Muenchener Rueckversicherungs Gesellschaft in Muenchen AG Q3 2021 Earnings Call Transcript

The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.

Question: William Fraser Hardcastle - UBS Investment Bank, Research Division - Analyst : First of all, on the premium growth drivers in P&C Re, what were the major ones here? Obviously, very, very strong growth, Q3 discrete. Anything that shouldn't be extrapolated perhaps reinstatements? Or is this a pretty good starting point to base our 2022 growth off? And secondly, again, thanks to the slides for the climate change nat cat impact. Maybe just to clarify, should one of the key messages I should take from this, and given expected exposure growth in 2022, you're still comfortable at the 8 points of nat cat budget at this point. Is that correct? Or should we view that maybe there's some heightened risk of this increasing? Christoph Jurecka - Mnnchener Rnckversicherungs-Gesellschaft Aktiengesellschaft in Mnnchen - CFO & Member Management Board Well, thank you, Will. I'll start with the second one. Yes, we are still comfortable to 8%. The process is unchanged. So we'll look at that again in the first quarter of next year. We do the mentioned bottom-up analysis, including this probabilistic modeling. And then we'll find out if the 8% is still the best number to be communicated. That was the case for the last many years, and we'll see in Q1. And if 8% is still the best number, then it will be 8%. And if it changes, it will be another number. But at this point in time, I do not see any need -- any tendency that the change would be appropriate. The premium growth on -- in the P&C Reinsurance segment is really across-the-board growth. So it's affecting both the traditional reinsurance as well as with solutions. And in these business fields, it's really across all markets, more or less all the businesses we are having. Because what we really see is that the current pricing environment is attractive really across the board, more or less on a global level. And therefore, we are happy to grow the book in all these areas. As you know, growth per se is not a target for us. So we only do grow our book if the profitability prospects are correct. So with extrapolating our growth, the difficulty always is that it's highly depending on the market environment. If it continues to be attractive, then we will continue to grow our book across all the subsegments and all the businesses. But then it has to be attractive. The environment has to be attractive really for all of them. And currently, I think we're optimistic also for next year. But then, of course, eventually, the cycle will break. So I wouldn't be unrealistic that the reinsurance business and the global insurance business will continue to be a cyclical business. So as a matter of fact, that at a certain point in time, margins will reduce again and then we will react, of course.