scared in March, April, when we saw inflation going away, going off at around 9%, 10%, 11%. You think about Czech Republic, we saw inflation of 16%. We saw in Poland 17%. We had a deep respect, assuming there might be a kind of cancellation coming, especially in those markets where household income isn't that high, and there isn't so much room for maneuvering for our customers. This all didn't happen, neither in Austria nor in CE.
Mm-hmm.
Having said so, I mean, you know, we still watch our book carefully, but there is constant new business flowing in, even in the year, I may say this, as well as first week 2023. We see a very stable development on the premium side. As I mentioned, supported in Austria, of course, by also the indexation, which is allowed by law. Again, common one, we are not so much concerned about the insurance business itself. Having in mind, again, that in the last two years, we saw severe impacts coming from weather-related claims. You know, this is, I think, what you will hear from the whole industry. The upcoming future.
Yeah.
Will always show
Sure. Yeah. I agree. Nobody can then, you know, give any guidance really, you know, because we obviously don't know.
No, it's about the capital markets. Highly appreciate you try. Due to uncertainty on the capital markets, we saw a lot of hits which you have especially also, except Russia and except Ukraine last year, coming from steadily increasing interest rates, we are cautious. Okay?
Okay.
I think also it's 2022, we have been cautious, and at the end of the day, saw a very positive result.
Okay. All right. Thank you.
Thank you.
Next question comes from the line of Rok Stibric of Raiffeisen Bank International. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon. Thanks a lot for taking my questions, and of course, also congrats on the solid results, despite all the headwinds in 2022. Maybe I'll just have one question on this one-off tax development. Would you maybe be in position to guide me with some figures, how come that this effective tax rate was so low in the last year? Thank you.
Okay. There are two things. We have a huge amount of loss carried forward from the history.
Second thing is, according to the differences between IFRS and local accounting GAAP, we had also a huge position of positive deferred taxes. We're talking about close to EUR 50 million. Very low taxes from previous years. This brings us to this very nice 7% tax ratio for 2022.
Respect to the loss carried forward, is there something remaining in the balance that could be utilized in the next years?
Yes. We have a good package of loss carry forward from the history, which we can then also use in the future. Certainly we have to take care in which amount and what positions, it's not eaten up all at the moment.
Okay. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Thomas Unger of Erste Group. Please go ahead.
Yes, good afternoon. Thank you also for taking my question. I would like to follow up on the investment income and maybe remaining just in Q4, and if you could give us the write-downs or the value corrections that you had in just this quarter. You had some very significant realized and unrealized losses in Q4. On the positive side, within the net investment income, the current income was very good, growing to nearly EUR 200 million in the quarter alone. Is that a signal for what we can expect going forward for the current income?
Then my second question would be on the net insurance claims and benefits. You touched upon that during your presentation more than once. If you could go through the operating segment again and give us some more color on what happened especially in health and life and then maybe also in P&C. A very last question from me would be on the dividend. Net profit was strong, especially in Q4. Why did you opt not to increase the payout ratio beyond those 44% proposed now? Thank you.
Hi, Thomas. Thanks for the question. I start with question number 1 on Q4 impairment. We had two major triggers in Q4. One was the already mentioned and talked about Ukrainian impairment of close to EUR 14 million, roughly. Second thing is, in Q4, we have illiquid assets regarding to some funds that has a big impact on the investment income. Here it comes a little bit on very technical, but I'll try to give you guidance in half a minute. We're talking about mortgage funds that we have here, and the mortgage funds have, according to the high increase of the interest rates, the necessity of an impairment. The impairment was of around EUR 150 million in that case.
A part of that is lying in the Austrian life business. As the impairment is only done in the IFRS, because on local accounts, we have still enough hidden reserves that we can cover this. We have a difference between the IFRS accounting scheme and the local accounting scheme, but this has the possibility to create or to build up a deferred profit participation. This is what we did. The profit participation is positive. That is what you see in the life business in the technical result. The impairment is that what you see on the investment income. Just looking on the investment income seems in that case, okay, what's going on there? Just take into account EUR 65 million was the first profit participation for only those mortgage funds that we had.
So this-
EUR 65 million positive?
6-6-5.
65. Okay, thank you. Mm-hmm.
Okay. Your next question was regarding the dividend. Yes, it's true. We have a very nice net profit. If you just set this into relation to our dividends, we end up below those 50%-60% what we always talk about. On a sustainable basis, even if we would like to have it, we do a 0.7% tax rate for UNIQA. If you take it into account on a 20%, what we always said is for us achievable, we are above the 50% payout ratio. This is what we see for us also sustainable and something that is according to that. Looking a little bit on the things Andreas mentioned, some uncertainties in the future.
Keep this stable, but not overdo this because of this long-term effect or this positive effect of the tax ratio, and therefore we keep the EUR 0.55. Your second question, sorry, I understood is the technical performance on the 3 segments. Look for us, we have nothing to add like that. We had a very negative year on weather-related claims. In relation to the seven years average, it's EUR 414 million higher than the seven years average in the history, only in UNIQA Austria. The second thing is major claims because of A, the situation of a bigger portfolio. B, it is also according to the situation of the acquisition of AXA, and AXA has a good corporate portfolio.
That's the thing. On the other hand, very stable position on the base claims. Everything in the normal retail business. Good development according to the insurance and the situation on the cost side. Indexation, we talked a lot. This is for P&C. Health business, very stable. We do not get any. We do not see this as a negative impact because the development in the fourth quarter, this is normal. In that case, we see also a great growth in the health business, especially in both segments, inpatient and outpatient. There is international-wise, the EUR 100 million that we have. The portfolio is good, it's growing, but predominantly, we're talking about Austria.
In the life business, what we have here is one thing where if you look only on the growth, it's plus minus zero. This comes from the situation that we have very high outflows coming from the years of 2010, 2011, 2012, where the two groups were. Again, Austria was pushed enormously even with the single premiums. Now the outflows are higher than inflows. That means the new business does not cover the outflows from the history. That's the reason for the plus minus zero. From the profitability, new business value is very positive. It's very good. Interest rate, we talked about, we can earn it.
In that case, also for the life business, we see a, I would say, positive to neutral development on the profitability and also for the future, in that case, a good position.
Okay, thank you. Just on P&C, what you mentioned, I think you mentioned in the presentation also, what was the amount of major claims in 2022?
The major claims have been around close to EUR 300 million, which is for the portfolio for us inside. It is what we see, also from the history, that this amount is what we can count on for the future.
Those were individual, single cases that made up the most of those, EUR 300 million?
Different. These have been fire claims. These have been claims on industries. These have been claims on the car insurance with annuities. All the stuff around.
Okay. Thank you very much. Just one last one maybe. You've also touched upon this in the presentation, How do you see customers reacting now to the premium increases, and especially maybe in health insurance in Austria? What the recent developments now last week's months?
We see a very stable position on the customer side, even on the positive side. We gathered around 300,000 new customers in the recent years. Indexation was taken. I think, customers are seeking for safety and for care, and in that case, very stable position. I also touched about these lapses, neglectable. In that case, we see no influence from any external factors within the economy.
Super. Thank you very much.
Okay.
There are no further questions in the queue. As a final reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star one. There are no further questions. I will hand back to your host to complete today's conference. Thank you.
Thank you for your time. I appreciate. Stay healthy, stay safe, and looking forward to seeing you again. All the best. Bye-bye.
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