Group Chief Executive Officer, Storebrand
Storebrand CEO Says Insurer Has Very Limited Exposure to Italy
May.31 -- Storebrand ASA Chief Executive Officer Odd Arild Grefstad discusses market volatility, Italian political uncertainty and ...
About Odd Grefstad
Odd Grefstad, Group Chief Executive Officer at Storebrand, reported on the company's second quarter 2026 results, describing "solid progress" and a "record strong group result" with operational earnings up 17% year on year. He attributed the performance to the insurance business and a rebound in equity markets, and credited the efforts of Storebrand's employees. Grefstad also noted that the company's sustainability work continues to receive recognition, with Time magazine ranking Storebrand among the 50 most sustainable companies. Grefstad announced a new one billion Norwegian kroner share buyback program for the second half of 2026, reiterating the company's long-term ambition of more than 12 billion in share buybacks by the end of 2030, in addition to increasing annual dividends. He stated that Storebrand remains on track toward its 2030 goals, including a 52% reduction in financed emissions from listed equities and corporate bonds against a 2018 baseline, and reaffirmed financial targets of 7 billion in results and a 17% cash return on equity by 2028.
Transcript (15 segments)
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Interviewer0:00
Thank you for having me. First, about the Italian saga, which is really every day amazing headlines this week. What's your exposure to Italy?
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Odd Grefstad0:10
We have a very limited exposure to Italy, just very limited actually.
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Interviewer0:16
What have you made any adjustments to your portfolio considering what's been happening over the past four or five days now?
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Odd Grefstad0:21
Both based on having a very limited exposure, but also we are a long-term investor and we just see a long-term view on this and have made no changes based on this.
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Interviewer0:31
What is your long-term view?
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Odd Grefstad0:34
Well, of course we are managing assets for pensioners, so you might say with 30, 40 years horizon, most of our money. So we are looking through this cycle and actually use opportunities when something like this happens. It's also a big opportunity to do something in the portfolio to increase the revenue, the results coming forward. Right? I mean, if you have a positive outlook on, for example, Italy's membership in the European Union, you might just want to buy the debt when it's yielding 33.1%. That's absolutely a possibility. And I think overall it's opportunities with the low volatility we have had in the market. What's happening now, it's both risk and opportunities in the market, and we are utilizing that in the best possible way, of course.
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Interviewer1:23
So what's your outlook then for rates? I mean, I'm going to go to Riga in a couple of weeks to see the ECB meeting there, and a lot of people have talked about maybe they're going to need to change their schedule as far as when they want to get out of QE. Do you still see it happening for September?
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Odd Grefstad1:40
Yeah, I think basically the economy is moving forward. There is growth coming through both in the eurozone and of course especially in the US, and that calls for normalization in the economy. And I absolutely believe we will see small steps but increasing the rates going forward.
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Interviewer1:59
All right, let's change tack here a little bit and just talk about the sustainable investing. You've looked deeply into this, you're very involved in it. It seems a little counterintuitive in Norway as such a big oil and gas sir. How do you sink those two kind of juxtaposed views?
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Odd Grefstad2:19
I think it's on the contrary. Because being that exposed with oil and gas, it's almost having all eggs in one basket. We need to diversify our economy, and that's why we are also very positive for the solution now for the sovereign wealth fund to divest from oil and gas investments. Because we have that exposure for the country as a whole very much into oil and gas, and we need to withdraw where it's possible to withdraw from this kind of exposure.
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Interviewer2:52
So a lot of this obviously investment thing is about timing, right? Do you see the sovereign wealth fund divesting quickly enough?
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Odd Grefstad3:04
Well, I think it's all about risk and possibilities here again. And of course I think the right thing, if you look at what needed to be done in the world to meet Paris Accord, it's a tremendous shift in the economy that is needed to be done over the next 10, 15, 20 years. And you can be tactic about timing here, but I think the long-term direction of this is very clear. And you can't be sitting with stranded assets if you're not really moving in this direction. And with the long-term view we have, it's very obvious for us to move into more fossil-free exposure.
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Interviewer3:43
You started your first fossil-free fund I think about two years ago, right? Talk to me about the growth that you've seen there, the popularity. And also who's investing? I mean, is this millennial retail investors? Are you seeing institutions?
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Odd Grefstad3:57
Yeah, now we launched this two years ago and it's absolutely being the fastest growing fund family I ever have seen in my life. These days, eight point five percent of all our assets are invested in this fossil-free fund family. It started of course with institutional investors. It's also interesting to see we have exposure both in Norway and Sweden, our core markets. We see that the Swedish institutions really moved forward to this very quick, and it's a big product in Sweden these days. We also seen Norwegian institutions also come along. Then we actually take a view for our 1.9 million clients, saying that we also include this as a part of the overall investment for our pension clients. So everyone has a part of this being a client with Storebrand.
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Interviewer5:00
Alright, excellent stuff. Thanks so much for joining us, really appreciate your time. Ah, Odd Grefstad, chief executive officer of Storebrand, which has 89 billion U.S. dollars of assets under management.