Strategy

Ongoing capital management optimisation is also an integral part of our strategy. The main focus here is on boosting profit and loss transfers from primary insurance in order to maximise financial flexibility within the Group, provide solid capital resources at all times and being able to pay dividends in the long term.

Capital for expanding business is used only where the strategic and profitability criteria have been met.

Business decisions are managed in such a way that capital and liquidity are transferred to the holding company whenever possible. For this purpose, both the Group capital structure and local capital resources of our subsidiaries are optimised on an ongoing basis.

In addition, we pool the reinsurance requirements for primary insurance on an intra-group basis at the holding company in order to take advantage of capital and diversification effects throughout the Group.

Through our people management strategy, we systematically promote employee engagement and strive to create a performance-oriented working environment that emphasises transparency, responsibility and collaboration.

We actively nurture talented individuals and use skills and competence management to establish transparency about roles and abilities.

We also place particular emphasis on diversity, leveraging it as a strength to drive the Group’s long-term growth.

Our divisions’ strategies are based on our Group strategy:

Strategically, in the Corporate & Specialty Division we position ourselves as a leading partner for international insurance programmes and service provider for captives.

Our profitability-driven underwriting policy is combined with an efficient cost structure.

Specialty insurance remains a key growth area. In the Corporate & Specialty Division, we believe there is particular growth potential in North America, Europe, Australia and selected emerging markets.

In the Retail International Division, we aim to sustain our strong growth through our strategy while continuing to drive diversification forward.

Our goal is to become a leader in our markets in Latin America and Europe, i.e. to be one of the top providers in the field of property/casualty insurance. We intend to achieve this through profitable organic and non-organic growth.

The strategic objective of the Retail Germany Division is to promote sustainable growth, strengthen its market position and thus contribute to long-term stability within the Group.

In addition to growth in the business with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the main aim here is to establish additional co-operations and organic growth in the area of banking partnerships.

The Reinsurance Division’s strategy is focused on achieving industry-leading performance in terms of profitability and earnings growth.

The key elements are a focus on reinsurance with a lean and capital-efficient business model, ensuring profitable growth and accelerating operational efficiency, automation and data utilisation, as well as firmly establishing diversity, equality and inclusion in the division’s operations.

Furthermore, as a long-term majority shareholder in Hannover Rück SE, we support the goal of further strengthening that company’s position as a global player.

Our sustainability strategy is based on focused implementation of ESG-specific aspects in investment, underwriting and operations as well as the Group's social commitment:

• In our own operations, we pursue our global objective of achieving GHG neutrality by 2030 (including offsetting of remaining emissions). To support this, we have introduced a reduction target for our Scope 1 and 2 emissions of 25% by 2030 compared to the base year 2024.
• Our ambition in underwriting is to achieve net zero by 2050, supporting our clients on their path toward more sustainable business models.
• Reducing our GHG intensity (1) by 55% by 2030 supports our ambition in investments to achieve net zero by 2050.
• A social focus, particularly in the areas of diversity and employee education.

(1) Reduction in the GHG intensity of the liquid corporate bond portfolio (including covered bonds, equities and near-public sector issuers) by 2030 compared to the 2019 base year

You can find more information in our current annual report.