Swiss Life Holding AG (SLHN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon and welcome to the Swiss Life Investor Day 2021 Conference Call and Live Webcast. I'm Myra, the Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] You will now be joined into the conference room.

So ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon, and welcome to Swiss Life's Investor Day at the Circle Convention Center here in Zurich Airport. A warm welcome also goes out to those following the event on the web. Today, we will present our new strategic and financial targets under our new 3-year corporate program, Swiss Life 2024. The program starts next year. We will have two sets of presentations. I will start by introducing the program. Matthias Aellig, our Group CFO; and Stefan Machler, our Group CIO, will speak next. We will then hold the first Q&A session. After our coffee break, we will continue with a deep dive into the strategic plans of our business: division Switzerland, France, Germany and International. We will welcome onstage the respective divisional CEOs, Markus Leibundgut, Tanguy Polet, Jorg Arnold and Nils Frowein. To conclude the event, we will have a second Q&A session. Now let's get started with Swiss Life 2024 that sets the scene for continued profitable growth. Swiss Life is in excellent shape after three very successful programs since 2009. We expect to successfully complete our fourth program, Swiss Life 2021 by the end of this year. Today, our competitive strengths lie in our very good positions in advisory networks across attractive markets as well as in our corporate culture, our resilient business model and our disciplined execution. With our new 3-year program, we will build upon existing strengths and key success factors and set the direction for future profitable growth. We commit to the following actions: we will deepen customer relationships, we will strengthen our advisory power and we will continue to expand operational scalability, and last but not least, we will anchor sustainability in all our activities. In this context, we set the following financial targets. One, we will significantly increase the quality of earnings and our ROE. Two, we will also seek to reward shareholders. Swiss Life 2024 is both about continuity and change. Earnings quality as well as capital, cash and payout will remain paramount in the new program. That remains unchanged. What does change is the level of our ambitions. We are raising our ambitions yet again. But let me first look back on the achievements of our current program and set a few key points that set the scene for our future developments. Swiss Life 2021 will run until the end of this year. As I alluded to, I'm confident that we will achieve or even exceed all of our financial targets, as you can see on Slide 6. With our current program, which we presented 3 years ago, we've also considerably strengthened the profitability and the quality of our earnings. We also have improved operational efficiency. In addition, we've increased our dividends to shareholders based on a strong cash remittance from our units to the holding company, and we have implemented 2 share buybacks. Let's have a look at our track record on Slide 7. Since 2012, we've achieved a fivefold increase of the fee result from CHF 121 million to more than CHF 600 million in 2020. When we expanded into these fields of the fee business about 10 years ago, it really sometimes felt like a mountain ahead of us. Since then, we have set ourselves ambitious targets for each and every year and I am proud of our achievements. In my view, our continuous delivery on targets and promises has created trust in our ability to achieve ambitious goals. And the shift to more fee result has considerably improved the resilience of our business model as we've reduced the share of the capital-intensive savings result. Moreover, and importantly, the fee result is cash accretive and capital-light. Over the same period of time, we have more than quadrupled our dividend per share to CHF 21 for the financial year 2020, as shown on Slide 8. And we've tripled the payout ratio. This is proof of our success in managing the underlying solvency, earnings growth and cash remittance that all contributed to an increased dividend. Our 2 share buybacks, one of CHF 1 billion and the other one of CHF 400 million, were both together with more than 2 annual dividend payments. We've created significant value for shareholders, as highlighted by Swiss Life's total return on Slide 9, compared to the total return indices of the Swiss Market Index and the STOXX Europe 600 Insurance Index both shown in Swiss francs. Now how do we get there? Well, in the end, development of our share price, of course, is up to our investors. In my view, we got there thanks to the skills of our people, our strong solvency position, the massive increase of our fee result, the resilient growth of our other profit sources, and of course, our focus on cash generation and remittance, which is the basis of higher cash returns to shareholders. Now that was, of course, quite a technical explanation. Without our excellent market position and our customers, none of this would have been possible. On Slide 10, we show our unique and strong position towards our customers in providing life, pensions, financial solutions and advice for the long run. Our unique life insurance footprint in attractive European markets and our advisory power differentiate us from other players. Overall, we have more than 17,000 advisers working for Swiss Life. We're also growing asset manager with unique strengths such as in real assets. This results in several sources of profit with more than 1/3 of the operating profit coming from the fee result. With this business model, we're on top of long-term trends and opportunities and can benefit from further business growth. First, we see increasing pension and protection gaps around the world. The impact of rapidly aging populations and the heavy indebtedness of many countries linked to pension and protection liabilities is generally underestimated. If people continue to live longer, then every one of us will be increasingly called upon to take more responsibility for providing for our own retirement. Pension solutions and advice are growth markets, and since many decades, we have proven to be a leading player in this field. We have the right offerings and solutions. And second, because people need support and financial advice in addressing those gaps in a self-determined way, we can be of help with our advisers. We believe that our advisory platform, which is already very strong, can be expanded further. Third, we continue to face a low interest rate environment. Our Asset Managers division has done a terrific job in achieving resilient yields and growing results based on optimizing the portfolio, including real assets. Equally important has been that our insurance operations have adapted their product landscape to this interest rate environment. And fourth, sustainable value creation is key. Sustainability is an integral part of our business and at the heart of what we do. I'll deep dive into this topic later on. With our Swiss Life 2024 strategic actions, we will strengthen our core and address industry trends and opportunities. Life, pensions as well as financial solutions and advice are strongly influenced by local needs of targeted customer segments in the context of local tax and regulatory requirements. Customer proximity is key. This is why Swiss Life continues to be organized multi-divisionally. Each business division has defined individual strategic priorities. These can be grouped around the strategic actions shown. You'll hear more details from our divisional CEOs later on. With Swiss Life 2024, we will continue to enable people to lead a self-determined life and show how this translates on the financial side into further earnings quality and growth. My next slide shows three of our strategic actions that support profitable business growth going forward. Our first strategic action, deepen customer relationships, focuses on complementing our product and service offering for new and existing customers. Solutions can be owned as well as third-party products and services. The second strategic action is all about strengthening the advisory power. Advice is a core element that complements the product and solutions offering. Excellent advice is essential to building trust and to establish a sustainable long-term business relationship with our customers. Swiss Life already has significant advisory power. This advisory power differentiates from our peers, and it will be an attractive and powerful element in our new strategy. With Swiss Life 2024, we will strive to grow our adviser base and distribution network. More advisers can reach out to more customers. However, we will also invest into our advisory platforms to optimally support our advisers to be more productive, ensuring an improved customer experience and thus in delivering high-quality advice. Our third strategic action is operational scalability. It can be achieved by either growing the top line and/or by focusing on cost efficiency. Swiss Life will make use of technology and digitalization to increase process automation and operational efficiency in its multi-divisional business model. Let's now move on to a subject of importance, not only for the world, but also for our group. It's our fourth strategic action, Page 14. Sustainability has been anchored in our business since the beginning for more than 160 years. We've created a sound foundation for making further contributions to the sustainable development of our group through our operations; our work in the asset management area, including our ambitious program in real estate; our product offering; as well as our advisory power of our owned IFAs. The further development in this field is a continuation of what we have been pursuing for years. Of course, taking on climate change is the key aspect. In our sustainability strategy, we prioritize those areas in which we can have direct impact in which the matter is, so to say, in our own hands. Specifically, this means in our business behavior in our role as an asset owner and manager, in the way we conduct our insurance businesses and our advisory activities, and last but not least, in our role as an employer. We have a broad set of metrics and initiatives in anchoring sustainability in our businesses. Out of these, let me highlight four goals relevant for Swiss Life 2024 on Page 15. First, in operational [indiscernible], we will reduce our CO2 emissions per employee by 35% by 2024. We will achieve this primarily by reducing travel, by aspiring use of resources and by contracting electricity from renewable sources only. We will also fully compensate for unavoidable emissions resulting from our work and other operations. We will therefore reach a net zero status from 2022 onwards. Second, in our sphere of influence as an asset manager and owner, we will reduce average CO2 emission intensity of our directly owned real estate by 20% by 2030. Stefan Machler will explain the path to net zero of our real estate investment portfolio in more detail later on. Let me just mention that our portfolio already is carbon efficient compared to the average real estate stock in the geographies we operate in. As a life insurer, we've always invested and managed our assets farsightedly, focusing on value stability. We invested quite extensively in acquiring new energy-efficient buildings and in refurbishing existing buildings, which have both resulted in comparatively low carbon intensity. In addition, we will continue to pursue our excellent positioning in ESG integration with our responsible investment approach, which covers 90% of all our assets under management. Our analysis also show that we are in a strong position with regard to the carbon intensity of our securities portfolio compared to the relevant benchmarks. We want to retain this position in the next strategic phase. In addition, we will further expand our business with convincing ESG customer solutions and seize the opportunities in this growth market for asset management. This also applies to our own products and solutions, our third goal. Across the entire rest of our group, we will also take account of the growing customer demand for sustainable solutions and expand our product offering. Our fourth strategic thrust is to harness the market power of our advisers and to further integrate sustainability aspects into our advice processes. This includes investing in the competencies of our advisory teams and in their systems and tools. To sum up, we will take decisive actions to further improve our sustainability profile. Now that brings me to the next subject, the strategic focus that each division has as part of Swiss Life 2024 on Page 16. Each division will contribute to our group's strategic actions. That fits in with our multi-divisional approach of managing each business division according to local economic, legal and regulatory conditions and in the view of proximity to customers. Well, you'll hear more from that again for my colleagues later on. I'll therefore quickly move on to the financial contributions I expect from each business division by 2024. The graph on the left-hand side shows the share of fee result for each business division plotted against their cash remittance to the holding company. The bubble sizes reflect the contributions to our profits from operations of each division. And the arrows, well, they indicate the aspirations of each business division until 2024. As you can see, I've set different priorities for each division. Switzerland is our biggest division. It's our key cash contributor, which will continue to grow. Its segment result is driven by large and resilient savings result as well as the risk result, which are both expected to increase compared to 2020. Moreover, Switzerland is investing to further increase the fee result beyond the 2024 period by expanding in affluent and digitally savvy customer segments. France will further leverage its private insurer and multi-distribution model, which will contribute to growing the fee results. Germany has delivered successful growth at Swiss Life Select and other brands such as [indiscernible]. And we'll focus on growing the results from owned IFAs even further primarily by increasing the number of advisers. International will focus on doubling the fee result supported by all lines of business while improving the risk result of corporate customers. While the Asset Managers have the goal to further increase their result from the business with third-party clients with real assets playing an important role. All of this will result in increased cash remittance and an improvement of our quality of earnings. With this, I turn now to my next page. With our new corporate program, we have raised our ambitions yet again. Again, we have refrained from publishing any top line growth goals at group level. Here, we will continue to focus on bottom line growth and we'll pursue the following financial targets. Compared to our existing framework, we will significantly grow the fee result by 40% to CHF 850 million to CHF 900 million by 2024. And we will also increase the return on equity to 10% to 12% valid in every single year of our next strategic period. Let me repeat, capital cash and payout will remain paramount in our new program. We'll strive to remit about 35% more cash to the holding company, namely, CHF 2.8 billion to CHF 3 billion over the next 3-year cumulative period. We will ensure an attractive cash return to shareholders by increasing the dividend payout ratio for period to above 60%. We will also launch a new share buyback of CHF 1 billion this December that is expected to be completed by May of 2023. On top of what is shown in this slide and in line with our strategic action of operational scalability, disciplined cost management will remain part of what we do. This applies to all our business lines. And what remains important, this plan does not rely on any future M&A activities. It has been prepared on an organic basis. With Swiss Life 2024, we will again raise our ambitions. As shown on this slide, with every 3-year program, we have become more ambitious in terms of target setting for the fee result, cash remittance and dividends to shareholders. The higher ambition for the ROE now follows suit. Well, it's impressive what my team has achieved, and I look forward to embarking with them on this new journey. Let me now wrap up. The Swiss Life 2024 program is our road map for the next 3 years. We will again deliver more earnings quality and earnings growth. We will return more to our shareholders. That is what my team and I will be doing. And I can assure you that we are fully committed to achieving our Swiss Life 2024 strategic and financial targets. Matthias, I now hand over to you to outline the financial aspects of our program in more detail.

Thank you, Patrick, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I'm looking forward to providing details of the Swiss Life 2024 financial targets and the initiatives to achieve those targets. Swiss Life is in very good shape. We have substantially enhanced the earnings quality, and we have further improved the operational efficiency. At the same time, we have delivered attractive returns to shareholders through higher dividends and to share buybacks. We're now, again, raising our ambitions in the next program, Swiss Life 2024. First, we plan to further strengthen the quality of earnings by growing the fee result and by increasing the ROE target. Second, we aim to increase cash returns to shareholders based on a growing cash remittance from the businesses to the holding. Let me start by reviewing where we stand with Swiss Life 2021 in more details. We are ahead with the return on equity despite the challenges of COVID-19. We have substantially increased the fee result and reached the 2021 target range 1 year ahead of time. We have achieved the goal to increase the risk result. And we also generated almost CHF 1.3 billion of cumulative new business value over the past 2.5 years, thereby exceeding the target. The SST ratio improved from 170% to 197%. That's above our ambition range. With a cumulative cash remittance of more than CHF 2.3 billion the half year 2021, we exceeded our target. This has allowed us to increase the dividend since 2017 from CHF 13.5 to CHF 21. We also continued to improve the efficiency ratios across businesses, life insurance, owned IFAs and asset management. To sum it up, we will achieve or exceed all Swiss Life 2021 financial targets. Every business division played its part in Swiss Life 2021. As you can see on the slide, we are on track or ahead with respect to the divisional focus points presented 3 years ago in the CFO slot. This demonstrates the disciplined execution of a 2021 program in all divisions. What else will remain -- what else will we maintain? With Swiss Life 2024, we built on proven strength and success factors. On one hand, we will keep the focus on quality of earnings and earnings growth. And on the other hand, capital, cash and payout remain paramount. Let me show you how this translates into the Swiss Life 2024 financial targets, which are presented in the context of the current IFRS framework. We strive to deliver between CHF 850 million and CHF 900 million of fee result for the financial year 2024. This will, amongst others, increase the return on equity. New target of 10% to 12% is valid for each and every year of the new program. We plan to increase the cumulative cash remittance to the holding over the next 3 years to CHF 2.8 billion to CHF 3.0 billion. And we strive to have a payout ratio above 60% of IFRS earnings. In addition, we will execute the CHF 1 billion share buyback over the next 18 months. You may have noticed that we have reduced the number of group financial targets compared to Swiss Life '21. The aim was to focus on those key value drivers, which are most relevant in explaining our growth ambitions. This supported the additional goal of simplifying the group's target set. The reduction affects value of new business, risk result and operational efficiency. It does not mean, however, that those figures cannot grow or improve. We certainly have growth ambitions for all relevant metrics intrinsic to the business, and you will hear more from my colleagues in the divisional presentations. I'll now provide more background to the fee result target on the next three slides. Looking back first. The fee result has been the key profit driver for the past decade. It has increased almost fivefold since 2012 to CHF 601 million in 2020. Growing the fee result has substantially improved the risk profile of Swiss Life's business model. The fee result has a low dependency on financial markets and the low capital intensity. Moreover, there's no policy shareholder sharing and it is cash accretive. And by the way, it is essentially unaffected by the transition to the IFRS 17 accounting standards in 2023. We strive to grow the fee result by about 40% to CHF 850 million to CHF 900 million in 2024. Who contributes to this growth? It's TPAM as well as the owned IFA and unit-linked businesses. The contribution from PAM to the fee result will, in absolute figures remain stable, which results in a decreasing relative share. The contribution by business division is shown on the next slide. Switzerland plans to increase the fee result to around CHF 30 million while investing in growth initiatives such as expansion into affluent and digital savvy customer segments. France aims to increase the fee result to EUR 125 million to EUR 135 million. It will lever its proven private insurer model and multi-distribution capabilities to further grow the unit-linked business. Germany plans to grow the fee result to EUR 115 million to EUR 125 million by further expanding the owned IFA networks. International will strive for a fee result of EUR 90 million to EUR 100 million. About half will come from the owned IFA businesses and the other half from the private wealth and employee benefit businesses. And Asset Managers will continue to grow its third-party business and push for profitable growth in all asset classes, supported an increasing focus on logistics and on ESG. We expect the fee result of CHF 460 million to CHF 490 million by 2024. Real estate project development will play an increasing role going forward. What about the other profit sources? They continue to remain important for us as they are also drivers of cash remittance to the holding company. Starting at the bottom of the slide, the cost result. We want to further improve it while growing and investing in the business. We also aim to further grow the risk result in all insurance divisions from 2020 levels. However, we are realistic that expected growth beyond 2021 is more limited than for the fee result. The savings result will continue to be an important contributor. We aim to further grow it compared to the 2020 level, which was impacted by COVID-19-related market volatility. We will manage the savings result as in the past with a capital-efficient investment approach and by focusing on disciplined ALM to secure the interest rate margin. As shown on this slide, we expect the positive interest rate margin to be secured for more than 3 decades. Our work in both the asset and the liability side will continue. What are the main assumptions of this projection? First, no new business is included; second, no profit from risk fee and cost results are considered; third, we have not assumed any realization on fixed income instruments other than for building up the remainder of the ZZR in Germany; and fourth, we base the projection on conservative reinvestment rates. If we project with current effective reinvestment rates, the interest rate margin in 2050 is higher by around 40 to 50 basis points. Let me now show you a breakdown of the statutory reserves underlying this analysis. Traditional reserves are expected to decrease since some of the business matures, and as mentioned, the projection excludes future new business. As a consequence, there will be capital relief from the bank book in the longer term. In the next few years, however, this capital relief is moderate. The following examples show how we will continue with our disciplined back book management that support value creation. In Switzerland, we remain a full-range insurance solution provider in the BVG business. In the current interest rate environment, we emphasize semiautonomous solutions. At the same time, we are lowering the overall conversion rates in full insurance in line with the industry. In France, we very successfully launched new pension products in response to the PACTE Law, which enabled us to lower the guarantees in the pension's back book. In Germany, we continuously lower guarantees in modern traditional business, having pulled out of the traditional insurance products already a while ago. At the same time, we are more and more successful in selling fewer unit-linked solutions. All those measures make Swiss Life's insurance business more resilient. In addition, we also manage the new business diligently. We focus on capital-efficient new business with low or even no guarantees as the following examples show. In Switzerland, new business is focused on products that have a negative technical interest rate and a low guaranteed endowment benefit of around 45% on average. In Germany, we also emphasize low and no guarantee business. Last year, the endowment benefit of new business was as low as 32% on average as we focus, as just mentioned, more and more on unit-linked solutions. This all leads to a reduction of the required economic capital for new business. That means Swiss Life is well positioned to further increase the value of new business. We strive to grow it above the cumulative target for the Swiss Life 2021 program, namely, to significantly more than CHF 1.2 billion. Moreover, the ambition for the new business margin is unchanged at 1.5% and the run rate stays at 1%. Turning to operational efficiency. Disciplined cost management continues to be key. Operational scalability, in fact, is one of four 2024 strategic actions, and I would like to illustrate that for the fee businesses. Here, we strive for the bottom line to outgrow the top line. In other words, our initiatives are planned to deliver operational leverage. During the course of the past years, we have invested quite extensively to grow the fee businesses and making them more efficient. And while we continue to further invest, we clearly see benefits coming through until 2024. France and International and TPAM are expected to substantially grow volumes while further benefiting from digitalization. This will result in significant operational leverage. In Germany, we see definitely attractive opportunities to achieve further growth in the owned IFA business. This will lead to operational leverage, while we continue to upgrade the back office infrastructure. Switzerland will not really show operational leverage in aggregate as investments to expand into new customer segments will be a drag on its total fee result. I now move to our financial ambitions in terms of capital, cash and payout. Since 2016, we have continuously improved the solvency position. The introduction of the SST standard model in 2019 was a step forward as it provided clarity on capital requirements. Today, the group SST ratio is at around 210%. The SST ratio of the main opco, Swiss Life AG, is also strong and even above that level. In that context, we plan to repatriate by the end of 2021 a hybrid loan of CHF 200 million granted by the holding. In terms of the group's SST ambition, we confirmed the 140% to 190% range. Also, the well-known framework with solvency and cash as key considerations for capital management actions remains in place unchanged. This includes that there is no automatism for such actions. In terms of cash, we increased the cash remittance target by about 35% compared to Swiss Life 2021. This means we aim to remit CHF 2.8 billion to CHF 3.0 billion of cash to the holding company cumulatively over the 3-year period from 2022 to '24. The main driver of this increase in cash remittance is the substantially higher fee result. On top of that, we also plan to receive increased contributions from the other profit sources. As we have mentioned on several occasions, cash remittance is based on local statutory accounts of Swiss Life Holding subsidiaries. The transition to IFRS 17 and IFRS 9 will not affect the way we manage the business and will therefore not affect our cash targets. From a divisional point of view, Switzerland remains the main cash contributor. Growing savings result will play an important role. Asset Managers is the second largest cash contributor. Growth stems from the TPAM business. Cash remittance from Germany grows as a result, owned IFA businesses. But in France, we also expect a growing risk and savings result in addition to a higher fee result. And then in the International business, cash remittance is driven by growing fee and risk results. Moving on to the dividend payout ratio, which we indicate as a percentage of IFRS earnings. As shown on this slide, approximately 15% to 20% of the IFRS earnings are noncash. Given the improvement in earnings mix, the relative share of noncash items will be lower than in Swiss Life 2021 when we indicated around 20%. One example of a noncash item are real estate revaluation gains, which do not contribute to cash upstreaming. The reason is as follows: on the statutory accounting, there's no mark-to-market of real estate assets unless they are sold. As a result, there is no contribution of revaluation gains to statutory earnings, which are the basis of cash remittance to the holding. We expect further real estate revaluation gains in our economic base scenario, which is very moderate interest rate increases of less than 20 basis points per annum. This means we continue to foresee statutory earnings lower than IFRS earnings. Less than 5% of the cash is retained at business divisions to finance local growth projects. Another 10% to 15% of the cash will be kept at the holding company to ensure capital management flexibility and financing for potential bolt-on acquisitions. This leads to our new target for a dividend payout ratio of more than 60% of annual IFRS earnings, up from 50% to 60% in Swiss Life 2021. We believe this is an attractive target while being able to maintain capital management flexibility. This flexibility allows Swiss Life today to announce a CHF 1 billion share buyback. Let me give some further details on the next slide. As in the past, this buyback will be executed by a partner bank through a second trading line over the course of 18 months. We will start repurchasing shares on the 6th of December 2021 and plan to complete the share buyback by the end of May 2023. The impact on the SST ratio is around 6 percentage points. Repurchased share will be proposed for cancellation to the coming AGMs. What does the financing of the buyback look like? About CHF 150 million will be financed from existing cash at holding. The remaining part is financed about equally to annual cash -- annual net cash buildups and by intragroup transfers such as the mentioned repatriation of the CHF 200 million hybrid loan. I will now come to the last of the group's financial targets. This is the return on equity. All Swiss Life 2024 initiatives mentioned so far will contribute to the increase of the target range to 10% to 12%. As in the past, it is based on shareholders' equity excluding unrealized gains and losses. On the other side of the ratio are the drivers of improvement are the higher fee result, the additional earnings from further operational leverage as well as the healthy interest rate margin. On the [ east ] side, the drivers are the disciplined bank book management and the capital-efficient new business as well as the higher dividend payout ratio and the share buyback, which will lead to an optimized capital structure. In that context, we set a new reference level for shareholders' equity of 65% to 75% compared to 70% to 75% as of today. With the mentioned measures, we are essentially in the middle of the new range. Ladies and gentlemen, with Swiss Life 2024, we raised again our financial targets and commit to an ambitious new program. We are aware that success does not come for granted and that we need to continue to deal with risks and master challenges arising from financial market, regulation and the competitive space, just to name a few. We have, however, the determination and commitment to deliver on the new financial targets. We will do so with our usual discipline and diligence, which are integral part of Swiss Life's way of doing business. Let me conclude. Over the last 12 years, we have successfully increased the earnings and earnings quality by repositioning the group by growing the fee businesses. With Swiss Life 2024, we plan to continue this successful path by further strengthening the earnings quality and by further striving for higher cash returns to shareholders. Thank you for your attention. I will now hand over to our CIO, Stefan Machler, who will speak about the Swiss Life 2024 priorities for Asset Managers.

Thank you, Matthias. Ladies and gentlemen, in the next 30 minutes, I'm glad to announce ambitious targets for Swiss Life Asset Managers' next business cycle, Swiss Life 2024. This is backed by our proven excellent business track record for more than 12 years. We are successfully delivering significant growth rates, organic and inorganic expansion, farsighted investments in promising emerging investment trends by gradually shifting the reliance on our proprietary asset management, or PAM, to our third-party asset management business or TPAM. Our goal. By the end of Swiss Life 2024, TPAM's segment result will surpass the one of PAM. With our insurance asset management background, our liability-driven investment management, we were well positioned to sail through a persistently low-yielding investment environment. We consistently built up our real asset platform, aligning a strong Pan-European real estate business with an attractive infrastructure equity offering. This is all on top of our solid securities platform. Our investment solutions are well sought after also because we invest alongside our clients, so-called quality investments. And thus, we do have a credible skin in the game. Hence, we are in a position to provide our clients a unique access to the market. Going forward, we will concentrate as we always have on delivery excellence, driving process optimization and digitization. ESG is not just a buzzword. We embed ESG in our DNA. Our core processes, we will pursue a CO2 reduction path on our PAM real estate portfolio. This will be reflected in raised ambitions for the segment result and cash remittance to holding by 2024. Concretely, the segment result will increase to CHF 460 million to CHF 490 million by 2024 and cumulative cash remittance will come in between CHF 750 million and CHF 800 million. We made farsighted early investments in sustainability or ESG in new geographic markets and in promising emerging investment opportunities. To name a few, at real estate such as health care, light industrial, small and big box logistics; at infrastructure, such as clean energy; and in securities, such as senior-secured loans or investable Swiss mortgages. We firmly established ourselves as a leading institutional asset management in Switzerland and a leading real estate asset manager in Europe. For the current Swiss Life 2021 program, I am confident to achieve or surpass our targets, though the TPAM cost/income ratio target of around 75% is challenging, but within reach. We have been investing significantly into our business platforms to ensure the sturdiness of our business with future automation and scalability in a very competitive environment. As said, we are very pleased with the development in the past 4 years in all of our investment competencies. We were able to shift our efforts to higher-margin business and sticky assets. In the securities business, we focused on leveraging PAM's expertise. We were able to increase the gross commission income with a CAGR of 6% by growing the asset base by CHF 12 billion to CHF 49 billion. Our infrastructure business has grown sizably. With the renewable and clean energy infrastructure know-how of Fontavis, which was acquired in 2019, we were able to strengthen our sustainability efforts in the recently combined teams. Growth rates of 44% reflect our ambition to profitably climb up the ladder. In line with our strategy, we expanded our real estate project development activities. We also executed several large real estate transactions beyond the Swiss -- the CHF 1 billion threshold and successfully built up flagship funds also in the area of mutual funds for retail clients with [ REIT ] funds in Switzerland, France and Germany, all of them having surpassed the CHF 1 billion mark. The total income grew at a CAGR of 16% and the asset base to a solid CHF 38 billion. Where are we heading to? Based on our investment skills, our stringent execution capabilities, we will focus, among others, on being a competitive ESG asset manager while further anchoring sustainability credibly in all of our core processes, products and services. This is a part of our DNA. Therefore, we are committing ourselves to a CO2 reduction path in our direct real estate portfolio because here we have the highest direct impact on the Paris Climate Agreement targets. We invest substantial financial means and resources in our IT platforms. On a cash basis, some CHF 20 million to CHF 30 million per annum, which is fully expensed, this to improve efficiency while harmonizing structures and processes. Follow me now and discover our concrete actions towards our focus topics. The actions will enable us to fully grasp our growth potential during the next 3 years. Nothing has changed in our heritage, the parent business. With our stringent asset and liability management, the capital-efficient investments and the narrow [ generation ] gap, our investment income is resilient and thus protecting the interest rate margin, all this in a cost-efficient manner. Let me now have a short case study on how we can add value to our investments. For example, real estate. As you can see, on the upper left graph, our PAM's real estate exposure with 77% to the Swiss market is by far the biggest of the entire PAM real estate portfolio. The way we select and manage the portfolio, in combination with our market strength and access, leads to higher returns, a solid 30 basis points -- 37 basis points per annum higher valuation gains and 10 basis points lower operating and maintenance costs over the last 10 years as benchmarked by Wüest Partner. Vacancy rates are low and rent collection has been high even during the pandemic. Needless to say, we still do favor real estate for the reasons of stable rental income and spread of risk [ fee ]. Let us turn now to the next slide and focus on our third-party asset management business, where we want to grow our assets under management to approximately CHF 140 billion by the end of 2024. We are convinced that preserving a strong contribution of all investment competencies is a truly critical success factor to embark on our ambitious growth path in the next 3 years. The securities business will focus on our established strong fixed income product shelf, including our money market and defensive equity offerings. Additionally, the introduction of thematic equity funds and more funds suitable for retail clients will complete our offerings. The infrastructure business is playing an increasingly important role in our strategy. Substantial effort will be undertaken to exploit synergies and capture new business opportunities arising from combining advantages of infrastructure and real estate. I will elaborate more on that on this later. Focal topics regarding the real estate business includes strengthening our position as a real estate gateway to Europe as well as pivoting the product offerings towards well-enhancing proposition. Having successfully enlarged the value chain, we will further enhance our real estate project development activities for the purpose of generating income, and once stabilized, of feeding our real estate funds or other vehicles. A strong client interaction with our sales force and industry specialists will bring the necessary link to our offerings and service and thus increase the assets under management. Now I would like to take a deep dive and give you a glance at two of our high-impact focused topics of the AM strategy 2024. The first one is logistics. Looking at our main real estate investment market and comparing them with the largest logistic clusters, a high degree of overlap is evident. We are perfectly positioned to add this asset class to our investment in product portfolio. Hence, the acquisition of BEOS in 2018 was a deliberate decision to enter the logistics market via light industrial and small box logistics. We since have consistently expanded our capacities and footprint. With our BEOS Logistics joint venture and Swiss Life Asset Managers (Nordic), our most recent acquisition, we cover the most important logistics clusters in Europe. We cover the full value chain from securing land, so called land banking, with the capability of swiftly responding to increasing tenant demand of well-known tenants to provide the necessary space at best-suited locations. This broad geographic footprint and the capability set make us an attractive partner to communities, tenants and investors alike as we provide maximum flexibility to fulfill the needs. Not surprisingly, ESG is the other focus area. The fact that we have been in the market for more than 160 years continuously adapting and transforming our business to changing social, environmental and economic developments is an integral part of our identity as a risk manager and testimonial to our century-long success story. ESG and responsible investing is a fundamental reality, necessitating the reorientation of traditional businesses in a changing society. Now how do we cope with this fundamental shift? We have chosen a comprehensive approach without jumping to conclusion and risking to overpromise. At Swiss Life Asset Managers, our aim is to embed ESG fully, incredibly in all of our core processes to future-proof our business model and actively invest in innovative ESG opportunities. Therefore, over the last few years, we have achieved a lot, which I'm very proud of. Here are some highlights in numbers. Integrating ESG in all core processes is a fundamental change process for the entire organization. For this transformation process, ESG equities is highly crucial. We are proud of having 14 full-time ESG experts who are supported by some 70 ESG ambassadors, creating a unique ESG expertise network in the organization. 90% of all assets are in scope of ESG integration strategy. That is a very broad approach. With a coverage ratio of 100%, again underpinning our broad approach, the carbon intensity of our government bond portfolio stands at 194 tonnes CO2 equivalent per million U.S. dollar GDP. This is significantly lower than benchmark. A lot. With a coverage ratio of 82%, our copper bond portfolio stands at 145 tonnes carbon intensity, equally significantly lower than benchmark. Both figures underpin the excellent and CO2-efficient fixed income exposure. 82% of our proprietary real estate portfolio, 100% of our Swiss proprietary real estate portfolio and overall 65% of our real estate assets under management are in scope of GRESB, Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark. This transparency, in my view, is exceptional in the market. The annual external benchmarking motivates us to continuously improve ourselves. This year, 18 out of 22 submitted real estate portfolios were Green Star rated by GRESB. Climate change and resource scarcity are important issues. We take intergenerational responsibility by refraining from investing in companies that derive more than 10% of their revenue from thermal coal. Also, we actively contribute to environmental sustainability by committing to invest CHF 2 billion in green bonds by 2023. The real estate and construction sectors are commonly known for contributing to around 40% of global CO2 emissions. As one of the leading real estate asset managers in Europe and private real estate owner in Switzerland, we are very well aware of our responsibility and what we can do. In alignment with the targets of the Paris Climate Agreement, we commit to reduce the CO2 intensity of our direct real estate portfolio by 20% by 2030. This commitment is proof that sustainability and long-term orientation has always been a part of our DNA. Why is that? Our starting point with 26 kilograms CO2 equivalent per square meter or carbon intensity lies already today far below the worldwide real estate sector net zero pathway, represented by the light pink line in the graph on this slide. This starting point is also below our net zero scenario benchmark, the dark red line, reflecting the Swiss Life specific real estate portfolio composition in terms of geography and asset type. With a 20% reduction, we aim a CO2 intensity of 20 kilograms per square meter in 2030. We have always been managing our real estate portfolio sustainably for the long term with a focus on value stability long before discussions about sustainability and CO2 neutrality became prominent. To achieve the set targets, we plan to invest a cumulative CHF 2 billion CapEx until 2030. ESG also is a growth market. Besides future-proofing our existing business model, we want to actively take ESG business opportunities to achieve competitive advantages. Therefore, investments in sector coupled energy-efficient solutions are a crucial pillar of our future strategy. We intend to build up in-house energy efficiency expertise that embraces new renewable technologies to accelerate the decarbonization of real estate portfolios. In this context, we focus on investments in solar power, low carbon heating, cooling, ventilation and e-mobility as well as the management of related resource consumption data. It's our endeavor to unlock financial benefits for property owners, talents and Swiss Life. On the next slide, I will give you a concrete example to get an idea about how this could be implemented. We are convinced that the development of energy-efficient properties is key in achieving global sustainability goals and reducing CO2 emissions. For that reason, we decided to move into the direction of district developments, and thus, will contribute to creating a more sustainable world. The industrial park, Griesheim, in the city district in the West of Frankfurt, with an area of 700,000 square meters was used for chemical production, but over time, all production facilities were closed. We now have the opportunity to develop a large area into an attractive mixed-use city district. The development will include a wide array of usages such as light industrial, storage, logistics, production, but also data centers, co-working spaces, event locations, et cetera. By developing whole city districts, we aim to employ the most modern technology for power production and consumption, heating and cooling, but also mobility and everything else that is required for an innovative and state-of-the-art development. Applying such technology, especially considering its interplay, brings a significant CO2 reduction. Through such environmentally optimized project developments driven by in-house energy efficiency and carbonization expertise, we are in a good position to earn fees on many levels of the service delivery. [indiscernible] in Basel is another project that we are realizing in Switzerland and where we intend to invest significantly across energy-related technologies, such as locally self-generated solar power, heating and cooling, e-mobility and the power distribution grid. As you can see, we have great plans and ambitions for the coming years and we'll make every effort to reduce the CO2 emissions of properties. Let's turn to the next slide and to have a look at our efforts on efficiency during the next strategy cycle. We will improve operational leverage and work relentlessly on our efficiency in 4 main categories: to manage increasing regulatory complexity, shift in product demand, strategic need for service consistency and margin pressure. We aim at building state-of-the-art core platforms by upgrading, implementing and integrating IT platforms, mainly in the core asset classes: securities, infrastructure and real estate. This enables us to stay agile as we always will. We harmonize processes across locations and functions, which supports our goal to consistently generate attractive returns for investors, but also helps us to withstand margin pressure. By enhancing and creating data warehouses for all core asset classes, including ESG data and financial information, we are pursuing an efficient handling of data also in regard to the CO2 reduction path. The fourth category is client interfaces, where we focus on developing improved ways to interact with clients. The key objective here is to attract new clients and increase the share of wallet with existing ones. All these combined efforts result in cash out investments of CHF 20 million to CHF 30 million in the mainly IT-related product portfolio. With this, I would like to turn now to our financial ambitions. Allow me to start with a slide you have seen before. As already shown at the last Investor Day, on this slide you see the TPAM income characteristics. We distinguish between recurring and nonrecurring income. Within nonrecurring income, we separate between nonrecurring income or fees from our traditional asset management business and nonrecurring income from real estate project development and Swiss Life Asset Managers take the investment risk. We are further striving for quality improvements of TPAM's income and we expect the share of recurring income from fund business and asset management services to increase to about 75% of TPAM's total income by 2024. Subsequently, nonrecurring income from real estate project development will account for rough 10% and nonrecurring income from fund business and asset management services of approximately 15% of TPAM's total income. Furthermore, we aim at the cost/income ratio in a range of 70% to 75% by the end of 2024. It should be noted here that this refers to the cost/income ratio, among others, adjusted for AM internal real estate project development costs. So what does it sum up to? As in the previous strategy cycle, our growth ambitions are high. We assume a stagnating asset base for PAM, hence, all the growth shall come from our TPAM business resulting in TPAM to become the main business driver from a segment result perspective by 2024. PAM and TPAM's asset base are growing -- expected to grow to CHF 320 billion by the end of 2024, whereby TPAM's asset under management accounts for roughly to CHF 140 billion. The envisaged AUM growth and the broad revenue resources will translate into a total income of CHF 1.25 billion to CHF 1.3 billion and the segment result of CHF 460 million to CHF 490 million. After all, a cumulative cash remittance for the next 3 years of CHF 750 million to CHF 800 million. Coming to the end of my presentation. We are aware that we have set ourselves high standards and ambitious targets. I'm fully convinced that we will be able to achieve our plans due to our unique positioning, long-standing experience, well sought-after investment offerings in the highly motivated and capable workforce. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Swiss Life Asset Managers' plan for 2024. Thank you. Now back to you, Patrick.

So quite obviously, we'll now have our first Q&A session. We'll start here in the room. And let's start with you, Andy.

It's Andy Sinclair from Bank of America. Sorry, I'm not used to asking questions this way. But 3 for me as usual. First was just trying to understand a bit more about the funding of the buyback. Again, wasn't sure if I got the figures quite right there. So CHF 150 million of excess cash there, I get that, today. And then did you say the rest was 50-50 between excess cash generation and the remediation of the -- repatriation of the loan? But I think you also said the repatriation of loan was CHF 200 million. So essentially, that repatriation doesn't seem to square up with 50-50 of that. So I was just trying to understand the difference there. Secondly, maybe this is connected was just on debt leverage. I think you're maybe going to be towards the top end of your leverage targets, maybe even slightly above without being exacerbated by the buyback. Just trying to understand where you sit on debt leverage over the next plan period and how you think about that? And thirdly was just on the savings target. There are some great targets in here today, but savings being better than a depressed 2020 level felt a little bit less ambitious. Just trying to get a little bit more color on how much better that can be than 2020 levels.

So let me have a first go and then Matthias will correct me or gives you some more color. So first point is Matthias mentioned the CHF 200 million loan repatriation as one example of there were about CHF 400 million of other internal capital movements over the coming years. So that was just one example. So it does square up, but not with the CHF 200 million alone. Then the leverage ratio, here, Matthias said that we're in the middle of our new leverage targets, so not at the upper end. And for the savings result, look, I mean, in the past, we never really talked about the savings result or gave you any target. And I think it's already quite a good sign that we do give you some color of where it will move. As Matthias said, it's not only -- it will not only rise because 2020 was an exceptional year, but also because we've reduced average technical rates over the last couple of years because current incomes will now stabilize. It will -- the reduction of current income, which has happened over these last 10 years, which was about 10, 13 basis points per year, this will now level off as reinvestment rates are moving closer to our direct investment income levels. And the last point is that we do expect our business to -- our insurance book to continue to grow slightly. But maybe, Matthias, anything more to add or no?

I was just going to follow up as well. Just on that CHF 400 million, CHF 450 million of extra actions. So should we see that as on top of the remittance targets as supposed to being included in the remittance targets?

They're not part of it, but Matthias will explain.

No. That's part of the intragroup transfer for the financing of the buyback. And just to give you some color of what is actually cash remittance, a pure repayment of intragroup loan does not count towards cash remittance. But it's a key part of the financing of the buyback.

Let's move over there to -- I'll just point to you so everybody knows. Michael? Not too many questions, please.

Michael Huttner from Berenberg. The -- I have 3 questions. The first one is on real estate. So what happens if the revaluations go down? What happens to these targets? Or how confident are you can -- that you're going have -- I think you gave a figure of 20 bps an annum. The second, similarly on real estate. So part of the strength of the business model until now is if you grow PAM and TPAM. If ever you can't sell a project, you can sell it to yourselves, warehouse it a bit and sell it on. Obviously, if you're no longer growing PAM, you can't do that anymore. So does the riskiness of that bit of the business increase? And then the -- I guess, the other thing. So you mentioned -- the one target, I think, which my colleague just mentioned, the target which sounds as if it's coming down, but I still don't quite get it because we don't see it as a savings target. I think at half year, we were well ahead of -- we were on track to be ahead of even '19. But a bit more color on this would be really helpful. And I know you gave some, but that's probably more you can say.

So first of all, we do expect our insurance book will continue to grow. With that, I hand over to Matthias and then to Stefan.

Still same question?

Yes.

Well, starting with the real estate, your scenario that you described, I mean, it's key to keep in mind, I mean, we do not hold real estate for the fair value changes. We hold real estate because they provide long-dated cash flows that really nicely fit with our long-term liability. So I mean that's the reason why we hold real estate on the balance sheet. Now still, should that scenario materialize that you just said, yes, as shown, it would hit the IFRS profit. So the noncash part that I have shown would become smaller when the revaluation would be smaller. The key point here is it would not affect, for the reasons mentioned, the capacity to upstream cash because if noncash item gets small, well, it does not affect the capacity to upstream the cash. I think that's important. And maybe on the TPAM basis, and Stefan can elaborate on that further, on the TPAM side, the clients, they hold real estate for the very same reasons as we do: focus on current income rather than fair value changes.

Maybe you can say something about our project developments and where they go and...

Well, the assumption you have that this is going to be sold to PAM is actually not the right one. So we have different, let's say, risk takers. Predominantly, what I was talking about was project development whereas Swiss Life Asset Managers is the risk taker. The first one is not PAM. We do have also PAM projects, but then they are in the business plans included. Now going for the risk, I give you 2 examples. One is in -- what happens on the residential side. On the residential side, you have 2 options. One is that you sell off the apartment. Then you only start building up -- or you start the construction only when you have sold about roughly 1/3 of the apartment already. So you gave cash down payment and you sell it off over the course of time. So the risk is, once you start billing, is fairly limited. With regards to where you do -- goes speculative is if you have residential for renting -- for letting then you go into a certain risk, but taking into account that there are still scarcity of residential properties in the Swiss, the French, but also in particular, in the German market, I consider it at this point in time as a remote risk. The other example is, for example, logistics. In logistics, where we do land banking, is usually via down payments or via options. So there's very little equity is deployed. And you start -- building in the logistics goes very fast when you have the tenant. So also there, the risk is relatively low and you sell it off afterwards in forward transactions either to funds also to third-party or outside parties. So also there we consider the risk relatively small. The highest risk is when you do speculative developments in terms of office buildings, but there we are not that highly engaged to do so. So overall, I consider the risk at this point in time and taking the cycle into account is not as manageable.

Peter Eliot from Kepler Cheuvreux. Two first questions to Matthias are going to sound very greedy given the CHF 1 billion today, which I'm entirely happy with and this certainly doesn't sound like I'm not. But looking forward, just to sort of understand how we should sort of track your ability to do buybacks, et cetera, in the future, could you maybe give us an update of how we should think about your comfort zone going forward, which obviously used to be the 0.7 to 0.9 and whether there's any additional flexibility to do sort of internal cash flows free up more capital in the future? That was the first one. The second one, if I look at the walk to get from IFRS earnings to your 60%-plus payout ratio, I mean if I take the midpoint of those buckets, I get to about 68%. Is that too bullish or -- just to help me sort of think about where I should be setting my expectations? And then maybe, finally, one for Stefan on ESG. You mentioned the 90% being in scope. I'm guessing you're not doing sort of your own proprietary ESG research into everything that's in that 90%. Maybe you are, I don't know. But I just -- maybe you could just explain to what extent -- how active you are on that 90%, what the process is?

Okay. So let's first start with Matthias.

Well, thanks for the question. In terms of buybacks, we confirmed the existing framework. I will not repeat that. I mean that stays in place unchanged, cash and solvency considerations, no automatism. So that will be -- what we will have going forward. So that's as said, fully unchanged. Now in terms of the comfort zone, I think that was -- the second aspect you brought up, we confirm also the CHF 700 million to CHF 900 million for the comfort zone for the cash at holding that has been lower than, I think, in Q1 -- or in half year once we have settled the DOJ matter. So we confirm that as well. And now looking forward, that was the last point you raised, there was the question on additional intragroup transfers. And we looked at that and I think it's clear the holding not only receives cash, it's also a percent of the intragroup financing. And at that point in time, there's no further, let's say, capacity or mobility of intragroup transactions.

And Stefan, on the ESG...

Okay. First of all, the -- although you did not ask, but let me answer about the 10%, which are not included. Those are Swiss mortgages at this point in time. These are senior secured loans and passive equity propositions. That, over time, will -- certainly will shrink, but that's just the data is missing, at least for our purpose. Now with regard to the process and the data, the ambition, what we have, is by 2024 that we are able to have our own proven opinion about what we do with the data and the conclusion out of that. Today, on the security side, we rely on MSCI data. We still focus and we are still maintaining them and making our judgment. But at this point in time, we still, more or less, follow what MSCI is giving us and -- but the idea is that we actually have more data, our own proprietary data, that's on the security side. More importantly is on the real estate side. The real estate side is that the data quality, which I have in the market is very poor. And also just to quantify your CO2 footprint needs a lot of data, particularly also tenant data today you do not have or just remotely. So what you do afterwards, we go for assumptions with best industry standards, but also there our ambition is actually that we know all the data ourselves, and therefore, we invest quite significantly. So for me, it's more a data issue than just a process issue to start with. And again, as I said, we're working on it for the last 4 years. We were never talking about it, but our ambition is that we are SFDR compliant today. The whole portfolio is SFDR Article 6, 8 and 9, you only can talk about 8 and 9 and I can say that 60% of our third-party portfolios are focused in the SFDR 8 and 9 packet, and for real estate, it's 100%.

So Matthias will add something.

There's one more question.

There was a question about IFRS earnings. We have a follow-up.

The walk from IFRS earnings to the 60% payout ratio. Yes.

I think this walk really shows how we think about the payout ratio and how we have derived that. And so I think that drives the big buckets from going from the IFRS profit to the payout ratio and that you can confirm the larger than 60% for every single year. And I think what you also should keep in mind is that there are 2 net cash buildups that we kind of use for the financing of the buyback.

But I mean the 68% are probably not unrealistic, right?

A question on IFRS 17, I'm afraid. And I know that this is not an IFRS 17 teach-in today. But given that your neighbor on [indiscernible] had an impact on the solvency ratio, I'm wondering if we should expect an impact during '22 as a preparation for the conversion to IFRS 17? And if you can quantify it, maybe you can tell us in what categories, what areas we should expect that? And the second question, not sure if you're ready to answer that today as you showed the nice slide that you hedged in terms of your interest rate hedges for 3 decades. Does this mean that we should expect 0 on those contracts under IFRS 17?

Okay. Yes, I'm glad that we don't have to make it an IFRS 17 lecture this afternoon. And obviously, I cannot comment at what other companies disclosed in terms of impact on IFRS and the SST. I mean the cases in both frameworks, SST and IFRS 17 and also VNB and whatever, they are best estimate assumptions that are used and we have been using them for many, many years in the various frameworks. And there is a very regular review process where we look at all those best estimate assumptions, yes. And if there is a need to update based on experience, we do so and we have done so in the past. I think that's probably what I can say in respect of that. So nothing particular to highlight at this point in time. And on the second question, we are very glad that we have secured the interest rate margin for 3 decades, but that this is a statutory view. And IFRS 17 is kind of a very complex framework that, how should I say, moves even further away for the life business from the statutory earnings than the current IFRS earnings are. It is just a present that concept like MCEV wasn't. That's why it's a bit difficult to say, let's say, what will come out of that. But what is clear, I mean, we have in the long run basis, let's say, for earnings, we have a positive interest rate margin that clearly will help us there as well.

Mr. Locher.

Yes. It's René Locher, KBW. So the first one, a simple question, I'm referring to Slide 10 in the booklet, there you are talking about deepened customer relations. I was just wondering, I never heard Swiss Life talking about like cross-selling or up-selling and I'm just wondering if this is what you are referring to? And if yes, could you give us a few examples? So that's the first question. And then -- yes, what Andy mentioned before, I thought that the cash situation is a little bit stretched. I thought that you will go for further bolt-on acquisition like in Swiss Life Asset Manager, like the logistics business you acquired in the Nordics and the rail wagon owned in Germany. So I'm wondering a little bit how do you think about this bolt-on acquisition going forward? And then last but not least, just the CHF 140 billion third-party assets under management. I was just wondering where the money or the growth should come from?

So let me start. So the bolt-on acquisition strategy is completely unchanged. So we still have the ambition to support our fee result by acquiring smaller companies, i.e., bolt-on here and there, again, mainly to support the fee result. I mean there is no change to that at all. Now on the example, yes, we have talked about cross and upselling in the past. But to be fair, we never made it measurable, right? I mean we never disclosed anything to the outside. We still do not do that. Internally, of course, we do speak about that. I mean, typical examples might be within Switzerland that we have group life clients that might also be approached if they agree for other purposes, so for retirement planning purposes. In France, for example, we have a long tradition of approaching our banking clients with life insurance products and the other way around. It's actually very broad. Then we do measure the cross-selling. For example, that Swiss Life Select in Switzerland, the number is much higher for Swiss Life Select. So our owned IFA than it is for our general agents, so for our traditional distribution network. At asset managers, of course, you start getting clients, for example, by real estate or infrastructure, and then you continue to sell. So Stefan gets about 70% of his inflows or, let's say, of AM's inflows from existing clients. So actually, it really works very well. The reason why, let's say, we don't put it out in terms of a hard measured figure is that there has been, let's say, a bit of an overpromising tradition within the insurance industry with respect to cross and upselling. So that's why we don't take the trumpet and make us heard loud and clear to everyone else, but we do pursue that within our business. Now your other question was I think...

Where the money is coming from, right? Okay. If you allow me to add the one acquisition you mentioned in Germany on the rail wagon part, that was a transaction in one of our infrastructure funds. So not Swiss Life having bought them, so one of our funds on the infrastructure side. The -- also from a cross-selling point of view, which is one of the best growth pattern we have is in Switzerland, the same autonomous business. There, the distribution or the acquisition is done through Markus' team and my division has then the benefit to manage the funds. So that's really a good engine of net new money coming in particular in Switzerland. As Patrick said, predominantly, we can increase the share of wallet of existing clients in different propositions since we are perceived as a balanced manager with a strong impact on -- a strong position on the real asset side. We also have invested significantly in our sales and distribution capabilities. So Overall, we're predominant there in the 3 key markets: Switzerland, France and Germany. But also internationally, we are quite well positioned, but predominantly in Europe, so to speak.

Next questions here in the room. I don't see any. So let's now turn over to the web. Let's open up for questions from the web.

The first question comes from the Liang Fulin from Morgan Stanley.

Hello?

Yes, we hear you. Go on.

I got 3 questions. Again, the slide of the walk from net profit to dividend payout ratio, just so -- just again, just clarify, that 10% to 15% cash retained at Swiss Life Holding, that block is essentially -- the source is actually funding the other roughly 400, 500 kind of shortfall in the buyback. Is my understanding correct? And then if that's the case, does that mean that you are not expected to build up your holdco central liquidity anymore. Is that a fair understanding? And what's your central liquidity after the CHF 150 million buyback? Sorry, it's a bit long question. There's actually a few questions there. And then secondly, again, on the same work. This noncash item, I know that Matthias mentioned about something 20 bps on the real asset revaluation. Can I just clarify, how the way turn to bps in terms of if I convert them into the normal like ratio, kind of revaluation ratio appreciation in terms of the percentage, like 1%, 2% per annum? So that's the second question. And third one is, again, I think you mentioned about a development. Basically, the fees from the development is actually steadily growing. What should we be thinking or how should -- on the run rate, what do you expect this development to contribute to your fee results by 2024?

Okay. So let me start with -- I think you didn't get that right. The 20 basis points that Matthias mentioned was the expected interest rate development over the coming years per annum. So we expect, basically, over the next 3 years that the 10-year rates in the markets we're in, so in euro in Switzerland, will increase by something around 50 to 60 basis points. We did not say anything what that does imply for real estate changes in value. So what Matthias did say, though, is that we do continue to expect further increases in valuations from real estate. I mean, as Stefan showed, some of that might be impacted by rate levels. However, there is also these 37 basis points, I think you mentioned, of additional value by repositioning the portfolio, which, of course, if that were to continue, would be great. So I think that was just a misunderstanding. So we did not quantify it. The 20 basis points were only about the annual increases in long-dated rates. Then on the walk, I think that's one of the favorites for Matthias to explain maybe again how much of the share buyback will be funded outright. I'll try to say it again. So from the cash comfort level, we're at now to the lower range. We'll get another CHF 150 million. Basically, instantly, that is available for share buybacks. Then the rest of it can be -- are 2 equally large parts, more or less. On the one hand, we have 2 net cash buildups over the coming 2 years. That's why, again, it goes until May of 2023. That was exactly the same thing we did 3 years ago. And the other half, which is still open, basically half of that will be funded by the loan that is maturing from the opco to the holding, which will not be renewed, which is not part of the remittance figures, but does help to fund the share buyback. And there's another, say, CHF 200 million or so of similar effects, which we have not detailed yet, which will also help to finance that share buyback. I think there -- what more is there to add?

Yes. And to be clear on that, yes, there is no additional buildup of central liquidity. So we confirm the CHF 700 million to CHF 900 million comfort range with cash at holding. So there's no buildup of that.

Okay. And so maybe just the very last question. I didn't get that. I think you talked about project developments and fees we get from project developments and so on. Is that right?

Yes. Yes.

Okay. Maybe here, Stefan, you can say something about that.

Yes, correct. What's the run rate to expect?

Well, in -- it depends on who is the risk taker. If Swiss Life Asset Managers is the risk taker, then it's -- we have, just within the house project development fees, in the area of 1.5 to 2 percent -- percentage points, but we are there. We are embracing for the change in fair market value or the capital gains in selling it off into the market or in our product. If it is on, let's say, on a PAM project or on a TPM project, the fees are in that area, as I just have been speaking, depending on the size.

Right. And for the contribution for everything that is basically on asset managers balance sheet, which is not so much, there, we expect about 10% of total income to come with what we call other fee income in our biannual or in our half year and full year disclosures in the area of asset managers. And this is the chart that Stefan showed. I think 3 years ago, this was...

Between CHF 25 million and CHF 50 million yet, profit contribution. And here, it's 10% roughly to CHF 5 million by 2024.

Which is the 10% of, I think, the CHF 850 million shown. So back to Peter, and then we'll go back to the web.

I had 2 other questions, please, if that's okay. The first one, just -- I was interested in the slide that you showed on capital release. It was Slide 13 of Matthias' presentation. And just wondering how we should think of that over the short term, whether it's linear sort of between 2020 and 2030 or whether it stays flat for the next few years. And then, yes, but just interested to understand that maybe a little bit. And then secondly, on the asset management, that cost income ratio for the third-party assets. I mean, I get the sense it's quite a big driver of the improvements we have seen and we'll hopefully continue to see. That's something that's quite difficult for us to track from the outside, I guess, with the information we have available, and it's possibly not an answer for today, I don't know. But I don't know if there's anything that you can add to sort of help us track that or understand that movement, just we don't have the expenses behind the third-party assets, I guess? So just differentiating between PAM and TPAM, that would be very helpful.

So let's first go to the first question.

Maybe on Page 13, I think, which is absolutely key to -- and our way stress is, there is no new business assumed in that job. So we have still a marginal part of traditional new business that is coming into the picture. And even if we sell also modern traditional business, I mean, there's one part of that modern traditional new business that ends in these figures. So this is really key to stress. And taken together, and that's what Stefan has shown, is we expect a flattish development of the PAM assets. And that's also, let's say, the answer to your question, what happens with the reserves on this side. So to cut it short, so given that we continue to win new business with also traditional elements, there is a flattish development to be expected.

And maybe on the cost income. I mean what we do show is for TPAM on Page 15 of Matthias' presentation, we do show that we expect a much stronger fee result growth than income growth. And this, of course, implies then that we have an improvement of the cost/income ratio in the area that Stefan mentioned, which is 70% to 75%. So -- or to put that differently, the main priority here is to grow the top line in order to grow the bottom line even more. And then basically, the cost/income, that results from that movement. So we do want to achieve operational leverage here, and that's the reason why implicitly the cost/income ratio will come down. I think this gives you a good flavor of what the orders of magnitude are, Stefan.

The -- as Patrick said, the -- if you allow me to add this, the TPAM cost/income ratio, taking into account the growth pattern we had in the last few years, I'm really pleased in the direction how the cost/income ratio came down because having such a strong growth pattern, you also have to finance the growth and you have to keep your IT platforms, Azure or even state-of-the-art. That's why we said that we are investing a significant amount in the sturdiness of our business. That's one thing, which I would like to add. And the other thing is that you have seen also on page -- where was it, on 14 is that the real estate development gains that is not coming into the cost/income ratio. Otherwise, the cost/income ratio would look fantastic. So we actually are really looking at the traditional asset management business to make a fair comparison to what you see in the market.

Now we go back to the web. There's another question. Back to the operator.

The last question for the first Q&A session comes from the line of [ Jimmy Shan ] from UBS.

So I have 2 questions. First, sorry to go back to this question about holdco liquidity again. So I just wondered, could you give a bit more color on the flexibility you have in terms of managing liquidity between the group and the subsidiaries going forward? And what forms -- what kind of form of liquidity you can potentially have? Is there any type of asset back in use in general? Is there any kind of regulatory constraints you have here? And my second question perhaps will be related to the first one. So looking at the SST Life position is still well above the targeted range after the buyback, given your strategy shifting to kind of the low-capital consumptive business buys, that will keep unlocking capitals for you. And at the same time, your subsidiaries would have different level of surplus capital. Can you give a bit of more color in terms of what's the plans you have in the use of excess capital adds, different subsidiaries or if there's any plans in terms of capital reallocation?

Okay. Let me first -- let me have a go at this and then, Matthias, maybe you can add later on. So you mentioned liquidity management. And the first thing we say is that our liquidity management power at the opco is a lot higher than at holding level. Why is this the case? I mean we have access to the repo platform of the Swiss National Bank, which is quite unique. And we showed again and again that we can raise billions of Swiss francs within a few hours because we have a lot of repo eligible assets on our balance sheet. I mean, if you look at that, you see how much this is. And the other way around, it works -- this works as well. So the opco liquidity management possibilities far exceed those at holding company. The only reason why we keep talking about liquidity management and comfort ranges and so on and so forth is, of course, because you're interested in how much more cash returns might be available for shareholders. And I think we've really now very exhaustively talked about the different comfort levels and impacts and changes and missing links for funding the share buyback that I really struggle a bit what there might be to add. But maybe, Matthias, you have an idea or two.

So I think Patrick highlighted the point of, let's say, the operational liquidity management in context to insurance operations and what have you. And here, then we have this really the transfer of profit, let's say, more on a strategic level to the holding level. And there, we try to upstream as much cash as we can to the holding company because, there, it is in a position where we can use this most flexibly, be it to deploy it to other units; be it for, let's say, capital management flexibility, such as capital management actions; be it for bolt-on acquisitions. That's why we keep this range of CHF 700 million to CHF 900 million. I mean, that's exactly why we keep a certain target range at holding. And if this famous framework applies and then we have more than that and more and, if you will, with a solvency then, we have this framework that says we can see the potential actions over and on top, but without any automatism. And maybe -- and that's also part of being a holding. As I mentioned, we try to bring up as much cash as possible, but every now and then, as we said, we also downstream liquidity to finance M&A, to finance projects. That's a part of a holding that we have there, just this kind of intergroup financing transactions, that's part of holding.

And maybe one more thing to add there. I mean, we obviously publish Solvency II figures of our subsidiaries, Germany France, Luxembourg and so on. And of course, most of these are at very comfortable levels. However, just because you have very comfortable levels, I think in Germany, we're one of the best capitalized life insurers in the market. That doesn't mean you can just get the money, right? Because that's not the only restriction around moving capital up the food chain basically because, just as an example, in Germany, we have the ZZR, the Z-Z-R restrictions. So at the moment, there is no cash coming from our German insurance company to the holding. And that has been the case for the last few years and will continue to be the case in this strategic phase. That's why Matthias said, we do try to upstream as much as possible. That's why we're getting to the levels that Peter tried to get some more color about before, right? I mean it's -- the Solvency II figures are not the only restrictions out there. Where we're trying to and what we do very diligently is just we get out as much as we can. Why is that possible? Because at our key opcos, we are very well capitalized in terms of Solvency II figures. Okay, Michael.

So I had one, which was just -- Matthias, on one of your slides, you mentioned going from 75% capital to 70%. I didn't understand it, and I tried and maybe you can explain. The second is the question which was asked, I think, 3 years ago. Which of these targets is so conservative that you've kind of almost achieved it already today? And then the -- I think that was asked back then and in retrospect, maybe which one it was a fee, obviously, because you're a year early. And then the -- maybe, Stefan, you can talk about the Basel scheme. I've been so curious about it. You've announced this big project, but I can't find any details of it. And I'd be interested to understand if it's in your numbers or how big it could be, anything like that.

So let's first go to Klybeck and to give Matthias a few minutes.

Well, Klybeck is the formal area of BASF. It's about 120,000 square meters of the plot. Then the neighboring one from Novartis, which does not belong to us, is another 180,000. So roughly 300,000 square meters of development size. This will generate some 6,000. If all the plans to materialize, we come then to the time line. There will be some 10,000 new inhabitants there and some 6,000 working places. On our side, we are planning some -- again, provided it will be approved by the political will, some 3,000 flats, of which 1,000 will be in the economic or on the price-sensitive space and about 60,000 square meters of office and other space. Now the thing is this has to go through the political process until the -- that will last for another 2 to 3 years. So if the -- in the best case, we can start construction in 2025, and that will last until I'm more than retired, like 2035, so to speak. What are we talking about in the amount? So we assume that there will be, just now our side, some investments of CHF 1 billion and beyond, just -- so to speak. But it's a long-term project. The reason I was mentioning, that's on the shorter term, but also it takes some up to some 10 years. But we are a good owner for that because we have all the time since we are here for 160 years already, but I hope it will be finished before that.

And I think, Michael, you referred to Page 21, and sorry for not having been clear enough. So what I meant to say was that we have many, many initiatives that contribute to the increase of the ROE target to 10% to 12%. And on the R side, on the return side, it's clearly traditional fee result. It is the additional source fee income, the operational leverage and what have you. But on the E side, on the equity side there, I refer to the fact that, look, we continue to do further disciplined bank book management. As outlined, you will hear about that after the break and also about new business. I mean, that is what will improve the E, but also increase payout ratio and the additional share buyback, which also contributes to the improvement of the ROE. And the latter 2 lead to an optimized capital structure. And we have a reference level for our capital structure, which currently is that we have 70% to 75% of that is shareholders' equity. The rest is hybrid and senior debt, and we now widen that range to 65% to 75% from today's level of 70% to 75%. And with all the measures that we have talked about, we will essentially be in the middle of the new range, so around the 70s.

And the reason why we did that, I mean, of course, we listened to our rating agencies and their requirements, obviously, coverage ratios, capital requirements and so on. And we also looked at our peer group, and we felt that this move is very well thought through. So thank you very much for your questions. We will now go for the break. We'll be back at 3:30 Swiss time. And really, one of the opportunities you get here is you get to talk to our operational CEOs. And I think one of the reasons why we're really so successful in the past is because we give you really a very granular plan. We really show you all the details on how we expect to get there. And in addition to that, we get the people who are responsible for making that happen up here on the stage to take your questions and explain on how they're going to make it happen. So enjoy your coffee, and we'll be back in a little bit more than 30 minutes. [Break]

Ladies and gentlemen, it's a pleasure to be here today. I welcome this opportunity to tell you how the Swiss division is playing its part in Swiss Life 2024. We have a strong market position in Switzerland, based on years of improved performance. We want to build on these strong foundations. Firstly, we want to develop our insurance business further. We will do this by increasing the number of -- and effectiveness of our advisers. We will also do this by diligently managing and further optimizing our new business as well as the back book. Secondly, we will harness our strong market position and our investment products experience to continually advance into the growing personal financial assets market. In short, we aim to once again significantly raise our contribution to Swiss Life Group. Our business [ legs ] has evolved by offering investment solutions to both private and corporate customers. It rests on strong foundations, a 44% share of the life and pension market and a substantial increase in advisers. Marketing and sales activities are more effective and efficient, thanks to the digital customer advice and support. As a result, we are making very good progress toward achieving the ambitious target of Swiss Life 2021. Personal financial assets are our market. There are 2 parts to this market. The upper part in light gray consists of the freely disposable assets of private households such as cash on hand, bank deposits, equities funds and other investment solutions. The lower part in dark gray is the life and pension market. This market is of particular importance in Switzerland as these funds may, for example, be used to finance owner-occupied residential property. Both submarkets, investments and life and pensions are growing. The investment market is growing at 4% per year. The investment funds part of that is growing even faster at 7% per year. The life and pension market is also growing at 4% despite the fact that annual premium volume is declining. The reasons are the intrinsic growth of the pension system and the fact that a significant portion of pension assets is managed by semiautonomous and autonomous pension funds and not by life insurers. So how do we capture potentially the personal financial assets market? Swiss Life successfully operates in both the investment and the life and pension submarkets. With Swiss Life 2021, shown on the left side of the slide, we increased capital efficiency and cash rebates in individual life and group life. At the same time, we reinforced our phygital market access and built a strong foothold in the investment market. We now successfully covered life, investment and mortgages in advice to our customers. On the right-hand side, you can see how we are supporting the Swiss Life 2024 strategy. In the life and pension market, we aim to further grow our business and continue boosting our performance. In the investment market, we will be launching new offerings for affluent and digitally-savvy customers. Sustainability, as Stefan Machler said in his presentation, will be our focus. By capturing opportunities in both areas of the personal financial assets market, we aim to further increase our contribution to the Swiss Life Group, particularly in cash and assets under management. On the next slide, you see that our Swiss Life 2024 strategy is based on 4 pillars: Pillar 1, optimize the business mix and back book; Pillar 2, insurer scalability and productivity; Pillar 3, increase advisory effectiveness; and finally, Pillar 4, attract customers in new segments. These pillars support the Swiss Life Group strategy and our financial ambitions. I would now like to turn to the 4 pillars individually, starting with Pillar 1. We have improved our starting position in individual life. New business production has been switched to capital optimized products with lower, in some cases, even negative guarantees. FlexSave and Dynamic Elements are examples of such products. As you can also see on the top left panel, we can exchange products in new business very quickly if market conditions so require. As a result, we significantly reduced the average guaranteed endowment benefit. And this in turn led to a market improvement of over 40% in the capital efficiency of new business. At the same time, we increased the product margin and maintained earnings power. On this basis, we want to further improve capital efficiency and provide our customers with attractive life products. By continuing to pursue our capital-light strategy and constantly managing our margins, we plan to further increase the value of new business despite declining market for individual life insurance. Our focus will be on sustainability. We want to be able to offer sustainable products in all lines of business. As in the past, we will complement our offering where relevant with a make-or-buy approach. Let's move on to our group life business. As shown here on the top left of the slide, the full insurance business contributes significantly to Swiss Life Group. This is thanks to the successive improvements in the performance of full insurance in recent years. The share of supplementary benefits in new business has increased by 20 percentage points to 60%. This is key as we can compensate for the still excessive conversion rate in the mandatory coverage with the supplementary coverage. We also introduced the so-called flexible splitting in new business and our back book. This helps us to further optimize compensation through a more differentiated approach for the excessive mandatory conversion rate, reducing the guarantees by another 15% by 2024. Thanks to these improvements in new business and the back book, we can secure the interest rate margin in full insurance for decades. And as shown on the previous slide, full insurance continues to be an attractive business for us. That means we will stick to our full-range provider approach. We continue to offer full insurance and we continue growing in semiautonomous solutions for companies and individuals, the latter is the so-called 1e solutions. 1e solutions allow for individualized asset solutions for higher income customers. We aim to grow assets under management in these solutions in the double-digit percentage range every year. Existing 1e customer relationships can also be used in market activities to develop the affluent segment. I now turn to our second strategic pillar being operational efficiency. Operational efficiency remains key. We are working on our single platform business model to increase scalability for our advisers as well as lean processes in our back office. This will lead, for example, to an improved distribution expense ratio. So what is the architecture behind our single platform business model and how do we use it to increase advisory effectiveness in our third strategic pillar? Our digitally supported platform business model not only allows us to scale up our business, it is also crucial to further deepen the customer relationships because advisers may capture more opportunities with our customers, leveraging the digital support provided by the platform. So the adviser effect, this is further increased by the digitally supported platform. And this in turn allows us to fulfill our purpose to enable our customers to lead a self-determined life. Our platform business model consists of 3 essential elements: the first element being processes and technology. The end-to-end customer process introduced under Swiss Life 2021 forms the technological core of the digitally supported platform business model. I will explain the key elements briefly in the following slide. The second element, distribution. Our physical advisory organizations are part of the platform business model and benefit from the integrated tools and processes. Third-party distributors and brokers can also be integrated and benefit from the platform. The third element, offering. The platform allows us to easily integrate third-party products in addition to our own products in accordance with the best select approach. Looking in more detail at the end-to-end customer process, we see that it consists of many elements, and these elements are all linked to create a seamless customer and adviser experience across all touch points from lead generation to customer service. We are continuously expanding the functionality of our end-to-end customer process as basis for increased advisory effectiveness. Personal advice will continue to be very important for our customers. And as mentioned, our digitally supported platform business model allows us to increase our adviser base, leveraging our capabilities to serve more customers. Our advisers benefit from high-quality digital support, allowing them to be more effective in satisfying all customer needs. This results in distribution income growing faster than the adviser base, while the share of other products as an indicator for cross-selling continuously grows. This brings me to the fourth pillar attracting new customers in new segments. In recent years, we have successfully entered the investment business for retail customers. Assets under management with private customer has increased to CHF 3.5 billion. On one hand, this success is due to our attractive investment solutions. On the other hand, it is a result of significantly broadening our holistic financial advice, covering areas ranging from life insurance and investment to mortgages and real estate brokerage. Customers trust us to have the expertise to manage their money profitably. This is critical given our plans to expand further in the investment business. Our skills and experience in retail investment solutions and very positive customer feedback, provide a springboard to further expand in the growing investment market. We will do this by systematically addressing 2 customer segments: number one, we will address the affluent customer segment, where we will be working with specific offers and a dedicated advisory organization in addition to our existing market access; number two, we will launch a purely digital sales channel to serve digital natives interested in sustainable offerings. Together with our current offering in the area of retail investment solutions, we aim to double assets under management at 2024 and significantly increase fee income. The effect on the fee result is mitigated by the related investment costs. With Swiss Life 2024, we aim to further enhance our already substantial financial contribution to Swiss Life Group. By 2024, we will further increase the cash remittance to CHF 500 million, cumulative between CHF 1.35 billion and CHF 1.4 billion for the period 2022 to 2024, and grow VNB to significantly more than CHF 200 million. We'll deliver a segment result of around CHF 1 billion. We expect profit sources to develop as follows: increase in the savings result, increase in the risk result, only a slight increase in the fee result due to the prefinancing of growth initiatives in the investment market, a further increase in the already positive cost result. To sum up, Swiss Life 2024 will enable us to further optimize our strong core business. We will further expand our already unique customer access. We will also exploit our excellent starting position to systematically develop the affluent and digitally savvy customer segments. With this growth, we will contribute to achieving the Swiss Life Group's ambitious Swiss Life 2024 targets. Thank you for your attention. And I will now hand over to Tanguy Polet.

Thank you, Markus. Good afternoon, everyone. Swiss Life France plans to remain on its profitable growth path, taking advantage of its unique positioning. Each country is different. The French often insists on their cultural exceptionalism. Over the years, we have learned to navigate those French waters, culturally, politically, technically and commercially. So let's see how we intend to build on our successful track record through 2024. For more than a decade, we have been uniquely positioned in the French market with our private insurer business model. This has generated a strong performance. Our focus is on advising and supporting high-value customers in their financial investments. We provide comprehensive insurance and wealth management solutions to affluent customers and high net worth individuals. We also offer a broad range of personal protection and pension solutions to self-employed professionals and corporates, mainly SMEs. We reach both main customer groups through proprietary distribution channels and a multi-distribution strategy. This helps us to increase our distribution capacity. I will come back to our key priorities for 2024, but allow me first to give you some more context. Our strategy has been successful. For more than a decade, we have outperformed the French insurance market. This outperformance is reflected in our gross return premiums in life insurance. This outperformance is also reflected in our resilience in the pandemic year of 2020. In fact, 2020 was our best year. We also outperformed in terms of share of unit-linked in the premiums we collect. This is far above market average. This profitable growth translates into new business margin, and again, this is above the market average. This is the result of our focus on customers that have high amounts to invest, are ready to take more financial risk and are more exposed to unit-linked products. That means that we are more capital efficient and we achieve higher margins. Turning to our 2021 targets. We are on track or ahead for fee results and our VNB. The risk result will be challenging, and this is due to the impact of the recent French health care reform. Our life efficiency ratio reach is also challenging because of our strong outperformance in the pension business that led us to allocate additional resources to capture this growth. This slide shows one of our recipes for success. It is the profound knowledge of our customers and the clear customer segmentation. The number of millionaires among the total population, the financial wealth of French households, the number of self-employed workers, these are all growing and are the basis of our future growth. But we also have other assets. One of these is our recognized brand. In France, the brand conveys quality and reliability. It perfectly fits with our affluent and high net worth customers. Another asset is our high-quality multi-distribution network with tied agents, but also brokers, IFAs partners that focus on our type of clients and sell our profitable products. And we have a culture of entrepreneurial agility. This is acknowledged by our partners because working with Swiss Life is always quick and time to market. This slide shows the second reason for our success. It is our private insurer model. Our private insurer model is based on the unique combination of a life insurer and a private bank. This model puts the expertise, solutions and distribution networks together to attract affluent and high net worth individuals. This combination is also very attractive to distribution channels because we provide a one-stop shop for wealth management solutions they offer their clients. As you see, it all begins with relevant advice provided by our distribution networks, taking advantage of this one-stop shop. This advice is converted into investment vehicles, be it life insurance contracts or private banking accounts. Our customers can transfer their private assets or professional assets into those solutions. And each of these life insurance or banking vehicles are regulatory designed to include a huge variety of financial solutions orchestrated in an open architecture mode. This is a very effective way to promote asset management solutions, notably our in-house Swiss Life Asset Managers solutions. They get better access to distributors and to customers thanks to this private insurer platform. In a nutshell, this private insurer business model is a very effective combination of advice, life insurance and asset management. It is fully in line with our purpose. We enable people to lead a self-determined life. Now let's turn to our 3 divisional priorities for 2024 supporting our group strategic actions and related KPIs. First, we want to grow our preferred customer segments. Second, we want to leverage our multi-distribution model to increase our volumes and our profitability. And third, we want to improve our scalability and efficiency. Let me go into detail. First priority, grow our preferred customer segments. This will be done by further developing offerings for self-employed and SMEs mainly in the personal protection and the pension business. I will make a focus on the pension business in the next slide. We will also strengthen our private insurer model by enhancing the offering to high net worth individuals and we will further integrate sustainability in our unit-linked solutions. I'm indeed convinced that we have a responsibility to make our wealthy customers aware that they also have a role to play by putting sustainable solutions in their portfolios. This should further increase inflows for Swiss Life asset managers by the way. Allow me to focus for a while on our pension business. No doubt, you have already heard about the [Foreign Language], called the PACTE Law, which aims to remove obstacles to the growth and transformation of companies in France. This 2019 PACTE Law has strong implications for the pension business by completely opening up this market in France. For decades, Swiss Life has been known by self-employed customers as an expert in pensions. We already had a solid market share, but we wanted to consolidate our position. We were among the first to launch our PACTE solutions on the French market. And these solutions match the needs not only of our preferred customer segments but also of many distributors we work with. And this has been a big success for us. This business is strategic because more than 2/3 of our new premium inflows are unit-linked products with high new business margin. The PACTE Law also helped us to shift some guaranteed interest rate back books into capital-light solutions, decreasing our average growth -- average, sorry, guaranteed rate from 1.6% to 1.1%, with positive impact in terms of solvency and VNB, as you can see on the slide. You also see the plus 18% CAGR in the Swiss Life pensions premium and our market share that increased from 9% to 11%. Remember that we only have a 2% share of the overall insurance market in France. So PACTE is a strong and profitable growth opportunity for us. Our second priority is to leverage our multi-distribution model. With large partners and brokers, we will accelerate our business notably in the savings and pensions business, but also in health and protection. We have also decided to launch an international health business with a dedicated distribution setup, including TPA services. We will also develop distribution initiatives with high growth potential. For example, we will hire new tied agents, especially the ones who focus on personal protection and pension solutions. We will also promote our savings and pension solutions on the Internet. We will do this through our Internet broker, placement-direct.fr. It achieved strong growth during the COVID-19 crisis with a 50% share of unit-linked. All these initiatives as well as others are key to reaching our risk and fee targets. This chart summarizes our sophisticated multi-distribution model. Distribution in France is very diverse. We have developed the know-how to select the right distribution channels to attain our strategic objectives. That means reaching preferred customer segments and selling our customer-specific products. As an example, IFAs usually sell high unit-linked share savings products to affluent and high net worth individuals. We are collaborating with these specialized distributors, becoming for them a crucial partner. Another example is the launch of our new PACTE pension products. Here again, we choose partners that are stronger than others in addressing our affluent and self-employed strategic customer segments. By combining our proprietary distribution networks with independent distribution networks, we have been pursuing a multi-distribution strategy, which helps us to outperform the market. Finally, our third priority is to optimize the scalability and efficiency of our business model. We want to increase our distribution efficiency by sharpening the selection of our distributors, notably by focusing on partners that use our portals and our electronic signature solutions. We will also leverage our customers and advisers portal by implementing front-to-back processes, thanks to more automation, aiming at a higher operational efficiency. In terms of architecture, we will push the development of our APIs. These technological solutions that make link between the external portals of our partners and our internal IT infrastructure, decreasing subsequently the operational work required to capture this growth. Nowadays, distribution partners are also growing and they see the benefits of using standardized formats. Optimizing our operating model is, of course, designed to reduce our cost ratios. But it is also designed to increase the customer satisfaction and the intermediary satisfaction. As a result, one of the KPIs for our business model optimization is the NPS, the Net Promoter Score. Here, we aim for a very significant increase. Indeed, 10 years at Swiss Life, including as Head of the Customer and Digital Transformation division has taught me the value of combining operational efficiency with the quest for increased customer satisfaction. Satisfied customers promote our business, satisfied customers are loyal to our business, satisfied customers entrust us with a higher share of wallet than average. With Swiss Life 2024, we aim to go from strength to strength. By 2024, we aim to have grown all our business lines, but with a much stronger increase of our fee results, allowing us to deliver more cash to the group. As a conclusion, we have a strong position in the French market. Our brand is a byword for quality, reliability and exclusivity. We have a strong distribution model, ready to make the most of growth in this dynamic market. And we have a strong commitment to efficiency and scale. That adds up to a platform for success, reflected in our ambitious targets. I look forward to answering your questions later this afternoon. Thank you for your attention. I now hand over to my dear colleague, Jörg.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. 2 to go. I'm happy to present Swiss Life Germany's strategy. Let's start with an overview of our business. Firstly, we have a unique business model, which includes a strong advisory network. This has allowed us to unlock significant growth potential over the past 3 years. We are particularly well positioned among the millennials, so the customer group aged between 19 -- 18 and 39 years. Our network of young advisers of products and services are playing a big role in our performance. Secondly, the priorities of Swiss Life 2024 put us on the further -- on the path to further growth in the future. We want to expand our franchise organically. We want to gain market share in the financial adviser industry in Germany, where advisers are typically much older than the millennial clients. And that offers us a major growth opportunity. In the insurance field, we want to build on our strengths around biometric solutions and modern UL offers. On the financial side, Matthias has mentioned it already, we are aiming for fee results in a range between EUR 115 million to EUR 125 million and aim to generate a cumulative cash remittance of EUR 190 million to EUR 210 million within 3 years. So before looking forward, let's turn back the clock. How did we perform under Swiss Life 2021? We expanded our adviser organization. And then we improved our productivity thanks to a hybrid, or as our French colleagues have introduced it, a phygital advisory approach. This combines personal advice and digital support. Our customer base has increased from 1.2 million active customers to 1.5 million customers since 2017. In insurance, we are focused on profitable biometric and modern products and launched a pure UL offer, our investor series with great success. We remain on the successful path we embarked upon 3 years ago. That is reflected in our performance against Swiss Life 2021 financial targets. We are ahead in 3 dimensions. We are on track in one. So we are delivering what we have promised. Swiss Life Germany's path is aligned with the larger group strategy. Let me explain with the same slide you already know the former presentations. Having the overall strategic dimensions in mind, we are paying particular attention to advisory power with our 4 strategic clusters. I will explain them in more detail in a minute. In addition to expanding the advisory organization, the core of our growth is rooted in taking care of our customers and further develop our customer or the customer experience. At the same time, we want to continue to work on our operational leverage, to advance the scalability of our platform as a whole, but we must make further investments accordingly. What's the secret of success for Swiss Life in Germany? Let's look into the customer dimension. Our strong customer focus solidly underpins our strategy. Our strength lies in serving younger customers. After all, they make up 1/4 of the entire German population. And in both of our business models, we generate more than 75% of new business from this customer group. So what are young customers most interested in? 3 points. First, they are very receptive to financial services because they have a big need for retirement planning. Second, they want strong equity-based pensions and are especially interested in sustainable solution. Third, they want digital interaction and personal financial advice. So we learned really in the corona pandemic that younger people want personal advice even more than older people. So we are catering on both needs on their digital wishes and on the need for personal advice. While the overall number -- and by the way, let's go to this last column here with results of what comes out of our customer orientation. And what you can see is that the overall numbers of financial advisers in Germany have decreased over the last 3 years. We have expanded at the same time, our network with a CAGR of 9%. And our financial advisers, on average, are 16 years younger than our competitors. That gives us a perfect match. Young advisers serve a younger customer base. In the insurance business, too, our focus is paying off. We have increased our VNB, our value of new business, significantly with a CAGR of 24% to a level of EUR 72 million. So what is the core of our model? What is the architecture we have put in place? You can see it on this slide. And let's start with the insurance model. There, we are following a make-or-buy strategy. In contrast to many of our peers, we are benefiting from the absence of a tied agent organization. We don't offer every product under the sun. We focus on offering profitable, capital-efficient products and leave everything else to the market. If you look at the major competitors in the advice arena, most of them are more or less tied to a specific insurer. Among the big 5 adviser organizations in the life market in Germany, we are the only one who offers a true open architecture. And this reflects a fundamental wish of our customers who have learned on the Internet to compare offers and who want to do the same for the financial solutions. So by leading our customers to the best available offer in the market, financially, we enable them to live a self-determined life. And talking about purpose, the purpose is absolutely key in recruiting young advisers to our network. Getting back to the open architecture, this open architecture builds at the same time, a solid entry barrier. In the new business, we cooperate with more than 250 different product partners, which represents a level of complexity that we are able to handle via our strong platform. For a newcomer to this market, it would take years to build that up. And in addition, our setup with a strong IFA model, I'm sure you are aware of this, generates cash and this cash can directly be transmitted to group level. What plans do we have now concrete for our IFAs? There are 3 strategic areas. Firstly, we want to continue to expand our advisory network to more than 6,500 financial advisers. Keep in mind that on top of them, we have additional 6,000 company representatives, most of them in a situation where they want to collect financial education and some of them to find out if they want to start a professional career as a financial adviser. Investing in management leadership skills is crucial in this field. Our more than 1,000 managers across Germany are responsible for recruiting, onboarding and educating our junior staff. We will launch a big program focused on further developing their management and leadership skills. And these managers are critical to the growth of our network, and they are exactly what our competitors are lacking and why they stay overaged. On top, we will enhance our career systems, and we will continue to expanding into new locations in Germany. I will now move on to the second area of this slide, which relates to our platform and our goal of further digitalization. You can see that the distribution expense ratio should further decrease. We have launched a major modernization project in the back office of the IFA with potential benefits of scale. The third area presents the customer experience, which is shown on the bottom of -- on the bottom part of the chart, which is definitely a key area to master. We will continue developing the hybrid model by increasingly linking personal consultancy with digital support. We expect this to pay off in the fee income, where we aim to increase to a range between EUR 800 million to EUR 830 million. So let's turn to our customer experience and let's look how it adds value. The adviser who gives the high-quality advice to our customers is in the center of our model. The adviser is backed up, and you can see them in those light red boxes, by a 24/7 customer support and our newly introduced claims processing unit. Then you can see it in dark gray boxes. We offer several apps and interfaces to the customers. Most of them supported by the adviser while the customer is using them. And there's another layer of technology in light gray, which is to organize and support the adviser in the best possible way and which helps to increase their productivity. All of this is based on our data management. This brings together all the information we have collected around the customer in combination with the data provided by our product partners. In 2020 alone, we have sent 700,000 leads from our CRM into our advisory networks. This gets more and more key in building up productivity. The development of our data warehouse is one of our key initiatives in the new strategy program. The better we manage data, the better we can grow with the customer as they get older. Or in other words, as our customer base matures, we will move towards significant growth opportunities. All these tools, apps and centrally-provided services intelligently interconnected with our team of advisers and our growing client base form our superior technological platform. It makes us more and more a tech company harnessing the strength of a personal adviser base. And this hybrid approach will also help us to deal with any potential competitive threat, which might occur from the fintech industry or other intruders into our market. What are we aiming for in our insurance business? There are 2 major areas of focus. First is to intelligently manage our back book to ensure solidity. This is based on our Swiss Life specific ALM approach. Thanks to Swiss Life Asset Management, we have been on the right track for years. We have extended the duration early and as a result, our net investment yield is substantially above the average technical rate. Additionally, we are working hard on improving our business mix, which generates a growing risk result on top. This brings us to the second major area, which is product innovation. We aim to continually strengthen our biometric solutions. We plan to launch new products over the next couple of years. We also plan to further reduce the guarantee level of our product range as it was already mentioned. Integrating sustainability in our offering is another key area to work on, especially having our young customer group in mind. This year, we have already taken the first step towards sustainability with the launch of Investo Green, our sustainable unit-linked product line. We also have many opportunities to further develop in the employee benefits insurance business, driven by our strength in consortia solutions. We are partnering with some of the big unions in Germany and received exclusive recommendations for our biometric products from them, and that, of course, helps us a lot. All these measures are contributing to the significant increase in our value of new business. So what are we aiming to achieve financially? You know already these figures. We aim for our fee result to grow to this range between EUR 115 million to EUR 125 million. We will strive to significantly expand our cash remittance. We have delivered EUR 145 million over the last 3 years. We want to deliver EUR 190 million to EUR 210 million within the next 3 years. The fee result remains a central pillar in our profit by source logic. Of course, we are seeking to increase other sources as well. Last but not least, let's do a quick wrap-up of what I have shown to you. As the second largest IFA in Germany, we are well placed to monitorize on our strengths. We are ready to tap growth among young customers by attracting young advisers to help the younger generation plan their financial futures. As our customer base matures, this creates new opportunities. The German management team of Swiss Life is convinced that the best is yet to come. We have a strong setup in insurance with a desire to focus on profitable new business. This gives us the confidence that we can make a substantial contribution to the group's financial success. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for your interest. And now I hand over to my dear colleague, Nils Frowein, the CEO of the International business.

Last, but not least, International. Maybe I should file an application for next time. Ladies and gentlemen, Swiss Life International has tremendously developed in recent years. We will be able to make a significant and above all growing contribution towards achieving the targets of Swiss Life 2024. Our strategy is fully in line with the aspirations and targets of the Swiss Life Group for 2024. Today, I will be looking at our current positioning and opportunities in the market, all of which we have defined clear initiatives to achieve our KPIs for 2024. When we speak of Swiss Life International, we mean 2 lines of business: firstly, Global Solutions, which is our B2B insurance business; secondly, our own financial advisory businesses. As both business lines are strongly positioned, it is now all about leveraging the existing propositions in core markets and expand distribution. Ladies and gentlemen, Swiss Life International is clearly focused on generating fee and risk result. By 2024, we are aiming to double the fee result to EUR 90 million to EUR 100 million and increase the risk result to EUR 18 million to EUR 20 million. An important point in this context, around 65% of the underlying fee income is recurring and creates stability for the years ahead. As important, this is a cash business. We aim to more than double cumulative cash remittance to EUR 170 million to EUR 190 million by 2024. Let me now explain our strategic positioning. Swiss Life International has 2 business lines: Global Solutions and the international IFAs. Both have strong market positions. Global Solutions is a leading brand and business partner for high net worth individual insurance solutions and offers biometric risk and pension solutions to multinational corporates. This business is present in key financial centers and operates with 3 insurance carriers: Luxembourg, Lichtenstein and Singapore. Our international IFAs provides comprehensive financial advice with a focus on investment, pension and real estate. In the U.K., we have been among the leading IFAs for almost 50 years now. In Austria, we are the #1 IFA and in Czech Republic and Slovakia we have also top market positions. This makes us a trusted partner and adviser for longer self-determined life. Before we turn to the Swiss Life 2024 program, let's have a look at the current Swiss Life 2021 program. Swiss Life International is on track to successfully deliver on its ambitious targets. We will double the fee result to EUR 65 million to EUR 70 million and increase the risk result by over 50% by the end of 2021. And both business lines contributed significantly and have strong foundations to grow further. In line with the Swiss Life Group's strategic objectives for 2024 set out by Patrick and Matthias, we have continued to develop our strategy for Global Solutions and for the international IFAs. For all, it is all about leveraging the existing proposition and brands in our key markets as well in new growth markets and segments. Swiss Life International has strong strategic foundations in particular with regard to systems and processes and will be able to further capitalize on operational leverage. This will generate significant fee and risk result growth by 2024. Our business is capital light, which will lead to strong cash remittance growth over the next 3 years. Important to mention, we do not foresee any major investment to deliver the initiatives of the 2024 program. Let me now take a closer look at the strategy for the 2 business lines, starting with Global Solutions. All our insurance activities are bundled together under the subbrand, Global Solutions with headquarter in Luxembourg. This is a well-established B2B business with long-standing business partnerships covering 350 private banks, asset managers, 90 network partners around the globe and the client base of well over 500 multinational corporates. With our insurance platform, we are connected to our partners and can offer customized end-to-end solutions while ensuring process efficiency and scalability. In addition to the pure delivery of solutions, these partners are interested in the excellence of our services. This is what constitutes the relationship between our partners, this is where the game is decided and this is where relations between partners become more rewarding. Global Private wealth provides high net worth individuals with succession planning and wealth transfer solutions, allowing for a simple, secure and straightforward way to transfer assets to the next generation. Furthermore, the offering includes innovative, high death cover solutions, which additionally address a state equalization targeting, for example, entrepreneurs. This is a growing market. Huge amounts of wealth are being transferred to the next generation in the coming decades. Global Employee Benefits offers biometric risk and pension solution. Risks covered are death, disability and medical. The solutions are offered out of Luxembourg to several European markets. And here, we want to capitalize on the growing need for employee benefit solutions for local and international workforces. Ladies and gentlemen, we address these opportunities with a clear strategic direction and focus on the following key initiatives. Let me start with Global Private Wealth. With our partners, we will focus on core markets: In Europe, France, Spain, Italy and Portugal; in Asia, Singapore and Hong Kong. With our innovative high death cover solution, we have a strong USP for partners and clients addressing wealth transfer, estate equalization and liquidity planning needs. This is where the distribution focus is. We want to get closer to our partners with full data and process integration and the foundation for this is laid. The business operates on 1 platform for all 3 carriers and is connected to its partners through the portal. What are the key growth initiatives for Global Employee Benefits? First, strengthening the existing footprint in Europe. Key markets here, Benelux, Germany, Italy and the Nordics. Second, further grow our insurance offering. This includes new solutions in risk, pension and medical. And last but not least, scale distribution with brokers, managing general agents, health insurers and IFAs. Ladies and gentlemen, our growth initiatives will significantly increase fee and risk result until 2024. Let's now turn to our IFAs. They offer financial planning with a focus on investment, pension and real estate solution very consistent with what you have heard today from our colleagues. Our businesses are in the U.K. and Central Eastern Europe. In the U.K., we operate as you know, under the Chase de Vere brand and have more than 300 advisers. Our target group are affluent clients with a focus on investment and pension. The business has developed strongly over the last 3 years, driven by a growing asset base discretionary portfolio management as well as strong relationships with several affinity groups such as the British Medical Association. The British Medical Association contract offers exclusive access to more than 150,000 doctors in the U.K. for advice about pension, investment and disability. Central Eastern Europe, we have more than 1,200 advisers serving retail and affluent clients in Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. In recent years, we have significantly strengthened and expanded the advisory propositions for investment and real estate. The businesses have all it takes to grow further, brand, distribution power, advisory solution, excellent processes and a huge client base. Our best-in-class advisory portal serves as a financial home for advisers and clients. Ladies and gentlemen, financial advice is a growing market, driven by the need to address the pension and protection gap. Now what are our major initiatives to capture these growth opportunities? First of all, we want to significantly expand our advisory power from around 1,300 in 2020 up to over 1,750. The job profile of a financial adviser is highly attractive. It stands for entrepreneurship, attractive income and for providing meaningful financial planning to our clients. We want to continue this journey with our advisers and systematically drive recruitment at all levels of the organization. The second major growth driver is the further strengthening of adviser productivity. Now our adviser productivity is already among the highest in the market. At the heart of the proposition is the financial plan, supporting clients in achieving their goals with financial confidence. In this context, we will focus on high-value business, and this means investment, pension and real estate solutions. Smaller tickets will be covered through our digital advice together with support from central sales and servicing. Our adviser and client portals, together with our digital processes are a major competitive advantage. We aim to attract new advisers and serve existing clients better and with more efficiency. All this will significantly drive the fee result until 2024. Let me conclude with a look at our major financial targets for 2024. Swiss Life International is driven by fee and risk result as shown by the profit by source. We will double the fee result to EUR 90 million to EUR 100 million by 2024, both lines of business, Global Solutions and the international IFAs will contribute strongly. Important to mention again, around 65% of the underlying fee income is recurring and creates stability over the years to come. Furthermore, Global Solutions will increase the risk result to EUR 18 million to EUR 20 million during this period. All this will more than double cumulative cash remittance to EUR 170 million to EUR 190 million over the next 3 years. Our track record, the growth opportunities based on our strategic foundation and the continuous hard work of an excellent team makes me confident that we will reach our ambitious targets. At the heart of the execution of this program are our people and the way we collaborate. With that, I would like to say a big thank you to my colleagues, to my team for the strong commitment and the passion to grow the business. Ladies and gentlemen, with Swiss Life International 2024, we are a major contributor of fee and risk result growth of Swiss Life Group. Thank you for listening. And now together with Patrick and my colleagues, we are ready to take your questions.

So thanks, Nils. Let's get going. Maybe a gentleman in the back right in the back there.

André Fischer from UBS. Hopefully, I ask questions which are in general interest of all of you. What kept in mind actually that you're saying is Swiss, France and also German business was -- you were actually proud saying we used the insurance portion. Of course, we all know what's the reason behind. But if I'm taking in mind Swiss Life, which is the leading insurance company in Switzerland and one of the leading insurance companies in Europe, it's actually interesting. Of course, you could say you will still try to sell insurance policies. But of course, the bank business is increasing so at this time also insurance is lower. So you may add whatever you like after it. But now to my question. I have a question to the Swiss business and more precisely to the -- your advisory model, which was on Page 14 in our booklet and Page 73. You pointed out that your advantage is having actually 2 sales channels. One is the organization with your tied agents and at the Swiss Life Select. Am I right that it's about half, so 700 to 700 employees? First question. Second question, what is -- what do you favor in the near future? What has maybe more -- has more growth potential? And third question, what is actually the fee split income of these 2 segments? So what is more profitable a tide agent or Swiss Life Select? And if I may ask a last question, sorry, is to your innovation ambitions on your new products in Switzerland. You mentioned this mobile 3a pillar product on sustainability. When will that come? And can you elaborate a little bit, will that be multi-manager or what will be differentiation to the existing offering in the market?

Thank you very much for the question. So they are all very important and interesting. So I go through in a row. In terms of numbers of advisers, they are a little bit more with Select and with the tied agent channel, but it's relatively close to 50-50. In terms of importance or potential to grow, I think it's important to realize they're just different. So the Swiss Life Select advisers are in this open model, very similar to what my colleague Jörg was describing for Germany. So they're independent, it's a best select approach, and it's a profitable business model in itself, producing fee result and cash. The tied agents on the other hand, they are really a deep part of our business model. So there is a big option value in helping us to sell what we need actually in terms of a business mix. And there is no stand-alone P&L to them. So we cannot really say anything about profitability. It's something which is deeply ingrained in the business model. So at the end, both are really valuable to us. That's why we also decided that we invest in a platform that can accommodate actually both distribution channels. And they're learning a lot from each other. They're profiting from each other. So it's a really cool model at the end. And then on the mobile offering, you can expect this to be in the market really rather soon. And it will go into the direction initially of like 3a offerings with a really strong distribution focus, and it will be really mobile only. Yes.

Michael?

On the international, it's the one which doubles. It's the best one. I just wondered. Well why isn't everything else doubling? I don't know why are you doubling? I think the answer is somewhere in the investment, I don't know. On the Swiss, I wonder if you can give us a figure or a feel for how much you're investing in the platform and the -- all this stuff -- to make your business more fee focused than it is now? And then the last one is actually not -- it's actually for Matthias, sorry. I remember from the half year, but maybe this is before, the hedging costs are down. And I'm just wondering whether that's one of the key reasons why we see these wonderful numbers.

So yes, well, maybe taking Matthias's role here. Yes, hedging costs are down. Of course, together with the forwards, they will go slightly up, but still way, way from where they used to be. And that obviously depends on the short end of the curve. But yes, you're right, that's definitely supportive. But much more importantly, was, let's say, compared to last year is, of course, that we had a drag from the equity portfolio, as you might remember, which I think is the higher swing factor than the hedging costs. But now let's move over to Markus.

Yes. So on the question on how much we invest. I think the simple answer is if we wouldn't invest in these new customer segments, you would see a clear increase in leverage in the fee business. So fee results would show -- would grow stronger than the income. And in terms of numbers, it's small million numbers compared to our cost base. It's actually not that much, but we are very honest in how we show it, deducting it from the fee result, yes.

And maybe, let's say, the doubling, if I may answer that and then we move on. I mean it's a bit -- look at what happened last year in Germany and one extreme -- which had an extremely good year. And then, of course, international, on the other hand, was impacted by the lockdowns, for example, in Asia. So I think that's one of the differences. But nevertheless, of course, doubling is great, Nils.

Thank you, Patrick. I actually think so too. No, I mean the reason is we really built the business model up the last couple of years on a continuous basis. And we are laser-focused actually in those business models precisely what we are doing there. And if you follow the operational leverage throughout the years, we expect more is to come with regard to that. We think that we are very well positioned in growth markets and that we have a good opportunity to really capitalize on that going forward.

Peter?

Peter Eliot from Kepler Cheuvreux. Two for Jörg, please and perhaps one for yourself, Patrick. On Germany, I was just wondering if you could help us understand if the sort of upcoming regulatory change in respect of commissions might have any impact. And secondly, I was interested, Nils, your statement at the end, your confidence that the best is yet to come. I mean we've seen a pretty good development recently. So I'm just -- I mean, appreciate everything you said in the presentation, but I'm just wondering if there's something that I've missed that is going to kick start even more in the future. And then one for Patrick, I mean, we've heard of lots of great businesses. There's no obvious connection really between high net worth individuals in France, real estate asset managers in Switzerland, young financial advisers in Germany. But they're all seem to be going very well. Just wondering what's the common factor? How do you achieve this?

Right. So let's start with potential regulatory impact. I mean the new German government has just yesterday afternoon put the new coalition contract on the table. So it's quite a short period to get into it. It's more than 150 pages. Only 2 pages are on our model and what we have learned over the last 24 hours out of it and a bit we was expecting -- we were expecting that already is that they want to strengthen the 3 pillars in Germany. So the state-driven pillar, the employee benefits world and then the private world. And they want to allow customers to take more risks, so they want to go into this equity-based pension building, and that is especially something which plays into our cards. So they want to think about other ways to put up pension solutions into the market. There's nothing decided yet. It's more let's say they want to look into it. What we are expecting is there will be some new offers. There will be some backwind for what we are doing. So we are quite neutral to what is coming out of the new government. So we are really used in Germany to regulatory changes. Over the last 10 years, there was plenty of it. And with our professional setup, we always think that we are very capable of dealing with those potential changes. The best is yet to come, yes. With Matthias and Patrick around it's always a bit kind of dangerous to walk such a sloping into it. I'm pretty aware of that. What I really think is supporting us in our optimism is that we have this young adviser network. I've shown the average age. There's one figure, which I find quite impressive. There were these exams for certified advisers in Germany, 20% of all persons in Germany in 2021 who took an exam were from Swiss Life. And if you take our numbers, so our head count, we are not 20% of the overall financial market. So it's clear that we are building up a network which can take over when a lot of older advisers will leave the market. And that is, together with our strong database we have built. That is what gives us this optimism that in the future, you really can take over market share in the German market, yes.

Well, what holds it all together, I mean, that's the reason why we talk a lot about our purpose of helping people to lead a self-determined life. And what we mean by that is -- I mean, from our market research, we know that's a very fundamental human need. We also see that people are getting older and older, and governments out there really have more and more tougher time in providing for old age. And as a matter of fact, we don't want them to take over everything. And we're here with our products and with our advisers to ensure that a large part of the population has access to retirement advice and retirement products, some of them being provided by our own asset managers, some of them, of course, by other products, with the different platforms that we have. That's why we talk about this. And then of course, the brand helps as well. But you're right. I mean we're not perfectly aligned everywhere. But in all fairness, it's probably smarter in France to access the richer part of the population where the Swissness really works really well compared, let's say, to the poor, which are covered by the mutual and similar institutions. Whereas in asset management with our liability structure, it's probably smarter to excel in real assets than let's say, in index funds, where we're competing against whom. And I think we really have a smart way of looking where we have a competitive edge, and that then holds it all together.

Yes. Sorry just for clarity I certainly wasn't criticizing the fact that there was a different strategy in each country. Could I just follow up on the market share, Jörg? Just -- sorry if I missed it in the presentation, but -- are you able to give us on what your market share is?

I mean I just -- I mean, we have now 5,000 -- a little bit more than 5,000 advisers. And the overall financial adviser market is 196,000 advisers. So take the 5,000 against 196,000. You see we are at something about 3% or getting into 3%, but 20% of all the guys who have passing an exam in 2021 are from Swiss Life. There, you see that while the market is getting older, we will take over market share.

So maybe we now turn over to the web. I hand over to the operator.

The first question is from Fulin Liang from Morgan Stanley.

Just 2 -- maybe 3 questions from me, if I may. The first one is I was just looking linking the slides back to what have been said earlier today, on the Swiss market. I just -- because you mentioned earlier that you're going to increase the remittance of -- the cash remittance of Swiss. And then I look at the slides this afternoon, I think the driver of the higher remittance, is it fair to say is because you have capital saving from writing new business? Or is it more like from the capital release from your back book? That's the first one. Secondly is, I just wonder how you manage the -- because you are running multi-distribution channels in some countries and how do you manage the competition bring -- between the distribution channels, for example, your tied agent versus your IFA. And how -- like if there is a lead, how do you manage that between different channels? And that's the second one. The last one, not sure that is specific to a country, but it's actually in general to all countries, I guess, is how much of the -- in France, especially large part of the -- or even a larger part of your flow is going to be from unit-linked products. And how much of that flow will eventually flow into TPAM?

So let me start with the very first question then maybe -- again, the cash remittance is not driven by capital release. It's driven by statutory earnings, and statutory earnings are driven by what we have in terms of guarantees and by the investment result, which drive the so-called savings result on the one hand, on the other hand, it's the risk result and what drives it. So it doesn't have anything to do with capital. I'm exaggerating a little bit, but not much.

Absolutely. So it's driven by operational results at the end, right, by the segment result. So on the question with respect to are these channels in Switzerland, for example, are they conflicting or not? Actually, they're not. Even if they both have a Swiss Life in their name, simply because they're positioned in a different way. So customers that would naturally go to Swiss Life Select wouldn't show up at an agency of Swiss Life tied agents and vice versa. So actually having both channels just simply increases our reach in the market.

Tanguy?

Yes. So relating to the unit-linked strategy in the TPAM capacity to collect this unit linked out of the life insurance contracts in France, we have 50% of our life insurance reserves that are uniting today. And among these 50%, we have 50% that are in-house asset management solutions, the 25% Swiss Life Asset Manager solutions, 25% is Swiss Life Banque Privée Solutions. And we have a strong capacity to bring our in-house solutions. We have an 11% CAGR growth over the period in collecting new assets. And just for Swiss Life Asset Manager solutions, for example, it's a EUR 500 million to EUR 600 million net new assets a year. So this business model is clearly working, but we need open architecture business model to really promote also our in-house solutions.

Thank you, Tanguy.

Okay. Sorry, just to clarify, so 50% of the 50% is -- went to internal solution. Is that right?

Yes. That's correct.

Next question from the web, please.

The next question is from Samant Singh from Citigroup.

A very good set of results. So congratulations on that. Just for the cash remittances you previously provided the remittances by business line. I was not able to find this information in the slide -- current slide. So if you can just indicate what is like the remittances that were planned for and break up by business lines. And just quickly, I wanted to understand this because there is a lot of shift to semiautonomous business in Switzerland group life business. So how should we think about this business going forward compared to the previous level where semiautonomous was like 50% of the mix? So just these 2.

So if you look at Page 18 of the slides of the CFO slides, there, you see the different cumulative cash remittance targets per unit, so per division. And 3 years ago, we also showed that the target is about 60% coming from the Life business and 40% from all other businesses. And going forward, this ratio for the Life business will just be slightly below 60%. We've not included it in the slide pack anymore because we never really got questions about that, but now we do. So it will be just slightly below 60% going forward. And the question about the semiautonomous business vis-à-vis the full insurance business, I guess that was it, if I understood correctly, I hand over to Markus.

Yes. So I try to answer the question, not sure I understood it completely. But at the end, it's a question which is -- that is -- the answer to that question is driven by what customers need at the end. There is choice. There are customers for whom the guaranteed model makes more sense. There are customers for whom the semiautonomous model makes more sense. We offer both. So we have a big reach in the market. And we also have a big reach in terms of like different investment solutions. And at the end, it's very attractive to have the full range because all in all, this business is capital efficient to us and makes a lot of sense and we can play with this together with our colleagues from the asset managers.

Did that answer the question?

Okay. Yes, yes.

We're coming to the end, Michael has another urgent question.

On France, can you say the -- there's a new kind of legal thing which makes Solvency lighter. They have [indiscernible] or something like that. And I just wonder if you could talk a little bit about that and the potential benefit. The second is in Switzerland, where you're trying to -- so you're obviously trying to grow and, in my mind, I make it very simple copy the success of Germany. I'm just wondering why didn't you buy -- like Germany did in the past, why did you buy an established network? And the last question, all your competitors are selling back books, but you're not. Is there any -- can you maybe give some color?

Sure, why don't we start in France?

Yes. So we have a project indeed to launch in France [ FAPS ] product, which is, in fact, the European IORP solutions with the French translation of it. And this vehicle is Solvency I related, which helps indeed to increase globally the solvency ratio of France. And we aim at gathering in this vehicle, all our pension business, our existing pension business, but also new pension business to come. We have filed an application, the regulator should give his consent in 2022. And then the pension business will be located in that business with this additional advantage of being Solvency I and so solvency friendly, I would say.

And in terms of buying a network in Switzerland, for us, the organic growth path is the more logical, more natural one. It works very well. It allows us to train our people the way we want to train them with respect to quality of service, et cetera. So it's just more attractive, yes.

And then with respect to the back book management here, we are under the impression that we do it better than others, and there is no need for anyone else to do it. So I guess there are no more questions left in the room and the web. So let me move over to my closing remarks here. I guess you can stay on stage because it's not going to be very long. I'd like to now conclude this Investor Day. So thank you very much for having attended. Maybe we could accelerate a little bit here. Our program is very clear with Swiss Life 2024. As you've heard, we build upon our key success factors of the prior programs. Our purpose, enabling people to lead a self-determined life; our ability to pursue market opportunities based on customer needs; and our local execution power, which you've just gotten to know better; our discipline in measuring and delivering is, of course, important as well, especially towards these guys here; and our new strategic actions centered around the customer, our advisory power, operational scalability and system ability will support Swiss Life in delivering on our financial goals. Those are increasing earnings quality and earnings growth, particularly by growing the fee results about 40% and by increasing the return on equity to 10% to 12%. Second, enhancing cash returns to shareholders by introducing a new share buyback and by increasing our dividend payout ratio. This is all based on a strong solvency as well as on an increase of about 35% of the cash remittance to the holding company. By focusing all our efforts on our goals for Swiss Life 2024, we will deliver on our promise to serve the societies we are operating in. And with this, I'd like to thank you for your interest again and your questions. Thank you for joining us today, and we'd be delighted for those here in the room to join us for a farewell drink and goodbye also to everyone who has followed us online. I wish you now a safe Germany home, if you're not already home and hope to see you again soon. Thank you very much.