No top-line targets for Swiss Re with focus on margins

By Michael Jones

May 16 - (The Insurer) – Swiss Re CEO Andreas Berger said the reinsurer has set no top-line targets as its focus remains on healthy-risk adjusted margins as he addressed analysts during the company's first quarter earnings call on Friday.

The reinsurer disclosed first quarter results earlier on Friday, with insurance revenue of $10.4 billion down on the prior year's $11.7 billion. This included P&C reinsurance reinsurance premiums down 10% to $4.5 billion.

Berger said he was not focused on achieving a set top-line. "The focus is entirely on maintaining healthy risk-adjusted margins and a high-quality portfolio," he said.

While the Swiss Re CEO said while it was not steering for top-line revenue, he said it will continue to target focused growth areas.

"We're steering for bottom line and we're steering for resilient portfolios. But at the same time, we analyze also in which markets do we have market-leading positions and, obviously, we would like to protect the market-leading position," Berger said.

He underlined that the reinsurer had enough capacity to deploy into attractive areas and told analysts they would see the reinsurer do that in a specific, focused manner.

Attractive areas included certain specialty lines, chief financial officer Anders Malmström pointed to credit, as well as catastrophe business, which Berger said he remains a believer in.

Berger added: "We tend to say always volatility is a friend because we manage volatility and we help insureds who can actually not carry the volatility. That's where we want to deploy our capacity, where it makes sense and where both parties benefit from it."