Good afternoon. This is the Chorus Call conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Generali Group Half Year 2023 Results Presentation 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 Mr. Fabio Cleva, Head of Investor and Rating Agencies Relations. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, and welcome to Assicurazioni Generali first half 2023 results presentation. Here with us today we have our Group CEO, Philippe Donnet, our Group General Manager, Marco Sesana, and our Group CFO, Cristiano Borean. Before starting, a quick housekeeping note. As we progress through the implementation of IFRS 17 and 9, we have made some minor updates to our 2022 preliminary comparative numbers. While the changes are negligible for the sake of completeness and accuracy, we've published an updated version of the financial supplement that we shared with you on our website, and we added a dedicated slide in the backup of the results presentation. Before we open the Q&A session, let me hand it over to our Group CEO for some opening remarks. Philippe, the floor is yours. Thank you, Fabio, and thanks to all of you for joining this call. Today, we published our financial results for the first half of 2023, which are being presented under the new IFRS 17 and IFRS 9 accounting standards. These figures confirm once again that Generali is an increasingly profitable, diversified, and resilient group, and that it enjoys a strong financial position. I'd like to focus your attention on five key messages. First, our gross written premiums rose to EUR 42.2 billion, up by 3.6% versus the first half of 2022. This was thanks to the robust growth in the property casualty segment, which rose by 10.6%, while premiums in Life remained stable. Focusing on the property casualty segment, non-motor premiums improved significantly by 10.7%, achieving widespread growth all across all main areas in which our group operates. It is worth highlighting that Europ Assistance premiums grew by 44%, thanks to the continuing increase in the travel business. The Motor line rose by 11% across all the main geographies, thanks to the tariff strengthening we implemented, the selective volume growth, and also the hyperinflation in Argentina. Life net inflows were minus EUR 877 million, with positive net inflows in both unit-linked and protection, thanks to our proprietary agent distribution network, partially compensating net outflows from savings. This is in line with our strategy to reposition the Life business portfolio towards more profitable capital Life products. It also reflects the industry trends observed in the banking channels in Italy and France. Second, we recorded excellent growth, both in terms of operating results and adjusted earnings. The operating result rose to over EUR 3.7 billion, up by 28% from half year 2022. This was driven by the strong contribution from the property casualty segment, whose operating results recorded an 85.7% increase, rising to EUR 1.85 billion. On the technical front, the Combined Ratio improved by 5.4 percentage points to 91.6%, driven by a lower illustration. The property casualty operating investment income increased by 26.2%, also benefiting from the acquisitions closed during 2022. The Life segment was solid at EUR 1.81 billion, and the New Business Margin was excellent at 5.81%, up by 0.31 percentage points. Let me highlight that over 40% of our New Business Value generated in the highly profitable protection segment, which continues to show healthy growth rates. Furthermore, the operating result of the asset and wealth management segment rose to EUR 498 million, up by 1.3%, with Banca Generali improving by 41.2%. Focusing on the earnings, the Adjusted Net result saw substantially increased to over EUR 2.3 billion, up by nearly 61% from half year 2022, translating into a 64.6% rise in the adjusted earnings per share. This was driven by the improved operating result, which benefited from diversified profit sources, together with the non-recurring capital gain of EUR 494 million net of taxes, related to the disposal of a London real estate development. It also reflects the impact from EUR 97 million impairments on Russian fixed income instruments recorded during the first half of last year. The net result also improved to EUR 2.2 billion, up from EUR 864 million at half year 2022. Third, we confirmed our extremely solid capital position with the Solvency Ratio at 228%, up from 221% at full year 2022. The 7 percentage points increase mainly reflected the robust contribution of the normalized capital generation at EUR 2.7 billion, up from EUR 2 billion at half year 2022. Fourth, as you know, we recently announced two key acquisitions that will strengthen our market position, both in the insurance and in the asset management space. The acquisition of Liberty Seguros will help Generali enhance its growth profile, further develop the property casualty business, and confirm its leadership in the European insurance sector. It also underlines our commitment to Spain, where as a result, we will reach the fourth position on the property and casualty market, and Portugal, where we will consolidate our number two position. Besides these two key markets, we will enter the Irish property casualty retail market for the first time. The transaction will also generate additional economies of scale, thanks to cost reduction, IT optimization, and the opportunity for cross-selling of Generali products. On the asset management side, with Conning Holdings Limited and its affiliates, we are adding a leading global asset manager with a strong customer base in the US and Asia. Conning is known for its longstanding expertise in serving insurance and other institutional clients, which makes it highly complementary to our asset management culture. Integration of Conning and its affiliates into our ecosystem will create a combined platform with EUR 660 billion in assets under management and high quality, diversified capability across many asset classes. This acquisition is therefore key to reinforce Generali's positioning as a leading global asset manager, while significantly scaling its third-party business. As we have now passed the halfway mark in the execution of our strategic plan, Lifetime Partner 24: Driving Growth, I confirm that we are fully on track to reach all the key financial targets we announced in December 2021. This is further proven not only to be the quality of the results we are presenting today, but more broadly by what we achieved in 2022, even with all the challenges in the external environment as it continues to pose. We will keep you fully updated on the progress on the plan in the upcoming months. We are pleased to inform you that on January 13, 2024, we will be hosting an investor day. Thank you very much again for your continued interest in Generali. The floor is now open to you for all your questions. 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 touchtone telephone. To remove yourself from the question queue, please press star and two. We kindly ask you to use the handset when asking questions. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question is from David Farmer from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Yes, hello. 3 questions for me, please. The first one on the P&C Combined Ratio. If, if I exclude the, the effect of discounting of prior year releases, you know, net gaps, the underlying has deteriorated from the Q1. Can you give us some color on this and what your outlook is for the rest of the year, please? Secondly, on life. You've booked a charge in the Q2 for higher lapses in France and Italy. Is, is this a forward-looking measure? What were your lapse rate levels in the Q2, please? Then lastly, on Operating Capital Generation. It normalized a bit in the Q2, but remains very strong and, and it puts you way ahead of your cumulative EUR 12 billion targets. My, my question relates to the, the reliances, and so should we expect the, the cash conversion payouts that you set out at your last CMD to remain valid in this new OCG environment? Thank you. Thank you very much, David. I think the first question is for Cristiano on the numbers side. Clearly, Marco, could intervene also in the business dynamics. ... Regarding the question on the charge for lapses, is for Cristiano, and then the question on the capital generation, the need to forward-looking remittance, that is for Cristiano as well. Hello, very good. First of all, it's fair comment to, to be said on the evolution from the Q2 versus the Q1, but please, I would like to highlight that the Q2 was also impacted by a higher amount over the average on man-made so-called, which are part of the attrition and are not the pure attritional part, but they are part of that, which was basically more than double than the the the average. This is also reflecting something in the order of less than EUR 50 million, less than EUR 40 million for riots, for example, in France, which is really something uncommon from this point of view. Regarding the effect, I do agree with you that there is on the undiscounted the current year combined ratio after adjustment for natural catastrophe, a small deterioration. For sure, if I look at the Q2 2023 versus Q1 2023, there are effects which are compensating when I look this translating into EUR terms, because on one side, the EUR term effect on basically zero, but because it's a strong effect of a higher amount of revenues, because of the very large growth we obtained, and we're still obtaining in the perspective collection that we are seeing also going forward, and there's no deterioration on the operational part of the 0.4 percentage point. On the second question, charges for lapses France and Italy. They are the combination of two effects, and if I like, I would like to comment on the slightly more than EUR 700 million operating balances you've seen in the first part of CSM movement. Those charges are almost evenly split between what is the value of the exited experienced policy, versus another charge for a more prudent lapse behavior going forward, notwithstanding the fact that we have observed in the last part of the Q2, and in the beginning of the third, a more delayed of this dynamic. I mean, a reduction of the speed of the exit, maybe also related to the different kind of clients now moving, because clearly the fastest moving clients were already the one moved moved out. Regarding the, that part, I, I would like to say forward looking, this is embedding also the solvency, and there are many actions that we are doing in order to have this under control, and maybe I will let Max comment also on the product. Just to conclude the answer on the remittance, then I hand over back to Marco. Capital generation is strong. Capital generation is absolutely helped also by the higher interest rates, which are seen in the discounting. You know, capital generation in the capital has to be discounted by mathematical terms, and which means a better development, especially also in the P&C world, when you look at the solvency. By the way, I would like to profit to give some more guidance looking on the effect on the remittances going forward as well, as some capital management, one-off, that should be conducive and improving compared to what I've seen so far, projected. I hand over now to the General Manager on the product effect for Life. Hi, hi, hi, David, and hi everyone on the call, great to have you here. I would start with the P&C underlying core. Just to say that you, you have seen the development on the average premium that we have in the first semester. I think it's, it's something that we discussed previously. It's unfolding. It's clearly something that we are seeing. Our average premium for, you know, the different line of business is increasing. Especially on motor, we should expect we, we, we will see an improvement on the underlying Combined Ratio of motor. That is something that we expect. In terms of non-motor, we are protecting really well our profitability, so that's something that you already can see. In terms of Motor, all the improvement on the different geographies on the- where we are pushing for price increase, quarter after quarter are materializing, and you will see a benefit coming up in the in the Combined Ratio attritional of the current year. One additional comment on your second question on Life. We have seen, I would say in the Q2, a better environment in terms of lapses. You know, as we see, as, as we go into the Q3, we see even a slight, a slight improvement, still on the, on the lapses, bringing an improvement also on net, on net inflows. We are now unfolding, you know, part of, you know, all, all of the different product that we that we plan and we design for reacting to this environment, both on the retention side and also on the new business side. This is coming up. First, you know, the product were introduced in the market, in June, so we should see the first result in probably in middle of July and then coming up in September. We are positive on this, and so we will see, I believe, a better environment going forward to the Q3. Thank you. If, a second question, please? Ah, yes, please go ahead. Yeah, just to quickly follow up on, on the lapse point. You're saying half of it is more forward-looking, and it's split between France and Italy. If, if I, if I take EUR 300 million split between the two countries, and I put that next to your liabilities, we're only talking about a few, a few basis points. If I look at the industry data for Italy, for instance, the, the lapse rates are up 100 basis points in the Q1. Does this mean we should expect more to come in the second half? Or, or are you saying that in Q3, the lapse rates are already back to the 2021, 2022 levels? Yes, thanks for spotting. First of all, as you know, the embedded lapse session is, so we're talking about a deviation from the projected one. We are putting or put this in the projection, okay? It is a matter between intensity and duration. The action that we have seen so far, especially, for example, in Italy, the emotional movement happened mainly in the month of February, which is behind us, and so far, with all also the, let's say, system solution found around is bringing a different trend. We put this part as an effect also. It's like, allow me to make a physical example. We have the fastest, the fastest animals running out of the door. When you open the door, the client moves so far. We have the others, which are moving in a different way. We are also seeing the dynamic from the effort that we are pushing for, which is unfolding. What is projected is for duration and intensity, but so far, compared to the normal projected effect, is what could be expected before also having the final outcome of all the action that also Marco will explain. I hope this clarifies that in the let's say pathway to normality. Okay, thank you. Next question, please. The next question is from Steven Haywood, from HSBC. Please go ahead. Thank you very much. Two questions from me. Just following on from the lapse trend, there was a six percentage point negative impact on the 72 ratio from a non-economic assumption. Can you tell me how much of this was from the change in the lapse assumption or the lapse experience? Thank you. Secondly, you've given the tariff changes by product from page 23 versus page 22. Could you provide us the tariff changes by country as well, for Italy, France, and Germany? That'd be very helpful. Thirdly, you mentioned in slide 2 that you see other tariff increases that's scheduled in the second half of this year. Can you tell us how much these are for, which countries and which products? Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much, Steven. I think the first question is for Cristiano, while the second and the third are for Marco. We are seeing, the effect of the service movement, looking at the half year movement, from year end to rates, the 6 percentage point, half of it is explained by the how it is related to the lapses we were mentioning, including experience. Thank you. So- Marco, you have a question on tariff changes and the second half of 2022. Yes. I would start by saying that in all geographies that we see, we are projecting tariff changes. All of like, what we show in terms of average price increase, it's really coming from a broad range of geographies. All of the geographies are showing positive signs. I couldn't mention any geography that is behind or not doing the type of increase that we think is important to close the gap. The gap that we are seeing, that we typically, when we think about profitability, it's really the difference between, you know, our price, average price increase and our risk premium increases. I have to tell you that we still see a frequencies that is lower compared to 2019, so that is still a good effect that we are enjoying. We have also seen, I would say, across the different geographies, a more predictable inflation, claims inflation. Something that is in the range of what we projected last year, so we do not have major surprises in terms of inflation. I would say that probably in Italy is where we have the lowest inflation in frequencies, so we are seeing pricing fees that are, you know, completely closing the gap of these. In Germany, we have a significant price increase. You mentioned, and I'm mixing also your third question, because in reality. For example, in Germany, we already had an additional tariff increase in June, so in the end of the first semester, in the first half, because we have seen the need of updating that. So we go in updating the tariff where we see a strong need. I don't have in mind measures the, in terms of price increase. What I also would like to underline is that we are also leveraging on portfolio pruning, claims management, so all of these is acting on restoring our profitability and keeping in terms of non-motor our profitability. So that's overall what we see in terms of pricing, price increase and adjustment that we need to do. Okay, thanks very much. Can I just follow up with a quick question on your Combined Ratio target? Do you foresee meeting the 11% Combined Ratio target next year, and on what basis? Yes, Steven, I would say this one, I just for the sake of completeness, I think it is useful for you to receive the full explanation of the 6% negative impact on the non-economic assumption, where half I told you was all the parts related to the lapses. The vast majority of the other 3% is explained by the buyback we exploited in the Q1 of the year in order to have the long-term incentive plan served going forward. The, the, the rest minor is really 0.few% points related to the growth in our claims business. Relating to the Combined Ratio target, reiterating the 95% undiscounted guidance, which is the most important one to look at, because clearly the discounting is more volatile, depending not only on ourselves. Because ourselves is the part on the discounting on higher volumes, as we explained in the Q2, which helps having a better discounting as well, not only the interest rate, but the largest component driving it is the interest rate development. The undiscounted part is confirmed, because I think that the action that Marco told you before will progressively unfold. If you look also on the technical parameter part of the acquisition, average premium, and the evolution through progressively on the balance sheet. Don't forget that there is a kind of J-curve effect as well in the inflation dynamic pricing, there's claim versus pricing, because it takes the time to see it unfolding progressively. It is confirmed modular, even some jiggling around. We had, for example, I can anticipate, in July, some higher natural catastrophic event, which is the typical also part happening in the 3rd in the 3rd quarter, which is one of the most impacted one, which could contain something of the order of EUR 250 million impact of what has been observed on top of the half year number so far on the projection, which is still well within our budgeted part, also on an aggregate basis. Next question. Very much. The next question is from Peter Elliott from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead. Thank you very much. First of all, thank you very much for changing your reporting dates to a quarter. It's very helpful for me. Thank you. In terms of questions, I wanted to focus, I guess, on a couple of the sort of big surprises today in terms of the non-life investment income and the discounting effects. On the investment income, I think it's probably fair to say that it was a bit higher than you had been sort of expecting or, or guiding us towards. Assuming you agree with that statement, I'm just wondering if you can explain what, what drove the surprise compared with what you were expecting? On the discounting, I, I'm still struggling a little bit with the seasonality, to be honest. I know you say it's non-linear, but you seem to be saying for this year that you expect basically one third in Q1, one third in Q2, and then one two third across the whole of H2. Bearing in mind that H2 should have some relative tailwinds, I think, from scope, volume, and interest rates, it just that, that final bit just seems quite low to me, so I just wondering if you can help me understand that at all. Then finally, one quick one on the asset management. Just wondering if you could clarify the outlook for the Cost/Income ratio. You talked about the strengthening of the operating machine, but I'm, I'm not quite clear whether that's a one-off or whether that's a sort of ongoing investment we should expect. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Peter. All the three questions, Cristiano, are for you. Yes, thank you, Peter, also for the acknowledging the flexibility in having them a single day. On the non-life investment income, the sustainability is pretty much there, because the improvement observed in the first half 2023 versus 2022 of EUR 164 million could be split in three important drivers on top of the average also increase of the reinvestment rate. You need to be aware that we enlarged our perimeter through the embedding of the recent acquisitions, and which means something in the order of EUR 60 million positive positive effect. We had also some further dividend from private equity for the order of EUR 53 million. We are clearly the improvement also coming from our South America, Argentina, which is related to inflation. On top of that, which is explained, I would say, 80% of this delta, also the rest, our 20% is more recurring as well in the nature. All of this could be explained, because we enlarge the perimeter. We have some private equity, which is really volatile as well, seasonality, but has some capability to be repeatable going forward. As well, there is the normal behavior in Argentina. This is the combination of the three factors, higher volumes, higher rate of reinvestment, higher perimeter. On the- That's very... Could, could I very quickly, sorry, that, that's very helpful. I, I missed the, the private equity dividends, the number. I don't know if you can maybe repeat that? Yes. EUR 60 million perimeter enlarges, EUR 53 million from private equity dividend, and EUR 24 million from Argentina are explaining almost already 80% of the movement. The rest is normal, as, as well, increasing also due to the reinvestment rate at higher rate of the, the, the as well, book and the, and the enlargement. This is why we doing this as a recurrent. Okay? No worries. Hope this clarifies. It does. Thank you very much. Discounting. First of all, you have seen that we raised a little bit the guidance from the previous one, EUR 650-700 to EUR 750-800. This is the joint effect of two things. Likely, higher effect of interest rates and likely higher volumes, which put together, translated in Euro terms, means something else. It is very important to remember that when you speak about discounting, there is also a discounting of the prior year. If I just split out the prior year discounting, which is a more erratic in nature, because it depending on what is happening on the review, and the effect on the estimator. The current year only was discounting EUR 250 million in the Q1, EUR 509 million in the first half. This, let's say, similar effect, but likely are, is explained by higher rates and higher, higher volumes. This is consistent to the, to the, to the projection. It's almost linear because of this effect and not because it is not linear. There is non-linearity, but this effect has been polluting this linearity, brings it to looks like similar linear. On the asset management side, yes, the Cost/Income ratio is higher for two, for, for two reasons. First of all, last year we had a higher amount of performance fees, which were not repeated this year because we had EUR 34 million higher performance fees compared to this year. We have some IT investing. I would like to give you a couple of examples. We are investing in the revolution for Germany and regions of the further check. We are investing in all the wave of the information on the ESG feature, which is extremely important also for the future compliance reporting towards the European directives, as well as the importance for us to better select the investments we are making according to our sustainability strategy. This means that the, the decrease of asset management revenues is bringing the joint effect. Going forward in the second half of 2023, the guidance is for tighter control in the business suite on the expenses, especially on the IT and the consulting one, which will bring a better development, provided that we are able to revamp the revenues. Hope this clarifies. Yeah. Thank you very much. Thank you, Peter. Next question, please. The next question is from Farooq Hanif from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead. Hi, everybody. Thank you very much. I just want to go back to your 95% undiscounted guidance. You, you said and admitted that there was some deterioration in loss ratio in Q2. If you allow for man-made losses. Is the implication here that you will have, you know, slightly higher loss ratio, but offset by reserve releases? Can you comment on the COVID-19 reinsurance coverage, and whether there are any other potential COVID-related reserve releases that we can look forward to in the next period? Secondly, going back to your comments about tariff increases accelerating, I mean, are you implying here that we could see higher than, you know, the growth rate we saw in 1H, in the second half, or at least the same in premiums? My last question is, you talked about the kind of discounting effect, but you also have the unwind. I know you provided a slide on it, and, and I don't want to go through that now because it's quite complicated. If you look at the net-... of investment income and the IFE, the insurance finance expenses, should we expect then that this is going to be quite a stable net margin going forward, or will there, you know, will the, the way the curve is working mean that there might be a bit of a squeeze in the next few years between investment income and IFE? Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Farouk. I'm thinking of the first question and the last question are for you, while the second one on tariff increases and the impact on premiums are both for you and Marco. If you would like to start with the first question. Yes, sir. Good morning, Farouk. The going back to undiscounted combined ratio guidance 95, clearly, when you say a number, we, we are not talking about the, the perfect bending line at the very single digit after, after the comma. For sure, this is the re- the, the, the range which we are keeping and confirming, the, the, the, the direction also because of the uncertainties in natural catastrophes. In general, the deterioration of the Q2 is, as we explained, driven by the higher amount of versus the average of non-renewal. Going forward, we have to remember that the Q4 is the most intense as usual. It is confirmed from the evidence on the natural catastrophe. We need also to recall that in the second part of the year, there is a progressive unfolding of the tariff strengthening measure and the pruning that we are doing. There are some portfolios as well, which are accounted in as Loss Component, which will revert back in the second part of the year, which is again, a little bit more conducive. Regarding the COVID-19 reserve, relief, and outlook, that was a kind of conservative, conservative approach towards it, which are for the positive, and as you know, it is something which is not something we can reproduce. On the contrary, the guidance we gave over the cycle and the two percentage points prior year is still confirmed, were basically even, even distributed between the risk-adjusted premium and the best estimate prudency that we are keeping, especially, allow me to say, in very good years, which prudency should be higher, like these ones. Then I hand over to Marco on the tariff, on the tariff increase, and then I will answer the premium. Yeah, I open my side. Let, let me, probably, give you a broader, a broader answer. When we think about the, the, the increase in tariffs, the way we think about is really protecting the profitability of the business. When you have inflation going on, you know, at 3%, 5%, 6%, or even 20%, as we, we have in Hungary, what we really think is not a one-off measure, but an ongoing exercise that we keep on doing on at the portfolio level, where we see the need of updating our premium to keep them in line with our risk premium, so to keeping them in line with the frequency and claims inflation. We have seen as, as we have commented multiple times, we have seen claims inflation, especially, let me reiterate, on the material damage. The real part of inflation is on material damage, and we think this is gonna be present also in the next year. We would not stop price increasing or price increase overall this year, but it's for us, it's an ongoing exercise that we keep on doing to maintain profitability of our portfolio. Going back to what we expect, we clearly expect these price increase, especially for motor, where there is a time lag in, in seeing the result of our price increase, moving up in the second part of the year. Again, I think it's important to remind that this is, now we see 3.2%. Last year, we were seeing 2% in the first Q. We were seeing 0.9 in January of 2022. We will, we, we will see these tariff increase going to the level of inflation multiplied by frequency, that we think it's the right level to offset the overall movement in our claims. This is how we think about this. It's important to see that also, we think that inflation is not gonna disappear in 2024. You, you're gonna see price increase constantly over time in the next months, because that's the way we think about maintaining the profitability of our business. Back to you, Stefano. Thank you, Marco. Farooq Hanif, on the unwinding, clearly, yes, it is complicated, but the, the, the key message is this: There is a different speed between the discounting impact and the unwinding impact, and we have shown it, I think, also in the, in the back of slide. We have seen that the full impact of seeing a locked in rate unfolding up as an, as a, as a, as an unwinding is much lower than the, what, what you see as an effect when you look on the discounting. We are seeing that you need basically six years to get 60%, 80% of the, the impact that you can find on a single generation on the inclined, discounted rate curve, which is explained, I think, in our, in our, in our presentation properly. Which means that, yes, you have a deteriorating effect. This effect is in any case, counterbalanced by the asset allocation. On the asset allocation, we have higher amount of growth, and then well, a risk premium, which you think you can earn over the long term above the risk-free rate, because for sure, to close this gap, you could invest everything in government bonds. Since we are not investing everything in government bonds, because we want to earn over the, over the cycle a higher premium, because we have capital to be allocated to take this risk and, and, and remunerate higher. We think that the, the effect could be depending on the different timing recognition of this excess premium in, in periods. I take an example, real estate. Real estate, we are observing an increase of the rents, that in life ended in, in P&L, because of higher quality of our prime location of real estate, which clearly started with a little bit of lag compared to the speed of the increase of rate, which is unfolding. On private equity, for example, where we also have and we receive dividend, it is depending on interest rates. When the interest rates are so high, like this, usually the exit from the private equity funds delay and wait for stabilization of rates. Over the cycle, this is not freezing. On the shorter period, yes, we could expect this to further be enhanced compared to the dynamic, but over, over the cycle, this is going, it is a pure effect. Don't forget that we also have private debt, which is floating plus spread, which is compensating also partially this. It is really an asset allocation decision, the speed of closing this gap versus the business growth. I hope we give the combination of these two directions. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next question, please. The next question is from Michael Huttner from Berenberg. Please go ahead. Thanks very much. I'd like to address these questions to Philippe, because it's lovely to listen to, to the boss, so may say. I, I don't know if, if that's true, of course, and, and it's such an honor to, to hear him. I hope, I hope these, these are addressable to the boss. The first one is on dividend growth, the second would be on deals and how happy you are with them, and on the third is on the, the remaining EUR 500 million and, and whether you, you know, you, you kind of think, "Oh, I could buy something with it," or, or, "No, actually I'll give it to the shareholder." On the dividend, so we, we've had these extraordinary net income and EPS growth numbers, I mean, some 28, some 60%, some 65%, which are huge, and of course, it's half year, but it, it does give a feel for the full year as well. I just wonder if that means that your ambition or flexibility, or how you call it, for dividends, which at the moment is constrained by your plan, EUR 5.4 billion-EUR 5.6 billion, whether there might be a little bit of room for, for maneuver there. The second is on the, the deals you've done, how happy you are with them. The, the reason I ask is, Cristiano, these are really complicated, and we purchase every single number, and we, we kind of get a little bit lost in the detail. I just wondered how, how would you... You know, you're sitting and you, you've got all this stuff, you know, you have a fairly good view of what's happening, whether you're done with the deals, how much more there is yet to come in the next business plan. Just a feel for, for where we are on track. Then the final little question is EUR 500 million. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Michael. on, on the, on the dividend, I can confirm that, we will, stay growing dividends in the, in the next, two years, consistently with, what we've, announced when we presented our plan last time, Partner 24. This is the basic commitment. Dividends will be growing. we gave a, a range on the, the amount of, of dividend that, should be paid during the, the, the course of the, of the plan. of course, if we can do more, we will be happy to, to do more, but, I will, I will let our CFO comment on, on this. yes, maybe, maybe, Fabio, you should remind the, the, the, our dividend policy for the, for this plan. Yes, yes, I remind that the EUR 5.2 billion-EUR 5.6 billion are well on track, and we are on the, in the high range, and there is a ratchet policy. As Michael, you, you will know, we will never get to a proposal lower than the, the previous year, which is also pulling back after the 2023 paid dividend of the 2022 results. For sure, this is a point of focus together with the improved remittance and cash flow generation capacity I was commenting before. ... On M&A, Michael, of course, I'm very happy with the deal we made, not only the last two one, which I will comment, but all of them. Cattolica, for example, was also a great deal, both from a strategic and a financial standpoint. I mean, we've been very selective in the past few years in making the acquisition. We've been always very consistent with the strategic and financial framework we disclosed. As you know, we don't do an acquisition if there is no strategic potential to it, and if it doesn't fit with our financial discipline, we try to do that, and we've been giving up many, many opportunities. We've been very selective, very consistent with our strategy, and we are very happy with all our acquisitions. The Liberty Seguros is very important to increase our property casualty business to improve significantly our footprint in Spain, which is a very good market, and we needed to upscale our business in Spain. This was very important. On top of this, we are also increasing the slightly, but still, significantly our business in Portugal. We are entering the Irish market, which is very different from the UK market, which is a good, a good market for us. We also have an opportunity with this transaction to upskill our direct business, which is, as you know, also part of our strategy. Definitely a good, a good opportunity for us. It's also a great opportunity for us to further strengthen our leadership in the European, the European market, which is important, very important to us. As you know, one of the keys and the success of this transaction, we obviously also the quality and the speed of our integration. As you know, we have already showed that we are very good at integrating the companies we are acquiring and good at extracting all the synergies. We will do it once again with Liberty Seguros. We are also happy because it is important for our M&A team, who has been, and not only for the M&A team, but for the whole management team and for the board of directors, it is also important to show that we are able to make a good deal, a good transaction, even in a very competitive process. The process for Liberty Seguros was quite competitive. The deal, the coming deal is completely different. It was born as a competitive process, very soon we entered in a bilateral discussion. As you know, it's a no-cash deal. We have a very good partner in Taiwan, who is another life insurance company, and they own 60 point something% of the total combined asset management company. It's a no-cash deal. We've been paying this acquisition with paper, not with asset collection, generally paper, but with general investment paper. Thanks to the deal, we are not only upscaling our A&WM business, we are a strong player in the A&WM business as well. We are now becoming a strong player in the A&WM business, also in the US. We are also acquiring affiliates like Octagon, which bring us more capabilities on the very interesting asset classes. This is a great opportunity for us to continue building our global asset management platform, acquiring both third-party clients, distribution capabilities, and asset management capabilities as well. I confirm that we are very happy with those deals, and we would not have done the deal if we were not very happy with them. The third question. Ah, yes, yes. Okay, we've been using EUR 2.3 billion for Liberty Seguros. We've been using also EUR 500 million for the closing of the Cattolica deal. To also acquire the control of both our Indian joint ventures. We've been using a significant amount compared to what was available for M&A. As I, as you know, we also have an excess, an excess capital of EUR 200 million in Liberty to go. We still have something like EUR 200 million left for acquisition. We have, as you said, a EUR 500 million buffer. I don't know if we will be able to use this for other acquisition. As you know, it takes a lot of time to make a good acquisition. The deals, the very good to good deals, needed a very long time for to become mature. I don't know what, what, how we're going to use this capital by the end of the plan. The end of the plan is quite, quite close anywhere, as I said. We are more than half, way of the, of the plan. The maturation of, of deal is quite, is quite long. We stick to, to, to our commitment to, to, return, any capital to, to shareholders at the, at the end of the, of the plan. Please leave us this flexibility until the, the end of the plan. As you know, we will not go for, CV acquisition. We will go for acquisition only with the, trade value for, for all, shareholders, but we, we definitely, have in mind that, that share, share buybacks, like, is not part of our capital management, policy, and. That's super. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Michael. The next question is from William Hawkins from KBW. Please go ahead. Hello. Thank you very much. Cristiano, you, you've got your breath back, I hope, because I'm back on to you, old friend. Coming back to the Combined Ratio, I, I would just like to touch on that again. I think you've confirmed that it's the undiscounted headline Combined Ratio, which you're primarily managing towards, and we've just had 95% for that. How do you think that figure is trending into 2024 and 25? You know, to me, there's big moving parts here in different directions. You've got inflation that's negative, pricing that's positive, business mix, which I think is probably positive, and then you've got massive investment income, which may mean you don't need to make the same Combined Ratio that you would have done in the past to hit the ROE targets. How are we thinking about the direction for that 95% over time? Is it going down or going up? Related to that, if I may, y- are, are you guys moving into a world where there is a connection between the impact of discounting and how you're setting the undiscounted Combined Ratio? Because you're, you're talking like it's not, which personally I like, but there are quite a few companies that are now saying: Look, we're getting such a benefit from the discounting, that we might as well use that as an opportunity to make more conservative, undiscounted loss picks. I don't know if that's featuring your thought process. And then lastly, on the Combined Ratio, if I may, sorry, but you made reference on this call to it kind of being obvious that nat cats are seasonal in the Q3. Maybe I misunderstood, but to me, that's not obvious. You know, if you're an American business, the hurricane season comes in the 3rd quarter, but if you're a European business, it's normally November, December, January, February, when we get the bad weather and the nat cat season. Maybe I've misunderstood, but if you could talk about that. Secondly, can you just confirm, what were the total dividends in the 1st half or the 2nd quarter for the non-life business? You, you kind of gave us the private equity figure, but I'd like to know the total dividends, just so I can figure out how much of that EUR 788 million is, is recurring in the 2nd half. Lastly, please, you may have indirectly touched on it, but I, I got confused. In the life result, you've got in the profit, EUR 138 million of negative experience variances. I'm not really sure what those were or how they broke down, because when you look in your financial supplement, that figure actually included a positive from Italy and then a negative from a couple of other markets. I'm confused about what those experience variances were in the first half, and I don't know if in the future I'll just plug in 0, because experience variances should gravitate around 0, or if we're discovering that they should be structurally negative or maybe positive. Thank you. Thank you very much, William. There are several questions here, more than three, but I would say that the Combined Ratio guidance is for Cristiano, together with the setting of the undiscounted core as, let's say, a target for the business. On the 3rd quarter nat cats, Marco could comment. The dividend contribution to the P&C investment result for Cristiano, together with the last question on the negative experience value for life. Hello, William. Thanks. Clearly, I confirm why we are managing the undiscounted Combined Ratio so far, because it is a process of, managing in the end, the final cash flow that can be paid out, to the, improved office to, to remittances in the results. Very few geographies are adopting this principle as Local GAAP. Local GAAP principle are not taking the undiscounted, sorry, the discounted Combined Ratio as a, as a result. One driver of future potential changes, and this could happen even in the logic of when everybody will adopt locally, and we know that there are some big geographies, but it will never, will never happen. Some will progressively get it, but it is important, and I'm linking also, you know, to the, to the, to the question of going forward in, in general, on how to look at the, the, other approaches, you know, giving more the discounted results. We would like to avoid to keep the discounted combination as a target, because when positive affect comes to the interest rates, there are two ways to, to stay within this number. One is being prudent, and the second one is allowing the business to deteriorate the underlying technical profitability, which is something we do not want to do, and we do not want to move into cash flow underwriting, which is the potential risk if you manage the discounted element. The undiscounted is protecting you in the real underlying technical soundness and the capacity of managing this. Also from the point of view of the business, it is a little bit much more complex to manage a pricing of products at the same speed of the movement of the market interest rate, as you can imagine, also for steering the full business, which is more technically around that. Going forward, 2024, 2025, is it 95 the magical number? We, we do think that we are obtaining the mix, where for sure we are improving more and more the weight of Non-Motor due to the growth of Non-Motor, and which is getting to more healthier loss ratio, for sure, at the expense of higher expenses. Allow me the joke, for this is, getting to more, let's say, sound, behavior around this. In order also to have 24 and 25 unfolding fully the benefit of, of the Motor tariff and, the Motor premium value, looks like to be pretty much, a good, direction of travel to be confirmed and confirmed. We go, on the third part, on Marco, on the natural catastrophe, I'll ask him to, to comment. Yeah, Cristiano, maybe I can add also one comment on the number 2, because I think you, you, you stated what we, what we are willing to do. I reiterate the fact that, you know, technically it's very difficult to move pricing, claims, you know, all these industrial lever according to what is doing interest rate externally. It's, in a way, the more we are prudent on the other underwriting side, the, the better we feel protected, you know, against the different context of the market. I would say, clearly, we would like, as I always reiterate, to have a sound and prudent underwriting policy in, in term of combination. Coming to your questions on the nat cat. I would say, when we talk about forecasting, nat cat is always a difficult, a difficult topic, right? If I look at our experience in, you know, in the past years, our, our experience is showing a concentration of nat cat in Q2 and Q3. Normally Q4, there is more stable, better than it's more benign than, than the other quarters. That's the type of experience that we have, that, that's not a prediction, but that's the experience that we have in the past, in, you know, in several years. We are not exposed in the Northern Europe countries, so the Q1 Euro storm probably worries us less than other player. While what happened in July, for example, in Italy, in Greece, in other Eastern European countries, something that we will experience going forward, and you will see in the numbers, in the second half. Cristiano, back to you. I think for the, for the Q4, right? Yes, the, the fourth question, the second question. The fourth question. Of P&C. In isolation, P&C collected dividend in the Q2 was EUR 99 million, while overall on half year 2023, the full six months, EUR 125 million. Just to clarify these numbers on the equity and equity-like insurance. What are the negative variances in the life component you are saying? It is exactly related to the experience of the change we had on the one-off effect, and we were commenting on the Generali benefit business, where the accepted reinsurance has been modeled once and forever in a new way, in order to capture the full effect, which is affecting just for this one-off, EUR 60 million. If you take this out, overall, and then there are even number gross, then there are some reinsurance intermediate parts, so this part is gross, and then there is the net effect in the EUR 60 million I was commenting on, to you. It just to let you appraise the fact that taking out into one of the fact, which is not going to be repeated anymore, the life is, as we said, more predictable and unfolding exactly with the sensitivities which we are showing. Fantastically helpful. Thank you. Thanks to you, William. We apologize, but due to lack of time, the next question will be the last question. The next question is from Iain Pearce from Exane BNP Paribas. Please go ahead. Hi, thanks for taking my question. Hopefully it'll be a quick one. The first one is just at the start of the call, you mentioned you were making some changes and taking some action on products to help insulate you from lapse risk, and you think that'd be beneficial in the second half. I was just hoping you could provide a bit more detail on what you're actually doing now, particularly on the product side, to sort of help on lapse risk. If that's baked into your assumptions around the CSM move that you saw from the non-economic variances. The second one was just on the cost ratio in P&C obviously ticking up. Sounds like a mixed effect. Do you expect that to continue going forward? Do you expect that to be more than offset by the improvements in the loss ratio, going forward? Thank you. Thank you very much, Iain. I think the first question is for Marco, and maybe Cristiano, if you want to add a color regarding the implications for the CSM, while the cost and expense ratio trends in P&C are for you, Cristiano. Yeah. I can add a couple of points to what I said before. We expect benefits from the product that we are launching. You know, I would divide, as I said, into, you know, conceptions to, different set of actions. One, we have some action on, on the retention side. When we have to limit losses, when we have to retain customers, we can put in place some action, like, for example, giving a little bit more benefit on the, on the, on the yield of the segregated fund to the customer, and making sure they can have, an option, to, to stay in with us. You know, there are a set of, you know, action that we, that we can put on the table to retain, to retain customer, including making switch on, for example, other segregated fund, which can provide a little bit better yield. In terms of new business, we are, we are updating all of our offerings. I typically mention one product that has been launched in June. A product with 2 segregated funds. One is larger, stable, with lower yields. The other one is a smaller segregated fund in term of size, but it can provide you a little bit better yield. Overall, we are making our product more competitive in this environment, trying to capture more volume that are in the market at the moment. Clearly, this depends on the different geographies. What, you know, it's very important, on, on the different geographies, as we typically say, is the type of distribution that we have, the type, the type of, segment in the market that, that, that we have, and the type of, you know, as, you know, typically the mass market is something that where, where you can, have a better value proposition, while, you know, the high net worth is, is more, looking for yield. That's, that's kind of different. The third, element that we typically mention, it's really the type of product that we can put on the, in the market. It's bundled with insurance value proposition, that is very important, that, in, in our value proposition. This is one, one element. The other element, clearly, is the external context. If you, if you look at the, at the spread between our segregated fund, for example, or, or the goal is 5 years or 10 years of the specific market where we operate, that difference is gonna give you some change in the lapse experience that we have. Of course, Germany is different than France, and it's different than Italy. That is overall what we expect. We expect some material benefit from this type of action in the second half. Already, you know, if we look at, as I said, if I look at July, today, it's better than, you know, probably one of the best month in the year in term of net inflow. We do expect benefit from this. Yes. Thank you, Marco. I am completing what is embedded. Clearly, there are, for example, retention campaign which are embedded in the CSM, or in some commercial actions. In general, apart from these cases, there are no direct link between the future new business. I'm not talking about the existing one, but the business in the assumption included in the CSM, which relate only to the book, which is in force. Clearly, those actions might affect in the future, exactly the margin, as we were saying, have been embedded. It is a matter also of data and also common sense in understanding what we were saying before. Clearly, the most sensitive animals exited from the fence when the door was open. Now you are left with a different dynamic. It's like having two different temperature of your gas in the room. You need to take into account what you have now in the book. I think this is the way it is embedded. To complete on the Cost/Income ratio in two. Clearly, we have a change of a threefold effect in 2023, which is more visible. We had M&A and then maybe from the acquired entities, which, for example, for India, when we did the step up in consolidating it, India is a market where commissions are pretty high. We developed very fast in the second part of 2022, and now it's fully visible in the 2023, the travel business of Europ Assistance, which as well has a very high acquisition cost, which are helping other component on the, on the social. In Italy, there are campaigns which are shifting more towards the non-motor, and within the motor, a huge push towards the motor other damages, which is a healthy, more valuable part that you can create also in a competitive market like Italy. All these trends put together, say that basically are bringing to a different balance, and also thanks to the higher overall growth of non-motor, there is a rebalancing in the mix between acquisition cost and Loss Ratio, which is, in any case, is being considered as well on the positive side, as a reduction in higher insurance costs, but also at the negative expenses, are expecting to be managing them in ground, especially also when we complete fully the integration of Cattolica with the full synergies that we see now in the P&C book of it. I stop here and hand over. Yes, before we close the call, the Group CEO would like to make some opening remarks. Opening remarks. Yes, thank you. Thank you, Fabio. First of all, I would like to thank all of you for attending this call on a wide cross audience, and I would like to give a few messages. Definitely, these are very good and very strong results, both in terms of capital position, profitability, and growth of the business. Definitely the last two acquisitions will further strengthen our group. I think it's very important that we are able to achieve some good results despite a very challenging and changing environment, we were able to do so because because of the quality and the experience of the management team, who is very much focused on implementing our strategy. As you can see, our strategy is working, is working very, very well, in any kind of environment. Not only I'm able once again to confirm that we will be able to achieve all the financial targets of our plan, Lifetime Partner 24: Driving Growth, I think that beyond this, we can be very positive on considering for the next strategic cycle, because this success, the success of implementation of this plan, will make possible a new ambitious, ambitious plan. We are not only delivering a good result, but we are also preparing a bright and exciting future for Generali. Thank you once again for being with us today. Bye-bye. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over. You may disconnect your telephones.