Swiss Re (SIX Swiss: SREN) Q1 2026 Earnings Call

0:00 Good morning or good afternoon. Welcome to Swiss Re's Q1 twenty twenty six Results Conference Call and Lab Webcast. Please note that today's conference call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Andreas Berger, Group CEO. Please go ahead. Thank you very much and good morning or good afternoon to all of you. I appreciate you taking the time to join us today. Before I, Group CFO Anders Malmstrom walks you through the details of our first quarter results, as usual I would like to start with some brief remarks. We made a strong start to 2026 delivering a net income of $1,500,000,000 U. S. Dollars in the first quarter.

0:46 This represents onethree of our full year net income target of 4,500,000,000 US dollars and positions us well for the remainder of the year. The annualized ROE for the quarter amounted to 24%. All business units contributed to this result, also helped by a good investment contribution. Both P and C businesses delivered strong underwriting results supported by a low level of large losses in the quarter and excellent underlying profitability. This allowed us to post a strong overall result while also strengthening the balance sheet.

1:33 Turning to the market environment and P and C reinsurance renewals. The April renewals confirm the continuation of the trends observed in January. Our focus on prioritizing portfolio quality over volume remain unchanged. This is what is required by cycle management. Competition has intensified, especially in non proportional nat cat. Here, the nominal price is down high single digits for our overall nat cat portfolio through the year to date renewals. Casualty and specialty lines show a more balanced overall price development picture. Within casualty, liability experienced notable rate increases, though we remain cautious with motor also seeing rate improvements.

2:28 Overall, we have achieved a nominal price increase in the mid single digit range for our casualty portfolio year to date. Within specialty, competition has picked up. However, nominal rates rose across the majority of sublines. As a result, the nominal price is slightly up for our overall specialty portfolio. Through the January and April renewals, we have successfully defended our market position and relevance, and importantly, remained underwriting, maintain underwriting discipline and terms and conditions. That's key for us. Our client franchise continues to be in an excellent position.

3:16 Specifically, in the April renewals, we saw stable demand in panels in Japan. In The US, nationwide clients increased demand and we participated. In certain markets, an influx of new capacity lacked a materially lower adequacy, and we decided to reduce exposures. India agriculture is an example where such actions can have a disproportionate impact on volumes. Some new aggregate covers were placed. Here, we maintain our cautious stance. What does that mean in terms of the overall renewal outcome? The April renewals represent a relatively modest portion of our overall business at 12%.

4:06 Combined with the general renewals, overall nominal prices, pricing has been flat despite the noted pressures in property net debt. When taking into account prudent increases in loss assumptions, the net price change stands at a negative 4.4%. Overall volume is down slightly at minus 2%, primarily driven by the nominal property rate declines and by the stated reduction in agriculture business. Overall, the portfolio quality and outcome of the renewals remain supportive of our 2026 financial targets. This also means that our renewals, that renewals have progressed broadly as we expected.

4:54 And we set the targets at the end of last year and communicated it also to you. We expected a more challenging 2026, and this is clearly what is happening. This is simply the nature of our industry, and therefore, you will continue to see us applying discipline and cycle management. Subject to loss event development, we expect similar trends into June and July. This means high demand but continued pricing pressure. Accordingly, at this point, you should not expect us to write higher volumes. We will remain focused on defending the overall price adequacy and quality of our portfolio.

5:43 Now turning to Life and Health Re. The first quarter has provided encouraging signs that the actions taken in 2025 are delivering the intended outcome. The business is now on a very strong footing, let's say on a stronger footing, as evidenced by clean earnings delivery in the quarter supported by a positive experience variance, for the first time, by the way, since our IFRS transition. This supports our confidence in achieving the 1,700,000,000 US dollars net income target for 2026. Let me also touch on new business generation across the group. The main driver of the year on year decline is the impact of the January renewals in P and C Re.

6:33 In addition, the contribution from Life and Health Re in the first quarter was more muted, which reflects the inherent variability of underlying transaction activity throughout the year. By contrast, new business CSM in Corporate Solutions remained broadly stable year on year, which is a very solid outcome in the current environment. CorSo benefited from more favorable reinsurance conditions in the external market as well as the inclusion of the P and C Re's credit and surety business. This partially offset the risk adjusted rate decrease that we saw in Q1 and which amounted to around minus 5% for our overall portfolio.

7:20 While CORSA is clearly also having to manage downward price pressure, in particular in property, we continue to see underlying growth in our strategic assets, as we call them, and focus areas, including international insurance programs and alternative risk transfer solutions. Looking ahead, our goals remain delivering on our financial targets and the group's overall resilience. Against the backdrop of geopolitical turbulence and an increasingly challenging market environment, our P and C businesses will remain focused on disciplined underwriting. In this context, we expect Life and Health Reinsurance to make a growing contribution going forward.

8:09 At the same time, we remain focused on cost efficiency. Now, with that, I'll hand over to Anders for a closer look at the financial details of our financial first quarter results. Anders, over to you. Thank you, Andreas, and good morning or good afternoon to everyone on the call. Andreas has taken you through the highlights of our overall positive first quarter. Let me add a few further details before we move to the Q and A. G and C Reinsurance reported an insurance service result of almost $800,000,000 S. Dollars, well above the prior year level. The increase was mainly attributable to favorable experience variance, which captures deviations from initial reserving assumptions.

8:58 In the quarter, we saw positive experience variance related to both current and past services. Just as a reminder, under IFRS, this broadly corresponds to what we previously referred to as current year and prior year development. The positive experience related to current services was around $100,000,000 primarily reflecting large Nat Cat losses coming in $276,000,000 below expectations, partially offset by reserve additions of slightly more than $100,000,000 in IBNR form to cover potential late attritional losses. Andreas mentioned that we strengthened the resilience of the balance sheet.

9:47 In the quarter, we achieved a positive experience of around $130,000,000 to past services. This includes around $450,000,000 of positive reserve developments. In light of geopolitical uncertainties associated with the ongoing Middle East conflict, we decided to retain most of these benefits and established around $400,000,000 of IBNR reserves to address potential inflationary impact, of which US350 million dollars in P and C Re. On the back of these elements, P and C Re reported a strong combined ratio of 79.5% in the first quarter, comfortably within its target of below than 85% for the year.

10:45 Let me also briefly touch on new business CSM before moving to corporate solutions. New business CSM amounted to US1 billion dollars compared with US1.4 billion dollars in the prior year period. As we indicated with our full year results in February, we expected the January renewals to translate into a roughly three percentage point increase in the nominal combined ratio compared to the up for renewal portfolio. The year on year reduction in new business CSM of around $350,000,000 U. S. Dollars is largely consistent with that expectation. Turning to Corporate Solutions.

11:31 The business unit delivered a strong combined ratio of 85.1%. The related insurance service result was $286,000,000 supported by a CSM release of $192,000,000 broadly in line with last year. Experience variance and other was positive at $146,000,000 primarily driven by a favorable experience related to past services across all lines of business. In addition, Corporate Solutions benefited from lower than expected large nat cat and man made losses, largely offset by the usual IBNR allowance for potential claims seasonality due to late reporting.

12:26 New business CSL remained broadly stable supported by resilient new business generation and the inclusion of about US40 million dollars from PNC Re's credit and surety business, partly offset by a more challenging property pricing environment. As a reminder, net new business CSM is subject to seasonality. With the majority of the reinsurance program accepting in the first quarter, while assumed business is written more evenly throughout the year. Turning to Life and Health Re, where we see the impact of the actions taken in 2025 coming through.

13:13 The net income of $491,000,000 reflects underwriting margins from the large in force book, favorable experience and a solid investment contribution. The insurance service result increased to $547,000,000 and includes a CSM release of $379,000,000 corresponding to an annualized release rate of around 9%, in line with our full year guidance. The result was also supported by positive experience variance of $60,000,000 primarily from The U. S. Mortality portfolio.

14:01 A few words on the top line. Group insurance revenue is down $371,000,000 versus last year, primarily due to P and C Re where the overall renewals outcome and reduced seeding volume updates represent the main drivers of PNP3's 8.5% decline. On a net basis, gene series revenues are down by a more modest 5.7% as we lowered our external retrocession in Nat Cat. Further, IptiQ revenues contained in group items have reduced by $192,000,000 due to our withdrawal progress on that business.

14:55 Life and Health Re revenues are up by $240,000,000 mainly due to FX tailwinds, while Corporate Solutions revenues are down $77,000,000 Excluding the impact of the discontinued Irish medex business, CorSo's revenues are up by around $100,000,000 which includes an FX tailwind. We also benefited from strong investment results with an ROI of 4.6% supported by disposal gains of US159 million dollars primarily from real estate sales while recurring income remained healthy at $1,000,000,000 Lastly, capital, we continue to maintain a strong capital position with the group SSE ratio estimated at 252% as of April 1, above our target range.

16:00 With that, I will leave it here and hand over to Thomas to open the Q and A. Thank you, Anders. Thank you, Andreas. And hello to all of you from my side as well. As usual, before we start, if I could remind you to limit yourself to two questions. And should you have any follow-up questions, please rejoin the queue. Could we have the first question, please? Sure. The first question comes from Kamran Osteen from JPMorgan. Please go ahead. Good afternoon. So I've got one topic with a couple of questions. Really kind of intrigued about kind of your attitudes towards, like, building prudence at Swiss Re. I know we talked about this at the IR day and not wanting to push too hard, but what was behind the decision to post such a strong Q1 combined ratio? Obviously, know, kind of discounting went in your favor, like CAT, you've done some stuff anyway, But could you have done more, given you're probably a little bit earlier on your kind of reserve build journey than some peers? So it's something to that at most of the momentary.

17:07 The second question is just on reserve releases in the quarter. In the commentary, you mentioned I think it's GBP450 million of reserve releases in the quarter that you offset with the kind of inflation related Middle East charge sorry, the inflation as a result of Middle East related charge. The 450,000,000, was that substantially higher than you had expected? Because for me, that does sound very high for a quarter. I just wanted to understand whether this is just positive positive development or something else happening in the background that means this could be a higher number going forward? Thank you. Yeah, we can. Just two questions in a way of the same question, they hang very much together overall. So, just to step back. When we talk about reserving, when we talk about prudent approaches, I think we're very clear that we're always going to reserve at the higher end of the best estimate range.

18:03 And that's the philosophy how we reserve, how we set also loss picks, and you also see that now in the renewals. The loss picks that we set are prudent. They reflect basically exactly to be at the upper end of the best estimate range. So, that should then also in a normal quarter, this should then also come through the reserve releases, and that's exactly what you now saw in Q1. The $450,000,000 is a solid number. We don't really give hard guidance, but we show evidence, and we see that every quarter how this reserve is now developing. And that's on purpose. That's absolutely on purpose. Now, to your point about then also more technical questions like discounting and other things, these are more consequences of that.

18:56 So the discounting is not higher per se this quarter. It's only higher because of the additional reserve that we put up for The Middle East because you basically allocate it to all the different lines, including liabilities. We just put it everywhere. And then because you have a long term liability business, that's where then the discounting is higher. So, it's a consequence of the reserve. It's not the reason for the good result. So, I think overall, we're very happy with that. It actually shows that the whole framework is now working and is coming through. So, it's a good outcome. Thank Thank you, Cameron. Could we have the next question, please? The next question comes from Will Hartcastle from UBS. Please go ahead.

19:47 Hey there. Just thinking about the P and C renew business CSM. Clearly, was materially low, and you said it aligned with your expectations on setting those full year targets in December. But then you link that with about three points of combined ratio deterioration. I guess the question is if the June and July renewals, if we see this continued trend, and let's say that pushes us beyond the three percentage points combined ratio guidance, is that then starting to say it's a bit worse than we anticipated for '26 and beyond? Because, of course, a lot of this I I guess the other part of that is how much of that 1,000,000,000 new business CSM flows into the current year earnings versus what goes into future, thinking about extrapolation of that.

20:37 The second one, I just wanted to quickly come back to Cam's question there on the the four fifty of experience variance. It's a really large number. Is there any, I guess, one offs within there? I mean, I presume you're not trying to make it say that that's a run rate from here. I guess any any color of sort of abnormality within that four fifty would be very helpful. Okay. So, let me start on the new business CSM. I think, look, I think we, as you rightly state, I mean, three percentage point combined ratio impact is exactly in line with what we see now in the new business CSM. And look, our view is that everything else equal, we will probably see a continuation of what we have seen at one point one and one point four, so we have no indication one way or the other. But if the other point I want to make here, I mean, this really reflects also a very prudent loss pick that we put in.

21:36 So, the 4.4% that you see here, I would say, I mean, that goes back to the discussion we had before. That's a very prudent assumption. That's obviously reflected in the new business CSM. So, we don't try to manage a new business CSM. We let it go through, and then once we see the reserve development, you should then see it come through in the form of reserve releases, which leads me directly to your second question. If you see in the $450,000,000, there is no one off in it. This is just the reserve development, but it also allowed us now to say, okay, I think we see the uncertainty in the world. We see the Middle East conflict that creates volatility. Let's take a prudent approach and put some of that money to the side for inflation that we will see somehow.

22:28 You will see an inflation impact coming from the higher energy prices, coming from the disruption on the supply chain. We don't know exactly how much. We don't know for how long this is going to last, but this allowed us now to take that approach as well to then continue that prudent approach. Thank you, Will. Could we have the next question, please? The next question comes from Shanti Kang from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Hi, afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. I was just reading The US primary results over the last few weeks, and I noticed a number of the primaries are increasing their limits and being able to negotiate more favorable terms on their reinsurance programs. And then this morning on one of the London market names, we we heard for the first time that there's been a bit of modest slippage in p's and c's. So I was just curious to get your take on that.

23:28 And if there is any slippage, where is that focus? Is that on attachment points? Is that on wordings? Or you mentioned a bit earlier the return of ad covers in specifics. But any color on that would be really helpful. Thank you. Yeah. Let me take maybe that question. I think we have been very clear, you know, so terms and conditions, structures remain stable. We have also heard of maybe individual cases where aggregates suddenly were a topic again, but I think we will apply discipline, and that's what I said also in my initial remarks. We stay very cautious here, and we don't see a reason why this should be supported.

24:14 We also have heard also from primaries certain individuals who were referring to race shooting down in certain markets, in particular E and S, and here I can assure you we're observing the whole situation. We're ensuring some of it. That's why we're very attentive here, and I can assure you on the CORSA side it's a very, very limited activity and exposure that we have there, mainly almost exclusively in property with a very low volume of around 200,000,000 revenues coming from that area. So, we're observing it, obviously, as a leading reinsurance market, but we're very cautious.

25:02 Thank you, Santi. Could we have the next question, please? The next question comes from Andrew Baker from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Thank you for taking my questions. First one, just on the P and C reinsurance revenue. So you mentioned today sort of renewals were broadly in line with what you're expecting coming into the year. It sounds like or it looks like the results today is lower than what it sounded like you expecting at the December Management Dialogue event last year. So can you just help me understand sort of where that delta is? So what the decline was versus what it sounded like you were previously expecting and also how we should think about insurance revenue developing for the rest of the year? And then on the Life and Health Re side, so obviously good to see the positive experience variances come through today.

25:51 I can see that's driven by U. S. Mortality experience. Are you able to give us an update on the experience variances related to the previously underperforming portfolio, so Australia, Israel, South Korea? Were they positive, neutral or negative? Any color there would be helpful. Thank you. Yeah, sure. We can do that. So, maybe just back to your revenue questions, also I think I mentioned that in the opening remarks. So, it's really two drivers for the on the PMT reset. One is the renewal outcome, and the outcome is pretty clear. I think we as Andre also stated, on expectations. And then the second one is the season update, and you can maybe say the season update came in a bit lower than what we expected, and that's something you don't really know until you actually get the underlying data. So, that's really the two drivers and nothing else there.

26:45 On the life and health, we absolutely have very positive experience now in The U. S. On the mortality front. All the other portfolios are absolutely in line with expectations, so there's nothing else there, which is exactly what we expect and which is a good outcome. Maybe for the outlook there, you were referring to it. Look, we're going to go through the next one year, and we told you we expect that the trend holds, but I would also highlight that there are opportunities in the market, yeah. So, it's not all gloomy. It's mainly a property and cat topic. We see increasing demand, in particular also through the crisis in various parts of the world.

27:32 There's not only a downside, there's also an upside. So, we see heightened activities around infrastructure investments, increased resilience of nations, of critical infrastructures, and that's where we're definitely going to participate, you know, and this will land up in obviously the treaties. If the primaries are participating on a single risk basis, we participate through the fact business. That definitely will then grow with the investments, but also with CorSo. And I think one should, you know, focus on the areas where there's healthy opportunities while we keep the resilience of the group. Thank you, Andrew. Could we have the next question, please? The next question comes from Ivan Bokhmat from Barclays.

28:20 I've got two questions, please. One is on the investment results. Maybe you could talk little bit about the investment disposals that you've seen this quarter and how does the pipeline looks for those type of gains or perhaps some other form of true ups later in the year? How should we think about it? And another question is just about the $400,000,000 of Middle East reserves that you have established. Maybe you can give a little bit of color of how much of that's related to pure inflation impact and how much of that could be the direct impact from the conflict? Thanks. Yeah. So, let me start on the investment results. So, maybe just to step back. The overall investment result is 4.6%. It's obviously higher than what you would usually expect.

29:07 Recurring investment is 4.1, and reinvestment, new investments are 4.3. That's really driven by the disposals on the real estate. This is a one off. You should not expect that to come in the future quarter. And also, don't have anything that we would guide you to for additional investment gains. Importantly, I think we have a very strong recurring investment and results of 4.1%, and this will continue to be that, and that's higher than what we had in previous years due to the repositioning of the portfolio. On the 400,000,000 reserve, this is an inflation. It's an IBNR, first of all. It's an IBNR for impact that might come as a second order impact from the Middle East war.

29:59 We have very negligible first order impact, so we're not really exposed to any claims coming directly from the work. It's all about the second order impact, which really means the inflation, driven by higher energy prices and also disruptions in the supply chain. Maybe the driver of realized gains was real estate. The driver sorry, I forgot that. Yeah, the driver of the real the realized gains was real estate and disposals in Switzerland. Thank you, Ivan. Could we have the next question, please? The next question comes from Chris Hartwell from Autonomous. Please go ahead. Hey. Good good afternoon, and thank you for taking my questions. First question is just I sort of wanted to come back to the P and C Re combined ratio.

30:50 I understand the deterioration that you're expecting from rate. But if I look at the year to date premium and also the renewals data from both January and April. I mean, there does appear to be, I assume, there would be some duration lengthening through that book and the casualties on a flat or growing versus particularly property nat cat shrinking. So I'm wondering if or what we should be thinking about combined ratio development just because of the sort of duration impacts there. And second question, the expense ratio in P and C, obviously, ticking up. And with volumes coming down, I was wondering beyond what you've already said about cost initiatives, is there anything more that you could be thinking about to try to protect the combined ratio from an expense side?

31:41 Thanks very much. Okay. So, maybe your first question about, you know, the combined ratio on the P and C Re side and the lengthening of the book. We don't really see a lengthening of the book, nor did ours. Also, from the renews side, there's no reason why the book should lengthen. The only reason maybe that's why the discounting is a bit higher are these additional reserves and that we also attributed some of them to the liability book. But other than that, from the pure renewal and development of the portfolio, there's no lengthening of the book. On the expense ratio for the P and C, it increased mainly for two reasons. One is just the decline in revenues clearly, and then the other impact is FX.

32:33 So, this is no underlying development there from an expense perspective. So, it's purely driven basically by the denominator of the ratio. Thank you, Chris. Could we have the next question, please? The next question comes from James Shock from Citi. Please go ahead. Hi. Good afternoon. Thank you for taking the questions. I'm sorry, but I just wanted to refer to the P and C reinsurance revenues again. So the gross revenues are down 8.5%, but still, I hear what you're saying about the some some of the contributing factors towards that.

33:20 But the premium, the the renewals year to date down 2%. This time last year, we were up kind of 5% or so. I I just struggling to kind of square that with the gross revenues being down, eight and a half percent at at this point even with Presumably, there's some positive effects in that. So what's the constant effects number? And is there any contribution from changing to discounting rates in that? I guess what I'm getting at is if you're saying kind of three point increase in the combined ratio at least of 30% decline, is that a good rule of thumb going forward with SurveyPoint is about 10 points off that new business? Thank you very much.

34:16 Okay. So, maybe on the first one, maybe one thing I should just clarify wasn't maybe that specific before. When I talk about renewals, we obviously always talk about the oneone renewals, but what we also need to reflect here are the renewals that happened still during the second half of twenty twenty five. Obviously, we never had a renewals update explicitly, but this also goes into that calculation. It mostly happens during the later part of the second half of the year. That's also reflected in the revenue. There's some transactions there that have very low margin, but have a higher revenue, and we have some reductions there, but it has very little bottom line impact, So, that should also be reflected in the revenue development here.

35:07 Now, the P and C, we knew that the CSM calculation. So, for you, I think that the way to think about it, if we have this new business coming in with a lower premium or lower margin, we said it's about three percentage points on combined ratio, and that translates with the revenue we have about $350,000,000 So, I don't think just in percentages, you're thinking in dollars, and then you reduce that from the CSM, new business CSM that we had the year before. The premiums overall are the same, pretty much the same. You have $350,000,000 less. That brings you exactly to the number that we disclosed now in Q1.

35:56 And James, just on the other renewals, on the revenue development, Anders already mentioned the season updates, which are, of course, true up of the renewal information from last year, where the underlying volumes are lower than initially expected, particularly on quota share. Could we have the next question, please? The next question comes from Vinit Malhotra from Medivanka. Please go ahead. Yes, good afternoon. Thank you. So for me the first one is just on the record session changes. You know, I've seen the nat cat YTD is down 11% growth but only 4% net. It gives us a pretty big shift happening there.

36:42 Could you just comment a bit about what was done and what are the implications of that? Is it really more risk taking or is it margin management? So looking at the following that, looking like a big shift. Secondly, just on the corporate solutions, you know, this you know, loss component of 77, minus 77, It's quite big, and you commented it's because of business. But I'm surprised I thought it could be a generic issue with maybe pricing, or is there any other drivers there, or was the NHS material enough to be such a loss component charge?

37:27 So, just curious on that, please, as well. Thank you. Okay, so maybe I start on the, you know, the impact from the retro, and we talked about that in previous meetings also at the management dialogue that we reduced the retro just because we believe it's good business and we can keep it on our research. That's why the premium decline actually netting the lower retro is a decline by 4%, whereas if you take the gross number, it's 11%. That's really the I mean, that's the answer, We just kept more of that business on our books, whereas in the previous period, we retro did it out again to the market.

38:21 Maybe on the course, so this is the accident and health. This is maybe Andreas, if you want to give Yeah, I a can confirm Accurin and Health remains a strategic priority. It provides still the diversification benefit. That's the reason why we have it. It reduces the overall average expense ratio. So what you see here is that in The U. S. In particular, you had some claims developments, you know, and this reflects also the actions that we took here, and you saw large claim activity in this book, which we haven't seen before. And we don't see that as a trend, but we have seen it in 2025.

39:07 And this is something that we then addressed, and you should also know that the short tail nature of this book, you know, can actually help us to correct and to introduce corrective actions and then bring the recovery very, very quickly. So that's happening as we speak here in the book, So I wouldn't look at it as a continuum or a trend. Thank you, Vinny. Could we have the next question, please? The next question comes from Ben Cohen from RBC. Please go ahead. Good afternoon. Thanks very much for taking my questions. I had two on the Life and Health business. Could you give us a bit more color in terms of the pipeline that you see that gives you the confidence that kind of Q1 was just a bit of volatility in terms of CSM?

39:58 And I guess related, because of the outlook that you have, do do you do you think that you will actually be able to keep new business CSM at least flat this year? And indeed, you think that the stock of CSM in life and health will actually grow over the course of the year? Thank you. Yeah. So, look, mean, I think first, I mean, it's clear that on the life and health side, the new business is always a bit lumpy. And obviously, you have the flow business, which is steady, which we have, which is good, but then you have transactions, and transactions can be quite volatile. And that's exactly what happened here. We had very good transactions in the first quarter last year. Now it's a bit less. I think we will see over the next we are very convinced actually that over the next three quarters we're going to catch up there. We have a good pipeline that's coming through.

41:00 Target, and we mentioned that before, CSM sustainability. Absent any large transactions, That's very important. Absent any large transactions, CSM sustainability, that's our main objective here. I mean, I can't go into details, obviously, but I think that the pipeline, I mean, is pretty good. Maybe also to mention here the longevity transactions that we published and talked about in March is not yet reflected in these numbers. This is an April 1 transaction that will then come in Q2. Maybe the last point to mention here is also, and you might have seen the announcement yesterday, that we now hired a head of transaction for life and health reinsurers, and we combined all of that. So, that's an important development now that we put more emphasis going forward, now also new business, growing business, and also through transactions, which now that the business is on good footage, think is the right next step.

42:09 Thank you, Ben. We've got a follow-up question. We now have a follow-up from James Sack from Citi. Please go ahead. Thanks for the opportunity. With the balance sheet kind of in a strong place and the core earnings now are much further fitting, you haven't really done any M and A in recent Just kind of what are you thinking about in terms of the pipeline here? I know you want to grow the Life and Health REIT business proportionally. Is there potential for kind of M and A? Would you like to do Facebook sort of transactions or something on the open book? Thank you. Yeah, I mean we can repeat what we always said. We are well established with the three business units. We have a very nice diversification.

42:55 We see opportunities in the market, yeah, so despite the cyclicality or the cycle management aspect of it, there are still lines of businesses where we can see opportunities, and also geographically definitely we can see opportunities. Now, having said that, you know, we're always very clear. We have analyzed the areas through our target liability portfolio approach and have looked at where would we focus on growth, you know, attractive growth and profitable growth organically and should there be an opportunity to do bolt on acquisitions like we have done with the QVE credit maturity portfolio that we took over, then we will do so. It adds nicely to the current portfolio, to the credit maturity book because it's straight credit where we were underweight, and it diversifies nicely.

43:46 So, if at all, you should expect something like that, you know, but nothing we don't need an M and A. We're not distressed buyer. We have actually a very solid portfolio, and we can weather the storm in the markets. Thank you, James. Are there any more questions? There are no more questions from the phone. We'd like to thank you for your interest and for your questions. Should you have any follow-up questions, please, of course, do not hesitate to contact any member of the IR team. Thank you again for joining the call, and have a good rest of the week. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.