Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Half-Year Results 2022 Conference Call and Live Webcast. I am Sandra, the Chorus Call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Mr. Philipp Gmür, Group CEO. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you, madam. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our analyst conference call on the half-year results 2022. Within the next 30 minutes, we would like to give you a detailed information on our business development and the key financials of the reporting period. What do I mean with we? Our Group CFO, Annelis Lüscher, will go through the financial figures. I would like to make an introduction and an overview, and after Annelis's speech, I would like to give you an update on the implementation of our strategy 2025. After our presentation, Annelis Lüscher and I will be pleased to answer your questions as always. Let us start with slide number four. Helvetia can look back on a successful first half of 2022. I would like to point out three highlights of the past year in particular. Firstly, we are very satisfied with Helvetia's strong, profitable growth. The growth driver was the non-life business, where we were able to gain market share in all country markets. We are also very satisfied with the technical development. I would also like to mention at this point that Helvetia was able to avoid any significant influence of inflation on profitability in the first half of 2022. We are closely monitoring, of course, the development of inflation and are adapting our non-life prices accordingly. The second highlight is our outstanding capitalization. As of the end of June, the estimated Swiss Solvency Test ratio had risen further up to more than 280% at the high level. Thirdly, we made good progress in strategy implementation. I want to briefly highlight three aspects, and will provide you with more details at the end of the presentation. First, in Spain, we increased the share in Caser and sold a life insurance company. Through these two transactions, we increased the share of non-life business and improved the business mix in terms of capital intensity. Second, we are focusing on profitable international growth by seizing international opportunities. Three, we were able to make significant gains in the fee business. This makes us more independent of the interest rate environment. I'm coming back to those three points in a minute. Now I would like to hand over to our CFO, Annelis Lüscher Hämmerli, who will present the key financial figures. Annelis, go ahead. Many thanks, Philipp. Also from my side, a warm welcome to all of you. I will give you more detailed information on our financial performance in the first half of 2022. As always, we will use a short version of the presentation and the full slide deck with additional information is available for download on our website. Let's start with an overview on the key figures of Helvetia's performance in the first six months of 2022. The half year 2022 results demonstrate that Helvetia is well on track to achieve and partly even exceed its strategic financial targets as shown on slide six. Helvetia continued its successful growth path with clear focus on profitable business areas. In a challenging environment, Helvetia generated a strong IFRS result after tax of CHF 219 million, resulting in a return on equity of 8.4%. This is well within our target range. That success was based on a persistent, robust technical performance in all segments and business areas. In line with our strategic ambitions, fee business grew significantly. On a half year basis, fee and commission income increased by 22.3% in local currency to CHF 193 million. This means that we are well on track to achieve our annual target of generating fee income of more than CHF 350 million. The good level of our combined ratio is reflecting our sound technical performance in non-life. At 93.6, the combined ratio improved by 1 percentage point and lies within our target range of 92%-94%. Going to the life business, the new business margin amounted to 3.4% and thus exceeds our target range. This demonstrates our good positioning and profitable growth in life business. The business volume was at CHF 6.8 billion. On a currency-adjusted basis, this is an increase of 1.1%. Growth was driven by the non-life business, which showed a strong organic increase of 6.6% in local currency. In all our country markets, the growth rates of our non-life business were above market rates. We are thus strengthening market positions in our profitable core business across the board. Coming to the progress on cost efficiencies and ongoing outstanding capitalization. Our strong results in the first half of 2022 are based on a very solid foundation. We are also well on track with regard to our financial targets on cost efficiencies and capitalization. This you can see on slide seven. After successful start in terms of raising cost efficiencies last year, we made further progress in the first half of 2022. We are continuing to implement the identified measures to increase efficiency in our operations. For example, we have realized additional efficiencies in procurement and further optimized end-to-end processes. The exact figure of cost efficiencies achieved will be reported on a yearly basis with the annual results. Going to capitalization. Helvetia's capitalization remains on an excellent level. This is demonstrated by the financial strength rating of A+ assigned by Standard & Poor's. Furthermore, our regulatory solvency, measured by the Swiss Solvency Test, continues to stay on an outstanding level. We estimate our Swiss Solvency Test ratio to have further increased over the first half of 2022 and to be above 280% as of 30th June 2022. The profitable growth and successful technical results, as well as Helvetia's outstanding capitalization, support our sustainable dividend policy. Based on the solid and stable level of our net income dividend capacity, we are confident to deliver on our target to cumulatively distribute more than CHF 1.5 billion in dividends for the financial year from 2021 to 2025. Now let's dig deeper into the results. On slide eight, I will start with the net profit across the different business areas. Helvetia generated a strong IFRS result after tax of CHF 290 million in the first half of 2022. This despite a challenging market environment with macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainties. The good result was based on a robust technical result in all three segments of Switzerland, Europe, and specialty markets. In non-life business, the technical results increased considerably compared to the previous year, proving the portfolio's earnings power. The increase was based on the high quality and strong diversification of the book and supported by the growth in business volume. In the life business area, the margin after costs remained stable, close to the solid level of the prior year. In particular, the savings and cost results both increased. In both business areas, non-life and life, our core business proved to be profitable and resilient. The volatile financial market conditions in the first half year of 2022 were reflected in the investment results. For that reason, net income after tax was lower compared to the strong performance in the previous year. Let's now have a look at the individual segments. In Switzerland, Helvetia recorded a solid result of CHF 156 million. Technical results in both non-life and life increased compared to the prior year. In non-life, a substantial increase of the technical result was based on the one hand on a more stable claims environment and a corresponding lower claims burden from natural events compared to the previous year. On the other hand, the ongoing efficiency measures and scale effects due to profitable growth had a positive impact on the cost side. In the life business, the margin after cost increased against the prior year. This was mainly driven by a strong savings result, which benefited from both slightly higher yields and a further decrease of technical rates. The latter was driven by the maturing of older contracts with high guarantees and our focused sale of capital life business. Turning to Europe. IFRS earnings after tax of the Europe segment amounted to CHF 59 million. The result in Europe was underpinned by a solid technical development in both non-life and life business. Notably, Caser again contributed a strong CHF 32 million to the segment's net income. In Italy, special tax effect influenced the net result and led to higher tax expenses in the reporting period. In non-life, the portfolio remained very resilient in view of increasing inflation and the further normalization of claims frequencies after the pandemic. The profitable growth of the business was also reflected in scale effects on the cost side. In European life business, the margin after costs was lower compared to the prior year. In particular, the development was influenced by currency translation effects, among others. The IFRS result after tax of specialty markets amounted to CHF 25 million. The technical result remained on the solid level of the prior year. The well-diversified high-quality portfolio was able to absorb a few large losses while the cost side benefited from scale effects due to the focused growth of the business. The corporate segment considerably improved its results to -CHF 21 million. One of the main drivers was a strong technical result of the internal group reinsurance. It increased substantially after the group reinsurance had been impacted by elevated natural catastrophe claims due to large storms in prior years. In the prior year. Additionally, positive effects related to our own investment funds influenced the results, including non-recurrence of a one-off effect from the liquidation of a fund in 2021. Now let's go to the growth in business volume on the next slide. Helvetia continued its successful strategy of profitable growth in the first half of 2022. We achieved a total business volume of CHF 6.8 billion. This equates to a currency-adjusted increase of 1.1% over the previous year. The growth was driven by a remarkable organic increase in the non-life business of 6.6% in local currency. We were able to increase premiums across all lines of business and above market in all country markets. Helvetia was thus able to further expand its market share in this attractive business area. In Switzerland, broad-based growth across lines of business led to an increase in non-life business volume of 1.1%. The main driver was traditional non-life business, which was growing stronger than the market average with a growth rate of almost 4%. Thus, Helvetia further strengthened its market position in its high margin Swiss core business. In addition, our online insurer Smile also made a notable contribution with a growth rate of 7.6%. In the life business in Switzerland, Helvetia continued to focus on capital life products in line with its strategy. We recorded a very successful development of investment-linked products in individual life. The growth in this line of business was over 13%. Business volume in Swiss group life was influenced by an ongoing market-wide trend of a shift from full insurance to semi-autonomous solutions. As expected, this effect finally resulted in a lower business volume compared to the prior year in the life business in Switzerland overall. Helvetia is well-positioned in this environment with its semi-autonomous products and flat-rate risk solutions. The number of actively insured persons in Swiss group life increased in total compared to the end of 2021. In the Europe segment, Helvetia increased its currency-adjusted business volume in non-life across the board in all country markets and all lines of business overall. The non-life business grew by 6.6% in original currency. With growth rates between 5%-10%, the increase in non-life business volume was above market level in all countries, demonstrating Helvetia's strong position in its core insurance business. In life insurance, investment-linked business in Germany and Austria grew very successfully. Despite this, total life business volume in Europe was lower compared to the previous year. This was primarily due to non-recurrence of a few large single premium contracts in the previous year and cautious underwriting of traditional guarantee business. The business volume of the specialty market segment developed very positively. It grew by 13.2% in local currency. Growth in this segment was due to increasing new business driven by our focused growth strategy in all three market units. In particular, the international engineering business, property and marine were strong growth drivers. In active reinsurance, premium volume benefited from new property contracts, growth in new business lines such as life or credit and surety reinsurance and favorable price effects. Increasing prices positively influenced the growth in specialty markets overall. Rate hardening accounted for more than a quarter of the segment's growth. Now let's turn to the fee business on slide 10. Helvetia has not only profitably grown its core insurance business in the first half of 2022. This slide shows that we have also achieved a strong development of fee business in line with our strategic ambitions to grow this type of income stream. The group's fee and commission income rose by 22.3% in local currency to CHF 193 million. This was mainly driven by two factors. First, Caser has further expanded its health and care ecosystem in Spain. Fee and commission income from this ecosystem increased from CHF 72 million to CHF 83 million against the prior year period. Growth was driven by, on the one hand, further acquisitions and a rebound of demand after the pandemic. A second main driver was third-party assets management. The successful capital increase in our Swiss property fund provided the basis for additional fee income. With this, we are moving to the net combined ratio in non-life on slide 11. At 93.6%, the net combined ratio in the first half of 2022 was on an attractive level within our target range. The ratio improved by 1 percentage point compared to the prior year period. This proved the high quality and resilience of the portfolio in view of increasing inflationary pressure and the further normalization of claims frequencies after the pandemic. Despite this, the current year claims ratio improved by 80 basis points, driven by a better claims experience relating to mid-sized claims and supported by inflation-induced premium adjustments in some country markets. Helvetia is closely monitoring inflationary trends and continuously reviewing and adapting the pricing of its non-life policy. Also, claims from natural catastrophes reduced considerably in Switzerland. The Nat Cat ratio improved only slightly on a net basis because of an offsetting effect from natural events in specialty markets and Europe. On a gross basis, the Nat Cat claims were substantially lower compared to the prior year. The development of reserves for claims from prior year is primarily attributable to particular effects in Switzerland. For example, it includes reserves for our contribution to the Swiss natural perils pool in the reporting period. In sum, our claims ratio has increased only slightly and thus proven its resilience in a demanding market environment. The cost ratio improved considerably, driven by the administration cost ratio. This is attributable to the ongoing successful implementation of efficiency measures, which shows that we are well on track regarding our financial target on cost efficiency. In addition, scale effects based on the profitable above-market growth benefited the ratio. Now let's look at profitability in life with the new business margin. New business in the life business area developed very well in the first six months of 2022, demonstrating Helvetia's good positioning and successful focus on profitable capital-light life business in life insurance. Helvetia has increased the new business volume measured by the present value of new business premiums by 6.8%. The increase was mainly driven by the inclusion of Caser, which had not been reflected in the figure of the prior year period yet. The main contributor to the volume of new business were investment-linked products. In individual life, the share of these capitalized products on new business further increased both in Switzerland and in Europe. New business generated in the first half of 2022 was very profitable, with the value of new business increasing by more than 20%. Accordingly, the new business margin increased to 3.4% and thus exceeded our target range of 2%-3%. The increase was driven by a more favorable business mix and higher interest rates. I would like to finish my part of the presentation with a wrap-up on the financial highlights. On page 13, you see that in the first half of 2022, Helvetia successfully continued its growth path. Let me highlight three overarching developments which underline our company success and solidity. First, we have been able to grow our business profitably, driven by A, above market growth in non-life business in all country markets. B, significant growth in fee and commission income. C, a further shift to capital-like investment-linked business in individual life. Second point, the solid net income was based on a strong technical performance in all segments. This demonstrates the high quality and resilience of our insurance portfolio. Third point, Helvetia's capitalization remains on an outstanding level. This is particularly valuable in an environment of macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty, and highlights the stability and resilience of our business model. On that note, I will now hand over to Philipp Gmür again. Thank you, Annelis, for presenting the financial figures of the first half of this year. Ladies and gentlemen, we are in the second year of our strategy implementation. We are very satisfied so far, as Annelis has shown, and we are well on track to achieving our strategic goals. However, how does the future look like? On the next slide, I will give an overview of the most important milestones of the first half of the year and what is coming. On slide number 20, I would like to make the following highlights. We are pursuing the ambition to be the best partner for financial security and setting standards in customer convenience and accessibility. To achieve this ambition, we defined four strategic priorities. This slide shall provide you with an overview of the most important achievements for each strategic priority. Let me first turn to the customer convenience. We invest quite a lot in new solutions for a digital customer journey. Let me highlight two examples. The first one is Smile. We very successfully developed, as also shown by the strong growth. The freemium model, launched in Switzerland a year ago with the aim of also reaching non-customers, is well underway. In the meantime, we reached over 120,000 users with this freemium model in the first year, many of whom are non-customers. With many, we mean roughly half of them, which means that we got 60,000 new users who are not clients yet in our, so to say, ecosystem Smile. Of course, we wanna have a conversion of all those people into clients. As of today, we are very successfully underway with the conversion rate as well. Let me make a second point. In addition to Smile, we launched a modular insurance offer for young adults in Switzerland. This insurance meets the needs of this target group and allows a high degree of flexibility. Apart from the customer convenience, it is important to have a right offering. We successfully focused on pension products and sustainability. Let me give you the following example. We integrated our real estate funds into a tranche product. In addition, a new offer for flexible executive pension plans was established. In engineering, finally, we established an underwriting team with a focus on solutions for renewable energies and environmental technologies. Let me turn to the profitable growth. As you've seen, we have a strong development of our core business. We are growing across all traditional distribution channels in Switzerland. We are growing above market in non-life business and gaining market share in every country market. There are two transactions in Spain, which I would like to explain in a minute. We continue to see international growth opportunities. To this end, we realigned our business in Liechtenstein under the name Helvetia Global Solutions, which opens up the door for specialty lines to the global world, so to say. Via Liechtenstein, Helvetia can underwrite risks in the European economic area within the framework of the freedom of service, FOS. The focus is on international specialty and reinsurance business, as well as on embedded insurance. Let me turn to the new opportunities. We are, for instance, strengthening alternative distribution channels. One focus here is on developing our ecosystems. Talking about the ecosystems, in our ecosystem home in Switzerland, we launched the so-called ImmoWorld platform. The ImmoWorld Helvetia platform for home ownership and pensions. Talking about the health and care ecosystem in Spain, it makes an important contribution to the growth of the fee business, as Annelis explained before. This, together with the successful capital increase of the Swiss property fund, contributed to our very attractive growth rate in the fee business. Finally, a word to the internationalization of Smile. As announced earlier, we are planning to launch our first product in Austria by the end of this year. Finally, I would like to mention that we have also made progress in sustainability. This is also recognized by the independent rating agency MSCI. They raised Helvetia in the ESG rating from a triple B to a single A last July. On the next slide, I would like to focus on the two transactions in Spain, which we announced back in June of this year. It is first the increase of the stake in Caser by 10% to 80%, and it is second the sale of the life insurance company, Sa Nostra Vida. What strategic advantages do we achieve with these two transactions? Our business mix is shifting towards non-life business. On the one hand, through the sale of Sa Nostra Vida, on the other hand, because Caser has a strong non-life portfolio. This also reduces the capital requirements. As can be seen on the right side of the slide, we expect an SST improvement on the low double-digit percentage point range after the completion of the sale of Sa Nostra Vida. It is also adding a high double-digit million gain to our half-year result in the second half of this year. With the higher share in Caser, we are tapping into further growth potential in the Spanish non-life market. Talking about dividend streams, we are earning not only 70% of the dividend capacity of Caser in the future, but 80% in the meantime. Ladies and gentlemen, let me on the next slide shortly wrap up what Annelis and I say about our first half of this year. Helvetia achieved a strong result in the first half of the year, both in terms of profitable growth as well as capitalization. We see good progress in our strategic ambitions. Based on the successful first half of the year, the outlook remains ambitious. We intend to continue our growth strategy with a clear focus on profitability. In a challenging environment, we believe we are well-positioned to continue our current very attractive dividend policy. Our good positioning is also reflected in our three segments, Switzerland, Europe, and specialty markets. In addition, we are experiencing strong growth in the fee business. Helvetia is therefore making good progress towards achieving its financial targets and in creating added value for all stakeholders. This brings us to the end of the presentation. Annelis and I would now be pleased to answer your questions. Thank you for your attention. The first question comes from Peter Eliot from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead. Thank you very much. I had three questions, please. The first one was, I mean, you've reported a very strong SST ratio, and I mean, it sounds like pro forma of the Sa Nostra Vida deal, it's probably around 300% or even higher. I mean, just playing devil's advocate, I mean, does it need to be that high? And is there anything you can do to use capital more efficiently? That's the first question. The second one was on the very impressive reduction in the administration cost ratio. You reported about a 20% reduction from sort of 8.6% to 7.0%. You mentioned, Annelis, cost efficiency and scale. I was just wondering if you could sort of quantify the impact that those have had given the very strong improvement. I mentioned this to IR this morning, but if I look at your half year report, then the non-life administration costs seem to increase in line with earned premiums. I'd just really like to understand maybe what's happening there a little bit. The final question was the Nat Cat. You mentioned specialty business was exposed to some events. Could you just clarify what those were? Thank you very much. Thank you, Peter. Let me start with answering question number one and then turning to Annelis for the other two questions. Regarding our capital position and the SST. You know well that the SST is pretty volatile. i.e., we are happy to have a certain buffer in those times we see, you know, with quite some volatility. However, of course, our capital and the equity is of course under steady review. What is best to invest where. We are, you know, thinking about financing organic growth, inorganic growth or even, you know, giving back capital to the shareholder, whatsoever. There, there's a whole, let's say, toolbox about what we could do with this capital. For the time being, we think we are pretty happy to have a solid SST ratio in order to be prepared for, you know, any adverse scenarios. With that, I would hand over to Annelis for the other two questions. Yes. Thank you, Philipp, and thank you, Peter, for the questions. On the admin cost ratio, we have started a clear cost efficiency program, let's say, one and a half years ago. This starts to show effects. The whole topic of cost awareness is now deeply embedded in the organization, and especially also in Switzerland. The better admin cost ratio really results from these efficiency measures on the one hand, which also included the reduction in personnel costs, for example. Besides others, like more attractive conditions in procurement and automation of processes. The second one is, as you have seen, that we have very strong growth numbers above market in online in all our country markets. That means in each one of the country markets. Therefore, these scale effects are visible in the admin cost ratio as well as we have a very strong, let's say, brake on the admin costs. The third one on Nat Cat. There were no huge events, but we had some impact from storms in Europe. In northern Germany was one, and the other one was called Zeynep in Southern Europe, I think it was. Then there were some effects from floods in South Africa in April, I think it was. Okay. Thank you very much. Yeah, thank you. Could I just follow up very quickly on the first one, Philipp? I just wonder, I mean, because you mentioned returning capital was one of the tools you have in your toolbox. I mean, I'm guessing that's just not just a solvency consideration. Would you be able to touch on the other sort of constraints or the in that? Well, let's say an efficient allocation of excess capital we see as a main driver for value creation for our shareholders. Within this framework, we judge the different options we have to create value for our shareholders. That means through still a very attractive one is through organic growth, then also through inorganic growth and t hird, through giving back money to shareholders with share buybacks and the likes. Of course, what makes an insurance company so interesting financially, there are always a lot of boundary conditions to be aware of. The SST ratio has in its capital calculation, of course, also capital which cannot be reduced, but which comes from valuation differences between accounting and SST rules. What do I want to say? We are very comfortable with the high SST ratio, yes, on the one hand, because we are then resilient to all kinds of market movements. On the other hand, it's also a good situation because we have now a lot of flexibility to think about how to invest this risk capital or what to do with this risk capital. Thank you. I guess you show an economic dividend capacity of CHF 0.8 billion. Is that what we should be thinking about, or is there sort of additional flexibility on top of that? No, this net of economic dividend capacity is still a very sound measure of the dividend capacity or, let's say, the excess cash that Helvetia has. Okay. Thank you very much. The next question comes from Jimmy Fan from UBS. Please go ahead. Thank you for taking my questions. I have two, please. First on debt leverage. Your debt leverage excluding unrealized losses is at 34%, at half year. Could you give a bit more color in terms of your plans for debt reductions? What's your kind of upper limits for this leverage ratio? Secondly, for growth. You mentioned that you consider organic and inorganic growth opportunities, and you have done, you know, a 10% stake in Caser. I think the question is why not acquire the remaining of Caser, and what other growth opportunities that you are seeing in the market? Okay. Thanks, Jimmy. Let me answer question number two and then hand over for question number one to Annelis. First, the transaction in Spain. You know, it is very important to have an alignment of interests with our bancassurance partners in Caser. As you probably know, we acquired 70% of Caser stake, two years ago with having remaining 30% with the remaining three bank partners. The three remaining bank partners are benefiting from the cooperation with Caser, with regard to three different aspects. First, they're gaining commission. Second, they're, let's say, benefiting from good business they're bringing in, according to profit-sharing schemes, regarding the profitability of the portfolios. Third, they're of course benefiting from the dividends paid out. Now, in the meantime, two of the three banks we are cooperating with merged, which meant that 10% were free, so to say, and we acquired those 10%. We are, however, very happy that we still have an alignment of interests with the remaining two strong banks. We think that this is a good, you know, also situation going forward in securing the banks as our cooperation and distribution partners at Caser. Now, what other growth opportunities do we see in Spain? Of course, we wanna invest the money we are gaining out of Sa Nostra in further developing our non-life business in Spain and also in looking for organic growth in certain life areas. There are many ideas and we think there is still much room for growth, for organic growth in Spain. Now, for the answering of question number two, I would like to hand over to Annelis. Yes. Thank you. Starting from the number you mentioned, excluding unrealized gains and losses, the leverage ratio was at 34.5% at Q2 2022. This also comes from the fact that we have issued a CHF 400 million senior bond in June 2022. This was intended or is intended for general corporate purposes, including the possible refinancing from outstanding instruments. The first ordinary call date of a CHF 300 million perpetual hybrid is on end of November 2022. The formal decision regarding repayment has not been taken yet and will be subject to prior approval by FINMA, our Swiss regulator. Such a repayment would result, of course, in a reduction of the leverage. Let me note here that the increased level of leverage does not have any effect on our capacity to pay dividends, and we also do not expect the S&P rating to be affected. Generally, we are comfortable with a leverage ratio of around 30%, excluding unrealized gains and losses in equity. More questions? Thank you. The next question comes from Thomas Bateman from Berenberg. Please go ahead. Hi. Good morning, everybody. Could you just talk a little bit about the growth in Switzerland? I guess that's slowed down a bit. In particular, can you just give us a bit of an update on your B2 B2 C strategy? I feel like quite a lot of the growth has been coming from there in the past. Maybe that's slowed down a little bit as well. I noticed the acquisition cost ratio didn't rise this half year. Also, can you just give us a bit of a flavor for how you think about a recessionary environment? What worries you, maybe if there's any opportunities there, and are you doing anything to prepare for that type of environment? Thank you. Okay. I suggest that I'm answering question number one and then handing over to Anneliese for the rather macroeconomic environment, talking about growth opportunities in Switzerland. You know, I mean, Switzerland proved to be a pretty resilient market in the last decades. Of course, there is some price pressure as always, mainly on the motor business, of course. However, we still see room for attractive inorganic growth. We are very happy to have this growth, you know, broadly brought in through many different sales channels. We are, you know, with the aim to be present at as many points of sale as possible. That brings me to the B2B2C or B2B question. We are looking for as many points of sale as possible, which means first, we wanna be part of the value chain of third parties. At the same time, we are looking for partners where we can, so to say, place our embedded insurance products. Both sales channels, so to say, are adding to our, B2B2 C and to our partner business. You see that, we had a very attractive growth, within the last few years in this partner business. For the time being, we are, consolidating it a little bit. However, we still rely on our, partnerships and on our capacity to think in the value chains of those partners. It's, for us, still an attractive option, of course. Now for the macroeconomic, environment, Annelis, please. Thank you, Philipp. Let me just add some words to the Swiss growth, just some numbers to be complete. We said that we had a growth above market in the core business in Switzerland of almost 4%. We had a strong growth in Smile of almost 8%, and we deliberately slowed down the growth in the first half year in the B2B 2 C business in order to operationally automate a lot of processes and prepare our systems for future growth in B2B 2 C business. Now let's turn to the macroeconomic environment. This is a very interesting time where it's really difficult to have any view what will happen in the next month. There could be harder falls in different areas like equity markets or rates or, and so on. Depending on the central banks, they may also be able to navigate this whole crisis smoothly. We just don't know. We think at Helvetia that we are well prepared for any environment as we have a high quality, resilient asset portfolio and business lines which are well diversified and we are not dependent on one certain business line in our portfolio, but all the business lines and countries, Switzerland, Europe, and specialty markets provide their results and provide their share to the results on the one side. We are balanced between life and non-life and also specialty. Therefore, we will not be hardly affected by a hit here or there, but can profit from our good diversification across countries, business lines, and also sales channels. Yes, we have no, in German, we say Glaskugel. So crystal ball. We don't know what comes, but we are comfortable that we are well standing, of course, also with our very strong solvency to navigate turbulent waters. Brilliant. If I could just follow up quickly. Just on the Swiss B2B2 C growth, I appreciate you're kind of doing some internal operational adjustments at the moment. Is that likely to continue for the second half of the year, i.e. slightly slower growth then, but then we should expect that to accelerate maybe next year? I guess my question on if you're doing anything to prepare, I saw your hedging had gone up in terms of you hedge your investment income coupons. Is there anything to read into that? Is that an active decision that you've taken, or is there anything else that we should read into that change in the hedging? Let me start with the B2B2 C. We already expect in the second half year that it will pick up again a bit, but it's really steered by us, so we deliberately slowed down. We plan to speed up a little bit in the second half year and then have next year a growth path, which is of course also digestible to go on. We strongly believe in this business model of embedded insurance and also plan to follow through. Regarding the hedging, I assume you relate to the appendix where we see the net equity exposure, right? Well, in the long presentation, at least in my long presentation, it's on page 42. What we did in January 2022, that was before the Ukraine war, we increased the hedge ratio of the equity portfolio. Why? Because we saw some uncertainties regarding rate hikes of central banks and decided to be a little bit more cautious. Therefore, you see this increase from December 2021 to March 2022 of the ex-equity exposure after hedging from 0.6% to 1.4%. This level we kept more or less. At the moment, we are comfortable with this positioning. That's excellent. Thank you very much for your time. The next question comes from René Locher from KBW. Please go ahead. Yes. Good morning, all. I would like to start slide 21, just for my understanding regarding to cash flows. You are buying, like, an additional 10% Caser, and 10%, that's roughly EUR 80 million. Then you're selling Sa Nostra Vida. I was just wondering about the cash flows, or is it that simple that you take the profit out of the Sa Nostra Vida deal to finance the 10% increase in the Caser stake? Very simple. Second question is on slide 26. Yes. On the net combined ratio. I remember, like, 10 years ago, the Swiss combined ratio was the mid-80s. Now we are more at the 90s level. I was wondering, you know, if 90-91%, if this is the new normal for the Swiss combined ratio. I have to come back to these other activities. Perhaps you have seen, I mean, you reported CHF -13 million consensus. I was looking for CHF -38 million. Yeah, I mean, especially for me as an analyst, it's very hard, you know, to get a grip what the result could be here. Perhaps you could just walk me through a little bit, too, especially the three first items, like group reinsurance, would that make sense, 10% of your non-life business is now reinsurance. Philipp explained to me this investment FX result, and if I'm not totally wrong, the fee business, the nice growth we have seen in the fee business is included in costs and other. If it goes too much into detail, we can take this off. Not an issue. The last question, also on hedging. One of your competitor highlighted that hedging costs on the bond portfolio are increasing. I'm looking at your bond portfolio, like at 12% US dollar. I do believe you also have to hedge these foreign currency exposure. I was just wondering if you can comment on hedging costs for the bond portfolio. Thank you very much. Thank you, René. I suggest that I'm gonna answer or give you an answer to question number two with regards to the combined ratio level in Switzerland. Annelis will then answer the other three questions. Now, you know, is 90% the new normal? I mean, what we see is of course first price pressure, of course. Second, the partner business has slightly higher combined ratios than the bread and butter business. This means that 90%, you know, roughly could be a new normal. However, that is still very attractive. We pretty much rely on the Swiss market. We are relying on the backbone of the Swiss non-life business. Of course, we've seen in the past, you know, combined ratios of like 87%, 88%. If I say around 90%, we think that's still attractive given the stability, the foreseeability, and also the business mix, which is, you know, not only bread and butter business, but more and more also harder business, which has, as I said, slightly higher combined ratio. Now, Annelis, Sa Nostra. Yes. Coming to your question regarding page 21, where we showed the two deals. The acquisition of the additional Caser shares and the sale of Sa Nostra Vida. As Philipp said, the acquisition of the Caser shares, signing and closing have been done. This is executed. For Sa Nostra, the signing has been done, but the closing is expected in the Q4 of 2022. This depends on the formalities regarding the regulator. Yes, depending a bit how fast they treat this, it will be a bit sooner or a bit later. Generally, we do not say anything about the prices of these transactions, but more or less, it levels out. More or less. I think that was your question. Not exactly, but more or less it levels out. This has not been planned like that, but it actually does. What we show is that, or what we say is that the sale of Sa Nostra Vida, we will expect a high two-digit million CHF gain. As I said, will most probably come into effect in the second half year of 2022. Regarding other activities, I have to say you formulated the effects almost better than myself. I think Philipp Schüpbach did a good job there, and I can understand that it is very difficult for you to estimate the changes there or the moves, as they really are complicated. What I can say in general, the FX move is positive when Euro Swiss deteriorates and would be negative if Euro Swiss increases. I'm happy if you want to go into details with Philipp Schüpbach and the team, that makes sense. The group reinsurance part, it's clear when we have a large Nat Cat as we had last year, then the result of group reinsurance is rather negative. If there are, let's say, expected claims environment, then it's rather positive as we also plan group reinsurance to make a gain and not a loss in normal claims years. Yes, it's true, the fee income flows in there as well, and it's still a small part, but we intend to grow it over the years according to strategy. Regarding the hedging costs, we do not disclose the hedging costs. It's clear if you look at the hedging costs, Dollar-Swiss especially got more expensive. This is one of the topics in asset management, which is under current observation and where we adapt also the asset allocation depending on profitability of the returns hedged in Swiss francs. Mm-hmm. That was very helpful. Thank you very much. Okay. We have a follow-up question from Mr. Thomas Bateman from Berenberg. Please go ahead. Hi. Thank you for giving me the opportunity. I just wanted to come back to capital one more time. Could you just remind us of the markets that you like in terms of maybe potential inorganic acquisitions? And also, I don't think there's been any recent track record of share buybacks or special dividends. Could you just give us some color on how you think about both of those? Thank you. Okay. Let me answer the first question and then hand over to Annelis again for the other question. You know, as we said, we are focusing on organic growth. However, we have, we think, quite a strong track record in M&A transactions. Which means in looking for targets, in acquiring them and in yes, I would say in pretty well integrating them into our group. Now, what markets are we looking at? As we said earlier, we are looking at targets which would fit in our current country portfolio. We are not looking for M&A transactions out of our existing country markets. With the exception, of course, in the specialty line business, where we are, you know, rather globally, so to say, even though we are focusing on our country markets, on our operations in Singapore and Miami. Now, you know, we cannot plan M&A acquisitions. We can only be open for them. Of course, if there are targets which we see, then we yes then we are looking at them. That's, you know, a steady process we are going through. For the time being, however, there are no major projects. For the time being, it's more about consolidating our acquisition we made in Spain. Annelis? Yeah. Regarding your question on special dividends, I want to stress again that we are convinced that efficient allocation of excess capital is key to long-term value creation for the shareholders. Therefore, we have a very disciplined capital management where we always or yeah. Laufende We continuously check which are the most attractive options out of the shareholder view. That means should we invest excess cash into organic growth or return money to shareholders? This is continuously checked with the eye on return for shareholders. Brilliant. Thank you very much. Okay. I think we are at the end of this conference. I thank you very much for your interest in Helvetia. As always, Annelis and I, and of course our investor relations people are more than happy to answer your questions. With that, I would like to wrap up this conference. Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing Chorus Call, and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect the line. Goodbye.