Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the VIG Preliminary Results for the Financial Year 2024 Conference Call and Live Webcast. I am Youssef, the Chorus Call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode and that the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Hartwig Löger, CEO of VIG. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Warm welcome also from our side, from Ringturm in Vienna, and we are pleased to welcome you to our telephone conference. Starting with the results of 2024, I just also want to remind that 2024 was a special year. We celebrated 200 years of existence of the roots of our group. I think long-term sustainability is fixed in this way, and also 30 years of listing on Vienna Stock Exchange, which might also show our resilient development also in this case. Coming maybe on the first slide from my side, taking an overview about the key KPIs of last year's development, we see all over strong full-year performance from VIG, especially with very strong growth on gross written premium. We reached more than EUR 15 billion of premium, which is by EUR 15.2 billion, more than 10% up on the result of last year.
Changing to IFRS 17, we see that insurance service revenue also increased by 11%, up to EUR 12 billion. The most important for us, that profit before tax is increased by 14.1%, up to EUR 881.8 million. What we see also is that P&C net combined ratio is also up 0.8 percentage points to 93.4%. We will come back to that in detail. It is also, of course, influenced by the big storm Boris, which took part in the summer last year. Earnings per share increased to EUR 4.98. Up to that, also a positive impact we have on the operating return on equity, which also increased and improved by 1.3 points to 16.4%. All over, very positive performance and very positive also developments in the main key figures.
On the next slide, we'll go on with, I think, one of the most important factors of our development over the last years and also for the future. This gives a strong basis for good performance over the next years. It is the diversification. We show here in the two pictures the gross written premiums, diversification by segments. Here we see that Austria all over is about 26%, and that also extended CEE already in premium is balancing the Austrian book, Czech, and Poland with 14 and 10%, quite strong, and also special markets coming up with around 9%. In this case, going to the right part of the result, we see result before taxes, still Austria is even higher in the level of results, even also Czech. What we see is that there is already a quite good balance situation coming from extended CEE and special markets.
This also we see in the perspective for the future that the potential we have is that especially Central Eastern Europe will improve also in the balancing of the result before taxes. What is most important, and Liane Hirner will come back to that, is that we have not only the growth of premium, but also the result before taxes in a very balanced situation in between the segments, in between the business lines, and the diversification all over is stabilizing also the results. Next slide, the dividend proposal. The board members will propose up by 10.7% to last year. We want to increase the dividends to EUR 1.55 per share, which gives an attractive dividend yield of 5.1%.
You see also in the chart the dynamic increase in the payout of dividends, which is also important to be seen on the basis of our dividend policy, which we defined last year already. There you are fixed that there is the minimum dividend paying now in the proposal for 2024 is again the minimum for the dividends increase of the next years, which will also depend on the operating earnings situation. I will come back to that later with also the outlook for 2025 so that we can expect here also a dynamic perspective and a dynamic development for the next years. Saying this, I will hand over to Liane Hirner to go deeper into the financials.
Thank you, Hartwig. Also from my side, a warm welcome to everybody in the call. Let's have a closer look at the group income statement, which we show on slide seven. Apart from the already mentioned positive development of insurance service revenue, which is up by EUR 1.2 billion, mainly driven by the B&C business, I would also like to highlight the increased total capital investment result. This was mainly the result of a higher interest revenue from the bond portfolio supported by the market interest rate development. The presented strong result before taxes of EUR 881.8 million includes a goodwill impairment of EUR 116.3 million made in Hungary. As a result of the repeated prolongation of the additional insurance tax by the Hungarian government, scenario analysis has been performed to further expenses arising from this tax beyond the current statutory period.
This resulted in a significant reduction of the cash flow projections and led to the impairment of goodwill. The tax ratio with 24.4% is one percentage point below last year's 25.4%. A tax ratio in this range is also to be expected for 2025. On slide eight on the next page, we show the insurance service revenue by segments. Double-digit growth rates were recorded in Poland, the extended CEE, and the special market segment. The strongest contribution to the revenue growth, with more than EUR 450 million, derived from the extended CEE segment, where Romania, Slovakia, and the Baltics, as well as Hungary and Bulgaria, showed solid growth in the motor and other property lines of business. These lines of business are also the reason for the dynamic development in Czechia, being the main driver for additional EUR 307 million insurance service revenue in the special market segment.
Austria follows with an increase of EUR 236 million in revenues, mainly coming from non-life. On slide nine, the strength of the non-life and health business is also reflected in the insurance service revenue development by lines of business. With the exception of life business with profit participation, all lines of business were growing double digits. Other property was the main contributor, with an increase of more than EUR 670 million, followed by motor, third-party liability, and CASCO, motor own damage, each with an increase of more than EUR 220 million, and health with an increase of EUR 108 million. Let's move on to slide 10 in the details of the result before taxes development. Despite the already mentioned goodwill impairment in Hungary, the extended CEE segment, with a plus of EUR 85.7 million, contributed to more than 50% of the overall profit growth of EUR 109 million.
Poland, which resulted before taxes last year, was burdened by the restructuring measures taken with regards to the effective mergers, was able to increase its profit by EUR 35.7 million. Together with the EUR 24.4 million increase in the special market segment, the positive developments in these three segments outweighed the result before taxes declined in Austria and the Czech Republic. This shows one of the advantages of the broad diversification of VIG. Increased combined ratios due to weather-related claims and the decreased capital investment result in Austria were the main reasons for the profit decreases in these two segments that did not harm VIG's overall strong profit growth of 14.1%. As I have mentioned, the combined ratio increased in Austria and the Czech Republic. Let's have a look at the combined ratio on page 11.
Overall, VIG's net combined ratio remained on a sound level of 93.4%, slightly up by 0.8 percentage points. The discounting impact on the claims ratio was 3.4% in last year. There has been no material change in the figures relating to winter storm Boris that we announced in our conference call in November already. Gross losses from this exceptional event amounted to EUR 617 million last year. Thanks to VIG's comprehensive reinsurance program, the impact was limited to a net figure of EUR 70 million, demonstrating VIG's conservative approach. On slide 12, we show the CSM roll forward for the life and health business. The overall decrease of 4.7% was mainly driven by the changes in variable fee approach. Lower interest rates compared to the previous year caused a minus of EUR 286 million.
Worth mentioning for 2024 is the relation between new business of EUR 480 million and the CSM release of EUR 513 million. The sustainability index of 93.6% was also impacted by the profitable new business volume from Czechia that supported the further increase of the new business margin to 10% after 8.9% in 2023. With this, let's move to the investment portfolio. On slide 13, we present the details of the already mentioned increased total capital investment result. Main driver for this development was the increased interest revenue from the bond portfolio. The investment volume in bonds decreased by more than 400, increased by more than EUR 450 million in 2024. Total investments amounted to EUR 36.5 billion, up 3.4% compared to the previous year. The next page, slide 14, shows the usual breakdown of investments. Compared to 2023, the proportion invested in bonds decreased slightly from 75.3% to 73.8%.
The proportion invested in property remained stable, whereas the proportion in cash and deposits increased from 7.8% to 9.5%. The total average new investment yield in 2024 was kept at a favorable 5.3%, only slightly down from 5.5% at year-end 2023. As the bond portfolio split by rating and issuer is rather unchanged compared to the previous year, I would like to move on to slide 15. Our diversification across markets, lines of businesses, and distribution channels strongly supports our resilient business performance. On the right-hand side of this slide, we are pleased to share our government bond portfolio by country, which also shows a very diversified picture. The Czech Republic and Poland are represented with a share of around 14%, followed by Austria with 9.2% and a share of 9.7% for super nationals. Romania, Czechia, and Slovakia have each a share above 5%.
The remaining government bond portfolio consists of more than 20 countries with less than 5% exposure. With this, I come to my last slide before I hand back to Hartwig for the outlook. The excellent capitalization of VIG is reflected in the strong solvency ratios, both with and without transitional measures shown on slide 16. The solvency ratio, including transitionals at year-end 2024, was 261% after 269% at year-end 2023. While own funds only slightly increased year-on-year by EUR 56 million, the SER increased significantly by EUR 142 million, driven by strong business growth. The solvency ratio, excluding transitionals, also slightly decreased from 243% to 238% at year-end 2024. Given the ongoing challenging geopolitical environment and all the uncertainties it brings, we are comfortable with the solvency ratio of 238%, which remains above our target range of 150-200%.
With that, I would like to hand back over to Hartwig for the outlook.
Yeah, thank you, Liane. I will continue with the next slide, number 18, where we show, I think, a quite interesting and significant chart with the forecast of GDP growth on a global basis. What you see on the right side is that the countries of Central Eastern Europe and also Central Eastern, Southeastern Europe are quite above, yes, the average. What is then concerning to Western European or even European Union basis, we see that all over we are in the right region, also in the perspective of growth in the next years, which will be also stable above the average, which will be reached in the Western and European Union countries all over.
We see also in the chart on the left side that with expectation of 1.2 or 1.4, the expectation in Central Eastern Europe still is quite doubled in the size to that. It is in the ranking on the chart on the right side shown also in the global perspective that Central Eastern Europe is quite and still a very interesting region for expansion and for investment. That is also the positive support given to the outlook 2025 on the next chart. We are ready as the management seen also the last years that there has, of course, been impacts also on the geopolitical and also on the macroeconomical conditions.
What we see up there is that with the diversification already mentioned by Liane before and also performance over the last years, we can in a positive way look also in the perspective and also the weighted form of result range. Out of that, we have a clear ambition that also in the profit before taxes for the upcoming year 2025, we expect a range between EUR 950 million-EUR 1 billion in the financial year 2025, which is also given this positive performance another step on. As it was mentioned by me before, also in the expectation in the link to our dividend policy, we have a common positive expectation to the future. That is from our side, our presentation. I give back also to the moderator, and we are looking forward, and we are very pleased to answer your questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, we'll now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Questioners on the phone are requested to disable the loudspeaker mode and eventually turn off the volume from the webcast while asking a question. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question comes from Youdish Chicooree from Autonomous Research. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for taking my question. I've got three questions. The first one is on your guidance, and I was wondering whether you could elaborate on some of the assumptions behind it, namely in terms of revenue growth, P&C combined ratios, etc. That is the first question. Secondly, just on your top line growth that you've reported, actually in the last three years has been quite strong. Now that inflation has moderated, would it be fair to expect quite a significant deceleration from the double-digit growth you have achieved? Finally, on capital deployment, I mean, once again, you end the year with a very strong solvency ratio, whether or not we include transitional. I was wondering, I mean, in the past, you've said you would deploy the excess by reinvesting in the business and on M&A as opposed to distributing to shareholders.
Firstly, is that still your position? Secondly, on M&A, what are your target countries and lines of business for expansion? Thank you very much.
Okay, I will take and start with the last question from my side. In your question, what about our interest in M&A and maybe investment in that case? I just want to open that we are still in our strategic program, VIG25, which is ending this year. We already started the discussion about our strategic options for the next three years, 2026 to 2028. This discussion already started but not finished, we also are screening our core market, Central Eastern Europe, where we have quite strong market positioning in main markets, also as market leader, but we still are interested and see the potential, for example, in the country Poland, but also, as you know, we are also interested to clear up about positioning or starting more activities in Slovenia.
This is on the basis of the current existing markets, but still we are screening also in the way of expansion in the form of special markets. As you know, we have, beside our 20 core markets, 10 special markets already, which are focusing sometimes in niche perspective on growth, but also in a very profitable way, expanding and supporting our total result. This means that we are ready, and as it was mentioned by Liane, also our strong solvency basis gives us the support also to taking the opportunities which will come up and fit to our strategic program, which we will then present also end of this year to clear up which activities will follow in this way. To the other questions, I hand over to Peter Höfinger about your question to combined ratio.
Thank you for your question. If I understood it right, it's a combined ratio and correlation to higher guidance for the year 2025. On one hand side, truly we have been benefiting from inflationary effects the last years, which was also driving our growth. Please never forget, inflation means that we also have increased our sums insured, our underlying sums insured. Also this effect is here. We are now on a higher level of sums insured. On one hand side, within our investment portfolio, we were able over the last years to shift to higher yields bonds. We are continuing to benefit out of this, even though maybe interest rates could be flat going forward. Our portfolio has been changed over the last years. Investment result, on one hand side, will support our further development of results.
On the other hand side, and this was mentioned in the presentation of my colleagues, you saw the forecast of GDP. We will benefit from the GDP growth. This GDP growth is also quite supported by internal demand. We had an overproportional salary inflation in Central Eastern Europe, maybe differently to some other businesses. We do have more clients than employees. Therefore, we are overproportionally benefiting from salary inflation, having our customers having a higher living standard and therefore a higher need for insurance. This is even supported by tendencies which we see of repatriation of CEE people working in Western Europe coming back to Central Eastern Europe, seeing the attractiveness of job opportunities, but also rising living standards. I have just one figure in mind, which is Romania. So in Romania, since the end of COVID, more than 850,000 people have repatriated to Romania.
These are principally younger people, more energized people, people which are expecting a higher standard of living, which they have learned in Western Europe, and they are also willing and used to insurances. This will support and drive our growth. This makes us quite confident that we will reach our guidance, which we are giving for the year 2025.
All right. Thank you very much. It sounds like there's quite a lot of the growth is assuming some decent volume growth from all the factors you mentioned. I would think that is not just motor, but also property and other lines of business.
If I understand it right, because unfortunately, your line is not so clear, it will be driven by all the non-life lines. If you look on our performance over the last year, the performance was also very much driven by CASCO business. CASCO business is the clear indication of internal demand. People are willing to buy new cars, used cars on finance basis. Therefore, they need also to take out a CASCO insurance, which shows a very positive consumer climate. This we believe to continue.
All right. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from August Marcan, UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. I have two if that's okay. First, on the payout ratio. I appreciate this might be a good problem to have, but given your strong EPS growth, it has outpaced the DPS growth over the last couple of years, so the payout ratio has been declining. Do you see any scope of increasing the payout ratio from the low 30%? What will be the binding constraint limiting you if you don't see that? Secondly, on your reinsurance, last year Boris was a massive event in the CEE. Did this change your reinsurance program or increase your reinsurance pricing at the renewals? Thank you.
I'm happy to start with the second question of reinsurance. Yes, Boris was a major reinsurance event. It paid off that we have invested over the last years and decades having a closer relationship. We are working together with two external modeling companies. There is no market model in Central Eastern Europe, so our models most probably are the most sophisticated. We are the market leader. The reinsurance industry, when they want to get Central Eastern Europe as a diversifying element in their portfolio, they sign on our contract. This is then reflected on the conditions. This is also the reason why we have been able over the last years and the hardening to still keep our terms and conditions. Also looking forward, in principle, we will keep our basic logic of the program. There will be certain adaptation, but one also has to be clear.
Boris has been a modeled event, and we therefore also paid modeled premiums in the past. The reinsurance industry did accept that this event is happening because for this we are buying reinsurance industry. There is no major change in our reinsurance politics going forward.
I'm happy to take your question regarding the payout ratio and dividend per share. Last year, we changed our dividend policy to the last year's dividend as the minimum dividend. We increased this year, as already has been said, from EUR 1.4 to EUR 1.55, which follows the positive development of our performance. We have no plans to change this dividend policy. Also, we consider a dividend yield of 5.1% as attractive also in the current interest rate environment. I would also like to remind you of the positive outlook Hartwig Löger gave before. We have a guidance of our profit before tax in a range between EUR 950 million and EUR 1 billion, which shows a positive development also expected for next year, which also should lead, hopefully, to an increased dividend. I hope this answers your question.
Yep, thank you.
The next question comes from Thomas Unger from Erste Group. Please go ahead.
Yes, hello. Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions also. I'd like to get some more details on the outlook for 2025. If you could talk about the individual geographical segments, Austria, Czech Republic, Poland, extended CE, what do you see as the growth driver for 2025 in terms of revenue growth, but also profit development? Do you see the smaller segments, extended CEE, special markets continuing to be the growth drivers, or how do you see Austria and Czech Republic developing? Looking back and staying within the segments, extended CEE, very positive development in 2024. If you could zoom in on this segment and talk about the countries in a bit more detail, Bulgaria, Romania, the Baltics, Slovakia, all with very significant earnings increases. I'd appreciate that. Also, the significant uncertainties currently, geopolitical, financial markets. How do you see that affecting your result?
How does that affect your outlook for 2025, the impact on the capital investment result from the yield curve changes and so on and so forth? Also, do you have a, for the capital ratio, do you have a combined stress scenario if multiple impacts affect you negatively? What could be the impact on the capital ratio? Thank you.
Okay. Thank you for your questions. I will start from my side and then hand over maybe to Peter Höfinger when we come to Romania, Bulgaria, and maybe some other detailed countries. I think overall our outlook for 2025 is running on the basis which was successful in 2024. What we see especially is that Poland still has room for growth on a higher level and also profits. This segment, I expect from my side, will come up in 2025 again. As you know, we did the merger in 2024 also to focus and concentrate in our activities there. There is still potential in also parts of P&C and also corporate where we are focusing on in the strategy in Poland.
Your question to Austria and Czech, on the one side, when we come back maybe to slide number 18, where I mentioned also the expectation on GDP growth, we know currently that Austria is on a quite low level. The recession awaited also for 2025. Even in Austria, we see out of the development of 2024, there is room, especially also in the way of health business, but also in the expectation that life will step by step come back. Especially Wiener Städtische is showing also in the partnership with Erste Group that there is the possibility still also for growth above the market. In this form, also inflation coming back in some form will also bring a basis of growth in Austria still.
Czech for itself, there is some pressure on the market, but with two strong players, especially beside Kooperativa as the market leader, we have JPB still in a very positive growth activity. Here, we also have high potential in cross-selling coming up of the existing portfolio. Also with new life insurance, we are quite successful on the market, which will also bring up positive expectation for the upcoming year in this area. You touched also extended CEE. We have in 2024 very strong support in this form of Romania. I think now I hand over to Peter Höfinger to go into detail that way.
I will start a bit more in general words about extended CEE, also with the smaller countries. Looking in the more volatilities we are having and the more volatilities we have ahead, not just geopolitical, all these countries in extended CEE are used over the last years and decades to deal with volatilities, therefore societies, but also the businesses there to have a very different resilience in scoping with these challenges. I mentioned already in answering before one question, there is a certain repatriation element from Western Europe having a lower economic performance in Western Europe, therefore giving less opportunities for people from Central Eastern Europe having their jobs returning to their home countries, which gives an impetus of energy and new labor forces, which is important in all these people which have been outside of what we call the extended CEE.
They have an education, they understand other languages, they have seen a different way of living, they have a different expectation on the environment, which I also would like now to have again in their home country. All this is also driving the dynamic which we see there. This is also supported with looking to the dynamics of going more to a multipolar world with taxes and tariffs, where also within Europe, manufacturing companies will have to think about having their manufacturing sites within the European geographical area, in lower distance to the main factories maybe in Germany. This will further support foreign direct investment in our region combined with having the repatriated people from Western Europe, also having workforce there.
Specifically in Romania, we do have in Romania currently quite a volatile political situation, but there is a certain decoupling of the economic environment from the political situation. Economy and GDP growth is quite favorable in Romania regardless of the political topics. We see a positive atmosphere and a positive business approach in Romania. We are having still there issues with regulatory topics, with certain price capping on the motor business, but this is now already for some time there. This price capping has forced us to focus very much on other lines of businesses. We see now the first fruits of having the very much focus on non-motor business lines and growing very much in property and private property and commercial lines and health, which is supporting the profitability which we see today in Romania. We have a profit increase in Romania of 46%.
We have an increase of insurance service revenues about 25%. Quite similar in Bulgaria, where we are also growing double-digit in profits and in insurance revenues. We also do have a quite optimistic and positive outlook for extended CEE for the year 2025.
I'm happy to take also your question regarding the uncertainties and how this affects our outlook and other KPIs. I would like to remind you that in the last five years, we had uncertainties to manage, and we managed them very successfully. As such, we feel very well prepared also for the volatile current environment. Also in the upcoming months, we expect some volatilities. We have models in place for stress test scenarios. Due to our high capital strengths and also due to our diversification, which leads always to compensatory effects, I'm quite confident that we will handle the upcoming volatilities also in the same way as we did in the last years. Here, I would also like to mention that IOPA did a stress test last autumn. Forty-eight companies or groups were participating in this stress test.
The outcome for VIG was that after these stresses without any management reactive measures, we had still a solvency ratio above 200 percentage points. We are with this result among the top three companies in Europe. Due to our high capital strengths and also diversification, I'm confident with the outlook that we have given for 2025.
Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Tejk iran K M from White Oak Capital Management. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you very much for the opportunity. I just wanted to double-click on the 2025 outlook again. Thank you very much for the comments on growth and profitability development in answers to the previous questions. I also wanted to understand if we adjust for the impairment in Hungary for this year itself. The profit before taxes adjusting for the impairment would already be in the range that you're targeting for next year. Does that mean that with all this development in the business, you might also expect one-offs and this target is given adjusting for those one-offs? How should we think about both of these factors interplaying with each other?
My second question is on the impairment again, if you could help us understand whether you, as of your current expectations, do you think we are all done or what should happen next year that might trigger another impairment in Hungary? Thank you very much.
I'm happy to answer your question. Let's start with the impairment. As I already explained before, this impairment was the result of the additional insurance tax burden by the Hungarian government. We performed some scenario analysis behind. The result was, and I must say we had a conservative approach in our scenario analysis, that this resulted to this impairment of EUR 116.3 million. The remaining goodwill in our books is approximately EUR 70 million. The risk for further impairment and if it materializes will not really affect materially our results. Going forward, we will see how the Hungarian government will deal with the additional insurance tax and if there are any changes, negative changes, this could lead to further impairments. As I said before, this is from the total amount, not something that we cannot manage here at the group.
From the result, the result was impacted by the additional tax in 2024. The amount was approximately EUR 50 million. For 2025, we expect a negative profit participation from the additional tax in the amount of EUR 30 million. We will see what will happen in 2026. If we exclude the additional taxes, the companies have a sound operating performance. This is also our expectation in the midterm and long-term future. I hope this answers your questions.
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Thank you.
The next question comes from Rok Stibric from ODDO BHF. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good afternoon. Thank you for the presentation and also the opportunity to take my questions. Yeah, you mentioned basically a lot of things already, so I'll be brief. I have only two follow-up questions. First one is regarding the guidance. We talked about CASCO and regional developments. However, I would still be keen on learning a bit more on how do you see life and health segment developing in the next 12 months, let's say. My second question is concerning the capital management or dividend policy, if you may. I understand that there could be some M&A plans coming up. You don't really feel like changing the dividend policy that you recently established. I mean, I'm just looking at numbers now, increase your cash position by 10%. Solvency is in a very comfortable level. Could maybe special dividend be an option?
Is this something that you were considering when proposing the dividend to the Supervisory Board? Thank you very much.
Thank you for the question of life and health. I start a bit with life business. On one hand side, after many, many years of low interest rate or zero interest rates, we are again back to an environment with interest rates, which is again giving a higher attractiveness to our classical life product. There is no other product, no banking product which is offering these kind of guarantees in the long run. You have to be aware about one topic very different in Central Eastern Europe than maybe to Western Europe. State pensions already today do not give enough state pension keeping your living standard which you have until your working time. Everybody who is working today and is in the working age knows this.
The sensitivity, the awareness of old-age savings is in the end much higher in CEE than maybe in some Western European countries where we still have very luxurious state pensions. The need to put money aside is not so imminent than maybe it is seen in Central Eastern Europe. Therefore, we are quite positive about the life business, also in relation with our banking partner, Erste Bank. Also seeing the topics of limited state budgets and therefore certain reduction on social security elements in the countries gives a protection gap for elements on one hand side in risk life, but also very much in health business. We are positive with product innovations on the risk side biometrically, but also on the side of old-age savings that there will be again a certain dynamic which we will benefit of in this area.
In health business, when you look on the catch-up potential of living standards in Central Eastern Europe, on one hand side, you see it with CASCOs or people bought quite newer cars, apartments have been refurbished, people have been on holidays. What they are now also expecting is reasonable and state-of-the-art healthcare, which is not in most of the cases provided by the state health system. That's the growing element of our health business. We are growing in Central Eastern Europe more or less all over the place double-digit because people are willing to take out the health insurance to receive health treatment and healthcare on the standards which they expect and which they have learned outside of the countries.
We are very much involved in further developing healthcare products which are very much supported by digital features where there is a high willingness and acceptance by people of Central Eastern Europe to also use digital applications in healthcare. We are also willing to go down the value chain. There is already a country like in Bulgaria where we have invested into a health clinic to also ensure that we provide these kind of services to our insurance clients for health. We are quite bullish on how health business will develop the years to come.
Regarding dividend policy, I already explained that we changed it in 2023, and there are no plans currently to change the dividend policy, which introduced a floor of the last year's dividend to be the minimum dividend for the next year. EUR 1.55 will be the basis for 2025. As we expect growing business and growing profits, I would also expect that the dividend following the improved results will also follow this trend. I would also like to remind you again that we are still in a very volatile environment. We are well prepared for this volatile environment through our diversification and strong capital position. Taking this into account, no special dividends are in discussion for the time being. We will stick to our dividend policy for the moment and no changes here in the near future planned.
Many thanks to both of you.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and one. The next question comes from Bhavin Rathod from HSBC. Please go ahead.
Hello, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my question. I have three on my side. The first one would be on the combined ratio, slide number 11, wherein we are seeing a 0.8% point deterioration. However, if I go a step back and look at the combined ratio of nine months 2024, it was rather flat on a YOY basis. Implicitly, this means there was some underlying deterioration in the fourth quarter standalone. Can you just talk about some of the drivers that took place in fourth quarter that led to this deterioration? Maybe related to that, can you talk about the higher claim that we have seen in Czech Republic, what's been driving that higher property claims? Is that more structural in nature? Should we expect that to improve going forward in terms of the combined ratio in Czech?
The second one would be on slide 12, the CSM roll forward. While I appreciate you do not really provide the sensitivity of CSM to market movements, it would be helpful if you can just break down the impact of EUR 286 million that was the change in variable fee in terms of how that was driven by different market movement pieces, i.e., change in interest rate, spread movement, equity market movement. What is driving that deterioration? The last would be again on the same slide. The PVNBP was quite strong in 2024. The growth was pretty strong in 2024. Can you just talk about the sustainability of that PVNBP? Should we expect similar level to sustain going forward as well? Thank you.
Thank you for the question to the combined ratio. You know that we had Boris in the end of September. Czech Republic has been quite heavily hit there. I think we made a very conservative first estimate of our claims. Nevertheless, there is a certain specific of flood claims differently to storm claims, flood claims do have a certain delay in reporting because people are realizing the claims a bit later. We therefore have also in the fourth quarter further increased our IBNR. Let's see if we have been maybe too cautious on the IBNR or if they are right for the floods. This is one of the elements. Yes, there has been a bit of higher frequency on property retail claims, which I see as a certain appearance, which I do not see as a tendency.
I'm optimistic that we will come back to the combined ratio in Czech Republic without special events like the flood, which we are used to have seen.
Regarding your questions on slide 12, CSM, the changes in variable fee mainly derive from reduced interest rate environment. This is the main impact here. Regarding present value of new business premiums, this value increased quite significantly compared to last year because it only shows the new business. I would like to state that this result also underlines the VIG strategic approach to exploit also opportunities in all our markets. This year, we had quite good impact from the special markets, especially [Türkiye]. We are well aware that maybe these opportunities may not be sustainable in the long run. This would be the explanation for 2024. I hope this answers your question.
Yeah, that's very helpful. Thank you so much.
Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Nina Higatzberger-Schwarz, Head of Investor Relations, for any closing remarks.
Thank you for all your questions and your interest in VIG. The 2024 group annual report will be published on the 28th of April. If you have any questions in the meantime, please feel free to contact the Investor Relations department. We are happy to help. Thank you and goodbye.
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