SCOR SE (SCR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the SCOR Group Q3 2022 Results and Investor Day Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] At this time, I would like to hand the conference over to Mr. Yves Cormier. Please go ahead, sir.

Good afternoon, and welcome to the SCOR Q3 2022 Results and Investor Day call. My name is Yves Cormier, Head of Investor Relations, and I'm joined today on the call by Laurent Rousseau, CEO of SCOR as well as the entire Executive Committee. Can I please ask you to consider the disclaimer on Page 2 of the presentation. I would now like to hand over to Laurent Rousseau. Laurent, over to you.

Thank you, Yves. Good afternoon, and welcome, everyone. In the current environment, we have decided to focus today's discussion on our key priorities. Our objective is to present our Q3 results and our 1-year action plan. To do so, we will go through 4 presentations. First, I will explain our priorities, our focus on our 1-year plan to restore sustainable performance instead of a 3-year plan and our long-term views. Second, I will then take you through our Q3 -- Ian will take you through the Q3 results. Given the importance of reserve movements in this quarter, and that we had a lot of questions on reserves during our Q2 call, I have invited Eric Lecoeur, our Chief Reserving Actuary to give you an update and answers on your questions. Third, Jean-Paul will explain how we are making SCOR P&C ready for the upcoming cycle. Fourth, Ian will take the floor again to share a few thoughts on SCOR's financials under IFRS 17. Finally, I will return to summarize before we move to Q&A with enough time to hopefully answer all your questions. So let's start. I have 3 key messages for you today. First of all, we care about our shareholders, and we are not happy to present a net loss of EUR 509 million for the first 9 months of 2022. We already have been taking extensive actions to reduce volatility and to increase profitability, but this is not enough. Performance will remain the focus of our 1-year plan. Second, we are adding further to our already strong and resilient balance sheet. Third and finally, beyond the short-term focus on delivery, we need to keep a sense of the long term. So let me start with the key concerns and provide a few answers to 3 critical questions I have been getting when meeting investors in the past few weeks and months. The first question I get is, are we properly reserved? Yes, we are, both on the P&C and on the Life & Health side. During the presentation of our Q2 results, we announced that we would start our annual P&C reserves review as we usually do. That's our normal process. We have, in fact, accelerated it and went through a thorough review of our P&C reserves. To leave no doubt, we have also asked for an independent external assessment. The consulting actuaries focus was on the most relevant segments such as U.S. casualty and selected U.S. property segments. As a result, we increased our P&C reserves by EUR 485 million to reflect prudence in an increasingly inflationary environment. This represents 2.3% of our net P&C reserves. This is both meaningful additional prudence to cover economic and social inflation and a small part of our EUR 34 billion total group net reserves. It was a useful exercise where we benchmark their assumptions and methodologies and got a lot of comfort on the quality and strength of our reserves and processes. Back in July, I told you we would use some positive reserve developments to compensate for other negative developments. We did so on the P&C business. Separately, we took advantage of some redundancies in our Life reserves. Altogether, I can tell you we have a prudent reserving approach, and we continue to be at best estimate. The second question often get is, is core balance sheet strong enough? Yes, it is. We are building on a resilient and robust balance sheet. We will put it fully at work to seize the opportunities in the current market. Our solvency ratio is strong at 217%. It is at the high end of the optimal range of Quantum Leap, and we are very comfortable with our level of capital. Our balance sheet is a strategic advantage because we offer AA level of security to our clients, and because we leverage the strategic value of P&C and Life & Health diversification, as we showed on the reserves review. The last question I get is, will SCOR pay a dividend in 2023? This, I cannot tell you right now, the Board will make the decision once the 2022 results are approved. But I can say one thing, we will stick to our well-established dividend policy. Now let me move to the actions taken in 2022 and our strategic priorities for 2023. We made the choice to move to a short-term action plan. We need a 1-year view and a long-term view. Anything in between risks becoming fast irrelevant in this environment. First of all, we have already taken meaningful remediation actions in 2022. Let me highlight a few. We have reduced our cat exposures by around 20%. These actions are already bearing fruit. Based on our cat exposures 1 year ago, we estimate Hurricane Ian would have costed us probably 60% more. We estimate our net market share on Hurricane Ian to be around 0.4% when our market share on prior Florida hurricanes was above 1%. Second, we tightened our P&C underwriting discipline and exposures and meaningfully increased our pricing requirements in several segments. Third, as mentioned earlier, we have accelerated our reserve review process to account for the inflationary environment, both economic and social. Altogether, we believe that the current market trends confirm the strategic directions we set ourselves back in September 2021. At the same time, our disappointing Q2 results also demonstrate that we need to go further than that. This is why our plan is for 1 year and focused on immediate actions. We'll maintain 3 clear priorities in 2023. First of all, we will restore profitability in parallel to ongoing underwriting and pricing actions, the group acts to contain the impact of inflation on its cost base, building a nimble and lean organization will lead to EUR 125 million efficiency gains by end 2025. Second, we will maximize the benefits from supportive market tailwinds. We have identified clear growth levers to create value for our shareholders. We are in the phasing out of the pandemic, which will have positive impact on the group, and we will make the most of the current P&C market hardening. Third, we will build on a resilient balance sheet. As an illustration, we anticipate higher inflation for longer and take a holistic approach to manage its impact. We reviewed inflation impacts widely across pricing and modeling, reserving and claims, underwriting, group expenses and investments. As far as the metrics of our plan are concerned, we will complete our IFRS 17 base economic performance framework in 2023. The IFRS 17 project is on track. We see that the appreciation of IFRS 17 KPIs by the overall market is taking a little more time than expected. One reason I believe is that IFRS 17 will magnify volatility. We are moving to reporting framework closer to economic value. And at the same time, we are going through a macroeconomic shock. It is reporting volatility over underlying risk volatility that can be managed. Managing volatility is our business, but it needs to be managed carefully. Looking at our financial strategy and setting our targets, we feel it is premature to define targets just now. We saw this with a Solvency II implementation in 2016. It takes time to calibrate targets rightly and define a KPI that will drive economic value creation over the long term despite ongoing market volatility. And it is so important that we want to take the right time to do so. In the meantime, we extend our IFRS 4 Quantum Leap target by 1 year. As a conclusion, I would like to have a glimpse at our longer-term perspectives. Beyond our focus on short-term delivery, we absolutely and critically need to keep a sense of the long term. This is the very nature of our business. I see appealing strategies -- strategic orientations for both our businesses, in Life & Health, SCOR will meet the increasing demand for protection by leveraging further its U.S. mortality leadership position and by further diversifying our portfolio geographically and into longevity. In P&C, so will focus on cycle management. The group will make the most of the hardening reentrance market after the successful buildup of our Specialty Insurance platform. And for both P&C and Life & Health businesses, one strategic imperative over the medium term will be to offer a differentiated technology-enabled value proposition to clients. So will prepare for the future by accelerating the development of innovation and services. Delivering on the short-term priorities will enable us to deliver on our long-term ambitions. We aim at delivering a sustainable performance. And I will conclude with this, how do I define performance? By performance, I mean, first of all, performance in our financial metrics, where IFRS 17 will play a role in defining economic value creation. By performance also means business performance. How do we build a franchise offering a differentiated value proposition, acting as a technical leader and price maker and standing with our clients when they need us the most? And finally, by performance, I mean in our culture and organization. How do we keep an advantage our size, our nimbleness and how do we be more innovative? We build the future and aspire to be a global leading reinsurer, using its performance in people's values and its innovative culture. Now I will leave the plan for -- to Ian, who will take you through the Q3 results. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Laurent, and good afternoon, everybody. Then I'm going to pick up on 4 key points. I'm going to talk through the Q3 results, of course. I'm going to pick up on the strong capitalization of the group and actions that we've undertaken to further strengthen the balance sheet. I'll give an update on inflation, a key topic for the industry. And finally, I'm going to comment upon the outlook for 2023. Let's move on a couple of slides and start with a summary of the key figures over the first 9 months of 2022. Let's be clear. And as Laurent said, it has been a difficult quarter and a challenging year for the industry and for SCOR. Our net income over the first 9 months is a loss of EUR 509 million, and that includes a loss of EUR 270 million for the third quarter alone. Our results over Q3 have been impacted by a heavy nat cat activity, in particular, by Hurricane Ian and the French storms. That being said, the solvency of the group remains very strong at 217% towards the top end of our optimal range. Looking at some of the metrics by business unit. On the P&C side, the premiums increased by a strong 15.8% over the first 9 months, sustained by the significant growth in Specialty Lines and in Treaty Global lines. The net combined ratio at 119.5% over the first 9 months include 8.5 percentage points of reserve strengthening and 15.9 percentage points of natural catastrophe impacted in Q3, as I said, by Hurricane Ian and the French storms. On the Life side, the premium growth of minus 2% over the first 9 months is mainly reflecting management actions undertaken in the U.S. in the course of 2021. Our Life & Health business delivers a strong technical margin of 14.9% driven by very strong 32.2% net technical margin in the third quarter of 2022, well in excess of the normalized technical margin of 8.3% for the quarter benefiting from the utilization of excess prudent margin in the Life & Health balance sheet in Q3. Let's move on to the next slide. I want to focus a little more on the net income. There are quite a few moving pieces in the quarter, and I think it's worth walking through those. The underlying net income for the group over the quarter is strong as we see over on the left-hand side. And then as we walk across the excess nat cat activity of EUR 265 million in the quarter, broadly equates to the overall net income loss in Q3 and is driven by Hurricane Ian with its impact of minus EUR 279 million for the group, and the French storms at EUR 113 million impact. In this quarter, SCOR has strengthened its P&C reserves by EUR 485 million before tax or EUR 378 million net of taxes, as you see on the slide. This brings in our future view on economic and social inflation. We're adopting a forward-looking view, we are anticipating our future. In addition, we've taken the opportunity in the quarter to be prudent in respect of our DTAs and have further strengthened the balance sheet by EUR 94 million. Now we're able to undertake these meaningful actions in strengthening our balance sheet at a limited cost to the P&L because at the same time, we have utilized excess margin that existed over and above the prudent Life & Health reserves. That has materially benefited the P&L in the quarter. Let's move on a couple of slides. I want to talk in particular about the nat cat exposure. And Laurent alluded to this, I mentioned earlier the impact of Hurricane Ian of EUR 279 million. We've been highlighting in our previous communication, the actions that we have undertaken to reduce the volatility and increase the profitability of our portfolio, including rebalancing our P&C portfolio towards non-cat lines. Now this is starting to bear fruits. And our net market share for Hurricane Ian, which is an industry-wide event. And for us, we market EUR 70 billion is now at 0.4%, and that compares to market shares of between 1% and 1.3% for historic events in the region. To put that into context, the cost of Hurricane Ian on an asset basis, would have been 60% higher compared to the portfolio we had at the same time last year. And finally, I would add that the impact of Hurricane Ian as a proportion of net earned premiums and as a proportion of shareholders' equity is lower than some of our major peers. Let's move on to the investment side. We've mentioned the key drivers of the P&C and the Life metrics. On the return on invested assets, that's a 1.9% year-to-date and a strong 2.3% quarter-to-date. And as noted, it's really benefiting from the increase in interest rates. The return on invested assets is poised to materially increase as we go forward as our current reinvestment yield is now at 5.1% as at the end of September and our relatively short duration of 3.3 years will help us to quickly take advantage from the increase in interest rates. To put this into perspective, the financial contribution from our investment portfolio is up EUR 99 million year-to-date over the same period last year, and we expect this to further materially increase across the course of our plan. Let's focus on our strong asset liquidity. EUR 8.9 billion of our invested assets will come to maturity in the next 24 months. This highly liquid asset profile allows us to continue the buy and maintain strategy on the fixed income portfolio. As a result, we do not expect to be fore sellers of assets under water and we see that over the next 3 years, we will recapture more than EUR 1 billion of unrealized losses back into shareholders' equity. I'd like to now move on to the balance sheet and comment upon that in a bit more detail. On Slide 15, we make a focus upon the review of the P&C reserves in the context of inflation. We have accelerated the usual Q4 reserving process into Q3. We have been through a very detailed and robust process of review of our reserves and the validation of our inflation assumptions. We have looked at inflation parameters line by line of business and by geography, not correcting for any historic weakness because our reserves were at best estimate, but bringing in future inflation expectations at that detailed level. Our review has included an independent external assessment where appropriate. And this has led to the reserve strengthening overall, as I said, of EUR 485 million. We are comfortable with our P&C reserves going forward and we do not expect any material change in Q4 of this year. Let's move on to slide. On the Life & Health side, we've reviewed the reserve assumptions. We've spoken before about the prudence in our Life & Health reserves. And following review of our assumptions, we have realized a significant excess margin from the Life & Health reserves of EUR 460 million. Our Life & Health reserves remain adequate and prudent after this excess margin release. Finally, on the balance sheet. In respect of the deferred taxes, we are, again, taking a prudent approach. We've reduced the stock and have not recognized certain current DTAs within the French tax perimeter. The net operating losses that generated these DTAs are not lost, and they can be reactivated, if appropriate in the future. This is a meaningful action that, again, brings strength into our balance sheet. Let's take a look at the book value of the group. That is very strong at EUR 30.39 per share and results in a leverage ratio of 31%. Now what I'd like to bring out here is that the revaluation reserve of EUR 1.1 billion, as I noted a moment ago, is not expected to flow through the P&L as a result of the strong financial cash flows that we have over the coming 2 years. As a result, we expect the revaluation reserve to return through equity over time and this is worth EUR 6.6 per share in book value and 4 percentage points of leverage ratio. If we move on to the next slide, just to close on the balance sheet. We have maintained a strong solvency position. The Q3 solvency ratio estimate is at 217%, close to the upper end of the optimal range. And this is after reflecting all of the balance sheet actions that I discussed. So moving on, it has been a difficult quarter on top of a difficult year, but we have positioned ourselves to bring in more security into our ability to deliver in the future. SCOR has been able to materially strengthen its balance sheet without materially impacting the P&L. We've been able to do that through utilizing excess margin in the reserves on the Life side, and we've strengthened our P&C reserves over the quarter to factor in future inflation. We have a strong solvency position close to the top end of the optimal range and a solid EUR 5.4 billion of shareholder equity. I'd like to now pick up on the third topic, inflation. We have taken an inflation fully into account in our reserves. Beyond that reserve review, we have also adapted our pricing framework to take into account the inflationary environment with a granular approach, including a review line by line and by geography again. We can use market data, economic indices for 80% of that review. For the remaining 20% of the portfolio, we take a prudent approach of adding inflation with an uncertainty load to general CPI within our pricing framework. On the underwriting side, we continue to take actions also including maintaining an appropriate Treaty language, all performing portfolio actions where our risk appetite is lower. So in summary, on our in-force portfolio, we strengthened the reserves for future inflation. For our new business, we now bring on to the books, we're protecting against future inflation. Let's now take a look at the invested assets in this inflation context. Almost 50% of our invested assets are protected against high inflation and will benefit from an increase in interest rates in the short to medium term, thanks to their variable revenue feature or their short-term maturity. The portfolio remains protected against a possible future recessionary environment through a relatively low duration, high-quality assets and a very low listed equity exposure. Finally, on inflation on the next slide. We're protecting ourselves against cost inflation through engaging in an ambitious program of transformation and simplification across the SCOR Group. We have already developed around 90 significant initiatives since the beginning of the year. Now our ambition is to reach EUR 125 million of recurring efficiency gains by the end of 2025 which will represent 0.5 percentage points of our group cost ratio and will offset the impact of inflation within expenses on the group. The key drivers of these gains are a strong cost discipline, a data-centric organization and optimization of the resources and the deployment of agile ways of working within the group. Just moving on to the outlook. I've described the actions we've undertaken to provide a more solid base for the group going forward. And in terms of the outlook for 2023, the group will benefit from the hardening P&C market where we see price increases across all lines of business, and we have the capital to grow in that market. On the Life side, we see an overall decline of COVID mortality and will benefit from the demand post pandemic. On the investment side, we see, as I've said, material increases in the financial contributions to come with a high reinvestment rate for our relatively short duration portfolio. So for 2023, our strategy, as Laurent said, is to continue to focus on reducing volatility, restoring the profitability of our book, whilst adapting to the new IFRS 17 accounting standards. As a result, the Quantum Leap targets are maintained until such time as we calibrate the IFRS 17 KPIs next year, along with the rest of the market. The underlying assumptions for technical profitability from Quantum Leap also maintained until we translate those into our IFRS 17 metrics. So with that consistency in our strategy of reducing volatility and restoring profitability, our solvency ratio target remains in the optimal range of 185% to 220% and we will adapt our ROE target into IFRS 17 in due course next year. Thank you. With that, I will hand over to Eric, our Group Chief Actuary, to give a little more detail on the reserve position I outlined.

Thank you very much, Ian. A lot of things have been said already. So I will try to give you some more insight, if possible. As described during our roundtable earlier in June on the P&C reserves, SCOR is having an active management of its reserves, which are dynamically managed throughout the year following among other things, cross reviews and repricing exercise. The full bottom-up analysis, as it was mentioned, has been performed. We are also performing on a yearly basis based on the Q3 data, our analysis and then rolling them forward with Q4 data. This year, we have followed the same process, but accelerated. We started earlier this review based on our Q3 data. Overall, the group is very well reserved with a total amount of gross reserves adding up to EUR 39 billion as of Q3 2022, which is split between EUR 24 billion for P&C and EUR 15 billion for Life. As it was mentioned already, we have carried out a thorough and detailed review of SCOR P&C reserves including with the help of a leading external actuarial firm, which was mandated to perform an independent reserving review based on our Q3 -- Q2 2022 data. The business, considered was a part of our P&C U.S. business, we believe, is the most exposed to inflation. This actuarial firm clearly concludes that reserves are reasonable, confirming both our methodology and our own assessment. So on one hand, we did review our Life assumptions under Solvency II, which confirmed our excess margin under IFRS 4, which allowed us to release excess margin in the Life & Health reserves. And on the other hand, we have increased P&C reserves by EUR 485 million. So approximately 2/3 of this amount was adjustment for future inflation. Our claims inflation assumptions take into account exogenous information such as Central Banks, financial market view and of course, our economists' own view. It is worth mentioning that actuaries in accordance with their professional standards are providing the management a range of best estimates. And the management then chooses where to stand within this range. The management has decided to place our P&C reserves higher in the ultimate claims distribution to take into account the claims environment marked by high economic and social inflation. The remaining part, approximately 1/3 of the EUR 485 million P&C reserve strengthening correspond to an increase of the reserves for latent claims, including sexual molestation. So as a conclusion, the reserve reviews led to reallocation of reserves between Life and P&C with a marginal effect on the total amount of the group reserves. So following this thorough and detailed reviews, I can confirm that score reserves are in a healthy position, and we are at best estimate.

Thank you, Ian, Eric, and good afternoon, everyone. I'm Jean-Paul Conoscente, the Chief Executive Officer for SCOR P&C. I will go through the P&C presentation, and there are 3 points I'd like to articulate to you this afternoon. First, as Laurent said, we are not satisfied with the past and current performance and have started to take extensive actions in 2022 to correct this. I will go through some illustrations of these actions. Second, whilst the impact of our efforts have yet to flow through our financials in 2022, we believe the improvements will start to be visible in 2023. Finally, we believe we're entering a transformational hardened reinsurance market, which should favor risk carriers like SCOR. After the significant remediation start in 2022, we are well positioned to drive the market improvements in 2023 and to fully benefit from the new cycle. So starting with our performance. Given the past 5 difficult years for the reinsurance industry and for SCOR, we conducted a holistic analysis of our underperformance across all lines of business in all geographies. Our results have been heavily impacted by climate-related losses across cat and agricultural lines of business and by the continued rise of social inflation in casualty and other lines of business. Our results have been affected by unexpected losses such as COVID-19 due to wide coverage and ambiguity in contract wordings and by unexpected shifts in the geopolitical landscape. Based on this diagnostic and an extended view of the root causes, we embarked on our remuneration plan in 2022 with strong management responses. Starting with our property portfolio. We've pruned a number of areas such as cat-exposed MGAs, and we reduced our 3D exposure to proportional aggregate and low cat layers. The aim was to position the property portfolio away from climate-sensitive frequency claims. To guide our actions, we have adopted a more forward-looking view of cat risk, taking the position that the long-term path can no longer be a reliable guide for the future. Based on the portfolio reshaping, the repricing of the business and further adjustments going forward, we have increased confidence in our ability to control the impact of cat activity on our financials in the future and to manage this impact within our cat annual budget. We have also significantly revised upwards of your risk and other climate sensitive business such as Agro. We're rebalancing the portfolio to its nonproportional treaties, and are reducing our overall nat exposure to this line of business. To complement our work on climate sensitive business, we have also revised our view of risk across all lines of business by incorporating recent trends. This includes a forward-looking view of claims inflation, incorporating all types of inflation risk drivers. Based on this revised view of risk, we have started to rightsize all lines of business in accordance to the revised expected net profitability. Finally, we have also done a review of our contract wording clauses across the entire portfolio and have identified specific clauses for improvement such as scope of coverage, event definitions, et cetera, which will be areas of focus during the upcoming XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX negotiations. To illustrate some of the actions already taken, let's start with cat, sorry. We have estimated the as-if impact of major cat events since 2017 if they were to reoccur on our current in-force portfolio. This analysis shows that our strategy is bearing fruit and SCOR's portfolio repositioning would have significantly limited the potential downside. Therefore, despite another heavy cat burden on our financials in 2022, where the full effect of these actions has still not earned through, we are convinced our approach will reduce our results volatility to cat activity in the future. In the course of the 2022 Treaty renewals, in addition to the repositioning of our cat portfolio, we have also undertaken a meaningful reshaping of our entire Treaty portfolio composition. We rebalanced it towards global lines in Europe where we believe our lead position can help us drive the appropriate improvements in terms of conditions. Our actions have been meaningful, leading us to walk away from almost EUR 1 billion at P&C reinsurance premium for underwriting year 2022 or 17% of our P&C treaty book. Half was through full cancellations, half through share reductions. Meanwhile, we managed the improving cycle to benefit from rate improvements and increased our share on well-priced non-cat business more than making up for the lost premium. Our cycle management not only allowed us to grow modestly our premium income, it also significantly improved the expected profitability of the business in 2022. We obtained overall price increases higher than the combined effect of inflation and a strengthening of our view of risk. As a result, the significant shedding of our property business did not impact the expected profitability of the portfolio, whilst making the net combined ratio more predictable than in the past. As we look forward to the market environment in 2023, we believe all conditions are met to experience a reinsurance market hardening, not observed for decades. Reinsurance demand has increased, while the supply has decreased, creating an economic imbalance that will strongly favor reinsurers. Whilst the market hardening in 2023 was already expected since the middle of the year, Hurricane Ian marked the transition for market hardening to a hard market with significant dislocation expected in segments such as U.S. cat where year-on-year expected high double-digit price increases for cat programs. Furthermore, we expect the market improvements will not simply be a matter of price. We think this renewal will be more transformational with improvements in all terms and conditions, including coverage and contract wordings. This will form the starting point of our renewal discussions with our clients. In this new transforming environment, SCOR belongs to a small group of reinsurers with the scale and footprint to attract the highest quality reinsurance business while having a real impact on final terms and conditions. We have the capability to take large shares and will leverage our strong client relationships, our underwriting team's expertise and our market positioning to command fellowship at our terms. In summary, we're entering an underwriter's market, which would favor risk takers like SCOR. We have taken clear and decisive actions in 2022 to improve the performance of our portfolio and expect the impact of these actions to be visible in our 2023 financials. Finally, we believe our investments in a global and deep underwriting franchise will be a key differentiator in the upcoming 2023 hard market. I will now hand the presentation back to Ian.

Thanks very much, Jean-Paul. Let's now move on to the IFRS 17 section. And the aim today is really to provide a brief high-level view of how the transition to IFRS 17 will impact SCOR's financial KPIs and disclosures. Now the information we're providing today is largely qualitative. We'll provide you with more detail and IFRS 17 KPI guidance as we progress towards our full year results to be published in early March 2023 when we've completed the work on calibrating those KPIs. Before getting into the broader topic, and I'm going to be brief on this page. Let me start the presentation by just highlighting particularly for the technicians amongst you some key accounting choices that we've made for the transition to IFRS 17. We've made the choice for the building block approach, which is more adapted to the nature and composition of our business portfolio, and allows us to apply a consistent approach across P&C and Life. Regarding the economic variance, SCOR has also, like many others, taking the OCI option in order to limit the impact of economic assumption volatility on our results. So let's move on to the new core IFRS 17 metric, the economic value that SCOR will use to measure the value of its book. Now there is a convergence between Solvency II and IFRS 17, which allows for more consistent management of the business under regulatory capital and accounting perspective. SCOR is a capital-driven company, which means our business decisions are based upon our internal model. And under IFRS 17, our accounting view will be much more closely aligned with that Solvency II view. This results in our real economic value being better reflected in the accounts under IFRS 17 than under IFRS 4. And that economic value is measured as equity plus the contract service margin or CSM, which represents the expected future earnings on the business that we've written which flows to equity as we provide the service of that business. Now this overall is a better reflection of the value. And that is especially true in respect of the long-term lines of business, so primarily on the Life side. With the stock of CSM that we will have, 90% of that stock of CSM is related to Life. And that's going to be the main driver of the Life earnings going forward. We expect to have a strong economic value at the transition to IFRS 17 in excess of EUR 9 billion, which compares to the EUR 8.7 billion of Solvency II net asset value. And of course, I mentioned the EUR 5.4 billion of shareholder equity where we stand today. On the next slide, explain the key drivers of this economic value and how it will evolve with movements into CSM and the shareholder equity. The IFRS 17 economic value is going to be a function, firstly, as the value created by new business, the new business CSM. Secondly, the experience variances and changes in assumptions will flow through CSM and equity, including economic variances that flow through the P&L into equity. Thirdly, I would add to the capital management actions, of course, drive the economic value. You see the capital return box at the end of the flow there. I do want to draw out though, the amortization of CSM is neutral to the economic value because when it amortizes, that is just a flow from CSM directly into equity, left pocket, right pocket. And we do expect to see a strong new business generation -- new business CSM generation from both engines, Life and P&C. And as discussed earlier, the stock of CSM, the stock is principally represented by the Life future profits. But the strong generation of CSM that we see coming from both Life and P&C will unwind into equity with that P&C CSM unwinding much quicker. Moving on to the insurance revenues. A new IFRS 17 metric which will represent the top line in the income statement. On the walk presented on the right-hand side, we showed this metric will better represent the risk premium associated with the business than the gross written premiums under IFRS 4. From EUR 19 billion of IFRS 4 gross written premium, this insurance revenue measure we expect could be lower by around 30% under IFRS 17 due to the netting of commissions. And there could be a similar variation seen across other groups outside of SCOR. But obviously, the extent of any change is going to vary depending upon the business mix of that individual group. On the next slide, we walk the top line measure of insurance revenue that I just talked about to the equivalent of today's IFRS 4 net technical result, and that's the insurance service result. This new metric will drive our P&L and depicts the profit earned from providing insurance coverage. Under IFRS 17, we will have an IFRS 17 combined ratio for P&C that will be a key indicator for the P&L, whereas in Life, the technical margin concept, no premium, drops away, and we will focus upon this insurance service result as a measure. So moving on to the next slide. Whilst the underlying P&C and Life business does not change, we will see changes in how P&C and Life technical profitability is reported under IFRS 17. On the P&C side, the combined ratio, we could expect to look slightly better than under IFRS 4. On the numerator, the claims and expenses will be lower due to the discounting effects and exclusion of certain items such as commissions and non-attributable expenses. The denominator, the insurance revenue will also be lower compared to the current basis following exclusion of commissions. However, in aggregate, we expect the effects on the numerator to be higher than on the denominator and overall, the P&C combined ratio to reduce as a result under IFRS 17. On the life side, the life insurance service results as described and not a direct translation of the technical margin. IFRS 17 will better capture the acceleration of Life profits, even though these profits could be subject to more volatility. So to conclude, SCOR is well prepared for the transition to IFRS 17. We're currently working through the finalization of the 22 comparative figures. Today, we presented the mechanics and fundamentals of IFRS 17 at a high level and their expected impact on SCOR's results, but we will provide more guidance on key IFRS 17 indicators during the full year results in March 2023. It's important to mention this is a transition to a new accounting standard. But the underlying business does not change, nor does our strategy, nor the way we manage our business. What we will see is a change in the recognition rhythm of the future Life profits and the amortization of the CSM. We expect IFRS 17 to add more transparency in the disclosure of financial accounts, but also more volatility but overall, to better reflect the true economic value of our business. So overall, we believe it's good news for the industry, it's good news to SCOR. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Ian. Before we move to Q&A, let me summarize the key messages of our presentation today. First, we listen to investors, and we want to address the concerns. Yes, we have a prudent reserving approach, both in Life & Health and P&C, and we continue to be at best estimate. We have taken some actions, building prudence in our strong and resilient balance sheet to navigate a volatile environment. The Board will decide on the 2023 dividend based on financial year 2022 results and based on our well-established dividend policy. Second, we have been taking actions to improve our performance, but it's not enough. We maintained 3 clear strategic priorities in 2023: one, restore profitability; two, maximize the benefits from supported market tailwinds; three, build on a resilient balance sheet. Third and finally, beyond our focus on short-term delivery, it is critical to keep a sense of the long term and define precisely what sustainable performance really means in our financial metrics, in our business, and in our culture and organization. The reinsurance industry is really at a pivotal time, both from a risk underwriting point of view and from a macroeconomic point of view. We are ready for it. SCOR is resilient and focus on execution to deliver a sustainable performance. Thank you, everyone. Let's now move on to the Q&A. Yves, I hand over you the floor.

Thank you very much, Laurent. On Page 76, you will find the forthcoming scheduled events. With that, we can now move on to the Q&A session. And I please remind you to limit yourselves to 2 questions each. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] And we will take our first question from Freya Kong from Bank of America.

The first question is that your P&C combined ratio target for '23 is still trending to 95% and below, how realistic or achievable do you think this is given ongoing remediation and time needed to earn through improvements? And given reevaluation of cat risks, how are you feeling about the 8% budget? Second question is on capital. Could you give us more color on the assumption changes you've made on the Solvency II? And if rates keep moving up, would you continue to adjust assumptions? Or are you happy with where they are now?

Thank you. So Jean-Paul will take the first question and Fabian in the second.

Thank you. On the first question, we feel confident about the net combined ratio target. Again, if you look at the main drivers of our results year-to-date, the -- I'd say the midst is driven by cat. We're taking strong action already in 2022. A very favorable market conditions in 2023 should help us further improve this -- the situation. We're very focused on getting our cat volatility within our cap budget. Right now, we have no plans to change the budget for 2023. And if we look at the performance of the portfolio besides the cat, again, we've had a high volatility this quarter driven by 3 areas. One is energy losses, second has been aviation market loss. And third has been some remnants of the Brazilian drought. We feel those are one-offs. And the rest of the portfolio is performing as expected. So we feel pretty confident that going forward in 2023, we should see performance back to the 95% and below.

Sorry, just a follow-up on that. Could you give us a clean attritional then?

By clean. So for this quarter, the normalized net combined ratio normalized of the reserve increases and the excess cat activity slightly above 99%. And then when we normalize the one-off on the manmade that I just mentioned, we're back to 95%.

We will take our next question from Kamran Hossain from JPMorgan.

Excuse me. We did not answer the second question.

The second question is on the Solvency ratio on Page #19. So what we did is review our Life assumption on the Solvency II and also in preparation of IFRS 17, which you see has an impact of 9 points. This review confirmed our excess margin under IFRS 4 and actually led to the releases under IFRS 4. And we feel very confident with this change going forward.

Kamran here. I hope you can hear me. The first question is on capital. I guess in the context of Solvency II, you've still got remarkably strong ratio. But I guess it's the rating agency capital that's the binding constraint. Listen, the last S&P report, they think you have AA capital adequacy, which I think you confirmed today, but S&P want you back to having AAA by 2024 in the September note. How does that rebuild of capital on a rating agency basis into play with the dividend? Because clearly, the dividend cost is a material number in the context of, say, the last 3 years' earnings. So just interested in how those 2 factors kind of play together? And how much capital you think needs to be rebuilt on a rate agency basis? The second question is on Life. Clearly, Life has gone very well in the last few years. Well, I guess for a number of years, probably not during COVID, but how much prudent do you think is left in Life? I mean, the description of adequate on reserving is I think it's probably slightly technical, but sounds fine, but how much prudence is left in Life? And then what does that do to future Life earnings? Because clearly, you had recognized some of that in previous quarters this year.

Okay. I'll -- thanks, Kamran. I'll pick up on the first question on the ratings. Look, first up, ratings, they are important to us, and we do all that we can to maintain them. And the changes that we've seen on SCOR's outlook are not based upon the capitalization and solvency of the group. That's at a high level. That's what matters to our partners and our clients. But it was on the basis of profitability. And as you've seen, we've been implementing remediation actions to deal with that. So the rating agency level of capital that we hold. We hold a AAA level of capital to achieve that AA level of security. That's the case. That -- we will continue to work to maintain that. And that is what we do. That's where we stand. So there is no drop of that capital position.

Can I just clarify? If I look at the September report, they talk about S&P capital adequacy being very strong in 2022 which suggests the AA before moving to excellent in their own projections for 2024, which normally assumes AAA. So I'm not -- I mean, -- so it just seems a little bit at odds with kind of what you're saying there, but I'm sure you -- yes, okay. That's fine. So there's no rebuild of capital needed for S&P?

No. We -- as I say, we maintain the AAA level to be able to secure the AA rating. That's clear. In respect of the dividend, so there's no link to the dividend in that respect. And in terms of the approach and the policy, Laurent has already quite directly answered that.

Yes. On the -- I can rebound on the margin on the Life side. We do not disclose our prudence, but there is still a significant excess margin under IFRS 4. We're measuring this through the so-called -- it's becoming a bit technical, as it was mentioned, the liability adequacy test, which is, in fact, the difference between the booked IFRS 4 reserve and the net present value of best estimate cash flow, net of XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX. We still have a comfortable LAT, a very comfortable LAT, should I say, and we are prudently reserved.

Maybe to add to the outlook for the future, this means that we don't expect the Q3 margin release to have any significant impact on our earnings power on the Life side going forward and we continue to operate the business on the basis of the current Quantum Leap profitability assumptions.

I'll probably -- I mean I'm sure we're going to dial back in for more questions, but do you know how much it benefits you in kind of previous quarters this year maybe?

No, Kamran, we -- in terms of the underlying Life technical margin that continues to go at the expected levels, and we expect that to continue into the future. The -- and just to reiterate, that excess margin release, that doesn't change the flexibility that we have with the Life portfolio going forward in any way.

We will take our next question from Andrew Ritchie from Autonomous.

First question, just on the fourth quarter. I'm just curious to know what additional sort of actions or may be taken on the P&C on the non-Life side? First of all, I guess, Eric, you said you were using data as of Q2 or Q3. I mean, isn't there a -- isn't there a big catch-up on data for reinsurers in Q4 because as you get it from your cedents? So I'm a bit concerned there may be a risk of a data update and a further revisit. And I'm sorry to get a sub-question on that. Would that also affect your current year? The reserving you've done is focused on the prior year. Is there not a current year true-up because you're sort of admitting that your inflation assumptions have been wrong, which presumably means the current year might need to true up in Q4 as well? My second question is only a quick one. What's the anticipated CSM runoff rate? I guess it's for the Life business because 90% of it is the Life business. What's the emergence rate roughly expected to be?

Thanks, Andrew, for your questions. On the Q4, we are not expecting any bad news. The cedent data are not necessarily -- there is no necessarily catch up at Q4. So we are pretty confident that we do not need any reserving action at Q4, bearing in mind that we are in November. The -- I disagree with one of your comments that the inflation we were wrong. We are not wrong. The -- we have the management, as it was mentioned, has decided to place itself -- to place himself at a higher level within the range of best estimate to take a forward-looking view of the -- what could be the inflation, economic and social inflation and that's basically where we stand. Regarding the last underwriting year, we are, of course, managing the reserves dynamically, as I was saying before, and adjusting systematically and dynamically throughout the year, our reserves.

Sorry, is that the same as saying there's no current year update required or within the EUR 485 million as implicitly a reflection of the current year?

EUR 485 million is a reflection of the current year.

It includes something for the current year? Sorry.

Yes.

Andrew, just on the second question in respect of the CSM. It's premature to give the amortization rates of that CSM stock -- at this stage, we'll come back with the details earlier in 2023 once all of our calibrations are complete.

Our next question will come from Darius Satkauskas from KBW.

So the first question is sort of I'd like to get management's thoughts on this. The balance sheet is strong. You've addressed the issues with the back book. You've not changed your dividend policy and you're confident about P&C profitability in 2023. So from your point of view, what barriers do you see just sort of maintaining or growing your dividend? I know it's Board's decision, but from a management point of view, what barriers would you see? Second question, how do you think about the sort of deployment of capital in the property cat? Are you looking mostly growing -- are you looking at growing exposures at one? Or should we think more about sort of mostly growing by the rate?

Thank you, Darius. On your first question on the barriers we see on dividend growth. Look, I'll revert back to the dividend policy -- is the financial strength to be sure that we remain at the high end of the range. And it's -- and to see the right attractively priced business opportunities and capital deployment. So to be honest, at this stage, it's premature and we focus on making the most of our capital in those renewals, which leads to the second question that Jean-Paul will take.

Yes, thank you, Laurent. I think on cat, right now, we're entering the renewals with the plan to keep, I'd say, similar cat capacities to last year. But depending on how well the renewals go and how hard the market actually is during the renewal, we may decide to cut back if we can obtain our terms and conditions or look at potentially deploying more if conditions widely exceed our expectations. At this stage, it's a bit too early for us to tell.

Can I move to the next question, please?

We'll now take our next question from Vinit Malhotra from Mediobanca.

Sir, my 2 questions will be on the P&C. And if I can just ask about Slide 46, which I find a very interesting remark on the last fourth bullet point, which says regime change to a more prudent claims assessment approach. Now I'm just curious that when you look forward say, for example, for that 95%, do you have in your mind some guidance on what the conservative effect of this -- effect of this regime change is in that number? And I'm just curious to give there is a pricing change and you said best in the market or the best time in decades and you are reserved for inflation. So I'm just curious as to what you think has been the effect when you took thinking forward from this bullet point. Second question is just on Slide 41, please. Could you talk a little bit about the growth area, which you have listed here as attractive in terms of the casualty Europe? And I think somewhere else, you mentioned some stabilization clauses to be enforced. Please, could you clarify some of that, and that would be very helpful.

Yes. Thank you, Vinit. On your first point on the regime change of, I'd say, more prudent claims assessment. What we've seen over the past years is sort of a loss creep, mainly driven by cat losses based on initial market estimates, client estimates, that we base ourselves on to project our own claims estimates. We've seen that these have increased almost systematically, in the U.S., very much driven by social inflation in Europe and elsewhere. I think driven by probably underestimation of the issues originally by cedents and by increased cost of construction over the past couple of years. So when we say more conservative, we're probably going to, in the range of possible outcomes, position ourselves on the more conservative part of the range. And that's why you see, for example, on Hurricane Ian, we position ourselves to a $70 billion market loss. And I think that's what we will do going forward. On your second question regarding the areas of development that we see -- where we see attractive prices, casualty Europe has been identified as an area of potential profitability. It's less affected by inflation because of the stabilization clauses depending on the country. Most of these clauses are in place, and they were meant -- always meant as a safeguard against inflation, not just CPI, but many of these are driven by medical inflation. And so we think in this environment, the expected losses is sort of more immune to inflation than other lines of business and the prices are fairly adequate. Other areas that are listed here are marine and energy, where we believe price adequacy remains very strong. Engineering and then property cat is really sort of depending on how well the renewal discussions go.

We'll take our next question from Ashik Musaddi from Morgan Stanley.

Yes. Just a couple of questions I have is, first of all, thanks a lot for giving some additional color about liquidity. But I guess one question I have or maybe a bit of clarification. How do we think about liquidity on a capital basis? I guess -- you gave some good color about asset liquidity and then just general cash flow movements, et cetera. But how do we think about like proper capital liquidity? Now what I'm trying to understand is, I mean, do you have cash at the center, which can be used to pay down dividends? Or would you still need to get the cash from Life business, P&C business? And given that it's a loss-making year, there are question marks on cash flows to the holding company. So I guess that's the question. I guess Slide #14 could be the answer, but I just want to make sure I get this thing right, is what is -- how do we think about capital liquidity? That's the first question. And secondly, I guess in your dividend policy, it says sustainable regular dividend. Now how do we think about what is sustainable? I mean is it based on a payout ratio? Is it based on stock of capital approach? I guess it would be a mix of a lot of things. But what is sustainable? I guess that's a question I'm just thinking because if I look at the 2 blocks before that, I mean, it says you need to have a solvency ratio with an optimal range, which you are. Then second thing is, you need to reserve for growth, which I think you have already done in one of the slides on the roll forward of solvency. It looks like you have set aside EUR 300 million, EUR 400 million or EUR 358 million capital for growth for future. So probably you have set aside capital for growth as well. So I'm just thinking, okay, what is sustainable after that here?

Thanks, Ashik. I'll take the first question on the liquidity. We do manage the capital liquidity, as you call it closely. So overall across the group, we do generate strong operating cash flows across the course of the last 10 years, that's averaged around EUR 1 billion of cash flow a year. That obviously occurs in different entities across the group. And we, therefore, have a structure. As a reinsurer, we're able to do this where we manage the regulatory capital levels in each of the entities within the group to be able to support fungibility of that cash that we're generating up into the mother company. And typically, and certainly, it's the case across the course of this year. The capital -- or sorry, the cash flows up to the mother are in excess of the additional capital cash flows that we need to put down into individual entities to manage their positions. On top of that, I would say that we've been very active in ensuring that the structure of the group is efficient. And we did have, across the start of this year, a structuring project for the group where we repositioned our business across the Swiss and the U.S. entities into Ireland. And that released EUR 2.7 billion of liquid assets. So it isn't just a process both managing the individual flows. We're very attentive to ensuring that our structure is optimal as well, and we can act upon that.

On your dividend question, Ashik, it's very much linked to the 2 prior points on the Page 50 of the dividend policy is sustainable means that it allows us to stay in the optimal range and fund future growth. You can look at it from a historical point of view, and that gives you as well an idea of the sustainability.

Just a follow-up on that future growth thing. So I mean if I look at the solvency roll forward in Slide #19, there is something called operating capital deployment of EUR 358 million. I just want to say, is it year which has already gone by? Or is it for the forward-looking year?

That's the -- you see it in the SCR line, and that's 1 year forward-looking view of how we grow our business and what capital is used for this 1 year forward looking.

That's for next year. Okay, very clear.

We will take our next question from James Shuck from Citi.

My 2 questions. Actually, I was going to circle back on that EUR 358 million that Ashik was just asking about in terms of operating capital deployment. I hear you when you say it's 1 year forward looking. It's a big number though. I mean top line is going to be growing at kind of single digit, low levels and not planning on deploying much in terms of nat cat. And historically, that number has diversified away. So the SCR actual requirements from growth actually are pretty de minimis. So I'm just struggling to understand where that EUR 358 million comes from. How it's perhaps split between P&C and Life & Health, would be helpful, please? Secondly, Laurent, I think when you took over, one of the first comments you made was that you would be open and the disclosure would be supportive for us. And I think there's been some issues in the past on that front. With that in mind, would you mind telling us what percentile you are reserved to on the P&C Re side, please? I know you've kind of alluded to us at this point. One of your peers has actually disclosed what it will be under IFRS 17. I think it's a really important number for us to have. So that would be very welcome, please.

Thank you, James. Fabian will take your first question on capital deployment.

Yes. If you compare it historically, you're absolutely right. It's a bit of a bigger number. But it's always, at Q3, it's the number which is the most difficult to estimate because we are still -- have known renewal or full renewal information, what happens on 1/1. So it's based on our planning. We have built a bit of conservatism maybe in the capital that we deploy so that we can really make the best of the opportunities in the 1/1 renewal. We will obviously recalculate that. It's a 12-month rolling basis with the full information of the 1/1 renewal and published this in February.

On your second question, James, thank you for reminding me to, indeed, the commitments I took. And I hope that you appreciate today the level of disclosure there is in the measures we take and the performance of the business. On the reserve buffer, I'm afraid here, we're not going to go that far. We already, I believe, pretty much the only ones to provide a full call on the reserve development. I think the level of transparency we gave is good enough.

Okay. well, I can just request that you revisit that at some stage. One of your competitors have disclosed the [ 65th ] percentile, and I think it's very important for us to have that number for yourselves, but perhaps we can come back to that another time.

We will take our next question from Vikram Gandhi from Societe Generale.

Vik from SocGen. A couple of really clarificatory questions. The first is -- and at the outset, apologies for my inability to grasp this. But the assumption changes on Slide 19, can I just confirm that relates to Life & Health? And what I see is a negative EUR 197 million figure for EOF and an addition of EUR 90 million plus on the SCR. So it -- and I'm just trying to square this against the excess reserves being released on the Life & Health side. So that's really where my struggle lies. That's first. The second one is on the reserve strengthening number on the P&C side. Now if I compare the EUR 444 million negative number here, which, I'm assuming is net of tax, on Slide 19 versus the number on Slide 8, where it's been shown as negative EUR 378 million, which is again net of tax because it's the net income walk. I'm just trying to understand where the differences could be arising from. So those are really my 2 questions.

On your first question, I think we need really to distinguish between reserving on an economic basis on the Solvency II and IFRS 17 versus reserving under IFRS 4. So these are quite disconnected. And I think Ian has elaborated on the fact that we are looking forward to when we move to IFRS 17, where we will have more joint movements, which are better to explain. So that maybe explains a bit the difficulty to understand this point. What happened here on this Life assumption changes is an impact on the eligible own funds and the SCR, in particular, also, and I talked quickly about this in the Q2 disclosure, how certain asymmetries or the rights and the obligations that we have in our treaties are modeled. On your second question on the difference on the tax, so the EUR 444 million versus EUR 485 million under the IFRS 4 after tax number, it's really the treatment on taxes in our Solvency II. Work is different to the tax treatment under IFRS 4, and that's why you have this difference.

We'll now take our next question from Derald Goh from RBC.

Two questions, please. The first one is just going back to the reserve review. So I had the impression that the review was triggered by that social inflation charge in Q2, but it sounds like quite a bit of the EUR 485 million is from economic inflation. Could you maybe give us a split of how much of that EUR 485 million is social versus how much is economic, and maybe some comments on which specific lines saw the biggest increases? And the second one is just on the solvency bridge on Slide 19 again. Can you give us a sense of what the underlying operating cap gen is at 9 months, and maybe also a split between P&C and Life & Health, please?

Eric is going to take your first question on the reserves. But maybe before I hand the floor to Eric, I think in Q2, you mentioned the sexual molestation as a trigger. I believe it was much broader than that. And our intention was to make sure we have prudence. So -- but I'll let Eric comment on the split.

Yes. Thank you, Laurent. The split of the EUR 485 million is basically divided in 2 parts. 2/3 of this amount is adjustment indeed for future inflation. And the second bit is related to latent claims, which includes sexual molestation.

And to be clear, the 2/3 is economic inflation.

Correct.

On the second question, Fabian?

Yes, we don't disclose on a quarterly basis the capital generation. Here, the EUR 464 million on Slide 19 are really driven by the business performance on Life and P&C and include, in particular, also the cat activity and the losses we have seen in the year-to-date IFRS 4 numbers.

Yes. But can you say maybe what is a fair annual run rate, at least at a group level?

Sure. I think a fair annual run rate would be what we have seen in the past publications. If you take the average over the past 3, 4 years, that's pretty much what we would assume.

Our next question comes from Thomas Fossard from HSBC.

I've got 2 questions. The first one will be related to your cash flow statement on Slide 14. I'm really intrigued by the Life & Health net cash flow reported 9 months 2022. Actually I'm trying to better understand why this is such a big negative year-to-date. So it's in negative EUR 813 million, while on the other side, you're showing a very big positive on the P&L side. I know that this is probably different things. But I mean, it's so extreme this year that maybe you can provide a bit of your intentions on how to interpret this discrepancy in the numbers. The second question would be related to Slide 56 on the retro. I think that in the past, you were one of the players in the market renewing your retro pretty early. And I don't know if you could make any statement or comment on how your discussions with -- how the discussions with your retrocessionaire are ongoing at the present time. Because looking at the boxes in the middle of the chart, it seems to me that actually you've got a lot of coverage attaching on fairly low return period, the kind of 5 years. That's typically, I think, probably this is the type of retro, which would make -- which will be very difficult to renew, to secure -- or I mean, I guess they will come with significant prices, probably uneconomic prices. And actually, you're doing the same move away from a working layer as well on your property cat book. So anything you could say on retro and how much you believe that you're going to be -- are able to secure in terms of capacity? And if we should have in mind any change in the way this retro is going to attach in 2023?

Thomas, thanks for the question. I'll pick up on the first one in respect of the cash flow. Firstly, you're right. Obviously, there's negative cash flow in the year on the Life side. And that's principally driven by a material negative technical cash flow that's heavily impacted by COVID claims. Now many of these COVID claims were incurred in 2021 in fact. And so you'll recall with our disclosures, we had a very high Q3, Q4 COVID wave in the U.S. at the time. So that is flowing through into the cash flow technical this year 2022, along with the other COVID claims that we've had this year. Then on the profitability side, of course, let's say, there's that timing difference on the underlying between '21 and '22 of that COVID experience. But I would add and that the significant driver of the very positive technical margin is the release of the excess margin and that's a noncash item.

On your -- Thomas, on your question on retro, we -- just for information, we were on track, I'd say, before Hurricane Ian with our normal timing of the retroplacement. Hurricane Ian disrupted that. Where we are today is you can see from the slide you referenced, we buy mainly 4 types of products, excessive loss, cat bonds, quota share and aggregate cover. The excess of loss and cap on capacity, we believe we should be able to buy the capacity that we need. Attachment point and price and coverage, of course, point of discussion currently with our retrocessionaires. Quota share capacity. We had anticipated based on last year discussions, a reduction of the availability of this cover and that's already factored into our plan. The third piece, the aggregate cover will likely be the one that will be more difficult for us to secure this year. It was already difficult last year and we expect it to be even more difficult this year. So overall, we still have confidence that we should be able to place our retro as we have in the past. We have the same partners for the last 10, 15 years. And we buy, I'd say, regardless of the cycle of the market and we'll continue to do so. We're a strategic buyer retro. And many of our leads have been with us for a number of years.

And this means that actually on a net basis, actually, you believe that you would secure enough in order to -- and you would be able to maintain broadly unchanged your cat on your front book?

Yes. Going back to what we said initially is, right now, we're entering the renewal season with stable cat capacities on offer to our clients. And the amount of capacity that we're -- we'll actually deploy will be very much dependent on the conditions we can secure.

Our next question comes from Kamran Hossain from JPMorgan.

Two questions. Just one on the renewals for next year. I guess you've talked about kind of business that doesn't meet hurdles, they're too volatile. Is this kind of why there's no guide on top line in P&C for next year? I guess looking back at previous year's Investor Day, things were a little bit different this year. The market is very dislocated. But you're normally happy to give a top line guide for P&C in September, I guess we're sitting here in November at this point. Or is this around retro and kind of what cover you can get there? So comments on top line and kind of why no outlook are interesting. The second question is just on the reserving. I know this topic has been done to death, so apologies. What changes are there in governance around the reserves? Because if we look across the big European reinsurers, there have been different approaches and different outcomes. But if I look at your peers that use a similar accounting basis, they've tended to -- they've been reasonably prudent, reasonably good at kind of delivering on kind of reserve surpluses, et cetera. So just interested in what's changing in governance on the reserving side?

Thank you, Kamran. On the renewals, the reason why we have not provided guidance this year is the renewals are a very, I'd say, uncertain much more so than in the past. As I said, we believe these renewals will be transformational. It's definitely not business as usual. And so I'd say the overall outcome remains very uncertain. All reinsurers are very focused on bottom line more than top line. And so how much of the transformation takes place at 1/1 remains uncertain at this stage.

Yes. On the reserving side, there has been no fundamental change, but we have strengthened the governance at the group level. Group actuarial staff has significantly increased. And there is still the same process quarterly one, yearly one, with the outcome of the actual studies shared with Comex and ultimately with the Audit Committee and the Board.

Our next question comes from Will Hardcastle from UBS.

Sorry, I got cut off at one point, so you may have answered it, hopefully not. Just really trying to understand your comment there about making the most of the P&C hardening. You've talked about there a bit of how the shape might be in terms of retro. I know a lot of uncertainty, but really trying to understand your ability here for exposure growth and P&L direction in light of possibilities on pricing but also reduce volatility. Just trying to understand that balance to be thinking about. And then the second one is on the investment income uplift. You've given the guidance of 2.8% for '23. Look, all else equal, should we be expecting a further 70 bps or more uplift again in 2024 if levels stay where they are? Or is there anything making this more upfront in 2023, exaggerating that uplift that we see in '23?

Yes. Thank you. I'll take the first question. As we said before, it's very much a question of return on capital. What we see right now is we believe for the current volatility of the cat market, the returns are inadequate. And therefore, what we want to do is reduce the volatility of cat business to our financials. If through the renewal discussions, we get to a level where programs start attaching beyond, I'd say, the noise of the past loss events that we've had over the past 5 years and provide adequate return on capital, then as a capital-driven company, we'll decide whether that's a better segment to deploy capital than other opportunities.

Yes. I will really convert with Jean-Paul. The -- making the most of that market really is not so much on the ability to deploy capital and exposures then grow exposure. This we can do easily. The thing for me, what we're going to make a very strong point at is to get the right return for it. And this is what we mean by making the most is to maximize the return we're going to require for the capital we deploy. The constraint on exposure deployment on capital is not the issue, frankly. On the investment income uplift?

Yes. So the guidance for 2023, 2.8%, 3.2%, that's the effect of the relatively short duration of the portfolio and significant redemption that we will have in the next few quarters. You should expect not such an increase in '24 and '25, but it will increase. I remind you the expectation I gave at the end of July for 2025, regular income yield between 3% and 3.5%. Given market condition, you should expect that we should be in the really upper part of this range.

Our next question comes from Freya Kong from Bank of America.

Just circling back to the P&C net strengthening. Could you give us some color on the moving parts within this, including lines where you saw positive development and to what extent? And secondly, on the expense savings, EUR 125 million, what's the rough split between P&C and Life & Health? And is this program just to make sure you maintain your existing cost ratio of 4.5%?

Eric, on the positive developments.

Well, we usually don't disclose this kind of things, but you will be, I guess, able to see them during the P&C triangle disclosure next year in June based on our 2022 data.

François on the savings?

So on the savings, on the EUR 125 million savings by the end of 2025, just to give you a flavor of where it will come. 60% of the savings will be delivered by applying, I would say, strict frugal management of expenses, so which means in practice is frugality, procurement, internalization and rationalization of our operating premises. And 40% of savings will be delivered through simplification of our processes and organization, so which means in practice is process or engineering and organization optimization. I would say that the contribution of all Comex domain is almost equal so -- which means you should expect the same effect on the Life & Health and the P&C segment in the future. What does it mean on the cost ratio? As of today, so we publish a cost ratio that is below 4.5% for the first 9 months. It's a little bit early. So we put a guidance for next year, a cost ratio below 4.8%. We still need to have the definitive growth rate of the premium in 2023 to compute it. I insist on the fact that the EUR 125 million are not cost avoidance, but they are really cost savings compared to expense we have really in the P&L in 2022. So those savings will contribute to improve our financial contribution -- our financial performance and will help also to finance the growth and business initiatives, maintain a significant tech and data investment capacity each year and of course, will absorb the inflation shock we mentioned during this call.

Our next question comes from Benoit Valleaux from ODDO BHF.

Two question on my side, maybe one still on investment income. We've seen a 40 bps increase in regular income yield in Q3, so it's quite significant. Just wonder if there's been [ sometimes away ] within that figures? And did you envisage to locate more capital to your investment portfolio to take some maybe market opportunity in current circumstances? And can you also please remind us what is the sensitivity of your Solvency II margin to any potential rate integration? And the second topic really in Life reinsurance that you still plan to reduce your U.S. mortality exposure? And if yes, can you please detail your action plan?

So on the investment portfolio, so that's true that we've got a significant pickup in Q3. That's linked to redemption on the portfolio. Just to give you a flavor of in practice where we invest, when we invest today, in dollar, investment-grade corporate bonds, we invest above 5% to 5.1% so which are -- that's right. That we lock in our portfolio. In terms of risk appetite, I think the portfolio today is very well positioned to fully capture the forthcoming or the continued increase of interest rate linked to the policies of most central banks. We mentioned a little bit at the beginning of the call and as mentioned also in one slide. Keep in mind that we have the risk of [indiscernible] on the radar screen. So we want in this context increase the capital allocated to investment portfolio. We will continue to further diversify this portfolio on value creation assets. But don't expect an increase of the capital allocated to investment risk. We benefit from the increase of interest rates. We have been waiting for it for [ 13 ] years. And we -- the portfolio is positioned also to be defensive today in case of major recession risk in 2023 or 2024. So again, no major change.

The question on if the solvency ratio is sensitive to credit migration. No, the solvency ratio is very insensitive towards that. If you look at our published split -- risk split, you see that credit risk diversifies or default and then credit risk diversifies very well away.

On your last question on U.S. mortality, in particular, pandemic exposure. As we mentioned in the past, we have significant optionality in our existing U.S. in-force business where we can increase premium rates of certain underperforming treaties and that is something which we've been exercising actively, and we will continue to do that. In some cases, clients have the option to recapture business after rate increase, and this is what has happened. And this is also what has led to the slight decline in the premium income for the Life business in Q3 at constant exchange rates.

We will take our next question from Thomas Fossard from HSBC.

Sorry if I come back to questions. The first one will be on the DTAs, EUR 94 million. So I get that you are into some part of the business where you expect lower profitability going forward. So maybe could you explain where you expect our profitability and where this is the case? Just to come back on the Life excess margin release and more about the quantum. I mean can you explain a bit for external side there? How the EUR 460 million has been decided? Or I mean what were the drivers behind the quantum? That would be the 2 questions.

Yes. Thanks, Thomas. And firstly, on the DTAs. It's not a reflection of expectation of future profitability on any particular line. This is in respect of the French tax perimeter. We've just taken the opportunity as a prudent stance not to recognize the DTAs on the losses within the French legal entities across the course of this year. And that's really about bringing a more solid base for the future in fact. Now it does increase the effective tax rate where we stand for sure. But the group is confident that the DTAs will be utilized before expiry under the accounting rules. And we have plans that will support that DTA utilization. So we're comfortable going forward, and it's brought some prudence and strength into the balance sheet.

Yes, to answer to your second question, Thomas, we did undergo through a deep review and a thorough review of our biometric assumptions, and this led to a confirmation that our margin -- IFRS 4 margin is significant. And as I was mentioning before, as we can see when computing the liability adequacy test.

Our next question comes from Ashik Musaddi from Morgan Stanley.

And sorry, just a couple of more follow-ups I have is, I mean, is it possible to get some color on the sensitivities for falling interest rates? I mean if interest rates were to go down, I mean has your sensitivities changed? I mean the reason I'm asking is most of the insurers are saying that given the level of interest rates are so high, the sensitivities have got dampened now. So if, let's say, interest rate goes down another 100 basis points from here, which has already happened a bit in October, would your solvency drop much faster? So that's the first question. And second thing, I guess, going back to one of the question that Andrew asked at the beginning of the call, around your portfolio structure in P&C. I mean you have already changed quite a bit in 2022. I mean if I look at the portfolio in P&C reduction or, say, canceled, restructured, et cetera, you have done about 20% rechurning. How much more do you think you need to go through that exercise again in 2023? Yes, that would be good.

On the interest rate sensitivity, we published them on a half year basis. And if you look at our Q2 publication, you see a bit of movements from year-end to Q2. But it's quite symmetrical between the basis point up or basis point down, and there's not a lot of things happening there.

On your second question on the P&C, honestly, if next year, we come back with a 95% net combined ratio, then I think we'll have judged that the portfolio repositioning has been complete. Until then, we're not satisfied with the performance and that necessitates -- that requires repricing of the business and repositioning of the business until we get there.

Okay. But is there any particular line where you would want to make sure you get it right? I mean property cat is definitely one, but any other particular line?

Yes. I think we've highlighted some of those. It's all climate-sensitive business where I think a view of risk has dramatically changed. And so cat is one, agro is another. I think we see other lines of business like aviation requiring significant remediation. The rest of the business has performed as expected. And as I mentioned initially, specialty insurance has been a big area of growth over the past couple of years. There again, we see the hardening of the market, slowing down in that area. And so our growth in specialty insurance will probably slow down as well.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's question-and-answer session. At this time, I would like to hand the call back to the speakers for any additional or closing remarks. Thank you.

Thank you very much for attending this conference call. The Investor Relations team remains available to pick up on any questions you may have. So please don't hesitate to give us a call. As a reminder, SCOR will hold its Q4 results presentation on March 2. I wish you a good afternoon.

This does conclude today's call. Thank you for your participation, ladies and gentlemen. You may now disconnect.