The rating agency Standard & Poor’s confirmed the existing “A” rating for the UNIQA Group today, 28 May 2010.

In doing so, S&P emphasised the strong competitive position of the UNIQA Group and its continued high degree of financial flexibility thanks to the core shareholders.

In terms of the strong competitive situation, the partnership with Raiffeisen in the area of the “bancassurance” was particularly emphasised as a differentiating strength. S&P also acknowledged the successful expansion of UNIQA within Eastern Europe and within other European countries, in addition to its position as one of the market leaders in Austria. The rating agency also expected that UNIQA would defend its good market position in Austria and that the growth in Eastern Europe would be able to be continued.

S&P continues, as before, to consider the structural economic conditions and the situation on the capital markets as a challenge for UNIQA and thus assessed the outlook as negative due to this and due to the volatile results of recent years caused by the financial crisis. S&P holds out the prospect of raising the outlook to stable if UNIQA continues to make significant progress and can return the earnings capacity to the level it was at prior to the financial crisis.

This assessment was not taken into consideration for the quarterly figures of the UNIQA Group which were also published today. In comparison to the same quarter last year, the UNIQA Group increased the premium volume by 8% and the profits by almost 39% in the first three months of this year.