By Tristan Veyet
(Reuters) -Swiss Life expects real estate fair value changes to boost 2025 results, driven by its Swiss property portfolio, finance chief Marco Gerussi said in a call following the insurer’s quarterly trading update.
Switzerland’s largest life insurance provider and a major owner of real estate in Europe said that fair value of its real estate assets rose around 0.2% in the first quarter compared to the end of 2024.
The Swiss federal statistics office had reported a 0.7% rise in residential property prices in the same period.
“What we see in terms of an outlook number by the year-end 2025 is in the upper teens of billion overall for the net new assets,” Gerussi said.
Swiss Life reported a quarterly fee income of 659 million Swiss francs ($790 million), up 3% from the same period last year in local currency, aided by its asset management business and good performances of its own and third-party products.
Quarterly premiums rose 6% on the same basis to 7.9 billion Swiss francs, led by an 11% rise in France.
The Zurich-based group’s main market is Switzerland, which made up more than half of its premiums in the first three months of the year, followed by France which generated around a quarter of them.
“Given that the shares are (one of) the most expensive insurance stocks in Europe … the company needs to deliver and beat expectations continuously – that’s what they did,” Vontobel analysts said in a note.
Swiss Life’s shares were flat at 1205 GMT after dipping slightly in morning trade.
Its results echoed those from peer Zurich Insurance which earlier in May reported higher quarterly revenue and gross written premiums in its core property and casualty business.
($1 = 0.8342 Swiss francs)
(Reporting by Tristan Veyet in Gdansk, editing by Milla Nissi-Prussak)
