Swiss Re Aims for a Sharp Dividend Increase

Swiss Re Aims for a Sharp Dividend Increase

The Swiss reinsurer is tightening ist focus on profitability unter its new CEO. Shareholders, however, can look forward to significantly higher dividends over the next three years.

Swiss Re is striving for more. In the coming year, the Swiss reinsurer aims to achieve a consolidated profit of more than $4.4 billion, as outlined in a press release on Friday.

The reinsurer initially targeted a profit of $3,6 billion for the current year. However, at the beginning of November, it revised its forecast to just over $3 billion, according to finews.ch.

Business Made More Resilient

«We have taken decisive measures in 2024 to increase the resilience of our business,» said Andreas Berger, the new CEO. 

Among other things, Swiss Re has increased the total reserves in the property and liability lines to the upper end of the best-estimate range.

For 2025, Swiss Re assumes that the price level in property and liability reinsurance will remain high and that demand for cover will increase due to the higher risk. According to the press release, prices in industrial insurance are stagnating at an attractive level and L&H Re's performance is benefiting from the growing life insurance market and the positive mortality trend in the US.

Swiss Re also intends to increase the ordinary dividend per share by 7 percent or more annually over the next three years and is sticking to its target of a multi-year return on equity (ROE) of more than 14 percent unter IFRS.