Market environment was one of the worst imaginable in 2022, insurer Allianz says

The chief executive of Allianz on Tuesday said that the German insurer proved to be “very resilient” through what he described as one of the worst market environments imaginable in 2022.

“We are doing very well in a very difficult environment, so that’s very good, but I don’t measure that on financials,” Oliver Bäte, CEO of Allianz, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Bäte said that 2022 saw Allianz post record customer satisfaction levels and claimed its employee satisfaction was “beating almost every company in the world.”

Asked how difficult it is for the company to invest, Bäte replied, “2022 was one of the worst, in terms of environment, that you can imagine. Equities and bonds going down, and you know that all of the classical theories haven’t really worked — and it was enormously challenging for our colleagues at Pimco.”

Allianz is one of the world’s largest investors, managing around 706 billion euros ($763.8 billion) on behalf of its insurance customers as of September last year. Bond giant Pimco is a unit of Allianz.

“We are now benefitting tremendously from rates rising in the insurance business … but it has not been priced yet. It is recently that people have come to understand that the higher rates are really, really good for us as a life insurer,” Bäte said.

“As interest rates level out, bond flows will come back and, in this environment, you really want to be with somebody who knows what they are doing, so I am very optimistic for our asset management business,” he added.

Allianz is scheduled to report quarterly earnings on Feb. 17. Company shares are up 9% year-to-date.