Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Vienna Insurance Group conference call. Throughout today's recorded presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. The presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, you may press star followed by one on your touchtone telephone. Please make sure your phone set the DTMF tones activated in order to register for a question. Please press the star key followed by zero for operator assistance. I would now like to turn the conference over to Nina. Please go ahead. Thank you. Welcome to today's conference call of Vienna Insurance Group. Liane Hirner, our CFO, will guide you through our first IFRS 17 results for the half year, 2023. Today, Roland Goldsteiner and Werner Matula, both well-known from our IFRS 17 webcasts, have joined and, together with Liane, are ready to take questions after the presentation. I now hand over to Liane, please. Thank you, Nina, and I wish everybody a good afternoon. It's a great pleasure for me to present to you the results of the first six months of 2023. I'm very delighted to provide the first regular set of IFRS 17 and 9 figures of Vienna Insurance Group. And please let me also take this opportunity to once again thank all the teams and companies involved through our entire group in this huge transition. And I would like to remind you that compared to our or many of our US GAAP peers, the change for VIG is even more substantial, as for the first time, we calculate our and value our IFRS technical reserves on best estimates and group-wide common principles. We are not yet at the end of the road, and, like everyone else in the insurance industry, we are learning and better understand the mechanics of IFRS 17 in every little detail with each result that we are preparing. But now let's directly move on to the half year results overview on page two. Insurance service revenue as the new IFRS 17 top-line figure increased by 13.7% to EUR 5.4 billion. Profit before taxes more than doubled to EUR 462.9 million, compared to EUR 212 million in the comparison period. The net combined ratio of VIG was 94%, up from 90.6% at the end of six months last year. The comparative period includes positive one-offs due to the transition of IFRS to IFRS 17, whereas trying to follow our prudent approach also under IFRS 17 and 9. Considerations of higher claims volatilities and the liability for incurred claims impacted the net combined ratio of the first half of this year. Based on the annualized net profit after taxes and non-controlling interests, annualized earnings per share of EUR 5.25 were achieved. Our operating return on equity, as well annualized based on the half year pre-tax profit, increased to 15.8%. The solvency ratio of the VIG Group, including transitional measures, demonstrated a very stable development in the first half of the year and amounts to 282% as of June 2023, or two percentage points above the previous year-end figure. The own funds increased by EUR 294 million in the first half of this year. This increase is mainly driven by the positive business development on the one hand, but also on the development of the interest and capital markets during this time. Altogether, these figures underline the group's strong performance in an ongoing challenging environment. I will give more details on the business development now on the following slides. Let's move to slide four, where we present the group's income statement, including the contractual service margin, CSM release of EUR 340.2 million. The increased CSM release in the general measurement model and the variable fee approach, together with the growth in gross written premiums in the premium allocation approach, business and short-term life, were the drivers for the 13.7% increase in the insurance service revenue. The shift from the -EUR 149.1 million to EUR 233.4 million in the net investment result is impacted by mainly three effects. First, we had the measure in relation to our Russian government and corporate bond exposure in the first six months last year, burdening the half-year result 2022 by EUR 126.1 million. Second, the previous year was affected by unrealized net losses from the valuation of bonds due to the sharp rise in the interest rates. And third, the positive effect out of the increased interest rate environment is coming through in the first half of 2023, with higher current income. Something that what we expect to be persistent based on the increased new money yield. All these effects, of course, also influenced the result. I already mentioned the result before taxes of EUR 462.9 million, and the result after taxes and non-controlling interests, the tax ratio of 23.8%, in line with the corporate tax rate in Austria of 24%, of EUR 343.4 million. Now let's have a closer look at the development of the insurance service revenue, which is shown on slide five. All segments contributed with increased insurance service revenues. In Austria and Poland, the growth of 6.4%, respectively 10.8%, was driven by the non-life lines of business. This is similar to the Czech Republic, where the 10.7 increase was dominated by the motor lines of business. In Austria and the Czech Republic, only the life single premium business recorded decreases in the first half of 2023. In the segment's Extended CEE and Special Markets, the first time consolidation of the former entities, Aegon entities, Alfa Vienna Insurance Group in Hungary and Vienna Life in Türkiye, supported the positive developments. Overall, sound insurance service revenue growth, which is here shown. In the appendix, on page 24, we have included a slide on the gross written premiums development, which is no longer part of the IFRS 17 reporting for your reference. With this, let's move on to page six and the profit before tax development, shown by segment. As already mentioned, the measures taken in relation to the Russian investment exposure, especially burdened the Austrian result last year. Out of the EUR 126 million, EUR 109 million impacted only Austria. In the Czech Republic, as well as in the Extended CEE segment, the net investment result and the effects out of the rise of the interest rates explain the profit being up by EUR 29.3 million, respectively, by EUR 75.8 million. In Poland, the increased net combined ratio is the reason for the slightly decreased result before taxes of EUR 33.5 million. Finally, the Special Markets segment had a positive first-time consolidation impact and has also seen better health business in Georgia. Now, over the page, let's have a look at the net combined ratio developments. The net combined ratio is calculated as net insurance service expenses divided by the net insurance service revenue. For the first six months, this year, the net combined ratio was 94%, up from 90.6% comparative IFRS 17 value. The increase is primarily due to the consideration of higher claims volatilities in the liability for incurred claims, which impacted the claims ratio in all reporting segments. In addition to that, in the Czech Republic, a positive one-off in accrued commissions is the reason for the rather low comparative net combined ratio in six months, 2022. In Poland, the relatively strong deterioration of the net combined ratio is due to insufficient MTPL prices. In Türkiye, increased claims costs, driven by inflation, is the main reason for the high claims ratio in the Special Market segment. Looking at the sound insurance service result, the yet elevated net combined ratio, driven by the claims ratio, is no cause for concern in view of the higher claims volatilities considered. We will, of course, closely monitor the further development. It's currently difficult to assess how the extreme weather events, not only, but especially in Austria, are going to impact our net combined ratio going forward. Therefore, we are not yet setting a target in this regard. Now let's move on to the profitability of our life and health business, which we show on page eight. First, the slide shows on the left that the total net CSM roll forward, starting with a CSM of EUR 5.8 billion as of 1st January this year, this year. Now, new business with EUR 164 million, more than 80% thereof deriving from life and health, and the change in variable fee with EUR 175 million, put together, outweigh the CSM release in the size of EUR 337 million. The total net CSM for the period slightly increased by 1.7% and stood at EUR 5.9 billion. On the right-hand side, the slide shows the key figures for the life and health business, with a new business CSM out of life and health in the size of EUR 136 million, leading to an excellent new business margin of 7.2% for the half year, 2023. Before we come to the outlook, let me shortly also touch on the investment split. The difference in the total capital investment portfolio of EUR 49.7 billion that we show in today's press or investor relations release is the exclusion of the financial instruments for unit and index-linked life insurance and investments for third parties. On Slide nine, the presented split for EUR 34.7 billion refers to the investments held at VIG's own risk and includes investments, funds, and also consolidated special funds. Very similar to the split shown at year-end 2022, the far biggest part, with close to 75%, are bonds, followed by property investments in the size of close to 10%. Cash and deposits coming next with 8.4%, and the share in equities of 4.5%. The bond portfolio split by rating and issuer both experienced only minor changes and I therefore move now on to Slide 11 and our outlook. Well, as already announced, VIG expects a group profit before taxes in a range of EUR 700 million-EUR 750 million for the full year 2023. This guidance is given subject to substantial interest rate changes and market volatilities. The development of the financial year 2023 is generally difficult to assess due to a number of uncertainty factors. There are the ongoing war in Ukraine, the weaker macroeconomic environment, and the currently persisting weather extremes. Nevertheless, based on our excellent capital position and our successful and resilient business model, and in view of the strong half-year results that we presented today, we are confident to be able to achieve the net profit, the profit before tax range of EUR 700 million-EUR 750 million in 2023. First-time preparation of the half-year results and comparative figures 2022, in accordance with the accounting standards IFRS nine and 17, already showed the expected increased volatility of results in relation to the changes in the interest rate environment. The objectives for the financial performance indicators and the dividend policy are therefore currently being reviewed. Of course, the participation of shareholders in VIG's success remains a priority for us, and we will keep you updated on the developments in this respect. With this, ladies and gentlemen, I have come to the end of my presentation, and together with Roland Goldsteiner, our Head of Finance, and Werner Matula, our Chief Actuary, we are now ready to take your questions. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by one on their touchtone telephone. Please make sure your phones have the DTMF tones activated in order to register for a question. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star followed by two. Anyone who has a question may press star followed by one at this time. We have the first question from Bhavin Rathod with HSBC. Please go ahead. Hello, good afternoon. I have three questions from my side. The first one would be on your reported combined ratio of 94.0% at first half of 2023. I would appreciate if you could provide any more granularities, as in how should we look at this combined ratio on a normalized basis, i.e., adjusting for the higher discounting impact at 1H 2023, which I presume would be more meaningful at this semester versus the previous semester. So just trying to make a comparison between 1H 2023 versus 1H 2022, how should we think of this increase on a normalized basis? The second one would be on Poland. Can you talk about what are your strategies to contain this higher combined ratio that we are seeing in particular, in the MTPL market, and how are you looking at this business in, in particular? And the third and the last one would be on the CSM release, which is coming at EUR 337 million at the first half. Now, looking at the release ratio, this comes out to be somewhere around more than 5% and looks stronger than what you had on a run rate basis versus full year 2022. So, can you tell us how should we think of this release ratio going forward? Should we take the 5% kind of a normalized release going forward, i.e., 10% on an annualized basis going forward as the normalized kind of release from the stock of your CSM? Thank you so much. Thank you for your questions. I will start with the first question regarding the combined ratio. Well, as I already explained, the combined, the net combined ratio is impacted by the consideration of higher claims volatilities in the liability for incurred claims. I would give you an example. For example, segment, or reporting segment, Austria, this is the main reason. In Czech Republic, for example, 50% is related to this consideration of higher claims volatilities. The other 50% are related to commission accruals, which positively affected last year's result. This is more or less the explanation. I don't know if Roland knows something to explain this. And I would like maybe, maybe also like to add that, last year, our focus was on IFRS 4 numbers. So, this is just the comparative period under the new regime for steering purposes and so on. The focus was on different numbers. Now I would like to hand over to Roland. He will explain a little bit in detail the elevated combined ratio in Poland and the impacts. For Poland, we experience, especially in the first half of 2023, very soft car market here regarding the tariffs. Which means that, because of our not with the leading market positions up there, we were not able to pass on all these effects, which we have experienced in the cost increases here in Poland, especially from the inflation environment there. This means that not only the cost ratio, but more or less also in the claims ratio, due to spare parts and then another repair index costs here. This is something we experience in this year. We are working here heavily here to better the situation up there. But we will see or expect also such a development till the end of the year, this year. Maybe with not so such a big extent, but I would say that the tendency is this year not really good in the car market in Poland. Now, for the third question regarding CSM release, I would like to remind you that we have in our half year report, our financial report on page 45, also, further details on the CSM development. But I would like to hand over to Roland, to Werner Matula, our Chief Actuary, and he will explain the developments, also with reference to these, tables on or information on, on page 45 of our half year report. Yes, of course. So if I understood your question right, you were asking whether the CSM release, currently we are showing EUR 337 million. How would this look in the future? And what would be a normalized ratio compared to the level of the CSM? So in terms of the mechanics, one needs to consider that the CSM is not released linearly, but it's flattening, yeah? So the table that Liane was referring to will show you that, roughly EUR 40 million-EUR 50 million less CSM release in the next 4-5 years will happen on the portfolio in force. Obviously, the release is then also depending on the new business written in the future years and potential adjustments to the CSM, be it changes in estimates or movements in the or changes in the variable fee, depending, for example, on interest rates. Yeah, but in it is important that the CSM release is, from portfolio perspective, rather slowing down. I hope this explains the mechanics, and the table in the financial statement should help you to understand this better. Hope this, Great, perfect. Great. Yes, it does. Thank you so much. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone. We have our next question from Thomas Unger with Erste Group. Please go ahead. Hi, good afternoon. Thank you very much for taking my questions also. You touched upon the extreme weather events in your presentation. Is there any level of expected claims that you could give us for the summer events now in July and August, especially in Austria? You clearly outlined it also in the outlook. What sort of impact do you assume for profitability in Q3 or the second half in general? Then also, you mentioned that you will be updating your dividend policy. Is there anything you can say about how you expect the dividends to be calibrated in the future? Do you anticipate a growth of the absolute dividend number per share alongside the earnings growth, or you'll be looking at a certain payout ratio? Maybe final two more questions regarding your P&L and how you present it now. The investment results, obviously, there's quite a fluctuation this year versus last. Is there any normalized level that you anticipate going forward? And also, I would like some more explanation on the other income and expenses line, which more than doubled year on year in the first half of 2023. It was up to -EUR 269 million. If you could just explain what, what's behind those numbers? Thank you. Thank you, Thomas, for your questions. First question was regarding extreme weather events or events which are taking place currently. As you all know, in the last days, we had ongoing extreme weather events, and currently, we are not in the position to give you any numbers. So we have to wait for that, and sorry for not being able to provide you with concrete numbers on that. It's just too early. So regarding the dividend policy, the dividend policy is under review currently. And as I explained already during my presentation, we saw quite volatile or quite volatility, which derives from the changes, or has derived from the changes in the interest rate environment, especially in the last one and a half years. So we are reviewing all the mechanics, and we will come back on that as soon as possible. But let me emphasize again that the participation of our shareholders in our success is really a high priority for us. And I would also like to remind you that since 1994, we paid dividends in each and every year. So this is for the moment, all what I can say. Regarding the P&L, investment result, yeah, that's quite, quite a different presentation to that that we have seen in previous years. And also the net investment result is highly impacted by the interest rate changes and capital market volatilities. So it's really not possible currently to evaluate a normalized result in this respect. We hope, we really hope that the interest rate environment will remain stable in the next periods, in the upcoming periods. So then, I think we will have more experience on that. Maybe Roland wants to add something, and also to the other income. I hand over to Roland. Okay. Thank you. Regarding the, you would say, the normalized financial results contribution to total pre profit before tax, it has become more and more difficult according to IFRS 9, compared to IFRS 39, due to the fact that we have much more investments classified as fair value through P&L, compared to the other accounting regime. This is, I think, this is an effect which is normally counterbalanced by the technical results here, which is mostly true for the VFA modeling, but not so much for the GMM modeling here. So we have, due to the changes in the interest environment, more volatility, especially in the financial results, and what contributes at the end of the day to the profit before tax here. Regarding your question with the development of the other income expense line of the P&L, here you can see mostly two effects. One is, I would say, a very common effect. We have here some foreign exchange changes here, like in the old times, also, too, here. And the other and bigger effect, of course, here is that we have much bigger consolidation differences, where we doing the consolidation from all the group insurance contracts and so on. And here, we see the net position out of this. But just to give you the indication, what does it mean for the total PBT? Actually nothing, because all these changes what I'm talking about are counterbalanced by the changes in other lines of the P&L. This is not the CEE effect, which you can see is isolated. All right. I hope this answers your question. Thank you very much. Yes. Thank you. Absolutely. Appreciate, yeah. Next question is the line of Rok Stibric with Raiffeisen Bank International. Please go ahead. Hi, good afternoon, and thank you for taking my question. So much has been already said, therefore I have only one. So it's related to the investment portfolio performance. Is there any chance that you could share with us your current running yield and reinvestment yield? Thank you. Thank you for your question. I can share that of course with you. The average new investment yield until June 2023 was 5.5%. This compares to 4.2% year-end 2022 for the group, for the whole group. Does this answer your question? Yes. Thank you very much. You're welcome. We have a follow-up question from Bhavan Shettigar with HSBC. Please go ahead. Hi. Sorry, I just have one quick follow-up on your combined ratio again. Now, under your previous accounting, IFRS 4, the normalized kind of expected combined ratio for the group, I guess, was somewhere around below 95% or 94%. Now, when I look at your first half 2022 reported combined ratio under IFRS 17, that is reported at close to 90.6, vis-a-vis, 94%, that was reported under IFRS 4. So, so, so the question really is, now, under the new accounting, should we think as close to 90% at the normalized level of combined ratio that the group would be aiming at, going forward? Yes, so that would be the only question that I have. So, we do not give a target on the combined ratio. This was the... On the 95% was the target, or below 95% was the target of the IFRS 4 steering. This is now finished, and we do not have new targets or for the combined ratio already for the new accounting regime. So this is under review. Do you want to add something? No. Uh. Maybe Roland will- The effects we're talking about, like, for example, the Czech Republic, the one-off effect, which derives from the transition, actually. This is only effect which we had experienced in IFRS 17, but not in the older- Yeah ... regime, for example. So the difference of the four percentage points you're talking about can't be totally translated to a new guidance here. All right, great. Thank you so much. Ladies and gentlemen, as a final reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and one at this time. There are no more questions at this time, and I hand back to Nina for closing comments. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, thanks for your participation and your interest in Vienna Insurance Group. The next update on the business development, it's just an update and not the full results presentation as we did today, is scheduled for the thirteenth of November. In case you have questions, please don't hesitate to contact the investor relations department. I'm wishing you a good afternoon and goodbye. Bye. Goodbye. Bye. Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded, and you may disconnect. Thank you very much for joining, and have a pleasant day. Goodbye.