Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Topdanmark Q3 2023 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question- and- answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press the star one again. For operator assistance throughout the call, please press star zero, and finally, I would like to advise all participants that this call is being recorded. Thank you. I'd now like to welcome Peter Hermann, CEO, to begin the conference. Peter, over to you. Thank you, operator, and good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining us for this conference call. My name is Peter Hermann, and I'm the Group CEO of Topdanmark. With me is our Group CFO, Lars Kufall Beck, and Head of Investor Relations, Robin Hjelgaard Løfgren. We're hosting this conference call because earlier today, we published our interim report for the first nine months of 2023. And I would like to start with a few opening remarks before handing over to Lars to comment on the results in more detail. But before going into the financial figures, let me briefly comment on the progress with our acquisition of Oona Health. As you know, we are only awaiting an approval from the Danish competition authorities before we can finalize the acquisition. The approval process is progressing according to plan, and we continue to expect a closing of the transaction before the end of this year. As mentioned on previous occasions, we are very much looking forward to welcoming more than 200 new colleagues to Topdanmark and to become a leading player within health products and services. Would you take, please, Slide two, please? If we turn to the financial performance in Q3, this was actually a satisfactory quarter. Net profit amounted to DKK 261 million, with an insurance service result of DKK 400 million and a combined ratio of 84.7% or 86.0% before run-off. The quarter was marked by a high level of weather-related claims after an eventful quarter, with multiple cloudbursts, heavy rainfall, a hail event in Northern Italy, and the Storm Hans. In fact, weather-related claims were higher than in any Q3 over the past 10 years, and actually, the total number of claims in the quarter was the highest ever experienced in a Q3. Again, this quarter, I believe we have fully lived up to our customer promise of being here to help, also when times are turbulent. But despite this, we continue to deliver a combined ratio in Q3 that is among the best in the market and has been the case for many quarters now. I'm particularly pleased to see a marked improvement of our underlying claims ratio in the quarter. This is a clear testament to our DNA of focusing on profitable growth in that order, and naturally, we will continue to adjust our pricing in accordance with risk premium going forward. On the investment side, we posted a loss of DKK 37 million, caused mainly by wage indexation of workers' compensation provisions, just as expected and after Q2. Insurance revenue grew by 2% in the quarter. This was low, as expected, but we are beginning to see signs of improving growth rates as projected. We are still seeing continued growth across all business areas, partly driven by our pricing initiatives, but also by up and cross-selling to new and existing customers. However, our continued work with pricing initiatives has also caused a higher churn rate this year as expected. An important topic over recent quarters has been the very high inflation. As mentioned before, inflation has already peaked at the end of last year, and the Danish Consumer Price Index continues to drop to now 0.9% in September. As you know, the Consumer Price Index is not a very good proxy for inflation in an insurance company, as we buy significantly different goods than those included in the index. On those goods, we see signs of falling inflation as delivery time from suppliers has normalized and demand from new construction and private consumption is decreasing as, as well. As a result, material prices has dropped and are beginning to stabilize. The current phase of the inflation cycle is about real wage growth. In the short term, I think we're in a good position to handle inflation through procurement and underwriting, et cetera, and we have already imposed inflation-based price increases across a number of products, and also we remain committed to our target of maintaining profitability by pricing at least in line with inflation over time. Our focus on pricing will continue in the coming period as we work to pass the negative impact from the hardening reinsurance market onto customers. Therefore, we will be implementing price increases across selected products and customer segments with effect from 1st of January 2024. Lars, will you then take us through the Q3 results more in detail, please? Yes, I will, and thank you, Peter. If we take a closer look at our Q3 results, the profit after tax amounted to DKK 261 million, as Peter mentioned. The result is affected by three main items that I would like to address: a high level of weather-related claims, a strong underlying claims trend, and a negative net investment result due to a loss on the matching portfolio. In terms of the technical result, we delivered a combined ratio of 84.7 or 86.0, excluding run-off, and a growth of 2% in the quarter. The quarter was characterized by a higher level of weather-related claims, most notably due to the very wet weather we experienced. We experienced multiple cloudbursts across the country and many days with heavy rainfall, and we even experienced a storm, which is somewhat atypical for a Q3. In addition, the hailstorm that hit the northernmost part of Italy caused many motor claims, and the weather also caused many claims among our agriculture customers with a crop insurance. As a result, weather-related claims amounted to DKK 153 million, which is significantly above the normalized level of DKK 95 million. Besides the wet weather, large-scale claims were also somewhat above the normalized level due to a few single fires in the commercial segment. If we adjust weather and large-scale claims to the model level, our reported combined ratio for the quarter would have been 81.7. If we strip out all the usual moving parts, the underlying claims ratio improved by a full 1.8 percentage points in the quarter. This is a result of our continued efforts to become more efficient, as well as our implemented pricing initiatives. Furthermore, the wet weather in Q3 caused fewer fires in the agriculture segment. Interestingly, the improvement is seen despite high motor frequencies, which remained at the level experienced in Q2, and we believe it is fair to assume that this is the new normal level after COVID-19. So we see solid trends in the underlying claims ratio, but as we have continuously communicated, please do note that there is a significant level of volatility in the underlying claims ratio, which can affect positively or negatively in single quarters. If we turn to the investment results, this was a loss of DKK 37 million in Q3, in line with expectations. The matching portfolio saw, as expected, a further negative impact on wage indexation of workers' compensation provisions due to rising wage inflation expectations. This was partly offset by a spread narrowing of Danish mortgage bonds, and the free portfolio was negatively impacted by the equity market movements in the quarter. We also continued the reduction of our CLO exposure as, as promised, and we are now standing at an exposure of around DKK 25 million, while our overall asset allocation was roughly unchanged during the quarter. Before rounding off my comments on the investment results, I want to draw your attention to Slide 14 in the Investor Relations presentation, where we, for the first time, have provided you with sensitivities to workers' compensation, both in relation to inflation expectation and bond yields, as promised at our Q2 release. Let me quickly comment on solvency. Our solvency cover in the quarter increased to 405%, mainly due to earnings in the quarter and a lower Solvency Capital Requirement following the further CLO exposure reduction. Our solvency cover remains elevated as we continue to hold excess capital for the acquisition of Oona Health, which, as Peter mentioned, is still expected to close before the end of this year. Could we turn to Slide three, please? Before looking at the profit forecast model for 2023, let me first comment on the developments in Q3. As mentioned, the quarter was marked by a high level of weather-related claims, actually the highest level in any Q3 of the past 10 years. This phenomenon was not specific to Denmark, as the rest of the Nordics and continental Europe saw similar trends. In addition, we experienced another quarter with more large-scale claims, both in the Private and Commercial segments. To this end, and as a result of the hardening reinsurance market for both catastrophe and per risk programs, we increased our normalized weather-related losses last quarter. We continue to monitor and follow up on the developments closely, and we remain comfortable with our current level of normalized or modeled weather-related and large-scale claims. And just to apply some context, in a normal year, we would expect five to six cloudburst, and 2023 is so far in line with this expectation. Despite the headwind experienced in Q3, the updated profit forecast has been improved by the runoff experienced in Q3, and this is a consequence of the improvement in our underlying claims ratio experienced in Q3. Thus, we have improved the assumed combined ratio for 2023 and narrowed the range from between 83.5% and 85.5% to now between 83.7% and 84.7%, excluding runoff in Q4. The assumed premium growth for 2023 is unchanged at above 2%. And in conclusion, the post-tax profit forecast model for 2023 is improved to now between DKK 1.1 billion and DKK 1.21 billion, excluding runoff in Q4. Could we take Slide four, please, and then back over to you, Peter? Yes, thank you, Lars. This concludes our opening remarks. We are now ready to answer your questions. Please keep your questions to one or two at a time, and if you have more questions, feel free to enter the queue again for a second round. Operator, may we have the first question, please? Thank you, Peter and Lars. At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, press star, then the number 1 on your telephone keypad. Your first question comes from the line of Asbjørn Mørk from Danske Bank. Your line is open. Yes. Hi, good morning, thanks for taking my questions. I have two questions. One, if I may start on underwriting and repricing. Looking at Slide five, motor continues to be dead flat. Lars, you mentioned this is the new normal we're seeing in terms of frequencies. And if you look at item number nine, there's been around 100 basis points deterioration due to frequencies here today. So basically a little bit of a comment from your side on what are you seeing in terms of repricing? What is your policy here? And on that note, considering the improvements we've seen to the underlying claims ratio in Q3 versus the deterioration in Q2, what kind of tailwinds are you seeing going into Q4 and 2024? Thank you. ... I can take the motor part. You're absolutely right that we have seen frequencies in 2023, both in Q2 and, as we mentioned, also in Q3. Q3, I want to highlight that there's no material deterioration to what we were expecting and as said, so we believe this is the new normal. I think it's important to note that the motor product as a whole is still a profitable and very attractive line of business for us, and we have already implemented inflation-based price adjustments. We, of course, continue to follow up and monitor the development and our pricing on the motor products and all other products. We also know that motor is a very highly competitive and price-sensitive policy. And we, of course, also are alert to the competition situation in this. Therefore, the price increases that we all have mentioned, that we will also be seeking will be implemented across a number of products and not only on motor. Just maybe a little briefly on the underlying, you can say, as you know, we're not guiding on the underlying claims ratio here, but of course, there are some effects on the underlying improvements that we also will see over forward for the next quarters. As you also know, as we have also mentioned, also when we had, you can say, deteriorating underlying and also now when we have, you can say, bettering the underlying, is that there is still, you can say, volatility in our insurance portfolio. Just for mentioning, just an example, this quarter, we had a lot of, you can say, wet weather that also meant, you can say, fewer fires within private and agriculture, which also you can say improved the underlying. But of course, there will be some underlying, you could say, tendencies also from the efficiency improvements we're making, the pricing initiatives that goes for both travel, and the contents insurance, accident insurance, and some of those, of course, we also expect that we see in the next quarter. If I just may follow up on the first part of the question relating to motor insurance. So it sounded like you were going to or you have been repricing in according to inflation, but not according to frequencies. So, I mean, some of your peers have been out, quite a lot of them actually saying that they want to price higher for motor. So would you see this as an opportunity to take markets here rather than to follow up on repricing? Oh, as we said, we look at the portfolio at an overall, and at an overall level, we are committed to maintain our profitability, both in terms of inflation, but of course, also when we see frequency increases in certain products. But it's important to note that we look at a portfolio as a whole. Okay. That's fair. Second question, on the storm surge we had in the weekend, and obviously October has also started pretty bad, last year as a reinsurance expert. Could you just remind me, how does your or how do you expect your sideways reinsurance to kick in here? As I understand, it's not quite relevant in this case, but just, if it was, where, how would you be covered? Can I maybe, and before we answering that question, maybe just make one statement about what has happened over the weekend, just to give it a little maybe a flavor here. We have around 1,600 reports of claims until now, and you can say, as you know, some of the claims will be covered by the Danish Natural Hazards Council that has this storm surge pool. And just to again highlight, about around 300 out of this 1,600 is on the storm surge pool. That doesn't mean that in the last 1,300, there could also be claims here, which will be covered by the storm surge pool. We are looking into that at the moment. So this is just to say that this is where we are. Of course, we still see claims coming in, but you can say the tempo with the claims coming in is actually already, you can say, lower now than they were during the weekend and also yesterday. And just to give... not to make a comparison and guidance, but just to say, when we had the Storm Noa last year in February, we had 1,300 claims. That had a total cost of around 16 million DKK. So I'm not saying that this is the same storm, because storms hits different areas with different paces and so on. But just to say, out of the 1,600, you can remove 300 at least. Of course, there could be more claims coming in, and last year, 1,300 claims, and the storm was 16 million DKK. Just to say we are not even close to having a situation where this will be covered by reinsurance. But, I don't know what- Yeah, and therefore, the question, Asbjørn, or the answer to your question, Asbjørn, is also that we do not see this as a reinsurance event at this point in time. No, no, but that was actually not the question, because I already understood that. It was more that could you just update us on how does your sideways reinsurance actually work in a situation like this? So if we had a new event tomorrow, how would you be covered? Well, that all depends on the size of the event, of course. Okay. I would think we can take that bilaterally. Okay, thanks a lot. Yeah. Your next question comes from the line of Tryfonas Spyrou from Berenberg. Your line is open. Oh, yes. Hi there. I had a question just coming back to the margin, underwriting margin. I guess you mentioned now the 81.7 combined ratio. You mentioned sort of improving underlying. I guess why not go for more market share and growth? It looks like the margins are at a pretty good place. So I was wondering if there's anything more you can add there. I know that you mentioned the underlying is probably not all sort of improvement from pricing. It could be some likely to more of the claims reducing higher claims and so forth. So maybe any comments you can add on how you think about the actual profitability of the business at this point in time, and how you think can take market share or maybe grow off the back of that? The second question is on solvency. If I sort of do the math, take out the dividend, or based on the 13 DKK per share, which consensus estimates, take the capital earmarked for the Oona deal, and back to Q4 profits, and maybe reduce the capital requirement when it comes to off the back of the lower CLO exposures, you get, managed to get rid of them. I get to around 190 solvency go forward for Q4. Is any scope you can pay out, I guess more than 100% of your earnings this year, given that earnings is much lower than the last year? That would imply a more, I guess, steady dividend trajectory or we should not expect anything when it comes to that. Thank you. I can maybe start with the first one. The, I think that if we're looking at the, what you can say, the historical development now also, you can say over the last two or three years, actually, where we've worked with, you can say, price initiatives and efficiency gains. Also, in a, in a time with inflation, we have actually had, you can say, pretty good combined ratio levels also compared with the, the market as a whole. And we have also seen that had an effect on growth. We have not had the highest growth during that period. We have a profitable growth, and that we still have a positive growth, which we are happy about, both in private and also the agriculture and the commercial segment. As if you look at, you can say, from an overall perspective, actually, the growth has been higher on agriculture and commercial this year. But if you look at Q3, actually isolated, we actually see higher growth within the private segment now. So what we're seeing is that, after some of the things we've done, also working, of course, with the competitiveness and the, and pricing and so on, we can see that churn is now at least lowering and, getting better in private. So we actually see sales is also picking up, churn is getting better. That could, you can see, mean, you can see a higher growth in that area going forward. And then on the other hand, we've also had, you can say, other initiatives for profitability within commercial agriculture. Also, you can say with a lower index on workers' compensation, the loss of this Mastercard travel insurance agreement, meaning that you can say we have had higher churn in agriculture and in commercial lately. So, but going forward, we think that, yeah, it could be that growth could be higher than at the present level here going forward. But again, we will always look into keeping and maintaining profitability before growth. So that's an important statement. I think if we turn to the solvency part, without giving any guidance here, but it seems like your Excel sheet is working. When it comes to solvency, I think it's important to note that our nominal Solvency Capital Requirement is so low now that even small changes will have a fairly large impact in terms of percentage points. Actually, be careful about the last two, three, four, five percentage points, because nominally, that does not mean a whole lot. Furthermore, it's important to note that we are currently having equity exposures and at a very, very low level compared to where we have been historically. Therefore, we do expect for the interim period to operate with a little bit higher solvency percentage than otherwise would have been the case, adjusted for Oona and payout of ordinary dividends, of course. Having said that, however, it is still clear our ambition, that we have said many times, to be able to have a dividend capacity for Topdanmark that equals 100% of the earnings for the year. But of course, and that's the caveat, that the final decisions on dividends are, of course, made by the Board and ultimately decided at the annual general meeting. Okay, that's helpful. Thanks. Your next question comes from the line of Youdish Chicooree from Autonomous Research. Your line is open. Good morning, everyone. I've got two questions, please. The first one is on claims inflation. I think you talked about a material reduction in headline CPI in Denmark, but you also talked about a few factors that's driving down claims inflation in both motor and property. I was wondering how come you've basically maintained your expected range of 2%-4% like throughout this year? Is it the case that you see inflation in motor was the bottom of that range now? That's my first question. The second one is just wondering if you could help us understand or quantify some of the moving parts in terms of the year-on-year change in the and discounted, you know, underlying loss ratio. 'Cause basically, there are really three elements here. I mean, there's obviously the benefit from your efficiency and pricing measures, but then there seems to be a bit of luck in terms of having basically no fires. And then finally, offsetting these improvements, there is a drag from higher motor frequency. So I was just wondering if you could help us, you know, understand, you know, how these three factors are affecting the result, actually. Thank you. Just regarding the first one, you can say, not. We're saying we're not guiding or guessing into what the inflation level. We're just saying that the 2%-4% we see over time, as you can say, a level in Denmark, and actually that corresponds actually quite good with the, you got the political intentions of a inflation level in the societies in Denmark here. So at the moment, we will always say that we will price accordingly to inflation to maintain and, and you can say protect profitability. What we are seeing now is now, yes, the CPI has gone down, and you can say we also said that that is not a good proxy, as I also mentioned, because we are buying other goods. But we are always following this, and of course, you have to do this with the, with the longer side because we're not pricing every month. We have to do this, you can say at least yearly and then sometimes a little longer. I think actually in a long time we've been in front of the curve, you can say now, but still, still say that we are pricing in line with inflation. And now also, as I mentioned, putting price, increases forward due to higher and hardening the insurance market and, and more weather-related claims. But actually, we think that, overall, I think, we have, you can say, inflation pretty well under control, actually. But let's see how it will move. But we are, yeah, over time, we see inflation level of two, four. So it's not a guidance for this quarter. It's not really looking forward. The other question was- No, that was more the year-on-year change on the underlying. And just one final comment on the inflation part. It's important to note that even though the CPI has come down, actually inflation, if you adjust for energy prices in September, was still almost at 4% in Denmark. So inflation is still- The core inflation is still at a high level. And in terms of the underlying, you're right, that we still have, we have tailwind from the increased, from the continued increased, interest rates. And then we have, you could say, in the underlying portfolio, we have both pluses and minuses. So we've seen things that gone worse as we've also touched upon, earlier this year and also for the quarter, namely in particular, motor frequencies. But we also have a number of other lines of businesses where we have improved our underlying, claims ratio. So I think if you look at the actual claims impact is a mixed bag of both pluses and minuses, some of them driven by external factors. We see this frequency of motor as a macro event, whereas the purchases and the improvements, we definitely see as a result of our continued pricing and procurement and efficiency initiatives. Okay. Okay, thank you. Can I just follow up on just on the claims inflation? I understand you don't want to give a guidance, and you know, the expectation you've put forward is your medium-term expectations. But as we stand today, if you compare the situation from you know, the start of the year, would you say claims inflation has come down quite quite materially, or is it broadly unchanged? It's come a little down, I would say. Just a little down. Okay. All right. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Vinit Malhotra from Mediobanca. Your line is open. Yes, good morning. Thank you. So just one question on the Slide eight. Q3 2022 discount effect noted there is 3.6. But if I just remember a conversation with the IR team, I think it was 2.4% for the this quarter, which means that the underlying improvement in loss ratio is smaller at about 40 basis points. First of all, is that something that you would still say agrees with your reading of the situation? And then even within this, I mean, I'm sure you just asked about the drivers, and if you don't mind, again just clarifying, how much do you think was the agriculture good luck, if you like, or fewer fires in that 40 basis points, if that is the right number? Thank you very much. I think if I take the discounting part first, remember last year in our Q3, we were actually quite vocal about the way or the fact that we changed the principle for discounting within the quarter. So there was a high discounting impact in Q3 last year, which all else being equal, would have been lower had it not been for the change in principle. And hence, I do not follow your argument about significantly lower improvement in the underlying. Underlying is underlying, and they are at a comparable basis. You know, what I mean is in the same table, if I change 3.6 to 2.4, it will have a different- But we didn't disclose that. Vinit, just to, just to make clear, underlying is undiscounted, right? So that means we take out everything related to discounting. So it is like- for- like, it's basically taking everything back to nothing. Oh, okay. Thank you very much. Just a question on the, how much was the, the fewer fires, please, if you can clarify again? Apologies, my mistake. I don't have a guidance. You can say, we're not taking it more than what we have shown in the investor report, which is just some cases. Just I'd like you to point out that, yes, we have efficiency gains, also for pricing within content insurance or by accident and other parts of the travel insurance and so on. But we haven't a number just to say that we have also been as part of the underlying, so also that, for example, fewer fires due to weather more weather-related claims. And sometimes it happens that you have more claims that just go, you can say, above the threshold for the insurance and getting it into the weather-related claims. Sometimes you have fires, which happen just below, which will be on the underlying. So the point is, it is an improvement, and we also see some of the things going forward of the improvements. But just to say, it's not 1.8, which is you can say, the improvement level going forward each quarter. That is not the point to say, but other than that, I don't think we can get it closer than that. Okay. Thank you very much for the clarification. Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Martin Parkhøi from SEB. Your line is open. Thank you so much. Two questions from my side. The first one being on weather. Now that we talk weather in Q4, I noticed there was also quite a large cloudburst hitting the city of Aarhus in the beginning of October. What's your—what do you make of that? Is that a claims driver? That's my first question. Second question goes on your Oona acquisition. We have yet to see it closing. I know you have guided for H2, but I guess we are a long way into H2 by now. What is, what is holding you up on this one? Of course, again, the only thing you can say about weather in the Q4 is that our normalized weather level is DKK 75 million. And it's true that we had a pretty big cloudburst over Aarhus which of course we also have customers within Aarhus. And then, yes, we have this claim that I just described about at least the amount of claims and so on going forward. But let's see, we cannot say we're not, we cannot say whether it's enough on the whether it's enough or not. But yeah, the normalized level is DKK 75 million. Let's see how that will surpass when we have this Q4. And then your question to- Oona. Oona is just to say, actually, nothing is holding us up because we have answered all the questions, so we are just awaiting the competition authorities. We foresee that this will be soon because there's not much, not many questions left, at least. But of course, you can say when we are sitting here on the 24th of October, then you could say that when we said the second half year, there's also some timing from we get the approval, so the closing can be done. So you can say, actually, it can earliest be the 1st of December for closing, or it could be the 1st of January, but it will be one of them. So nothing is holding us up. We expect it to get it soon, and then it will probably be the 1st of December or the 1st of January. Let's see. All right. Very clear. Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Jakob Brink from Nordea. Your line is open. Thank you. Maybe just starting where Martin left. So on your guidance for this year and also the when we should include Oona, given also the integration cost, could you— so your guidance includes nothing from Oona, right? So no integration cost and no profit impacts. But I guess the closer we get to 31st December for the closing, will you then still book the integration costs this year, or will they then also be postponed to next year? Or how should we look at that? Yeah, if I take that first, you're absolutely right. The closer we get to the year-end, the less integration we will be able to do. I think at the time of closing, we will book transaction costs related to the transaction. What we've said earlier is we expect in aggregate DKK 100 million for acquisition and integration costs, including transaction costs, of course. So, clearly, we cannot book, we cannot put a provision aside for integration costs on this. There is a liability and actual de facto liability associated with that. And hence, in any scenario, I believe that what you should potentially consider this year is that if we close on December 1st, then it's only the transaction costs that are gonna impact the numbers. And as of when the approval comes from the authorities, we will of course give you some insight as to what do we expect in terms of cost for this year on transaction-related costs. It's true that there's nothing now included in the numbers of Oona. And let's say it's only transaction cost, then they close 1st of December, then the profit contribution for one month, is that then roughly offsetting the transaction cost or, or not. No, then, no, they... I don't think they're earning that much money, or our advisors are too expensive. I'm not sure there will be a one-to-one, but, but we'll give you, we'll give you some input on that. Okay, fair enough. And then sorry to come back to this, this question, but the underlying improvement, I don't have all the breaking or break points, but, but I guess if, if we look at the, the gross efficiency gains, it's around, yeah, DKK 110 million this year. It's around 1% on the combined ratio, but typically we have been-- I think you've been running at maybe 60, 65% net of gross, so 0.6%. So still, there's quite a long way up to 1.8 when also you have the most frequency headwind. So, so, so just so I understand fully, what, what is the remaining fairly large chunk that is leading to this improvement? I think we are not going further into details in terms of the different lines of business. But as we've said, clearly, our efficiency programs has an impact. What we've also been saying, and I think that's important to note, that if you go back over the last quarters, and in particular last year, we've also been saying consistently that there has both the baseline, but also the actuals have not been quite comparable, when you looked at the underlying part, in particular, when it comes to how to adjust for COVID and how to adjust for the impact of the inflated energy prices that we saw in the first, in particular, in the first half of last year. So clearly, there is also an underlying impact from that, where we are probably year- to- date, at least getting some tailwinds from what we saw in terms of both COVID and inflated energy prices in 2022. Sorry, I'm not sure I understand that. So, what was those energy related that pushed up the underlying? I can't remember we talked about that. No, sorry. What I'm saying is that last year we saw impacts that were not comparable with the previous years, and it's a little bit the case this year that you cannot compare like- for- like. Last year, we also saw that was the first summer, for instance, where we saw an amazing boom in travel activities after COVID. I think there was a record high activity level in the summer last year. This year, we've seen a better result on our travel insurance, so that goes the opposite way. There are clearly impacts from COVID and from energy prices still in the baseline if you look at it both year- to- year, but also in the quarter. Okay. So travel goes the right way, efficiency goes the right way, and then you have motor frequency going the wrong way, and then you have wildfires in agriculture. But those are the key elements of the 1.8%? Yeah. Yeah. We have some improvements, as I also mentioned, with content insurance and have agriculture accidents. So, some of the things there's some underlying improvements based on efficiency, but also pricing levels. Okay. I don't know if I can just ask a very small follow-up, but last you mentioned the lower equity risk exposure right now means that you will have a higher solvency ratio than maybe before. Wouldn't it be the other way around, or is that because you plan to take it up again? It was to give us a little bit room for maneuvering in the equity. I'm not saying that we're gonna be—we're not an investment house, and when you buy into Topdanmark, you buy into an insurance risk. However, looking into it, with the current equity exposure we have of around DKK 600 million, I believe that's an all-time low for Topdanmark. Strategically, there might be an idea to improve that a little bit, if and when we see it from a tactical level, that it makes sense. And that would naturally also draw a little bit on the solvency potential. So again, important to highlight, we are not here to be an asset management house. We are here to be an insurance provider and be good at that. However, of course, there are opportunities where you could increase the equity exposure slightly, which would then also have an impact on the solvency. Mm-hmm. This, we have also been helped by this anti-cyclical on the equity. Mm-hmm. So that actually does, again, you can say this drops again. So that also you can say makes equity, you can say the solvency requirement from equity going down, and you see the exposure. So the reason we are mentioning is just that it's more volatile when you have such a low, you can say, solvency requirement. So there could be small changes that actually could impact percentage-wise more than it worked before. So we're just saying that instead of maybe having the lowest solvency cover, it could be maybe a good idea for us at least to have, you can say, a little more renewal room. So if we took out, you can say, more quick equity exposure going forward, that we shouldn't, that we should still be able to pay out 100% of earnings if our Board choose to do that. That, that's just the main argument and reason we're saying it. Okay. Very clear. Thanks a lot. Your next question comes from the line of Jan Erik Gjerland from ABG. Your line is open. Thank you for taking my questions as well. The first one is about cost, and potential synergies. It seems like the cost line is, of course, up, year- on- year, as you have sort of highlighted, but it's still a little lower than sort of expectations. So could you drive us through a little bit of what happened behind that expense line? Is it less sale? Is it lower activity? Is it actually that the synergy from life is better than we thought? Or, or how should you read that sort of, less uptick than we probably foresaw? That's my first question. Yeah, you can say that. That actually would say that if you look over the year, I think it's actually pretty much in line with what we have, you can say, both guided on forecasted, and we still maintain that we will have this around a little more than 16.5% in costs. There's some phasing between Q3 and Q4 that has, you can say, a beneficial impact this quarter, but will revert, you can say, in Q4. That's the reason why we maintain it. So, so this is not that we have got very much better in a quarter. This is, this, this is a little more phasing actually. So it's still in line, and we are, of course, still, you can say, hit by the synergies from the life. That will also maintain next year, you can say, because we need-- we're still in, in process of, of working with this. Going forward, we still have, you can say, some, some activities to do after the, the, the, the disintegration of life, actually, to improve the, the, the cost level going forward. We will also, next year, also have, you can say, headwinds from this. Okay, perfect. When it comes to the claims situation, then, just to follow up on all the questions there. If you look into the private and SME segment, it seems like you're sort of having a higher claims growth if you look at the year-on-year basis from quarter- to- quarter, while this sort of getting improved levels when you put the year- to- date versus year- to- date last year. So as you alluded to, the private seems to have a higher premium growth than claims cost growth, in private. But when you look at the underlying levels or quarter- by- quarter, it seems like the claims growth is actually increasing the fastest now in Q3, versus earlier this year. So it could be that the improvement earlier this year is sort of-... We're playing ourselves a little bit around. So how should we read about these two numbers? When it comes to the commercial SME, it seems like the claims growth just on the underlying numbers seems to be quite high, while the premium growth is still very low. So how should we think about this when it comes to profitability and your improvement in the agriculture fire this quarter? And how many fires is actually a normal level of fires in Q3? It's good questions that we don't have, you can say, exact answers to. You can say that, Jan, you can say it's a little depending on when you have these, for example, weather claims or large-scale claims on fires, are they above the threshold, you can say, in terms of reinsurance, and we'll go on to the large-scale claims and the weather, or is it below? And that, of course, is you can say something that will be volatile going forward. Also, you can say, is it hitting the underlying, is it hitting the lines, large-scale claim, large-scale claims and weather-related claims. But you can say it's true that the growth in this quarter has been, you can say, it's trending the other way around, that the private is actually trending upwards in terms of growth, and also a little downwards in terms of growth in the SME segment here. But of course, we have some initiatives that are open pricing going forward. You can say when we, for example, saying that we will impose price increases due to high reinsurance cover, that would mainly also be on the private, sorry, on the SME segment. Because there will be more of the business within SME that will be, you can say, have a insurance cover, where in private, it would be a lower part. You can say there's some different trends going forward that could influence the growth, and you can say claims level differently. So it means that, is it tougher competition on the SME commercial than now than in the private side? Is that what we also should read into this, or is it just too little concrete? I would say that if you look at the SME segment, where we, where we've seen that, within, you can say, workers' compensation, we saw higher level of competitive level. After some years with high indexation, we also saw, you can say, higher competition from both, yeah, both, you can say, normal, competitors, but also small players trying to get a, a piece of the market, and they're having at least put lower prices on, with this competition going forward. That has meant, you can say, higher churn, which is hitting, you can say, the SME segment here. So that at least, you can say, is a sign of higher competition with that area, with that, that area. But still, actually, we have pretty good, traction within SME. We have seen a little lower growth on the agriculture actually this year, also due to the fact that we have imposed new systems, and that has actually meant some internal work, you can say, on migrating or getting kind of things into new system. It's actually working quite well, so the customers are happy, but has made also a little lower activity in the sales organization here. We have actually pretty fine level of growth also within the SME. And now, yes, private is picking up to both due to better churn, but also you can say sales is picking up. But I would say that the competition level is still quite high, actually, also on private. We can just see that with that, we have competitors also working more with prices than they did before, maybe. Would you say it's housing or motor that actually brings them also the growth in the private line? What? Sorry, you can repeat? I didn't get that. You have a growth of 3.2% in the private book year-on-year on the quarterly basis. Is it pricing increases from motor as well as house, or is it just a mix or what? What is driving them, the main driver behind that 3.2% growth? You can say it's still also some of the pricing initiatives we have done earlier on, also on house and commercial. Some of the product lines where inflation hit the most, and then we can see that the churn, that's an overall, you can say that actually will go into the different business lines, all the different business lines. And the sales- Mm. You can say, that's actually also broadly. So most of the—if you look at churn and sales, it is broadly across different product lines. If you look at the pricing, it's mainly within the product lines. We did some pricing initiatives on, which was mainly related to the inflation, which was more house and continuation and so on, and a little on accident. Okay. Is it then, is it possible to say anything about the normalized level of number of fires in agriculture at all? I don't have a number. No, we don't, we don't disclose that. Thank you. As a reminder, before we move on to the next question, if you would like to join the queue, please press star one on your telephone keypad. You've got a follow-up question from Martin Parkhøi from SEB. Your line is open. Thank you. Just to follow up on my previous questions regarding Oona, I guess if I go to the competition website, it seems like the application was complete on the 19th of September. Given the 25 work days in the first round, which is today, you should receive, I hope, approval today. Then my question is, why do we need to wait until the 1st November for this to close? That's, I mean, practically from a practical point of view, without going into details about how the SPA is structured, there are, of course, deadlines in the SPA as to how and when we close after receiving the approval from the competition authorities. And the deadline for closing November 1st has passed. Okay. But, but what needs to be finalized after? I mean, you should receive that today, right? So what needs to be finalized after receiving that approval, that's going to take so long? They have, they have, let's say they have 25 days after a final, and then there could be situations where there is additional questions. And it's not, it's not prolonging, and it's not making a new 25 days, but it's just prolonging maybe some days or two. So we haven't, of course, if we receive it today, we'll of course, announce it today. But, so we'll, we'll, of course, announce it when we get it, but we have not received it yet, but we also expect it to, to happen too. But as Lars is mentioning, that just means that it cannot be the 1st of November due to, you can say, other deadlines in the agreement. Okay. But if it goes above the 25 days, then it needs to go to the second round, correct? No, no, not if it's, not if it's, not if it's, you can say, clarification of questions in the process, then it could only be, then it could be the days that have been spent on that question. Unless, of course, it will go into a second. We don't expect that, just to say that. It doesn't mean that it will go into a second round. It could just be that there's some follow-up questions that have to be answered, and that could just prolong over the days we're spending on that question. That is how the system is working. Okay. All right. Very clear. Thank you. Okay. That brings us to the end of our Q&A session. I'd like to turn the call back over to Peter for closing remarks. Okay. Thank you, operator. Thank you for all of you for taking the time to attend this conference. As you know, you're always welcome to reach out to Robin if you have any further questions. We wish you all a pleasant rest of the day. Thank you all. This concludes today's conference call. Enjoy the rest of your day. You may now disconnect.