REFILE-Talanx eyes high single-digit corporate and specialty revenue growth over 2025

By Rebecca Delaney

March 19 - (The Insurer) - Talanx Group is targeting high single-digit insurance revenue growth within its corporate and specialty business for 2025 after meeting its 10 billion euros target last year, CFO Jan Wicke told a media call on Wednesday.

Wicke said the aim was to also achieve a sub-92% combined ratio in the segment.

Earlier on Wednesday morning, Talanx posted a 10% increase in corporate and specialty insurance revenue, meeting its previously stated target for the division by the end of 2024.

The insurance service result in the segment increased by 30% year on year to 1 billion euros, while net income totalled 501 million euros.

"We are growing this business, and we are very well-diversified in this global business," Wicke said. "On the one hand, we are able to attract new customers. On the other hand, we had rate changes."

He said the corporate and specialty segment faces a "benign" outlook for 2025, with expectations of high single-digit growth in insurance revenue, a sub-92% combined ratio and return on equity above 15%.

"The key driver of our growth in corporate and specialty is that we have a huge cost advantage," said Wicke.

"If you compare us to our peers, we have more than five percentage points better cost ratio. This provides us with an opportunity to grow, even if there's some pressure from the market. We are capturing this growth with underwriting discipline. Our main focus will always remain the growth of the bottom line, not of the top line."

Elsewhere, Wicke described the retail international as Talanx's "growth machine", with the segment reporting a 31% increase in insurance revenue year on year to 9.28 billion euros (40% when adjusted for currency exchange).

With net income growing by 62% over 2024 to 449 million euros, Wicke added that the retail international unit is in a "follow-up position" to exceed the 500 million euro mark in the next few years.

"The diversification within the portfolio with regard to the top line is 50-50 between Europe and Latin America. When it comes to net income, we are 60-40, more exposed to Europe. But you should keep in mind that the 40% in Latin America includes 72 million euros of integration costs for the Liberty entities during the course of the year," he added.

Talanx is targeting mid to high single-digit growth rate for the retail international business unit, although he cautioned that these results are highly dependent on currency exchange rate fluctuations.

For the reinsurance segment, Wicke pointed to Talanx subsidiary Hannover Re, which is forecast to grow P&C reinsurance revenue by more than 7% over 2025, with a target combined ratio below 88% for the full year.

Combined with an insurance service result of more than 875 million euros in L&H reinsurance, Hannover Re is projected to post group net income of around 1.2 billion euros for Talanx Group in 2025.

"How do all these rather benign outlooks combine to the outlook of Talanx? Overall, we expect a mid single-digit growth with regard to insurance revenue," Wicke concluded.

"The group net income should be above 2.1 billion euros. With regard to the mid-term strategic targets, we want to confirm we are very confident that we can deliver an earnings growth of 30% to 2027. If you do the maths, it will result in a more than 2.5 billion euros of net income for 2027."