(AOF) – SCOR’s board of directors, meeting on June 25, unanimously decided to appoint Fabrice Brégier non-executive chairman, with immediate effect. He has been a director of SCOR since 2019. A graduate of the École Polytechnique and Chief Engineer at the Corps des Mines, he began his career in 1986 at the Ministry of Industrial Redeployment and Foreign Trade before being appointed Deputy Director at the Directorate General for Food of the Ministry of Agriculture in 1989.
After several appointments as adviser to various ministers from 1991 to 1993, Fabrice Brégier joined Matra Défense, and became managing director of MBD/MBDA in 1998. He was then appointed chairman and managing director of Eurocopter from 2003 to 2006, before joined Airbus (commercial aircraft) as Deputy CEO at the end of 2006 then CEO from 2012 to 2018.
Fabrice Brégier has been President of Palantir France since October 2018.
He joined SCOR’s Board of Directors in 2019.
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Key points
– Fourth largest reinsurer in the world, born in 1970, leader in the American life reinsurance market with a third of the market share;
– Very safe risk profile: the most geographically diversified reinsurer and fair distribution between life reinsurance under the Scor Global Life brand (more than half of premiums) and non-life reinsurance under the Scor PC brand;
– Gross premiums of €17.6 billion and successful diversification in asset management with a portfolio of €20.3 billion, 8/10ths invested in bonds;
– Business model organized into 3 autonomous management “hubs” (Americas, Asia-Pacific and EMEA), with underwriting and claims management depending on the life and non-life divisions;
– Open capital, the first shareholders being Covea (8.44%) ahead of employees (4.60%), Denis Kessler being non-executive chairman, until 2022, of the 16-member board of directors and Laurent Rousseau director general ;
– Exceptionally strong financial position, with debt rated AA, shareholders’ equity of €5.5 billion, a debt ratio of 30.6% and a solvency ratio of 240%.
Challenges
– Before the launch of a new plan presented on November 9, strategy to reorganize the insurance portfolio at the expense of the natural catastrophe sector, increase to 10% of valuable assets, such as corporate loans and reduction of liquidity in the portfolio investments;
– Innovation strategy aimed at preventing the arrival of new competition, technologies linked to artificial intelligence making the prediction and probability work of insurers accessible to other players, hence the use of acquisition, processing and data security and the integration of artificial intelligence in reinsurance operations / the launch of the hELIOS platform and the partnership with start-ups and Insurtech / the use of public clouds / €250 million investments in technologies;
– Environmental strategy at the heart of the strategy, reinsurers being very exposed to climate risks: CO2-neutral investment portfolio in 2050 / support for research on climate risks / creation of specific offers -FEEL, BAM or VITAE- in life reinsurance / use of carbon credits and launch of a “green” credit facility;
– Reduction of the level of probable maximum loss to 21% for the year 2022, operated during renewals in property and casualty reinsurance on June 1 and July 1 and increase in the reinvestment rate to 4.1% at the end of June.
Challenges
– Sensitivity to natural disasters, and to major industrial, financial and cybersecurity disasters in developed countries and to the euro against dollar and pound sterling parity, the currencies in which most of the revenue is denominated;
– Change in net book value per share, €31.21 per share at the end of June;
– Impacts of the Russian-Ukrainian war, natural disasters and drought in Brazil: net loss in 1
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semester, hence a complete review of the portfolio with a 50% reduction in agricultural exposure in 2023;
– After an 8.3% increase in gross written premiums and a deterioration in financial figures as of June 30, active management of reserves, maintenance of a short duration of assets in the portfolio and search for opportunities, particularly in health.
A strong development momentum for French life insurance
The growth of life insurance continues over the months. Over the first four months of the year, contributions reached 53.7 billion euros, a level not seen for more than ten years. At 10.5 billion euros, net inflows also returned to their highest level since 2011 over a similar period. In the end, at the end of April 2022, outstanding life insurance contracts reached 1.847 billion euros, up 1.1% over one year. These good performances are partly linked to the growing success of the PER (Retirement Savings Plan). Since the start of 2022, PERs marketed by an insurer have posted 592,000 additional policyholders and 9.3 billion euros in payments. At the end of April 2022, 3.2 million policyholders held a PER, which represented an outstanding amount of 39 billion euros. Without taking transfers into account, 87% of new holders of a PER (at the end of December 2021) had taken it out with an insurer.