Swiss Re AG Q4 2020 Earnings Call (Q&A) Transcript

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

Question: Kamran Hossain - RBC Capital Markets, Research Division - Analyst : A couple of questions for me. The first one is on dividend. I guess in a very difficult year for the industry, the good news is you paid the dividend again. What scenarios would stop you paying it? Because it feels like we've kind of pretty much stress tested paying the dividend or not. So that's the first question. How much flexibility do you have around that going forward? The second question is on, I guess, pandemic losses versus what you've booked. It looks like if you total up total COVID losses, they seem to be well below your view of the pandemic, which I assume reflects your losses for the year plus next year. Do you think the rest of the industry has taken as cautious a view? And therefore, where does it go from here, really? And any thoughts on those 2 would be really helpful.

Question: William Fraser Hardcastle - UBS Investment Bank, Research Division - Analyst : First one is, you talked about the gross premium reduction around 11%. But can we -- the January renewals, can we discuss what action has been taken on the reinsurance retro protection? So how we should see that coming through on a net basis? I know you touched on this at the Capital Markets Day, but just wanted to get some clarification from January. And then the second question is thinking about the SST ratio, it's maybe prodding a bit on what James was asking earlier. It's regarding exposure reduction. Has that already been reflected as such when it will -- will it be when you give the SST ratio next month in terms of the exposure reductions that you've already taken, and then presumably that has this exposure growth assumption going forward. So if you can give any sort of quantification for that and expectations for the remainder of the year, that would be helpful.