Investments, shareholders’ equity and underwriting provisions

Investments

Breakdown of investments 2018

A brief presentation of the investments is included on page 122 of the notes to the consolidated financial statements.

Vienna Insurance Group’s total investments (including cash and cash equivalents) were EUR 37,635.6 million as of 31 December 2018, which was just slightly higher than the previous year level of EUR 37,430.6 million as of 31 December 2017.

The investments include all Vienna Insurance Group land and buildings, all shares in at equity consolidated companies and all financial instruments, using the look-through approach for consolidated institutional funds, as well as other fund investments allocated to the asset classes. Investments for unit-linked and index-linked life insurance are not included. These decreased by 11.2% from EUR 9,061.1 million in 2017 to EUR 8,048.6 million in 2018, mainly due to negative performance by the underlying unit-linked and index-linked securities and outflows of funds from these securities.

Shareholders’ equity

VIG’s capital base decreased by 3.4% to EUR 5,835.7 million in 2018 (2017: EUR 6,043.9 million). This change was primarily due to repayment of the hybrid capital bond.

Underwriting provisions

A detailed disclosure of underwriting provisions is included in Note 10 Underwriting provisions – gross of the notes to the consolidated financial statements.

Underwriting provisions (excluding underwriting provisions for unit-linked and index-linked life insurance) were EUR 30,505.9 million as of 31 December 2018, representing an increase of 1.1% over the previous year (2017: EUR 30,168.2 million).