Company Reports

Over the first half of 2026, Swiss Life has delivered what we believe is a mediocre set of numbers. On the back of that, the business has announced that over the next two years it will be carrying out a round of redundancies, targeting 600 positions by the end of 2028.

Swiss Life's development has been hampered over the years due to the structure of a long-term savings market overshadowed by low and declining government bond yields. However, Swiss Life is an evolving business that increasingly generates earnings from fees. Of its three income sources, the fee and commission income has almost doubled over the last 10 years. Sources of fees stretch across advice, asset management, and unit-linked fees. Now, Swiss Life is a slightly different business. Its advisory business is one of the strongest in Europe and provides high-quality advice to wealthy individuals. Advisors tend to take their time and focus on specific characteristics and circumstances of each client, then develop tailored goals and suggest products to meet their needs. We think Swiss Life has extended this to most core markets beyond its domestic one, focusing on Germany and key wealth transfer markets. The emphasis is on helping customers build enough wealth to live life as they want. More recently, the business has built on core and market-leading domestic BVG autonomous and semiautonomous solutions with the acquisition of Swiss Re's ElipsLife.

In its first-quarter trading update, Swiss Life announced the acquisition of an advisory business, Telis. The acquisition is for an undisclosed sum and is expected to close in the third quarter of this year.

Swiss Life's development has been hampered over the years due to the structure of a long-term savings market overshadowed by low and declining government bond yields. However, Swiss Life is an evolving business that increasingly generates earnings from fees. Of its three income sources, the fee and commission income has almost doubled over the last 10 years. Sources of fees stretch across advice, asset management, and unit-linked fees. Now, Swiss Life is a slightly different business. Its advisory business is one of the strongest in Europe and provides high-quality advice to wealthy individuals. Advisors tend to take their time and focus on specific characteristics and circumstances of each client, then develop tailored goals and suggest products to meet their needs. We think Swiss Life has extended this to most core markets beyond its domestic one, focusing on Germany and key wealth transfer markets. The emphasis is on helping customers build enough wealth to live life as they want. More recently, the business has built on core and market-leading domestic BVG autonomous and semiautonomous solutions with the acquisition of Swiss Re's ElipsLife.

For 2025, Swiss Life has reported earnings that we believe look a little light. That stretches across profit, from operations, net income, fee income, and the well-discussed fee result.

Swiss Life's development was hampered over the years due to the structure of a long-term savings market that was overshadowed by low and declining government bond yields. However, Swiss Life is an evolving business that increasingly generates earnings from fees. Of its three income sources, fees have grown by close to 25 percentage points over the last 10 years. Sources of fees stretch across advice and asset management. Now, Swiss Life is a slightly different business. Its advisory business is one of the strongest in Europe and provides high-quality advice to wealthy individuals. Advisors tend to take their time and focus on specific characteristics and circumstances of each client, then develop tailored goals and suggest products to meet their needs. We think Swiss Life has extended this to most core markets beyond its domestic one, focusing on Germany and key wealth transfer markets. The emphasis is on helping customers build enough wealth to live life as they want. More recently, the business has built on core and market-leading domestic BVG autonomous and semiautonomous solutions with the acquisition of Swiss Re's ElipsLife.

Swiss Life's indicators over the first nine months show steady development of the business, with gross premiums rising by 3% in local currency terms, and fee income also up 3% in local currency terms.

For the first half of 2025, we believe Swiss Life has missed targets in a couple of key areas, and that has led to a drop in the share price as a result. That includes cash remittances and the important fees result.

In our look into European dividends for companies and stocks we prefer for 2025 earnings, we like Admiral, Munich, and Scor, but we prefer Scor over Munich based on its price/fair value ratio. We also think there is potential in Ageas.

The development of Swiss Life has been hampered over the years due to the structure of a long-term savings market that has been overshadowed by low and declining Swiss Life government bond yields. However, Swiss Life is an evolving business that increasingly generates earnings from fees. Of its three income sources, fees have grown by close to 25 percentage points over the last 10 years. Sources of fees stretch across advice and asset management and Swiss Life is a slightly different business. Its advisory business is one of the strongest in Europe and provides high-quality advice to wealthy individuals. Advisors tend to take their time and focus on specific characteristics and circumstances of each client and develop tailored goals and suggest products to meet their needs. We think Swiss Life has extended this to most core markets beyond its domestic one, focusing on key wealth transfer markets and Germany. The emphasis is on helping customers build enough wealth to live life as they want. More recently the business has built on core and market-leading domestic BVG autonomous and semiautonomous solutions with the acquisition of Swiss Re's ElipsLife.

For the first quarter of 2025 Swiss Life has reported better-than-expected development of its top line with mid- to high-single-digit growth in gross written premiums, broadly ahead of AWP Finanznachrichten-collected consensus. However, all-important fee income has missed consensus expectations.

The development of Swiss Life has been hampered over the years due to the structure of a long-term savings market that has been overshadowed by low and declining Swiss Life government bond yields. However, Swiss Life is an evolving business that increasingly generates earnings from fees. Of its three income sources, fees have grown by close to 25 percentage points over the last 10 years. Sources of fees stretch across advice and asset management and Swiss Life is a slightly different business. Its advisory business is one of the strongest in Europe and provides high-quality advice to wealthy individuals. Advisors tend to take their time and focus on specific characteristics and circumstances of each client and develop tailored goals and suggest products to meet their needs. We think Swiss Life has extended this to most core markets beyond domestic, focusing on key wealth transfer markets and Germany. The emphasis is on helping customers build enough wealth to live life resolutely. More recently the business has built on core and market-leading domestic BVG autonomous and semiautonomous solutions with the acquisition of Swiss Re's ElipsLife.

During 2024, Swiss Life delivered CHF 1.224 billion of net income. This is slightly better than the CHF 1.158 billion that we forecast and versus 2023 this is a double-digit percentage rise. We think this improvement has been driven by real estate project development.

The development of Swiss Life has been hampered over the years due to the structure of a long-term savings market that has been overshadowed by low and declining Swiss government bond yields. However, Swiss is an evolving business that increasingly generates earnings from fees. Of its three income sources, fees have grown by close to 25 percentage points over the last 10 years. Sources of fees stretch across advice and asset management and Swiss Life is a slightly different business. Its advisory business is one of the strongest in Europe and provides high-quality advice to wealthy individuals. Advisors tend to take their time and focus on specific characteristics and circumstances of each client and develop tailored goals and suggest products to meet their needs. We think Swiss has extended this to most core markets beyond domestic, focusing on key wealth transfer markets and Germany. The emphasis is on helping customers build enough wealth to live life resolutely. More recently the business has built on core and market-leading domestic BVG autonomous and semiautonomous solutions with the acquisition of Swiss Re's ElipsLife.

Swiss Life has reported a solid trading update that indicates mid-single-digit business growth over the first nine months of the year. Premiums, or written gross premiums plus fee income plus deposits, were 4% better at CHF 15.9 billion. These were mainly driven by higher business growth in France where premiums were 12% higher with a 5-percentage-point increase in the share of unit-linked sales. Swiss Life France’s 67% unit-linked share was higher than the 37% share in the French market more broadly. Its private bank helped generate these sales and fee income. Premium income in Switzerland was broadly flat and in Germany the company delivered mid-single-digit premium growth, helped by its IFA business. However, the international business was the detractor over the nine-month period.

For the first half of 2024, Swiss Life has reported solid results, mainly driven by asset management and France. The business delivered CHF 632 million in net profit for the first six months of the year compared with our CHF 1.237 billion full-year forecast. This translates to a 9% return on equity so far, 18% annualized, which sets the business up well against its 10%-12% 2022-24 return on equity target. With CHF 1.263 billion of cash upstreamed to the holding, that takes total upstreamed over this strategic cycle to CHF 3.4 billion, ahead of the CHF 2.8 billion-CHF 3.0 billion cumulative target for 2022-24. While the fee result looks better, this is one area where Swiss looks a little light. For this year, management is guiding to the low end of the CHF 850 million-CHF 900 million target. The CHF 300 million buyback has been completed and the greater-than-60% dividend payout ratio looks likely. We maintain our fair value estimate of CHF 770 and our rating of no moat. Shares are roughly fairly valued.

The development of Swiss Life has been hampered over the years due to the structure of a long-term savings market that has been overshadowed by low and declining Swiss government bond yields. However, Swiss is an evolving business that increasingly generates earnings from fees. Of its three income sources, fees have grown by close to 25 percentage points over the last 10 years. Sources of fees stretch across advice and asset management and Swiss Life is a slightly different business. Its advisory business is one of the strongest in Europe and provides high-quality advice to wealthy individuals. Advisors tend to take their time and focus on specific characteristics and circumstances of each client and develop tailored goals and suggest products to meet their needs. We think Swiss has extended this to most core markets beyond domestic, focusing on key wealth transfer markets and Germany. The emphasis is on helping customers build enough wealth to live life resolutely. More recently the business has built on core and market-leading domestic BVG autonomous and semiautonomous solutions with the acquisition of ElipsLife from Swiss Re.

We believe Swiss Life has reported mixed indicators for the first three months of 2024.

Swiss Life has reported earnings for 2023 that are a slight miss versus AWP Finanznachrichten-collected consensus. Earnings are ahead of our estimates as the company reported net income of CHF 1.11 billion, but a touch behind the CHF 1.12 billion expectation from consensus. Our forecasts were for net income of CHF 949 million. The miss for the firm is its fee result, which was CHF 664 million. This is versus an expectation from consensus of CHF 754 million. Swiss Life's target for its 2024 fee result was CHF 850 million-CHF 900 million and it is now guiding to the bottom end of this. The lower fee result for 2023 is predominantly the result of lower real estate fees, though these are expected to start normalizing in the next year or two. In light of these earnings, management is proposing a CHF 33.0 dividend, a CHF 3 per-share increase. The proposal will be made at the company’s May 5 annual general meeting and on May 17 Swiss Life shares will trade without this dividend. It should be paid around May 22. The dividend is more than covered by the CHF 1.15 billion remittance. A further CHF 300 million buyback, planned for completion by the end of March, is almost done. Swiss Life operated with a 220% solvency ratio at the end of the year and generated a 13.4% return on equity. While this is enhanced by a fall in equity as a result of lower real estate fair values, guidance for this is still a 10%-12% return on equity. We maintain our fair value estimate and no moat rating.

The development of Swiss Life has been hampered over the years due to the structure of the Swiss long-term savings market being overshadowed by a business that offers guaranteed mandatory minimum returns and the declining yields of Swiss government bonds. However, we believe Swiss Life is an evolving business that is increasingly orienting to deriving earnings from fees. Of its three sources of income—savings, risk, and fees—income from fees has grown to over a third. The source of these fees stretches across advice and asset management and Swiss Life is a slightly different business here than most. We think Swiss Life's advisory business is one of the strongest within our European Insurance coverage as it provides high-quality advice to more discerning clients and takes a long-term approach. Advisors tend to take their time and focus on the characteristics and circumstances of each client and hammer out specific goals and products. We think Swiss Life has extended this line to most core markets beyond its domestic one, focusing on key wealth transfer markets and Germany, where the business is number two in the market for advice. The emphasis is on helping customers build enough wealth to lead a self-determined life and we think Swiss Life’s dedication to providing advice is further highlighted by its domestic residential real estate broking service Immopulse. The business has also built on its core and market-leading domestic BVG autonomous and semiautonomous solutions business by acquiring ElipsLife.