Brussels-headquartered multinational insurer Ageas has posted a 20% increase in its net result for 2022, thanks to improved performance in its non-life Belgium business and its underlying results in Asia.
Ageas posted a net result of €1,011 million for the full year, versus €844.8 million in the previous year.
This followed a Q4 during which the company saw strong operating performance in its life business across Europe and Asia, but was impacted by adverse weather and continued high inflation in non-life.
The life margins for the consolidated entities all met the group’s Impact24 targets, while the non-life combined ratio slightly fell short at 96.5% mainly due to above average bad weather.
Group inflows including the non-consolidated entities were 2% up compared to last year and amounted to €16 billion.
Growth in life inflows was driven by new business sales in China, supported by a strong fourth quarter, while in Portugal and Belgium, the volumes in individual life products decreased due to uncertain financial markets.
Non-life inflows increased in the mature markets of Belgium and Portugal as well as in the Asian partnerships, driven by portfolio growth and tariff increases in response to increased inflation.
Reinsurance gross inflows amounted to €1.6 billion, of which €1.4 billion was from internal quota share agreements.
In, Ageas announced it would open its reinsurance activity to third parties, outside its group perimeter, meaning the January 2023 reinsurance renewals were the first ones where Ageas participated as an external reinsurer, through Ageas Re.
Thanks to the significant hardening of the reinsurance market, Ageas Re benefitted from improved terms and conditions throughout its portfolio and wrote premiums at the upper end of the €20- 30 million guidance for the 1/1 renewals, Ageas reports.
Ageas Re focused its direct reinsurance underwriting mainly on the European markets, mainly in the property and CAT segment.
“2022, the first year of our Impact24 strategy, was a challenging year, but also one in which Ageas again delivered a solid performance. Commercially we continued to make progress thanks to Asia and the Non-Life business. And as a result of the strong operating performance reported in all regions, the Group’s net results exceeded EUR 1 billion,” said Ageas CEO Hans De Cuyper.
“Throughout the year, we also took important steps in delivering on our Impact24 strategic ambitions in terms of growth, commercial excellence, integration of data & technology and sustainability. As a result, our non-financial and sustainability targets, reported for the first time, showed good progress on many fronts.”
