Despite inflation and a mood of crisis, Allianz insurance achieved record results last year. Operating profit rose by almost six percent compared to the previous year to almost 14.2 billion euros, as the Dax group announced on Friday.
The Munich company owes this, among other things, to very good business in its everyday business with property and casualty policies. This means that Germany’s largest insurer was even able to compensate for losses in asset management, because the second major business area was hit hard by the turbulence on the capital market.
Fears of ‘damage inflation’
The Group’s net profit attributable to shareholders increased by 1.9 percent to 6.7 billion euros. In the new year, CEO Oliver Bäte and his colleagues do not want to raise excessive expectations with a rather cautious forecast: Allianz is aiming for an unchanged operating profit of 14.2 billion euros, with the usual range of plus/minus one billion.
In the insurance industry, inflation is causing concerns about a corresponding “claims inflation”. This means rising costs, because in the course of the general rise in prices, the repairs paid for by insurers – for example for car accidents or storm damage to buildings – are rapidly becoming more expensive.
Allianz has reacted to this with price increases: In the property and casualty line, for example, sales increased by 12.4 percent to 70 billion euros, after factoring out currency effects and acquisitions and sales, it was still 9.5 percent. According to Allianz, the “price effect” contributed to this with 5.7 percent. Although sales in health and life insurance fell, operating profit rose by 5.4 percent to 5.3 billion euros.
The past year was difficult for asset management. With its subsidiaries Pimco and AGI, Allianz is one of the world’s largest companies in this field. At the end of 2022, customers had invested 1.6 trillion euros in the group, 331 billion less than a year earlier. Operating profit fell by 1.9 percent to 8.2 billion euros.
Allianz explained this essentially by “unfavorable market influences”. Aside from that, clients also withdrew funds. The company put the net outflow of funds at 81.4 billion euros. This effect not only hit Allianz in 2022, but also other asset managers.
