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Hannover Re: "Reinsurance Company of the Year"

Hannover, 23 September 1998:

Hannover Re has been awarded the title of "Reinsurance Company of the Year 1998" by the UK trade journal "The Review". It also received the "Innovation of the Year" award.

For the past four years "The Review" has presented awards in a total of nine different categories. This is the first time that a single company has received more than one award in the same year.

The Reinsurance Company of the Year Award is given to the company which "has produced consistently stable profits, provided reliability and creativity to clients, and which has enhanced the long-term value of reinsurance". The judges - eight leading figures primarily from the insurance and reinsurance industry - felt that Hannover Re had fulfilled these criteria on all counts. With its third successive record result, double-digit growth in the Group profit for the financial year and a further increase in the gross dividend, the judges noted that Hannover Re had again comfortably attained its previously published objectives. They added that the company has won itself a profile in the market and achieved a tremendous performance for its shareholders, posting an increase of 139 % in its share price in 1997.

Hannover Re received its second prize, the Innovation of the Year Award, for its creativity in the area of alternative risk financing. The judges recognized that in recent years investment banks and indeed other reinsurers had transferred insurance risks to the capital market. However, such deals had exclusively involved natural perils insurance risks. Hannover Re's L1 transaction (described in greater detail in the NewsLetter of 15.04.1998) was the first to use the capital market for the transfer of acquisition costs from life reinsurance contracts.