Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Helvetia Full Year Results 2024 Conference Call and Live webcast. I am Maria, the conference 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 1 on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press Star and 0. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Peter Eliot, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you very much indeed, and good morning and welcome everybody to Helvetia's conference call on our results for 2024. On the call today, we have our Group CEO, Fabian Rupprecht, and our CFO, Annelis Lüscher Hämmerli. Fabian will start by going through the development of the business before Annelis takes us through the financials in more detail. As usual, there will then be the opportunity for Q&A afterwards. So with that, let me hand over to Fabian. Thank you, Peter, and welcome everyone from my side. We're pleased to present our 2024 results to you today. Let me start on slide 5 with the highlights of 2024. We're delighted to report a 42% increase in our underlying earnings to 529 million CHF. This is in line with, or even slightly ahead of, the guidance we gave to you at our Capital Market Day. Improvement has come from a lower NatCat charge and from our technical profitability measures, which I will come back to. We think there is much more to come, but this is already a good start. The results make us very comfortable in continuing to increase the dividend in regular steps, and the Board of Directors proposes a dividend increase of 6% to CHF 6.70 to the annual general meeting. The dividend remains supported by our free deployable funds so that you can have confidence in our ability to keep paying dividends even in very adverse years. We stressed the benefits of our diversification when we presented in December, and this is again evident in these results. A more difficult year for Switzerland and Austria, mainly due to the flooding and severe weather events experienced at the end of June and September, was more than offset by a better year for our other segments. The growing earnings contribution from our businesses outside of Switzerland and from our fee business is also helpful for our capitalization, and our SST ratio remains at an excellent level. We estimate at about 290% at the start of the year. We continue to seize attractive growth opportunities. Our top line was driven by non-life this year, which I will touch on shortly, and we grew strongly in most markets. However, we will remain disciplined and manage the cycle. Volume growth has therefore been lower in Specialty Markets this year, but the segment again posted excellent underlying earnings, up 21% on an already strong 2023. We continue to make good progress in our fee business with 7% growth, in Smile with 12% growth, and embedded insurance products with 11%. Annelis will discuss this later. Now I move to slide 6. We set new targets at our recent Capital Market Day, which will apply for the period 2025 to 2027. This is therefore the last time we will report our 2025 targets. From 2025 onwards, we will focus more on underlying return on equity. However, for 2025, our IFRS return on equity improved significantly and was in the upper half of our target range. Our business volume grew by 3.1% currency adjusted. 2023 offered a difficult comparative of our life business with a strong performance of investment-linked premiums and deposits in the prior year period in Switzerland and a single large one-off contract in Spain. With this in mind, the life business volume was very respectable, and an excellent performance by non-life has more than offset the small decline in life. In non-life, our volume grew 5.7% currency adjusted. Our revenue grew more than 8%. Our growth was above the market in Switzerland and in Austria. This volume growth was supported by rate increases. In 2024, we continuously adjusted our rates across all segments and lines of business. For lines of business typically exposed to inflation, our rates developed strongly above inflation. For example, we achieved high single-digit increases in motor. Even for portfolios linked to automatic indexation, we have been able to make additional increases. All segments recorded strong, positive, effective rate changes, with a small exception of Specialty Markets, which was only very much marginally negative and which enjoys strong margins. However, even here, the strong competition and pressure in engineering lines was balanced out by our aviation and art portfolios in specialty lines and by France. Favorable rate change development is a proof of our strong customer base, a result of our strong underwriting discipline, and it is in combination with the continuous effort to develop our pricing capabilities further. The success of the adjustments has been accompanied by very strong retention levels. Overall, our lapse rate remains stable. On the right, you can see that our strong performance and increased dividend brings us to 1.3 billion CHF cumulative payout since 2021. We have one more year to go for the old target we set, which was for a cumulative dividend distribution of over 1.65 billion CHF. We already revised this target upwards once, and we're fully on track to meet that revised target. However, we are now focused on our new, more ambitious target. On slide 7, we show our margin. I will start with the combined ratio that has reduced from 97.7% to 95% and is in the middle of the guidance we gave to you at our Capital Market Day. While we're still above our target range, we're moving quickly in the right direction, and we intend to continue this trend. We aim to be in the lower end of the 92%-94% target range by 2027. I remind you that we have a wide range of measures in place to achieve this. I just mentioned our rate increases, and we have significant initiatives in areas such as efficiency, underwriting, and in particular, claims management. While the NatC ats in 2023 helped the prior year comparative, we showed a significant underlying improvement even if we exclude NatC ats, discounting, and prior year development from the claims ratio. The underlying ratio on this basis fell from 70.7%-68.8%. In life, our margins remain in the middle of our target range as we balance profitability and volume. However, we continue to focus on capital-light products. The fee business again performed strongly in 2024. Fee income was up 7.2% on a currency-adjusted basis, mainly thanks to the expansion of the non-insurance business around health and care services of Caser in Spain. Margin improvement means that the fee result is up by more. We had targeted more than 5% of the group's IFRS net income, and in 2024, we already achieved over 7%. Slide 8 is my summary of last year. An important step last year was the enhancement of our corporate structure and governance. Last summer, we adjusted our corporate structure and the Group Executive Board to foster closer cooperation and create values as an integrated international insurance group. Our adjusted structure is now allowing us to improve the conditions for leveraging our know-how across the group regarding, for example, future-oriented topics such as AI. Last December, we unveiled our new strategy and set ambition targets for the first three-year strategy cycle. I will say more about the focus of the strategy and the financial targets on the next slide. We have emphasized in the past that technical excellence and operational efficiency are key to us. We've been working on these topics for about a year now. Today, we can see that the actions we have taken are starting to deliver results. Our current year loss ratio, excluding NatCats and discounting, has improved by 1.9 percentage points. While we expect this rate to improve further in the years to come in line with our efforts on technical excellence, please keep in mind that there is some volatility in this number. The non-life administrative expense ratio has improved by 0.2 percentage points. Operational efficiency is also a key element of the new strategy, and on the next slide, I will give an indication of how we expect technical excellence and efficiency to develop. Finally, selective growth. Helvetia wants to grow with a clear focus on profitability and capital efficiency. While we grew the business in most lines last year, we were selective in underwriting where we faced difficult market conditions, such as liability in Active Reinsurance. To conclude, I will say a few words on slide 9 about where we are now and where our near-term focus lies. Firstly, I can say that Helvetia is in a strong position. We have proven in recent years that we can grow profitably on a sustainable basis. We have also further enhanced our diversification, which makes us more resilient. Helvetia's excellent capitalization and high liquidity also contribute to our resilience. Finally, the 2024 financial figures presented today show that Helvetia is moving in the right direction. My second point is our new strategy, which I have already mentioned on the slide before. The aim of the new strategy is to unleash Helvetia's potential. The strategy therefore builds on our strengths, such as direct access to customers in the retail business and our expertise in the global specialty business. We're positioning ourselves as a local customer champion in our retail markets of Switzerland, Spain, Germany, Austria, and Italy. This means that we will accompany our customers throughout their lives as the preferred provider with the ambition of increasing the services per customer. The global specialties business forms the second pillar of our new strategy. In this area, we aim to establish a leading role in specialty business in our existing European markets and develop additional international specialty lines in a targeted manner with a smart follower approach. As mentioned earlier, technical excellence and operational efficiency are key elements of our strategy. I would like to reiterate our plans for these two areas. We set ourselves the target of improving operational efficiency by more than 200 million CHF by the end of 2027. Part of these efficiency gains will offset anticipated inflation. At the same time, we expect the cost ratio to improve by around 0.5 percentage points. Overall, we expect the combined ratio to improve by around 2 percentage points, which would bring it within the previous guidance range of 92%-94%. Third, we have set ambitious targets across our next strategic plan period. The starting point for our underlying earnings per share target is CHF 9.48 per share. This level is even slightly ahead of the guidance we gave you at our CMD, meaning that our 2027 targets are now even more ambitious. However, we reiterate the target, including the 9%-11% underlying earnings per share CAGR. As a reminder, our other targets include underlying return on equity of 13%-16%, which is higher than in 2024, and a cumulative dividend payout of CHF 1.2 billion over three years. Finally, we aim to achieve a credit rating of at least A. With this, I hand over to Annelis, who will present the financials in more detail. Thanks, Fabian, and welcome also from me to our conference call today. Over the next 15 minutes, I will explain our financial performance in 2024, starting on slide 11. Before I do that, just to remind you that the 2023 numbers have been restated as we communicated at the Capital Market Day. GRI, our group reinsurance, has been reallocated to non-life and life from the other businesses, which we now call non-insurance. Europe has also been split into Spain and Italy. We gave you the full year 2023 restated numbers at our Capital Market Day, and today we are also giving you the half-year 2024 restated numbers. Our 2024 results again demonstrate the benefits of our diversified business model, as Fabian mentioned. Helvetia generated underlying earnings of CHF 529 million compared to CHF 372 million in the prior year, a 42% increase. As a reminder, our underlying earnings metric excludes the volatility from capital market developments and other non-operating effects, meaning that the main driver is the technical result of our insurance businesses. The main reason for the increase was a better non-life result. We improved our underlying combined ratio, and 2024 also benefited from fewer exceptional NatCat events than 2023. We did still have to navigate some major events, especially over the summer months, and our home market of Switzerland was hit here. It also received late reporting of 2023 NatCat claims. It therefore came in slightly lower than the previous year. However, this was more than offset by a very strong performance from our other markets. In the case of our second market of Spain, that is, of course, before the benefits of the planned integration we referenced at our Capital Market Day. Spain was the biggest driver of the improvement after 2024 did not suffer as severe weather events as in 2023, and after we benefited from some reserve releases. Meanwhile, Specialty Markets continued to go from strength to strength, and it recorded an even better year than last year. Life produced a solid result against a tough prior year comparative, which included some non-recurring elements. In the non-insurance business area, we have reduced our corporate costs significantly, including from lower project costs. Overall, the underlying return on equity was 12.3%. Fabian has just reminded you of our targets to increase these over the next three years, to which we remain committed. Our IFRS net income was up even more by 67% to CHF 502 million. Besides the development of underlying earnings, the increase was also due to a better performance of non-participating assets in Switzerland, especially from a property fund and property revaluations and the non-repeat of an impairment. Turning to volume on slide 13, this was up 3% at constant exchange rates to CHF 11.6 billion. The growth was again driven by non-life, which showed a strong organic increase of 6% currency adjusted. We grew above the market in Switzerland, which was up 8%, and in Austria. Pricing has been a major driver, and we will continue adapting our pricing to inflation and other market developments. Life volume was down 1%, mainly due to the non-repeat of a large group contract in Spain in the prior year. However, Helvetia continues to grow its core business, focusing on profitable and capital-efficient products. The business line continues to be influenced by the ongoing market-wide trend in Switzerland of a shift from full insurance to semi-autonomous solutions, where we are well positioned. The fee business on the next slide also grew significantly in line with our strategic ambition to diversify income streams. The fee and commission income increased by 7% at constant exchange rates to CHF 413 million. This comes despite very limited inorganic growth in Spain and despite a small headwind in asset management. Asset management provides a stable income stream, but one of performance fees come on top, and in 2024, there was no real estate capital raising. Growth was mainly driven by the health and elderly care business, as well as our assistance business. Profitability improved further in 2024 due to a combination of growth in income, business mix, and margin improvement. Switzerland, and specifically MoneyPark, was the main contributor to the very strong increase in the fee result, which increased by 36% to CHF 45 million before tax. With this, the fee business contributed 7% of the group's IFRS net income, so above the 5% level we originally set as a 2025 target. Now let's dig a bit deeper into non-life on slide 16, starting with the combined ratio. I remind you that this has been restated for the new segmentation of group reinsurance, and we have given you the restatement on the half-year numbers in slide 29 of the appendix. Overall, the 95% combined ratio was in the midpoint of our recent 2024 guidance. We are very pleased with the improvement we are seeing. It came despite some significant events, such as the floods in Wallis in Switzerland and in Central and Eastern Europe, and riots in New Caledonia. If you exclude NatCats and discounting impacts, then the 2024 claims ratio showed a strong improvement in every business area. In reality, even this ex-NatCat and ex-discounting ratio tends to exhibit some volatility, and we do not think we have quite achieved 2 percentage points of improvement in just one year. That number may therefore be a little flattering, but we see room for improvement, and we are working hard on that. Germany was one example which we do not expect to repeat. There we think a sustainable overall combined ratio is in the range of 93%-94%. Indeed, every segment and country market was below 100% combined ratio, including group reinsurance. We believe this supports our strategy of internal reinsurance. However, we see several significant levers to strengthen technical profitability in non-life further, as we outlined at our Capital Market Day, and we remain fully committed to bringing the combined ratio down into our target 92%-94% range. The cost ratio, where I remind you we include non-fulfillment expenses, improved by 20 basis points. This is broadly in line with the 30 basis points improvement we reported at half-year after restating for GRI. You can see this restatement in the appendix. It is helped by efficiency gains from scale effects on the back of our profitable growth. Consensus was expecting a better improvement, but we think consensus did not factor in the effect of restating for GRI for the first half-year, second half-year seasonality that we also saw last year. We will remain very focused on cost discipline and the implementation of our efficiency program for 2025 to 2027. The acquisition cost ratio has increased by 10 basis points, due mainly to business mix. In particular, we grew the embedded insurance business, which has higher acquisition costs but a lower claims ratio. We also benefited from very strong investment income. The non-life current investment income was up 22% year on year, with some significant reinvestments made at the end of 2023 and start of 2024, earning in and with an enlarged asset base. Outside of underlying earnings, positive market performance was offset by adverse FX movements, and we have the normal inter-group corporate support charges in the walk-to-net income. In the life business on slide 18, our stock of CSM is up 8% compared to the end of 2023, thanks to positive operating and economic variances. Economic variances of CHF 211 million were mainly driven by interest rate effects and equity markets. Operating variance of CHF 120 million was driven mainly by better cost assumption updates. This is less positive than we reported at the half-year, but the half-year calculation is never as precise as the full-year calculation and always subject to some volatility. We have not changed our view of the annual CSM release we expect or the level of underlying earnings. Indeed, this is confirmed by the underlying earnings we reported for 2024. We gave our view of the 2023 recurring level at our Capital Market Day, and 2024 has come in 3% above that level. We don't consider there to be any particularly one-offs in 2024 numbers, so you can consider that a good base going forward. We will, of course, keep working to improve it. The normalized CSM growth has been flat, as profitable new business and the expected in-force return has offset the CSM release. We indicated at the Capital Market Day that we did not expect significant normalized growth, and there will always be some volatility around this. Instead, we focus on creating value outside the CSM. We also indicated that we believe we can realize the value inside the CSM more quickly in future than in the past. We generated a new business volume measured by the present value of new business premiums of CHF 2.8 billion, up 4% on the prior year, as we show on slide 19. The main contributor to this growth was individual life products, where we saw growth across the board, but especially in protection products. The share of capital- light products of new business was 87%, as you can see in the appendix. We continue our focus on growth in profitable lines of business, and the new business margin in life remains well within our target range at 4.7%. The small drop relative to the prior year can largely be explained by active reinsurance, which benefited from some exceptionally high margins in the prior year and some very profitable contracts in the post-COVID era. Turning now to our capitalization on slide 21. This remains at an excellent level. The S&P rating remains at A+, comfortably meeting our target of an A rating, and AM Best takes a similar view. Our regulatory solvency, measured by the Swiss Solvency Test, continues to stay at an outstanding level. We estimate our SST ratio to be about 290% as of 1 January 2025. Compared to the level at the end of June 2024 of about 300%, it has slightly decreased, mainly due to the fall in Swiss risk-free rates. Our financial leverage fell across 2024. You will have seen that we took advantage this January of the supportive market conditions and issued two new bonds of CHF 250 million combined, with coupons of 0.8% and 1.1%, respectively. But even with these and the temporary increase in leverage, the leverage remains below our 30% target. Now let me give you an update on cash on slide 22. Cash remittance increased by 27% in 2024, with a strong contribution from Switzerland Life and Active Reinsurance, while the Non-life business was already on a very good level in the previous year. Besides remitting the regular dividend, we continue to hold a buffer at the holding level. Our free deployable funds stand at CHF 378 million after benefiting from some interest over the year. We will keep increasing this to maintain roughly one year's worth of dividend, but there is no need to do so at this stage. This concept, which we introduced a year ago, gives us a buffer of unencumbered liquid assets at holding level, which will increase the fungibility of free capital for the group and our financial flexibility. This adds resilience and visibility on our dividend capacity to always pay at least the same dividend per share as in the previous year. That brings me to the dividend on slide 23. Here we stick to our communicated policy of sustainably increasing dividends. Our core business is growing profitably, it is well diversified and resilient, and our financial strength is excellent. For 2024, Helvetia's Board of Directors is therefore proposing a further increase in the dividend to 6.70 per share. This represents a payout ratio of 78% on underlying earnings or 75% on net income. It represents a dividend yield of 4.5% based on a 2024 closing share price of CHF 149.40. It brings the cumulative dividend distribution since 2021 to CHF 1.3 billion. Helvetia is therefore well on track to reach the revised target we set of paying out more than CHF 1.65 billion in dividends over five years to 2025. As Fabian said, we are, however, now focused on our new, more ambitious targets. With that, I hand back to Peter. Thank you very much, Annelis. So now we'll go to the Q&A, and if I could ask you to limit yourself to three questions in the first instance, that would be appreciated. So operator, please do start the Q&A. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the touch-tone telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you've entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Questioners on the phone are requested to use only handsets. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. Our first question comes from Farooq Hanif, J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead. Hi everybody, thank you very much, and I'd like to actually congratulate you on your disclosure this morning. I thought it was very helpful that we got the more detailed consensus and also the, you know, Peter, thank you for sending the, the variance. That was really helpful this morning, so thank you. I've got two questions, as promised. On the fee result, you can see that the costs have grown lower than the fee and commission income, and you talked, Annelis, about the higher margin. Should we expect this margin expansion generally to continue? The cost base, you know, rising more slowly than the fee and commission income, and what are the lines that will drive that? That's question one. Question two, if you could talk about the jump in life cash remittance and how to think about that as well going forward. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Farooq, and, you know, thank you for your comments. We're always keen to know how we can do better as well to, and, yeah, not just the IR team, but I think the wider internal stakeholders are putting a lot of work also to bring the closing forward a month. But thank you very much. On the, so two questions there. One on the fee result, can the margin expansion we've seen continue, number one, and secondly, on the life cash remittance? I think probably both for Annelis. Yes, thanks, Peter, and thanks, Farooq, for the question. So, on the fee result, you know, our fee result is really a collection of many different businesses. So on the one hand, health and elderly care, mainly from Spain, then our third-party asset management business from Switzerland, and many other fee businesses, either from Switzerland, which are smaller and are contributing, also MoneyPark. So, the distribution of mortgages goes in there. So, it's a mix of many different things, and therefore the driver of the profitability is also a mix of different things. Generally, of course, in all our businesses, we try to maximize profitability, not on the short term, but really sustainably, and try to expand the margins. What we can say is definitely that the margin within the MoneyPark business, so the mortgages business, has increased, and we strive, of course, to keep that margin, to keep that sustainably. To be honest, I would not expect such an expansion in margin now every year, but generally, I'm quite optimistic that we can keep the margin we have seen now and continue to work on that. Now, on the second question on life, the contribution of life in 2024, so the contribution of life is mainly driven from the Swiss life balance sheet and is mainly driven by the result we can achieve in the Swiss life balance sheet. The result, so the statutory result in life in 2023, so what we pay in 2024 has been very good, and therefore more cash could be remitted to the group, to the mother company in 2024 than in 2023. Are you able to give a little bit more detail if we think about the macro, the equity world environment, and other factors, what, whether the 2023 uplift was kind of one-off in nature? Are there kind of effects that we should normalize for? So it's basically also mainly a change on how we do capital management. So starting in mid-2023 and 2024, you know that in 2024 we introduced the concept of free deployable funds. With that, we introduced the concept that we want to have all excess cash and capital to repatriate it to the mother company, where all the other companies are daughters or branches. So we want to hold the excess cash in the mother company with the free deployable funds in the holding just above. So that means that we also now have a strong focus on collecting all the excess cash in all the companies and bringing it to the mother company. That is also one of the main differences from 2023 to 2024 in life. So it's not really, it didn't have a lot to do with financial markets or anything, but with the change concept to bring all excess cash to the mother company in order to be able to reallocate it to organic growth areas. Thank you, that's very helpful. The next question comes from Amalie Zdravkovic from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Hello, good morning, it's Amalie from Deutsche Bank. Thanks for taking my questions. I'll stick to two as well then. So you had a very positive investment performance in non-life in particular, and I was just wondering how much of this is sort of sustainable going forward. If you can add a bit of color on that, that would be great. And then just secondly, there's been quite a lot of sort of news flow recently around potential disposals in Europe. And I was just wondering if you have anything new on sort of if such a disposal were to happen, what would you do with proceeds? Are you keeping it for organic growth, or how would you deploy such? Thank you very much. Thank you very much. So the two questions. First one on the non-life investment performance and the outlook for that. So Annelis will answer. But then secondly on the disposals in Europe. I'll hand over to Fabian. Sorry, Fabian, you want to take the disposals one first? Yeah, yeah, okay, okay, that's what I think it. So please understand we will not comment on rumors. So you will not hear anything from us about that. But then you asked that question as a hypothetical situation. And I can say if ever we did any disposals in the future, we have set ourselves a per share target. And I hope that makes clear that we are committed, or would be committed in any such situation, to this metric. And we would try always to avoid anything that would dilute the EPS. So that's just a general remark what we would do in any hypothetical case. Yes, and I'm happy to take the question on investment performance in non-life. So there were two effects in there. So what I have to state first, very important, there is no change in strategic asset allocation. The reason behind it has nothing to do with re-risking, but it's the growth in our liabilities in US dollars, especially out of Active Reinsurance, led to investments in US dollars and as the risk-free rates, and therefore also the corporate bonds, for example, are very high yielding currently. This led to a higher investment income. Will it continue in the future? It depends, of course, on the volume growth on this US dollar business. On the business in US dollars, if the volume or if the investment income is growing, yes or no. And of course, it depends on the interest rate that can be gained in these markets. It's the explanation is actually simple. It's a matching of the assets in the currency of the liabilities. Thank you, thank you. The next question comes from Iain Pearce from Exane BNP Paribas. Please go ahead. Hi, morning everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. They're both just around cash, and I think it's just a bit of sort of clarification on some of the moving parts. So on the first one, you sort of a bit confused, and it sounds like there was some excess cash coming from Switzerland, and the remittances were very strong because of the sort of changing cash management philosophy, but also the statutory result and the benefits of markets driving a better statutory result, helping that remittance. So any ideas on sort of how much of the cash remittance was sort of part of that cash cleanup and changing cash philosophy in 2024, and whether the 2024 level of remittance is sustainable going forwards would be really useful. And then the second one, which I guess is sort of linked, is you've said the sort of free deployable funds you want roughly to be in line with dividend costs, which you're sort of at already. So, if remittances are sustainable at that level, you'd be continuing to build that number. Just trying to sort of square that circle really about how you're thinking about the free deployable funds development if remittances are going to be sustainable at current levels versus dividend costs. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ian. So, two questions. The first one on cash, is any part of how much of that is sort of part of any cleanup, or is it a sustainable level going forward? And the second one, just the interaction between free deployable funds, dividend increase, but free deployable funds didn't. How do we think about that? I guess both for Annelis. Yes, thank you, Iain, for the question. So I will start from the outside in. So we'll start explaining the whole topic, starting with the free deployable funds. So these are funds currently CHF 378 million, and they stay at holding level. These are unencumbered and in that sense, completely free. Currently, the dividend we propose for our general assembly, the 6.70, corresponds to CHF 355 million. So that means that the free deployable funds currently are a bit higher than the dividend we pay out. Now, when introducing and explaining at the capital markets day our capital management approach, we clearly said that our aim is to always have one year's worth of dividend in the free deployable funds. Now, of course, we do not know exactly how our dividend will develop in the future, but what we said is that our ambition is for three years to pay CHF 1.2 billion in dividend. Now, if you make a small Excel table and see how you could distribute this CHF 1.2 billion over three years and sustainably increase year over year, you see at some point that our external dividend would be a little bit higher than the free deployable fund, and that would be the time when we would add what is needed in order to make sure that we cover this external dividend in free deployable funds. A small effect, of course, is also that the free deployable fund itself, they earn a bit of interest, which we can, of course, add there, or which will increase the free deployable funds as well. So now, if we now go one level down to the mother company, where all our other companies and businesses are either daughters or branches, then in the mother company is the place where we collect all the cash remittances from our daughters and branches. Now, we said that our strategy implies the CHF 1.2 billion dividend imply an increasing, steadily increasing dividend path. That means that our cash remittance also has to steadily increase from the daughter companies. The cash remittances from the daughter companies and branches will always be a little bit volatile, but that is the beauty of our diversified business model. In one year, we will have a bit more from Active Reinsurance, but a bit less in the past years, for example, from Germany, and it will level out. But in general, we plan with increasing cash remittances in order to be able to finance the increasing dividend over the next three years. This strict capital management policy has been developed in 2023 and has been started to execute in 2024. Now I make a quick stop and see, do you have a follow-up question or was I clear? No, that's clear. I guess the follow-up is if I look at the cash remittance this year and an assumption that that's, well, the sort of comments that you expect that to steadily increase, there's still quite a bit of headroom between the cash remittance and the dividend cost. You know Yes Even with the dividend growth, you'd probably be looking at sort of depending on the rate of dividend growth, CHF 80 million-CHF 100 million. Is the assumption- Yes That or is the assumption that the remittances come down next year and that they're more in line with the dividend costs going forward? No It's sort of what I'm trying to get to. So, yeah, I see. That's a small aspect that is not yet explained. So from the cash remittance, of course, we pay the dividend that goes in the holding and then to shareholders, one point. But from cash remittance, we also pay external financing costs, and we also pay group costs like salaries of investor relations, for example. So there are cash remittances of our businesses also have to cover group costs. And then what is left, we use to capitalize our organic growth. So that's the logic behind. Okay, perfect. Understood. The next question comes from Nasib Ahmed from UBS. Please go ahead. Hi, thanks for taking my question. So, can you hear from me as well? Firstly, at the CMD, you gave us an indication that there's about 20% of businesses not meeting hurdle rates, and that's only been four months, or less than that. Can you kind of give us an update on have any of those businesses moved up, into kind of meeting hurdle rates, any businesses that you're looking at, and any indication of whether those businesses are, where are they placed, what business lines they're in? That'd be super helpful. And then second question on the technical excellence, and kind of bringing the combined ratio, the underlying combined ratio down. I saw at one stage it was down 160 basis points, now it's down 190, so the run rate's improving. Is that kind of the regular improvement in the combined ratio we should expect over this plan? That's all for me. Great, thank you very much. So yeah, the first question on the businesses we showed at our Capital Market Day on not meeting hurdle rates, has our view on those changed at all since then? And second one on the technical excellence, the run rate improvement, is that sustainable and growable? Both for Fabian. Yes, thank you. Thank you. So, on the hurdle rate, so in a four-month period, that doesn't change so much. So that's a too short time frame to say that things have changed. I think what's important and what we explained in the Capital Market Day, wherever we see that return is under our hurdle rates, we asked for a clear plan, and we gave a time horizon of three to four years in which we would expect those business units need to come back to a level above the hurdle rate. And if we think that this plan is not realistic, then we would. So the last three months is therefore too short to consider that. Then on your second question on the technical excellence, yes, so we had a significant improvement of 1.9%, and Annelis just used the word, it's a little bit flattering number for what we already achieved in our technical excellence. So there is, while I think it's a very useful number to monitor our progress, I would not say it's always, you know, there are different trends impacting that, of course, you know, how well you forecast inflation, how much you get your price increases through, etc. So I would not, you know, just think that this is going absolute mechanically. So, while we think that this rate will be further going down. I rather recommend you to look at our guidance, which we gave at the Capital Market Day, where we said that we expect to achieve a 2% improvement over the next three years, where we said, starting this year, so you have now the starting base. We said as well that we are expecting to be rather on the lower range of the 92%-94%. So I think that is the best indication for you to model going forward our progress in technical excellence. Perfect, thank you. Are you able to give us an indication of which businesses aren't meeting hurdle rates, or is that something that you're not willing to give us? So which businesses? No, we said that we're not doing it on that level. But what I can tell you is, you know, there are when you looked at what we showed. So, the first thing is it's always profitable because there was sometimes a misunderstanding. The second one is, businesses typically have several portfolios. So, you can have a situation in which a business, you know, has below a hurdle rate in one part and then above a hurdle rate in the other part of the business, so typically life and non-life. They are so linked together that you cannot separate them, and you have to look at them jointly. So that's the only thing I'd like to add. Perfect, thank you very much. As a reminder, for questions, please press star one on your telephone. The next question comes from Anne-Chantal Risold from Octavian. Please go ahead. Hello, good morning everyone. Some question from my side on the Swiss business, the profitability of the non-life. You have actually achieved probably a very good price increase. But if I look at the combined ratio, which also includes NatCat, you have a strong deterioration in Switzerland. After 2020, I think it was 2023, now 2024 or 2022, now 2024, NatCat is becoming, giving its share to the profitability. So my question is, are you tackling or do you see a trend for higher NatCat in Switzerland? And are you, for instance, taking measures with the reinsurance going forward to maybe lower this possible adverse impact? Second, on the EM division, the underlying earnings of this division had a massive improvement, so nearly CHF 110 million improvement. Could you give us a breakdown which country contributed by which amount to this level? And maybe just the last one, it's also, yeah, the period is very short, four months, but do you have any significant update to give on the progress of the merger in Spain between Caser and Helvetia? Okay, thank you very much. So the first one on Swiss non-life profitability, we've had two years of heavy NatCat. Is this a theme? Is it something we need to price in? Second question on the improvement in EM and where exactly did that occur? And third question on Spain integration, where are we? Fabian, do you want to take the first one on the NatCat theme first of all? Yeah, I'm happy to do so. So on the NatCat in Switzerland, we had a NatCat event this year, but we were impacted basically from late claims from the NatCat of the previous year. And if you just took the NatCat of this year, you would say we're very much in line. And what we do is we always price in our budget in our pricing. So we always, you know, take the latest NatCat experience. There's a lot of intelligence that goes into that. And so I would say we always make sure that we price adequately. But of course, we don't price the volatility, that one comes. Here on the, just on the, reinsurance cover, what we do is, we have, of course, a cover for a one-time loss event. And that one is there and stable. So with the renewals, it changed only slightly. And, what for us is most important that we continue the diversification because the diversification of the group is the most effective way to manage the volatility out of the NatCat. So, there is no reason for concern in Switzerland going forward on the NatCat. We're making sure that this is priced adequately. Thank you very much. While you've got the mic, do you want to comment on Spain as well? The progress, anything, any comments we can add on the progress in Spain? Yeah, no, happy to do so. So, short time between the last time and this time, but, shortly, you know, we have met, we have put our plan, we have set our plan, and we're absolutely according, or progressing according to the plan. And so we're positive that we can realize the CHF 50 million of cost efficiencies which we have planned for 2027. Great, thank you. And then the third question was on the EM improvement. Annelis, would you like to comment on that? Yeah, so thanks for the question, Anne-Chantal. So Germany definitely was much better in 2024 than in 2023 regarding underlying earnings in non-life. This was mainly due to large NatCat events in 2023 and also 2024 benefited from previous year developments out of 2023. So, a very good year for Germany where we think it. You have to be careful to see this as new run rate, but generally a much better, of course, than in 2023 and the same for Italy, whereas Austria was on a similar level in both years delivering very good results. So the hard figure, I don't know, I haven't looked through all the documents, but we can find exactly the contribution from each country separately in your documentation. You can find it, for sure in the Finanzbericht, in the financial supplement. The combined ratios, yes, you can find, but the underlying earnings, I think, per country are not in our analyst deck, but please approach IR on the detailed numbers. Okay, thank you. The next question comes from Michele Ballatore, KBW. Please go ahead. Yes, thank you for taking my question. So two questions for me. The first is about the in Germany. If you can give some, you know, your thoughts about the outlook in terms of, you know, the pricing environment and if inflation is still an issue in those countries, if you can give maybe, you know, more color how you expect that 2025 will develop, also considering, you know, also the competitive environment, etc. So that's the first question. The second question about if you can, I don't know if you gave this, but if you broadly give, you know, the moving parts of the SST development in the second half of 2024? Thank you. Thank you very much, Michele. So the first one on EM outlook, given the trends we're seeing in pricing, inflation, and competition, and the second one on the SST development. I mean, on the SST, I remind you, it's just an estimate at this stage. Obviously, the final calculation will come out in a month's time. It's just our estimate at this stage. So it makes it more difficult to give the precise moving parts. But let Fabian comment, first of all, on EM. So you saw the significant we just commented on the significant improvement in EM. What we see overall is, to a large extent, hard markets. That is good. So, I think all players want to make sure that they price adequately their product. We see that, for sure in Austria, in Germany, and to a certain extent as well in Italy. We always say that motor is there more of a challenge. But other than that, it's fine. So we are, and inflation, of course, has come down. And that has helped us. But we would, you know, for any inflationary impacts in the future, for sure, make sure that we get the adequate price. What helps is that we are very much relying on agents and own distribution. It's easier to get the price through and push through with your own sales force. It is more difficult when you're dependent on brokers. Then perhaps just to add, in Austria, there's a lot of contracts with indexation. The indexation has the disadvantage that's somehow lagging behind. So you have first inflation, and then the index adjusts. But we're now, of course, in the phase where that indexation kicks in, because inflation has been in the past. So this is a kind of tailwind from which we take advantage. I think that's all I can give you for pricing and the situation. We see rather a positive picture. Thanks a lot. Very useful. Thank you. So on the SST, I'm happy to give you the big picture. As Peter has said, we will also always, I think it's towards the end of April, publish our first of January SST ratio, also with a bridge explaining or a moving parts analysis explaining exactly the drivers behind the change. So what changed from half year to end of year? Generally in SST, you basically have three drivers. That's financial markets, that's capital management actions, and that's the business development. So the business development is hopefully always positive, so also for the second half year, of course. Then in capital management actions, you have to take into account that we pay back a hybrid position and replace it with a senior. So that's that will have a drag of a bit more than 10% on the SST ratio. And on financial markets, the 10-year Swiss government, the ten-year rate is negative with maybe around 10% approximately, whereas lower credit spread is positive. And taking all these things together, it's you end up at approximately 290%. Thank you. Thanks a lot. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. Mr. Eliot, back to you for any closing remarks. Thank you very much. I'll let Fabian make some closing remarks. Yeah, so thank you for spending the time with us and on our numbers. As you see, we think that we're convinced that this is a positive message we can deliver to you and looking forward to working with you in the future on this exciting Helvetia business. Thank you so much. 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 your lines. Goodbye.