Development of the Group segments

Key figures: Life/Health Reinsurance

The Group segment of Life/Health Reinsurance combines under the worldwide Hannover Life Re brand the international reinsurance activities in the life, health, annuity and personal accident lines, insofar as they are transacted by life insurers.

Hannover Life Re writes its business on all five continents and in recent years has advanced to become a leading provider of reinsurance concepts and solutions. With a market share of around 8% worldwide in 2007 it has long ranked among the four most important internationally operating life reinsurers. Hannover Life Re is organized as a network of seven reinsurance companies and five foreign branches.

We offer our clients a broad range of reinsurance solutions. Over 470 staff at 18 locations worldwide are thus in a position to respond to the special needs of the various markets and individual clients and incorporate them into their solution concepts.

We consider ourselves a customer-oriented life and health reinsurer that structures and manages its relations with the aid of systematic Customer Relationship Management. We work together with our clients on a long-term, partnership-based footing in order to open up profit potentials for both parties.

Clear policy of expansion

Life and health reinsurance is one of the strategic growth segments within the Talanx Group: in this business we are generating profitable organic growth with double-digit rates of increase. The smaller of the Group’s two reinsurance segments is consistently enlarging its market share and pursues a determined policy of expansion: equipped with equity resources of EUR 120 million, a subsidiary in Bermuda – which at the beginning of October 2007 received a license from the local regulator to commence operational business activities – has now been added as another member of the Hannover Life Re network. We are devoting intensive efforts to further tapping into the Asian growth market: a branch was established in China and commenced operational business in May 2008. The South Korean regulator gave its approval in principle in December 2007 for establishment of a branch in Seoul. In addition, preparations are currently underway for the setting up a service company in Mumbai that will write life and facultative non-life business on the Indian market from this year onwards. With the opening of these branches we are moving closer to our goal of being one of the three largest active life/health reinsurers in the world by the end of this decade.

We are just as committed to pursuing our goal of becoming the market leader in financing transactions for life, annuity and personal accident business. Going forward, as in the past, we remain interested in value-enhancing acquisitions in the Life/Health Reinsurance segment. Our investments serve primarily to promote the expansion of our infrastructure in emerging Asian markets as well as to cement our position on various Continental European markets.

A new initiative that we are supporting through our Paris branch consists of so-called microinsurances – a counterpart to the microloans that enable rural populations in developing countries to start their own independent commercial activities for the first time.

In this sector we concluded our first group reinsurance treaties for business in Egypt and Morocco, and in the coming years we expect to see appreciable extension of this initiative to various Asian and Latin American markets.