Sustainability Report 2015
Hannover Re at a glance
- Worldwide reinsurance, transacting all lines of property & casualty and life & health reinsurance
- Gross premium volume of EUR 17.1 billion with growth of 18.8% year-on-year
- Roughly 2,500 employees
- Over 5,000 insurance clients in some 150 countries
- More than 100 subsidiaries, branches and representative offices worldwide
- Operationally and financially independent – despite majority shareholder: 50.2% held by Talanx AG
Hannover Re, with gross premium of around EUR 17 billion, is the third-largest reinsurer in the world. We transact reinsurance business in our business groups of Property & Casualty and Life & Health reinsurance. The strategy pursued in both these business groups supports our Group's paramount mission: "Long-term success in a competitive business".
Our profit and growth targets are pivotal to the Group strategy. Profitability and value creation are the foundations of our sustainable development in the interests of our clients, shareholders, employees and business partners. With this in mind, our goal is to achieve economic success while at the same time acting in accordance with the needs of our staff and the company and giving due consideration to protection of the environment and conservation of natural resources. The targets set are regularly analysed and adjusted as necessary according to a three-year cycle. Non-financial targets are specified in concrete terms in, inter alia, the sustainability strategy.
Our integrated enterprise management system "Performance Excellence 2.0" supports Hannover Re in the accomplishment of its strategic objectives. In this regard, each organisational unit of the Hannover Re Group defines its own contribution to the Group strategy. In this way we ensure that all initiatives and measures within Hannover Re are rigorously linked to our corporate strategy.
We generate competitive advantages to the benefit of our clients and shareholders by conducting our insurance business with the lowest administrative expenses in our industry. This is made possible by, among other things, lean organisational structures, a uniform global IT infrastructure, centralised underwriting in property and casualty reinsurance, the efficient allocation of capital and the use of hybrid capital in order to optimise our cost of capital. In this way we deliver above-average profitability while at the same time being able to offer our customers reinsurance protection on competitive terms.
Guided by a clearly defined risk appetite, our risk management steers the company so as to be able to act on business opportunities while securing our financial strength on a lasting basis.
Through the acceptance of reinsurance risks with largely little or no correlation in our Property & Casualty and Life & Health business groups across all lines of business and based on our global presence, we are able to achieve efficient risk diversification. In conjunction with our capital management, this is the key to our comparatively low cost of capital.
We transact primary insurance in selected market niches as a complement to our core reinsurance activities. In this context, we always work together with partners from the primary insurance sector.