Tokio Marine Holdings Inc

TSE:8766

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q1

[岡田 健司 (おかだ けんじ), executive]

Thank you very much for taking time out of your busy schedule to join us today. I am Okada, Group CFO. Today, we announced our first quarter financial results. So let me explain the contents and other related matters.

Please turn to Page 3. There are 3 points I want to communicate today. First is steady performance towards FY 2023 projections of JPY 670 billion. In the first quarter, there were some negative impact from nat cats in Japan and overseas and North American capital losses, but all of them are within the scope of our initial projections. In addition, yen depreciation led to an increase in the reserve for outstanding claims in foreign currency and a loss on valuation of foreign exchange derivatives in Japan, but those will be offset by the increase in full year profit for international insurance.

In addition, taking into account the domestic fire insurance profitability improvement, expansion of specialty insurance, stronger-than-expected international insurance underwriting and increase in investment income. I believe it is fair to say that performance is steady towards FY 2023 projections of JPY 670 billion.

Second point is concerning Japanese media coverage of TMNF, Tokio Marine & Nichido, which have caused great inconvenience and concern to our customers in the capital market. First, regarding the price fixing of premium rates as announced on June 20, we take this matter very seriously and have established a special committee headed by several external lawyers to investigate potential additional infringement.

As released on Friday last week, we received an FSA directive requiring a report, which is exactly on our ongoing investigation on similar incidents. We will sincerely deal with this order as well. We are analyzing the root cause, formulating and implementing necessary measures both from governance and basic employee behavioral perspective to prevent further recurrence. Next, regarding fraudulent insurance claims concerning Bigmotor, as announced on August 1, we prioritized the recovery of customers' damages and have begun contacting customers who were or may have been affected.

We will not wait for the conclusion of Bigmotor's total investigation and work to proceed with various measures such as supporting safe driving initiatives sincerely and proactively. Thirdly, despite such incidents, it is our duty to provide insurance coverage at an appropriate rate and conditions based on customer needs. Therefore, I would like to add that the initiatives to further improve domestic fire insurance profitability shall continue without compromise.

In this context, the domestic nat cat since July is slightly exceeding our original plan for the year. But apart from that, the performance is strong domestically and internationally. On this basis and taking into consideration the fact that this is before the full scale season of nat cat and other factors, we are not revising our full year adjusted net income forecast of JPY 670 billion at this time. We do not intend to revise the dividend, share buybacks and other shareholder return policy that we announced at the beginning of the year at this time. Let me now explain particularly the first point in more detail.

Please turn to Page 4. First is top line. In the first quarter, net premiums written increased by 9.9% and life insurance premiums increased by 0.2%. Excluding FX, net premiums written was up 6.7%, thanks to strong domestic and international sales. On the other hand, life insurance premiums declined by 4.1%, which was due to the expected increase in the cancellation of domestic corporate insurance. So the performance is strong overall.

Next, please turn to Page 5 for the first quarter assessment of the main components of adjusted net income. The group's adjusted net profit was JPY 164.5 billion and the progress rate compared to our full year projection was 25%. That 25% progress rate is lower than our 5-year average 36%. We have explained the factors behind this gap at the beginning, and we think we are enjoying steady performance.

Let's take a look at each business. Starting with our domestic operations at Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire. Profit drivers are yen depreciation and natural catastrophes that we have explained. About yen depreciation, it still pushes down the profit of the company, but on a group basis, it is offset with a factor on Page 27, an increase in overseas subsidiaries profit in yen term. Rather, JPY 1 depreciation against the dollar will benefit the group's profit by JPY 400 million.

When we look at our underlying performance, excluding these factors, the progress rate is 40% on pace with our 5-year average. We think that the performance of our profit drivers, domestic fire insurance profitability improvement and expansion of specialty business is steady. About foreign insurance business, our first quarter results at our key entities were better than local plans by JPY 2 billion.

To give you some color, our underwriting profit was favorable, mainly as Delphi Group and the Brazilian entity TMSR and outperformed local plan by JPY 7 billion. About investment business, we stated back in May that we anticipated more than JPY 20 billion of full year capital loss. So this capital loss of the first quarter was JPY 12.4 billion and was somewhat larger. But thanks to the higher than planned investment income, our total investment profit is aligned with our plan at the beginning of the year. This leaves us with negative JPY 5 billion gap. This is JPY 5 billion. This JPY 5 billion is the loss in Europe from fluctuations of currency rates between dollar and pound.

About the first half flash report numbers at our major entities, they outperformed local plans by approximately JPY 13 billion, further accelerating the solid trends that they're enjoying from their first quarter. The basic trend remains the same as Q1, but we plan to book additional loss reserve in overseas runoff reinsurance posted by TMNF of JPY 11 billion. This is the reserve provision for ADC or Adverse Development Cover that we signed with Bayer at the time of divesting our formal reinsurance subsidiary, TMR, in March 2019.

Social inflation is a factor behind this. We believe that our current reserve level is appropriate, but even in the case that we need to add further reserve in the future, our ADC has an upper limit. So the maximum loss amounts to be added in the future is kept at JPY 100 million or so. The loss is a onetime factor, and our entire overseas business did more than just offset this negative factor. As you see on Page 1, half year flash report at the end of June indicates that our overall overseas business was on pace even after reflecting this particular loss.

To summarize, we need to continue to monitor the progress of the coming natural catastrophes and investment. But our overall understanding of our performance is that it is steady. We would like to satisfy capital market participants by realizing a top-level EPS growth and ROE improvement to one of the world's best. To do this, we will capitalize on our strength of global risk diversification and global and aligned group management and implement corporate strategy steadily. It goes without saying that our customers trust is the source of whole insurance business.

We take a series of cases very seriously, and our holdings company will provide thorough supervision and guidance to ensure the implementation of various measures at Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire. We would appreciate your continued support. Thank you for listening.