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

Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon, and welcome to Swiss Life's Investor Day at the Circle Convention Center in Zurich. It's great to see you here in person. A warm welcome also to those of you following the event on the web. Today, we will present the strategic and financial targets of our new 3-year corporate program, Swiss Life 2027, which starts next year. Swiss Life has a strong track record of delivering on its promises. With every 3-year program, we have set higher ambitions and have increased our targets for the fee result, cash remittance and dividend payout to shareholders. The fee result has become an important pillar of earnings and earnings growth next to our insurance business, which supported the drive for higher cash returns to shareholders. Our competitive strength lie in our unique business model with excellent positions that enable us to capitalize on long-term trends. Customers, advisers and efficiency are at the heart of our new 3-year program. With Swiss Life 2027, we will, firstly, expand our customer base and customer relationships; secondly, grow the adviser base and productivity; and thirdly, continue to increase operational efficiency. These are the strategic cornerstones of the new program, and they underpin our 2 financial ambitions. On the one hand, we will drive earnings quality and earnings growth. On the other hand, we will deliver attractive cash returns to shareholders. Swiss Life 2027 takes us a step higher on our success path as we strive to reach new heights for earnings and cash returns for shareholders. Looking back at past success helps us to plan for coming success. Let's start with Swiss Life 2024, our current program, which runs until the end of this year. We have already exceeded our cash remittance and share buyback targets. We expect to exceed the return on equity and dividend payout ratio targets, and we have the ambition to increase dividends per share. Regarding the fee result, we expect to reach the lower end of our target range of CHF 850 million to CHF 900 million. This is reliant on the further normalization of real estate markets in Germany and France. Overall, we are well on track to achieve or exceed all our group financial targets. None of this would have been possible without our highly engaged employees and advisers. I want to thank you for your strong commitment and support, which is key to our success. Swiss Life 2024 is the most recent in a series of strategic programs. We have demonstrated an excellent track record of credibly and successfully delivering on promises. Continuity is important. It is a sign of strength, and it means staying successful. Continuity for us is continuous evolution. It's about us seizing new opportunities. This contributed to our success in the past and have no doubt it will do so in the future. Since 2013, we have more than quadrupled the fee result up to the lower end of the ambitious range of CHF 850 million to CHF 900 million, which we expect to reach by the end of this year. This has been achieved in an environment that was challenging from an interest rate and FX point of view. The fee result is based on asset management, advice and own and third-party products and services. It contributes more than 40% to our operating profit. The fee result remains paramount for earnings growth also in the Swiss Life 2027 program. And we aim to further grow the fee result. We have also achieved a more than tenfold increase of cash remittance to holding over the past decade. This is based on our success in achieving business as well as earnings growth. Taking the past 2.5 years of cash remittances together, we have achieved a cumulative remittance of CHF 3.4 billion. This includes one-off effects of CHF 0.2 billion. That means we have clearly exceeded our Swiss Life 2024 cumulative target of CHF 2.8 billion to CHF 3 billion, also when adjusting for these effects. This is a major achievement. Our business divisions have done a great job in navigating the changes in the interest rate environment. As you all know, a growing cash remittance is the basis for higher dividends to shareholders. We have increased dividends by a factor of 6 since 2013 to CHF 33 for the financial year 2023. Striving for and achieving higher cash returns to shareholders has always been a priority when delivering on our strategic plans. Over the past decade, we have returned close to CHF 9 billion to shareholders, about CHF 6 billion of which as dividends and close to CHF 3 billion through the implementation of 4 share buyback programs. In terms of total shareholder return, Swiss Life has substantially outperformed both the SMI and the SSX IP indices. In Swiss Life 2027, we will drive business growth with 3 strategic actions. Simply speaking, more customers, more advisers and more efficiency are the cornerstones of this new 3-year program. And let me be clear, it does not rely on any M&A activities. Our first strategic action is about the customer. We will expand the customer base, both targeting existing and new segments. We will also deepen customer relationships by complementing our product and service offering. We will leverage our strong brand and our access to customers and build on their satisfaction. We have a clear customer focus and have proven to quickly adapt to their needs. We will continue to do so. The second strategic action is about strengthening the advisory power. Advice is a unique element in our service offering. Excellent advice is essential to build trust and to establish a sustainable long-term business relationship with customers. With Swiss Life 2027, we will strive to grow our adviser base. More advisers can reach out to more customers. We will also further invest in our advisory platforms to support our advisers in being more productive and in delivering high-quality advice. This ensures an improved customer experience and lasting customer relationships. Our third strategic action is about operations. We will continue to make use of technology and automation to increase operational efficiency and scalability. This includes, amongst others, optimizing end-to-end processes as well as investing in modernizing our back-office systems. These 3 strategic actions will translate on the financial side into higher earnings and higher earnings quality as well as into attractive cash returns to shareholders. Let me mention 2 other important elements of our Swiss Life 2027 strategic program that are at the heart of what we do. Our purpose and sustainability. We enable people to lead a financially self-determined life. At Swiss Life, we enable our customers to shape their financial future with confidence through our commitment, our comprehensive offering as well as our advisory services. Our advisers support our customers to increase their financial self-determination and our employees strongly identify with our purpose. Their commitment brings it to life. Coming to sustainability. It is anchored in our business. We are on track to achieve our Swiss Life 2024 targets and are committed to progressing on this path with a new program. We prioritize those areas where Swiss Life has a direct influence, specifically in business behavior, in our role as asset management owner and in terms of offering. In our own operations, we will, by 2027, reduce CO2 emissions per employee by 50% compared to 2019. We will pursue this primarily by adjusting business travel by sparing use of resources and by contracting electricity from sustainable production only. To offset unavoidable emissions from our own operating activities, we'll continue to invest in certified climate change mitigation projects in our core markets. As asset management owner, we confirm our commitment to reduce the CO2 intensity of our directly owned real estate by 20% by 2030 when compared to 2019. Per Erikson will provide more details on how well we are underway. And finally, we will take account of the customer demand for sustainable solutions, and we will seize opportunities in developing sustainability offerings. With our Swiss Life 2027 strategic actions, we capitalize on opportunities. Long-term trends play right into our hands. There are substantial and increasing pension and protection gaps around the world that is due to rapidly aging populations and underfunded public pension systems. Everyone needs to take responsibility for their own private financial wealth and retirement. I'm therefore convinced that pension solutions and advice are a growth market, and we are a leading player in this field. People need support and financial advice to close pension protection gaps in a self-determined way. Our advisers, supported by state-of-the-art tools and services, help our customers achieve their goals. The combination of comprehensive insurance offerings and fee businesses creates a natural hedge. It supports the resilience of our business model and earnings growth in different interest rate environments. We continuously adapt the product landscape to achieve this. We also safeguard our healthy interest rate margin through disciplined ALM and capital-efficient investments in the insurance business. Our business model plays to our strength when seizing opportunities from long-term trends. Today, we command an attractive and unique position, providing life, pensions, financial solutions and advice to our customers. We are a leading life insurer in attractive European markets. We offer own and third-party products and services such as unit-linked solutions as part of our comprehensive life insurance offering. We're also active in non-life insurance in France. We have thousands of advisers helping our customers across Europe and the U.K. This advisory power is a clear differentiator. And we are a leading European asset manager. Our strong focus on real assets differentiates us from our peers. Asset Managers serve as a backbone to our insurance business, managing the insurance assets as well as the assets of our third-party clients. Life, pensions, financial solutions and advice are heavily influenced by the local needs of customers and their requirements, particularly in terms of local laws and regulations. Customer proximity is therefore key. This is why we are and will be organized multi-divisionally in our markets. Each division will contribute to the 3 strategic actions of the group. I'll give a couple of examples, and you will hear more from our divisional CEOs about their strategic priorities and their goals. All divisions focus on making the most of customer relationships and on expanding the customer base. Switzerland, for example, will continue to offer comprehensive life and pension products as well as services. It will also venture more into private wealth solutions for retail and affluent clients. France will address high-value customer segments with a special focus on business owners. Those offer considerable wealth management opportunities. And Asset Managers will nurture partnerships with Tier 1 clients. In terms of advisers, Switzerland, Germany and International will continue to grow advisory networks and productivity. We will, amongst others, further invest in tools and training to make our advisers best-in-class, which will help us attract even more. Now to operational efficiency. France, Germany and Asset Managers will further digitalize processes and leverage IT platforms. This will help our own operations and is also designed to serve advisers and customers more efficiently. As shown on this slide, contributions differ as each business division has specific priorities. but they are all aligned and committed to the strategic actions of Swiss Life 2027. Each business division will also play its part in delivering on our ambitious 2027 financial targets. Switzerland is our largest business division. It is our key cash contributor and will further grow cash remittance. Its segment result is driven by a large and resilient operating result from insurance business, which is expected to increase compared to 2023. France, Germany and International will continue to grow both the fee result and the cash remittance. Growth will be double digit in percentage terms as in our Swiss division. And what is important to mention, raising cash remittances and fee results will be achieved despite substantial investments in growth and other initiatives. Those investments will support business and earnings growth also beyond the Swiss Life 2027 program. This holds true for asset managers, too. As you know, subdued real estate markets, especially in Germany and France, have put pressure on Asset Managers in 2023. As mentioned, our asset management offering to both internal and third-party clients is unique, given our strong expertise in real assets. Asset Managers plan to significantly increase their fee result compared to 2023 with real assets continuing to play an important role. Cash remittance will grow at a slower pace compared to the fee result given time lags between the income recognition from real estate projects and the distributable cash. All business divisions drive earnings quality, earnings growth and cash to holding. With this, they all contribute to the group's financial ambitions. Our first ambition is to lift the fee result to above CHF 1 billion by 2027 for the first time in our history. This is remarkable. We will also increase the return on equity target range to 17% to 19%, valid in each and every year of our next strategic period. Capital and cash will remain paramount in our new program. We will strive to remit more cash to the holding, namely cumulatively CHF 3.6 billion to CHF 3.8 billion over the next 3-year period. We will deliver an attractive cash return to shareholders by increasing the target for the dividend payout ratio to above 75%. And we have the ambition to increase dividends per share. Moreover, we will launch a new share buyback of CHF 750 million this December that will run for 18 months. It is scheduled to be completed by May 2026. It is prior to the end of the Swiss Life 2027 program. With Swiss Life 2027, we again raised our ambitions compared to the current program. 15% more fee result, 25% more cumulative cash remittance, 7 percentage points higher return on equity and 15 percentage points higher dividend payout ratio. In addition, we launched our fifth share buyback program. As you can see, we have raised the bar with every 3-year program. This is impressive. What's even more impressive, we have consistently delivered. I'm proud of what my team has achieved. Let me sum up. Swiss Life 2027 takes us a step higher on our success path as we strive to reach new heights for earnings and cash returns to shareholders. This is what my team and I are committed to do. I now hand over to you, Marco, to outline the financial aspects of our program in more detail.

Thank you, Matthias. Good afternoon, dear ladies and gentlemen. It's great to be here for my first Swiss Life Investor Day as a Group CFO. And it is a great pleasure to speak about how we continue our growth story. With Swiss Life 2027, we again raising the bar. At Swiss Life, we have an excellent track record in delivering on our financial ambitions. Over the past decade, we have significantly strengthened the quality of our earnings and delivered earnings growth based on our unique and resilient business model. This combines life insurance, asset management and advisory networks. We have continuously increased cash returns to our shareholders through higher dividends and share buybacks. Today, with Swiss Life 2027, we are raising our ambitions again. First, we want to drive earnings quality and earnings growth. Namely, we raised the fee result target to more than CHF 1 billion by 2027. And we lift the annual ROE target to 17% to 19%. Second, we want to deliver attractive cash returns to shareholders, meaning we grow our target for cash remittance to CHF 3.6 billion to CHF 3.8 billion. We raised our payout ratio target to above 75%, and we have the ambition to increase the dividend per share. And we start a new share buyback program of CHF 750 million. Let's first have a look at our ongoing Swiss Life 2024 program that sets the scene for our new strategic program, Swiss Life 2027. In a nutshell, we are well on track to achieve or exceed all our group financial targets. We are ahead with the return on equity, which is expected to clearly exceed our target range of 10% to 12%. In view of the fee result, we expect to reach the lower end of the target range of CHF 850 million to CHF 900 million. The progress of our asset managers in the first 9 months of 2024 gives us confidence in that respect. By generating CHF 3.4 billion by half year 2024, we have already exceeded our cash remittance target. We further increased the dividend per share to CHF 33 for the financial year 2023, leading to a payout ratio of 86% and thereby being ahead of our target. And last but not least, we exceeded the share buyback target by returning CHF 1.3 billion to our shareholders. To sum it up, we are well on track to successfully delivering on Swiss Life 2024. By doing so, each business division is playing an important part. As shown on the slide, International is on track and Switzerland, France and Germany are ahead of their targets. Asset Managers is behind the segment result. This is due to headwinds from the changed interest rate environment and subdued real estate markets. However, cash remittance is on track. This is supported by a special dividend and the sale of a subsidiary and, as previously mentioned, because of timing effects in the real estate project development business. You will hear more about the divisional target achievements from my colleagues later on this afternoon. With that, let me shift our focus to Swiss Life 2027. This slide shows our financial ambitions and our financial targets for the next 3-year period. As usual, it will be with us in our upcoming half and full year disclosures when we report on our progress. I will take the time and the opportunity to walk you through each financial target in more detail. With Swiss Life 2027, we reinforce our position and build on our proven strengths. On the one hand, we will keep the focus on earnings quality and earnings growth. And with that, we plan to further increase our earnings from both the fee and the insurance businesses and achieve a higher return on equity. This is supported by operational efficiency and scalability. On the other hand, we are aiming for attractive cash returns to shareholders and maintain a strong SST capitalization. Let me show you how we are going to pursue this. The fee result has been our key profit driver for the past decade, and it has substantially improved the resilience of Swiss Life's business model. Our fee business is based on our asset management, on our owned IFAs and on our own and third-party products and services, which include the unit-linked businesses. We will strive to grow the fee result by 2027 to over CHF 1 billion for the first time in our history. To achieve this ambitious target, each business division will contribute. I'm going to give you some more flavor. Starting with Switzerland, aiming to increase their fee result to around CHF 70 million by leveraging its customer base and advisory power. At the same time, the business division will invest to grow its business with wealth solutions. In France, the team strives to increase the fee result to above EUR 200 million by leveraging its proven private insurer model. And our German colleagues aim to grow the fee result to more than EUR 150 million and continue to invest also in back-office systems. By continuing to grow its financial advisory networks and services, the International division strives to achieve a fee result of above EUR 100 million. And finally, our Asset Managers aim to further grow the real asset offering and increase the fee result to over EUR 500 million by 2027. Real estate project development will play an important role. At group level, we aim the fee result to outgrow the fee income. Our asset managers and our International division will drive this. At Asset Managers, we expect a significant improvement. TPAM will achieve a substantial segment result growth compared to 2023, mainly supported by real estate project development. The international team will increase their adviser productivity and, therefore, the fee result through greater usage of digital tools. In the other divisions, we see a more limited scalability. They all grow their fee result and are, at the same time, investing. Switzerland in wealth solutions, France in digitalization, and Germany in the system landscape. Let me now turn to our insurance business. We strive for earnings growth and higher cash remittance also from our insurance business. Our priorities are: first, we aim to increase the CSM through operating growth. Second, at the same time, we keep life absolute costs stable. And third, having said that, we have the ambition to achieve a higher operating result from the insurance business. Let me take you through this, starting with the rather new element, the CSM. Our ambition is to increase the CSM from its 2023 level through operating growth. This is without considering economic and other nonoperating variances as we do not have influence on them. We focus on those CSM levers shown on the right-hand side of the slide that we can influence. Those are expected business contribution, new business as well as experience adjustments and actuarial assumptions through our disciplined back book management. In sum, these 3 key levers are expected to outweigh the CSM release, and I will, on my next slide, going to deep dive into these levers. We will continue to adhere to disciplined asset and liability management and ensure capital-efficient investments to safeguard the interest rate margin in our insurance business. This will support the expected business contribution. Let me highlight that we have applied conservative assumptions such as reinvestment rates significantly below today's levels. And even with this, we expect the interest rate margin to remain resilient for many decades to come. Let me come to the new business and say that we intend to continuously grow with modern traditional and unit-linked products. Our goal is to focus on capital and acquisition cost efficiency and disciplined new business margin management. This is illustrated by 2 examples here on the slides. One from Switzerland with modern traditional business growth and one from France with a higher share of single premiums in the savings business. Both contribute to operating CSM growth. In addition to new business, we also manage our back book diligently. For instance, in Switzerland, we achieved business growth from existing customers through top-up campaigns. And in Germany, another example, here, we focus on reducing lapse rates in the occupational pension business. Both examples are to illustrate how we strengthen the CSM and intend to do so going forward. With that, we turn to operational efficiency and scalability in the insurance business. This is one of our strategic actions in the Swiss Life 2027 program. And I have already referred to it in the context of our fee business. Also in the insurance business, disciplined cost management continues to be key. That is why at group level, our ambition is to keep absolute life absolute costs stable at CHF 0.75 billion on a comparable FX basis. To achieve this, we continuously optimize processes across all business divisions to facilitate investments in business growth and to counteract higher costs from regulatory requirements and inflation. At the same time, we also strive for continued digitalization and automation. To sum it up, we have the ambition to achieve a higher operating result in our insurance business compared to the 2023 level. Beyond the growth of the CSM, we also want to grow the additional contributions from insurance business. And those mainly pertain to our non-life business in France, the global employee benefits business at International and the income from assets not backing insurance liabilities. It is the combination of insurance and fee businesses that creates a natural hedge. It supports the resilience of our business model and earnings growth for Swiss Life in different interest rate environments. This is important to us and, ultimately, also to our shareholders. Let's now turn to the ROE. We are lifting the return on equity target range to 17% to 19%, valid in each and every year of our next strategic period. The increasing earnings from the fee and insurance businesses as well as the operational efficiency will be the drivers for the R, the return of the ratio. The drivers on the E side, the equity, will be our dividend payout ratio above 75% and the ambition to increase dividends per share and the new share buyback. Let's continue with a look at our financial ambitions for capital and cash. Starting with solvency. The SST ratio is strong, and it is well above our ambition range of 140% to 190%. The impact of the new share buyback that we have announced today is estimated to be around 5 percentage points. Factoring this already completely into our SST ratio, it remains above 200% as of today. As you know, cash remittance remains key in our new program. We raised the bar again and increased the target by about 25% compared to Swiss Life 2024. In other words, with Swiss Life 2027, we aim to remit cumulative cash of CHF 3.6 billion to CHF 3.8 billion to the holding company over the 3 years, '25, '26 and '27. This is mainly driven by the growing contributions from the insurance and the fee businesses. And let me highlight that the past cumulative cash remittance from '22 to half year '24 included one-off effects of CHF 0.2 billion, which will not be repeated. As a reminder, cash remittance is based on local statutory accounts of Swiss Life Holding subsidiaries. Each business division will play an important role by delivering more cash to the holding company. Switzerland will significantly increase cash remittances driven by our growing life insurance business, where we expect to see contributions from reserve releases. France will grow its cash remittance based on higher contributions from fee and insurance businesses. Germany will deliver more cash driven by the growing IFAs and insurance business. In the International segment, cash remittance will also be driven by growing the insurance and the fee business. And with Asset Managers, increasing cash remittance will be fueled by the TPAM business. With that, we move on to the dividend payout ratio. We target a dividend payout ratio of more than 75%, up from over 60% in the running ongoing Swiss Life 2024 program. And we have the ambition to increase the dividend per share. When it comes to disciplined allocation of cash, attractive dividends to shareholders come first, as I just mentioned. We also use share buybacks as a potential capital management measure, in line with our proven framework. Capital management actions such as share buybacks are considered if 2 key conditions are met. That means, first, the SST ratio is above our ambition range. And second, we have excess cash at the holding. There is nothing automatic about share buybacks even when these framework conditions are met. If we decide on a share buyback, the announcement would be made when we disclose our half year or our full year figures or on an Investor Day. Today, in line with the framework, we are announcing a new share buyback program worth CHF 750 million. Cash at holding may also be used to support further business growth at the business division level in addition to the cash that is retained and not remitted to the holding. This may apply as in the past, if needed for organic or inorganic growth. Let me provide some details about the share buyback that I've just mentioned. This buyback will be executed by a partner bank through a second trading line. It will run over the course of 18 months. We will start repurchasing shares next week on the 9th of December 2024, and we plan to complete the share buyback by the end of May 2026. These shares will be proposed for cancellation to the upcoming AGMs. Let's now have a look at the financing. About half of the share buyback will be financed using cash we have at the holding today. The other half will be financed with future cash remittances to the holding, which entails 2 annual cash buildups as it was the case with past share buybacks. We have lowered the cash comfort level at holding to a level of CHF 0.5 billion to CHF 0.7 billion. For us, this best supports the flexibility and effective use of cash at the holding. In case we would need more liquidity, we have a revolving credit facility in place with access to up to CHF 2.5 billion. Ladies and gentlemen, with Swiss Life 2027, we are raising the bar for our financial targets and commit ourselves to a new and ambitious strategic program. Of course, we cannot take our success for granted. Like in the past, we will have to deal with risks, regulation and competition; however, we are convinced that with our determination, our diligence and our discipline, we will achieve as a team, our ambitious targets. Let me conclude. We strive to drive our earnings quality and our earnings growth and increase cash returns to our shareholders. With Swiss Life 2027, we continue our successful journey. Ladies and gentlemen, with this, I will now hand over to my colleagues, our current Group CEO, Stefan; and our designated Group CIO, Per. Thank you for listening and see you at the Q&A session.

Thank you, Marco. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm pleased to be here today with my successor, Per Erikson, who will take over as Group Chief Investment Officer on April 1 next year. I will report on our Swiss Life 2024 achievements, while Per will present his program for Swiss Life 2027. Per and I share the same fundamental beliefs on how to run a successful asset management business. These are: the first is relevance. You have to be relevant, relevant in the market, relevant with clients and relevant within your own firm. The second is growth. You must grow the business to make it future-proof. We primarily focus on organic growth; however, we like inorganic growth if these bolt-on transactions expedite our organic growth. The third is mental readiness. Swiss Life Asset Managers has a culture of acting swiftly to seize emerging opportunities and implementing propositions decisively. Looking back, Swiss Life Asset Managers has generated a great momentum. We remain on our growth path. Swiss Life Asset Managers has strengthened its position as an agile and leading European asset manager. We have combined the needs of our own balance sheet with the needs of our third-party clients for the benefit of both. Our investment solutions are highly sought after because we invest alongside our clients so-called co-investments. With this skin in the game and our proximity, we offer clients a unique market access. Backed by our proven excellent business track record, we demonstrated our resilient business model. Hence, we could navigate quite successfully through rough waters and enabled ourselves even in difficult market conditions to come in quite close to our financial targets. Let me emphasize a few of our key differentiators. We developed tailored solutions for our strategic partnerships. This approach doesn't just foster collaboration, it amplifies brand visibility and strengthens our market position. While we are well positioned in the key asset classes, we actively focused on specialized markets by playing attractive promising niches with high growth and margin potential, allowing us to leverage our expertise and market insights. While we grow, we never lose sight of operational efficiency and invest significantly in technology and data. What truly sets us apart is our ability to seize strategic opportunities with decisiveness. This is evident in key examples like our newly created business line, Energy as a service or the launch of the index business in Switzerland, we have taken bold calculated steps that continue to drive our success. I do not want to use the market developments as an excuse; however, when we defined the Swiss Life 2024 strategy, we had quite a different interest and business environment. We were able to book solid and continued net new asset flows despite sharply higher interest rates and inflation. Taking all that into account, we got quite close to our financial targets. Let us have a closer look at our growth journey over the past 10 years. We have grown our third-party business with annual rate of a solid 14%. According to our fundamental beliefs, we favor organic growth. We look at inorganic growth if these companies help us to expedite our organic growth. Over the last 10 years, we made 7 bolt-on transactions in 6 countries. All these firms were well-run and profitable firms whose entrepreneurs were looking for a platform like Swiss Life Asset Managers to foster and solidify their growth. Equally, we divested 2 business propositions where we did not matter in the market, or in other words, where we were not the right owner. Thus, we sold the facility management business of Livit as well as the brokerage arm of Corpus Sireo, reinforcing our focus on core activities that enhance our relevance and the market competitiveness. Despite the high growth rates of 14% CAGR in our third-party business, we were able to increase both the TPAM commission income as well as the TPAM recurring income by even 15% CAGR, supported by improved operational efficiency. Even in the rather adverse business environment from 2021 to 2023, we were able to increase the TPAM commission income with a CAGR of 7% and the TPAM recurring income by 12%. This is proof of the resilience of our business model and our ability to adapt to rapidly changing market conditions. Now let's turn to the business where Swiss Life Asset Management is coming from, our proprietary asset management or as we call it, PAM business. The PAM business continues to be a cornerstone of our business. Our disciplined asset and liability management, our proven expertise in capital-efficient asset classes and our cost-effective operation and execution enabled us to drive value for policy and shareholders. As you can see, we have accomplished a great deal over the past 10 years. We are proud of our agility, our dedication and our continued success. We know how to grow sustainably at a high rate. That's why we are where we are today. That's what we are proud of. With this, I now will hand over to Per. Per will share his outlook and insights for the next 3 years, our strategy 2027. Thank you.

Thank you, Stefan. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm pleased to present our ambitious program, Swiss Life 2027 for Swiss Life Asset Managers. As mentioned by Stefan, we both share the same fundamental beliefs on how to run Swiss Life Asset Managers successfully. Continuity of our growth path is at the core of our strategy. Let me start with our key priorities for the next 3 years, which will support our group's strategic actions and KPIs. First, profitable growth remains our key focus; second, we continue to grow our customer base; third, we increase our operational efficiency; and fourth, sustainability as a business opportunity. Profitable growth is key. We continue to optimize our compelling offering of services and products by placing a strong emphasis on our active product life cycle management. At the same time, we explore attractive new business segments with a particular focus on expanding our real asset offering. To successfully grow our customer base, we will enhance our strong physical presence and proximity to clients and investors. We will leverage our strategic partnerships with Tier 1 clients to tap into new customer segments and broaden our sales network. We aim to increase our market reach and create even greater value for our clients. In the past, we have made substantial investments in our core IT platforms to enable further growth. These investments also provide us with valuable proprietary data that to us is a source to pursue additional business opportunities. All of this is aimed at improving our efficiency to meet operational and client requirements. Finally, in sustainability, we focus on actions that create a measurable real impact. We remain committed to reducing the CO2 emission intensity in our directly held real estate portfolio. Furthermore, decarbonization will be part of our integrated energy solutions. Let's now take a closer look at these priorities and the strategic actions that will drive them forward. As outlined before, we have been on a strong growth trajectory for the past decade. This is an excellent foundation to build on as we continue to push for profitable growth in all asset classes. As the #3 institutional asset manager in Switzerland, we are strongly focused on accelerating volume growth in securities, both in actively managed fixed income, equity or balanced products and in our new index business in Switzerland. In infrastructure equity, it is our ambition to establish ourselves as a leading infrastructure asset owner and manager in Europe. We will expand our role as a lead investor. In real estate, depending on what league tables are used, we are the #1 or #2 in Europe. This position in the center of the market enables us to seize more business opportunities. We continue to provide a unique market access to accommodate investors' evolving and diverse needs. Going forward, infrastructure and real estate will continue to increasingly move closely together. At Swiss Life Asset Managers, we are speaking of building a real asset business platform. We are convinced to be very well positioned to integrate value chains across asset classes to provide value to our clients. I will elaborate on this later with a specific example. Stressing the key points. We will enhance and streamline our product portfolio to grow assets under management and enable economies of scale. Leveraging technology and proprietary data across all asset classes will drive operational expertise and efficiency. Let me focus on asset growth, starting with real estate. Our strong local presence in Europe and deep expertise is the foundation to grow further while building on existing activities. We are used to spot and seize opportunities based on long-term trends. We are aiming to achieve attractive returns and building high-quality portfolios centered around 4 key segments, which we call the 4 Ls: living, logistics, light industrial, and life science and technology. However, it is worth noting that the office segment, our largest market, remains crucial to us. We are convinced that modern offices at the right location will continue to be the place where most people want to work also in the future. We see interesting opportunities in attractive niches or specialized markets such as health care, self-storage or camping, where we can offer client-tailored investment solutions and where we can be relevant. Ultimately, clients profit from this unique access. This approach does not only allow for volume growth, we can also capture attractive margins. Let me now move to real estate project development, a business that has become much more relevant over the years. Our developer capabilities and expertise across sectors supports our strong pipeline of projects. This allows us to be able to be at the forefront of trends and shape whole city districts while creating long-term attractive financial results. What truly sets us apart is our unique in-house ability to merge real estate and infrastructure capabilities. This enables us to develop a business platform that will extend our value chain, leveraging multiple expertise from various sectors. This combination of asset manager and asset owner gives us an excellent position to meet investors' needs. The frame around risk creation is our new business line, Energy as a service. This initiative reflects our culture of acting swiftly on emerging opportunities and implementing propositions decisively to stay relevant in the market. Let me demonstrate this by using an example that you already know from the last Investor Day, the former industrial Park, Griesheim, now called Frankfurt Westside. We are developing Frankfurt's largest commercial and industrial mixed-use district, creating a modern and smart infrastructure, blending resources used with renewable energy and waste heat recovery. Since the last Investor Day, we have sold plots to a global data center operator, which is currently constructing a new state-of-the-art and AI-ready hyperscale data center. Not only have we contracted the necessary green power grid capacity to run the centers, but we also manage the enormous amount of heat produced by them. In the next phase until 2027, we will complete the planning and start the construction of the local heat network to use the excess thermal energy within the entire district. Combining energy supply and demand is one way of generating value for investors outside of our traditional value chain. This is what we mean by Energy as a service. Let us move to the next key priority. Swiss Life Asset Managers is focused on growing its institutional investor base. We are convinced that deep and strong relationships serve institutional clients' needs the best. By expanding our geographic footprint, we continue to increase proximity to investment markets and clients, both with a local or pan-European focus. Besides our organic growth, we have pursued this expansion through acquisitions or establishing sales offices in attractive locations. We have been successful in winning globally renowned Tier 1 clients. These partnerships are of strategic importance to us as we see this as a validation of our capabilities. Highly professional Tier 1 clients support our drive to grow in other institutional markets. Our exceptional growth has put significant new requirements on our entire IT infrastructure. We, therefore, made substantial investments in the past 10 years across all asset classes and in all countries. We are talking of around CHF 160 million in total. A state-of-the-art IT infrastructure is necessary to grow our business and increase our operational efficiency, especially in asset classes where scalability is more difficult to achieve like real assets. In infrastructure equity, we implemented an integrated IT solution connecting front, middle and back office. In real estate, we built a pan-European IT platform across all entities, harmonizing processes along the entire value chain. Vital functions like transactions, ESG or risk are all directly connected and over 100 data providers feed into the system. This is unique in the market. After years with very high investments, we are now looking at harvesting the benefits through efficiency and efficient use of these platforms. They will strengthen our top line by enabling further growth and enhance our bottom line by enabling efficiency and scalability. Furthermore, we are now able to systematically collect proprietary data for analysis, decision-making, processing and reporting from a wide range of activities. It is our conviction that proprietary data will be a fundamental business driver in illiquid asset classes, and we intend to capitalize on this. Proprietary data on an individual asset level is an essential pillar to drive, steer and document the success of our sustainability efforts. Let me turn your attention to this topic. At the Investor Day 2021, Swiss Life committed to reducing the CO2 intensity of our directly held real estate portfolio by 20% by 2030 in comparison to 2019. We continue to uphold this commitment. We currently forecast a reduction of our carbon intensity of approximately 35% by 2030. However, as the global carbon budget has decreased in past years, the Paris-aligned CRREM 1.5-degree path has become steeper. Swiss Life is ahead of its commitment, and we remain on the path, but we cannot compensate for others. As an asset owner and active manager, it is our core objective to future-proof our real estate portfolios through systematic decarbonization. We thus focus on real measurable impact that is within our control. As seen in the Frankfurt Westside example, value preservation offers long-term business opportunities for value creation. Energy as a service supports this opportunity. Let us come to our financial ambitions. As shown at the last Investor Day, on this slide, you see the TPAM income characteristics. We aim at achieving a TPAM total income in the range of CHF 930 million to CHF 970 million. We distinguish between recurring and nonrecurring income. Within nonrecurring income, we separate nonrecurring income of fees from our traditional asset management business and nonrecurring income from real estate project development, where Swiss Life Asset Managers takes the investment risk. We expect the average share of the nonrecurring income from real estate project development to increase to about 15% of TPAM's total income during the next strategy cycle. Subsequently, nonrecurring income from fund business and asset management services will account for around 10% during this period. The recurring income is projected to be around 75%. This shift towards an increased share of project development business significantly increases the income volatility as the timing of such project development comes with some uncertainty. Finally, we aim at an average cost/income ratio of around 80% through the strategy cycle. 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 all this add up to? As in the previous strategy cycle, our growth ambitions are high. We assume stagnating assets and stagnating asset base for PAM. Hence, all the growth will come from our TPAM business. TPAM's assets under management are expected to grow to around CHF 170 billion by the end of 2027. The envisaged TPAM assets under management growth and the various revenue sources will translate into a total income of CHF 1,280 million to CHF 1,320 million and a segment result in excess of CHF 500 million. This results in a cumulative cash remittance for the next 3 years of CHF 750 million to CHF 800 million. This brings me to the end of this presentation. We are pleased how our business has developed in the past decade and how we were able to navigate through challenging markets. I am convinced that we are now in an even better position for the future. We will continue to drive our business forward, pursuing our 4 key priorities: profitable growth, growing our customer base, increasing our operational efficiency and sustainability as a business opportunity. I am fully convinced that we will successfully deliver on our strategic plans. We have built an excellent foundation through our competitive business platforms. We invested significantly in state-of-the-art IT platforms for all asset classes, securities, infrastructure equity and real estate. I am proud of our highly skilled and motivated team of over 2,200 employees. We have already demonstrated our ability to act decisively and to adapt fast to changing market conditions. We continue to consistently strive to provide our clients and investors with the best possible solutions and services. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Swiss Life 2027 for Swiss Life Asset Managers. Thank you. And with this, I would like to hand over to Matthias again for the Q&A session. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Per. We are now open for the first Q&A session. Here on stage with me are Marco Gerussi, Stefan Machler and Per Erikson, and we will start with questions from the audience here in the room. Who goes first?

Simon Fössmeier, Bank Vontobel. Two questions On asset management. On Slide 46, you mentioned an increase in RFPs in Switzerland with the potential for market shifts. Can you elaborate what you mean by these potential market shifts and maybe provide examples? And on Slide 56 on ESG. If I remember correctly in the last Investor Day, you gave a number that you will invest CHF 2 billion to decarbonize the portfolio. Where do you stand in that journey? Is that number still valid? And if I may just throw in a third question. There is a press article today in a Swiss newspaper saying that there is a good chance that we'll see negative interest rates in Switzerland, next year. Not my personal plan, but I was just wondering if you have any comments on what this could mean for your plan if that materializes?

Let me take first your last question, then hand the 2 others and maybe even the third one to Stefan and Per as well. You know our base case is not that we will see negative interest rates in Switzerland. This is part of the toolbox of the National Bank. We know that, but this is clearly not the base case. And I think for further elaborations and on the 2 other questions, I hand over to Stefan and Per.

With regard to ESG, the CHF 2 billion were meant in green bonds that we have exceeded. The second question about the market shifts. What we see that's particularly now true in Switzerland, with the takeover of Credit Suisse by UBS, we have seen a tremendous increase of RFPs in the market, which is very difficult for the whole industry to digest. That's one part. And the other one is that we see out of the concentration process that many clients are now thinking of alternatives. And this is also the reason why we went into the index business, an offering we did not have beforehand. And it is -- since it's the volume business, it is very difficult to get into, but we had a chance just about summer last year to get hold of a team with an excellent track record. And we started at the beginning of this year, if you like, I can give you a few numbers. The #1, the #2 -- sorry, the first 3, there was UBS, Credit Suisse and Swisscanto for market and index business of more than 70%. And the #1 has been taken over. So the chance that this is going to enter the market is significant, at the same time, a growing business. So since the beginning of the year, we have booked CHF 2 billion of index business, and we have got another CHF 10 billion of commitments, which will be funded over the next months, months plural, so including the Q1, and maybe the Q2. So this is an excellent start within 11 months, CHF 12 billion of commitments. I'm quite happy with that. Coming to a conclusion. That's what we mean by potential market shift.

Further questions, I see.

Hello. This is David Barma from Bank of America. My first question -- well, my first 2 questions are on cash. And firstly, on your new cash buffer at the holding. Can you explain what's driving this reduction? And then linked to that, how should we think about the buyback you're announcing today? Because if I look at your new payout target for dividends and your CHF 750 million buyback, you would still be in the top end, if not above the range you set out in the previous plan. So why do you think now is the right moment to reduce it? And then if I can just come back on the previous question around interest rates in Switzerland. So the remittances from Switzerland are planned to grow quite a bit, and you're saying part of that is coming from capital release. So am I right to understand that basically, your plan is that as long as rates are not negative in Switzerland, this is secured?

Let me elaborate a bit on your questions. On the buyback, I mean, how to think about that, we have said in the past and we continue to have that as a priority. It is attractive cash returns to shareholders. This is a priority. If we think about cash returns, however, we think about dividends and buybacks. I mean, we look at them in combination, and if you think where we have been 3 years ago in terms of dividend, we were paying CHF 21 for financial year 2021. Now for financial year 2023, we have paid CHF 33 per share. So we have had a very significant increase of the dividend. And as we mentioned I think several times today, we continue to have the ambition to increase EPS. So I think that's the way to think about today's buyback in terms of size and timing. And by the way, we have seen Marco presenting the entire framework and how we think about paying the dividend, having buybacks and so forth. And that is what remains in place for the program. Now in terms of the question, your first question on the cash at holding, and I'm sure Marco will further go into the details about that. We said we reduced the comfort range from originally CHF 700 million to CHF 900 million to CHF 500 million to CHF 700 million. And we have done so because we want to use cash optimally. We don't want to have it sit around the holding level. And we're doing that in view of this credit facility, this revolving credit facility, which provides access to cash if we need it. Maybe you can add a bit more on that, Marco.

I can add on that. I mean, first, I think it's important. As of today, we have around CHF 1 billion cash at holding, and we are always looking into, let's say, possibility or measures how to optimize our cash, how we manage cash. And that's why we, from the -- what we call the comfort level from 0.7 to 0.9, we lowered that to 0.5 to 0.7 because we believe putting our cash at work rather than letting -- sitting around just at hold because we can use it for intra-group financing, finance business growth, for example, maybe some bolt-on acquisitions if there are opportunities made as reducing at the level. We still feel very comfortable with that. I think that's important to add. Nevertheless, and that's something we do not consider as cash. But if we need, in case some additional liquidity for short-term financing to bridging certain things, then we would have access to a revolving credit facility of CHF 2.5 billion. As I said in the presentation, if we need it, as of today in December, it's to a very large extent, undrawn. So it's really optimizing our view on cash and how to handle it and put it at work.

And to your third question on the Swiss business, the reserve release situation, I think we can reiterate what we have said, I think, at half year closing -- at the full year closing. Going now into that program, we see the run rate of reserve releases in Switzerland, meaning group life and individual at this CHF 0.3 billion per annum, which we reported also for 2023, and that's what we confirm. And again, we say that not only in view of the current rates, but because of the reinvestment rates that we achieved today and we mentioned that, I think, for the group -- a couple of times for the group, it is around 4 percentage points. Now I think some question in the middle.

Nasib Ahmed From UBS. Firstly, on the cash, the CHF 3.6 billion to CHF 3.8 billion, is there anything else apart from cash remittances that over the plan is going to impact the holdco cash, like one-offs, releveraging that you expect over the next few years, it's going to buffer the holding company cash position? Secondly, on the remittances from the asset management company. If I look at 2021 to '22, yes, I think asset management cumulative burn was about CHF 1 billion, and you remitted CHF 700 million, 70% payout ratio. If I look at -- you're targeting CHF 500 million result for 2027, payout ratio seems to be a little bit lower. What's the delta? Why is it a little bit lower given that your cash remittance rate, which is less than CHF 800 million? And then on asset management, particularly on the slide on the drivers on asset management earnings. You show CHF 930 million to CHF 970 million on TPAM on top line revenue and the cost income ratio is going up from the previous plan from 75% to 80%. What -- it seems like you've got reverse operating jaws. What's going on there? Why is the cost income ratio increasing and the top line increasing as well? And then finally, on the Swiss index funds, what's the fee margin relative to real assets? You expect the fee margin to kind of reduce as you focus more on that part of the business?

Thanks, Nasib. Let me take maybe the first one and then hand over to again, Stefan and Per for the further questions. The cash target of CHF 3.6 billion to CHF 3.8 billion does not include one-offs. You may have seen we had, in the current one that we report for the current program, in the CHF 3.4 billion, we had CHF 0.2 billion of one-offs included. For the CHF 3.6 billion to CHF 3.8 billion, we do not have one-offs included. Clearly, I have mentioned that with our CFO, I said that as the CEO, if we clearly see opportunities for additional cash to optimize situation, we will do so. But the number CHF 3.6 billion to CHF 3.8 billion does not include one-offs. And maybe handing over to Per and Stefan, just one thing. You have really spotted, and I think we made that also clear on my slide, I think, 10 or something, the growth in asset manager is a bit less cash rich than in the past. And I think Per can maybe elaborate a bit on that before then going into the further questions.

I think I'll start with the segment result and the profitability as obviously, you spotted that there were quite a few factors which led to that 2023 result of asset managers was a bit lower kind of like we did not expect the high increase in interest rates, inflation. We saw a fall in the market prices for liquid assets and illiquid assets, and all this obviously impacted our recurring fee income, which kind of led to the situation that we were in. But now looking forward, we have actually a much more positive outlook. Hence, this is what drives the overall top line for our segment results. When it comes to the cash remittance, that is obviously strongly driven by our project development business. And let me maybe kind of elaborate a bit on the project development business for you so that you get a better feeling for it. Obviously, project development, as any other of the asset classes that we were in during the last 2, 3 years have had a quite hard time. To say the least, we had financing costs going up. We had the construction costs increasing, but also on the exit values of new product developments they kindly fell quite a lot, which means that the profitability there went down. And project development is something that we have been extending and expanding as a business line over the last few years quite substantially. What does that mean? We have project development for our PAM business. We have our TPAM business, but then we also have project developments at -- for our own risk of Swiss Life Asset Managers. And this is part that obviously drives a lot our nonrecurring income that we see. And if this kind of goes down, then we have a direct impact. Now let me say we -- if you look at our portfolio, our portfolio is well diversified across size, across sector and also when a project gets finished and is ready to be sold. And in cycles that we have now, we might sometimes also decide to actually hold on to a project because if we are convinced to achieve a better price later, we much rather prefer to sit on this project, collect the rent and then sell it at a better price somewhere in the future. And this then, of course, leads to that the cash flow can be a bit choppy. So you do have a project that sits on your book and as it gets clearer, the planning permissions and stuff, you have a fair value effect that goes up, but the cash is only created when we exit. And this exit is sometimes at a later stage than planned, means that the cash can be deferred sometimes over several years. If you look at these big project developments, like Griesheim or like a district in Düsseldorf, they expand over decades. And kind of like planning exactly when the cash flow is going to happen for such a project is difficult. Cost-to-income ratio, I think the simple answer for the cost-to-income ratio, if you look at our business mix, our business mix is heavily into real assets. Real assets are difficult to scale. That's why we invest so much in IT. But it is a different mix. It's very labor-intensive. Hence, the cost-to-income ratio is always going to be higher, plus we have invested heavily in our business that too leads to our cost-to-income ratio being higher than maybe you would expect from other competitors.

Okay. Let me stress with regard to project development. In any given year, we had positive returns. So we never had losses in a given year. It was just last year less positive than the previous year, so to speak. Then with regard to the index business. Also here for clarification, we are looking at the index business in Switzerland for Swiss clients. That's tax induced, and foreigners are not in this market or just marginal players. So they are Swiss competitors who are doing it. We are not aiming to go into the index business on a global scale. That's a complete different game. As such, margins are definitely lower than the real assets, but they are highly scalable, which is different to the real asset business. Now in terms of the strategy, in the past, we did not have an index business for our third-party clients. We had passive investments of CHF 10 billion for our balance sheet. So it was not new for us, but it was not available for third-party clients. So that's why we entered into this market. It's a barbell strategy. As Per said rightfully during his presentation, it's about catering the clients and getting more client interaction and cross-selling. So it helps us in that way. It's highly scalable. And the side effect is also that on the active asset management you become, over time, a real active asset manager and not being very close to the benchmark for active fees. So it also is a transitional trend, which we would like to follow. Then coming back also to cost/income ratio. Would we calculate, including the project development gains, which is an add-on, the cost/income ratio would be incredibly low. That's why we just tried to show peers for peers. And if you compare it to competitors, some are lower than us, that's right. The business mix, I mean, with these 2,200 people, roughly 2,000 on the real asset space, and that's not as scalable as the others. It sounds like an excuse, but that's reality.

Thank you, Stefan. Let's stay in the middle with the next question. We'll move right and left afterwards, too.

This is Farooq Hanif from JPMorgan. Firstly, in the chart that you showed on CSM growth, the fact that you wrote grow rather than giving any kind of indications, suggests to me like you're thinking it's going to be quite a low rate. Can you talk about what the biggest driver is there? Is it the new business? Is it the ALM in managing that? My second question is sort of related. You kind of indicated you want to get a higher return from your excess assets. So in one of the slides, you talked about getting better investment return on assets above the liabilities. So are you talking about re-risking here? What's your strategy around that? And then the last question, sorry, it's a bit complicated. So you've given one example in asset management where your cash flow could be a lot higher post 2027 as these development projects complete. Which other areas of the business do you see beyond 2027, where you're really not being as ambitious on remittance ratio, where there's some upside further to that. What I'm trying to get to is the kind of the ratio of cash to earnings. Are we getting to a peak level? Or do you think long, long term, there's still a lot more to do?

Okay. I think the first one, I will give to Marco. The second one, I think you probably can also address, and then we'll probably go for the third one.

Okay. So let's start with the CSM. I think first, we've never gave some guidance on other earnings figures then on the fee results. So even with me being a new CFO, I won't name any numbers in terms of the CSM more than the operating results in the insurance business. The CSM per se, I think what is important to us is that we aim to a goal to grow the CSM operationally. So things, as I said, that we can influence. And on one side, it's our back book, so our in-force management, where we just want to have, let's say, returns over risk-free because we don't manage our portfolio for free. That's one element, this is a bit critical element, we expect business contribution. And the other driver, main driver of the growth is new business. So new business we do within our different insurance segments. As I said, I cannot mention or name any numbers, but -- and you listen carefully to my colleagues talking later on in the afternoon about their segment and what they want to do? Is their insurance business is a [indiscernible], 1 or the other hint, where we're aiming to. And I think the second point here also is the CSM is mainly with Swiss Life is the VFA business we have. So that's the business with the profit sharing policyholder participation. That's a big chunk of our CSM. But besides the CSM, we also have, what we refer to additional contributions. So in non-life in France, the global employee benefit business in International. That's mainly elipsLife. And then that brings me then to the second question, the assets not backing insurance liability at the CSM, and these other contributions, they contribute to stable costs to growing operating result in insurance business. For the second question, these assets, so they do not belong to the tied assets. In Switzerland, for example, they are besides that. There is part of re-risking, I wouldn't say it's the large part. It's a bit of it, then there is a higher underlying asset base for sure. And what will help us to grow that again is the fair values on real estate, where we have seen back in '23, some fair value changes going south, so to say, now within the normalization, we comment on it and we see some further progress coming back into more normal levels that will help us if they just continue to be on a stable basis valued or even maybe slightly increasing to get more out of those assets, not back in insurance liabilities, which will then help also to grow that part of the business.

And maybe coming to your third question, if I understood it correctly that you have fully understood the dynamics and the nature of the project development and your question was more around everything else if I was understanding that correctly.

Yes. [indiscernible] 2027 to catch.

Okay. Yes. And I think the comment we've made was that we said or that I said is that the current plan, Swiss Life 2027, both in terms of fee and cash, also allows for investments in systems and processes and the like that will help us grow the business and its efficiency beyond 2027. I think that's the statement I've made. We are doing investments here that help us beyond 2027. No, I think -- we stay in the middle, Anne-Chantal, ladies first. Sorry, guys.

Anne-Chantal Risold from Octavian. Back on the cash remittance, I mean, since 1 year, we hear local stat is the fundamental for the cash remittance for the different BU. If I look at your main Swiss Life AG, they had a very strong development in terms of profit in the last 2 years. And also there, if you look at your local state equity at the AG, do you have also quite a significant amount that could apparently be streamed. So I just wanted to know from this local stat equity, how much would be fungible to upstream at the holding? And what do you need still for local requirement -- regulatory requirement? That's one. And the second one, on the asset management. You have mentioned significant growth overall. As in the plan, you expect again a very steep AUM growth. There was a number of CHF 170 billion. To me, how also are you increasing your client base, your investor base? Are you also looking outside Europe? Or what is the potential there to increase this?

I think the second question obviously goes to Per. Stefan and I will take the first one, but please go ahead.

Yes. I'll start with the second question. Like we are not going to go outside of Europe. But we have always said that we invest in Europe but we obviously also provide solutions for clients, which come from anywhere in the world, especially kind of on the real estate side, obviously, we are convinced that we have a value proposition there, but like we don't intend to kind of move outside of Europe from that point of view. When it comes to kind of the AUM growth, we have adjusted it, obviously, for the index proposition, which is a volume. So hence, it needs to grow. Nevertheless, it is so that we are strongly focused on our liquid products at the same time as our infrastructure and real estate part. So from that point, we have just added the index business on top of it to achieve this new AUM number that we have provided. Underlying, of course, remains the same. We have ambitious targets to grow. And hence, we, as an active manager, provide solution that we want to kind of in each and every year with our business model show higher growth rates.

Okay. Then let's stay in the first question on the local stat question. Indeed, the local stat was always and is the basis for cash remittances to the holdco. Swiss Life AG is the main opco, and we clearly need also from a statutory perspective, a certain risk capacity, not only in SST, solvency capacity, but also a statutory risk capacity, and there we do not see scope to reduce the statutory equity. That would be to the detriment of the risk capacity on a stat basis. I think we go left, Farquhar.

Farquhar Murray, Autonomous Research. Just 2 sets of questions from me, kind of mainly focusing on the asset management side. If we start particularly on the real estate development book, thanks for the earlier detail there. I think what would help me a little bit is maybe a bit of a conversation about the magnitude. Because if I look at Slide 14 from the asset management presentation, I'm looking at probably an increase in nonrecurring income of about just over CHF 100 million between '27 and '23. I think what might help me just getting a kind of broad sense of how much of that is volume driven in the sense of is driven in terms of kind of real estate development volumes, particularly the own risk component of that being put to work how much of it is maybe revaluation improvements coming in versus a depressed base in '23? And how much of it might be outside of that? I think it's the decomposition of the magnitude there might help me, please. And then more broadly on asset management. Obviously, we've seen a lot of M&A activity in terms of consolidation and push for scale. Your business is quite different in some ways, I would have thought. But I just wanted to get a general sense of what your thoughts are on that consolidation process, whether you feel any impetus from it or any effects from it?

Okay. Maybe the real estate development. Just to give you some numbers, which we have not actively disclosed so far, but they are evident in which area. We are a relevant player on the real estate development market. So including land value and total investment costs, we have a book of roughly CHF 10 billion. The last majority is on the insurance book. That's about roughly CHF 1 billion is with TPAM clients in France and about CHF 2.5 billion are on the book of the Asset Management division and legal entity. Now if you break down the one from our own book. So the -- not the insurance books, our own asset management book, it's about half is logistics and light industrial, about 25% is office and about 20% is living or residential, and 5% is retail. Now it might sound strange because office is having quite a big share. But if you look, for example, the German market, in the German market, about 20% of the office park is taxonomy compliant. And none of the German players is investing there. So if you're willing to take construction risk, you can make a good business out of it. That's what we believe in it. There are other opinions in the market, but we really believe in that because there's a huge shortage of taxonomy compliant office buildings, particularly in the German market, as an example. That's about from the volume, but we are not giving indications when it's coming -- what. So that's we were not going to answer. You can ask as much as you want, but we will not answer it. You will see it when it comes. The other one with regard to M&A. I just will talk about the past, but Per can say what he's doing in the future. The thing is, I mean, we have been growing so much organically. I mean, the 14% we mentioned on the TPAM business, with the PAM business being flat for the future, we always believe that bolt-on transactions, so well-run companies which are helping to expedite our organic growth. That's the key to our success. And if you look in the past, exactly that has worked. So we are not the right ones for, let's say, restructuring cases because we don't have the capacity to do so. So it also will not be transformational acquisitions. That's -- at least we don't have the DNA and we do not have the proof point, but that might change in the future. So what's your opinion?

No. Like I can definitely say that we are very much aligned that the idea obviously is, yes, if there are M&A opportunities out there that makes sense under the parameters that Stefan just mentioned, we will look at that. And we are constantly looking at opportunities. And I said that our focus is on organic growth. But if something comes along that makes sense to us, we will look at it, and we have added to it. And that is part of the past 10 years of history, and that will stay the same. If your question though, went more into the direction of we are looking at M&A, especially selling the asset management business from how other insurance companies have done. If that were kind of the part of your question, then I would say, no. I think we have a highly successful model where we are strongly integrated as an asset manager into our insurance operations. And at the moment, there are no discussions going on in that direction at all. And maybe you would like to confirm that.

And maybe to add, I mean it's not only the 2 gentlemen having this opinion, it's also us at the group clearly having this opinion. I mean we are, and I think that has become very clear, a very different setup in asset management, focus on real assets, and I think that's really what makes us different from other asset managers within insurance groups.

I mean in other words, we are not up for sale. And to be very clear, if you look at what is actually the key of our success, we were able to combine the need of our insurance balance sheet with the needs of our third-party clients for the benefit of both. That's the key of success. And if I look at the real asset part is, we have increased over the last 10 years our book by CHF 56 billion to CHF 88 billion assets under management. I do not know any other market player who has grown in such a path, so why should we give it away to someone else being not that focused as we are. But that's an assumption. We are not for sale on this. You guys are telling something else?

No, no, we just confirm what you say. Now I think for questions, we should, a bit, move to the right, and I look from me, from our side, yes.

It's Kevin Ryan from Bloomberg Intelligence. I just had a quick question around the costs, which at group level, you're going to try and keep absolutely flat. And I was wondering how that squared with your -- what you also said about investing in digitalization. So I've got 2 questions around this, really. How much are you investing in digital? And if the absolute level of cost is going to be flat, what else are you squeezing out to invest in digital?

I think I hand over to Marco, our CFO, for that. And I could imagine that in the afternoon, you will get additional flavors when hearing about the divisional priorities, but I think you can already say a couple of words.

I think I would have said the same that in the afternoon, you will see many interesting examples of digitalization. But our thinking is at group level, and I think that's something you've already had in the earlier program in view of the fee result that we want to grow the results stronger than the income. So the top line leading to efficiency and scalability. And that's something we continue and now put a bit more focus also on that in the insurance area. And how are we going to do that is on one side, I've elaborated to that the 2 questions regarding the CSM and the grow of the assets not backing insurance liabilities to grow the result in the insurance business. And at the same time, we want to have the life absolute costs, our cost within the life insurance business, which is to a large extent that we are doing at Swiss Life, flat. And keeping it flat means also counteracting what's in it, in view of increases. So I mean, if you just would do nothing, there is new regulatory requirements, there is new standards, there is new framework, there is inflation and so on and so on, you name it and cost would just go up. But we're doing on a continuous basis is not just something we start to write off as of today, is counteracting that with investments into digitalization, automation, efficiency gains to lower the level of the cost development compared to the increasing demand and also the higher business we are doing. So I think that's kind of the mechanism we think about it. And then for sure, there is some bigger, larger scale digitalization projects within our business division. So we'll hear about that later on the afternoon where we invest quite some money, some swisses or euros into that project. And I think the important thing there is that we grow the insurance result, grow the fee result and are able at the same time to do and take the capacity to do this investment in digitalization at the same time, which will help us then in the future, mid- to long term, get these benefits back and even scale that may be a bit more. That's the way we think about, but I don't -- going to name some very exact numbers on that. But basically, we do it out of our normal course of how we do the business.

Marco has said that, but let me again point that out. I mean we're talking about the life absolute costs that we plan to have flat. So not the overall cost of the group, just the part of the life. And I mean, just to be frank, we didn't start investing into digitalization. Now with the new program, we have done so clearly before, you have seen examples of Per that was showing how much they have invested over time. I mean, for us, that's part of, let's say, normal course of business here and there, the amounts get a bit bigger for reasons that sometimes systems need an upgrade. Further question, let's probably stay on the right-hand side from our perspective. There seems to be no further question sent or apparently as well. So at least I do not see any further questions from within the room. So I suggest that we go to questions from the web. Okay. There seem to be no questions from the Web. So thanks a lot for your questions, for your interest. I would now like to invite you for a break that will be, I think, outside. We will be back at 3:30 for the second presentation block. We will start with Roman Stein, CEO of Swiss Life Switzerland. Thank you, and enjoy your break. [Break]

Ladies and gentlemen, it's a pleasure to be here today. I'm looking forward to showing you how Swiss Life Switzerland will make a crucial contribution to Swiss Life's 2027 targets. We are proud of our market-leading position in Switzerland. It is built on years of sustainable success and improved performance. We aim to capitalize on this excellent starting position and want our business to further grow in the years ahead. Firstly, we have high growth ambitions for our core insurance business, both in group as well as in individual life. In addition, we will further continue to leverage our back book. Secondly, we are determined to increase our footprint in the private wealth solutions business. And thirdly, we will capitalize further on our strong market access by leveraging our advisory channels and expanding our partnerships. In short, we will once again significantly raise our contribution to the group. Our unique position in the Swiss market is built on solid foundations. We have a strong customer base. We enjoy top end brand recognition. We generate strong customer satisfaction. We have significant market access through owned advisory channels and a wide network of partnerships. In addition to all of this, Swiss Life 2024 enables us to further broaden our product range as well as our advisory services. And last but not least, we have proven that we can adapt quickly to customer needs. On the one hand, that has allowed us to strengthen our core business. But on the other hand, that has also enabled us to develop our business beyond pure life insurance both for the retail and the affluent segments. Swiss Life Switzerland is in a great place. We enjoy a leading position and broad market access. This, combined with favorable changes in the interest rate environment, will allow to fully deliver on our Swiss Life 2024 targets, but it also offers exciting opportunities for further growth. Our business model has been significantly strengthened and expanded with Swiss Life 2024. Let me point out a few highlights. We were able to substantially increase the number of advisers in our advisory channels, which allows us to achieve even better market penetration. We rolled out a complete 1 platform advisory suite for both Swiss Life Select and our tied agent channel. With the launch of Swiss Life Wealth Managers, we successfully established our own dedicated private wealth offering and advisory unit additionally targeting the affluent segment. And finally, we have further focused on our work culture, processes and customer orientation, which prepares us well for future initiatives. Our ambition to play a crucial role in the market for all personal financial assets remains unchanged. Thanks to the Swiss Life 2024 initiatives, we were able to position ourselves favorably not only in our core life and pension business, but also in the market for private wealth solutions. We are convinced that this position in combination with favorable market conditions will allow us to broaden our share in both categories with Swiss Life 2027. What are those favorable market conditions? Firstly, the available short-term assets have risen steadily. Secondly, assets are primarily held in cash and deposits and public interest in investing is still increasing. Thirdly, interest rates have turned positive. And lastly, we see a continued high demand for personal financial advice. Swiss Life has a strong focus on such personal financial advice across all of our advisory channels. This is based on our market research, confirming what customers want when they speak to us. Unlike any other competitor, we offer a variety of comprehensive life and pension products and services as well as private wealth solutions. This puts us in a strong position. We're well placed to benefit from current market conditions with positive interest rates. We are best placed to meet the demand for financial advice with the human face. To leverage our strong market position, we will focus on 4 divisional priorities for 2027. Number one, by growing new business for group and individual clients, we will harness our potential to expand our core business. We are determined to establish private wealth solutions for our retail and affluent customers as an additional core business within Swiss Life Switzerland. Number three, we will continue to make the most of our strong market position for personal financial advice by enhancing advisory power and increasing customer retention and value. Last but not least, number four, we are investing in digitalization as a driver for growth and efficiency. These 4 pillars support all of the group's strategic actions and will contribute to delivering our financial ambitions. We are proud of our undisputed #1 position in the Swiss Group Life business. It will allow us to strengthen our earning contribution by growing both main business lines, the full insurance as well as the semi-autonomous business. We will focus on increasing new business volume in the SME segment by enhancing competitiveness and innovation and seizing opportunities with large enterprises and pension funds through a diverse range of in-house expertise. As illustrated on the right, our goal is to grow in group life business, both in periodic premium in our full insurance business as well as assets under management in our semiautonomous business. This growth enables our significant and sustainable contribution to the group. As illustrated here, we have diligently managed to strengthen the resilience of our full life insurance business. I'd like to give you a few examples. We lowered our conversion rates faster and with more discipline than our competitors, and we will keep this discipline in line with market opportunities. We maintained our statutory yield, which is well above the technical interest rate, and we increased our surplus fund above competition, supported by reserve releases. Taking these steps allows us to write more profitable new business. It will result in lower lapse rates in the SME business, and it will also strengthen our attractiveness for policyholders and shareholders. Let's move on to our Individual Life business. Our modern traditional products are designed to capture the growing demand for appealing private pension solutions and will allow for significant growth. The main levers for accelerated growth in individual lives are the following: to enhance customer access for personal pension planning across all advisory channels to expand digital services in the broker business to grow the 50-plus customer segment and to optimize end-to-end digitalization of our offering as well as our customer support processes. We are confident that these initiatives will allow us to grow our new business alongside new business value, as shown on the right. We expect a good momentum from the positive interest rate environment for our Individual Life business. As you can see on the left-hand side, we have successfully innovated our product range and will continue to do so in the coming years. We are very proud of our ability to proactively shape the product portfolio that ensures the fastest time to market in the industry. This allows us to offer an attractive selling proposition in the positive interest rate environment with modern traditional products that invest into our tied asset pool. With product innovations such as capital plan and annuity plan, we can address the specific needs of the 50-plus customer segments and their pension planning. In addition, our direct investment yield also in Individual Life business is well above our technical interest rate, which shows the strength of our interest margin. Moreover, our current directed reinvestment yield is again higher than the direct investment yield shown in the chart on the right-hand side, supporting the potential for reserve releases. In short, we see a lot of momentum in the private customer business for Swiss Life and have all the ingredients to capitalize on that momentum. We want to grow the footprint of our private wealth solutions. In fact, we want to make it one of our core businesses. Firstly, we aim to do this with current private wealth customers. But secondly, we will also expand the product range we offer our insurance customers. And thirdly, we will harness our own advisory channels to generate new customers. And in addition, we will further distribute our own investment offering via our broker and partner network. Finally, we will expand our services as well as our product range in this space. We will protect, grow and manage investments for private customers. The goal is to considerably increase assets under control up to CHF 9 billion in 2027 and to substantially grow our fee income. Allow me to move on to the advisory channels. As we have successfully done over the last cycle, we will continue to expand our adviser base, which enhances our growth in fees and meets the demand for personalized advice. With Swiss Life 2024, we have laid a very strong foundation to further grow our owned advisory channels with attractive career and compensation models to profit from our powerful advisory process and to expand our industry leading holistic advisory approach via a 1 platform setup. We are committed to further raise efficiency and effectiveness in our advisory channels. We are also committed to offering an even better advisory experience that supports financial self-determination for our customers. We will continue to substantially invest in our digital service platforms, cloud services and artificial intelligence to support these initiatives. We aim to modernize our group life insurance system to achieve greater flexibility and efficiency through digitalization by 2027. We also plan to increase how often we interact with customers by providing additional digital services and touch points supported by artificial intelligence. This paves the way for growth, enhanced efficiency and effectiveness in all our business processes. With Swiss Life 2027, we aim to further enhance our already substantial financial contribution to the group. By '27 we will firstly increase the cash remittance over the period to about CHF 1.9 billion cumulative. Secondly, grow the operating results from insurance business to more than EUR 830 million. Thirdly, increase the fee result to about CHF 70 million. And finally, grow the contractual service margin from new business to more than CHF 370 million. Ladies and gentlemen, let me sum up. We can look back on the current program with pride, but we can look also forward with optimism. Swiss Life 2027 puts the Swiss division on an exciting growth path. We have a dedicated team. We see increasing customer demand. We are well positioned in the market, and the market conditions are favorable. This puts us in an excellent position. We will grow the new business in our core lines. We will increase our market share in wealth solutions for private customers. We will leverage and broaden our advisory channels and partnerships. Thanks for your attention. I will now hand over to Tanguy Polet, the CEO of our French business.

Thank you, Roman. So let's turn to Swiss Life France. Speaking of France, I guess, you have been reading the news. So I can imagine you are asking yourselves how we deal with economic and political uncertainties. Well, not minimizing the situation, we all know that this is not the first time that the French state behaves surprisingly. And time and again, facing these changes, we have adapted our solutions and fine-tuned our business model without changing our overall strategy. And today, as always, in challenging times, our entrepreneurial and high net worth customers, they turn to us more than ever. They want a trusted partner for advice and customized solutions to help them lead a financially self-determined life. So Swiss Life France will pursue its profitable growth strategy through 2027. Let me show you the ingredients of our success. For those of you who were here in 2021, our strategy will happily seem familiar, yet not completely the same. Our key strength is that we are uniquely positioned to address high-value customer segments. Our private insurer business model offers comprehensive insurance, private banking and wealth management solutions to high-net-worth individuals and affluents. We are also a recognized expert in pension, health and disability protection for the self-employed professionals and SMEs, and we have a multi-distribution setup that allows us to provide financial advice, the one that our customers expect and generate profitable growth at the same time. So what's new? Looking towards 2027, we have 5 key priorities: first, to further grow the high net worth individual and affluent segment. Second, to expand our customer base and our share of wallet with a special focus on business owners. Third, to focus on what we call preferred advisers, the one who will help us to increase profitability and market share. Fourth, to sharpen scalability and further increase our efficiency. And finally, at the end of the day, to increase our fee results above EUR 200 million and our cash remittance up to EUR 520 million, EUR 560 million cumulative. Now before I take you through each of these priorities, let me first tell you where we stand today. Yes, for more than a decade, we are consistently outperforming the French market. Our strong track record is clear from our growth, plus 9% per year for the number of targeted customers, plus 9% per year in fee income and plus 20% a year in fee result. Our market outperformance is also measured across our growth in life of 8% per year versus 2% on the French market, our share of unit-linked in our premiums of 63% against 41% for the market and our annual growth of unit-linked life reserves of 15% versus 8% for the market. Overall, we are, therefore, ahead of plan regarding Swiss Life 2024. Our customers are at the heart of our success. For more than 15 years now, we have targeted the wealthiest French households, those that offer the most growth potential by addressing both their private and their professional needs. Let's take a closer look. In France, we have 3 million millionaires, and that number will continue to increase. At Swiss Life France we have attracted these customers for years, and they know us. They constitute 79% of our unit-linked individual life reserves because these customers, they tend to aim for performance in the long term. These unit-linked reserves are the biggest source of our fee results. Now if we consider the professional side, one must keep in mind that business owners represent 50% of France's wealthiest households. Over the past decade, we have also gained market share. Indeed, since 2020, we grew our corporate customers by 4% per year, well above market growth. And important to know, most of our corporate customers are SMEs and self-employed professionals. So we get to interact directly with the business owners. And those business owners, they offer a higher wealth management opportunity. We see it's also in our customer portfolio. Business owners entrust us on average with 36% more life interest assets than others. Let's now have a closer look at our value proposition. By now, you are familiar with our successful private insurance model, a unique combination of a life insurer and a private bank, as highlighted in dark gray on this chart. I will explain how we will even strengthen it with an increased focus on business owners. On the left-hand side, you can see our 2 strategic customer segments, focusing on high-net-worth individuals at the top and SMEs at the bottom. Our specialized distribution networks address those type of customers. At the top, high net worth individuals and affluents, they find us when they speak to their IFA. At the bottom, SMEs find us when they speak to their broker. Besides IFAs and brokers, customers also increasingly find us through our proprietary network. They speak to our highly skilled tied agents supported by enterprise insurance experts or Swiss Life Banque Privée dedicated wealth managers. For each of those 2 customer segments, we have built a state-of-the-art value proposition, which is very attractive for both customers and advisers. Looking now closer at our SME customer segment, we can zoom in on business owners at the left and right of the slide. Those business owners, once they trust us, they tend to be extremely loyal, especially because we provide quality products, advice and services. We will, therefore, address them more at every stage of their private life besides their professional life, including when they sell or transfer their business, and then, often increase their private wealth considerably. Let me now briefly shine the spotlight on structured products. They have been for years an important part of our private insurer value proposition. But since 2020, they've recorded a strong growth on the French market, and that's why everyone has been talking about them. By the way, please note that we don't produce structured products ourselves. Therefore, we do not bear any counterparty risk on our balance sheet. Back to the high impact on our fee results coming from structured products, it is indeed explained by much higher volumes than in the previous plan. But also, by the way, the fees are organized with higher upfront fees at inception. We believe that this outperformance will only be temporary because the market is changing with lower short-term interest rates and new attractiveness in the real estate unit-linked market. We, therefore, do not anticipate an increased contribution from structured products going forward, but rather a stabilization and more recurring fees from traditional unit-linked solutions. Turning now to our new plan, Swiss Life 2027. Let me explain how we will leverage our strengths. This slide shows you how our 3 divisional priorities support group strategic actions and KPIs. First priority, extend the base of our targeted customers. Second, leverage our multi-distribution model. And third priority, sharpen scalability and efficiency. In the interest of time, I will move directly to the next 3 slides that provide all the details. Our first divisional priority is to grow our customer base. Firstly, by strengthening our private interim model for high-net-worth individuals. Thanks to a new dedicated wealth manager support team for our proprietary network, we will increase our footprint in this segment. Secondly, we will sharpen our offering for business owners and SMEs. We will focus on specific professions like pharmacies, notaries, and we will also promote unit-linked group pension products for SMEs. Thirdly, we will increase cross-selling based on data. For instance, we will better detect business owners, also when they are about to sell their business. The KPIs here include the number of high-net-worth individuals and affluent customers that should increase to more than 220,000 by 2027. Our annual fee and commission income, which should nearly double compared to 2020, and the share of unit-linked in our results, which should further increase to more than 62%. To develop our multi-distribution model, we will focus on targeted adviser segments. Our key initiatives in this area include: first, expanding and sharpening our proprietary network. We will accelerate our recruitment of experienced experts as well as young graduates with a strong academic background in wealth management and social protection. Second, we will grow our open network with selected IFAs and brokers. And the emphasis here is on selection based on distribution power, efficiency and customer profiles. And third, we will strengthen our distribution expertise. We would invest in training to make our distribution relationship managers best-in-class. This will help us attract the most experienced advisers in the market. KPIs here include the number of expert tied agents, which should grow to more than 300 in 2027. Our fee result, which shall reach over EUR 200 million, and our new business, CSM, which we anticipate at more than EUR 280 million. Last but not least, digitalization will give us the opportunity to sharpen scalability and efficiency. Our key initiatives here include: first, investment in end-to-end processes. Further investing in APIs will increase scalability and help us process new business volumes more efficiently. Second, we will reshape customer and adviser journeys. By encouraging self-servicing through our B2B and B2C portals, we will be able to dedicate more time to enhancing the digital experience for preferred customers and advisers. And third, we will accelerate our time to market with faster IT developments. This means migrating key applications and tools into the cloud and rolling out relevant AI use cases. Our KPIs here will be to decrease by 20% the number of employees needed to process new business applications, to increase by 20% the usage of our B2C portal, MySwissLife, while further improving customer satisfaction measured by our Net Promoter Score. All these initiatives will clearly contribute to our segment results. Fee results will mainly increase from our private insurer model as well as from our new unit-linked group pension business with SMEs and business owners. Compared to 2023, our important driver is also the significant increase of the operating result in insurance, generated mainly by our rebounds in the nonlife business, and this includes the strong catch-up effect in health and protection from the measures we have implemented in 2024. All in all, Swiss Life France will make a substantial contribution to the group. For the fee result, driven by strong unit-linked and private banking business, we will increase our figure by more than 25%. And for cash remittance, driven by both fee result and higher contribution from health and protection, we will increase our figure by 40%. As a conclusion, we have a unique private insurer model. We are an acknowledged expert in pension, health and protection. We have also a strong brand, and we focus on the high-value customer segments. Our 5 priorities will drive additional profitable growth turning into high fee results and cash remittance. That's Swiss Life 2027 for Swiss Life France. Thank you for your attention, and now, Dirk, the floor is yours for Swiss Life Germany.

Yes. Thanks, Tanguy. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I'm pleased to present the German strategy to you today. We plan to significantly improve our fee result and cash remittance by 2027 by monetizing our existing setup. Our German business model in a nutshell is this. Firstly, we are the leading IFA network with a wide range of product partners in Germany. Our competitive edge is a combination of trusted personal advice and the digital features of our platform. We play to our strength, size, focus on younger generations, successful recruiting of new advisers and the excellence of our platform. Secondly, we have our own insurance business, specialized on pension and disability. The business dates back to 1866. These products also benefit from our in-house IFA knowledge of what advisers want and need. Together, that puts us in a strong position for further growth. Our ambitions for Swiss Life 2027 are to raise our fee result to over EUR 150 million in 2027, and we aim to deliver a total of EUR 320 million to EUR 340 million cash remittance for 2025 to 2027. Before we look into the future, let me recap on our current positioning and how we delivered our Swiss Life 2024 commitments. Let me start with our owned IFA business. Our advisory base has grown to around 6,000. We have more than 1.8 million active customers. We outperformed the market in terms of advisers with a CAGR of 9%, while the market decreased with a CAGR of 2%. As an insurer, with focus on visibility and pension products, we benefit from our owned IFAs. We can co-develop products and have access to the largest untied distribution force in Germany. That enables us to pick favorable products and distribution channels. We increased our gross written premiums by 4% annually, whereas the market only increased by 1%. We are on track to achieve our fee result goals. We are way ahead on our cash remittance targets. So we will deliver on our Swiss Life 2024 ambitions. Our Swiss Life 2027 strategy plays to our strength. In the IFA business, we retain our focus on growing our network and increasing our productivity. We continue to do more of the same with a strong emphasis on more. We continue to invest in the excellence of leaderships. Managers, who attract, recruit and onboard our new advisers, are key for our success. Another priority is to further enhance our digital platform. We want to meet the high expectations of our digitally savvy customers and our advisers who appreciate our market-leading tool landscape. In the insurance business, we were focused on our most profitable product segments and strengthen our in-force management. We will invest substantially in harmonizing our IFA back-office platform. In the insurance business, we will finish remaining modernization task. Altogether, these initiatives support Swiss Life's overall strategic actions and key performance indicators. So why are we confident about our future? Where will the extra fee result come from? Let me start on the left-hand side. First and foremost, we offer what our customers value. In our recent survey, 3/4 of Generation Y and Z mentioned that they value personal advice. They clearly understand the need of old-age provision. You see, when it comes to complex financial questions, even the generation of the digital natives seeks personal advice. Our advisory organization is young. Competition is far older. The difference is more than 15 years. Our advisers understand young customers. They understand their lives, their concerns and what they need and want. Let me change to the column in the middle. Our advisers are claiming more and more market share. In 2017, we had a market share of 3.5%. By 2023, this had risen to 5.9%. This only reflects our life insurance advisory. Please keep in mind that we advise all relevant products needed by private households. We are also good at grasping opportunities, as a brief look back to COVID times reveals. When all kinds of business stopped hiring people, we were able to recruit large numbers of young talents. We made them stay with us, which resulted in a leap in fee result. On the right-hand side, you can see where we are now with an advisory infrastructure of 819 offices and 1.8 million active customers. While many competitors, especially banks are closing branches, we are opening additional offices. In our opinion, this is an excellent launch pad for more growth. To make the most of the vast German market potential, you need some key ingredients. We have all of them. Our purpose is to enable people to lead a financially self-determined life, and we do. Our customers value our services guiding them through complex financial matters and making their lives better. And they rate our services with very high net promoter scores. As you can see, we are well above market average. Without a powerful advisory organization, this would not be possible. Our advisers cross-sell to over 7 contracts per customer in all product segments that are relevant to private households. This is more than twice as high as the industry average. Our digital approach is in demand. Pure online competitors have not met expectations. Customers want what we offer. This, of course, is only possible with a standardized process and a scalable platform that is designed to support advisory success. For example, by providing more than 100,000 data-driven consulting triggers per month. You also need a product shelf that is market-leading. With our best-select approach, we allow our advisers to pick the best solutions for their customers. As you can imagine, it makes a big difference from a customer perspective if you can choose from thousands of products and more than 250 product partners. And best for last, with all these assets, we have so far managed to gather 6% of the German life insurance market. Or as we see it, 94% are still out there. So let me elaborate on the advisory platform that is key to success for us. To create tailor-made advisory for retail customers is demanding. We use a standardized advisory process with customizable elements. Nowadays, both customers and advisers expect digital interfaces and convenient online tools. That is why we are constantly sharpening our competitive edge and continue to invest in our processes and applications. With Swiss Life 2021, we enjoyed ideal timing for digitalizing our advisory process. When COVID broke out and lockdown slowed all kinds of business down, our advisers were ready to do their job. We had a video advisory tool, digital signature and so on. With Swiss Life 2024, we completed our digital chain and added new features that are our customers' demand, services that resonate extremely well with our customers. With Swiss Life 2027, we will go even further. We modernize our back-office systems and update our front-office tool landscape. In addition, we will implement a holistic data strategy that enables us to make best use of the fantastic data we are gathering from our customers. For the reasons mentioned, our Swiss Life 2027 growth ambitions for our owned IFAs must be high. We will continue to expand our adviser network to over 7,200 and our fee income to over EUR 1 billion. There are 3 strategic areas. Firstly, we will grow our owned IFA network and push productivity. We will further enlarge our original footprint, and we will invest in the leadership skills of our sales managers, especially on a team management level. We are in the people's business. Our manager capabilities are crucial for our success, now and in the future. One example how we can raise our productivity is our trigger management. We will further improve it with more and more automatically generated leads. Secondly, we will enhance our digital customer-centric platform. Our platform will remain one of our USPs with market differentiating attractiveness for advisers and customers. As a strategic move towards online Athene customers, we will open our existing customer portal for noncustomers. We intend to increase our revenue by gaining new customers in a digital way, too. Thirdly, the modernization of our IT infrastructure. Existing back-office systems are limiting us from further efficiency gains and also increase time to market. It is a proof for our strong business model that we can finance such investments out of our own P&L, while showing such a strong fee result increase in 2027. However, it leads to the effect that the fee result will be around 2024 levels in 2025. The benefits of these investments will come back-end loaded within the program and beyond. With our insurance franchise, we foster our attractive pension and disability businesses. Our strong track record in the pension business will be supported through the implementation of further digital services, for example, in the occupational pension area. That makes the handling of the business much easier for corporates as well as intermediaries. We want to secure our positioning in the disability market and our consortia business with further improvements, such as additional supporting services for our intermediaries during the application process. When it comes to increasing our contractual service margin, the major impact comes from a thoughtful margin management of our new business and disciplined asset liability management. But we will also improve our in-force management along the dimensions of sales channels, campaigns and customer support, including lapse prevention. After a successful modernization of our IT back-office, as part of Swiss Life 2024, we can now finalize the renovation and harvest efficiency gains. This leads to an improved life absolute cost per gross written premium ratio over the next strategy period. Our targets are the fee result will rise by 30% from 2023 to 2027 by 2 main drivers, increasing the number of advisers and making them more successful by growing their productivity. Cash remittance will raise by 40% in the same time period. On an organic base, you can witness the increasing cash generating power of the German division. So let me conclude. We have all the ingredients it takes to make the most of the substantial German market potential. Customers appreciate our personal advice based on digital tools. The circumstances are supportive, both in terms of competition as well as from a pension gap perspective. With our IFA business, we managed together 6% of the German life insurance market so far. The entire German management team is eager to win more. Our insurance business will continue to outgrow the market regarding gross written premiums while improving its efficiency ratios. As I said at the beginning, we plan to significantly improve our fee result and cash remittance by 2027 by monetizing our existing setup. Thank you very much. And so now I hand over to my dear colleague, Theo Iaponas, the CEO of Swiss Life International.

Thank you, Dirk. So ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. Swiss Life International is on track to successfully deliver the Swiss Life 2024 program. We're also very well positioned to make a growing contribution to the new program. In International, we have 2 lines of business: Global Solutions, our life insurance business in key European and Asian markets; and the International IFAs, our financial advisory businesses in the U.K. and Central and Eastern Europe. In the new program, we will focus on 3 strategic initiatives: first, strengthen solutions and services in attractive segments. Second, grow insurance distribution and financial advisory networks. Third, enhance operational efficiency and scalability. Where will these initiatives take us? By 2027, we aim to double the operating result insurance business to a range of EUR 55 million to EUR 60 million and grow the fee result by more than 40% to EUR 100 million or higher. With this, we will generate a cumulative cash remittance between EUR 240 million and EUR 260 million over the next 3 years. As mentioned, we have 2 lines of business, Global Solutions and the International IFAs. Global Solutions operates in key European and Asian markets. We focus on employee benefits. In parallel, we offer solutions for private customers. The business has proven expertise in underwriting and managing risk and pension plans. It serves their respective markets with insurance carriers in Luxembourg, Liechtenstein and Singapore. The business, driven primarily by Global Employee Benefits, has increased premium more by more than 40% since 2020. Our International IFAs provide comprehensive financial advice, covering investment, pension, insurance as well as mortgage and real estate brokerage. The business posted fee and commission income growth of more than 25% since 2020 due to a growing number of advisers and a shift to higher-margin advisory solutions. We are on track to successfully deliver on our 2024 targets, both in terms of fee result and cash remittance. We expect both business lines to grow significantly until 2027. Our key focus is to further grow in our existing markets by strengthening our solutions and services, by growing our B2B distribution relationships and financial advisory networks and by further scaling our platforms and increasing our operational leverage. We have a strong foundation to further grow our insurance and fee businesses, thanks to strong local market presence, well-established distribution relationships and scalable business models. Let me now take a closer look at the strategy for the 2 business lines, starting with Global Solutions. Global Solutions mainly serves corporates with employee benefit solutions covering risk, pension and health. In addition, the business provides solutions for private customers. Global Solutions is a well-established B2B business with a proven track record, serving more than 2 million of insured lives, managing more than EUR 21 billion of assets under control and having direct access to over 500 multinational corporates via the Swiss Life network. The solutions are offered in the respective markets via our insurance carriers in Luxembourg, Liechtenstein and Singapore. For the coming years, we expect higher demand for our insurance solutions given the protection and pension gap, the increasing importance of occupational pension schemes as well as a growing private financial wealth. In a nutshell, we will accelerate profitable growth by focusing on a wider offering, deepening distribution and increasing scalability. Firstly, we have proven offerings in risk, accident and health, which we want to expand further to profitable segments in existing markets. For example, in the Netherlands, we see opportunity in extending our capacity for corporate pension solutions as well as entering the short-term disability market. In Italy, we see opportunity in offering health solutions in combination with mortality and disability. Secondly, we will grow and deepen the distribution relationships we have with our business partners, such as brokers, managing general agents and banks. For example, by offering bundled solutions to brokers targeting specific segments and by offering preferred terms to managing general agents with a balanced product mix and high-quality standards. Finally, we will strengthen the operational efficiency and scalability. We will do this by further aligning processes and systems across locations and by structuring the partner and customer experience through further digitalization of front-end tools. Let's now turn to our international IFAs located in the U.K. and Central and Eastern Europe. In the U.K., we operate under the Chase de Vere brand, and we have more than 300 advisers. Over the last 3 years, the business was able to grow both its asset base and its discretionary offering. The business has a strong brand and an excellent advisory force. In addition, the business has key affinity partnerships in the medical field, which gives us unique access to this customer group. In Central and Eastern Europe, we have more than 1,500 advisers serving retail and affluent customers in Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. We offer comprehensive financial planning covering investment, pension, insurance, mortgage and real estate brokerage. With this offering, we are a lifetime partner to our customers, providing them with advice to lead a financially self-determined life. Looking forward, financial advice will be even more relevant, driven primarily by the unsustainable public funding of European pension systems, creating need for individual pension and investment advice and the financial environment, which is becoming increasingly complex. We aim to grow the International IFAs, thanks to 3 growth initiatives. The first initiative is to strengthen recurring fee income by expanding services to attractive segments such as affluent customers and corporate business. In the U.K., we will broaden the scope of the advisory logic and further grow their asset base. In CEE, we will integrate investment solutions more prominently into the advisory logic. The second initiative is to increase adviser productivity. Lead generation is a key point for advisers. We intend to strengthen our capability to generate leads centrally to even further support our advisers and strengthen our profitability. For example, we can do that by leveraging our existing affinity partnerships. We are today able to offer our customers and advisers flexible journeys, where interactions take place physically or digitally, whatever is more convenient and efficient for the client or the adviser. Expanding these digital tools and capabilities for customers and partners is a key element of our initiative to increase adviser productivity. The third initiative is related to our adviser network, which increased by more than 30% since 2020. We see room to get to over 1,900 advisers by 2027. Winning advisers remains a key growth driver. We will do that by driving recruitment at all levels of the organization with a focus on promoting the adviser profile, job profile and creating new entry-level roles. Let me conclude with an outlook on our major financial targets for 2027. We aim to grow the fee result by more than 40% to EUR 100 million or higher with strong focus on recurrent fee income. Both lines of business, Global Solutions and the International IFAs contribute to this recurring fee income and fee result growth. In line with our strategy, we expect a growing share of risk business on our own balance sheet in the employee benefit lines of business. By 2027, we aim to double our operating result insurance business to a range of EUR 55 million to EUR 60 million versus the financial year 2023. Our businesses aim to deliver a cumulative cash remittance between EUR 240 million and EUR 260 million over the next 3 years. Ladies and gentlemen, I look with confidence at the next strategic program. Swiss Life International has all the right ingredients to achieve this planned growth, strong brands and market positions, well-established distribution channels for our solutions and an excellent team that has a drive and the discipline to achieve growth and manage the business efficiently. Our people and the relationships we have with our customer and partners are at the heart of this program. I would like to say a big thank you to everyone involved in writing the next chapter of Swiss Life International. Now, together with Matthias and my colleagues, we are ready to take your questions.

Thank you, Theo. We'll now have our second Q&A session regarding the business division Switzerland, France, Germany and International. Here with me on stage are Roman Stein, Tanguy Polet, Dirk von der Crone and Theo Iaponas. As before we start with questions here from the audience in the room. Who goes first?

It's Farooq from JPMorgan. My first question is in the semiautonomous pensions business in Switzerland, what's your profit contribution? And will you see increasing margin as the scale of that business grows over time? My second question is with a kind of a macro environment of lower short-term rates and higher long-term rates, how is that impacting your IFA business? On the one hand, banks may compete more for commission income. On the other hand, falling rates gives you an advantage in growing AUM by attracting deposits from banks. So I just wanted to understand that dynamic. And then lastly, going to France and the drama therein, what do you think is kind of the outlook for personal taxation that might hinder or help you in the next few years?

Thanks, Farooq. Let's start with the drama in France, Tanguy, before then going to Switzerland.

Yes. So the projects the current government has is to increase the tax for the large corporates, at least the ones that have a higher than EUR 3 billion turnover. So this hits us, Swiss Life France indeed. It's a 10 points additional tax compared to the 2023 tax rate for 2024 already and then a 5% increase in the tax rate compared to 2023 for 2025. So for sure, this will have an impact on our net results and afterwards on our cash remittance. So this tax effect is already included in our plan. The good thing is that this does not hit the SMEs, which are really the type of customers we target. So this is not putting any difficulties in our wish to further develop this customer segment. And for rich people, they were thinking of increasing some taxes as well to force people to pay at least 20% tax in France. But with the current level of taxes in France, this only hits a very few number of people, more ultra-high net worth individuals than the high net worth and affluent customers that we are aiming at. So that would be my answer relating to tax in France.

So on the question of Switzerland, semiautonomous business, I think we manage the business in the group life from an overall perspective. So we are certainly making sure that we meet our hurdle rates and that we write this business cash efficient -- capital efficient. I don't think we see increasing margins over time. The market is quite competitive, as you would think also, specifically on the premium side. Cost premium, there is competition, which is quite substantial. So I am not -- don't expect an increase in margin.

Would you like to say something about the question on the short-term rates and the impact on the IFA business? Maybe you can elaborate it. And while taking that question, on the point on the AUM, I mean, if the semiautonomous business grows, that is clearly a benefit also for Stefan Machler in the TPAM business and in the future for payer.

Yes. On the IFA, I think you were referring specifically on the private wealth services because our IFA network, certainly around Swiss Life Select, for example, is also very active in insurance and health. But on the IFA, with a focus on private wealth services, currently, I mean, we've started this business in the retail space a long time ago. We've only gone into the affluent segment about 2 or 3 years ago with the last program, so this is now on a substantial growth path, but I don't see a change currently yet because of the shift in the interest rates.

This guy in the middle, Nasib, maybe.

Nasib Ahmed from UBS. Firstly, on kind of different businesses, different models, but also similar in a way, are there any learnings that you can learn over the next 3 years from your different models? For example, in Germany, you've got a biggest IFA network, but you don't produce nonlife insurance. In France, you do nonlife insurance. And also looked at the NPS scores in Germany were twice the NPS scores in France. Any learnings you can learn to kind of match those 2 businesses or other businesses across your different segments? And then secondly, on regulation, advice business in the U.K., you've got a U.K. business, a lot of regulation happened there. I think EIOPA is looking at cost of products on unit-linked retirement in retail investment products as well. Any potential issues from that EIOPA read across on regulation? And then finally on Switzerland, Group Life, full insurance products, I think some of your competitors are allowing lapses and kind of backtracking from the full insurance product given everyone is focusing on semiautonomous, but you seem to still growing it. What is the rationale for you guys being a little bit different to some of your competitors there?

Thanks for the question. I may say a couple of words on your first question and then ask my colleagues to join in. I think the second one on regulation in the U.K. is clear then for Theo. And the third, obviously, the Swiss one for Roman. And let me maybe go back to what I said in my speech, I mean, customer proximity is key, and that's why we are and will be organized multi-divisionally, so be close to the customers because regulations are very specific for each and every market, be it tax, be it -- you name it. And that's for us the reason why we have these strong divisions if you wish. Clearly, our colleagues, they all will tell about that, are in continuous exchange at not only at the exp level, but more importantly, also on the operational level to learn from each other how to do things here and there and really to have a fruitful, let's say, exchange on ideas that actually in the past have led to products not being transferred one-to-one from a division to another, but the spirit, the idea to have transferred from one division to another. And maybe I think you mentioned the NPS, I think Tanguy, Roman and Theo, you talked about them, maybe you can elaborate a bit on that, starting with Roman may be there.

Well, I think on the NPS, what's really important to see is that different cultures work differently. So the answers are going to be different in different cultures. I think, therefore, the value -- comparing the value between different countries is a very difficult feat. But certainly, we look at each other's way about going to interpret the changes from 1 year to another and see what works to increase the NPS and what didn't work. So that would be how we profit from each other.

Tanguy, do you have something to add? Maybe...

Perhaps you, Dirk, go first.

Yes. Maybe just to give a look into our internal world, so we have a so-called group distribution Board hosted by Roman Stein and me where we have a structural debate over how to drive the business, how to recruit newcomers, how to push productivity, how to start the year, et cetera. So it's very concrete with all the different business units in this group distribution Board, and this is, as you said, very fruitful.

Yes. Yes, indeed, even though we have a strong multi-local strategy we have those Boards that help us indeed in exchanging good practices, and I'm heading the Group Product Board, for example, in which all the business units are present to really see how we can take advantage of solutions that work in one market or another. And back to the NPS, of course, there is a cultural bias, and I would not be surprised that the French bias is lowering the NPS. But looking at my presentation, there was an important footnote relating to the NPS. It's not only in our case, in France, the NPS, let's say, adviser that we measure, i.e., the satisfaction of the customer after having met an adviser and getting a solution from this adviser, we also measure it along the whole value chain because we have afterwards aftersales services, claims management and so on and so forth. And these moments are from time to time. And certainly, when you are also in the nonlife business, in the health and protection business, moments where the customer satisfaction is lowering, the first very good impression of having found a solution. So having such an NPS around 40 is compared to our competitors in France quite a very good level.

So, thanks, then we move to the U.K. to IFA regulations.

So there are different indeed regulations in U.K., namely the consumer duty. From our perspective and given our business model, we find that more as an opportunity than a constraint. The main reason for that is that since the commission ban, if I remember correctly, in 2013, we have changed the business model to be really independent with very transparent pricing with no exit fees. And that, given our size, it puts us in a very good position to digest business that other IFAs cannot do at the moment. So yes, it is extra work, but we do see that more as an opportunity rather than a constraint.

Thank you, Theo.

Yes, on the full insurance business. So I think it's important to note, there is a demand in the market. There is a specific demand around the SME segment. I think with increasing uncertainty, there is also more demand for certainty and guarantees. You asked why we're different than the competitors, so it's not our place to comment on the strategies of the competition. But what we can say is that we are in a strong position. We've, I think, demonstrated that we can manage this through the interest rate cycle, and we are able to manage the overall Group Life business, like I said, in a way so it meets our profit hurdles and is capital efficient.

And maybe to expand on that and to be a bit more explicit than Roman, we have received this kind of questions already 6 years ago. You may recall that, and we have shown that back then in terms of reserving levels, asset yields and the like, we were in a different position. And today, you have seen that we are still in a different position. Roman has shown how much surplus fund we have per actively insured person, what the conversion rates are and the like. So I think we operate the business a bit differently, and apparently, we come to different conclusions. Next question. Farquhar?

Farquhar Murray, Autonomous Research. Just 2 questions for me. Firstly, on the Private Wealth Solutions in Switzerland, the assets under control of about -- kind of look unlikely to make the CHF 6.5 billion target that we've originally set for 2024. Equally, it is growing. It was actually a new focus strategically for the group, so it may just be taking longer. But I just wonder if you could explain the reasons for the shortfall on that target and perhaps explain what the -- what's going to make the difference this time around in terms of accelerating to the new targets? And then secondly, turning to Germany, you mentioned our further strengthening of the in-force management. I just wondered if you could give some examples concretely of what that might be. And is that purely a CSM-type exercise or might it have some cash remittance implications as well?

So, if I may, I'll start with the question around Private Wealth Solutions and CHF 6.5 billion assets under control. I think it's important to sort of distinguish between 2 different aspects of that. One of them, and you mentioned it yourself, it was a new initiative for the group. And we've started to build out a lot of momentum. But yes, it was a bit slower than initially planned. But on the other side, I think, what you can also see that, as the interest rates have come back a lot quicker than what we had in our plans, we saw a steep increase in growth in our individualized single premium business, which to some extent also has a little bit of a complimenting effect. What is different now is I think we've built out the setup. We've put in place the processes and the structure. We have opened now 8. By the end of the year, we'll have opened 8 locations for our Private Wealth Business focused on affluents. So the whole dynamic, I think, is taking up speed, and we're confident that we can get to the around CHF 9 billion by the end of the period.

Then going to Germany.

Yes. The -- ultimately, the target for the in-force management is, of course, to safeguard or to increase CSM, but it's, of course, mainly affected with the business. And what we are doing with the in-force is a bundle of things, like we were watching our sales channels very strictly, what can be learned there, about lapse rates, what can we do for our campaigns and so on. So it's a bundle of products out of the in-force management to safeguard the gross written premiums, and ultimately, the CSM.

And if I may add, and over time, it will obviously accrue also to the cash, but not as immediately as you will see it in the CSM. Next question. Sorry. David?

David from Bank of America. Just 2 questions on France, please. Firstly, on the share of unit-linked in new business, it's already very high. Is this something that you expect to grow even further? Or is it mostly seeing volume growth coming from the shift that you're talking about into more SMEs, more high net worth? And then also a bit linked to that, are you seeing a pickup in flows going outside of France into Luxembourg, for instance? And the second question on France is on the non-life rebound, which is a driver of the pickup in earnings. I thought most of the rebound was -- had already been seen in 2024. Should we expect more from non-life from next year?

Okay. So indeed, our plan in getting more life inflows, and by the way also, net new assets within the private banking area will strongly be volume based. We would have increased volumes, but also even an increase of our share of unit-linked solutions. We see that the type of customers we address and the more we go the direction of the high-net-worth individuals and with our wealth managers' support team for proprietary network, we will address even more richer customers. Those ones they really want to have more performance. And so they are ready to take more risk. So this will even increase in the new premiums, but also in the new business and at the end of the day, in our reserves, the share of unit-linked. So this will definitely help also to increase our fee income tomorrow, not only the volume, but also the share of unit-linked within those volumes. So relating to outflows from France to, for example, Luxembourg, this is not a phenomenon that we already see now, but we already saw that in the past, so perhaps it can repeat in the future. We have developed by the way for years, and this is also something very strong in the French market, a fully tax transparent solution that is proposed to our customers, and that is also very transparent to the French tax authorities while working with our colleagues in Luxembourg. So we have the possibility if a customer wants to have part of his assets outside France, but still in Europe and still under his control and the French authorities' control because this remains taxed in France. We have such solutions also to propose. So the important point for us is to keep the contact with the customer, and this is something that we have developed for years now. Now relating to the non-life rebound, indeed, we have launched in 2023 after having been hit by, let's say, the massive claims development on the health and protection business in France, not only Swiss Life France, but the whole French market was hit in 2023. We have launched a strong action plan to really have a rebound and come back to the expected profitability in this business already in 2024. And this rebound has taken place from a negative figure in 2023. We are about to reach a positive figure, high double-digit figure in 2024. So the rebound is there, and we are happy to build on this rebound for the next strategic period. And indeed, this is part of the increase of our operating result insurance business that you have seen in my slides.

Thanks, Tanguy. Further questions. Yes, Farooq.

Sorry, just a very quick question. Farooq from JPMorgan. You gave new business CSM targets for some of your business, but not all of them. So you're talking about international, mainly in Switzerland. Does that mean in the other markets you're not seeing it as an important driver of growth? Are you assuming sort of flat new business profit there? I just wanted to get some sort of steer on the group new business expectation for new business CSM.

We clearly have growth ambitions across all the business divisions. I hope you could get a sense of that. I think specifically for International, we don't have a new business target in CSM. There's a very simple reason for that. The business that Theo and his team writes doesn't create a CSM. That's an accounting thing, and for example, that's the reason why we didn't have a CSM new business target there. So we really want to grow new business across all the business divisions. Any further questions? I see that -- I think there's no question in the room. Do we have any questions from the web? Apparently, none. So I think -- thanks a lot again for your interest. I think that brings me now to the closing of the day. Ladies and gentlemen, before moving now to the Apéro, let me say a couple of concluding remarks. With Swiss Life 2027, we have a clear strategic program for the next 3 years. We will, again, put the customer at the heart of what we do. We'll leverage and enhance our advisory power, and we'll continue to increase operational efficiency. Each and every division will contribute to making this program successful, pursuing specific priorities and initiatives. By doing so, we will build on our strength, be it our strong brand, our excellent local market positions and our discipline in executing and delivering on promises. I look forward to embarking on this journey with my team. With Swiss Life 2027, we also raised the bar with, again, higher financial targets. We will grow the fee result to above CHF 1 billion by 2027 for the first time in our history. We increased the return on equity target to 17% to 19%, valid in each and every year. We will strive to remit more cash to the holding cumulatively CHF 3.6 billion to CHF 3.8 billion over the next 3-year period. We will continue to deliver an attractive cash return to shareholders by increasing the target for the dividend payout ratio to above 75%. And we have ambition to increase dividends per share. Moreover, we will launch a new share buyback of CHF 750 million this December. It will run for 18 months. Swiss Life 2027 takes us a step higher on our success path as we strive to reach new heights for earnings and cash returns to shareholders. This is what my team and I are committed to do. With this, I would like to thank you for joining us today, for your interest and your questions. Have a nice evening, and enjoy Apéro. Thanks.