All right. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and also warm welcome to investors and analysts who follow us, offline, on the screen. Welcome to this, Investor Day, twenty twenty-four, where we will share with you the launch of our new strategic cycle called, Elevate27. I'm joined here in the room today by Wim Guilliams, our CFO, already well known to most of you, but also by Karolien Gielen. Maybe Karolien, if you stand up a second. You know, Karolien joined the group in June, coming from BCG partner for Europe and Benelux section, UK, Benelux at BCG. She's a member of our executive committee, leading the business development division, and in the business development division we also have strategy. I think, Karolien has been instrumental in bringing this story today to life, of course, together with hundreds of collaborators all over the group. What will I talk about this afternoon? First of all, a little bit our profile, our identity. How are... Who are we actually, and how are we, I would say, even more and more being recognized by the market, by analysts and investors? What kind of actor are we in the insurance business? Let me show you the transition. How do we come from Impact24 to Elevate27? Impact24, for me, it was the first strategic cycle to announce, was a little bit starting from a white sheet of paper. Today, you will see that's not what we do. We can continue, I think, on what we have already set into moving in Impact24 to go to Elevate27. I'll zoom in then on the drivers of the plan, and then, of course, we have definitely of high interest to you a delivery, a promise, a commitment towards the new targets. The financials and the targets will be explained to you in a lot more detail by Wim Guilliams in the second half. Then at the end, of course, we close with Q&A. Ageas, of course, well known to you. We are unique and I think unique in the sense how we operate, but also I think related to our business mix. We are well-diversified, and you will hear the word diversification quite a few times in the presentation this afternoon. Insurance group is clear in Europe and Asia, and that I can already tell you, for the next strategic cycle, our focus will remain on Europe and Asia. We're not launching another continent. Of course, a small caveat here: with the reinsurance business, the third-party reinsurance business, we operate all over the world. And actually, I would say almost a little bit more outside of Europe and Asia, except for that reason of diversification via the reinsurance segment. So you know our map, Europe and Asia, these strong, home markets, which leading positions in most of the country. Then I would say Asia, I would almost color in two different colors. You have China and the rest of Asia, because China has become an important part, of our Asia story. Something that is hard to squeeze on a worldwide map is reinsurance, because reinsurance actually is a little bit everywhere. But after all, it is a well-balanced portfolio, well-balanced geographically. Remember that over the last two cycles, geography has played an important role in the diversification and keeping our performance, I would say, at the mark, because economic trends, COVID trends, inflation trends, interest rate trends, more and more vary around the world. It is actually the fact that we are well-diversified geographically and also between Life and Non-Life business around the world, that is, in my view, a very strong element in our identity and our strength as a group. Of course, we have more than the geography as a key strength, and this is the strengths. I would say this is the foundation on which we can build the next strategic cycle, Elevate27, and the first one is it was a party year. We have been celebrating two hundred years of existing, two hundred years of history, started in Belgium, serving individuals, serving families, local enterprises, on their life insurance risks and savings, and also on their Non-Life insurance solutions. You know that in Belgium, we are a market leader, and you see that leadership and growth priorities is another element here in our strengths. If we are in a market, we always believe there is a benefit, there is a margin to be made to be able to go into market-leading positions, and we feel that very much in Belgium in the first place. We are happy to tick another box in leadership, because we were already quite a long time life insurance leader in the Belgian market. From this year, we are also number one in Non-Life. We used to be number two in Non-Life in Belgium, but now I can officially confirm that we're also number one on the Non-Life side. It's a group, and Belgium, with two hundred years foundation, is, I would say, one of the drivers of this which is recognized for strong technical insurance expertise. We are technically driven, and a lot of decision-making is based on technical fundamentals, and I talk about pricing, underwriting, risk management. Asset liability management, I might use that a few more times later in the strategy. I'm still convinced that how we went to twenty years of low interest rate environment in Belgium with a solid asset liability management, not selling back books, no need to sell back books, is a key strength in our identity, and a strength, by the way, that we are exporting now to China, because China, you could say, in that respect, is a little bit in the situation where we were twenty years ago. So a very stable, technically driven, profitable engine, for the group. We have the diversified, footprint regionally, I told you already, and we have a plan here that keeps that profit mix, let's say, roughly 50/50. It will vary, of course, but roughly 50/50. And 50/50, I mean Asia and the West? And the West is then Belgium, Europe, and reinsurance. Then we will be a group with a footprint in that respect that is fairly stable for the next strategic cycle. Life, Non-Life, but maybe also a little bit atypical here. We are two-thirds a life group, one-third a Non-Life. It has shifted a little bit because of this very solid Non-Life growth that we have seen under Impact 24, but roughly spoken, the mix is still two-third, one-third. Diversified in distribution. As you know, we had under Impact 24 three main blocks on the distribution: banca, agency, and broker. Now, I think other, including the direct business, has become sizable enough to get its own color in the pie chart. So we are working also on future-proofing and diversifying our distribution model. We have now 47 million customers, and they are served by 50,000 skilled and committed employees. And then let's not forget the partnerships. We celebrated two hundred years for ourselves in Belgium. Next week, we will celebrate twenty years partnership in Thailand. By the end of the year, we have 20 partnership with Banco Comercial Português in Portugal. Our partnerships are built to last. We are not short-term partners. No, we are there for the long term, and that seems, in a way, to work. So these brands that you see there under that block are very stable. And I think if you look at previous presentations we have given, you always see the same names coming up, and that's part of our identity. And we are actually quite proud of the quality of partnerships that we have around the world. Another characteristic in the identity of our group is delivering, yeah. We are very conscious on setting targets, and Wim will spend the whole session exactly on that: how do we set the targets, and how what is the plan to achieve those targets? But we also have a track record that we can deliver, and we are perfectly on track under Impact24 by the end of the year to deliver on all the targets that you see here on the screen. I don't need to repeat them. These were the targets. If I take the scores of the half-year results, then you know combined ratio of 93, just above 93%, a guaranteed margin of 124 basis points, but you always know there is a seasonal effect here, towards the end of the year, and 39 basis points on the unit-linked side. A solvency level, which is well above 200%, and then an outlook on shareholder remuneration and how it comes together, meaning going from EPS over holding free cash flow towards the dividend, which will be perfectly in range with the commitments that we have given before. And then we have, for the first time under Impact24, also put non-financial KPIs as a commitment. And also here, I think we will tick or almost tick all the boxes on the investment side, on the product side, our own footprint, and then, of course, we had also strong commitments on the diversity side, and then mainly in the area of the gender diversity. We will be able to tick most of these boxes, if not all, by the end of this year. So let me take a few of the non-financial ones. First of all, sustainability. Remember that in Impact24, we said we put sustainability at the heart of everything we do, and that is key to stay relevant. For a company which is so important in the Belgian economy, who has been able to show two hundred years of relevancy, we have to think ahead and to see how do we stay relevant. And we said sustainability is a key element here. And we were not first in this. We were average five years ago. We have said, "Okay, we want to reach top quartile by the rating agencies," which by back then, as you know, is a moving target, because rating agencies are also still developing their methodologies. Well, we are well within sight to reach top quartile for three out of the six. We never set for all six. Actually, I haven't found one financial institution with top quartile on all of them, that is, I think, close to impossible. But the three that are most relevant to us, we are well on track to reach top quartile, and you have seen a gradual progress over the Impact24 cycle. We have joined the BEL 20 ESG Index at the beginning of this year, so we are one of those companies with the ESG label in the BEL 20 Index. But the more important one for me is the one there at the bottom with EcoVadis. EcoVadis is a label on sustainability also for your suppliers, which for the first time, I feel can also drive business growth. Because in Belgium, international conglomerates who decide to put their pension plan with AG, they ask about your EcoVadis sustainability rating. And so we are now Platinum. That means we belong to the top 1% of companies qua sustainability in their methodology, and that helps us to really win bids in significant material pension plans that international conglomerates operating in Belgium offer to their employees. Investments. Investments we had said EUR 10 billion will be investments going into direct Impact investments. That's what we said. An investment that people immediately recognize as an ESG investment, because we all know that ESG investments, it's not yes or no? There is a grading there, and it's all about transition. But we said directly recognizable, we want EUR 10 billion. End of 2023, we already reached EUR 13.5 billion. Be aware that it is not only planet, this is not only environment, this is also S, also social. In this portfolio, for instance, there is a significant portfolio of social housing in France, or there is also building schools, which is a little bit of the E and the S, the social role of schools, but also E because the new buildings are a lot more energy efficient than the old buildings. Let's not forget, sustainability for me is also the role you play in society in general, while being one of the largest institutional investors with EUR 27 billion invested in the Belgian economy, next, of course, to all the product solutions that we offer to our customers. Here, we also said that 100% of all new investments made would go through an ESG filter, yeah. Because there is not black and white? We have put a threshold there on ESG, scoring, and we apply that now already on 100% of our investments. So all companies have to show their ESG plans, even if they are, I would say, outside of the scoring. If they have a very solid plan, which we will track, they might be able to get our investment again. If they have no plans, then we will probably walk away from them for new investments. I can already give you this one. We are not putting a formal target on these investments for 2027. We believe we have a plan to go to EUR 15 billion. And why not a target? Well, there are two reasons. First of all, quite some of these investments start to come at maturity and need to be replenished, which we will do if we have the opportunity. But secondly, there is also something like asset allocation, right? We have fixed income, we have equities, we have real estate, we have infrastructure. And so, I mean, this asset class, because some people might think you have a EUR 100 billion balance sheet, so these direct Impact investments can become a EUR 100 billion. No, because we need fixed income, we need liquidity, we need equities. So that's why we don't give a new commitment, but rest assured, we keep on working on this. We believe that we might evolve to EUR 15 billion in line with the evolution of the portfolio, but it also have to fit in our strategic asset allocation. And then we had the topic of the products. We were one of the first ones, because until now, three years later, there is no such definition of what is a sustainable insurance product, or what is an ESG insurance product. We have said that if we can incentivize our customers to make a contribution to a better world or a better society, the same as we do on the investment side with companies, then we would call it a sustainable product. And I think there is a massive innovation has happened over the last three years by launching new products or adding features to existing products so that people, have an incentive to make that contribution. One example, which is quite common, you have sustainable, unit-linked funds, right? The ESG funds, and you have other funds, for instance. So we are driving, the development of ESG funds. We have Weldon is a whole platform. We used to call it the healthcare platform, but it's now become sizable. It deserves its own brand, so but Weldon is in Belgium, the solution for well-being of employees, working on reintegration of burnout of employees. We have a few initiatives under Médis. Médis Active, live a healthy lifestyle. We have some initiatives you see here on the claims repair, like here in the UK, where we use green parts as a solution for claims repair. And then Asia, of course, where sustainability is coming forward strongly, it's a lot more about inclusion. In Asia, you see still large population groups who have no access to insurance, and where we see there, for instance, a Bima plan, micro-insurance solutions, to offer. You have micro-insurance, you have something like micro-takaful, to drive inclusion in the Asian region. 29% we have already achieved. Target was 25%, and we have taken one year and a half to make our own definition, right? And we have taken, I would say, the more stringent view of our definition. So I'm quite confident that this 29% is solid, products that help developing sustainability. So this is a little bit our foundation. So Impact24, as you remember, was announced at a long-term, sustainable growth strategy. The growth has been there, and I think if you look at the end of 2023 results and the half year 2024 results, 23% growth in Non-Life, 10% growth in life over the six months of this year. The growth, organic growth, has delivered on its promises. Sustainability, as I've just shown you, has taken center stage, and we are still long-term thinking. I will show in the next section how the long-term thinking comes in in our new plan. Our conclusion was, if I take all these strengths, there is no need, absolutely no need, to start with a white sheet of paper. We can start with the footprint, with the strengths, with the delivery, and with the performance that we have. How are we gonna put a layer on top of that? That was the driver to develop Elevate27, and that's why we call it Elevate. Elevate in the sense, driving further the growth and driving margin improvement, and in that sense, of course, all the consequences of margin improvement, earnings per share, holding free cash flow, and so on. That's why Elevate27. Okay, let me zoom in on a few key themes under Elevate 27. First of all, we will focus on three strategic drivers. We do away with the ten or even more strategic choices we had in the past. Many of them are still there or have become part of our identity, what I've just shared with you. Here, it's more forward-looking, where we will further build upon. That is, first of all, working and driving profitable growth. Second, further building on something we are already recognized for, technical insurance capabilities, and more and more operational excellence. And thirdly, distribution excellence and driving customer experience. And I will zoom in each and every one of them a little bit more in a minute. And we see three, what I would call our enablers. Yeah. What will facilitate that? Our people are our main enablers for two hundred years already, and we have a very dedicated, qualified team that really respects commitments and delivery. Sustainability, I have moved from, I would say, a growth engine, something to be fully developed, to an enabler, and I just gave you the example of EcoVadis. Our focus on sustainability will continue, yeah, and we will keep on putting it at the heart of everything we do, but it will start enabling us to do more. And the third one, the most important one, and you hear it everywhere, is tech, data, and AI. We had tech, and I think we are well-positioned in tech. We had data, and I think if you talk to all my colleagues, everybody will say, getting the data organized took more time than we expected when data management became a possibility. In my view, AI is now the missing piece of the jigsaw. By adding AI on the first two, we will really be able to deploy all the capabilities, all the management information, all the insights in everything we do, in underwriting, in claims, in fraud management, in customer journey, but also in HR, in recruitment, you name it. We will be able to start deploying it once your tech and your data foundations are installed, and I will show you where we are today. AI, for me, was the missing tool to really turn it into business, and that is now coming in at rapid speed. We have categorized the drivers in two categories. Remember, on the Impact24, we set the core, yeah? The core is strong, and the core will approximately deliver 80% of our story and of our ambition, but it's more or less the same. We call it here Continue. Yeah. What will we continue? That means we do it well. We are recognized for that. We will continue trying to do that even better. We can build on our past experience. We have learnings from Impact 24, and of course, we will have to adapt that to local market circumstances, huh? And then we have a second block, where we say Elevate. And Elevate, we have been thinking... If we take all the strengths together, where do we have the right to win? Where do we have the right to outperform what the industry or the society at large will do, yeah? Why? Because we have the building blocks to do it better, to do it earlier, to do it faster, or to do it bigger. That's what we call Elevate. That means Elevate things that can bring that new extra layer of value for all our stakeholders. Of course, still build on the strengths we have as a group. Let me start with the first one: driving profitable growth. I'll take a quick sip of my tea because my voice, I have to keep it up. We are quite happy with the position in Retail P&C, to take an example, combined ratio, 93. Business growth, 23% in the first half of the year. Please do not extrapolate that too much, because there is an element of inflation here, and inflation is fading away. Reinsurance, I'll talk about in a second. Health and protection. Where do we feel we can truly Elevate, yeah? There are two segments. First of all, the SME market, yeah? We are very strong in the retail. We are actually already very strong in SME as well. You would be... Don't underestimate that, but we believe that the SME market is a market that will outperform the rest of the Non-Life market. And second is aging society, yeah? I always say, if there is any peer of us, yeah, who wanna go in this, we can do better because we are two-thirds a life company already. We have shown to have the products. We have the full product range. We have shown how we manage asset liability management, how we cover liabilities that we accept, so we should take a leading role in aging society, and I've not even spoken about our footprint to do so. I'll zoom in into that in a second, so these are elements, SMEs, aging society, where we aspire to outperform, yeah, and to bring a new layer of value for all our stakeholders. First, the first three, where we'll continue. A CAGR of 12% in Retail P&C business growth, 10%. Above 10%, I mean, double-digit, that's good, yeah? I don't think that anybody at the start of Impact24 would have thought that the Non-Life markets also in Europe would grow so much, yeah? And that is because inflation, yeah, but also because of customer journey, distribution, intimacy, so we have a very healthy mix here between business growth as well as inflation. And another element that played in our favor here is the transformation that the UK has been going through over the last two to three years. In Re, I would say the timing was right. We went in third-party reinsurance, quite well. Remember, we have allocated EUR 215 million capital to be invested in this business segment by 2027. Here, I can say no change, yeah? We are well on track on this plan. We are slightly ahead of business volumes and capital allocation, but for now, the team has said with the EUR 250 million, we can gradually build our expertise and build the portfolio. At this moment, we do not ask for more capital. Let's gradually build this up. So we have committed to continue that plan, of course, subject to trends in the cycle. And because reinsurance is a market where you go in, but you also must be brave to go out when the cycle turns. And the good news here is, when I got a debrief last week from the reinsurance team that was in Monte Carlo, they said, first of all, a lot more attention by the specialized reinsurance press for Ageas, so that's good. We are recognized in that respect. But also, and that's the first time I hear that, by investors and investment community who is more focused on that segment, who start getting some interest. I'm not even saying yet appetite, but interest to get to know what Ageas is doing in this segment. So I hope that this is also, I think, a driver for growth in our investor base. And then health and protection, remember, we saw that as main growth engines. The world changes rapidly. When Impact 24 launched, health and protection was the most profitable segment of Non-Life and life risk, yeah? That has turned, yeah. A few Non-Life businesses have had pressure under COVID or after COVID due to inflation. Health, there, the issues has lingered on a lot longer because you have an inflation of claims frequency together with an inflation of claims cost, yeah? And that's staying. And I think we have done significant adjustments in the premiums, but we have also learned dealing with such a situation, developing health and servicing is something very local. So we say the group role is actually limited, so we keep with the model in health and protection, Ageas in the lead in Portugal, where we have, well, the best developed healthcare model with Médis, yeah? We will keep on continuing doing this, but we do not see this today as the major elevating segment. It will grow. We will see where it goes. It might come back when I talk about the other topic in a minute, but profitability is key. Profitability for me, combined with insurability, because premiums in this segment needs to stay affordable for citizens and clients as well. So aging. Aging is the first one to Elevate, and I don't need to explain you why. Age dependency in Europe, which is now between 35% and 40%, age dependency defined as 65+ generation compared to the active working population, where in this example it is taken twenty to 65. Age dependency in Europe will go from 35%-40%, varies country by country, to 60%-70% in the future. Age dependency in Asia. Asia has a longer, a younger generation still. So age dependency in Asia today is between 20% and 25%. It will go to 75%-80%. Age dependency is a huge issue for all economies in our footprint, both in Europe as well as in Asia. We talk a lot about how can we further industrialize Europe again and get industry again? That would be great, but we will need immigration for that. Yeah. Building an aging economy, I think, is another topic that will come more and more on our agenda, and here we have the right to win, yeah? With the presence that we have and with the strengths we have in-house, we have the right to win. To put one example here where we can play, the cost of aging in Belgium alone for the government will go up with approximately 50%. Yeah. You all know that there are not many European government budgets who can deal with that easily. So I would say we have a tailwind for the coming years, and I'm talking here about years, yeah, in the pension and savings segment, and we are convinced that that will outgrow the traditional life market. We have already EUR 86 billion life liabilities on the book today. We kept them all. Yeah. We were never forced in the low interest rate environment to do back book transactions. We didn't have to divest life liabilities because the pressure of low interest rates became too heavy for us to carry, solvency has been strong. We have stayed active in the whole range of products in this segment, from guaranteed, over unit-linked, over funds. We have not closed business lines in this segment, so I think we have the right to win also in the future in this segment. And we have market-leading positions. In Belgium, we are by far number one. We are doing more than 30% of the pension business in Belgium. We have, and I will zoom into that in Portugal, a top three position in Portugal. I don't have to talk about Taiping Life too much in this respect. You know the position of Taiping Life in China. They are number five in this segment, and soon to be, we will immediately be a number four in the pension business once we conclude the investment in Taiping Pension that we have announced. We are top players with the second-largest bank, because relationship with bancassurance, of course, in this segment is very close, right? Aging and savings. In Thailand, with the Kasikornbank. So we have market-leading position. And not forget AgeSA. AgeSA is on a boost at the moment. The growth in AgeSA is very, very significant, but also promising because we also see bottom line growth coming in in AgeSA. Another topic, where will we then Elevate? Well, first of all, by tapping and developing the segment, because we think the segment will outgrow the rest of the life issuers. So that means stay where you are with your market position, and you should outgrow if you focus on this one. Another element here is post-retirement. If you look at this age dependency ratio, a bigger group of your clients and your customer base will go from the accumulation phase to the decumulation phase. Yeah? In the decumulation phase, we have solutions already in Belgium, for instance. We have Silver in Portugal, where we service our customers after retirement. Of course, we talk more about annuity type of business, for instance, succession planning type of business, a big business in some of our countries, helping our customers with succession planning. We will also focus more and more how we will develop that post-retirement pension solutions. We have China. I just spoke about the aging issue in China. China is on a road to convert its economy from an infrastructure and export economy into a consumer consumption economy. They know to do that, that they need to develop the Social Security system, because savings are fully going to servicing your family. Meaning, after the one-child policy, two twenties who marry serve four parents, serve eight grandparents. And if you have studied a little bit what Confucius has said, this is one of the highest values that you have in China, taking care of the previous generations. Life and pension liabilities have grown approximately 3% over the Impact24. We believe with a dedicated focus, we should be able to bring that number above 4%. And if we can bring that number above 4%, that would be on top of the normal evolution, another EUR 2 billion extra life and pension liabilities coming in over the Elevate27 period. Here you have the Portugal case. I'm not gonna zoom in, too much. We are number one for the pension fund business in Portugal. We have 22% market share on the life side and, of course, on the healthcare side. And because healthcare is also a topic, of course, with aging population, we are market leader in the UK with an integrated healthcare model, has servicing as well as insuring. And so where we will focus on, where we will Elevate, is stay the relevant player with a full set of value propositions, and so that we can accompany our customers in accumulation, in deaccumulation, in healthcare throughout their life cycle. And then, of course, a lot focusing here on servicing delivery. And digital and data is also a very important element in healthcare. I think the only way out to keep adequate qualitative healthcare for all is developing more also the digital healthcare solutions that are becoming more and more available in the market. We have new initiatives there, Médis Vintage, for instance, critical illness of seniors in this aging group, or Médis Light, for instance, where we take a relatively basic cover, which is not so much age-dependent, which we can do without a medical questionnaire to be able to service these segments in society as well. So that's about aging. Let me go to SMEs. Yeah. SMEs is a segment we are servicing already, and with very strong market positions. We are number one in Belgium, in the SME market. I will zoom into that in a minute. We have a top three position in Portugal, top two with Aksigorta in Turkey, and mainly done here by the agency force, and we also service SMEs with Etiqa in Malaysia. So we have already very strong positions. That means we also have the expertise. Yeah. It's an attractive market. We expect the SME Non-Life market to grow faster than the retail SME market, with approximately two percentage points higher growth in the overall P&C, and let's not forget, we have the distribution. Yeah. Because while maybe on the retail market, we might think that direct and digital might gradually take over a lot of the business in the direct market—in the retail market, sorry, I do not see that happening easily in the SME market. Because an SME manager, he doesn't wanna have the burden of finding out his insurance solutions for all the risks he has. The risk is more complex. It's less standardized. I'm sure that an SME manager will look for professional advice, and that's where brokers or the branches of a bank focusing on SME and medium-sized enterprises will focus on. So this will further future-proof also our relationship with our distribution channel in case distribution would shift. So where will we Elevate? First of all, further elevating underwriting capabilities. And here, when it will come a few more times, data and AI is transforming underwriting capabilities also for SMEs. Yeah. How can I ask less to the SME and still know more, so that I can properly underwrite a small and medium enterprise? That's the name of the game. Make the burden for the customers as small as possible, but make sure you have the maximum information available to make sure to underwrite that SME, correctly. Also, this is segment-driven, right? You have industries, and every industry has a little bit of different type of risks. Here, also, data and AI can help. Second area is the product range is quite wide for SME, right? It depends on what type of industry are you working in, what type of risks do you run? We still have room to widen our product capabilities, yeah, and product solutions. Sometimes you also have very good and profitable niche products in these segments for SMEs. Developing this and helping that through the database we have and the distribution we have, will allow us to further Elevate our position in this segment. And we will further diversify distribution channels, and not least, also digitizing the relationship with our distribution partner to the end customer, because also here, digital can make the customer journey more interesting. So in the four SME markets that we have seen here, you do not see UK If you would ask yourself, are you gonna go back in SME market in the UK? That is not on the agenda today. We have a focused strategy with Ageas UK on the retail market. Yeah, and we are quite happy with the transformation that is ongoing. Yeah. So you do not see UK on this board. But in the four key SME markets, we believe we can outgrow the growth of the P&C market. If I take Belgium, for instance, as an example, again, there we are already number one. We are approaching, in the Non-Life side, EUR 1 billion premium written by SMEs in Belgium. We are just above EUR 900 million today. And we have a very nice packaging solution for the SME manager, which is called Modulis. A bit the same like we have on the retail side with Familis, which is a packaged approach to our customers. We started that more than 20 years ago. We have started digitizing the customer journey in Modulis in 2017. We started acceleration now. Why? Because adding AI to the digital process and the data we have, we can go to a next level of hyper-personalization of the service to our end client in a digital way. The bank as well, it was very much a broker-driven business in Belgium. BNP approached us three years ago to take their stake in the market of servicing SME on the insurance side. The plans have been designed, all rolled out, and we see that we have outperformance relative to the market because BNP is coming into that market with our risk solutions. So that is a little bit our ambition. Also, we see last year, credibility to specialized brokers. You also see some MGAs in this segment. So we will see how we can bring our expertise, our insights, to all related parties here. This was the first block of profitable growth. Continue what we do well, adding Ageas and SME as levers of our growth and margin. Second block, technical insurance and operational excellence. Of course, a lot of this is happening locally, yeah? Each and every market, each and every company we operate in, is very strong on their technical expertise. And of course, we have our sharing platforms, which we have more officialized under Impact 24 with this creation of the CDSO function. We have now the managing director, business development, who puts that even at the executive committee level. Where will we Elevate? Well, we will further step up our leadership here, again, by leveraging and adding data and AI to the story. We have, I think, a very strong foundation on core insurance expertise, and I gave already the example of Life in Belgium: asset liability management, risk management, pricing, covering guarantees. It's also becoming more and more from the beginning, but still relevant, our export product, yeah? We went to Asia because these were emerging markets, and they wanted to build that insurance expertise. We went to Taiping Life because it was a dormant license since nineteen twenty-nine, which could be reactivated under the condition that they would seek a partner that brings the expertise. That's exactly what we do. It's our export recipe. Next to bank insurance, by the way, which is also an export product that has brought us into Asia. What's our ambition here? Wim told me that he gonna generate EUR 75 million -EUR 100 million more insurance result by focusing on this technicality of the business, and that's a mix of three things: operational efficiency, customer experience, leveraging the data and AI here. The second one is technical excellence, can be too. I hear technical excellence is related to cost, but it's also related to claims. So it's not, it's not cost savings as such. It can be too. And sometimes we have that debate: if I make a little bit more costs, but I can create 1% lower combined ratio, what's the best, cutting the cost of controlling and managing the claim? So that's why we take it in one basket, technical excellence. Then, of course, digitalization, simplification, here again, because the data are organized, the processes are more and more digitized, and AI will help us to personalize all this. So a little bit about that data and AI story in this segment, because I see a lot of insurance group throwing very big numbers, how much they are gonna invest. I cannot give you a euro number that we are gonna invest, because it can happen at the desk of one person deploying an AI tool. I'm not gonna bother how much we have invested to use that AI tool in one entity who has decided to explore something. That's, I think, not relevant. What we have insisted is, each and every division has the duty to come up with their ideas. So we do a lot in training and learning development, what AI can do. We give examples. We bring our new strategy Wednesday to the management, and we will show a lot of examples what it can already do for those who might not know, yet. And so we have now lined up already more than three hundred initiatives, small and big, in different entities around the world, where we say, "Here, data and AI in my job, in my responsibility, in my division, is gonna make a difference." Eight out of ten, and we will also bring them to the group to a big extent, we see them as really transformational. They are really already today changing our business model. Now let me just take four examples so that you can a little bit understand what we talk about. First is in Belgium, the car repair plus cost model. If I take it in one sentence, five to six years ago, when a claim came in, you ask a quote to the car repair shop, you negotiate a little bit on the quote, and you say, "You know, you go ahead, repair the car." Now it's the opposite. We tell the car shop, "Oh, that's how much it can cost." If you know the model, if you know the post code, if we see the pictures of the car, we say, "Look, we know what this is gonna cost." Because historically, in all our database, these type of accidents, we can tell you there is a margin to be made, and AG Insurance keeps on inventing, how can I better control my car repair network to have the best service at the correct price, the correct repair cost for everybody? UK claims handler AI assistance, that's more operational excellence. This is an example where we help the life of our employees and improving the customer journey. There are two things live already today, quite promising. The first one is, am I covered? A customer does not have to call anymore. He still has to call, but in the call center, AI can immediately say, "Am I covered?" And it takes the general conditions of the contract and can immediately say to the customer, "Yes, this is covered or not covered." Very soon, I think the customer can do that by himself. He would not even have to call to see whether he's covered or not. The second one, which is also live already in the UK, is speech-to-text and summary. So if now somebody calls into the claims, the whole call can be recorded. You can get the full script of the call, and you automatically get a summary. The employee who was losing time on logging the call for the follow-up of the claims does not have to do anything anymore, yeah. The system automatically captures the summary, and when the customer calls back, yeah, the claims handler says, "Oh, yeah, I know you called that day. That's the status of your file," and can immediately service the customer. Ada in Turkey. Here, I think, for me, the numbers are mind-boggling, and I also heard the numbers only a few weeks ago when I visited Turkey. Turkey, I can easily say to some extent, it's our digital lab, hmm. Don't underestimate the speed of digital development that is happening in the Turkish market. They came with Ada already a few years ago, and Ada is a chatbot asking customers to give information and giving immediately a quote, an underwriting and a quote to the customer, purely by a chatbot. This year, Ada will approximately do EUR 7.2 million transactions for us in the Turkish market. We started with EUR 2 million in 2023, and again, this is an evolving thing because now we can put a GenAI on top of the tool to make it even better, to make it even accurate, and they are converting Ada now into what I will call our digital insurance expert. Then we have the Digital Coach. Digital Coach is an asset we have built at group level, and this is all about training our agents, but it doesn't have to be limited to agents in the future, but agents in Asia. An agent, well, I always say, if you have two hundred and seventy thousand agents in China, you don't bring them in a classroom, yeah? So that means now on a mobile, he can do a training course as an agent at any moment in time, when he likes. Every training course is a different one, because what Digital Coach does is, Digital Coach creates a potential client, right? And you have the training with that potential client. The tool, immediately after you end the interaction, gives immediately your feedback, where you did well, where you could do better, yeah, why the call was maybe a bit long or why, what he would have hoped to get from you. We do that at group level. This is a typical example of why being part of Ageas as a joint venture. Because we build it once, it takes a few weeks to learn another language, yeah? You need to add a little bit the product expertise, and you're going. So from one country, we can immediately roll it out over all Asian countries, and at this moment, we have already quite some pilots going on. Then, so in the last block here on the right side, I forgot, it's all about people. People in two aspects. Everybody, because how do we keep everybody on board with all these AI capabilities, huh? I'm very much convinced that AI will not replace people. AI will be a co-pilot of our people, and we can actually upgrade also the contribution of people by adding AI to their story. But we also need, of course, the experts themselves to build all this, and here, we invest in 580, and most of them are already available around the world, 580 data and AI experts to build all this, for our entities. Last one, distribution excellence, customer experience. I would say very much a continuing diversification. As a group, we are very well-diversified in distribution, and I would say from what we called, I don't know, nine years ago, multi-distribution. We then called it omni-channel. I think I call it now more omni-channel, yeah. Make sure that for every type of transaction you have with the customer, you offer him the most optimal way to get that service done, yeah? And that means that banca also needs to digitize, and our broker is also using data and AI. So this is a mix of customer journeys with all the tools we have in-house, and a broker, a bank branch, is also one of those tools to service a customer. Where will we Elevate? Well, we do future-ready partnership capabilities. We wanna stay relevant to our partners, and we are still driven by NPS. Elevation comes from traditional partnership, keep on building, digitizing them, helping them in their transformation into a new tech world, but also diversify distribution. Might sound strange, but we are very well diversified at group level. We are not always optimally diversified in each and every country. So for instance, there are countries in Asia where we are very strong on banca, but less present on agency. So there, I think we will focus. Can we also develop the agency side so that we can Elevate our business model, and that we can service more customers with their channel of choice? And we will invest also more on what we call the next-gen partnerships. For instance, in the digital platform world, in India, we have started digital platform for quite simple life protection covers. And we've seen a more and more new type of partners in their services, saying, "I would like to add my protection, your protection solution with API to my value proposition to the customers." That's what we call new type of next-gen partnership. That's also what you see here in the block, Other, being developed. Focus here on the operational side is to, first of all, self-service. With data and tech, it was, I would say, a bit difficult to really go into self-servicing. I'm sure with the personalization of AI, that becomes possible. Yeah. And so that's something where we will focus on. And the other one is very similar: automated customer assistance, which also can become more and more personalized. So these were the three main drivers. Let me then go with you through some of the elements where group will take a leading role, huh? Because our identity is more and more, and I must say, the Asian joint venture recognize stronger and stronger where the added value is of being part of Ageas. Well, first of all, we have sustainability. We keep on putting it at the heart of everything we do. We continue, yeah? That would have been, I think, definitely an Elevate three years ago. I think we have taken the elevator, and now we can say this is a continuum. And also group capital management and capital productivity, where we will strengthen, no surprise, technology, data, and AI. And we have three roles at group level, and that is organized by Karolien in the business development. I start with the bottom one. We do the longest already, sharing of expertise with OpCo in the lead. Belgium is very strong in bancassurance, so Belgium makes sure that the bancassurance expertise goes around the world. We are not gonna setting that up at group level. UK is very strong now in agile pricing, in customer journey management, CX transformation. They take that role for the group. Portugal is very strong in healthcare with Médis. They take that role for the group. Yeah. That's how we operate, OpCo in the lead, but with platforms, that information flows around the world. First one is also evident. We expect local outperformance for everybody in their respective market, huh? The OpCo is also in the lead of their decision-making. Yeah? We at group, we are not gonna say what they have to do first and second. They should know themselves. They are closest to the market. They know what needs to happen to deliver. What we tell them is what they have to deliver. That's what we tell them, because otherwise we cannot add it all up to the target story that you will hear in a minute. But we also have areas now where we say the role of the group can be bigger, yeah? Because there is efficiency to be won, huh? There is gains to be made. We do that now already three years in technology, for instance, the cloud. Yeah, the replatforming and the cloud, we have one cloud solution for the group. The security operations center and cyber, we said, "Let's not invent all this everywhere. We create one for the group." And I see more and more for data and AI. Yeah. If I take the example of the UK, I take speech of a phone call, I convert it into text and a summary for my claims database. The only difference between the UK and Belgium is language, but that, the AI tool can learn quite rapidly, and interfacing. Interfacing to your call center technology and interfacing to your claim system. The module itself, yeah, can be deployed rapidly. Look also at Digital Coach, another of those examples. You have it in one country. So more and more we are building targeted group assets that we say, "If we have them at group, we can deploy them rapidly." But we are not gonna go to a big centralized IT engine servicing all the world. It will be very targeted, very business-focused. So where were we on the readiness, the tech readiness? Because I hear many groups saying a lot of promises, but it is all about your readiness. And let's be honest, we all learned that the readiness of the data has taken more time than we expected, huh, when these things became available. But first of all, three of our core entities have already completed a replatforming, so that the infrastructure and the data are organized to deploy these new technologies. Eight of our entities have already achieved the ISO 27 K certification, so that confidently, I would say we have the protection, yeah, around the prairie. We have the fence around the prairie in which they can operate, yeah, and develop their op solutions. In the applied tech, yeah, we have, as you said already, quite a lot of project live and coming live, and there is a commitment that the margin improvement I show you for one third would come about this applied tech. Interesting is what we monitor very closely is the IT run cost. A recent study of all players by an IT firm has shown that we outperform on IT run costs. What we do is we do not leave legacy behind, yeah? If we do a merger or we integrate portfolios, we really make sure that we fully get rid of the solutions that we decided to abandon, yeah. So in that sense, our environment remains clean, and it seems that on the areas that did the first one, the re-platforming, our IT run cost is approximately 30% lower compared to peers. And that's 30% that we can move from run to build, yeah? And that's, I think, important. And lastly, procurement. Also, in procurement, we play more and more of a role as a group. We do it already a few years, but there is still room for further elevation. I'm coming to a close. These are the non-financial commitments we take for Elevate27. We keep with our top quartile ambition for all stakeholders. Competitive NPS for the customers, employee NPS for the employees, which by the way, from the end of 2023, we have achieved. So our worldwide employee NPS study has confirmed that on international standards, we have top quartile employee satisfaction. For gender diversity, we have said that 40% of our senior and middle management will be of the different sex, so in this case, for us, still female, and senior and middle management, we define the top 800. Ambition by 2030 is to bring that to top 300, so but now we say top 800 by 2027. ESG ratings, we spoke about. Top quartile is the ambition to achieve by Impact24 and to stay thereafter, and the 25% premiums, what we would call products with an active incentive, should further grow to 35%. And then with and that one you definitely know already since this morning, we have come with new type of financial KPIs under Impact24, because with the accounting change in IFRS 17, we wanted something that was consistent in this changing accounting world. So that's why we have moved to free cash flow, holding free cash flow, dividend commitment, earnings per share. You know all this. These are the new numbers. I'm not gonna zoom in because that is part of Wim's story in a minute. And then we have inorganic M&A, I'm sure you might have questions there as well. Well, actually, not so much change. We have shifted a little bit from the beginning of Impact24 halfway because we said from investing in growth, we see that the story in rising interest rates is more about cash generation and cash distribution. So we have aligned ourselves with that, reflection by investors. So we will look, if we do M&A, at consolidated, controlled, cash-generative entities. Of course, where we leverage our good strengths, meaning we can also bring potentially synergies, to the table. Our partnership DNA, I think, is a very strong element, here, and we have always open to look how can we move into market-leading positions everywhere we operate. So if I look at the regions, for Belgium and Europe, that could be add-ons on the business models that we have in different, countries that could lead eventually to in-market consolidation. We do not exclude a new market, but remember that in Impact24, we said we are looking for a new market, but we don't need it to deliver on Impact24. I'm gonna say the same. We will keep on looking on adding another business, but it's not that we need it, yeah? So we will remain financially disciplined if we look at these opportunities. For Asia, same story. Probably not gonna add a new market. That's not our priority, but in the same context of consolidation, if we can optimize our position with our partners in a specific market, we are open to look at that. Optimization could be consolidation with a partner, could be more distribution diversification, I spoke about a minute ago, or it could also be product marketing or market optimization, adding, widening the product range and the presence in the market on the product side. This is just what Elevate 27 is all about. Before I give it to Wim, let's maybe look at a very quick summary on what Elevate 27 is all about. Do you know what makes the difference between ordinary and extraordinary? It's that little extra.... Elevate27 is where the ordinary steps up and the extraordinary comes to life. Our three-year strategy, Elevate27, is designed to Elevate our group's performance by building on a strong track record and on the strengths of our group and expert partners. In this fast-changing world, our plan reflects what matters to our stakeholders today and in the future. We will continue to excel at what we do best and accelerate where we see new opportunities emerge that play to our strengths. The plan has three drivers and relies on two of our most critical assets. Hold that thought. Driver one: Drive profitable growth. We will continue to leverage on our geographic presence in Europe and Asia, offering a diverse range of life, Non-Life, and reinsurance solutions to retail and corporate customers. And we will further accelerate our efforts to grow on two fronts, providing the optimal solutions for an aging society and focusing on the specific needs of our SME clients. Driver two: Lead in technical insurance and operational excellence. We will continue to invest in our own systems and processes and those of our partners, and increase operational efficiency and excellence in pricing, underwriting, and claims management. And we will accelerate the deployment of digital technological solutions across our value chain, pushing AI capabilities to work to help us better serve our customers. Driver three: Future-proof distribution capabilities and enrich the customer experience. We will continue to invest in traditional distribution channels and enhance our digital capabilities hand in hand. We are building a robust customer experience culture, and we will accelerate the development of digital platforms through future-ready partnerships. Plans don't come to life on their own. It's our engaged and skilled people and strong tech, data, and AI capabilities that will turn our ambition into reality, and let's not forget, the beating heart of sustainability and our long-term focus continue to guide us in every step we take. We are ready for takeoff. Join us on this exciting next step in our journey. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I also would like to thank you for joining us today on our Elevate 27 Investor Day. Hans has already provide you with a look back on our Impact 24 performance. With only a few months remaining, we are very confident we will deliver on our financial and operational targets. The least we can say is that Impact 24 has proven to be a quite unpredictable journey. If you look at the interest rate environment, we started with a low, even negative interest rate environment in Europe, and we moved to a significantly higher and inverted yield curve. In China, we moved to a lower interest rate environment. In Europe, we have... We were also confronted with a much higher inflation, and our Non-Life operations had to translate that in tariffs going forward to protect our profitability to deliver in line with the Impact24 targets. Impact24 was a period of many new challenges, but it also allowed us to grab many new opportunities, and thanks to our diversified and resilient business model, to which Hans already referred, and the strength and proactiveness of our group, we are delivering on the different Impact24 ambitions we have put forward. Elevate27 is a plan of sustainable, profitable growth going forward, in which we will accelerate progress in key areas of strength, and on the graph, you can see that we have delivered already over a long period, over the last nine years, a steady progress in our shareholder remuneration. Under Elevate27, we also will promise an attractive shareholder remuneration going forward. Hans already explained Elevate27, and he showed one graph with the different financial targets, the three financial targets until 2027. I will take some time in my presentation to guide you through the underlying numbers, the numbers behind these targets. With this reasonability assessment, we aim to give you comfort on our ability to deliver on these targets put forward. Now, as under Impact24, the one thing we'll know is that market will change. So we will adjust wherever needed to deliver on these three financial targets, and the numbers that are providing is a bit of guidance based on the assumption of today, how we look to fulfilling these targets. Now, at the start of Elevate27, we decided that it would be good to simplify and create focus on a limited number of financial targets, and you can see them here on the slide. So we commit to an average annual EPS growth over the period 2024 - 2027, so year 2025, 2026, 2027, in the range of 6%-8%. We commit to a holding free cash flow contribution based on a cash view of an amount of more than EUR 2.2 billion, which is a growth on a comparable basis with Impact24 of 25%-30%. And we commit to a shareholder remuneration of more than EUR 1.9 billion over the same period, which is approximately a growth of 20% on a comparable base compared to Impact24. We also reconfirm a progressive dividend, and we reconfirm that we will continue an interim dividend of EUR 1.5 per share going forward. We have decided to focus on these three financial targets. We consider them to be in line with what shareholders are using to evaluate the performance of a company. The first one shows our ability to grow and to translate that growth into profit. The second one shows the ability to convert that profit into cash, and the third one indicates what part of that cash we will distribute to shareholders. Holding free cash flow is defined as the difference between the dividend upstream that we will get from our operating companies and the holding costs. Shareholder remuneration, more than EUR 1.9 billion, is the dividends that we will pay over the next three years to our shareholders. It's important to highlight, and it's mentioned there, that this is under a cash view, where under Impact24, we had what we called an accounting view. What's the difference between both? In an accounting view, we take the dividends that we receive in the year that the net result are accounted. Whereas under a cash view, we account the dividends that we received and pay in the year that we're reporting, 2025, 2026, 2027. On a comparable base, this is a difference of EUR 100 million -EUR 120 million, where under the accounting view, the numbers are higher than now on a comparable base, which is a cash view. So allow me now to go to the EPS growth and explain the underlying reasoning behind our EPS growth ambition. But before, let's have a look at the long-term evolution of our EPS over the last six years. So you see that over the last six years, we have delivered a very nice growth in our EPS of between 6%-8%. And before we were under IFRS 17, you remember that we had much more volatile results, and now under IFRS 17, we're able to realize more stable, growing Net Operating Result s. The numbers you see here, pre-IFRS 17, is the so-called underlying result. And you remember that at that moment, we had a net result, which we corrected, adjusted for the RPN(i) movement, and we also adjusted for the volatility on the asset side in China and for the revaluation of our non-participating business through the P&L. We've always disclosed that underlying result separately, and this is the numbers that we are using in this graph. Going forward, under Elevate 27, we commit to continue to deliver a growth of 6%-8% per year. So let me... Allow me now to go a bit in the underlying assumptions behind that 6%-8% EPS commitment. And in a simplified format, EPS growth can be driven by three elements. You have, of course, the business growth that's contributed, business growth at unchanged margins. You have the improvement of the margin. Think here about a life margins. Think about a combined ratio improvement. Think about the investment result improvement in Non-Life. And you have, of course, the contribution of the capital redeployment. Now, that last element of capital redeployment refers, on the one hand, to share buybacks, and on the other hand, on the decision to reallocate, redeploy capital from lower-yielding activities to higher-yielding activities. A good example has been our divestment in France, our life business in France, where we reallocated the capital to funding the profitable growth of our reinsurance business. On the share buybacks, the recently announced share buybacks, by the way, we just also published a press release in which you can follow the share buyback as it's being implemented in the market. That recently announced share buyback with a half-year result, the part that we will be executing in 2025 will, of course, also contribute to this capital redeployment you see there. And to give you an idea, if we would do half in twenty twenty-five, that would translate in half of a percentage point. Like Hans mentioned, Elevate27 is three, is based on three strategic drivers: driving profitable growth, leading in technical, insurance, and operational excellence, and future-proofing our distribution and enriching the customer experience. Let's now look in more detail at that business growth component. If we look at Impact24, most of the growth of the EPS, primarily the growth of the EPS, was coming from business growth. Yeah, so we have realized, we will be realizing the upper range of that 4%-6% that you would see here. That can be explained by a continued growth in our life liabilities of approximately 3%, and an exceptional growth in Non-Life of +11%-12% over that period. When we mentioned the half-year results, we said that of course, part of that growth in Non-Life is coming from the rate effect for inflation, half, and half is coming from customer acquisition and portfolio growth. Looking forward toward under Elevate27, we continue to see a sizable contribution from profitable growth, but at the same time, in line with the strategy that we have communicated, an increased focus on increasing our margins going forward. That's in line with the second driver of our strategy to lead in technical insurance expertise and operational excellence. If we look at that business growth, and that you see here on the graph, we foresee a contribution of 4%-6% coming from business growth. In our strategy, our strategic drivers, you have driving the profitable growth. You have, of course, the focus on distribution excellence and enriching the customer experience that should contribute positively to our volumes growth going forward. We have, of course, the continued profitable growth in our reinsurance business in line with the business plan that was announced in 2022, contributing to the business growth. We have our operating entities striving to grow in line, even outperform the market growth of their separate markets, and finally, Hans mentioned SME and solutions for an aging population as two accelerators on which we can create additional growth. In SME, we have the ambition to outgrow the SME market, and in life, aging solutions, Hans has mentioned that in life and pension liabilities, we foresee with the initiatives that are planned to have an additional EUR 2 billion, at least EUR 2 billion, life and pension liabilities in 2027, compared to the normal road without these initiatives. In summary, 4%-6% business growth, where you can expect Non-Life, based on our today's assumptions, to be more in the upper end of that range and life to be more in the lower end of that range. We also confirm that we foresee that even in the economic situation in Asia today, that the Asia segment will continue to outgrow the consolidated entities. In the economic situation of today, we foresee that Asia will continue to grow at twice the level business growth as we see in the consolidated entities. Let's now move to the margin expansion part. As Ageas, we have a strong record in everything which is technical insurance, operational, and distribution excellence. And we use that to better serve the clients, but also support the margins that we are realizing. First, look at life margin and what we expect going forward. There's many initiatives that are planned to contribute positively to the margin and that contribute positively to the bottom line, but most of that improvement, we foresee to utilize to make our product offering more attractive in the market, and so indirectly support the business growth. If we look at the Asian markets, we also see a lot of improvement initiatives, but they, we foresee to be offset by the lower interest rate environment that we have in China today. So combined, our outlook for the life margin is more a stable outlook. There's a lot of questions on life margins and what we'll be showing. We will continue disclosing life margins, but you have seen with the move to IFRS 17, with the move to group-wide life margins, that especially for operating entities and segments, which are more dependent on contribution of protection results and which have a fast-growing life liabilities, that these life margins are more volatile and less telling. But if you look at the Belgium market, there, the life guaranteed margin stays very relevant. So we guide also to have around ninety basis points on average as a life guaranteed margin in the Belgium market. Let's now look at the Non-Life margin. Yeah? We said that in total here, we foresee a margin expansion of 2% - 3%. Life margin is more stable. That means that this contribution will come from the Non-Life segment, based on the assumptions that we have today looking forward. Hans already shown that we foresee a positive contribution to our insurance result of EUR 75 million -EUR 100 million. EUR 75 million - EUR 100 million is comparing 2027 expected results with 2024 expected results. This is an improvement in the combined ratio of approximately 1%- 1.25%. So if you translate that, that will mean that we assume we guide toward a discounted combined ratio of approximately 92% in 2027 on a discounted basis and assuming today's interest rate environment. Hans already has shown how we're gonna do this. What will drive this improvement in the margin expansion? One third will come from the positive contribution from data and AI initiatives that will mostly be contributing to the improvement of our expense ratios. One third will be coming from the improvement in technical and price positioning and claims management, and this is especially in product groups where we're not reaching the minimal profitability targets that we have in mind. One of the example is Household UK, where we're still re-rating in the market to support the profitability going forward. One third will be coming from these initiatives to simplify and digitize further our business, which will contribute positively to the margin evolution. In summary, we commit to an EPS growth of 6%-8%, and based on the assumptions of today, we foresee that we will be able to deliver on that commitment with a contribution of 4%-6% from business growth, 2%-3% from margin expansion, and 0%-1% from capital redeployment. Again, this is an assumption based on what we know today, but we have also shown in the past that if market change environment are different, that we will take the necessary measures to adapt and live up to the commitment that we have put forward. It's also interesting to look at from a different perspective and to take a regional view on that outlook that we have from the growth, the EPS growth, that we've put forward, and if you look at it from a regional perspective, and we look at Asia on the one hand, and we look at the rest of the activities, you will have different contributors to the growth of the Net Operating Result, but the end picture looks quite similar. For both, we expect a growth of 6%-8% going forward over the Elevate27 period. For Asia, the growth will come primarily from business growth, and this can be explained by, on the one hand, the portfolio effect, past sales that still have to run through the life liabilities growth, and also there remains a big social security gap in the Asian market, which means that the insurance market we continue to see outgrowing the economic growth of these markets. As mentioned, on the margin side, we see improvements. We see improvements by moving more to profitable product mix, we see improvement by improving pricing agility, and we see improvements by focusing on expense management. But these improvements will help to offset the Impact of the low interest rate environment in China. If you look at our consolidated entities, we also expect a growth in the Net Operating Result of 6%-8%, and this to an equal contribution from business volume growth and margin expansion. I already explained the business volume growth, which is the continued growth in our reinsurance business, which is the growth in our direct insurance, the outgrowth in the local market, and the acceleration, the add-on growth in SME and in aging solutions. The margin side, primarily in Non-Life and coming from data and AI, coming from technical pricing, claims management, and coming from simplification and digitization. Now, let's have a look at the holding free cash flow and the shareholder remuneration, and let's take as a starting point, 2024. Over 2024, on the left-hand side, you see that we have realized a nice increase of 12% in the recurring dividend upstream from fully, sorry, from our consolidated entities. And remember, we didn't ask for a dividend of UK to support the high growth that they were realizing in the UK. That translates over 2024 as a starting point in a net dividend upstream of slightly more than EUR 800 million. We're expecting holding costs of approximately EUR 175 million, so that translates in a holding free cash flow of EUR 625 million. Now, in that dividend upstream, it's good to know that Belgium, Europe, and reinsurance are contributing approximately close to 85% of the total dividend upstream. With the dividend payout ratio from Belgium and reinsurance being at 100% and Europe being at 55%, in line with the fact that we didn't ask for a dividend of the UK. Asia has a payout ratio of 23% and is contributing approximately 15% to the total. We foresee the future growth rate in the holding free cash flow, thanks to a positive growth difference between the growth of the dividend upstream and the growth of the holding costs. The growth of the Net Operating Result, 6%-8%. That growth in our consolidated entities we foresee to derive still an important part in amount, in nominal terms, of the growth of the dividend upstream going forward. And again, remember, with UK not contributing dividends in 2024, that means that there's also a step-up possibility contributing to the growth in that dividend upstream. We remain also confident that also the Asian entities will continue their dividend payments at a growing trend over the longer term. This is supported by a Net Operating Result growth of 6%-8%. This is supported by the fact that we see alignment with the partners, and the partners also focus on optimizing the dividend payouts. But even if there would be volatility in the results going forward, as this is only 15% of the total, we will be able to manage some volatility over the future years. That brings me to the targets. Yeah, we have a target of the holding free cash flow of more than EUR 2.2 billion, which an increase of 25%-30% compared to the Impact24 period on a comparable cash view. So adjusted for the movement to the cash view and adjusted with that EUR 100 million -EUR 120 million. million. Explained by dividend upstream growth of 6%-8% and a holding cost growth below 4%, creating a positive difference between the two growth rates. For the total shareholders' remuneration, we target to be above EUR 1.9 billion at a growth of almost 20%. Now, this means that the shareholders' remuneration is 85% of the holding free cash flow, and that difference we plan to use to support profitable growth, to fund profitable growth, or to fund M&A opportunities. Of course, if this would not be available, then we can use that difference also for additional shareholders' remuneration. Some concluding remarks on our balance sheet and financial flexibility. We have a strong balance sheet. We have ample financial flexibility. I'm not saying anything new. This is also what we disclose in the half-year results. We reconfirm that under Elevate 27, we do not change our risk appetite, and we also keep a neutral solvency level of one seventy-five, based on our Pillar Two ratio unchanged. We only change the name to neutral. We don't put it on the headlines, because as we said in the past, this is a neutral level. This is not a minimum level, so we change the terminology accordingly. For what do we use that? We use that for performance monitoring internally, to calculate the operational free capital generation, and we confirm the same picture that we've shown in Impact24 for what we would call capital management thresholds. A final slide on capital productivity, capital management. Under Impact24, we have given more importance to that topic, and that will also continue under Elevate27. Under Impact24, that started with monitoring closely the operational capital generation up to operational free capital generation at OpCo and segment level. So we're now disclosing them also on a group-wide basis to you and per segment. But we're also using this internally, both for the consolidated entities and the NCPs. So these numbers are an integral part of the conversation that we have with the partners and the NCPs. Another example is the improved capital fungibility, which, with reinsurance cap for capital management, is the most clear, visible example how we have increased that capital fungibility going forward. We also have used, though, under Impact24, to improve our internal cash management. So we have strengthened the central liquid resources. Think about the repayment of the internal debt of AG, the alignment of interim dividends received, and interim dividends paid. And we also focus on capital remuneration in how we look at the performance of different entities, and as such, we safeguard the long-term value creation. So we look at the value added, but we also look at the return on capital, with return on capital being defined as the difference between OCG and the capital consumed. And we require our operating companies, both consolidated and NCP, to generate a return in excess of the local cost of capital. The excess return that we ask for is, of course, dependent on local market situations, our outlook on future value creation that we can do, and to what extent the entity is adding to group diversification benefits. And this is a simplified format to show you how we are looking at that, and we clustered it. And you will see that only 15%, the 5% and the 10%, is generating Net Operating Result, while at the same time having a return on capital, which is below the local cost of capital. The biggest one, the 10% on the right, is high-growth company. And it's quite logical that if you're in a high-growth company, that you're not immediately living up to a return on capital targets. But the moment that growth starts tapering off, that you can get you get a better balance between return and between volume growth. You also see that 5% is in what we would call a transformation journey, transformation trajectory, in which we have and/or to improve the growth and the return on capital. And they should also contribute towards the future in improving our return position. But what is most interesting to see is that 85% of our Net Operating Result is generated by companies which have a high return on capital... significantly above the local cost of capital threshold, which makes us very confident on the long-term value creation going forward. So I have now reached the end of my presentation. We will take a three minutes technical break. There will be a clock on the screen, and they will do things on stage, and then we will be back on the stage to answer any questions you might have. All right. Welcome back. How do we organize this, Filip? You pass the mic? Okay. Michael. Thank you so much, and it was a lovely presentation. I like the fact that you're smiling. And my first question, 'cause Karolien is not on the stage: how much more do you think they could have done than the figures they've given us? It sounds like that'd be my first question, but I can make it more precise, which is, the numbers you had on that lovely slide with the EPS actually adds up to 6%-10%, not 6%-8%. So I just wondered, if you can explain a little bit of that. And my last question is, you spoke, Hans, a lot about Turkey, and I just wondered, is Turkey that little 5% lump, which is going to get better? What numbers can I put in my model for Turkey? Thank you. You can nicely spotted on the different components. It has been deliberate, so we added up to the lower boundary, where we had six. And we kept some flexibility on the upper boundary to see how they would combine, because as you know, there's always a bit of link between how you do your price positioning in the market and the business growth that you can do. So on that side, we wanted to keep some flexibility on adding the upper boundaries of the equation. On Turkey, so that Karolien can think about her answer. On Turkey, well, we do not comment where the different countries are positioned. I can tell you that in that ball, there are very specific market attention points, huh? So that means that we are still confident that we can move them into the right direction. Of course, we will monitor that very closely. Uh- On Turkey itself, independent of that graph, I can tell you the situation very much the same. The Non-Life company, of course, with the effect of the inflation and the pricing mechanisms in the Turkish market, that stays difficult but improving. As I said, during my presentation, the life side, which AgeSA is actually doing very well, huh? It is growing quite materially. Remember that it's also quite common in Turkey to write U.S. dollar life liabilities covered also by U.S. dollar assets. We see the company still benefiting from that. I don't know, Karolien, how much more you want us to do? Yeah, so I think on the question on the simplification of the targets we put forward, I think what we reflected a bit internally, in the end, it's all about three things. It's about the earnings we generate out of the businesses that we have. It's about the cash that it generates at the level of the group, which is the second one that you see. And then, of course, it's about how much of that cash can we distribute in terms of shareholder remuneration. And of course, those three things are underpinned by the margins we make in Life, by the combined ratio, so that we put forward in Non-Life, which you heard also Wim talking about, it's something that as good insurers we will continue to guide you on. But in the end, it's those three things that will drive the value of the group. So it was a deliberate choice to also simplify around those three components. Yeah. Can we raise the volume a bit? Because- Yeah. -here we cannot really hear it. Hi. I think you hear me now. Yep. Farooq Hanif from J.P. Morgan. Thanks for the presentation, by the way. I think it's very, very clear. Just going to the point you made about, you know, getting 2% higher growth from SME, you know, in your kind of forecast. Why is that? Why do you naturally think, especially in Non-Life, you get that higher growth, if you could just back that statement up. Secondly, let's say you gave. Obviously, you're not giving a combined ratio target, and I think that's very sensible. But you indicated on the current year's of 92%, those go down materially. I mean, are you just transferring from insurance service result into net financial results, or do you feel from a profitability point of view, it's really not gonna make a difference by 2027? And then my last question is on the Taiping Pension opportunity. You mentioned that, you know, margin in Asia is gonna be flatter, and you're looking for a top-line growth. So can you talk about Taiping Pension? You know, what numbers can you give us on the growth potential, you know, the market and also the margin on that? Thank you. Maybe I'll take the first one on SME outperforming growth. Well, first of all, I think the SME market as a whole will continue its growth pattern. Potentially, I think even more and a bit longer than the retail market, where you see that combined ratios are better. So today, in most of the markets, the combined ratio of the retail segment is better than the SME segment. So I think there is still room to further improve in that area. Secondly, like in Belgium, we have really been upgrading our capabilities over the last few years, coming from a lower position into what is now approaching a market-leading position, and I have no reason why we would not be able to continue that momentum. If I see the intimacy with the broker that we have, the presence in distribution, and also, let's not forget, the bank. The bank in Belgium has clearly taken a commitment to also develop the Non-Life segment for the SMEs and medium-sized enterprises. And I'm sure they have all the right to take a fair stake of that market, coming from almost nowhere. And so that's why we see that outperformance. I think combined ratio. Yeah, on the combined ratio, you remember that we disclosed the sensitivity of the combined ratio for interest rate movements. So, as a reminder, if the interest rates move up fifty basis points or down fifty basis points, we see a movement on the combined ratio of 44 basis points, just to put that in perspective. Now, it is important to remember that we are pricing from an actual perspective. That means that we also take into account the interest rate situation. Due to the way we are presenting it, with smaller interest rate movements, you will have a bit of volatility in that combined ratio. But if we would go to a completely different interest rate environment, at that moment, we will also reprice the products to take that into account. So, we said that we are one of the companies that look at the discounted combined ratios also to support the profitability going forward, because it's that discounted combined ratio that drives return on capital. So if you look at return on capital, you have to take that into account. Yeah. On Taiping? Yeah, please start. I can add on. Yeah, on Taiping Pension, when I was referring to the margins, I was mostly looking at what you would call the life margin. The Taiping Pension business, to a big degree, is of course a pension fund business, which is margin-driven, and it will be especially how the cost-income ratio will be evolving over time that will drive the profitability. So it's more a margin business for a big part. There's also short-term and long-term insurance contracts, but they are a much smaller level than what you see, for example, in Taiping Life. But I don't know, Hans, if you wanna add something on the pension market in China? Yeah. Well, you have the two components there, where you have the occupational pension. You have what we call typically the second pillar for the corporates. But you also have now, of course, the launch of the third pillar pension system in China. That means individuals organizing pension savings. And that's a new market to be developed. The first signs that we see in the numbers are quite promising. But honestly, it is very hard to guess where that will end because this is a new market to be developed. But I cannot even imagine what it would mean if I would say four hundred million Chinese who have become middle class over the last 20 years would start using this individual third pillar pension saving. In that sense, I would say compare it maybe a little bit when we went into Taiping Life 20 years ago. Well, it's like: Where is this gonna bring us? The only thing I see is two things: demographics, the way the economy is transforming, and also the regulatory initiatives to drive the development of that market makes it very promising. But please, don't ask me a number with 10% accuracy where that is gonna bring us. Of course, we have run our models. We have stress test models on the entry ticket that we pay to get into that business. For us, the main driver was it would be good for us to stay a complete player, yeah, in this business segment in China, meaning with the life insurance side in Taiping Life, and then the pension business, which is a little bit in both. So that was the reason with the partner, of course, we know, and we work very well with. Hello, David Barma from Bank of America. Three questions, please. So firstly, on the target to increase by EUR 75 million -EUR 100 million, the insurance results, could you give us an indication of how that is split between the UK and Portugal? Secondly, on free cash flow, can you talk a little bit about your assumption for growth in Asian remittances? Is that based on the earnings target that you put out on the 6%-8%, or are you assuming any change in payouts? And then lastly, on reinsurance, what's your expectation for kind of normalized earnings growth for the reinsurance unit? Thank you. I don't know, Wim, whether we almost don't hear anything here. There is a big echo, so sorry, we need to guess a little bit- Yeah ... what the exact question is. But I think the first two are for you, I think. I thought to understand that you want to have more granularity on the EUR 75 million -EUR 100 million, what would be from the different segments. I don't have it split per country, but of course, if you look at our half-year reporting, you will see already a better combined ratio in Belgium, so there, the improvement is far less, and you see much more improvement potential in Europe and, of course, in our Asian segment, so that's the biggest contributor to come to the improvement of the combined ratio. Just on that, but... Can you hear me? No. Hello? No. Is this better? No. Can you hear me? No. Yes. Try again. Hello? Hello. No. Yeah, can you hear me now? They're coming. That should work. Yeah. Just a second. They bring another one. Yeah. Is this better? Yeah. Okay, great. Just on that, what I meant was between Portugal and, and the UK. So maybe to ask this differently, would you say Portugal is already back to kind of a run rates of profitability? I think where the profitability pattern changed quite a bit from pre-COVID to today in Portugal. Is this back to normal? What we mentioned during the half-year results is that the combined ratio of Portugal and UK are slightly better than what we disclosed to 95%, so they're quite similar, and there you will see for both the improvement potential still going forward. Mm-hmm. On the healthcare side, I think we saw significant- Yeah ... improvement? Healthcare was the major pressure point in the Portuguese market, and there we have seen significant improvement, mainly due to premium rates increases. And then, David, you had a question on reinsurance- Yeah, on China. ... but I didn't capture that. Underlying growth. Simply, what's your growth expectation is for earnings and reinsurance? Okay. We do not have that specifically. No. I don't know, Wim. But you have, of course, if you look at the reinsurance result, there's a big part that is coming from reinsurance for capital management. For that, you can look at the growth rate, of course, of the underlying direct business. That will evolve in line with that one. And then the other part that will contribute to the growth is the growth of the external reinsurance, where we said that we will follow the business plan as we put forward in 2022. There's approximately already EUR 120 million capital used, and we will go to EUR 250 million capital. I think there was a question on the free cash flow from China going forward? ... What we assumed in this outlook, if I may say it, based on the assumptions we have today, is a kind of organic capital growth rate going forward. So that's the underlying assumptions. You have a view on what they do today. You probably heard that our partner, CTIH, which is the mother company of Taiping Life, has also announced for this year, stable and then in the longer term, growing dividends. So that's the underlying assumption that we have taken in this outlook. We didn't assume a complete different positioning of solvency ratio. We didn't assume a complete different higher rate environment in that outlook. So that step-up was not included. But of course, we have included for some volatility that can happen over the period, for the different upstream from China. Thanks. Nasib Ahmed from UBS. First question, again, on the 6%-8%, when you keep on saying that it depends on current market conditions. So what, particularly on interest rates, what assumptions are you using? Are you using the forward rate over the next few years? I know rates are going to move quite a bit based on where the forward curve is. What rates are you using until 2027? Second question on Belgium. Hans, you were talking about no backward transactions, but would you be open to doing something on the disposal side, but also on the acquisition side in Belgium, if something came to your table? And on the acquisition side, are there any areas where the regulator wouldn't be happy, given you've got a very strong position already in Belgium? And then third question on the UK Non-Life. You gave an example, Hans, on how you can actually determine the cost of claim based on pictures, in Belgium. You probably can't do that in the UK Are you going to expand that and try and do that in the UK as well? And claims management in the UK, I don't think you have your own garages. What makes you think that you can win on the claims management side in the UK? I know your pricing is very agile, but on the claims management side, how are you competing with your competitors in the UK? Sorry, lots of questions. Yeah. But first, on Belgium. Yeah. Well, on Belgium, on the acquisition side, I assume you have a specific target in mind when you ask that question. Yeah, we have a very strong position, but that does not exclude any options. It is not only market share that matters in this respect, and then even then, you have market share by business segment. Actually, you don't need to look overall. What also plays here is, for instance, distribution. So if you have a target in mind that is more in the public sector compared to us, we are almost fully in the private sector. That does not automatically mean that that would create competition issues or a target that is distributing directly, which we are not doing at AG in Belgium. So there is more elements than market share at play here when we look at ours. But in that sense, yes, we are open to look at further strengthening our position in Belgium, specifically in areas where it is complementary to what we do. In the UK transformation, I didn't get your question fully. Remember, we have three elements. The first two. The very first one, I think, is fully live. That was, and I think for the UK market, the most important one, that was pricing and underwriting agility. How fast can we bring a new tariff to the market, in a market that is so price sensitive? Remember that November last year, we managed to do that in motor, and we have seen the benefits of this. In home, it is also live now. We have not seen yet the full effects also in the market, by the way. We have not seen the full effects of what I would call the right pricing discipline in home, but we are ready. So the tool for that underwriting is ready. Second block is everything what is related to the customer journeys. Modernizing, digitizing, data-driven customer journeys. There, we also want a new IT system. That was a plan that should bring us to the end of the year, and we are quite well on track. There might be a minor delay, there might be minor expense over it, but nothing material, nothing, I would say, that would make me worry. And I hear again, the first modules have already gone live, so I hope we can see some of the benefits coming in soon. When we designed the plan and the allocation of capital, we left claims management a little bit towards the end. So there we have not really started at a big scale on the claims management side. That's maybe for the future. I don't know, Karolien, whether you want to add something here. Yeah, I think what you heard in the data and AI story is actually the strength of the group that we have, is that we have strong OpCos that are working on different items. So you see, for instance, the UK now really deploying data and AI on claims automation. You see Belgium deploying data and AI on the claims repair management side, so the claims payout measurement. And I think what we really have as the ambition for Elevate 27, is that we bring this pockets of strengths that we have in the group to also to the other OpCos. So I think on your question, will we bring the claims repair data models we have in Belgium to the UK? Absolutely. Is it a matter of prioritization as Hans was putting forward? Yes, of course. We will start with things that generate value quickly, and so that's why the efficiency game, you see on claims automation is first on the list, but then that will follow, and there are things also in the claims repair network in UK, even without owning the shops, that you can steer upon. Things like repair-replace ratio is something we are already very actively working on in UK. ... There was the first question? Sorry. There was also the first question on what do we use. Now we start an exercise like that by looking at the forward curves. We get the input of our investment managers. We have a bit of a discussion, but I can say in this one, we are looking to what I would call smoothed forward rates. So we're not going to have a bit of volatility there. We're smoothing them, but forward rates are a good reference point. We have two more. Hi there. Steven Haywood, HSBC. Three questions from me. One is on your relationship with BNP. Can you tell us how your relationship is with BNP, both as a shareholder and also as a business partner in AG Insurance? Secondly, on this cash view, can you. I got a bit confused by your explanation earlier, but can you provide a bit more detail around there, or just go over, recap, what you mentioned earlier on the cash view side of things? And then thirdly, you just highlighted that the reinsurance business is going to have sort of EUR 250 million of capital allocation from around EUR 120 million currently. Does that mean you need to inject over EUR 100 million into this business, or keep it as earnings retention, so less dividends coming out over time? Thank you. Okay, I'll take the first one- Yeah ... you take the two other ones, Wim. BNP, indeed, is now, I think, business partner and was already shareholder at AG, so we know very well how we operate with BNP also in a boardroom. As business partner, I think it's very strong. AG would never have been what it is today with only the brokerage. It is the biggest bancassurance player in the country. We are very solid partners, continuously driving the bancassurance with the bank. So actually, we are very happy there. Let's also not forget that one of the reasons that BNP gave for stepping into the capital of the group was exactly also about protecting that model. So, for them, it is very important that the bancassurance BNP AG can continue to exist in Belgium. So in that sense, I think it is a very strong message for AG. If I go back in time, in 2018, as you know, they had the option after ten years after the crisis to end that bancassurance agreement, as well as to sell potentially their shares in AG. Now, we are six years later, and I would say the situation is exactly completely the reverse. So they have a very strong confirmation for that business model to continue, and that helps because here there are a lot of investments to be made in that relationship, on customer journeys, on digitization in the bank, on using AI. There is a strong appetite also on our side, together with the bank, to make now those investments, and that we remain, I think, a very good competitor to the other bancassurance players in Belgium. As a shareholder, well, there's not a lot I can say, yeah. They have 10% stake in AG as today, and they are a shareholder. That means they get exactly the same information as all investors at the same moment in time, with the same interaction, with the same type of Q&A. Of course, with the bigger investors, we sometimes have an individual session on this, but on the new strategy, to give an example, they see the same information as you are seeing here today. Shall I take the other two questions? Maybe the last one to start on the reinsurance business. As a starting point, you're right in the question. So if the business growth, we have to put at the disposal capital to support that growth. So EUR 250 million will be the capital that they can use. But we're also looking at the diversification benefits that they can have within the reinsurance business. There's also capital management, there's internal protection, and there's also the question: how will internal protection evolve? So there's a lot of other elements that will play, that will be defining the final capital that we have to put at the disposal. For the reinsurance, for capital management business, we use the group diversification. For that one, we don't need to put capital into the business, but we're using the reinsurance for capital management in the local diversification on the reinsurance side. I don't know if that is sufficiently clear. On the second question, that's a very good question because also internally, I got that asked repeatedly to explain, so I'm very bad in explaining that one. I will do my best. Hans, help me if I'm not clear yet. What we do in an accounting view is assume we get a dividend today of 100 from an operating company in 2024. In an accounting view, we say that that dividend that we receive in 2024 is related to net result generated over 2023. So in our reporting, we put that as part of the Holding Free Cash Flow 2023, because the results were generated in 2023, and that's what we call accounting view. What we're now going to do, cash view, is make it much simpler, and then I don't have to explain that often. So that's also one of the drivers, is we're going to keep that dividend in 2024, the moment we receive it. So for incoming dividend in 2024 that we receive, cash view, that's 2024. If we pay a dividend in 2024 to our shareholders, that's outgoing dividend, shareholder remuneration in 2024. So that's what we call the cash view. That's also much simpler. It will allow you also to make the link to the movement in our liquid resources and what's happening on that Holding Free Cash Flow side. Is that more clear? That's clear, yeah. Well, actually, 2024 will count twice, right? Because the dividend in 2025 will count for Impact 24 in accounting view, because it's over 2024, and it will count again in Elevate 27, because it's the cash received in 2025. That's actually the only difference. But Wim can explain that a lot more complex. Anthony, or- Thank you. It's Anthony from Goldman Sachs. The first question is a follow-up to your comment on China. You mentioned some volatility assumed in the cash remittance. Is it more about interest rate, or is it-- does it have some considerations on premium growth or inflows as well? And second is coming to share buybacks. Is that something going to be reviewed every year, or is it come kind of the end of the strategy plan? And the last question is what is the holding cash level that you are comfortable with? Thank you. Okay, Anthony, let me take the first one on China. And I lost it. Say it again? I lost it now. I was thinking about the share buyback. On China, where is the volatility? The volatility, the volatility of the cash flow. It's not that we have assumed volatility in the cash flow, that's not what Wim said. We follow what also our partner has communicated. We expect to continue with a stable dividend for the coming years and growing into the mid to long term. Please remember that in China, the dividends are not so much influenced by the retained profits. So we have more than enough retained profits accounting view. But solvency was an important element in the upstreaming of the dividend. Of course, you have seen where the solvency has gone, with all the measures taken at the end of last year, in the first half of this year, we are well with two hundred eighty something. Two hundred eighty something, if I remember well. There will be some dilution of that solvency, as we know it, from the interest rate Impact, further coming in. So, but at this moment, I think that the statement that CTIH made is the right one and also the assumption we take. The only thing that Wim says is, "We want to be able to deliver on our target, even if there would be a little bit of volatility in the dividend coming out of China." And that's actually what he says. So even if the situation would be slightly negative or deteriorate, we feel confident that we should still be able to deliver on our target. Share buyback, second question. Well, actually, no change to the position we have taken three years ago when we have launched Impact24. Share buyback remains a possibility, and share buybacks is a mix of three questions that we will ask ourselves. The first one is: What is the solvency? By all means, we will protect the solvency of the group when we decide on what we do with excess capital. Second is the cash position. What is the cash position that we have? And remember that in June, we said we have an exceptional inflow of cash; we go to EUR 1.3 billion from the upstreaming of the repayment of the debt coming from AG. And the third one is: What is the alternative, huh? In the alternative, I think we look at, is there any sizable M&A in the pipeline for which we would need that extra cash, or, and maybe in the future, or would we decide to maybe be able to get better returns if you would add it to the reinsurance segment? That could also be an option, huh? That are the three considerations we make, and then we balance that with a share buyback. So it remains possible. But please, and I can only repeat what we said in the June results, do not assume that the dividend of June this year is an annual recurring dividend, like, sorry, annual recurring dividend, yes, but not annually recurring share buyback, like we used to have, before Impact24. On cash, again, it's hard to say a comfortable cash position. We feel a general sentiment in the market is one year of the dividends, right? That you pay, that should be a comfortable cash position, but there is also something like revolving credit positions if you have some volatility in the cash. So it's hard to plug a hard number, but we want to keep a decent cash position. Thanks. If I just quickly follow up, it's a bit more for modeling. Does it mean your interim dividend, EUR 1.5, that remains unchanged? Yeah. Well, we have said that we have confirmed that we will do the annual interim dividend of EUR 1.5. For now, we keep it on EUR 1.5 for the very simple reason, I don't want to raise it half year and then say, "Ah, so the end of the year will be then times two." No, the growth potential from the dividend is decided on the full year results, so that will be announced. So the growth year on year, you will see in May, or well, when we announce it, what is it? End of February, yeah, with the annual results. So for the time being, the interim dividend is a flat number. Okay. Thanks, it's Farquhar Murray, Autonomous Research. Okay, sorry. Is that better? Nope. Is it working at all? Yeah, I hear you. Yeah, yeah. Cool. Sorry about that. ... Farquhar Murray, Autonomous Research. Just two questions, if I may. Firstly, just with regards to the SME strategy, could you just frame whether that's a kind of offensive move or a defense? Because you kind of slightly framed it against the context of trends on the retail side. So I just wondered, is it, as I say, is it offensive or defensive in terms of movement? And then you mentioned the bank in terms of somewhere where you're seeing changes to what make that happen. Can you just explain what those changes are within the bank channel to make that SME strategy come together? And then secondly, on the Asian earnings growth of 6%-8% that you're describing, can you decompose that? Because obviously, you've suggested, look, broadly, that's mainly volumes. But I just wondered if you could split out the margin versus the interest rate headwind components that are within that. Thanks. I only really heard the second part, what will drive BNP in the SME segment. Let me take that one first. The two others I didn't hear very well. On the SME segment, well, the most important investment we needed to make there is sales capacity, huh? SME is a very personalized service in insurance. BNP was not equipped, like, for instance, a broker who is servicing SMEs on the sales of or the proper risk solutions for an SME. That has been built, so BNP has been recruiting in their SME centers that they have throughout the country, in sales agents for SME. And that's actually the biggest investment, both money and time, that has been made. But that is more or less finalized. Because this project started two years ago, so now they are up and running. Sorry for the other two. Wim, I don't know whether you- SME strategy, defensive or offensive, because it was positioned compared to retail P&C. Now it's a positioning where we feel that from the strength of the retail P&C positions, we have also a good position to thrive in that market and also the past experience that we had. So that's the positioning that- Yeah. We had. I don't know if you want to- And there you have to take also, for me, the broker distribution, huh? Strategically, today, in the Belgian market, you might have seen there is some kind of a broker consolidation ongoing. Yeah. What I see some of them do, not all of them, but some of them, after the consolidation phase, they say, "Okay, we're gonna focus on the highest advisory products," meaning more the SME segment, yeah. And one of the potential consequences there, I think, for the long term is the strength of the, I would say, the smaller family brokers in Belgium today, is the proximity to their customer base, right? The owner of the broker knows his clientele almost personally, and I hope, I truly hope that does not degrade, huh? So if they consolidate, they become bigger, they... Their footprint becomes bigger, that they keep that proximity with their customer base, and so what we have here is, I think, AG has been doing two things. On the one hand, today, we are fully focused on brokers in this segment, next to bank. Why? Because we see the market share from brokers and the distribution still even gradually growing a little bit. There is no negative indication on numbers that they would lose market share, but we are long-term thinking, so that means we help them to digitize, yeah, and also to make sure that if ever somebody would come into the market, and we started that with Insurtech, who would come with a great direct value proposition and eating in our market, that we would be able to compete, and that is one. I think AG's readiness there, I think, is very good to be able to compete. But secondly, if our main distribution channel, brokers, would shift also more to SMEs, we have said, and that's already five, six years ago, "Okay, let's make sure that we can also be their number one supplier," because they like us on customer service, they like us on professionalism, they like us on technical excellence. So that means then making the step of also being the number one provider in SME is not so big, yeah. So that's more the long-term strategic thinking, how to secure our leadership position in the Belgian market, both in retail and SME. If retail would grow faster than SME, I don't mind that. We're not gonna stop the growth in retail, but I think the potential to grow faster is more on the SME side, in the broker segment. And then there was a question on the components of the Asia growth outlook Net Operating Result. I will try to approach it differently, and not first focus on the business growth, but look at the margin growth. So on life margins going forward, we see improvement to move to profitable product mix. We see pricing agility improvement, we see expense management improving, but we assume that that will offset the low interest rate in China. So there you see stable life margin going forward. We see an improvement in margins in Non-Life, but the contribution and the total will be more limited at an Asia segment level. So then you come to the conclusion that the growth we put forward of 6%-8% is predominantly from business growth. Jason Kalamboussis from ING. Following up just on Asia, could you give us if there is a difference between China and the rest? If you could give us an indication. The second thing is just on to remain on China. How would you look at the ... the dividends, I mean, when we look in 2021, I think it was EUR 146 million. Can you remind us, was that a one-off, or do you think that at some stage we will come back to that number or such numbers? And the other thing is on Belgium, on the M&A. Agreed that, you know, possibly Ethias is a very good, you know, could be a good fit. But, when we look at how the Belgian government is looking at financial institutions, for the moment, we haven't seen a Belfius IPO. If anything, we have seen more assets staying within the government sphere. So why would something like Ethias leave the government sphere and not stay within Belfius, so within state-owned assets, if you want? Thank you. Where China is different is a very open question, Jason. It's different in many aspects. But today, of course, one of the big differences is there we are managing this transition of the portfolio in a low interest rate environment, huh? And that has, so that will also have to do with repricing, I mean, guaranteed rates. That has to do with product mix, and there we still have potential and work to do. Today, you see a market where repricing of rates is mainly regulatory-driven, and everybody moves it a bit in the same way at the same time. Regulator is working on that one. You see some rumors that they should maybe introduce an automatic adjustment system on guaranteed rates, so that the industry would not wait for the regulator to step in before insurance companies would lower a guaranteed rate if interests come down. So the regulator is put that high on the agenda so that the industry as a whole makes a healthy transition from the, I would say, the old book to a lower interest rate environment, which might be there still for a while. To me, it sounds very, very familiar to what we saw in Europe at the end of the nineties. When the euro came, and we all knew the interest rates were coming down, and everybody reacted differently. AG, back then, have set a big amount of extra margin aside to make sure that the guaranteed rate on the book was lower and that we could go through that transition. AG didn't do back book transactions. Others had to do back book transactions. Some stopped with guaranteed, others didn't. So it's hard to say, but what I do see is there is a strong alignment between regulator and industry to make sure a healthy evolution of the business into that new environment. Second, for Belgium, well, it's hard to say. We have the Belgian government clearly as an anchor shareholder. They have been very vocal on why they made that investment in Ageas. Now they are forming a new government. We will see, and of course, when they form a new government, there is a lot of rumors and speculation in the market. I'm not distracted by that. I'm very happy with the shareholder base we have. We have with BNP, a great business partner, who is now also a shareholder in the group. We have with the Belgian government, a great partner anchoring our business in Belgium, and we have a very diverse international investor base. I'm quite happy with that, and I'm not getting distracted, like I never got nervous, when there were rumors that Fosun might be a potential seller of our stake. I mean, we have always been very happy with the shareholders that we had, and then you had a third question? On the 2021 dividend of China, the EUR 146 million, and what would be the reference level going forward? I would therefore refer to the statement that our partner, CTIH Taiping Group, already also made. For this year, they announced at the beginning of the year with the annual result, more stable dividend and growing in the longer term. Together, we're looking more for a growth rate, which would be sustainable at a certain moment going forward. Okay, I have one here in the front, and maybe then we start closing the Q&A session. Yep. Yes, Benoit Pétrarque from Kepler Cheuvreux. Just wanted to come back on the EUR 2 billion life and pension liability growth, which sounds a small figure on the EUR 86 billion. Also given the focus on the aging theme and pension, so is there room for more there? On the life margin in Belgium, so 90 basis points, if I remember well, you were running more on the 100 basis points in 2023. So it seems that you are facing a slight pressure in Belgium, although you said that on the 6%-8% growth, 50% comes from business growth, 50% from margin expansion. So yeah, just wondering if this... Yeah, how do you see this small margin pressure, or is that movement temporary or not? And then, yeah, to come back on the Belgium situation, on the consolidation, obviously, you have to fight with banks mainly in terms of potential M&A, and I was wondering how you see the Danish Compromise, because, yeah, the two potential buyers for Ethias will be using the Danish Compromise. So yeah, how you see that? Thank you. Maybe you take the first one. Yeah, I will take the first one. This, when we talk about these additional EUR 2 billion, this additional EUR 2 billion is an additional growth of 1%, and you should see this on top of the growth that comes from all the other initiatives running. So in this bucket of acceleration. So So we have a strategy of continuing to excel what we already do good, and we have a topic of acceleration. These initiatives will contribute an additional growth of 1% by having that additional focus on there. So you should relate that to that. So this is part of the total growth, the business growth that we see going forward. On the life margin, what we wanna position is, that we keep on giving that guidance of 85-95, around 90 basis points for the Belgian market, because we want to continue making the right trade-off between that volume growth and the margin we can contribute, because the business from a return on capital is a very attractive business. So we also wanna keep that flexibility going forward. You've probably read that also some competition is happening in the market, especially on the life investment side, and we want to also keep the volumes in that life investment segment. As was explained in May by Benoit, of course, you have a life group segment, which is much more attractive and where you can have different margin. But if you take that combined, that brings us to that around 90 basis points. Yeah, and on the Belgian M&A, just to close, I cannot comment there. Let's be honest, there is no file running today. There are rumors in the media, but there is no file running today, and everybody will do his homework, if ever a file would come to the market. So I'm not gonna speculate on this. Okay, thank you for your presence. Thank you for the people online for dialing in. For some of you will stay here for the dinner, so we have plenty of opportunity to have a chat around the new strategy or any other topic you wanna have a chat about with a nice glass of wine. For those who are leaving and cannot stay for the dinner, thank you for coming. We appreciate your physical presence as well as your interaction to the session. Thank you very much.