Eureko announces 2010 Interim Results

Eureko ended the first half of 2010 with a good net profit of €864 million, a significant increase compared to the figure of €115 million for the same period last year. The settlement with the Polish government in respect of insurer PZU S.A. (PZU) was a major factor in this increase, but even without it our net profit would have been slightly higher than last year.

There was also a modest increase in total premium income in the first half-year, to just over €10.7 billion. Higher premium income from Health and Non-life business was offset by lower premium income from Life business. Total equity and the solvency ratio, important measures of financial strength, continued to improve over the reporting period, reflecting further progress in Eureko’s financial position.

Efficiency and customer focus
Despite the limited growth in the market, there are enough opportunities to maintain our profitability, not least by raising operational efficiency and reducing costs. Our cost-reduction programmes progressed as planned in the first half-year, yielding economies of scale.

We continued in the first half of 2010 to implement the measures we had previously announced. The proposed reduction of 2,500 full-time equivalents is proceeding as planned and, by the end of the period, we had achieved a reduction of some 1,900 FTEs, with few compulsory redundancies.