UnipolSai Assicurazioni S.p.A. (UNI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon. This is the Chorus Call conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the presentation of first half 2023 consolidated results of Unipol and UnipolSai. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Matteo Laterza, CEO of UnipolSai and General Manager of Unipol. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning to everyone, and thank you very much for staying with us on 11 of August. Before opening the floor to the question, let me make some statements and remarks on our results. I will start, as usually, from non-life business, where in terms of top line, we achieved a very good growth. I have to say that the numbers don't reflect in full our distribution potential due to the motor installments, sale of products above all in motor that we started at the beginning of the year. So the performance was very good, both in motor and in non-motor. In particular, very good, the performance that we achieved in the health business, where we started to distribute UnipolSai product, both through the agent distribution network and bancassurance. And in particular, bancassurance was the most important driver of growth in terms of top line. In terms of technical profitability, there were some negative impact, as you were able to see in the numbers, both in motor where we have been commenting about the trend in motor for several quarters. We have the increase of frequency and also the increase of the average cost of claims. At the same time, we are following and executing our strategy of repricing. We are on track in the execution of the strategy. We start to see some positive implication coming from the trend of frequency. So some light at the end of the tunnel. But nevertheless, we will continue to pursue our strategy of repricing of our product. Concerning non-motor, we had some negative impact coming from natcat, in particular, the application and losses coming from the fluid in Emilia-Romagna that were priced at EUR 110 million in the numbers of the first half of the year. In July, we continued to have some negative impact coming from natcat in particular in the area of, again, Emilia-Romagna, Veneto and Lombardy. In life, we had very positive results in terms of top line, first of all, where, again, we had some positive contribution coming from pension funds where we acquired 3 new mandates, but also in the traditional business, the trend was very good, above all, again, in the bancassurance distribution network, but also in our agents distribution network. We have positive net inflows that were able to contribute to increase the yield of our asset in life. We decreased the average minimum guarantee of our portfolio, and we were able to maintain a stable profitability for the equity shareholder in life. We had positive contribution coming from the CSM creation in life. And in terms of new business value, we maintained a profitability above 4%. One of the main drivers of this contribution, both in Life and in Non-Life come from investments. This is a natural and normal implication coming from the increase of interest rate and the positive performance of financial market. And as a consequence of this trend, we were able to improve the contribution of investments of the first half numbers in Unipol Gruppo and Unipol side. Positive implication come also in the -- our capital position. The main driver is the contribution of the result, but also the positive contribution coming from the trend of financial market and also coming from the decision to decrease our investments in the equity component of the portfolio as a consequence of the prosecution of the upward trend in equity financial market. Finally, I have to stress that as you were able to see in Unipol Gruppo results reflect the effect of bank's extra profit tax that was announced by the Italian government at the beginning of this week. Consequently, we decided to adjust the contribution of BITA results as they were approved by the Board of the bank last week before the announcement by deducting the total number by EUR 28 million. And so the contribution has changed from EUR 141 million to EUR 113 million in order, again, to reflect these very important news that came at the beginning of this week. Having said that, I'm here with Enrico San Pietro, and we are ready to answer to all your questions. Thank you very much.

This is the Chorus Call conference operator. [Operator Instructions] The first question is from Michael Huttner from Berenberg.

Lovely results as always, and well done for taking the EUR 28 million upfront. I had lots of questions, but I'll start with 3. So the first one is on your dividend and you might say it's a bit early, but I'm always interested in cash. The second is on Motor pricing. And the third one is on the Life profit. So on the dividend, you had the strategy put in place on the 3-year plan last year to uplift the dividend from Unipol Gruppo and may say, actually cut the dividend at UnipolSai. As a result or maybe as a result, I don't know the discount to the sum or the part is down. So it was 37% when we started covering the stock, it's now 30%. So the strategy is working, and hopefully, it continues to work. But I was hoping, given the very strong solvency and results that we're also seeing UnipolSai, that the dividend could be reinstated back to the old level, which is what is also in consensus. I just wondered if it's too early to talk about that. The second is on Motor pricing. So I think Speaking to your wonderful IR team, the tariff since you started raising pricing in November, promoters up 15%. And I just wondered, net of rebates, what the figure would be and when we will see that benefit fully played out in the numbers after the usual lag. Which quarter could we look forward to? And then third is on the life. Life was the area where I was positively surprised. I'm positively surprised particularly in life. And I just wondered if you can add a little bit to your comment saying about investment results and things.

Thank you to you, Michael. I will start from the Life profit, then I will comment on the dividend, and I will leave to Enrico to discuss and to answer on pricing strategy in motor. Concerning Life, we had a quite positive result in the first half of the year. The balance between first quarter and second quarter is in a short-term sense unbiased versus the second quarter compared to the first. It is mainly due to the contribution coming from investments between the first and the second quarter. There are some technicalities in order to justify this difference above all, concerning how we assess and we proceed to calculate the mirroring in the real estate funds, in particular. But I don't want to be complicated in the answer. What I can tell you is that what you saw in the first half of the year, he's the normal evolution overall of the profit in life. And so in order to have an idea of what will be the result in life, you just can multiply by 2 the number of the first half. Of course, it will be in a normal environment in financial market as it has been the environment of the first half of the year. Concerning the dividend of UnipolSai, the dividend of UnipolSai, I said also concerning the last quarter, it's quite early to discuss about our dividend policy. We are still in the first half of the year. So I don't have any further comments to add something on what you asked. I can tell you only that we disclosed in the announcement of the industrial plan some financial KPIs that we want to achieve at the end of the industrial plan, both concerning Unipol Gruppo and concerning UnipolSai. And today, we are fully in the condition to deliver all this KPI, hopefully, for UnipolSai dividend to over deliver the numbers. But again, it is too early to assess and to add something more on that. Having said that, I leave the floor to Enrico for motor pricing.

Good morning, Michael. So what we had to face in the second part of 2022 was an increase in the average cost of the claim, so caused by inflation and also a rebound of loss frequency going back to almost to the normal level of per pandemic period. So we had to increase our tariff. On average, what happened in November was 10%, 15%, adding another 5% in February. And in the last months, we had further increases that put the renewal average price around 20% higher than the year before. Of course, the average doesn't represent what happens to the single customer. So there is a very well-differentiated pricing strategy. So the higher risk are receiving higher renewal increases. And this produced a change in the portfolio composition that is giving us the first benefit on loss frequency. So what's happening now basically is in the last month that the average premium is increasing around 11%. And on loss frequency, we are beginning to see some slight impact of those pricing strategies. So it will take time to see the full asset that will be very significant. But I think that we will begin to see an improvement in the motor profitability in the second part of 2023. Of course, we need to cover not only the loss frequency but also the average cost of the claim. That is, of course, increasing. But on this, we have some good news related to the percentage of the claims in which bodily injuries are involved. So this very important KPI is improving. So in the end, we are, as Matteo said, looking at the execution of our strategy and we are confident to be able to reach our targets.

The next question is from Elena Perini from Intesa Sanpaolo.

Thank you, Matteo, for this presentation. And then I would like to ask you 2 questions. The first one is about life profitability. So it seems that your indication provided with the former accounting principles of around EUR 280 million to EUR 300 million it is reasonable. If we consider that you had recorded EUR 145 million in terms of pretax profit. And you said that we can multiply it by 2. I would like just to have a confirmation in this respect. And then another question, we're probably involving also Enrico. It is about the new impact of bad weather in Italy, especially in July. So have you already had some indications of the potential impacts could they be higher than the ones that you had for the flat Emilia-Romagna? So if you can add something more on this, it could be useful. Thank you very much.

Thank you to you, Elena. As you can remember, we always said that the application of the new accounting principle would have not changed a lot to our business model and applying this statement to life. It is a clear confirmation on what we said before. What matters is finance, how much money we get in net of claims and costs. And we always said that the business model in Life can support our profitability in the were about of a range between EUR 250 million, EUR 300 million. And this is what is happening at the end. The financial markets are performing quite well. The quality of the new business production is very good, both in UnipolSai and in Arca Vita, which is the JV that we have with Banca di Roma and Banca Popolare di Sondrio. We are creating value in terms of new business value and also in terms of stock of CSM. And so as I said before, I'm quite confident that the number that you saw in the first half of the year can be a good proxy of the final number at the end of the year, of course, by multiplying it by 2. This is the main point. Having said that, I leave the floor to Enrico on the most difficult question on natcat.

So as you know, the third quarter is usually the quarter in which are more concentrated with related events every year it happens. This year, the third quarter began in a very bad way because the hailstorms on several regions in Italy, in the northern part of Italy are now estimated in an amount that exceeds EUR 200 million for us, counting both property business and motor other damages business. So in the end, we will be able, at the end of the quarter to understand how much this will affect our overall results. Yes, of course, this is a figure that is gross reinsurance. The reinsurance schemes are quite complicated to explain in this moment, but we are calculating some recoveries of around EUR 50 million, roughly speaking.

So if I understand correctly, the net impact of July events could be around EUR 150 million.

Yes. Roughly speaking, yes. And of course, we have to wait for the end of the summer season to understand how much will affect the overall results.

Okay. If I may, I would add another quick question about your good debt on net inflows in the first half as regards life because also the traditional policies were positive, slightly positive. So I don't know if you can add some comments on these figures...

Yes, Elena, it is an issue that we have been addressing on since the end of last year where we noticed the starting of the increase of lapses, both in bancassurance and in agent distribution network. Of course, starting from that point, we pushed our commercial distribution network by launching new products, also by making some investments in terms of a lower management fee on the products just to justify and to support the achievement of net inflows in our distribution in our segregated account. I have to add also a point on the quality of the product that we sell in the sense that we have a very strict policy in terms of dimension of each contract that we subscribe. We avoid totally to subscribe jumbo products or capitalization products issued by issued with banks , obviously financial institution. But our clients are 100% retail families. And this support the stability of our lapses compared to the general market where we still are, if I remember [ Bart ], a couple percentage points under the average of the market in terms of lapses. So by combining these 2, we were able to achieve net inflows of EUR 100 million that is not so much in terms of total amount, but considering also the security going to maturity, the assets going to maturity we were able to work on the increase of the yield of the asset that we have in our great accounts covering the traditional products. Today, we are above 3% gross. We are still working on the increase of this number in order to support our distribution network, also taking in consideration the increase of build. Having said that, of course, the selling of this kind of product have not to be based on the comparative yield compared to other products because today, of course, if you compare the yield of a traditional product to the yield of an Italian government bonds, there are no comparison. You have to support your selling proposition on the other characteristic components of the life insurance products that can support the selling of this kind of product compared to financial or asset management opportunities.

The next question is from Peter Eliot from Kepler Cheuvreux.

The first one is a quick follow-up on the weather and the reinsurance. Thank you for clarifying the numbers and the EUR 50 million recovery for the July events. Could you just remind us where we are on your reinsurance cover overall? So how much protection you will have if there are any further events, further large events over the rest of the year? That would be the first question. And then a couple on the combined ratio. Firstly, I know you said in Q1 that the reserve releases were not very relevant, but are you able to give us an update for the half year on what the reserve releases were? And secondly, would you also be able to give us the discount impact on the combined ratio? So maybe what the combined ratio would have been on an undiscounted basis. Maybe you could also say what do you expect that benefit to be for the full year? Because I think the full-year benefit will probably be rather less than the half-year benefit. And maybe how you think about those 2 ratios as well internally. Do you think of the combined ratio that you report? Or do you think about targeting an undiscounted combined ratio?

Concerning the discounting and reserve release, the impact of discount on the combined ratio is 3.5%. And in terms of reserve release in the first half is it 5% is the total, considering UnipolSai and also at consolidated levels. Then on reinsurance, it is a too difficult question for me. I leave the floor to Enrico.

Thank you. So it's quite complicated also for me. Basically, I guess that could be interesting if you are interested in the issues to organize some further explanation of what our insurance scheme are. Basically, what I can say is that we have several treaties, some very simple. For instance, the [indiscernible] treaty has retention for us of EUR 150 million. So if it happens an event that exceed 150, we recover everything until we get EUR 100 million, so a lot. In addition, we also have what in reinsurance is called an aggregate program that put together several business lines on smaller layers of risk. This is quite complicated. I tried to explain it. We have the natcat part that has a first layer in which there is EUR 25 million of retention and EUR 25 million of capacity and another layer on which there is EUR 50 million executing the first player that starts from EUR 50 million. We have some aggregated are, both on the single business line and the overall aggregate program. So when it comes to several medium-sized events like it's happening is up in July. This program starts to work. So the overall capacity of this scheme is EUR 85 million. So when we have several medium-sized events the treaty that is working more is what we call multiple, the aggregate. When we have single events that are exceeding EUR 150 million, the [indiscernible] traditional treaty is start to work. I hope it could be quite understandable, but I promise I can discuss it in a more detailed way in the next hours, if you need.

No, that's great for your answers. This may be something I can follow up with the IR offline and very happy to do so. But I don't know if you also have a feel for what the discounting benefit might be at the full year and whether you wanted to add anything on how you think about it, but I can follow up with IR after it's no problem.

I have not -- of course, the expected number at full year, but I can tell you that there will be a lower contribution of the discount effect at the end of the year because it usually is more impacting at the beginning of the year compared to the second half. But I can tell you what will be at the end of the year, the number.

The next question is from Andrea Lisi from Equita.

The first one is, again, on the combined ratio for the full year, in particular, considering the events. Other to reinsurance, do you have other room to mitigate the impact of recent natcat events? This is the first question. The second one is related to the Life business, in particular, thank you for providing the details on CSM on the release and so on. So just to -- you said that the results can be multiple the first half, so at end of the year result, just to understand, so is it reasonable to assume RB ratio the CSM over time 10% beginning of the year, CFM. And if you can provide us more color can you elaborate on the impact of the economic and operating variances on the CSM during the first half?

Okay. We'll start from Life, Andrea. The evolution of the CSM, as you saw it in the first half of the year, we expect not to have a lot of volatility compared to this number. So I can tell you that, yes, you can expect a CSM release and creation quite stable over time, even if I can tell you a fixed number to use. But again, I don't expect a lot of volatility in terms of CSM created and released. Concerning the economic and operating variances, we had 2 positive effects to comment in the sense that we had almost EUR 150 million positive coming from a financial result, EUR 145 million coming from financial component and a negative EUR 39 million coming from the operating component due to the evolution of the portfolio that we had in the first half. There is also a contribution coming from the pension products, both individual and collective. And on P&C, I leave the floor to Enrico.

Okay. So about reinsurance, we have room to recover more. Basically, what we have said in the answer to the question of Peter is we have plenty of room for big events that are exceeding EUR 150 million. Of course, we hope they will not happen, but we have plenty of room. When it comes to medium-size events such as the hailstorms of July. Basically, medium-sized events have a EUR 25 million of our retention, then they begin to contribute to the recovery of the multiple, the aggregate. Now we estimate around EUR 50 million already recovered and the total capacity of this treaty is 85%. So we have EUR 35 million more to recover in case of further worsening of these kind of events.

The next question is from Michael Huttner from Berenberg.

Yes. So simply because AXA can't do a buyback early to 1 year and change it another -- there's nothing else in terms of policy actions clearly better but in terms of cash and a little bit [indiscernible] point to see it in January.

Sorry, but it was not absolutely clear the question. I don't know if it was a question or not, but if it was a question, if you can repeat it.

Mr. Huttner is not in the questions anymore.

Sorry, I take the opportunity to say more on how we adjusted the number of Unipol Gruppo profit because I saw some press release that could be misleading in the sense that what I said is that we adjusted the BPA result that on our component was EUR 140 million before the announcement of the bank extra profit tax. And after the announcement of the bank extra profit tax, we cut the deeper profit on our, of course, component by EUR 28 million. So it was EUR 140 million, 20% of EUR 700 million that was the BPA result, EUR 140 million, cutting by EUR 28 million. And so our component of profit of BPA for the extra profit bank is EUR 113 million. Just to be clear on what I said before.

The next question is a follow-up from Peter Eliot from Kepler Cheuvreux.

To come back, just a couple of small clarification points, please. The first one is just on the motor premiums. I take on board everything you said, and hopefully, we'll get a bit of an acceleration coming through. But I was just a little bit surprised that the 1.6% increase was lower than in Q1 because I would have expected that to increase with the premiums. Is that basically just because more people were leaving or the portfolio is changing a little bit more in Q2 than Q1? Or yes, I just wonder if you can help me understand that dynamic. And then the second question was you pointed out the very nice rise in real estate yield. Your income has gone up by about 13%. So I was wondering if you could just explain what's driven that. It seems more than simply inflation-linked or anything. So yes, if you could explain that would be great.

Okay. Peter, I'll start with the motor premiums. And so first of all, as we discussed in the first quarter, you have to take into account the significant impact of our monthly installment scheme. So starting from the beginning of this year, our customers have the chance to pay monthly their contract. And this is really success hundreds of thousands of customers are choosing this kind of scheme, and this affects our premium written of course, because a single customer is paying 1 month and not 1-year premium. Considering this for motor, the overall figures increase around 4 percentage points. So it's around 5.5% motor premium growth if you do not consider this kind of effect, the second phenomenon is that in the first quarter, we were still growing in number of customers. In the second quarter, we started to slightly decrease the number of customers. So this is reducing a little bit our motor growth. Okay. On real estate, there are a lot of things to support the increase of yield in the asset portfolio. So the first thing is that all people of the real estate department are doing a very good job in order to increase the profitability of the assets under management. On one end, all our contracts are correlated and related to the inflation rate. And so there is a restatement of the rent to the evolution of the inflation. Second, we are a very large group. And so I don't have time to comment on all the business in which we are involved, but one of them in which we are having a very good profitability in the hotel business where Una reported EUR 10 million of net profit. Of course, Una is the management company, the operating company. We have also the PropCo, where we own EUR 700 million of hotels at which [ Una pay ] rent part is fixed and the part is variable depending on the profitability of the company. And considering that the company is doing EUR 10 million of net profit. Consequently, there is also a positive implication on the profitability of the real estate asset. And so overall, this can explain the improvement of the profitability of the asset class.

Mr. Laterza, there are no more questions registered at this time.

Thank you very much to all of you, and we will meet again in November. Have a good holiday for everyone who will do it. Otherwise, have a good weekend.