Events

No changes to the composition of the Board of Directors at the Annual General Meeting

No changes were made to the company’s Board of Directors at the Annual General Meeting held in April 2009. The Board of Directors will consist of the following members until the end of the next Annual General Meeting: Jukka Tuori (Chair), Arja Alho (Deputy Chair), Kari Kaunismaa, Timo P. Nieminen and Helena Pesola. The Policyholders’ Representative Assembly, acting as the company’s General Meeting, elected from among its own members the following persons to the Nomination Committee: Ilkka Joenpalo (new member), Mikko Viitasalo (Chair) and Jukka Vihriälä. The Nomination Committee makes a proposal to the Annual General Meeting for the Board members and the auditor of the company.

High investment returns allowed the company to resume the payment of additional benefits

At the end of the year, the Board of Directors decided on additional benefits for 2010. There had been a substantial improvement in Suomi Mutual’s investment returns during 2009 and the company had recovered quickly from the losses of the previous year. It was decided to provide policyholders with solvency capital refunds for 2009. These will be in the form of additional benefits totalling about EUR 160 million.

In 2008, when the global economy was in the grip of a crisis, the company had given priority to the safeguarding of its customers’ insurance savings and had distributed only a small amount of additional benefits. The company has distributed almost EUR 1.2 billion in different types of additional benefits in the period 2005−2010.

In 2010, the overall annual return of old insurance policy savings may exceed 12 per cent (which includes a technical interest of 4.5 per cent, a special benefit of 2.7 per cent, a special additional benefit of 4.5 per cent and a customer bonus of 0.5 per cent). The annual return on other insurance savings is between 4.5 and 5.0 per cent, depending on the level of technical interest. After these additional benefits, about EUR 100 million of EUR 840 million, conditionally promised to old insurance policies as special additional benefits, remains to be distributed.

The decisions on special additional benefits and customer bonuses are made each year. The decisions depend on the company’s risk position. For this reason, there may be substantial differences in the amounts of customer bonuses and special additional benefits granted each year.

Elections of the Policyholders’ Representative Assembly were held in November 2009

The year 2009 was also an election year for Suomi Mutual. A total of 25 new members, replacing retiring members, were elected to the 75-member Policyholders’ Representative Assembly representing the policyholders and owners of Suomi Mutual Life Assurance Company. The elections were held between the 10th and 30th of November 2009 as postal elections.

The number of candidates (100) was substantially larger than in previous elections. In 2000, 2003 and 2006, candidates had numbered 94, 91 and 91, respectively. The increase came as a surprise, since only policyholders may run as candidates and their numbers are slowly decreasing because the company ceased selling insurance policies at the start of 2005. The terms for all members will end at the time of the November 2012 elections.

Of the 250,000 policyholders with voting rights, 22.7 per cent cast their votes (in 2006, the number of policyholders had been almost 300,000, of whom 22.9 per cent had cast their votes).