Welcome to Ageas conference call for the full year 2022 results. I'm pleased to present Mr. Hans De Cuyper, Chief Executive Officer, and Mr. Christophe Boizard, Chief Financial Officer. For the first part of the call, let me remind you that all participants will remain on listen-only mode. Afterwards, there'll be a question and answer session. Please also note that this conference is being recorded. I would now hand over to Mr. Hans De Cuyper and Mr. Christophe Boizard. Thank you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you all for dialing into this conference call and for being with us for the presentation of the Ageas full year results. As usual, I'm in the room with my colleagues of the Executive Committee, Christophe Boizard, CFO, Emmanuel Van Grimbergen, CRO, Antonio Cano, Managing Director, Europe, and Filip Coremans, Managing Director, Asia. Our new Deputy CFO, Wim Guilliams, who will succeed Christophe as from June first, is also present in the room. We ended the year with a strong quarter. Our quarterly net results amounting to EUR 305 million, excluding RPN(i). This result was driven by a solid operational performance in the live business across Europe and Asia, whereas the non-life result was impacted by the severe freeze events suffered in the U.K. in December. The fourth quarter result also benefited from a EUR 147 million capital gain from a successful transaction on our legacy debt instrument, FRESH, which also enabled us to further reduce our reliance on a grandfathered instrument. Over the full year, the group net result amounted to EUR 1.1 billion or EUR 871 million excluding RPN(i). As we already flagged during our 9-month results, the result was heavily impacted by markets evolution in Asia, more specifically, the continued decrease of the discount rate in China and capital losses arising from the adverse equity market. If you exclude these two market elements as well as the positive capital gains from the FRESH transactions and from the M&A in India and the U.K., the group net result would have exceeded the EUR 1 billion mark. You can find the details of this calculation on the slide 4 of our presentation. This high number illustrates the sound life operating performance realized across regions. This translated into operating KPIs for the consolidated entities comfortably within our target range. Indeed, the Guaranteed operating margin amounted to 91 basis points, while the Unit-Linked operating margin continued its steady improvement and stood at 36 basis points. In non-life, the Combined ratio for the consolidated entities stood at 96.5%, including a 4.3 percent points from adverse weather. The weather impact is above our average run rate of 2-3 percentage points. In Asia, our entities also delivered a very strong operating performance as illustrated by the high underlying results of EUR 627 million, excluding the market impacts just mentioned, as well as the positive capital gain from the step-up in our live Indian joint venture. Our solvency stood at a high 218%, largely above the group target of 175% and up by 21 percentage points over the year. Given this high solvency position, the board will propose a final gross cash dividend of EUR 1.5 per share, bringing the total dividend over the full year to EUR 3, up 9% compared to last year. I'm happy to report that we are today fully on track to reach our Impact24 targets, both in terms of operational performance and financial targets. Our Holding Free Cash Flow for 2022 should end up close to EUR 700 million, comfortably within our target of a cumulative amount of EUR 1.7 billion-EUR 2.1 billion over the three years. Next to our commitments to our shareholders, we are also making significant progress on our ambitious ESG targets for Impact24. You can find on slide 65 of the presentation, performance indicators on our key commitments, and we are particularly proud of the steps taken to improve sustainability. To give you a concrete example, we have already achieved two years ahead of target our Impact24 target of EUR 10 billion invested in transitioning to a more sustainable world. Before handing over to Christophe for more details on the results, I would like to add a word on the devastating earthquake that took place in Türkiye two weeks ago. Our thoughts are with our Turkish colleagues, partners, and customers. We are fully committed to support them in any way we can, we are donating EUR 1 million to the aid program set up by the Sabancı Group. In terms of financial impact for the group, it is still early day, we expect it to remain manageable in the range of EUR 10 million-EUR 15 million. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I give the floor to Christophe. Thank you, Hans. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Before providing more details on the performance by region, as well as on our cash position and capital generation, I would like to comment briefly on the group commercial performance. Inflow hour share were up in both life and non-life. In life, sales benefited from a positive trend in Asia with a particularly strong fourth quarter in China, whereas rising interest rates and volatile market weighed on volumes in Europe, especially in bank insurance. In non-life, inflows were driven by a solid growth in Belgium and Portugal, and a strong sales momentum in all the Asian countries. As usual, I will now give you more details on our results per segment. In Belgium, on slide 7, our net result amounted to a record high EUR 464 million, up 16% compared to last year, thanks to both a solid performance in Life and an excellent result in Non-Life. In Life, the Guaranteed operating margin ended the year within our target range, standing at 89 basis points, supported by real estate capital gains realized in the fourth quarter, while the Unit-Linked operating margin exceeded our target range, amounting to 41 basis points. In Non-Life, favorable claim experience and higher volumes resulted in an excellent Combined ratio of 93.8%. In Europe, slide 8, the net result amounted to EUR 116 million, with a mixed performance between Life and Non-Life. The life business recorded a strong performance with both operating margins within target range, whereas the non-life business, which already suffered over the first nine months from storms and claims inflation in the U.K. and hyperinflation in Turkey, was further impacted in the fourth quarter by the freeze event in the U.K. The full year Combined ratio, which stood at 100%, included 5.3 percentage point from adverse weather. In Asia, slide 9, the result, which amounted to EUR 245 million, was severely impacted by the market environment, as previously mentioned. The share decline of the Chinese equity market resulted in EUR 196 million capital losses, while the continued decrease of the discount rate curve in China impacted the result by EUR 236 million versus EUR 186 million in 2021. The high underlying result of EUR 627 million, significantly up compared to last year, illustrates the excellent operating performance. I would like to point out that it also benefited from non-recurring elements such as a positive exchange rate evolution, favorable claim experience, and a strong focus on expense management. In non-life, the results of the fourth quarter included a EUR 29 million goodwill impairment on RSGI, our Indian non-life JV, facing challenging personal motor market environment. The reinsurance result, on slide 10, amounted to EUR 32 million, reflecting mainly the adverse weather experience in the ceding entities, as well as claim inflation in the U.K. As mentioned by Hans, the general account result, on slide 11, benefited from a EUR 146 million capital gain from the FRESH transaction. We launched in the fourth quarter a tender on this legacy instrument. We recorded a success rate of 55% and hence reduced the outstanding amount of FRESH to EUR 151 million of nominal. Given that this instrument had been hedged in December 2021, where long-term interest rates were very low, the transaction enabled us to unwind the interest rate swap at very favorable conditions. Moving now to the solvency and capital position. Our cash position on slide 12 went down to EUR 624 million, mainly on exceptional cash out related to specific shareholder and bondholder returns. Indeed, the largest part of the decrease is due to the introduction of the interim dividend paid in October for EUR 270 million and to the share buyback of EUR 96 million. In addition, the reduction of our exposure to the legacy instrument, both FRESH and CASHES, also impacted our cash position by EUR 127 million. I would like to stress that the record amount of EUR 753 million dividend received from our operating companies in 2022 covered the full year dividend paid to our shareholder in June, the holding costs and the remaining part of the share buyback realized in the first part of 2022. Our group Solvency II ratio, slide thirteen, amounted to a strong 218%. The 7 percentage point decrease in the fourth quarter resulted from the transaction realized on FRESH and CASHES instruments. Over the full year, the group solvency was up 21 percentage point, driven by rising interest rates and a strong operating performance across entities. This performance translated into a high Operational Capital Generation of EUR 1.8 billion for the whole group, and an Operational Free Capital Generation of EUR 1.2 billion. We are on slide fourteen. The Solvency II scope companies contribute EUR 721 million to the Operational Free Capital Generation. As already pointed out during previous quarters, this number includes EUR 60 million from the sale of the commercial lines in the U.K. The fourth quarter number includes a negative impact from the launch of the external reinsurance activity. As you may remember, we recently announced our plan to enter into third-party reinsurance in line with our Impact24 strategy. We have successfully implemented this plan since the beginning of the year, taking advantage of the significant hardening of the reinsurance market. The resulting SCR increase, as we already included the new business requirement as from Q4, reduced the group capital generation by around EUR 100 million. On the non-Solvency II scope companies, so mainly the ones in Asia, the Operational Free Capital Generation amounted to EUR 556 million, significantly up compared to last year, but in line with the increase of our underlying result, and also benefiting from the same non-recurring elements. Finally, the general account consumed EUR 105 million of Operational Free Capital Generation. I have now reached the end of my presentation. We are ready to answer any question you may have. Thank you. Thank you. Gentlemen, please go ahead. Question and answer. Script ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the introduction, and we will now open the call for questions. May I ask yourself to limit yourself 2 questions? The question and answer will now then follow by Michael Huttner from Berenberg. The line is open now, please go ahead. Thank you. Good morning and well done for achieving your targets despite whatever in nine months. I had two questions, one on cash and one on China. On cash, you're guiding to EUR 700 million down from EUR 753 million in terms of net cash remittance. If I just look at the Asia portion of it's EUR 140 million out of the capital generation or whatever, EUR 556 million, it's just 25%. I was under the impression that the capital, the cash conversion in Asia is more like 30% or 33%. Just wondered if you can maybe correct me in some way. On China, can you talk a little bit about the sales momentum? I was trying to work it out in local currency and I completely failed. Any indication, you know, Q4 sales momentum and what you're seeing now? Thank you. Okay, thank you, Michael. Well, on the cash, I will give first on dividends the word to Christophe Boizard, and Filip Coremans I think can add on the sales momentum in Asia. Okay. My mic didn't work. On the cash, the conversion is 50%, but not really a surprise. This has been like this for a long period of time, and even the 30% should be seen as a rather favorable figure compared to what we can see elsewhere. You remember the story. Instead of being at the holding level of the group, we are at an operating level via TPL. TPL is the key cash contributor to the Taiping group. Hence, this payout ratio around 30%-35%. This should be seen as a rather high figure in Asian standard. My question was the figure I worked, I calculated, and this is why I'm asking you to correct me. A conversion rate of 25%. So if I compare the EUR 140 with your Operational Free Capital Generation for Asia, EUR 556, that's 25%. That's not 30% or 35%. Maybe I'll give it to Filip to add some more color there. Yeah. Michael, you're right. This will result in a quite higher ratio than we have seen over the last years, except maybe two years ago, where we also had a higher payout ratio, certainly on the IFRS result. Let's keep in mind that the dividend remittance of the Asian operating entities do not depend on the IFRS result, but more on the local results. The dividend expectation that we have, which I'm very happy to confirm that this is going to be level if not slightly up from what we saw over this year, despite the lower at line result in IFRS, indeed will lead to a higher payout ratio. It will be close to 50% overall, obviously. That is because in China, we still have significant retained earnings. The resulting costs, has to be around obviously by our partners. You will see there we have less impairments, and all that results in, a stable dividend commitment out of China, which drives, to a higher payout. You're right. Correct. Thank you. Yeah. On the sales momentum, indeed, Q4, as you noticed, was strong, and I must say particularly in China, it's a bit in line with what happened last year. That's also supporting the result, which was high in the last quarter. We had a quite, let's say, persistent sales effort until the end of the year. So by the end of the year, China overall still grew with 4% top line. At a good continuation or they managed almost to maintain, I would say, their margins level over the year in the new business, which was very good, positive for us as well. In Southeast Asia, you know, already I announced coming out of COVID, we had a quite solid growth rates at Thailand at 26% growth in APE new business. The Philippines was up with 17%, Vietnam 23%. Across the region, we saw strong traction coming out of COVID, which supports the 10% deadline. As Christophe mentioned, it is supported by FX. Also at the non-life side, we had a very strong growth last year, over 20% actually at constant FX. I would say all the countries coming out of COVID, you see a pickup, obviously in a new business sales. The overall growth in GWP, of course, has been hampered a bit by 2, 3 years of COVID impact. The sales of new business is good and was very strong in Q4. In Q1 now? Okay. It's too early to tell, Michael. You will have seen, because it has been released on the China market, that January figures were slightly down. Let's not forget that Chinese New Year, first and foremost, came very early this year. It was in January, the earliest I have on my record at least. The second thing is, let us also not forget that across Asia, and that's not only in China, but also Vietnam and the Chinese communities in Singapore and so on, they really celebrated Chinese New Year. There was a lot of travel. We will see better when the first half comes to an end, actually after the first quarter. Since we will have our yearly result announcements, you will have to track it a bit on the releases of time. We are confident, and the focus is more on margin this year than on at line figures. That's also something I want to share. Brilliant. Thank you very much. Thank you. We will take the next question from line Farooq Hanif from J.P. Morgan. The line is open now. Please go ahead. Hi, everybody. Thanks very much. I wanted to just quickly talk about the European non-life performance. The reserve releases were extremely high in the fourth quarter. Obviously, there was also quite large weather events. Now, when we kind of take all of these impacts out, can you comment on how the claims inflation is impacting that number and what you see going forward and your confidence around, you know, around the sort of 95%, albeit with IFRS adjustment, IFRS 17 adjustment. That, that's question area number 1. Question number 2 is around, you know, if we take out the VIR impact, another one-off, I mean, your underlying result in Ageas Life is extremely strong. Are you quite confident that on a current sort of IFRS 4 basis, that is a sustainable number or is there anything going on in that sort of margin delivery that's one-off in nature that could normalize? Thank you very much. Yeah, I'll give Europe to Antonio who follows up the European countries, and Filip will come back on the fifth question. Yes. Okay. On Europe, the two main markets non-life are obviously the UK and Portugal. You pointed out to a high previous year claims release. We always have a pretty sound release. Maybe Q4 is a bit higher. That stems mainly from the run off of our personal lines motor UK business. Some of you might remember that we had very high large losses we booked in 1920. Now we see that those are actually being closed down in much lower amounts. That is the source of the previous year positive results. I would say there is nothing really special to add. We expect that to stay sound also moving forward. You also questioned about the weather events. In Q4, the weather event was obviously the freeze in the UK. Our number, and I'm gonna use the gross numbers, was about GBP 40 million. That translates into EUR roughly at 47, which is a number that is, if you compare it with some other UK companies that have published the impact, it is relatively lower compared to some, relatively higher compared to others. Bear in mind the geographical footprint of companies determines a lot, as those based in UK might know it was in mainly in the northern part of the UK that got hit. We are pretty much in line to what we've seen with the others. Obviously that has had a big impact on the results. On top of that, we continue, we saw in Q3, Q4 also quite some subsidence claims in the UK. Also bear in mind, in Portugal, also in Q4, there was quite a heavy rainfall, with also a significant impact on the results. Weather was quite harsh in Q4. On claims inflation, I mean, are you happy that you can offset that? On claims inflation, maybe just again, focus on U.K. where that plays the most. We see claims inflation and it's about attritional claims mainly. Yeah, we don't see any inflation in the large losses or bodily injury. In the attritional claims inflation, we see that coming down gradually. Our numbers indicate that we are in the, around the 10% area. We have been increasing rates throughout the year. Just to give you a number, year on year, so an annualized rate increase we have carried through in our motor U.K. business is around 25%. That is well in line with the inflation. What is positive is that we clearly see in Q3, but definitely in Q4, both the API price tracker and the Confused.com tracker, already in Q3, they pointed to a very stiff rate increase. The Q4 has been very high. On an annualized basis it was about 30%. I mean, it's never I have never seen that before. Whereas at the beginning of the year, you saw prices motor in U.K. actually stabilizing. In Q4 you have seen a steep rise. Might have could be explained due to the pricing review and that people at the end of last year were quite aggressive on the rates and that now have to price up. There can be various motives. We're pretty confident. We have carried out our rate increases throughout the year. We see that we are becoming, again, more competitive on price competitive websites. In a nutshell, we have pushed through the impact of inflation in our pricing, and we see competitors also doing that now. Okay. Thank you. Maybe I can add briefly on Belgium, because Antonio focused on the UK. In Belgium, we have said that already in Q3 that 65% of our products there can automatically absorb the impact of inflation. That's what we did. On top of that, in home, there was a further additional increase because of the increase in cost of reinsurance for CatNat. It looks like that all this has been very well digested by the market, not impacting our sales volumes at the moment. Slight attention point on Workers' Compensation. That can be easily absorbed within the provisioning that AG overall has foreseen. Actually the combined ratio impact in Europe is actually mostly related to weather, it's not really related to inflation. We have digested the effect of inflation almost fully in the Q3 results. You ask about the Impact24 and under IFRS 17. In the roadshow, the deep dive we gave on IFRS 17 in December, you know, we will have a slightly different definition of combined ratio going forward. You have, of course, the discounting impact that will come into the combined ratio. At this moment, we fully stick and are confident on the Impact24 KPIs that we have set. We will come back, as you know, with the full IFRS final story, controlled and uncontrolled participations, in the month of June, well ahead of the first closing of IFRS 17 in August. Thank you. Can I give it to Filip on the fifth question and the good results on Asia. Yes. Obviously, we are very pleased with the results we saw in Q4 and overall underlying on Ageas. That is obvious. Indeed, it came in quite a bit ahead of what I gave as earlier guidance, going around EUR 550 underlying. In all fairness, I would like to point out maybe three, four things that positively impacted the quarter four result and, which may not be fully recurring, but were definitely operational. First and foremost, I mentioned it before in the previous calls, FX has given us a help, helping hand, over the year. The average exchange rate, euro, which would now at the end of year is a bit different, but throughout the year, that definitely supported the translation of the Ageas results into euro. The second thing is also, and that may be for all the wrong reasons, but we had very good claim results on health in China, and that is because of the lockdowns over the last quarter. Because of that, we had definitely a significant positive bias on the claim experiences in Asia, mostly in China. Thirdly, and that's also important, and it comes from two angles. We had a significantly better experience on the expense overrun in the fourth quarter. It comes because of what I said, the strong push in sales by the year-end, which obviously increases the cost-bearing capacity of the new business, but also because there was quite a bit of restraint on expenses, predominantly related to salary increases and bonus provisions across the region, but mostly in China, which helped. So if you ask me to give you a clear guidance on the underlying, I would say, okay, EUR 70 million-EUR 80 million less than the EUR 627 would certainly be a stable core, which brings us back around to EUR 550 range looking forward. Here we should add, but I think you are already aware, that under IFRS 17, there will be a different treatment of this VIR. We can assume that the real operating profits coming out of Asia will be closer to what we have seen as underlying in the past. So the two will become closer together, which I believe is a very important positive impact we can expect on the results for this year. From that perspective, Hans, I'm certainly probably one of the few, but one who is definitely looking forward to IFRS 17 9 because it will create more transparency and comparability. I agree. Thank you for your comprehensive answers. Thank you very much. Thank you. We will take the next question from line David Barma from BofA. The line is open now. Please go ahead. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one is on real estate, please. What are you seeing in terms of evaluations on your real estate portfolio at AG? Should we expect any impact for your capital gains usual budget for this year? Secondly, on reinsurance, are you able to give us a bit of color on your expectations for growth in the third-party business this year, and what the current market dynamics are doing to that? Thank you. Working. Yeah. Let me quickly take a little bit on real estate, and Antonio will zoom in further on reinsurance. Real estate is holding up very well. Real estate prices in our main areas, and that is all related to location, location, is keeping up nicely. We have a slight drop in occupancy, but we are still well above the 90%, which I think is good for our real estate portfolio. Secondly, a big part of the real estate is Interparking, the parking business, where actually we are fully back to normal. I would say we are even slightly better than 2019, which is the pre-COVID period. We have fully restored our parking business. Some attention, only attention point a little bit on the parkings at the railway stations. We see that the railway is used less than before, but all the others, I think, are fully back to normal. They will keep on contributing the yield to the performance of AG Insurance. Maybe just to add that once you said, I know you mentioned that the stock of unrealized capital gains in real estate is maintained, and indeed, we don't see, given the quality of the real estate portfolio, any impact. On reinsurance and specifically on the third-party business, we're starting to ride in 2023, so that the January renewal. We have underwritten mainly risks that obviously do not correlate with Belgium, U.K., so say North European storm. We focus on Central Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, top covers. That's the bulk of it, and there's also a participation in diversified North American exposure. All in all, we're talking about EUR 25 million-30 million premium. As you might be aware, the rates and the nature of the reinsurance market for reinsurers obviously is quite positive. A good start. We could obviously have written much more, but we like to do this gradually and probably in the April and July renewal season, we will also continue to grow that business but again, on a very controlled way. Thank you. Thank you. We will take the next question from Nasib Ahmed from UBS. The line is open now, please go ahead. Hi, morning, thanks for taking my questions. First question on, I'm not sure if you have answered this already. You usually provide a guidance on net result RPN(i). I know for full year excluding markets and one-offs, you are at EUR 1 billion, can we expect a similar result for 2023 or a little bit higher? And then on the M&A outlook, what do you see in terms of the scope for M&A in the current environment? Presumably coming into a recession in 2023, do you think M&A is gonna be a focus for Ageas? Thanks. Thank you. Well, first of all, on the guidance, well, you will understand that we are still fully in that transition to IFRS 17 and it's probably the most difficult year ever to give you some kind of a guidance in the beginning of the year. You remember that on IFRS 17 in December, we have said if you change net result into net operating result, that for the controlled entities in Europe, there will not be a major difference compared to the accounting treatment under IFRS 4. As I just explained already, in Asia, we can expect a quite important impact amongst others, but also the treatment of some of the impairments. Today, I would say that if you look at that adjustment result that we have given you on page 4 of your slides, taking into account those effects and the other exceptional effects, I believe you have a good guidance today for 2023. I would say between EUR 1 billion and EUR 1.1 billion. Again, I would say above EUR 1 billion. But it is indicative, and we will give you better insights on the guidance for the full year when we publish the half year results, because by then, we have fully digested the IFRS 17 impact in all our businesses. Second, on M&A, I would say no change. Always open for in-market consolidation in the markets where we are to strengthen our positions. There is continuous activity. Okay, you might not hear us all the time in the media, but, you know, we are very diligent on doing M&A and valuations. There is definitely activity. On the fourth home market, you will understand that Europe has been quite silent on M&A in 2022 due to the market circumstances. It is something we keep on looking at for the future. But you also remember we have said it is not urgent, huh? It is about balancing the Group Europe, Asia, for the future. It is on our radar, but it is nothing urgent. I want to add one more element here, is you might see, you have the evolution of the CASHES, partially because of the interim dividend and also for the very attractive FRESH and CASHES transactions that we have done in the fourth quarter. You should also be aware that, of course, the FRESH creates new debt capacity, yeah. There is maybe a little bit of shift in our capacity to do M&A, but it is mostly a shift. We took the good opportunity of the interest, rate, hedge with the FRESHes, to bring back that instrument. Remember it is a grandfathered instrument. So it's good that we get it off the balance sheet in the future, but it creates new debt capacity. You should take that into account when you look at our M&A, firepower. Perfect. That's very helpful. Thank you. We will take the next question from line, Michel Malato from KBW. The line is open now, please go ahead. Yes, thank you. I have one question about the reinsurance, especially the a drop in the solvency ratio for the reinsurance unit in 4Q. I mean, this was, I think you mentioned something. Is this due primarily to growth? Also on the performance of the Operational Free Capital Generation from the reinsurance in 4Q, which was weak. I mean, was this related to the performance insolvency? What was the driver between the driver for the, let's say the... Performance in the fourth quarter in the reinsurance unit. Thank you. I'll try to give you an answer, maybe Emmanuel can fill that up. So the drop you see in the solvency rates for reinsurance has also to do with the fact that we have allocated, or that we actually require more SCR for the new third party business. The new third party business obviously has only written in January. As you take a 12-month forward look in solvency, you have this mechanic increase in SCR. On the, could say the underlying performance of the reinsurance activity itself in Q4, you are aware that we have the quota share deal with the UK. S i 40% of the impact of the freeze in the UK flows through the reinsurance account. Add to that also the rain in Portugal, and that is the bulk of the explanation why you see a lower result in the reinsurance account. It's actually very much linked to the performance of the ceding entities. In say, the more of the pure protection reinsurance type of business, so beyond the quota shares, actually performance has been quite good. Thank you. You're welcome. Yeah. On Operational Free Capital Generation, so Emmanuel is speaking. Indeed on slide 53, you can see that the Operational Free Capital Generation of reinsurance is negative EUR 53 million. A couple of elements that are playing here. The first one is the consequence of the quota share and LPT and inflation and weather from the UK. The other one, and that is really the one that Antonio already mentioned also, is the launch of our external reinsurance. When you start up a new business in non-life insurance, on the 31st of December, because Solvency II is a 1 year forward looking, you have already to set up the solvency capital requirements at the 31st of December. That is impacting the Operational Free Capital Generation of reinsurance in Q4. You can see this, everything being equal moving forward, of course you will not have that increase anymore, and which means that then the Operational Free Capital Generation will be again at a more normal level. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, let me remind you that you can still ask question by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. We will take the next question from line Steven Haywood from HSBC. The line is open now, please go ahead. Good morning. Thank you. Appreciate the guidance you've given on the IFRS basis. Following up from the, from the previous question, I wonder if you can give us any guidance for the OFCG in 2023. Obviously, there is a few one-off impacts in 2022, but if you can give us some color going forward, that would be very helpful or give us an underlying sort of level we could expect on the OFCG. Secondly, You mentioned that your run rate for adverse weather impacts in your combined ratio is about two to three percentage points per year, which is helpful. Thank you. Do you think this is appropriate now, if you think about a potential new normal of higher levels of secondary perils, particularly from climate change going forwards? Is there anything to suggest that this 2-3 percentage points per year is not appropriate anymore? Thank you. Okay. Christophe will give you some feedback on the OFCG. On OFCG, the OFCG is not meant to be very volatile because it is filtered. It is the Operational Free Capital Generation. In some way, it is a little bit like underlying earning for profit. A lot of one-offs are filtered. What you have in OFCG is what we call the result of management action. So on OFCG it is quite stable. The SCR on OFCG could grow with growing activities, growing market, hence this impact coming from reinsurance. As Emmanuel already said, this is done, and this is good for the year. You know that most of the underwriting in reinsurance is done as of January first, so it was recognized end of Q4. End of Q2, we don't expect further need from the reinsurance. Further need could come for the second phase of development in 2024, but not before. Guidance on OFCG, we have decided not to issue any at this stage. Why? Because we have recently reshuffled the framework by including the Asian component. You remember that in the past we had Europe and Asia with a quarter delay. That is not the case. We consolidate now Europe and Asia at once without any delay. Regarding OFCG, we would like to wait until Q2, and when the guidance on the result will be released, we will add some indication regarding OFCG. Be patient until the closing of Q2. Thank you. Yes. Sorry. I come back on the core. Maybe first on OFCG. You know that we use OFCG to show that the FCF that we foresee, that the free cash flow coming to the group is sustainable for the future. If you compare the two, you will see there is a comfortable margin above the free cash flow coming to the group. We don't give guidance. But our principle that the dividend upstreaming should be sustainable, I think is proven by the OFCG numbers that we have. On combined ratio, whether 2%-3% is abnormal, it's a very good question. We see two elements. At first in pricing, the cost of reinsurance has significantly gone up around the world, specifically for CatNat. As I said, also in Belgium, for instance, we have been able to reflect that in the pricing of home insurance above the inflation. We have applied another 1.5% premium increase for all contracts, to cover CatNat, and that's already the second year in a row, that we apply that increase. Part of that effect will flow in the premium. That being said, the reinsurance cover is not fully renewed as it was. On some of the protection, it was not possible to get economically attractive positions, and I'm thinking about aggregate cover in Belgium. We can expect a little bit more volatility coming from the non-life home book, due to CatNat. If we would look over longer time periods, I believe the 2%-3% is still our ambition, because most of it we want to be reflected in the pricing of the product. Yes, but a little bit more volatile. Okay. Thank you very much for that. Thank you. We will take the next question from line Ashik Musaddi from Morgan Stanley. The line is open now. Please go ahead. Yeah. Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Just a couple of questions from me. First of all, I mean, you mentioned that because of this liability management on FRESH securities, there is some debt capacity that has opened up. Is it possible to get a bit of quantification of what that debt capacity looks like if you were to do any M&A? That would be the first question. I mean, I remember in past, it used to be about half a billion EUR debt capacity that you had. So where is that number going up? Second question is like, Asian reinsurance earnings were negative. I mean, what is driving that? And any specifics behind it would be helpful as well. Thank you. On the debt capacity, the situation is as follows. As regard the sub debt capacity, we are at around, I would say EUR 850 million. We have restored our RT1 capacity EUR 450 million, and the rest EUR 400 million could be a Tier 2 transaction. Now it is almost evenly spread between RT1 and Tier 2 for a total amount of EUR 850 million. We could issue senior debt up to something like EUR 200 million. And that is it for the debt capacity. Please keep in mind that the leverage has increased, and we can now feel some constraint coming from the leverage limit set by rating agencies. It is, as you know, due to the fact that shareholder equity has shrunk because of the rising interest rate, and we have lost quite a bit on shareholder equity and an impact on the debt capacity. Conclusion, EUR 850 sub-debt plus let's say EUR 200 senior debt. This is possible. When you add the existing cash, keep in mind that we have a credit facility, which is in place. Beyond the cash cushion of EUR 620 million, we have EUR 500 million of credit facilities. Good morning, Ashik. Filip Coremans. Your question was about non-life results or non-life earnings? Non-life results in Asia. The non-life results in Asia, you see it was washed away by an impairment, actually, on the Indian book. If I look at, when I look at, the results across the region in Southeast Asia, Malaysia, Thailand, I think, the combined ratios were back to, I would say, normal territory after COVID. There, they are at 88% for Malaysia, and then they were around 93% for Thailand. I would say back to normal. Taiping Re. Taiping Re, we had strong growth actually in non-life. At the same time, we tapered down the saving book. If you're looking at the premium on Taiping Re in total, it is coming down a bit. That's because we exited actually the pure saving lines, which led to, at the life side, a strong decline in premium. The focus is there entirely on protection lines now. In the non-life side, they grew. The combined ratio of Taiping Re is still not to the standard that we would like it to be. The result of Taiping Re definitely was significantly better this year, but I will leave that to our partners to disclose. At the non-life side, we're still impacted quite a bit by CatNat. The India story is very simple. The company did not make a loss, and they paid for the first time their, the dividend. When we look at the technical results in India, there are three challenges in that country. One related to the health insurance, which suffered from COVID claims, but also from aging population in the health book. There, we are taking commercial action and product development initiatives to bring that back on track. The second one is the commercial vehicle lines, which has always been a challenge. There, of course, the companies are in control of both pricing and underwriting, and we are taking on both sides material action, that should bring that also back to both better results. The real challenge lies in the personal lines in India. You know very well that the third-party liability is a tariff market, rates are set not by the regulator but by the Ministry of Finance, which typically trails a lot under inflation. There we saw very high Combined ratios over the last year. There we cannot control the pricing, only the underwriting. We are taking underwriting actions. All in all, looking at the risen interest rates and our cost of capital, we decided to impair. The impairment is about EUR 29 million. That is where the deviation come from. That is very clear. I just have a small question on slide 6. This other free cash flow, Holding Free Cash Flow of EUR 157 million. I mean, can we get the split of that in what is UK and what is this unwind of IFRS and what is recurring, what is non-recurring in that? Sorry, slide 6 you mentioned? Yeah, slide 6, EUR 157 million, other Holding Free Cash Flow. On the IRS, it accounts for so pure cash EUR 85 million, plus EUR 17 million of mark-to-market adjustments. It is around EUR 100 million, the total contribution of IRS, out of the EUR 146, of which EUR 85 of free cash. And is it fair to say it's non-recurring, it's just a one-off? It can be seen as a one-off, you can see what is left of nominal, EUR 151 million. We really have no plan to launch another tender offer on the FRESH. If you take the second one, the CASHES, when we do liability management on this one, there is no impact on the PNL, because we basically, we settle the RPN(i), which is seen as a debt against cash. It consume cash to settle CASHES. That's very clear. Thank you. Thank you. We will take the next question from line Anthony Yang from Goldman Sachs. The line is open now, please go ahead. Thank you very much. A couple of questions from me. The number 1 is on China or Asia. I think you mentioned in the slide on slide 38 about favorable claims experience in Asia Life. Can I ask what is that, please? Is that one-off? Also looking into 2023, given the COVID infections in China as part of a China reopening, should we expect some excess claims in Taiping Life? Number 2 is could you give some color on the solvency ratio of Taiping Life, please? 'Cause I think it was only 109% at 9 months 2022. Finally, coming back to Europe, indeed UK, I think your claims inflation assumption was 13% at 9 months 2022, which was actually an increase from 10% before. But that I think, you just mentioned it was 10% again, if I heard that correct. Can I ask what has improved there, please? Because I think the used car prices continue to increase. Thanks. Maybe first and foremost on the claims experience I mentioned in China. Yes, indeed, it is, we saw less health claims. It's not related to the mortality claims during the lockdown period. That's one of the things that has supported the result last year. You ask about impact of COVID infections after. Well, we don't see any material deterioration. Let's keep one thing in mind that the mortality may have been up over that period, but it is very much in non-insured populations. Yeah. It's not in the younger active population that COVID that's been that much noticed, right. So it's more in elderly retired segments of the population that the mortality rate is higher. Yeah. Until further notice, I have not heard anything that seems to be worrying in terms of the claim consequences of that in China. You asked a clarification on the solvency ratio in China. Of course, that solvency figure has not been published yet, I leave that to the result announced the CTIH Group. Referring back maybe to the previous quarter, the solvency ratio of Taiping Life was around 206%. There you have to keep one thing in mind that it is more volatile in Solvency II than it was before because of the double cap system that was introduced. Meaning that equity volatility immediately impacts, for instance, core capital recognition, and that the core capital is put as a cap on the recognition of other Tier 2 instruments in what they call the core ratio and on, let's say, returns of future profits in the overall. The ratio at that moment was 206%. It will have come down a bit by year-end, but not alarmingly so. Sure. Sorry, can I just quick follow-up on that solvency? Yeah, 'cause I guess if I talk about on the core solvency, should I expect directionally it should come down as well? The core, as you will have noticed, is 50% of the comprehensive. That is because of this cap system. The comprehensive is actually capped at 2 times core. So they move in sync. Okay. For the time being. Yeah. Keep in mind that the core ratio, the target is internally to stay close to 100. The target from a regulatory perspective is the minimum capital requirement of 50% there. Cool. Thanks. Can I ask on the inflation, claims inflation assumption in Europe as well? Yeah. You asked specifically about UK claims inflation in motor and you refer to lower second hand car prices or higher second car prices. It is an interesting proxy to look at, but it's, there are many other factors that we track. The 10% is a result of all the, all those factors. Let me just point to one. It's a big chunk of the cost is related to car hire. If you have an accident, then you can't drive your car, and you have to wait X number of days, and you get a replacement vehicle, and it was the cost of those replacement vehicles that was very high. That is a component that we definitely see dropping. You can many, many reasons to explain that, but we see in general, less supply chain issues, in nutritional claims. The second hand car prices might be a proxy, but it's maybe a too rough one. Cool. Thank you. Thank you. We will take the next question from line Benoit Petrarque from Kepler Cheuvreux. The line is open now. Please go ahead. Yes, good morning. It's Benoit Petrarque from Kepler Cheuvreux. A couple of questions on my side. The first one is on the Belgium Life earnings, EUR 95 million ex cap gains. It's like EUR 31 million, which sounds a bit low for quarterly run rate. I was just wondering if there is kind of any reserve strengthening or profit sharing or any one-offs in that figure. Again, linked to the Belgium Life question, actually, what do you see in terms of new business margin in Belgium Life currently? Could you maybe update us on the guaranteed rate and also obviously the yield on the new money? I was also wondering, in terms of volumes, volume development for 2023 on Belgian Life, what do you expect in the current interest rate environment, looking also at, you know, the competition from banks on savings products, what will you expect in terms of, yeah, volume growth for 2023? Last question is on the holding cash, EUR 620 million. You know, in the past, you guided us for kind of EUR 500 million as a minimum level. Now as we get close to EUR 500, I'm just wondering if you could update us on, you know, what will be a minimum level for the, for the cash, holding cash. Thank you. Thank you. There's no more questions in the queue. Okay. I was off. I'm not sure if you listened to me. Yeah? No. Okay. The Belgian Life earnings. As I said, the capital gains, particularly on the real estate business, they are very much a part of the model and we've always seen that all those years. We're very, very satisfied actually with the margin that we are showing in Life Belgium. The well, part of that sub question that you had was the new business margin. Well, if you would look at the new business margin today with the current yields, you would see a bigger margin than you've had in the past. I can't quantify what that'd be or if you want to express it in APE or whatever. It's not really the way we manage the Belgian business. We manage it more like the margin of the book. The new money rate has obviously gone up, and I would say that today it is north of the 3% even touching something north of 3.5%. EUR 390. That's for the, for the quarter. So it's definitely going up. You also asked about the guaranteed rates. The guaranteed rates on our main product that we're selling is since the 1st of February, 1.75. Now, compared to a new money yield of, say, north of 3.5, some people say it might be close to 4. That's still a very comfortable margin. Would explain the high new business value that you would have. You had another question, I think on volume. There, I would say that's maybe a bit more challenging, because banks, if you distribute through banks, and I take it a bit broader than just Belgium, but just bancassurance in general, also including Portugal. Banks make very healthy margins on their traditional savings business. You might see less appetite for really selling a lot of savings business. Having said that's also a business that we like to sell, but not in huge volumes. It might be a bit more challenging on the savings side. Not sure we were clear on your money rate. It moves a lot throughout the year. The year average is 2.6%, the 4th quarter is 3.9%. Actually we went from 1.8% over the 1st quarter to 3.9% in the 4th quarter. The new money rate in the fourth quarter is. By the way, it is the first time that the new money yield is above the average investment return of the portfolio, which means that in the future, this long-lasting trend of eroding investment income on the bond portfolio will go into the other direction. Now with 3.9, we will increase the average investment return from the bond portfolio. You have the question on the cash. Is that still EUR 500 million? I think we would always set around EUR 400 million is healthy for us. As you said, we also have a credit facility in case we need it. We are very comfortable with the current cash level that we have available just in case. We will take the last question from line, Ilaria del Prato from Barclays. The line is open now. Please go ahead. Hi. Morning. Thanks for taking my question. Only one question from my side, please. Wouldn't the EUR 146 million gain from the liability management qualified as the one-off when event you were talking at, 2 results last year for share buyback? Thanks. No, this is completely unrelated to share buyback. It is a one-time event. We still have approximately 150 million FRESH outstanding. This block of FRESH is indeed a one-time event. But of course we will not directly relate this to a share buyback. We look at the overall position of the company on solvency, on cash, as well as on our future growth plans. You have heard a few in reinsurance and still continuous looking at M&A opportunities. You should not make a link between the FRESH transaction and share buyback. Thanks. If no more questions. There's no further question at this time. Thank you. Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your questions. To end this call, let me summarize the main conclusions. The group delivered a strong operational performance in both Europe and Asia, driven by Non-life in Belgium and the underlying results in Asia. This performance contributed to the increase in the group solvency ratio to a strong 218% for the consolidated entities, and it resulted in a high Operational Free Capital Generation of EUR 1.2 billion for the whole group. Given the solid capital position, the board will propose to increase the full-year dividend per share by 9% to an all-time high of EUR 3 per share. This was our last call on IFRS 4 results, and it's also a page turning, as it was also our last earnings call with Christophe as Ageas CFO after 11 years of collaboration. I would like to take this opportunity to thank him for his contribution in bringing Ageas to where it stands today and in building a solid financial base on which the group can further develop. With this, I will bring this call to an end. Don't hesitate to contact our IR team should you have any outstanding questions. Thank you for your time, and I wish you a very nice day. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you very much for attending. You may now disconnect your line.