Business model

• Worldwide reinsurance, transacting all lines of property & casualty and life & health reinsurance with the goal of achieving the broadest and most balanced possible regional and line-based diversification
• Competitive advantages due to our low cost of capital and administrative expense ratio
• Financial strength secured through sophisticated risk management

With a gross premium volume of more than EUR 17 billion, the Hannover Re Group is the third-largest reinsurer in the world. Hannover Rück SE is a European Company, Societas Europaea (SE), based in Hannover, Germany. We transact reinsurance in our Property & Casualty and Life & Health business groups.

The strategy pursued in both property & casualty and life & health reinsurance supports our Group’s paramount mission, namely: “Long-term success in a competitive business”. Our entire business operations are geared to our goal of being the best option for our business partners when they come to choose their reinsurance provider. It is for this reason that our clients and their concerns form the focus of our activities.

We generate competitive advantages to the benefit of our clients and shareholders by conducting our reinsurance business with lower administrative expenses than our rivals. In this way we deliver above-average profitability while at the same time being able to offer our customers reinsurance protection on competitive terms.

We also strive for the broadest possible diversification and hence an efficient risk balance. This is achieved by accepting reinsurance risks with mostly little or no correlation in our Property & Casualty and Life & Health business groups across all lines of business as well as by maintaining a global presence. In conjunction with our capital management, this is the key to our comparatively low cost of capital.

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.

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.

Our subsidiary E+S Rückversicherung AG (E+S Rück), as the “dedicated reinsurer for the German market”, offers a range of products and services tailored to the specific features of the German market. Of special importance here are the mutual insurers with whom we maintain a strategic partnership that is underscored through their participation in E+S Rück.

In the Property & Casualty reinsurance business group we consider ourselves to be a reliable, flexible and innovative market player that ranks among the best in any given market. Cost leadership, effective cycle management and superlative risk management are the key elements of our competitive positioning.

In the Life & Health reinsurance business group we are recognised – as customer surveys confirm – as one of the top players and the leading provider of innovative solutions. We achieve this standing by opening up new markets for our company and by identifying trends in order to anticipate the future needs of our customers.