Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Allianz's second quarter 2024 media conference call. Thank you for joining us today. My name is Frank Stoffel, Head of Financial Communications and Investor Relations, and I'm here at our headquarters in Munich with our Chief Executive Officer, Oliver Bäte, and our Chief Financial Officer, Claire-Marie Coste-Lepoutre. Today's conference call is scheduled for 90 minutes, and as usual, we will answer your questions following the presentation. With this, I hand over to our CEO, Mr. Oliver Bäte. Ja, guten Morgen aus München, das einzige Deutsche, was Sie jetzt hören werden. Ich freue mich trotzdem, dass Sie zuhören.[Foreign Language] Good morning, everybody. Thank you for dialing in this morning. In a quite crowded day of results from a lot of peers and a lot of companies, I would like to thank you for being with us today because there are many, many other things you could do this morning, so we appreciate your attention. I want to just comment on a few things up front in terms of developments for the next few minutes, and then Claire-Marie Coste-Lepoutre will lead you through the highlights of our financial results for the second quarter or more, probably appropriately also highlight the six months' development, obviously, because we have a long-term business model that doesn't live quarter to quarter, but that lives over next year, 135 years. So let me just talk to you about what happened in the first six months. That's the page number 3 in the documents that we have distributed to all of you, I hope you have had access to in some time, to digest the usual information. We have had so far very, very, very strong results in the first six months, and I would like to say that we are really pleased that Allianz is delivering in this really tough world out there, even better than many people expect. And let me comment at this point, we often get this question: Is size and diversification a benefit, or is it actually a curse? We all know, and we've discussed it over the years, it can be both, but now you see really the strengths of strong diversification both across our business segments, but across our businesses in terms of geography and products throughout the world. Business volume is up more than 6%. It's at EUR 91 billion. Operating profit is more than 5%, up to EUR 7.9 billion. Shareholders' net income is even higher. We measure it at the moment with core net income. The undiluted net income number is even stronger, and our solvency is up at a very strong 206%. The OP outlook, therefore, is fully confirmed. We feel at this point at least comfortable that we will make that. Because of the strong results that we've had over the first six months, we have extended our share buyback by another EUR 500 million to EUR 1.5 billion, and then total payout stands as a strong EUR 6.9 billion, which equates, depending on how you run the numbers, to a total payout ratio of 75%. This is, by the way, what Allianz has been doing on average over many years now, and we have a very strong commitment to keep distributions to our shareholders strong. In the first quarter, we focused on the results on increasing the dependable payout on dividends from 50% - 60%. So this is the balance in order to get to, depending on how you run the numbers, to 75%. So it's very important. This is fully in line with what we've been doing over the years. It's nothing out of the ordinary. Now, that's just the numbers. Let me talk about the business because Allianz is not in there for producing financial numbers, at least not only, but what we're really here for is to help people face a really, really difficult future. And you remember a lot of debates we had had over the years about the value of our purpose, which we call We Secure Your Future. And the second quarter of this year had another test. This was the third large weather event in Germany in the last four years. We had serious floodings in southern Germany. Just to give you a few facts, more than 11,000 claims with an average claim amount of EUR 25,000, a 46% increase in average workload for our people, and the current loss estimate stands at around EUR 290 million. What's very important when we look at these numbers, ladies and gentlemen, is how do we do in terms of losses relative to our market share? We would like to be better in terms of comparing market share in terms of premium and customers relative to payouts. On the slide to the right-hand side, page 4, you find on the other side the comparisons of our market share. That's about 14% in property-casualty to the losses from Bernd and Baden-Württemberg, which we had in May of 2024. Remember, we already had a big flood, and it's totally clear that because of the way we Baden-Württemberg modeling now, how do we risk evaluation and in particular how we are dispatching our excellent claims adjusters in time and helping our clients that we help loss to actually turn from a small damage to a big damage, and we can spend a lot of time on it. I would like to take the opportunity to thank our claims assessors and our employees in the claims departments because they have agreed together with our workers' council to open weekend work and to work off hours, and a big thank you goes to them and our agents in the areas that have been available for customers 24/7. You see that one of the key success factors in terms of providing customer satisfaction and at the same time limiting damages was actually Allianz Handwerker Service, something that we've been working on for a long time, was not always perfect. Now the colleagues there have done an amazing job dispatching 6,700 air dryers very, very quickly. We had very fast loss assessments. We actually had maximum 14 days to inspect all urgent claims and got outstanding customer feedback. I was very proud also to read that it was even acknowledged by politicians and the press. Thanks to the colleagues for doing that because it's good for customers and it's good for our shareholders because fast response also means lower claims. There's a lot to be learned. Most importantly, also in Bavaria, if I'm allowed to make this comment, that we need to do better in terms of loss prevention, not just as insurance, but also from the political leadership because you may ask yourself why in Germany we continue to have these huge losses, why in neighboring countries that have been better prepared, think about the Netherlands that have been living under the water surface for a few hundred years, they are better protecting losses. So there is a lot to be done in order to make sure we reduce the impact of changing weather patterns forward. So we need to work between the industry, our clients, and particularly the political leadership to improve the protection against these weather events which are here to stay. So this is one highlight that I wanted to share out of the second quarter. Again, you see from the results of Allianz, despite these things happening in our core market where we're very large, the overall profitability is still very strong, even though various elements keep on being stressful and we'll probably get questions around that. The second thing I wanted to share is we have had a very consistent story and execution around how we think about capital management beyond just simple dividend policy and share buybacks. The key example here is for our quarter, we have sold our U.S. MidCorp and Entertainment businesses because we have been over the years thinking through, could we ever get to a top 1, 2, 3 position in the segment in the United States without massive capital deployment? The answer has been no. And therefore, at some point, we decided we are not the best owner for this segment of the business and found a proper partner to grow this business more successfully than we can and have redeployed the capital into the acquisition of Income Insurance, a leading insurance franchise in Singapore. Remember, Singapore is our home for the region in ASEAN, but we don't really run a big operating business there. We have a startup P&C company that's doing fine, but far from being a leader. With this investment, we are putting us to be the number one in P&C, the number three in health, and have a very promising starting position, number six in life, where we can do much, much better. We really target a double-digit ROE over the midterm, and the consideration for acquiring 51% is about EUR 1.5 billion, and we want to build that out and to have, by the way, it's very significant. The OP in the region is going to grow by about 30%+, so it is making a meaningful difference to building out our presence in Southeast Asia. We actually believe Singapore has the potential to become the Switzerland of Southeast Asia, so it's also an investment into the city-state and its community. And again, I expect some questions around this. I don't want to take them on. So these are the highlights of the first six months and the second quarter. Needless to say, as you compare and read across the line with our competitors, it's very hard to do so well when the world is such a dangerous place. I'm happy to say not just our employees, our customers, but our shareholders are safe with us. With that, I hand over to Claire-Marie. Thank you very much, Oliver. Let us move to page 7, and let me as well maybe start by thanking our employees because I think our results are very strong for the first half of the year. As you mentioned, Oliver, it doesn't come by chance, and they have been working really hard to deliver those numbers. From my perspective, as I mentioned, I'm very pleased with those results, and they demonstrate our sustained strong momentum in terms of performance together with the resilience of our operating model as we have navigated through an environment which has seen inflation remaining sticky in some markets, some volatility in the capital markets. While the first quarter has been benign in terms of loss experience, the second quarter has been quite active from a weather perspective. In that context, we deliver a record operating profit at EUR 7.9 billion and similarly, actually a record shareholder net income at EUR 5 billion, which is almost up 8% compared to last year. What I think is particularly nice to see in those results is that all our segments have seen business volume growth over the first half and have contributed as well to profit growth into our operating profit and net income. Those results and our sustained momentum basically give us confidence towards the second half of the year and our 2024 OP guidance. Let me now move in more details into the second quarter results before we enter into our Q&A session. Let's move to page nine, and here we are looking at our results for the quarter. I think overall the strength of those results is demonstrating very well our sustained momentum that we have really been seeing building up over the last quarter. Overall, we see almost 9% growth, and our operating profit is very close to the first quarter one despite the elevated level of natural catastrophes we have seen this quarter, which just in terms of comparison compared to last year is EUR 500 million more net cap loss into the quarter. So let me start with the P&C segment. Here you can see our double-digit growth that is coming both from pricing and volume. Our combined ratio emerged at 93.5 for the second quarter, which is in line with our expectation, which are basically between 93-94 for the quarter, and that's leading to an operating profit of EUR 1.9 billion that is slightly above our quarterly expectations. As mentioned, given the elevated level of natural catastrophes we have seen this quarter, this delivery is supported by a very strong underlying performance of our business, which is particularly nice to see as we are clearly earning the benefit of all the actions we have taken to address the inflationary trends in our portfolio. If we look now at life and health, we continue here with an excellent trajectory compared to the previous quarters with EUR 1.1 billion of value of new business and a double-digit operating profit growth. On the asset management side, I think looking at the first half of the year, we have been clearly in an uncertain context when it comes to the central bank intentions, and we have seen again another quarter of double-digit net inflows in that environment. So with slightly improving cost income ratio and our third-party asset and management growth, our operating profit grew as well by close to 6% in the quarter. So overall, a very strong picture as already mentioned. Let's move to page 11 and let's look at our balance sheet overall. We maintain a very strong level of strength with our solvency ratio that is up 3 percentage points compared to previous quarter, and our sensitivities, which is a very important aspect to look at, I think given the uncertainties currently, are broadly unchanged and are pointing out to a good level of resilience of our capitalization. Page 13, if we go in a bit more detail in terms of development of our solvency ratio, we are moving up by 3 points, and basically 2 points are coming from our capital generation net of tax and dividend, which is exactly in line with our expectations for the year, which are 6-8 percentage points. The market effect that is made of plenty of effects is actually close to zero, and on the management action side that also captures multiple dimensions, we also see a positive 1 point that is emerging from our actions here. So overall, a very strong solvency position that makes us confident, and this confidence, as mentioned by Oliver, is reflected as well in our extended share buyback program of EUR 500 million that we have announced yesterday night. Let's move to P&C, and let's start by looking at our growth on page 15. Here you can see the continuation of our excellent level of growth quarter after quarter. I will say we are at 10% overall, out of which 3% are coming from volume. We see more growth in the retail segment, which is quite logical also given the inflation pattern, which is at 12%, with motor particularly high at 15%, and commercial is at 9% growth overall. When you look at this page overall, what you can see as well is that our growth is very well spread across our entities, so everybody is doing a very strong job here. You can see in particular Italy, Spain, Australia, or Germany with a particularly high level of growth. But on the commercial side as well, we continue to see growth, and maybe just to highlight on the AGCS side, while we have seen a little bit of softening of the rate, as you can see on the rate change on renewals, we continue to have clearly a line of business or geographies where we have good areas for growth. Let's move to page 17, and let's look at our operating profit for P&C. We are at EUR 1.9 billion, as I was mentioning already, and that's ahead of our outlook midpoint for the year. And I really think this is a very strong result given the elevated level of net cap we have seen this quarter. This is clearly demonstrating the strength of our diversified portfolio. We are going to look at that in a minute when we look entities by entities, but that's very strong. Our overall combined ratio is at 93.5, and basically you can see that this is supported by also our good actions on the expense side as we are continuing our productivity journey. If you look in a bit more details at retail overall, so retail quarter-to-quarter is improving by 0.5 percentage points, but in that numbers, you have a higher effect of natural catastrophes of 4 percentage points. Just like this delta gives you a sense of the underlying strength and improvement we have seen in the underlying of the portfolio. On the commercial side as well, we have seen a higher level of natural catastrophes in the quarter, and even with that effect, we are emerging at a very strong level of combined ratio at 91.3. Overall, also very strong. Let's look at our portfolio on page 19, which I think continues to be a super, super strong page that is showing the quality of the diversified portfolio we have. It's really nice overall. Clearly, you can see the impact of the large floods in South Germany that are really visible there on the German side with close to 10 percentage points higher net cap effect compared to last year into the combined ratio. And despite this, Allianz Germany or Allianz Versicherung is emerging at 99.8 combined ratio, which is a very strong performance, I think. But what you can also see here is the very strong improvement, as an example, on Australia or Latin America compared to previous years. UK is also doing a really good job at addressing the issues and emerging at a much better level of profitability. We also continue to see very strong performance from many of our entities: Italy, Central Europe, Switzerland will be other examples. And on the commercial side, AGCS is also seeing a good level of performance despite as well 5 percentage points more net cap load into their results for this quarter. And trade, which is a bit negatively impacted by a technical effect into the combined ratio, also continues to operate at an excellent combined ratio. So really overall, a very, very strong page from my perspective. Page 21, you can see that our operating profit investment result is slightly up. As we are actually, we move now to the IFRS 17 world, so we are earning the benefits of the higher yield levels into the operating investment results, but they are more or less neutralized by the higher interest accretion we have to pay as an offset unwinding of the previous year discounting benefits. So over time, if rates keep stable, you would expect this effect to continue going forward. So let me recap on P&C. For the quarter, we deliver an operating profit at 26% of our outlook midpoint guidance despite an elevated level of natural catastrophes. For both commercial and retail, our growth momentum continues. For retail, in terms of profitability, we see clearly the earnings of our pricing actions, which are coming through as we expected. And on commercial, we continue to operate at a very good underlying level of profitability. All of that clearly puts us on a good trajectory for the future. And let me move now to life and health on page 23. Here you can see as well the continuation of the new business momentum we have seen in the first quarter. Our PVNBP is up 6.5%, but in reality, actually, if you adjust for a large Allianz Re contract we had in 2023, we are up 15%, which is even stronger. And you can see that very clearly on the page when you look at our various portfolios and what is the level of growth they are showing up, which is really demonstrating how the growth is widespread into our life and health book. Even the U.S. had actually a very strong quarter, as last year we had a promotion that was not repeated in Q2 2024, which is basically explaining the delta you see. This growth has been done at an excellent level of new business margin at 5.8%, and that's leading us to a value of new business of EUR 1.1 billion, which is basically in line with last year. So overall, clearly an excellent development on the new business side on the life and health side. Now let's move to our CSM, which basically is our forward-looking stock of margin to come. And here also we see developments which are very well in line with our expectations. First of all, the level of profit we are releasing to come into our operating profit is in line with our expectations, so we expect 8%-9% per year. So here we are emerging with EUR 1.2 billion for the quarter. And as well, our future build-up of the CSM, which is a normalized CSM growth, is as well close to our expectations. We always have a bit of seasonality in the second quarter and third quarter. If you look at the first half of the year overall, we have built a normalized CSM growth of 3% against the 5% we expect for the full year. So again, strong development also forward-looking. In the movements of the CSM, we almost had no economic movements for the quarter, and on the non-economic side, you see a down of EUR 300 million, which is basically mainly related to the lapse activity we have seen. On the sensitivity side, which I think again are very relevant given the environment we are living into, they are broadly unchanged compared to previous quarter, and they are clearly confirming the robustness of our CSM against market movements. Let's move to page 27, and here you can see as well very clean translation from our CSM release to the operating profit. We see less movements in the negative variances, and we see as well, which I'd like to also highlight, higher results from our pure unit link business, which is coming into that line item other operating, where both actually Italy and Mexico have been performing very well and contributing nicely as well to our operating profit. What you can also see on this page, I think nicely on the right-hand side, is a nice build-up of the diversification in terms of contribution of operating profit from our various business unit and geographies, which is very visible on that page. So overall on life, we continue to see a strong growth at very good margin level together with growing CSM, which is positioning as well for the second half of the year too. Let's move to asset management on page 19. As mentioned here, I think we have clearly seen a bit of uncertainty given the inflation landscape and the debate on the timing of the central bank rate cuts, which is impacting the development of our asset management business. But in that context, we have seen EUR 14 billion of net inflows, which together with the EUR 30 billion of net inflows we have seen in the first quarter means a 5% growth of our third-party assets under management year to date, which is a very good level of growth. And also, which is basically leading to the revenue growth we are seeing on page 31, which is clearly driven by our assets under management, while our margins basically are slightly down but very stable if you look at it also quarter after quarter. So a lot of work as well going into that. And our performance fees, which have normalized compared to last year and are fully in line with our expectations. In terms of operating profit on page 33, we see a growth here of 6% that is supported by our stable cost-income ratio. Without the performance fees effect, which is always a bit volatile, clearly from one quarter to another one, our operating profit growth is at 10%, which again is clearly very strong. If we look a little bit more into the details of our two asset managers, so PIMCO clearly emerged with a growth of above 6% for the quarter with a cost-income ratio that is improving, and AGI is as well contributing very nicely to the operating profit growth, also close to 6% growth with a cost-income ratio that is slightly higher compared to last year, but that's a seasonality effect, and we expect also the cost-income ratio to improve and normalize down a little bit towards the end of the year. So overall on asset management, our operating profit is in line with our full-year guidance, and we are very well positioned to capture the market momentum if the direction of rates clarify, which clearly makes us confident as well for the second half of the year. Corporate segment I will simply skip because it's much better than expected. On page 37, also I think a very clean page. You can see the translation from our operating profit to net income. I think maybe the only elements I would like to highlight is that our tax rate is higher compared to last year, but is clearly at our normalized level. It's more that last year we had some positive one-off contribution. So overall, this leads us to a shareholder net income of EUR 2.5 billion, which clearly positions us very well towards our yearly trajectory. Let's move to page 39, and let me wrap up here. So overall, I think a very pleasing first half of the year, both from a performance and a resilience perspective, given the strength of the contribution of both all our segments and our various business units. Our capital position is strong, and while you can always see volatility in our numbers, the overall situation mid-year makes us confident to fully meet our financial trajectory for the year. This confidence is clearly reflected in the extension of our share buyback program by EUR 500 million. As things stand now for 2024, we have a total payout of EUR 6.9 billion with our new 60% dividend payout policy and EUR 1.5 billion share buyback, which I think is a very strong level in terms of payout. I think this is clearly demonstrating our commitment to attractive shareholder return, while in parallel, we continue to optimize our capital deployment as shared already by Oliver when it comes to our M&A optimization approach. With that, I hand over back to you, Frank, for Q&A. Thank you very much, Claire-Marie. Before we start the Q&A, please let me mention some housekeeping items. As usual, we will answer all questions in English, but if you're more comfortable to ask your question in German, please feel free to do so, and we will repeat it back in English for everyone else on the call to understand. If you want to ask a question during the Q&A session, press the talk request button on the web audio call or star five if you have joined via telephone. If you have an IP-based telephone, this may cause technical problems for you. If this is the case, please email media.contact@allianz.com, and we can assist you with your setup, or we can take your question and ask it on your behalf. The first question on the call comes from Michael Flämig from Börsen-Zeitung. Michael, your line is open. Michael, can you hear us? Jetzt hatte gerade der Operator gesagt, der Ton der Leitung sei aktiviert. Hören Sie mich?[Foreign Language] Yeah, we can hear you well. Okay, great. Hello, Mr. Coste-Lepoutre, Mr. Bäte, Mr. Stoffel. I have three questions, please. The first one, do you think Allianz will reach the upper end of the forecast range this year? The second one, which are the biggest risks in the next five months until year-end? And the last one, Mr. Bäte, you told that the US mid-corp and entertainment business was sold. The financials are a bit difficult to understand, but in the interim report, it is written that there is no material net income impact from this transaction. Nevertheless, it's signaled as a loss portfolio transfer. So this business has a very long history with Allianz. Have you got a number? What loss has Allianz suffered since the portfolio was taken over? Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Let me start with your question on the outlook. So at this point in time, clearly we see good developments into our business, as I was highlighting during the presentation, given the strength in terms of growth and operating profit clearly. But we are in the insurance business, right? And we can always see in the second quarter of the year some natural catastrophes in particular, but as well as indicated by Oliver, I think the overall environment we are operating into is a very complex one. So at this point in time, it's too early for us to bring any further perspective into our outlook. So we confirm the 14.8. We feel good about it, and we also confirm the range around it. Maybe coming on your last question related to the divestment of the U.S. mid-corp portfolio, you will see the effects in the third quarter results. You should not expect to see big swings coming from that divestment. So that will come with small effects, also possibly some small distortions into some of our KPIs, but nothing to worry about. And maybe in terms of biggest risk for the second half of the year, I will say as always, right? I mean, we have seen weather activities is always there. So I think for us, while we are doing an extremely good job, I think at pricing, at diversifying our portfolio, as you can see also in the first half of the year, the strength of our diversified portfolio, that's always something we are managing carefully. And also there are announcements with further building up weather events for the second half of the year. So that's always something to keep in mind. Then I think the overall, I mean, the overall economic and geopolitical environment is something we are carefully navigating. We feel comfortable given the strength, again, of our diversified portfolio, but we are not immunized against all the type of events that may come through from that perspective. Okay, great. Have you got an aggregated number? What you have invested in the U.S. mid-corp business and which losses you suffered there? No, I do not. Okay, thank you. Maybe one thing what we are not worried about, because typically investors are worried about it, is we have very little exposure to volatility in the equity markets. We have carefully decided quite a while ago to try to hedge at a very high level equity market volatility. And you see that also in the solvency numbers, which is one of the reasons why it's so low. So we are not worried about the flash crash you've seen in Japan and others because we've deliberately taken to hedge that at a very, very high level. So that's one thing we are less worried about. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mr. Flämig. Our next question comes from Tom Sims from Thomson Reuters. Tom, your line is open. Hi, I assume you can hear me. Sort of related to that last element that you mentioned, Mr. Bäte, so a question for Allianz as a major investor in light of the big swings in financial markets. So what is generally the outlook for markets now? Have you made any position changes or adjustments in your portfolio? And are there any pockets of the market that look too risky right now? Thank you for the question. I'll do it very quickly. Over the last few quarters, you have seen increasing volatility, so it's nothing really new. What's really new is how very small changes you saw that in Japan, 15 basis points rise in rates, and a few other things can create a significant crash at a very short period of time and unwinding the biggest carry trade probably of my time. And that is what we have to be prepared for. And nobody saw that coming. So that's the second thing. It's very, very hard to predict. We don't know what people will do on rates volatility. So therefore, our position is defensive across all asset classes. People tend to forget, because we have a lot of assets to invest, that we focus on very high-quality assets. We do not take highly leveraged positions in almost everything we do, at least as far as I know. I always, as a CEO, hope to know, but you never know everything. But from everything we see, this has paid out extremely well. The other thing we look through daily volatility, we have a very long-term business model. So some of that volatility is pricing noise. Why do I say that? We always get lots of questions on real estate. And this is a really funny way to look at. We have an extremely high-quality real estate portfolio. Anybody that has to sell at the moment has to sell at huge discounts. And then the question is, what is the portfolio worth? And my answer would be, it depends. It depends on whether you have to sell. If you have to sell, then you're in trouble. If you don't have to sell, and we never have to sell, you're not in trouble. So we have really strong bases. So we keep on managing not just the quality of the investment portfolio carefully, but what is often overlooked, the liquidity of the business very carefully. So that is something that I think investors need to pay more attention to when they look at financial institutions. We have the benefits, and that's true for insurers overall in difference to banks, that we have very little run risk. So that is something that people overlook. But our exposure is conservative. The second one, as I comment, where people, I think, are not paying enough attention to is the issue, and this stems still from the time when Central Bank were anesthetizing investors in the bond market by what is called, I don't even want to use the name, but quantitative easing, which is sort of in and of itself a funny word. Why do I say that? The level of indebtedness of public households is really scary, and it's now getting to the United States. Now, to be fair, they have the reserve currency of the world. But even there, I would spend a lot more time looking at very fundamental debt dynamics, and there we are also very careful on not just corporate credit risk, but also sovereign risk. And remember, in financial institutions, investment in sovereign risk, particularly domestic, is seen to be risk-free. Nothing could be more wrong than that. It's not risk-free. Remember, the only G7 country in the world that has a triple-A rating today is Germany. And this is where we are at home. Thank you. Thank you very much, Tom. Our next question comes from Jean-Philippe Lacour from AFP. Jean-Philippe, your line is open. Yes. Good morning, Mr. Bäte. Bonjour, Madame Coste-Lepoutre. I have a question on the Olympics. They were not mentioned among the highlights during your presentation. It's logical because they are ongoing, the games in this quarter. Nevertheless, they are the main insurer of the event. And do you expect a very positive return at this stage, given the absence of significant damage linked to all the exposures you have? And let's cross fingers that it stays that way, of course. And do you already have an idea of the return of your investment in this event, generally for the image awareness of Allianz and the business? Bonjour. So basically, maybe first of all, there is a highlight, which is on the cover page related to the Olympics, where we have the Olympics logo. So I think the finance team decided that it would be nice to do something, given that we are into the Olympic environment, and we try to stay committed working on the numbers while everybody's enjoying watching the Olympics. So I think overall, given the enthusiasm that is rising around the Olympics and the fact that so many communities actually are really engaging around the Olympics, we definitely consider that the Olympics are great, and they are really contributing extremely well to what we wanted also to do via the Olympics, which is bringing people together around watching as a community, athletes who are basically engaging in terms of performance, but also fitting to the message that we were mentioning today. Also, some of them going through some strong resilience, right? So I think it's resonating very well with our core messages around performance and resilience and bringing community together. So we feel that this is contributing extremely well to our brand overall. Remember that the brand value of the Allianz Group is EUR 20 billion. So definitely, I think that's a worthwhile investment that is also contributing further to the build-up of our brand. And cheers to France. I have to say, we were at the opening, and I've seen some other things despite the rain initially. It's probably one of the most successful Olympics, and I want to shed some more color since I was the guy inventing the partnership with them. These are not just one of the most successful games in terms of creating enthusiasm. And to answer your question, the return is very positive without giving you the numbers, but it's also very positive for our people. The Olympic contribution that Allianz does is one of the top five contributors to employee motivation in the group at the moment. So it's super important for our people inside of Allianz. They're super proud, and that is not to be underestimated. So it's not just the customer side, just to add to what Claire-Marie said. It's internally a massive driver of pride and engagement. And we have made sure that part of the way we run this, many of our employees and many of our customer service staff get actually to see the Olympics, which is rather unusual. So we don't run it as a celebrity shop, as it's sometimes being perceived. The second thing is it's also one of the most sustainable Olympic Games ever, which is very important as Allianz stands for that there's been a lot of criticism. How does that not create? It's just not true. It's another sort of fact fact. I have to just applaud the team in Paris for using existing facilities and rather building out new things that end up being dead in the wood. It was a big bet, particularly by the mayor, who I wish she gets criticized for many things. I can only applaud the lady for this one, using the so beautiful and actually, as we found out, practical capabilities to have them. So when it will be all over, you will find out that the footprint that the games have left are strongly emotional, but they're actually very little physically. And it's also something to say. It's the first Olympic Games, and you know that I personally in Allianz care for where you have 50% of the athletes being men and women. So this is the first time ever. So there has been enormous progress under Thomas Bach, who again is not always getting the credit for what he's doing because it's very hard to organize Olympic Games. So I can only congratulate the IOC and particularly the French team for putting up an amazing event. And we are very proud to be part of the movement. Okay. Thank you for the color and too bad for the figures, the numbers, but maybe they come later. Thank you, Jean-Philippe. Let's move to Alexander Hübner from Reuters, please. Alexander, your line is open. Alexander, can you hear us? We can't hear you, Alexander. So if you wouldn't mind redialing in, please, or asking your question again. Until then, we move to Stefan Karl from Bloomberg, please. Yes. Hello and thanks for giving me the chance to ask a question. Actually, it kind of refers to the portfolio we were talking about earlier in the call. I was wondering what role private credit actually does play in Allianz's portfolio and how you, Mr. Bäte, look at the asset class in gene ral at the moment. I'll leave that to Claire for a second, but be careful. It's my top-down answer where Claire looks up the data. So I would like to say a couple of things where we give you then the facts a little bit. One, we have been a lender, by the way, very few people know this, for the history of Allianz, so 134 years. For example, we are one of the significant mortgage issuers in this country through Allianz Leben. That's often forgotten. So that's a form of, if you want to say so, private credit that we've been always doing. We're not new in this. Second thing is we've also done private lending in German called Schuldscheindarlehen for many, many decades. So it's not an area. Now, there's a rush into it as the banks through Basel III are being charged much higher capital. They'd like to have either securitized this business into people with lower cost of capital that they think may be us or even us. So we are investing there, but we are really cautious. We only go into high-quality private credit. We have very strict underwriting guidelines, and we don't believe that the rush that we see there and the hype is warranted. In fact, I am personally very nervous when all the private credit houses are now trying to think about an IPO. You typically want to know whether that's a great time to invest in the asset class. But maybe some numbers from Claire-Marie. Definitely. So basically, in terms of private debt, we have EUR 135 billion at the end of the second quarter invested into alternative debts. And that's basically steaming through, as mentioned by Oliver, a very well-diversified portfolio of non-commercial mortgages, some commercial mortgages, some infrastructure debt, or some further private placement where we have been basically investing for many years with very high-quality portfolios. So that's the nutshell view on our portfolio. And we are always happy to follow up with more insights if you want. Okay. Thank you so much to you both. Thank you, Stefan. Let's move to Alexander Hübner again, please. Alexander, your line is open. Hello. I hope you can understand me now. I've dialed in via telephone now. Can you hear me? Yeah, we can hear you well. Okay. Good. Some more detailed questions. Sorry for that. One, you mentioned the acquisition of Income Insurance in Singapore. As to media reports, there seem to be some opposition to this acquisition in Singapore because of the nature of the business that until now. Can you elaborate a bit on that? How do you see the chance to get this deal really done? Another question on CrowdStrike. What's your point? What's your opinion on that? Will this hit Allianz somehow? And if not, why? And the last one, the three events with Taylor Swift in Vienna have been canceled last night. I'm not sure whether you're involved in that. Can you help us a bit in explaining how these music events are insured and what could be payable in this event? Let me start with Income, if I may. So it's a really interesting story because it's many years of collaboration and work on this. So the key concern, just to frame the so-called noise, happened first and foremost when Income, which was a mutual company, or the correct legal description is a cooperative, started to be corporatized, I put into a corporate format more than three years ago. And exactly the same people voiced, which I, by the way, understandable concern, whether the Social Security system support that Income Insurance as part of enterprise had supported the working class of Singapore for many decades would keep its focus on providing affordable healthcare, P&C insurance, and life insurance for the working class in Singapore. This is the key concern. And it was, again, quite a debate when the corporatization happened a few years ago. There's also a small aspect of it because a number of the so-called members of the cooperative became shareholders as part of the conversion. It was a debate on how would they be treated relative to other members that are not part of it. Through a number of years, we were able to convince the Singaporean community enterprise at the lead of it. It's an important part because more than one-third of the Singaporean citizens are directly or indirectly a client, but most of them directly of Income. And the position of Income was even stronger a number of years ago. I'll talk about that in a second. The key part was helping that Income would really keep up and stay up to the challenges that are there in a world that is getting more and more difficult. Because, for example, there used to be once upon a time the leader in life insurance, and they're now number 5 and 6, and they lost positions over the years. They were the leader in health insurance and now a very strong number three, and they still are the leader in P&C. So the idea of the community was we need to bring in a partner that helps us to make the leap forward. And it's very important that this is a partnership. We are not buying 100% now. We're buying 51% and taking entrepreneurial accountability for helping this very important community institutions to make the leap forward. And we are fully committed to the cause of Income in supplying affordable access to insurance and healthcare covers because that's what's really needed. And I could spend an hour on what the challenges are. For us, it is clearly an invitation to become part of the fabric of the Singaporean family and community. And we are very thankful for this opportunity because it's unique. It's never been done this way. And we are bringing the best of what Allianz can do. By the way, particularly from Germany there, our old-age provision system, particularly Pillar II, group life through employers is something Singapore doesn't have that comes with much lower acquisition costs, for example, than normally you get that through banks and agents. So that is something where we're really going to push. The strong success we had with Allianz Krankenversicherung in Germany to really work with the supplier to contain healthcare cost inflation and therefore keeping and making healthcare supplemental healthcare insurance affordable. These are just two examples of what we are planning to bring to the community. So I understand the concern, but to your concrete questions, we do not expect this thing to be derailed as we move forward. Let me answer your question on CrowdStrike. So first of all, I think like many companies, we have been impacted operationally by CrowdStrike. And I think also here I can thank the team because they have done a very good job at putting us back on track swiftly. So here it has been a really nice experience. Now let me come back to the cyber question, so basically to the cyber insurance question. So first of all, I think cyber insurance is an area where we have always been quite cautious in terms of underwriting, but at the same time being there in terms of underwriting because that's a very relevant risk also for the future for us to understand well. Our first actions related to cyber insurance has been to work quite extensively on our portfolio, actually to make cyber explicit, so to move away from the silent cyber into our policies. So that has been successful, which means basically we are working with explicit cyber policies. Secondly, we take a razor-cautious approach when it comes to the limits we are underwriting for cyber. We are looking for diversification, and we have as well a strong reinsurance program in place. So this cyber event per se is a bit of a technical event as well because it's related to a technical failure. And typically, technical failure will not be covered by cyber policies unless this is explicitly basically underwritten. And so usually it's more related to corporates, this type of coverage. And so overall, I will say at this point in time, it's still a bit early to really assess the event, but we would expect to emerge at a low- to mid-double-digit EUR million loss for us. So nothing to be worried about from that perspective. And maybe the last question, sorry, on Taylor Swift. Please allow us to understand that we do not comment on a standalone event. So this one I cannot answer at this point in time. Thank you very much, Claire-Marie. Let's move to Maximilian Foltz from Plato, b rief, please. Maximilian, your line is open. Thank you very much for taking my question. It's a small one. You and some direct competitors sold non-insurance parts of their business, especially the movie business in the U.S. and parts of Allianz Global Investors in the U.S. What is your approach? Do you want to grow in the non-insurance business or concentrate on the core business? And is there a swing from American continent to Asia? You spoke from Singapore as the Swiss of Asia. Thank you very much. So I think first of all, if you look at our overall operation, our overall activities in the U.S., we are very strong in the U.S., right? You have PIMCO very strongly in the U.S. You also have Allianz Life that is operating on the life and health segment and growing extensively as well as we have been seeing. So we are definitely there. And in addition to that, we are also in the U.S. via our so-called global lines, right? We are the number one travel insurer as an example in the U.S. So Allianz Partners is definitely strong there. And Allianz Commercial is as well operating in the U.S. more on the large corporate side. So the reason why we have decided to exit our mid-corp business is simply related to the logic of our operating model, right? We believe to be really able to perform from a strategic and financial perspective into our markets. We need to be in the leadership position in the top three. And that was very, it was not really possible to achieve as a position for our US mid-corp business. So that's why we have decided to go along those lines. Then definitely in terms of capital deployment, you have seen we see a lot of opportunities in Asia, but we also see further consolidation opportunities as an example in Europe. So we are also looking as well at, in particular, maybe distribution opportunities which are at the convergence between our life and our asset management business also across the globe. So we are definitely not disengaging from the US overall. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you, Claire-Marie. Can we get the next question from Ben Dyson from S&P Global Market Intelligence, please? Ben, your line is open. Hi, good morning. Yeah, I just wanted to ask a bit about Allianz's M&A strategy and get a bit of an update there. I'm following on from the Income Insurance acquisition. What other areas you might be looking into and whether the expanded share buyback suggests that perhaps there aren't that many opportunities out there, at least for large-scale M&A for Allianz? Thank you very much. Yeah, thank you, Ben, for the question. Nothing has changed. We are trying to balance very strong returns of capital and on capital for our shareholders. By the way, second quarter 17% ROE. The long-term average for Allianz until a while ago was below 10%. So we have very strong return on the invested capital. Whatever we don't need, we return. On M&A, we are very selective, as you see, very clear on what we want to achieve, very well prepared for a long time. We typically don't participate in auctions, but we have a very clear strategy when and how we want to grow and at appropriate returns. It's nothing that has changed. Growing out where we believe the growth is, and as Claire-Marie clearly has said, where we can be a leader in the market. It's also important to come back to Income. One of the reasons why we've done it, it's the leader in P&C. It can be one of the—it's already top three. It can be one of the top two in health. And there is a lot more to be done in life. So we don't want to buy something where we are in an also-ran. That is not something we really like to do. We want to complement what we have to build our leadership position. This is in a nutshell. Nothing has changed. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ben. May I just remind everybody, if you would like to ask a question, press the talk request button on the web audio call or star five if you have joined via telephone. Our next question comes from Ulrike Dauer from Dow Jones Newswires. Ulrike, your line is open. Ulrike, you have disappeared from the queue. Can you please try to dial in again? Okay. This was the last question actually for today. This would conclude today's conference call. We thank you very much for your attention and for your interest in Allianz. We will report our financial results for the third quarter on November 13th. We are very much looking forward to continuing our exchange then. For those that did take their vacation already, we hope you still feel refreshed and your batteries are recharged. For those that still have their vacation ahead of them, like many of us, we wish you a relaxing time off. Godbye.