Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I welcome you to today's Hannover Re international conference call on Q2 2021 financial results. For your information, this conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to hand the call over to your host today, Mr. Jean-Jacques Henchoz, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you very much, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our conference call presenting our results for the first half of this year. As usual, I will start with an overview before our CFO Clemens Jungsthöfel goes over the financials in detail. I will comment on the outlook for the year thereafter. For the Q&A, I am additionally joined by my board colleagues, Klaus Miller on the Life and Health side, and Sven Althoff for P&C. I am pleased to report that with a group net income of EUR 671 million, Hannover Re has successfully taken the next step towards achieving its full-year guidance. Additionally, we continue to grow our business at attractive terms. At 12.2%, the return on equity returned to pre-COVID levels, even though the results of our Life and Health business group were still impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Gross premium increased by 14.2%, adjusted for currency effect. This is mainly driven by our Property and Casualty business group, where we recorded continued strong top-line growth on the back of improving market conditions. The price improvements in P&C markets also support the technical profitability of our portfolio, which is in line with expectations at a very healthy level. Overall, large losses stayed within the budget, thanks to a benign impact from natural catastrophes in the first half. In addition, our net estimate for COVID-19- related losses remained unchanged compared to year-end 2020. Hence, the combined ratio of 96% is a good reflection of the underlying profitability in the first half year, and additionally, we have built up a further buffer of EUR 150 million for large losses in the second half of the year. As mentioned, the ongoing global pandemic is still having an impact on Life and Health reinsurance results. The main insurance market affected by COVID-related excess mortality continues to be the U.S., even though as expected, the numbers decreased over the course of the first half year. Outside of the U.S., we recorded losses, in particular in South Africa, where Hannover Re also has a strong market position. All in all, losses connected to COVID-19 amounted to EUR 263 million in the first six months. As already disclosed in Q1, the restructuring within our U.S. mortality portfolio led to a positive one-off effect of EUR 129 million, partly mitigating the COVID impact. Finally, we recorded pleasing premium growth of 7.3%, adjusted for currency effects. At 2.7%, the return on investment is ahead of our expectations, driven by favorable ordinary income. The capitalization according to Solvency II continue to be excellent, confirmed by our strong solvency ratio of 250% at the end of the second quarter, well above our threshold of 200%. The operating cash flow in the first half of 2021 was particularly strong at EUR 2.7 billion, mainly driven by attractive reinsurance growth as well as very favorable results on the investment side. The figure for the first quarter included a positive one-off from the restructuring within our U.S. mortality portfolio of EUR 640 million. Driven by this positive cash flow, total assets under own management increased to a record high of EUR 52.8 billion. This growth was additionally supported by Forex effects and the issuance of EUR 750 million in hybrid capital in March this year. This new bond issuance is also visible on the next slide, bringing our total hybrid capital to EUR 3 billion. We still have flexibility in regards to our total hybrid capacity, and shareholders' equity is up by 0.5%, which is quite positive, bearing in mind that we paid the dividends in the second quarter. However, the group net income in the first half of 2021 was already sufficient to comfortably cover this dividend payment. Finally, the change in OCI was only slightly negative because negative valuation effects were mitigated by a positive currency translation. On that note, I'd like to hand over to Clemens, who will explain the figures in more detail. Yes. Thank you, Jean-Jacques. Good morning, everyone. I hope you are all well. As Jean-Jacques mentioned, the performance of our P&C business group was very pleasing in the first half of 2021. Gross written premium grew by a remarkable 17%, adjusted for currency effects, which accounted for 5 percentage points. The growth is highly diversified, with particularly strong momentum in North America, Germany, and Southeast Asia. On top of this, we successfully expanded our structured reinsurance book, where we continued to see a very healthy demand. As already reported in the first quarter, the recognition of premium from the underwriting year 2020 supported the growth, but a s mentioned also in the first quarter, this effect will dilute over the course of the year, bringing the premium growth closer to the growth numbers we reported for our renewals. Major losses came in at EUR 326 million, clearly below our half-year budget of EUR 476 million. As you know, in line with our usual practice, we have kept the unused part of the budget within our IBNR as a buffer for the remainder of the year. Additionally, we still feel comfortable with the overall net loss estimate of EUR 950 million for COVID-19 and hence did not see a need to change anything on this front. The runoff of our reserves was at normal levels in the first half of 2021. The development in the second quarter was more favorable than in the first one. As we have not changed our conservative reserving approach, I would expect the confidence level of our reserves to be stable compared to year-end 2020. Altogether, the 96% combined ratio is fully in line with our expectation. Net investment income increased based on the strong ordinary income and lower impairments. Other income and expenses amounted to -EUR 109 million, mainly driven by negative currency effects, as we've seen in the first quarter of EUR 77 million. Altogether, the EBIT increased strongly to EUR 778 million, thanks to the improved underwriting result, which was heavily impacted by COVID losses in the previous year. Finally, the tax ratio was slightly below the normal level due to a favorable earnings contribution from lower tax subsidiaries. As mentioned, the total net large losses accounted for EUR 326 million in the first quarter, EUR 150 million below our budget. Together with the regular budget for the second half, this means we have a large loss budget of EUR 774 million available to absorb losses in the second half of this year. This is a comfortable starting point, I would say, but a s we all know, that we have already seen significant losses in the third quarter, with the biggest impact expected to come from the flooding events in Germany and neighboring countries, as well as impacts from the riots in South Africa. There is still uncertainty around the flood losses, but our initial estimate would be in the range of EUR 200 million-EUR 250 million for our net position. For the riots in South Africa, we expect a net high double-digit million loss. Adding up those losses, this means that we have started to utilize our actual Q3 budget, but more importantly, that we still have significant buffer available for the remainder of the third quarter. On the next slide, you can see that the largest individual event was the Texas winter freeze with a total net loss of EUR 136 million. This number reflects an increase compared to the end of the first quarter, which is mainly the result of late claims notifications. Still, the overall impact from natural catastrophes was below expectations. On the man-made side, we have seen an above-average frequency of losses. Altogether, we have already used up around 2/3 of the full-year budget set aside for man-made losses. The next slide, as usual, shows the technical profitability of our P&C portfolio by reporting line. The picture is a mixed one, as usual, for our highly diversified portfolio, yet w e also do see material deviations. We do not see material deviations from the target combined ratios. Large losses, like the Texas freeze and man-made losses, had an impact on the combined ratios in some of the segments, as you can see, but t he overall 96% combined ratio is fully in line with our target. On the next slide, let's move to Life and Health. The pleasing business growth is reflected both in premium and in value of new business. We were particularly successful in expanding our financial solutions business in the APAC region, and in longevity, the growth is starting to also come from outside the U.K. As Jean-Jacques mentioned, the technical result was still affected by losses in connection with COVID-19. The main impact is visible in our U.S. portfolio, where we have recorded losses of EUR 167 million. As expected, the impact in the second quarter was lower than in the first, given the progress in vaccinations. Apart from the U.S., the bulk of the losses are from South Africa. As explained at our Q1 conference call, the restructuring of parts of the ING portfolio in our U.S. mortality book led to a positive one-off effect, affecting different line items in the P&L. In total, the positive impact was EUR 129 million, partly mitigating the COVID-19 losses. Furthermore, the underlying mortality experience in the second quarter was more favorable than in previous years. The ordinary investment income was, I would say, in line with expectations. The fair value of financial instruments decreased materially, and the negative impact was driven by the valuation of a derivative embedded in a life insurance contract in the first quarter, as we've reported in the first quarter already. While in the second quarter, the valuation increased slightly. Other income and expenses are mainly driven by a further increase in the contribution from our financial solutions business, a large portion of which is recognized according to the deposit accounting method. Currency effects were slightly positive in the first half year, and altogether, the EBIT of EUR 179 million is satisfactory, and a djusted for the different positive and negative extraordinary effect, actually slightly better than expected. On the next slide, as usual, we also have a look at the non-IFRS metric for business growth in Life and Health, the value of new business according to Solvency II. On this slide, you can see that we were quite active in all reporting categories and also the pipeline for new business remains healthy. The business opportunities we have seen and are seeing going forward are highly diversified, but the opportunities are particularly good in developed markets and by reporting categories in the area of financial solutions. Looking at the indicator for new business value at the bottom, we have achieved roughly half of the full-year target, but a s you know, transactions in Life and Health are often rather bulky, and the value of new business is also closely linked to the duration of the business written. In any case, I think it's fair to say we are well on track in terms of new business production in Life and Health. The next slide, the investments. The development of our investments in the first quarter of 2021 was very satisfactory in the first half. The ordinary investment income is particularly strong. This is mainly driven by increased contribution from our alternative investments. I wouldn't say that these contributions are extraordinary, but the distributions of our private equity funds can naturally be volatile from quarter to quarter. This also means that one should not simply extrapolate those returns for the remainder of the year. Further drivers for the strong ordinary results are the increased asset volume and the slight strategic shift in our asset allocation, which is certainly helping to stabilize the book yield in our fixed income portfolio. Realized gains are mainly the result of normal portfolio management, and around EUR 50 million are linked to the partial disposal of listed equities in the first quarter. Impairments and depreciations decreased compared to the previous quarter, where we had recorded some impairments in the volatile market environment. This year's number is more or less at expected low levels, I would say, to a large extent, comprising regular depreciation on our real estate investments. As explained in my comments on Life and Health, the derivatives valuation was negative. The overall return on investments was 2.7%, meaning that we are on a very good path to achieving our full-year target of roughly 2.4%. Unrealized gains decreased by around EUR 500 million, mainly due to the increase in interest rates, and particularly in the first quarter. In the second quarter, we've seen some reversing trends, bringing the total to a very high level of EUR 3 billion. On the next slide, a quick glance on the asset allocation. I think the asset allocation has developed pretty much in line with our strategy. The most notable change, as you can see, is that we've slightly increased the share of corporates to 32%. Here, we invested according to, I would say, a broad-based approach with a focus on developed markets. The contribution to ordinary investment income is diversified as usual. The highlight is probably the recovery, as mentioned, in the contribution from private equity to the very strong levels we had seen before the market volatility caused by the pandemic in 2020. On the next slide, for the first time, we have also included the final result of the 2020 Annual Reserve Review by Willis Towers Watson, which we usually, as you know, publish for our Investors Day. This year, the report was available ahead of the Q2 publication, and hence we thought it would not make sense to withhold that information until October. Looking at the numbers, the overall redundancy level and the increase by EUR 80 million in the year 2020 should not be surprising because it's fully in line with our comments from March. Still, it confirms again that the result we achieved in a challenging year 2020 was not at the cost of our reserving quality and that the buffer of more than EUR 1.5 billion remains to be very comfortable. To conclude my remarks, the overall result for the first half of 2021 does include a few larger, extraordinary effects. Both the reported net income and the underlying business development very much support our guidance for the full year. I hereby hand back to you, Jean-Jacques, for the target matrix and for the outlook. Thank you, Clemens. A look at our target matrix confirms the successful business development in the first six months of this year. Growth is significantly ahead of the strategic targets and our main profitability target for the group, the return on equity, is well above our minimum target. The EBIT growth targets in P&C and Life and Health are somewhat distorted by COVID claims. The targets are more oriented towards normalized growth over the course of the strategic cycle. The mid-year treaty renewals were, again, successful for Hannover Re. We were able to further grow our business at improved pricing. One could argue that the price increase of 3.2% in total and 6.4% in non-proportional business is a slowdown compared to the January and April renewals. However, I'd like to point out that the rate increases in the mid-year renewals in 2020 were the strongest in terms of rate increases for Hannover Re, and therefore, the 3.2% rate increase achieved this year comes on top of a higher basis than in January and April. In North America, one important driver is the continued positive trend in primary insurance markets both in terms of pricing and volume growth. Both factors have a direct positive impact on our proportional portfolio because we wrote the business at overall stable commission levels. In Australia and Latin America, rate increases were most visible in loss-affected areas. The development in credit and surety was slightly more stable, but here too, the quality and volume of our book went up. Altogether, the growth rate of 14.7% is the highest in this year's P&C renewals, and I'm very pleased with the overall outcome of these mid-year renewals. This brings us directly to the next slide. Looking back at all important renewal dates in 2021, the expectation for the full financial year looks quite favorable. The volume in most areas is going up at attractive profitability levels for the entire portfolio. Clemens already flagged the pickup in loss activity in the third quarter, which, together with the outcome of the hurricane season and other loss activity, will determine the profitability levels and also the momentum for further price increases in 2022. In general, I'd expect the underlying pressure for rate increases in reinsurance to carry on to the next year, mainly because interest rates are expected to stay on a low level, and also climate change-related loss trends, which again became visible with the recent flood and drought events, will not only further support the need for pricing discipline, but should also act as a driver on the demand side. Finally, the currently higher inflation levels will also have to be reflected in the upcoming pricing negotiations. In Life and Health reinsurance, growth is expected to be well-supported by our strategic initiatives and most pronounced in financial solutions and longevity. In both cases, the profitability expectations are clearly above the cost of capital. In mortality, there remains uncertainty around the further development of the pandemic. Excess mortality will be most visible in countries where progress with vaccination programs is slow. However, the trend in deaths in countries where vaccination programs have slowed at a higher level is also dependent on the management of the pandemic in the respective countries. In particular, in the important U.S. market, we have not seen a reversal of the decreasing numbers of COVID-related deaths. The premium in mortality is expected to be stable, and the same applies for the overall development in morbidity. As mentioned earlier by Clemens, the business development in the first half of 2021 is in line with our guidance for the full year. The improved technical result in P&C is fully in line with expectations, and our COVID-19 reserving in P&C is confirmed to be adequate at EUR 950 million net. Additionally, the losses already impacting the third quarter do not have an immediate impact on the guidance because we have a large loss budget of EUR 774 million available for losses occurring in the second half. COVID losses in Life and Health were slightly higher than expected. On the other hand, the performance of our investment portfolio is ahead of expectations for the full year. Even though some factors within our guidance deviate from our initial planning, we continue to feel comfortable with the guidance for group net income and have kept it unchanged. Also unchanged is our positive view on the dividend policy and the potential to pay a special dividend if profit targets are reached and our capitalization remains strong. This concludes my remarks, and w e would be happy to answer your questions. Thank you very much. We will now begin our question-and-answer session. If you have a question for our speakers, please dial zero one on your telephone keypad now to enter the queue. Once your name has been announced, you can ask a question. If you find your question is answered before it's your turn to speak, you can dial zero two to cancel your question. If you're using a speaker equipment today, please lift your handset before making your selection. One moment please for the first question. Our first question comes from Vikram Gandhi, Societe Generale. Please go ahead. Your line is now open. Oh, hello. Good morning, everybody. I've got three questions, all related to P&C. Firstly, appreciate the COVID loss estimate is unchanged at EUR 950 million, but i f you can shed some light on the moving parts within that EUR 950 million, whether some of your estimates are going down, some are going up, let's say credit and surety coming in a bit benign, BI going up. Any color there would be appreciated. Secondly, can you help us with the overall level of IBNRs within that EUR 950 million? Thirdly, if you can help us understand how the runoff result has developed over the second quarter on P&C, that would be great. Thank you. Thank you. Sven will address your questions. Yes, good morning also from my side. Happy to give you a little more insight into our COVID numbers. You already heard from Jean-Jacques that the net numbers stayed at EUR 950 million at the year-end closing 2020. We had very little movement on the gross side of the loss. We saw some additional claims coming in from the contingency event cancellation business, which was roughly EUR 30 million higher compared to the previous quarter. All other areas developed very stable, so t his is the only marketable increase on the gross loss. The reason why the net position stayed unchanged is that due to cedent advisories, more of the property claims moved from bulk IBNR into treaty-specific reserving so that we could book those losses against our retrocessional structures, keeping the net position overall unchanged. On the credit and surety side, you're right. What we have seen so far is a relatively low level of reserves coming in relation to the EUR 235 million we have booked on that side. We have not decided to reduce that number in the second quarter. We will obviously closely monitor that situation, but I would say that in that EUR 235 million, we are starting to see some prudency by now. When it comes to the distribution of paid versus IBNR losses on COVID, we saw an increase of the paid number going from 15% from the first quarter to 21% in the second quarter, which of course, is fully in line with expectations. The overall level of IBNR, be that bulk or be that treaty-specific IBNR, is still at the level of 54%. We currently feel rather comfortably reserved with our EUR 950 million on the P&C side. When it comes to the runoff result in general, the first half of the year, the second quarter in particular, did not show any development which were outside of expectations. The ordinary runoff result for the second quarter stand-alone was a +EUR 190 million. As I said, fully in line with our expectations. Okay, thank you very much. Our next question comes from Andrew Ritchie, Autonomous. Please go ahead. Your line is now open. Hi there. Good morning. First question, apologies if I ask this every renewal, but I wonder, Sven, if you could just recap, again, how we should think about the reflection of pricing changes on proportional business. I guess, I think effectively, you're not obviously reflecting the underlying original change in pricing. You're just reflecting any changes in ceding terms. Maybe, if you just give us a bit of color again around that, to the extent to which the headline price doesn't necessarily reflect the underlying economics of the business. Second question, related to pricing. I guess I'm just interested in an opinion on European cat pricing and then the outlook. For years, it's been regarded as a diversifier, and t herefore, it gets heavily subsidized, and the pricing doesn't necessarily react too much to loss experience. Do you think that's going to change with the effect of these losses and/or higher profile or higher awareness of risk? The final question was on the reserve surplus for the year-end 2020. How is COVID reflected in that? I'm assuming the COVID claims are not part of that reserve surplus. There's no assumed surplus on the COVID claim within the reserves, but I'm more interested in the good news that COVID helped, particularly in terms of benign frequency, because I think everyone experienced a technical increase in reserve surplus in 2020 because ex-COVID claims notifications were benign. How has that been reflected in the analysis? Thanks. Yeah, let me start with your question on the pricing side, Andrew. The pricing effect on the pro rata side is of course, mainly driven by the change in terms and conditions, so r eduction in ceding commission, for example. We are also reflecting some of the pricing increases we are seeing from our ceding companies. In the primary market, when we are looking at price adjusted improvements, we always take a haircut on the increase that we are seeing on the insurance side f or the simple reason that we are not in full control of what are the underlying factors when our ceding companies are reporting about their rate increases. We not always have full transparency to what extent those reported numbers are risk adjusted. Therefore, we are taking a haircut. But the combination of the two would be what we are giving you as information on the change in pricing on the pro rata. When it comes to your question on European cat pricing, as Jean-Jacques already said, we still see positive momentum in both the insurance and the insurance markets. Our general assumption would be that there will be a slight upward trend in European cat pricing in general, but o f course, we expect higher increases on the loss impacted business. Would we expect at this stage that this is going to be much more significant increases than we saw for 2020? I would say we don't have that expectation right now. Lastly, yes, of course, you're right. We had a general benign environment in 2020 in many classes of business due to COVID. Like, for example, in motor business. I would say, given that I don't have a precise number for you how much that played into the increase in redundancy that we have reported, that reduction in frequency is mostly involving very young underwriting years, where normally we are not really reflecting any redundancies in our reported numbers. If we do, to a very limited extent. This should not have been the main driver of us showing a higher redundancy in the Willis Towers Watson study. Okay, thanks. Our next question comes from Kamran Hossain, RBC. Your line is now open. Hi. Morning. Just wanted to ask about the Life and Health business. You've pulled out, I guess, for the first half that South Africa was a major part of the claims that you saw in the Life business. Could you maybe talk about how this is weighted Q1 versus Q2? You didn't specifically call out just South Africa in Q1, but you did it the first half. Just eyeballing a chart of COVID deaths in the first half of the year, it was pretty bad at the beginning of Q1, and it didn't really tick up until right at the end of Q2, so j ust interested in whether there's any late reporting factors or something else going on there. I guess given the ex-U.S. component of the life claims in Q2 is about EUR 50 million, I think, just kind of back of an envelope, i s that a reasonable number for us to pencil in for the third quarter? Thanks. Yeah. I'm happy to take that. First of all, most of our claims are or have still been from the U.S., so 60% of the claims we have seen this year is from the U.S., a bout 20% was from South Africa. This picked up especially with the Delta variant in the second quarter. Main issue is that the vaccination rates in South Africa are still very low, although they are now picking up. This is what I would expect around the world in most of the countries where we currently have been, let's say, a little bit surprised about the COVID claims. Latin America is one other example. Vaccination rates will go up significantly in the next couple of months in these countries. I'm not really concerned for the full year. I'm still concerned for the next one or two months. In total, this is a small part of our bottom line result. Sorry, what was your question about the EUR 50 million? I didn't quite get that. It really is eyeballing the ex-U.S. COVID claims in Q2, they looked like they were around EUR 50 million. Given that South Africa is now going at a higher pace now in terms of deaths than it was, or pretty much in line with what you saw at the beginning of Q1, j ust trying to get an idea whether EUR 50 million for the quarter is a reasonable number for us to pencil in. There is certainly a little bit of late reporting here. We have, even in developed countries, a late reporting of four to six weeks for the cause of death, and you can certainly expect this in South Africa as well. What is very special in South Africa, a lot of our business in South Africa is cash financing business. This has a certain risk, which comes with lapses and with mortality, but t here is an implicit buffer for these cash financing deals. The client usually wants to have the option to recapture the business after a certain while, and especially when he believes he has paid back the initial financing amount. This has a buffer implicitly built in. As long as we ultimately get back our money, higher mortality claims even increase profitability because the treaty just runs three, four, five years longer. As long as we still get back our money, and so we have absolutely no negative from this. It might take a little bit longer. This can be seen as just an additional financing, because in certain years like this year, there was a loss and there was no repayment or recuperation of the initial amount. If the treaty just run three, four years longer, we might not even have a claim there. That's okay. Klaus, thanks so much for the additional color. Thank you. Our next question comes from Vinit Malhotra, Mediobanca. Please go ahead. Your line is now open. Yes, thank you. Good morning, everybody. Maybe, three questions and a quick follow-up. The first one, firstly on P&C repeat, the profitability outlook on slide 23 today, a s Americas a bit lower and Asia PAC a bit improved. Also, Asia PAC, you mentioned somewhere, significant premium growth under APAC growth initiatives. Could you just help us understand what's the magnitude here, and what's the rationale for the Americas lowering as well? That could be important. Then, just second question on credit and surety. There is a EUR 20 million large loss mentioned, also the combined ratio, 1H is much worse than 1Q, 94% in 1H, 83% in 1Q. Is that all coming from this large loss or is there also something else? I think I also heard you, Sven, say that credit and surety is still benign for COVID. Third question is, I've seen in your report a comment about EIOPA's harmonization policy for third country reinsurance as part of the convergence plan, and you highlighted it as a risk. It'd be good to know how big a problem you think this could be. Just very, very quick one, fourth one is, there's a mention of another layer of extreme mortality cover placed. Could you comment on whether any life mortality has seen any recovery from some of these points? Thank you. Thank you. Sven will address the P&C questions and mortality with Klaus. On EIOPA, we don't have an immediate answer to your question. I think we might need to come back to you thereafter, on exactly where the information comes from, but Sven first. The reason why we changed the profitability outlook from plus minus for APAC to plus and the Americas from plus to plus minus is just a reflection on the combined ratios we are reporting after the first half of the year. You can see on slide 10 that the Americas are currently over and above their target combined ratio. The main driver here, of course, is Winter Storm Uri. While at the same time, the APAC region is significantly below its target combined ratio in the first half of the year. There are no structural problems in those portfolios from a profitability point of view, but w e just felt it appropriate to switch our two guidances around, particularly for the U.S., because we still have the full hurricane season ahead of us. It's always a little difficult to predict how much of a positive catch-up we will have for the remainder of the year to eventually bring Americas into line with the target combined ratio. On credit and surety, yeah, you're right. As I said, the actually reported losses from COVID so far have been below or significantly below our expectations. We have nonetheless decided, going into the underwriting year 2021, to have relatively high ultimate loss ratio picks compared to the historic average f or the simple reason that many economies are only just starting up after long lockdown periods from COVID. We still have positive government measures in place in many countries, which are bound to run off at some stage. Which, of course, is leaving the question, will we see a heightened level of insolvencies later in the year? Out of precaution, we have therefore decided to start the year conservatively from an ultimate loss ratio point of view. Of course, you're right. One of the ingredients here is the credit loss we are reporting due to payment delays for a project in Africa. Hope that answers your question on the P&C side. Yeah. Thank you. I will continue with the retro cover on the Life and Health side. I guess you're referring to our increase of the pandemic cover we have recently placed again. So far, we had for this year and last year, we had EUR 255 million cover, which is about to attach or has already attached. We have placed another EUR 80 million, starting with 1st of January 2021. That means we are covered this year. Same terms and conditions as previously, but the reference year is always the last year. We need a significantly worse experience for these EUR 80 million, compared to last year. Last year, obviously, was higher than the year before. It still attaches at 110%, but the reference year is last year. It's a little bit more out of the money, but t he EUR 255 million we have in place already are covering us for this year. Right. And we have recorded some benefits already, quick manage? No. We have not taken that into account. The reason for that is we have an expectation that currently, the index is at about 112%, but i f the mortality is significantly lower in the rest of the year. We're not talking about population mortality in general. We talk about the weighted average of the population mortality in the U.S., U.K., and Australia, and the weighting is according to our portfolio. If this is significantly better, and for instance, in Australia, that could be the case because they are all keeping their distance, t hey don't let anybody into the country, and they keep mortality very low, t his also keeps infections very low, and maybe mortality in Australia could even be better than the attachment we currently see might disappear by year-end. That's possible. Or it grows if there is another variant of the virus. This is the reason why carefully accounted for, we didn't take that into account so far. Yeah. Thanks, Klaus. Thank you. We'll come back to you. We had a generic statement on EIOPA more to comment on the development of Solvency II rules and the different discussions with the commission, which is going to look at it. There was more of a general statement. We'll follow up with you on the specific topics which are under discussion. Yeah, no. This is already useful. It's preferred for the generic comment. That's also helpful to know. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. Our next question comes from William Hardcastle, UBS. Your line is now open. Oh, hi there, guys. Two quick ones. One long term, just thinking about the reserve redundancy. It's very good to see this going up year-on-year, despite the tough 2020 backdrop. I didn't quite get the answer there relating to how I should think about COVID at year-end and how that influences year-on-year. Is this blurring the number, or could you just give me a quick follow-up answer on that, if that's possible? How do you think about this number? Do you tend to view it as the absolute number, so the EUR 1.5 billion, or as a percent of net reserves when considering adequacy yourselves when looking at the business? Then a bit more shorter term, I guess, is there any more information you can provide on the European flood loss? Anything to do with industry loss assumptions, how you derive your estimate, and whether there's any assumption of retro attaching. Perhaps as an extension to that, is there any aggregate protection you have in place that would therefore be more likely to be utilized should the remainder of the year see increased activity? Thanks. On the reserve redundancy, as Clemens already mentioned, there is a zero impact from COVID in the reported numbers. We are not reflecting any redundancy out of our P&C COVID reserve in the EUR 1.5 billion we are reporting. From the way we are looking at it, we are of course not only looking at the absolute number, but also on the relative number in relation to our overall reserves. Here, we could see a slight uptick coming from 5.5% in 2019 to 5.6% in 2020. The increase of EUR 80 million was a little higher in proportion than our general increase in reserves, which of course is a positive development considering that we have more than or we have EUR 950 million of new reserves from COVID alone, which of course goes into that calculation as well. On the flood loss, we said that we are expecting a net position of EUR 200 million-EUR 250 million. It's of course extremely early days in assessing the situation. But ballparkish, we would say that the associated market loss with this range is between EUR 5 billion and EUR 7.5 billion. It's also a little too early to tell how exactly our reinsurance structures or retrocessional structures will come into play, because so far, we have mostly worked on bulk numbers. In order to know the precise effects on how our retrocessional cover is going to attach, we need more treaty-specific information in order to see what may trigger, what may not trigger. We will, of course, be able to report on that when we are talking about our Q3 figures in a few months time. For now, I can't give you precise information here. To your last question, on the property side, we are buying three vehicles of retrocession. One is a proportional contract, our K transaction, and w e have our event tower, what we call our whole account excess of loss protection. The last ingredient is our aggregate cover on large losses. To answer your question, yes, we do have an aggregate cover in place. Right now, given the general benign net cat environment in the first half of the year, even with the flood loss, we are not near the attachment point yet. In case we should see frequency and severity for the rest of the year, this protection, of course, potentially will come into play. That's great. Thanks. Our next question comes from Thomas Fossard, HSBC. Please go ahead. Your line is now open. Yes. Good morning, everyone. Two questions. The first one would be on the top line growth. Since the start of the year, combining P&C and Life re, you grow your gross written premium by EUR 1.3 billion. It's a pretty significant number. Could you maybe tell us how much capital this has required to support the growth in the business? That would be the first question. The second question, just following up on Will's question regarding the redundancy on the P&C side, and because you're bringing this information to us today. Can you talk a bit more about reported combined ratio and I would say the economic combined ratio? Actually, it's now two years in a row where you're reporting nice improvement in pricing, but y our reported combined ratio is relatively flattish or in line with your guidance, but flattish, implying that actually you're not showing yet any improvement in the margins. I guess that there is something going on in the background. Yeah, it would be interesting to talk about economic combined ratio. At the end of the day, if there is an aim to go back to the 1.8% or to somewhat, I would say, higher redundancy reserve as a percentage of reserves, using the current relatively hard market cycle to increase again your confidence level. Thank you. Thank you. Maybe, we start with that P&C question on combined ratio, Sven. On the combined ratio side, what we have said over the last couple of quarters when we changed our guidance from 97% to 96%, is that this is a prudent approach from our point of view. We are not translating rate increases 1:1 into ultimate loss ratio reductions when it comes to our actuarial picks. We do take haircuts on that. By conservative initial reserve, the profitability will show, but it will show over time. It will not only show in one calendar year. Hence, we are comfortable with our 96% combined ratio target. Of course, also quite a bit of our growth is coming from the structured business, where margins are typically in the 2%-3% area. What the traditional P&C business is, of course, seeing very good levels of rate increase. The margins on the structured business are relatively unchanged. Here, of course, our main competition are other financing instruments. You all know what the interest rate environment looks like right now. Therefore, margins on that side have been relatively stable, and that business standalone would produce combined ratios over and above the 96% target combined ratio. Thank you. Clemens, a word on capital consumption. Yes. On capital consumption, Thomas, I don't have the exact nominal number at the top of my head. But if I try to answer the question by looking at our Solvency II ratio, both at year-end, where we stood at roughly 235% and now at a 250%, I would say the main driver between some movement on credit spreads and interest rates and currencies, et cetera, I think the main driver was with 10-12 percentage points, certainly the hybrid. Then, I would say, a single-digit number is really attributable to the business growth. That has, to some extent, affected our Solvency II number, but not to a material extent. I could add something from the Life side here. I know that this is a smaller number compared to P&C, but e ven there, you cannot just expect that the premium growth will be reflected 1:1 in the capital requirement. The main areas where we are growing is longevity and financial solutions, and the premium number in financial solutions just comes from cash financing. Both lines of business, longevity as well as cash financing, diversify very well in our internal model. The additional capital requirement are minimal from the Life side. Excellent. Thank you. Our next question comes from Ashik Musaddi, JP Morgan. Please go ahead. Your line is now open. Thank you and good morning, everyone. Just a couple of questions I have is, first of all, sorry to go back on the reserve redundancy number. You are at 5.6% at the moment, h istorically, I think Thomas was flagging this as well, y ou are at a higher number, so d o you have any intention to move to a higher number? What needs to happen for you to move to a higher number? Given the pricing backdrop, would you say that you will be going towards 6%, 7%, or you are okay with the current level? Secondly, if I look at the life insurance results, you had large losses on COVID in this quarter, as well as investment income was pretty low compared to historical standards, but y et the earnings were pretty strong on a relative basis, like after COVID and lower investment income. What is driving that underwriting thing in Life business? Would be good to get some color. Just last question is on investment income. Your ordinary investment income increased quarter-on-quarter by about EUR 30 million-EUR 40 million. Is that just a function of second quarter dividend, or is this some one-off from alternative investments, as you mentioned on the call? Thank you. Sorry, Clemens? That was the first one, and I'll catch up with you probably on the last one. I didn't fully get it, but we can probably pick up that one. On the reserving side, to be honest, I think it's fair to say that we don't really plan the redundancy sort of as part of our planning process. We will do a reserve study, of course, at the year-end, and then we see how all the elements that Sven mentioned, et cetera, how that comes into play and how we can build up redundancy. Having said that, I think we do feel comfortable with the reserve level that we have at the moment, but we would also be prepared to build up further buffers as the year sort of passes by. If you wouldn't mind, would you mind repeating the last question? Yeah, sure. Your ordinary investment income increased by about EUR 30 million, EUR 40 million quarter-on-quarter. I think last quarter was EUR 330 million, EUR 335 million. This quarter is EUR 375 million. I think that increase, I just want to understand, is that increase just as because second quarter is dividend heavy, so probably you got some dividend and that's why it's an increase, or is it driven by any one-off, say, revaluation or anything like that from alternative investments? Yes, it's really coming mainly from our private equity portfolio. Well spotted. We've seen already in the first quarter that we saw a pickup, particularly compared to last year, on distributions from our private equity investment portfolio, and t hat has actually accelerated further in the second quarter. Year- on- year, that's really the increase in contributions in our ordinary income. There's a slight impact also from our inflation linker. We do see a higher contribution from our inflation linkers. There is a time lag in the way we amortize these into our ordinary income. We will see further impacts probably in the third and in the fourth quarter. You mean the positive impact? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. And Klaus? Yeah. I'm very happy to take the Life and Health question. We have a pretty strong underlying profitability for our book. This has been a little bit difficult to see in the last couple of years, where we had some block impact, some disability impacts from Australia, so three, four years ago. The shift you have seen in our portfolio, even for the last 10 years, was away from risk business towards financial solutions business and longevity. We are working on that for about 10 years now. The financial solutions business has a profitability which is basically stable in these times with COVID. Longevity is stable or even positively impacted. Of course, we have significant mortality claims. We have paid EUR 260 million last year, EUR 260 million already this year in the first half, so m ore than EUR 500 million of claims, but t he underlying profitability is extremely strong and extremely stable. On the longevity side, we expect profitable cash flow in the next 20, 30 years of more than EUR 1 billion. But there won't be any spikes, i t will just come through in the ordinary way, in the way how we calculate and have reserved for that. I'm personally not surprised by those relatively strong results, excluding COVID. But you would not say that this is driven by longevity one-offs just because this is the opposite effect of mortality. You would not say just that. No. There is some underlying as well? It's not run by any one-off on the longevity front. Okay. That's okay. Thank you. The longevity result was 3.5%, and that's exactly in line with our expectation, 3.5% of premium margin. Not a really good margin, I always argue against it. We shouldn't look at it this way, but the expected margin on the longevity side should be something between 2% and 4%, and we are just in that range right now. That's very clear. Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. We have not received further questions at this point. I will hand back to the speakers. Well, thank you very much for joining this call. I think we wanted to convey the key message that we're well in line with our full-year guidance. We have solid growth across the board. We have good momentum in P&C with the pricing. Solid pipeline, both life and non-life. We can confirm with a good level of confidence our outlook for the year and the guidance, in spite of the continuing COVID burden in Life and Health. In P&C, COVID, as discussed, is expected to be stable. We can confirm that with this outlook and assuming results in line with the guidance, we intend to pay an attractive dividend, which would include an extraordinary dividend, if conditions are met. That would be the key messages for today. Thank you very much for joining and see you next time. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your attendance. This call has been concluded. You may disconnect.