(03.2024) AGM – Chairman and CEO's report
SPANISH SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION (CNMV)
In accordance with article 227 of Law 6/2023, of
OTHER RELEVANT INFORMATION
Please find attached the report presented by the Chairman of the Board of Directors, Mr.
Ángel
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for the trust you have placed in us for yet another year as our shareholders.
To bring this Annual General Meeting to a close, I'm going to give you a brief overview of how 2023 went for MAPFRE; then I'll briefly review our achievements
and main lines of action in the different regions and business units in the world.
I'll also go over the main challenges we are facing, with a revision of our strategic
plan and an update on our aspirational objectives for the next three years.
Once again, we had to deal with a considerable environment in Non-Life insurance. Two key factors were a drag on income statements of insurance companies:
- First, persistently high inflation in many markets around the world significantly affected our costs, especially those linked to the Non-Life businesses, which are highly demanding in terms of human and logistical resources. Auto insurance is the most impacted in general and saw significant losses in the main global markets. The changes in social behavior affecting driving led to an increase in claims frequency. And inflation affecting the automotive world, which is even higher than core inflation, is causing cost increases that were not included in rates, which had gone down significantly during the pandemic.
- The second factor is related to the impact of the climate, which is increasingly changing and causing damage to property and people. In recent years, the overall damage caused by weather events worldwide has continued to increase with each passing year. Along with large catastrophic claims, which respond to unpredictable cycles, medium- and high-intensity events are now happening far more frequently, and they are even affecting more developed areas like
Europe .
The insurer's task is not easy when faced with these changes, which do not match known historical series and require reasonable rate increases if they are to be properly managed, in addition to improvements in efficiency and productivity. It takes time and much analysis to adapt prices to new circumstances, and in the meantime, they significantly affect the profitability of the insurance business.
Insurance companies specialize in risk management, which involves both the most and least predictable risks. And the essence of our activity is based on a proper diversification of these risks, to compensate for the imbalances between them. For this reason, MAPFRE, despite these circumstances, and precisely thanks to the diversification we have achieved, once again managed to report strong numbers, as 2023 was a good year for our group.
To summarize 2023, I would like to highlight that:
Premium growth was excellent, and together with the strong performance of our investments, we set a historic record for revenue, which far exceeded 32 billion for the first time.
Earnings were also very good, because, excluding the goodwill writedown in our
Now I'd like to give you a more specific view of the company's performance across the different regions and business units, as well as an assessment of the outlook on the immediate horizon.
In Iberia, we closed the year with exceptional growth, and we outperformed the market in both Life and Non-Life. We can highlight the positive performance of the Life business, where our provisions grew, almost doubling that of the sector. In Non-Life, we maintain strong leadership in the Auto, Homeowners, Commercial and Condominium lines, and in Health we continue to be the largest multi-line insurance company in the Spanish market. We still have room for improvement in profitability, due to the effects of inflation, the frequency of climate events, and the rise in the compensation scale for personal injury in Auto. But we're confident that the improvement measures adopted, both in terms of adapting rates and boosting efficiency and productivity, will continue to bear fruit.
We remain committed to driving a multichannel approach with the implementation of a new commercial model that gives us a uniform view of the entire territory while raising the quality of service provided by all channels. Our own network is still our greatest strength, and we have continued to reinforce it, with 60 net new office openings, bringing the national total to an impressive 3,061 own offices, and making it one of the largest insurance and financial networks in
To boost our commercial positioning, we are taking new consumer habits into account, and we continue to develop online self-service features, which have enabled us to increase the number of customers who use our digital assets. Just to highlight some data, in
With regard to business development, we will place more emphasis on:
- Ensuring adequate rates and improving the efficiency of operations, especially in terms of benefits.
- Expanding our offer in Life Protection insurance and taking advantage of the optimal conditions for the distribution of Life Savings and Retirement insurance.
- Managing our offer of solutions for companies in a more transversal way, including business risks and the protection of workers and their families.
We are absolutely certain that our specific plans in
In terms of agricultural insurance, a line in which we are leaders together with our partner Banco do Brasil, we continue to grow, and we managed to greatly reduce the loss experience, aided by the excellent weather in 2023.
In short, our improved technical management, portfolio restructuring, structural adjustments, and creation of new capabilities, together with a good financial result, all led to
advantage of the bank's commercial strength, the country's size and economy,
and the still-low rate of insurance penetration.
Elsewhere in
In
quality of our management and
would also like to highlight the growing weight our businesses are acquiring in the
In
In
contributed to last year's negative results in the region.
However, the North American economy is in an excellent position, and that will
help us grow profitably in the coming years. We're confident that our strategy in
In the same region,
In EMEA, the year was particularly challenging, given the inflationary environment and the negative cycle of the Auto line at a global level. The past year was aggravated by the high frequency of climate events not seen until now, which occurred in
Regarding other business units, the Reinsurance Unit performed brilliantly. The capital increase at MAPFRE RE, in the amount of
underwriting and capital management tools, which is accompanied by a technological renewal to improve and optimize operations management.
The Reinsurance Unit is facing this year with great confidence, more capacity to take advantage of the cycle, and a healthy and balanced portfolio. Its balance sheet strength, together with its solvency and technical capacity, suggests that if it is not impacted by major disasters, it will continue to be a significant contributor
to the Group's results.
MAPFRE's Global Risks unit also closed 2023 with abetter-than-expectedperformance and a generalized improvement in its business indicators. Reporting its highest revenue in 15 years of existence, it is tackling 2024 with the target of increasing its acquisition of newlarge-businessclients to consolidate the portfolio, make it sustainable over time, and promote new lines of business, thus ensuring better business diversification.
Finally, MAWDY, our Assistance unit, also had a good year with revenues that surpassed our expectations and a very positive result. As we mentioned last year, this company has undergone an intense transformation process. As a result, it has become more digital and more focused on the countries where MAPFRE carries out other operations, with an innovation-based strategy to bring more value to its customers.
SOLUNION, the credit and surety insurance company that we operate together with Allianz Trade, obtained again, in the year of its 10th anniversary, extremely positive results. In 2024, it will continue pursuing its growth strategy, considering the complexity of the economic cycle and with a focus on strengthening technology as a differential strategic value, consolidating talent, managing financial resources efficiently, and boosting sales profitability, with prudent risk management.
Attachments
Disclaimer
American Property Casualty Insurance Association: New Catastrophe Modeling Regulations Will Help Restore Balance to the Insurance Market
LIMRA: U.S. Life Insurance Premium Sets New Record in 2023
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