Good afternoon. This is the Chorus Call conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Generali Group Full Year 2020 Results conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, they may signal an operator by pressing Star and Zero on their telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Ms. Giulia Raffo, Head of Investor and Rating Agency Relations. Please go ahead, madam. Thank you, welcome to everybody on the call. Before we open the Q&A session, I would like to hand over to our Group Chief Executive, Philippe Donnet, for some opening comments. Thank you very much. Thank you, Giulia. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the presentation of Generali's 2020 financial results. The COVID-19 pandemic has proven to be the worst crisis since the Second World War. The face of this context, our group achieved outstanding financial results that demonstrate Generali's strong resilience, both in terms of technical excellence and capital position. Thanks to our strategic positioning and agility, we were able, and continue to be able, to navigate the crisis from a position of strength. We also had the digital and technological platforms in place to ensure business continuity and to support our customers, even in the most critical times, reinforcing our role as lifetime partner. Before we open up the Q&A session, I would like to start with four key messages that best characterize our 2020 performance. First, for the second year in a row, we posted a record operating result reaching EUR 5.2 billion, with strong contributions from P&C and asset management. This accomplishment clearly proves the solidity of our business model and our diversification. Second, even in a persistently low interest rate environment, we maintained our strong capital position with a solvency ratio of 224%, stable year-on-year, confirming our excellent position as best in class within our peer group. We achieved this result also thanks to our record capital generation of EUR 4 billion. Third, as a result of these achievements, we will propose to our shareholders a dividend per share of EUR 1.47, split into two tranches. The first tranche of EUR 1.01 for 2020 to be paid this May, up by more than 5% compared to last year. The second tranche of EUR 0.46, related to the second part of the 2019 dividend, which we had to retain, will be payable in October in absence of supervisory recommendations preventing it. Finally, at our Investor Day last November, we confirmed our full commitment to the targets of our three-year strategic plan, Generali 2021. We remain very confident about our execution, and today's results demonstrate that we are well on track to deliver on these targets. Thank you again for your attention. Now, Cristiano, you and I are happy to open the floor for your questions. Excuse me. This is the Chorus Call conference operator. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press Star and One on their touch-tone telephone. To remove yourself from the question queue, please press Star and Two. Please pick up the receiver when asking questions. Anyone who has a question may press Star and One at this time. The first question is from Andrew Sinclair with Bank of America. Please go ahead. Thanks. Afternoon, morning, everyone. Three from me, if that's okay. Two on P&C and one on holdco cash. Firstly, you've clearly had a very strong year on P&C despite lower reserve releases. Just really wondered on that, have you actually increased the buffers in your reserves on P&C? Secondly, on P&C pricing, just really wondered if you could give us an update on thoughts on your key markets, in particular, how much of frequency benefits for 2021 do you think will be competed away on pricing? Third question, really strong cash remittance in 2020. Just really wondered any guidance on 2021, and also, could you update us on holding company cash balances? Just now feels like that must be a pretty strong number right now. Thanks. Thank you very much. I'll ask Cristiano to answer your question on the PYD and the holdco cash. Then Philippe will answer your question about the outlook in P&C. Hello, Andrew. Regarding the prudence and evolution of our P&C, as you can notice, first of all, I would like to draw your attention on the best estimate view, which is reflected in the capital generation part, which year-on-year, basically on the P&C contribution almost doubled. Relating to our prior year development, we already stated also in the half year and nine months result, this level is not the recurring level you will see going forward. They will be more a normal level towards the previous one you've seen. I would like also to draw your attention in the fact that our best estimate liabilities have been always very well prudently assigned and as more as time goes by, we have each year some positive change coming from best estimate assumption, which means that we were prudently underwriting, and this is progressively reflecting out of that. Having said that, there are other non-technical items where the prudence was there on the IFRS result, not reflected in the best estimate liabilities, but which are in the IFRS balance sheet. On the P&C business, there are a few different impacts. Obviously, the lockdown in 2020 had a positive impact, a positive one-off impact on the claims frequency on the motor insurance business. I would say that in 2021, because of the partial lockdowns in some countries or cities, because of the curfews in some countries or cities, the motor insurance claims frequency will remain quite low, but it will still be a one-off impact. On the contrary, there has been some inflation on the motor spare parts prices. Technically, this is a reason to increase the prices on the motor insurance business. It depends on the local competition. In some countries, the competition is stronger than in other countries. Once again, the price making ability, the price making power depends on two things, the quality of your distribution. The more you control your distribution, the higher is your price making power. I've always said this. It also depends on your market share and on your market position. In Generali, we have been always consistent with this. We have a strong proprietary distribution, this increases our price making power. We aim to have even a stronger market position and market shares in most of the countries, especially in Europe, which will further increase our price making power. Having said that, talking about retail insurance, the market is overall quite competitive. It's different on the large corporate and commercial business where the market is hardening significantly because of the reinsurance market hardening. Definitely as a player on this market, we will get some benefit on this for Generali corporate and commercial. Cristiano? Yes. Holdco cash. Year-end 2020, we had EUR 4.76 billion as Holdco cash positioning. I recall you that within this amount of money, there is the retained EUR 0.46 of dividend not paid in year-end 2020, and that has been reported this year. If you take into account the evolution and the guidance for 2021 of remittances, which should stay in the EUR 3 billion, EUR 3.1 billion plus level, you get to a level of final year cash, which is stable to slightly higher to the level of 2020 because you have to remember that we will spend EUR 724 million of catch-up of the EUR 0.46 that we were referring before. Strong numbers. Very good. Thank you. Next question, please. The next question is from Peter Eliot with Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead. Thank you very much. I had a couple of similar questions to Andrew, actually. On the cash, your 2018 Investor Day, you targeted EUR 3 billion-EUR 4 billion for capital redeployment. The very strong numbers that you're reporting now, I'm guessing that you're going to have made a lot more than that available. Obviously, we're in the last year of the plan. I was just wondering, could you remind us how that's been used so far and any sort of update on any plans for the remainder? Secondly, on the non-life prudency, very clear answer on the PYDs, et cetera. I'm just wondering, would you say that you've also been quite prudent in striking your current year loss picks, given the current environment? Maybe a third question. You mentioned in your transcript the joint venture with Accenture. I was wondering if you could just talk maybe a little bit about the benefits that that might bring and also the associated costs. Thank you very much. Thank you. I will start answering the first one, Cristiano will add more information. Basically, we've been investing, we've been redeploying so far EUR 1.8 billion in some, I would say small and medium acquisitions. By the way, most of the companies that we acquired have been integrated. The last one was AXA in Greece, and as soon as the closing is done, we will start the integration. For example, despite the COVID crisis, which has been quite severe in Portugal, we were able to complete the integration of Tranquilidade in almost nine months. All these acquisitions were fully in line with the strategy, and the integration has been successful. We will be able to get all the expected synergies from these acquisitions. We have basically another EUR 2.3 billion to redeploy according to the Generali 2021 plan. Definitely, we are looking at opportunities with the same discipline. Without our discipline, maybe we would have done more acquisition. We have been very disciplined. We will continue being very disciplined. Actually, we always benchmark. You have to understand that in our mind, acquisitions, M&A is not an objective. Acquisition and M&A are the mean to create value for shareholders. We always benchmark acquisition and acquisition against not making the acquisition in terms of value creation for shareholders. I don't know what we will do before the end of the year. It depends on the quality of opportunities and the consistency with both our strategy and our financial discipline. Cristiano? Yes. To integrate the first point, having taken into account all the money deployed before paying for the agreed AXA Greece operation, we will have EUR 2.5 billion before this payment. Second question related to had we been prudent in the P&C IFRS accounting? The answer is compared to the previous year, yes, we had something in the order of 0.5 percentage points more prudency in the current year IFRS accounting. I recall again what I told before to Andrew, there are anyhow other non-technical items post where we were also prudentially accounting, not to reflect in the full operating result, the complete benefit as it is reflected in the operating capital generation. For what regards the third point, the joint venture, we were setting up. We set up this to have a mutual benefit between exchange of knowledge on one side, because also of the progressive aging in the IT department and the need to refresh to the best incoming standards of innovation. We use this form in order to have a mutual exchange between benefit of knowledge on one side and benefit for us of efficiency and more, let's say, efficacy in the deployment of our infrastructure, especially. This should reflect in a progressive reduction of some running costs for infrastructure after the starting set up going forward. Next question, please. Thank you very much. The next question is from Farooq Hanif with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Hi, everybody, and congratulations on your results today. Just going back on Holdco cash capital management. I noticed that you had particularly large upstream from Italy and CEE, Austria, Russia this year. Can you talk about further opportunities for exceptional capital management? For example, did your extension of internal model for operational risk, for example, create opportunities to upstream in 2021 and 2022? On the changes in management structure, can you just talk a little bit about what you think wasn't working well, particularly on the ALM side, that you think is now going to improve under the new management? Same question for the deputy CEO role. The last question is, I've noticed the gap between your new business reinvestment yield and guarantees has closed a little bit in life. I'm just kind of wondering, what your outlook is for the investment margin, how that will translate into IFRS going forward, and what your concern is about that. Thank you. Thank you. I'll ask Philippe to answer the question on the management structure, and then Cristiano will answer the rest. Thank you. Thank you, Farooq. Well, first of all, our previous organization was working well. It's not because it was not working well that we decided to change it. It was working well. I would say that the proof is the quality of our 2020 results. It doesn't mean that when something is working well, you should not change it, because you could always improve something which is working well. First of all, we are in the middle of a crisis, because actually the COVID-19 crisis is not finished yet. This organization is more a crisis management organization because it's simpler, it accelerates the decision-making process, and this is what we need in this kind of crisis time. The asset liabilities management was working well, we want to make it even stronger. Why is that? As you understand, the COVID-19 financial consequences with the strong public debt in most of the countries put additional pressure on the interest rates. This is important to us as one of the major life insurance groups. It's important to be even more proactive, for example, on the in-force management. It's important to be more proactive on the asset liabilities management, and it's important to manage, basically, liabilities together with assets. This is the reason why we've been innovative, creating a new position of Group Chief Insurance and Investment Officer. Doing this, we will manage insurance together with investment, which means that we will manage liabilities together with assets. Another reason of making this reorganization, it was to put more focus on the asset management business because we want to further grow our asset management business. It was important for us to have a business unit for asset and wealth management, with the CEO reporting directly to me, like any other important business units. The third reason was to accelerate the digital transformation. Thanks to the creation of this new position of Chief Transformation Officer, putting together strategy, operations, IT, and digital. These are the reasons for the change in the organization. Thank you, Cristiano. Yes. Thank you, Farooq, for the question. Thank you for the compliment. Let's start with the holdco cash. It is correctly spotted that Italy and Central Eastern Europe, Austria, this case did really contribute with especially extraordinary capital management action. There were other entities which also supported, but the two largest contributor for the EUR 1.2 billion capital management action of 2020 were coming from Italy and Austria. Going forward, are there further opportunities to upstream some more capital from capital management actions? The answer is yes, but the answer is not at the same level and not at the same pace. You should expect, going forward, something which is lower as a contribution, coming from the fact that we will complete the vast majority between 2021 and 2022 of the extra remittance part, apart from the ordinary net result component. Clearly, you should expect something compared to the EUR 1.2 of this year, in the next 2-3 years, being in the order of slightly less than half of it, EUR 0.5. The third question's on the new business reinvestment yield in Life. The outlook for the investment margin. We need to understand the effect of what you have seen in the drop. First, there has been eight basis point impact coming from dividends and rents less of 2020, which were, as we think, a very specific one-off on the total book amortized cost return. Second, the outlook will be impacted by the normal dilution of the rates, but at a lower pace compared to the 2019 to 2020 delta you observed. This is because mainly in 2020, we did a de-risking activity and as well an asset liability management effect, which I will comment later. I need also to recall you one point. When you see the average guarantee of the book and also of the new business underwritten, in that average, there is no Calculation contribution base coming from the product, saving product we are selling in Italy, which are representing 34% already of the full sale of savings in the group, which has no guarantee, only death benefit. They are not part of this average. In reality, the implied, let's say, guarantee is lower, but you can't count on it because it is not a guarantee. Just a clarification on this point. In going forward, the investment yield in life, we could expect to have an amortized return in 2021, which is in the order of 18-19 basis points lower. Don't forget that now we have reached a very important point of ALM restructuring of derisking, which allows us, thanks to the very high level of solvency, also thanks to the operational risk improvement in the SCR, solvency capital requirement module, to have a very high level of solvency also in the operating entities. Allowing us to manage eventually the opportunity of risking or derisking in a much more, let's say, disciplined way, having reached a very solid base to start growing and add extra profit to sustain the investment margin. The basic story is first we have to do our baseline. The baseline has been set, now we can profit from this new environment, also this higher yield environment compared to what we had in the plan. Thank you very much. Very comprehensive. Next question, please. The next question is from Andrew Ritchie with Autonomous. Please go ahead. Oh, hi there. Just coming back. Cristiano, you mentioned the outlook for current income. Is there a headwind in 2021 still from lower current income? I'm thinking particularly from real estate and to some degree, equities. I'm not sure that it seems optimistic to assume that normalizes in 2021. Maybe just clarify what the headwinds are still from sort of COVID related impacts in 2021 related to current income. Second question, your restructuring charges have settled at a lower level. You did EUR 130 million roughly in 2020. It's down sustainably over two years from the historic run rate. It used to be EUR 200 million-EUR 300 million. Is that a new level for restructuring charges? Although I'm struck that there are various new initiatives being launched. Will the restructuring charges go up again in 2021? The final question, in asset management, the metric that went backwards in 2020 was the% of revenue from external clients, which fell from 33%-30%, and you have a target of more than 35%, which implies a pretty substantial increase in 2021 from external clients. I think the reason it fell was because you had outflows, but how do I have confidence that the external revenue, is there a strong pipeline or how are you going to hit that particular target in 2021? Cristiano Borean. Okay, Andrew. I agree with you that we did not see the full end of the recovery for equities and real estate. What I was mentioning is that the impact of eight basis points in 2020 should be lower in 2021. Don't forget that we had also started from the end of 2020, and progressively also a redeployment in the so-called real asset component, which is catching up a little bit, which helps to support also the run rate of the fixed income part, increasing progressively the so-called real asset component in the last three years by almost 2.5 percentage points on the asset allocation. This is the reason why. We are not fully capturing in, but we are recovering a big piece, and if you just like, and you are a derivative geek, if you look at the dividend swap market, you have seen that there is a big catch up in the last quarter also on all the financials, which is a positive. Second question on restructuring charges. Yes, they are down from the historic run rate. I recall what I told you to the market during the investor day in November. There will be something in the order of EUR 30 million less restructuring charges in 2021 compared to what you have seen in 2020. Third point, asset management. Yes, the metric on external%, revenues coming from external client went down in 2020. There was an effect of one-off in 2019, which was accounting for EUR 23 million of a specific one-off coming from a closing of a client selling asset, which gave us that one-off. That's why you see in relative terms, and that's why we are convinced that in 2021, the mix will stick to the existing target. Okay, thanks. Next question, please. The next question is from James Shuck with Citi. Please go ahead. Hi. Good morning. Good afternoon, everybody. First question on the own funds generation in 2020. Just looking at the life contribution, the new business value was up, but the life own funds generation was down. I think it fell from EUR 3.0 billion to EUR 2.7 billion. Just expand a little bit on some of the moving pieces behind that and link to this the P&C own funds generation. I think you mentioned that it had doubled in the year, which it has, but last year was very low. If I look at the own funds generation in P&C and compare it with the operating profit for 2020 net of tax, the numbers are actually pretty close, and yet you seem to be guiding down towards a reversion in the P&C own funds generation back towards the 2019 level. If you could just elaborate a little bit on that would be helpful. On the SCR release, you give really good disclosure picking apart the movements in the SCR, particularly on the life side between new business and the release from the back book. I'm just noticing a release from the back book is trending downwards, it's gone from EUR 1.6 to EUR 1.4 and now down to EUR 1.3. Could you just elaborate on the glide path for that SCR release? That would be helpful. My final question. I couldn't see a date for the new three-year plan. Obviously, it runs out at the end of 2021, and I presume you're going to have a Capital Markets Day at the end of this year. Philippe, don't want to be ageist at all, I'm just keen to know, are you still going to be the person to see the new three-year plan through? When does it get signed off by the board? Is there any pressure to be more aggressive on the M&A side of things? Thank you very much. James, sorry, we couldn't hear well your last question. Sorry. Can you repeat it, please? Certainly. It's just about the new three-year plan. I presume you're going to have a Capital Markets Day at the end of the year. Can't see a date for it. Philippe, I'm wondering if you are the person to see this through. Will your mandate extend to the next three-year plan? When it comes to discussions with the board, are there any kind of pushback and initiatives maybe to be more aggressive on the M&A side in particular? Hi, James. I hope I understand well the first question related to the contribution of new business value, but you say, yes, the new business value is up, but the contribution is down. I think the effect is also related to the fact that you have the real world versus risk neutral as well effect, which has to be taken into account, and which was releasing for us a positive effect of 3.9%, 4%. Referring to this point, don't forget that there is also the fact that you were mentioning the SCR. I'm answering your third question. You were mentioning also the SCR release from back book is trending down. Why? Because clearly there is a higher impact from the ultra low rates we experienced in 2020. There is a kind of balancing effect. Notwithstanding this, you have seen that there is anyhow a positive release of SCR because we have still EUR 100 million SCR less coming basically from all the life part. This is related to the new business value contribution. The SCR on the own funds generation in P&C compared to the operating result. To be sure, if I understand your question is that you are asking the differences among the two and where you are looking at the deltas, just to be sure to answer correctly your question. Well, just very simply, you seem to imply that the own funds generation in P&C was at exceptional level this year, and yet it seems to be pretty much in line with the post-tax operating results. I'm puzzled why it would suddenly come down and revert to what it was last year. Yes. Don't forget that you see one thing in the P&C component, the difference between real world view and IFRS and the best estimate. Don't forget that if you just mix up all the element of the soup, I agree with you that the EUR 4 billion was an exceptional year. If you just more look in a run rate, it is more coherent with the EUR 3.5 billion we were mentioning in 2018 when we presented the strategic plan. Okay, you can follow up on that later. Thank you. Yes. On your last question, James. First of all of us are still very much focused on delivering the targets of our current strategic plan, Generali 2021. As you know, this plan was very ambitious before the COVID-19 crisis. It's even more ambitious in the middle of this crisis. We are very committed to deliver all the target despite the challenges. It requires a lot of attention. Having said that, we already started working on the preparation of the next strategic cycle. It's obviously too early to comment it. We will present it either end of this year or early next year, as soon as we will be ready. I don't expect any change on M&A. Once again, M&A is not an objective. It cannot be a strategic objective. It's a mean to achieve objectives. Our approach will remain the same, disciplined and opportunistic, which means that we can be aggressive when we think it's appropriate to be aggressive. I do not expect any disruption on this. I think that our ambition to become a lifetime partner to customers will still be a good ambition, because we are not there yet. We still have some efforts to do to become really the lifetime partner of our customers. This is what will create a lot of value for our shareholders. Talking about the renewal of the board of directors, the whole board of directors will be renewed at the general assembly, at the shareholders meeting next year. When it will be the time, our board of directors will start working on the process for the renewal for the whole board. Do you face any mandatory retirement age, Philippe? James, sorry, we didn't hear. Just a last question. Sorry if I'm taking up too much time. I just wondered if you faced any mandatory retirement age as CEO, Philippe. Not at all. There is no mandatory limit at all. Okay, great. Let's hope you're here for the next one. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next question, please. The next question is from William Hawkins with KBW. Please go ahead. Hello. Thank you very much. First of all, Philippe, with your management changes, you're continuing to underscore the importance of technology and innovation in your group. What do you think that means in terms of what we're going to see as analysts over time? Generali, financially speaking, is very secure and performing well as a mid-single digit EPS and DPS growth kind of business. Do you think your ambitions in technology basically just contribute to that? Or can you envisage there's ever going to be a time when you say that as a result of the technology opportunities, you can either see a step change upwards in some of those numbers, or maybe the need to actually pull back on some of those numbers because there could be a massive investment opportunity? I'm just trying to get a feel, when we cut to the chase on this technology stuff, is it all wrapped in the bigger picture, or could it actually become a bigger driver? Secondly, please, you guys have been very clear about the debt leverage and the de-leveraging that you've been doing, and I think you've indicated clearly that there's more to go in your plan for this year. I'm just wondering, to what extent are you allowing for the fact that that's kind of tying your hands for any M&A opportunities? Because your leverage, in theory now, is low enough where you could re-leverage if you saw an opportunity. The fact that you're guiding to the market clearly that your leverage is going down, are you looking at that as a binding constraint for M&A? Is it conceptually possible that you say, "Well, we know we were taking leverage down organically, but now we think our leverage should go up because we've seen a good opportunity"? Thirdly, if I may, again, sort of getting into cheeky territory with the M&A conversation, but I wondered You've already talked a bit about this, but it's really notable that you continue to talk about asset management as an inorganic growth opportunity over time. Yet in reality, you haven't really done very much. I just kind of wonder how you're sort of thinking about that longer term. Also with regards to CEE, you've just upstreamed a huge amount of capital from one part of that region. Can you envisage scenarios in which you may actually be downstreaming capital for inorganic opportunities in Central and Eastern Europe? Thank you. I'll start, Philippe. Thank you, William. Yes, technology, it's a bit like M&A. Technology is a mean. It's not an objective. We are investing in technology, in digital transformation, in technological innovation because it helps creating value for all stakeholders. Not only shareholders, but also obviously customers and distributors. This is what we are doing. We want to have a more digital interaction with our customers. We want to have a more digital interaction with our agents, and we want our agents to have a more digital interaction with their customers. This is good for both customers and distributors. We also want to leverage technology to reduce our costs, to improve the quality of our administration processes. This is what we said when we presented our Generali 2021 plan a few years ago. We said that we would invest EUR 1 billion over the three years of the plan in technology. With this objective. This is what we've been doing. I would say that the COVID-19 crisis has accelerated this digital transformation, because in two weeks, we were able to send 90% of our employees at home, working from home, and ensuring the full business continuity. Same things for our agents, who accelerated the adoption of the digital tools in order to continue the interaction with our customers in all countries. This has been very efficient in terms of acceleration. I think this is good for when we talk about cost reduction, don't forget that we also decided to increase the cost reduction target of the plan. At the beginning, it was EUR 200 million, and when we updated the market last year, we said that the target was upgraded up to EUR 300 million. I would say that this is the first result of the acceleration of the digital transformation. On top of this, and I think this is really important, the lifetime partner ambition creates value not only for our customers because it's good for our customers to have a long-term relationship with us, but it creates value for the shareholder because more and more, the value of the company will come from the value of the quality of the relationship, the long-term relationship with customers. This is also based on technology. It's not based only on technology, it's also based on the quality of the personal and physical interaction with our salespeople, with our agents. We confirm the validity of what we always said, the winning solution is the combination of technology together with people in the insurance distribution. This is creating a lot of value for all stakeholders. William, it's Cristiano. For regarding the leverage, just one small correction to what you said. We never said that we were going to reduce further the leverage. We said that we achieved our targets. Clearly, we stay flexible and opportunistic in any case on how to deploy cash. I remember you that for M&A, as I said, after deducting for the AXA closing transaction, we will get slightly above EUR 2.3 billion. It is in this logic that you have to look at the equilibrium of the capital structure. I think that our leverage ratio today has been at a level which was the one we wanted to reach, not only at an absolute level but also on a relative level, which is good in order to think how we want to look at things. We are always opportunistic. We look and we assess each single opportunity according to the value creation and to the opportunities of M&A that creates. Just to clarify. We are not going to further reduce by constraint. We never said it. You have optionality. Philippe. Yes. On the asset management, our growth strategy is mostly based on our multi-boutique platform. We've been very successful in growing our multi-boutique platform, acquiring competencies, skills, expertise that we didn't have in-house. When you look at the numbers in 2020 for the growth of the earnings from the asset management, we can say that this strategy has been successful. We've been also proactive in making small and medium acquisition in the asset management. For example, the Lumyna Boutique, Sycomore in France, which is a leader of the ESG investment, and also Union Investment in Poland. We've been also proactive in making insurance acquisitions in CEE as well with Adriatic Slovenica and Concordia company in Poland. We will remain very opportunistic. The CEE is very strategic to us. We are already the leader in this part of the world, if we can find good opportunities to further strengthen our leadership position there, we will definitely do it, remaining very disciplined. That's great. Thank you. Apologies for the mistake in my question. Thank you. Next question, please. The next question is from Nick Holmes with Societe Generale. Please go ahead. Hi there. Thank you very much. Two quick questions, please. With the dividend, I wondered, how confident are you that the regulator will approve your second dividend? Do you think we'll have more of a level playing field for dividends across the EU this year? Second question is, with your life back book, are there more disposals like Generali Leben that you're looking at? Thank you. Over to you, Philippe. Thank you, Nick. Well, the recommendation from our regulator, who is the Italian regulator, IVASS, is basically based on the recommendation coming from the ESRB. This ESRB recommendation is ending on September 30, which means that as of today, if there is no renewal of this ESRB regulation, we will pay our second tranche, our EUR 0.46 second tranche of dividend. I'm very confident that this is going to happen, that it's going to happen this way. This has been discussed with our regulator, with whom we have a positive and constructive dialogue. This is the most likely scenario. This is, I would say, the only condition for the payment of the second tranche. I obviously cannot give you any certainty. I can only tell you that I'm very confident it's going to happen this way. On the Life back book, first of all, when I look at the current situation, I'm even more happy that we did the Generali Leben operation a few years ago. We said in November during the Investor Day that we would become even more proactive on the in-force management. If we decided to put together in our new organization, insurance and investment, it's also to push the in-force management because our Group Chief Insurance and Investment Officer is fully empowered now on the in-force management, and he has all the levers in his hands. Okay. That's very clear. Thank you very much. Next question, please. The next question is from Michael Huttner with Berenberg. Please go ahead. Good morning. Good afternoon. Thank you very much. I think for Javier, these are stunning results. I could have only wished for EUR 0.46 now anyway. Lots of questions, but they're really little ones, apologies. A, could you give us a little bit more of an update on Cattolica where we've seen lots and lots of press releases? The second, I think, Cristiano, you pointed out that in the own fund report, non-life was stunningly good. I checked, yes, exactly as you said, it's doubled to EUR 1.856 billion. You said no, it wouldn't recur. My question here really is, does that mean that the combined ratio you report would be 89%, could have been 86%? That seems to be the difference, the extra EUR 800 million is equivalent to 3% combined ratio, give or take, I think. Question. On COVID, could you give us a precise breakdown? I think you split life and non-life, but I wondered within these, if you could give us a precise breakdown of the impact, frequency, volume effects, whatever, it would really help. Also, if you can maybe say what you think will come on COVID for 2021. Then on life back book deals, I just wondered if you could say which countries. I'm reading between the lines, so completely wrong probably. I'm thinking it's most likely initially to come from France. Thank you. I'm sorry. I had last question, if I may. On asset management, why did you have net outflows? Michael, sorry, just to be clear, you managed to sneak five question after all. Okay. No problem. That's all right. Just to make sure we understood correctly, your fourth question is, are you trying to get a sense of geographical priority for in-force management? That's right. Yes. You hinted to France. Your last question is. Precisely the reason for the outflows in asset management, right? Yeah, Giulia, thank you so much. You're welcome. We'll start with your first one on Cattolica, and I'll ask Philippe to answer. Yes. If you don't mind, Giulia, I will answer on Cattolica and on the in-force management. On Cattolica, I would say that things are proceeding smoothly. Thanks to the capital increase, we became the first shareholder of Cattolica with 24.4%. This goes together with a strategic agreement with Cattolica regarding asset management, reinsurance, Internet of Things, and health insurance. We are very happy with the way it proceeds because we are implementing the strategic agreement. It has been implemented already completely for the reinsurance and the asset management. We are very happy with the implementation of our agreement. We are very happy with our investment in Cattolica. On the in-force management. We have a very granular approach. It's not a matter of geography, it's a matter of policyholders' funds. We are looking at every single policyholder fund, we are looking at the guarantees, we are looking at the assets, we will take the decision based on this. No looking at the geographies. Cristiano, floor is yours. Yes, Michael. Good morning. Regarding the P&C, yes, I appreciate that you all look at the own funds record, which is very insightful in my opinion. I see from the question which is getting there. I would like just to highlight, if you just look at the unwinding of the previous year compared to what we are putting in the IFRS account, you understand that our prudency was slightly above the level of the unwinding you have seen. Clearly, yes, you didn't see the full result in the IFRS account of the best estimate, let's call current year, because we were prudent in allocating normal reserving, and also because we did, as I already said also to Andrew and others, the fact that there are other posts in the non-technical item, which we put prudency in the balance sheet. The point is, the answer is, yes, not far from what you are saying, even lower. The COVID effect in 2021. What we learned. This year, first of all, we are very under control on the business interruption effect. We have done a full due diligence of all our clauses in the insurance policies. We don't see a risk increase around this point. There is basically everything under control. What we are observing as a COVID effect, there could be some potential trend, but lower than the 2020 in the frequency. Clearly there could be a start of the year with lower frequency, especially in the motor part, but not at the level observed during 2020. I should say slightly less than half of it. On the, let's say, rent and dividend, as I was mentioning also before to Andrew Ritchie, clearly the point of fully restoring the dividend capacity and the rent capacity is not fully phased in, but we are more than half recovering that part. Going to the question on the asset management outflows, I think that we need to split the effect between something more than EUR 3 billion split between Lumyna, which is our very good performing boutique, which got a very big mandate from a hedge fund based in London, and also our China operation, which increased externally. This is counterbalanced from exit from our general investment account, mainly for institutional clients, which were managing a book of government bonds at very low margin. Margin-wise is very limited, and as well from some exit of zero impact on revenues on assets under management from our previously sold entities of Generali Leben and Belgium, where basically the owner decided to split it out, but with no impact because of the way the contract is written. Hope I gave you insight. That's good. Thanks, Cristiano. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next question, please. The next question is from Ashik Musaddi with JPMorgan. Please go ahead. Thank you, Giulia, and hello Philippe and Cristiano. Just a few questions I have. I will not ask five, but maybe two, three. First of all, going back to Michael's question about combined ratio and the prudency. If I understand correctly, you reported 89.1%, of which, say, 50 basis points was a one-off COVID related positive. Your clean was 89.5%. If I just heard correctly what Cristiano said, it is a very conservative number. What sort of combined ratio are we talking about going forward? Are we talking about low 90s for a prolonged period now? Or are we still talking about below 90s or just above 90s? Any thoughts on that would be great, because I think the general expectation is still slightly above 90s combined ratio is what is a general perception. It looks like you are doing far better than 90%, I think. That's the first one. The second question is, if I think about the cash you have, you have EUR 4.6 billion cash at the moment, and the math you gave at the beginning of this call, it looks like by the end of this year, you would be around EUR 4.5 billion cash as well, which is definitely a level which is too high in my view. You could easily have EUR 2 billion, EUR 2.5 billion of extra cash. You want to do M&A, I agree, but for how long would you be holding this cash in hope for doing M&A? Are we talking about this year, next year? Any timeframe would be very helpful. Why would you not buy your own shares at 9 times earnings, rather than going and buying something at, say, 12, 13 times earnings? That would be my second question. Third question, just a very short one, is can you comment a bit on this speculation about M&A in Poland, that you'd be interested in thinking about stuff in Poland? Do you have any potential synergy benefits in that market? How we can think about that would be helpful. Thank you. Thanks a lot, Ashik. I'm going to ask Cristiano to start, Philippe will close. Hi, Ashik. In the answer to Michael, I hope, I don't want to make a confusion, I need to be very clear about this point. If you look at our COVID report, the combined ratio of the Generali Group without COVID impact would've been 90.9%. 90.9. This is the IFRS accounting view combined ratio, it is a good accounting view of the future trends you can expect in the years to come, which we always said the corridor was in the 90% to 90%+ level. Another thing is, when you look at the best estimate part, where you put prudence into it, I was referring to that answer when answering to Michael. Okay. This year, clearly, there has been prudence put aside at a higher level, the 0.5% more was referring to the higher level of prudence compared to the usual regular one you put every year. Okay. Second point on cash, on the year-end level, I hand over to Philippe. On cash, you should expect to have a level not different from the year-end without taking into account any effect of M&A. Don't forget that the level of 2020 has been artificially increased by the lack of the second tranche payment, which I recall you, it will be EUR 724 million. Basically, to make it simple, would've been more closer to EUR 4 billion. Don't forget that we always said that we want to hold a buffer of cash, which is fine to be always in the order of the EUR 750 to EUR 1 billion, also in these uncertain times, because it is important to be prudent around the potential evolution, as we always did, we have the opportunity to manage it. If you just do the maths and take all these pieces together, you see that there is not on top of the EUR 2.3 billion of excess cash, an amount which is excessive. I hand over to Philippe. Just on this one. If my understanding is correct, what you're saying is EUR 2.3 billion is what you want to hold, and then on top you want a cash buffer of EUR 750 million to EUR 1 billion, that takes me to EUR 3 billion-EUR 3.2 billion. If we take the proper dividend of 2019, then you would be at EUR 4 billion. Is that the right math? What I'm trying to understand is, I think EUR 4 billion cash holding is still pretty high. You don't need to hold more than EUR 2 billion, I would say. What is the reason why you would need to hold EUR 3 billion, even EUR 3 billion? Yeah. It's impossible for me to forecast what acquisition will be made or will not be made by the end of the year. Our objective is definitely not to keep too much cash for a long period of time. If we don't make any acquisition according to our Generali 2021 plan, we will take the appropriate decision in order to create value for shareholders. Yeah. I will not comment on rumors on specific situation. I can only say that definitely, Central and Eastern Europe is a priority for us. We are very strong and very successful in this part of the world. We would consider any appropriate operation to further strengthen our leadership position there, remaining very disciplined once again. That's very clear and really good. Thank you. Thank you. We have time for one more question. The next question is from Colm Kelly with UBS. Please go ahead. Yeah. Thanks very much. Just quite quickly, on the solvency II target of 180-240, it is quite wide relative to peers, which has proven to be a very sensible approach in the context of the year we've had in 2020. Given how strong the solvency position has emerged from that very tough test last year, and that we're still working through, and also given the amount of improvements you've made and de-risking actions you made to the balance sheet to lower risk and lower volatility, is that solvency target range still seen as appropriate for the group? Do you see potential for that target range to be tightened going forward? Just lastly, on the Life normalized capital generation, it also applies to the operating profit. Clearly, it's fallen from the 2019 level of EUR 3.1 billion, which is for understandable reasons. Is it your aim or expectation that Life normalized capital generation can return to that 2019 level this year? Do you think it might take a bit longer, given lower investment returns? Thank you. I will start answering to the question and Cristiano will add comments. I think that in the middle of a crisis like this one, I think it's very good to have such a strong solvency ratio. Don't forget that solvency ratio is a ratio which is quite volatile as well. We are very happy to have such a strong capital position. If I look back in the history of Generali, it was not the case in the previous crisis in 2008, and we've been paying for this, and I am very happy that we navigate this crisis in a very different condition. Yes. To integrate what Philippe said, I would like to stress that 2020 was a very interesting proof point of the importance of such an operating target corridor, because we experienced to be not very far from the top and not very far from the bottom throughout the year. This is exactly built around the Generali structure of the balance sheet and the liabilities, and this is the corridor which is allowing us to operate appropriately according to our strategic target. It is very important to keep this in mind because the structure of our portfolio is made in a way that we need to keep this corridor also, thanks to the capital we can create and the transfer from capital into cash in the period. Exactly going to this point, the normalized capital generation from 2019 to 2020 has been falling because of the lower real world assumption compared to year-end 2019 and 2018. There was a lower expected extra return, because the 10-year yield from BTP, for example, dropped, halving basically from one year to the other, and also there was a lower release of the risk margin. If we look going forward, will we be able to get to a more 2019 level? I think it is very important to keep in mind that the transformation of the product we are doing and the larger increase of the share of product with no guarantees or with death benefit only guarantees, are helping us to create further new business value. The fact that we are increasingly very well the share of unit link, and we are also seeing this increase in the beginning of 2021 of unit link and protection share, is bringing us towards a sustained new business value capacity of creation back to more normal levels. Okay, that's excellent. Thank you very much. Thank you. We need to close the call now. As always, the investor relation team is available to take any further question or follow-up you might have. Thank you all for the attention. Have a good day. Bye-bye. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over. You may disconnect your telephones.