Generali has reported double-digit growth in first-half operating profit and adjusted earnings as stronger performance across insurance and asset management supports another €500m return of capital to shareholders.
The Italian insurance group generated an operating result of €4.51bn for the six months to the end of June, up 11.2% from €4.05bn a year earlier. Adjusted net profit increased by 13.7% to €2.54bn, while reported net profit rose 17.9% to €2.54bn.
Gross written premiums reached €53.4bn, an increase of 5.8%, with property and casualty premiums up 6.3% and life premiums increasing 5.5%.
Life insurance delivered particularly strong inflows. Net inflows exceeded €8.3bn, a record for a first half, while new business value increased 21.1% to €1.89bn. Life operating profit rose 8.8% to €2.19bn.
Property and casualty operating profit increased 4.7% to €2.14bn, although natural catastrophes weighed on underwriting performance. The combined ratio moved to 91.5% from 91%, with catastrophe claims adding 1.9 percentage points.
Asset and wealth management provided the fastest operating growth, increasing 31.3% to €735m. Asset management operating profit rose 17.3%, while wealth management increased 45.8%.
Group assets under management reached €944bn, up 4.9% from the end of 2025. Generali’s Solvency II ratio remained strong at 216%, down from 219% at year-end after accounting for the planned €500m share buyback.
Chief executive Philippe Donnet said: “This excellent set of results demonstrates the very strong progress on our ‘Lifetime Partner 27: Driving Excellence’ plan.”
The capital return sits within a strategy combining earnings growth, dividends and share repurchases. Generali’s current plan targets average adjusted earnings-per-share growth of between 8% and 10% over 2025 to 2027, alongside cumulative dividends of more than €7bn.
European insurers are balancing strong capital positions against a more demanding risk environment. Higher interest rates over recent years have generally improved reinvestment yields and helped life insurers offer more attractive savings products, while natural-catastrophe exposure, claims inflation and volatile financial markets continue to test underwriting performance.
Generali’s life inflows show how changing rates can influence customer behaviour. Insurers compete with deposits, bonds, investment funds and other savings products, making product design and credited returns more important when households can obtain higher yields elsewhere than they could for much of the previous decade.
A strong solvency position gives insurers greater flexibility in that competition. Capital can be directed towards organic growth, acquisitions, dividends or buybacks, although boards have to balance shareholder distributions against the capacity required to absorb large claims and market shocks.
Natural catastrophes are becoming a more significant part of that calculation. Generali’s higher catastrophe burden in the first half did not prevent earnings growth, but it demonstrates the increasing pressure physical climate events can place on underwriting margins.
Across the market, insurers have responded through repricing, tighter underwriting, reinsurance purchasing and changes to risk appetite. Those measures can protect profitability, although they can also make cover more expensive or harder to obtain in locations exposed to repeated flooding, wildfire, storms or other severe weather.
Asset management provides another source of diversification. The 31.3% increase in operating profit from asset and wealth management means a larger share of earnings can come from fee-based businesses rather than underwriting risk alone.
That approach reflects a wider insurance-sector effort to use customer relationships, distribution networks and capital-management expertise across savings, investment and wealth products. Greater fee income can reduce earnings dependence on claims experience, although asset-management profitability remains exposed to market levels and investment flows.
Generali is also investing in data and artificial intelligence across customer service, underwriting and internal operations. Insurance businesses hold substantial volumes of structured and unstructured information, but useful deployment depends on model governance and integration into existing processes rather than stand-alone experimentation.
Italy’s wider financial-services market adds another strategic dimension. Banks, insurers and wealth managers have been involved in an unusually active period of consolidation and ownership change, increasing scrutiny of capital allocation and the strategic value of financial holdings.
Generali enters that environment with rising earnings, record first-half life inflows and substantial financial flexibility. Sustaining those trends will depend on maintaining underwriting discipline, managing catastrophe exposure and retaining customers in a European savings market where households continue to have more choice over where they place capital.
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