Clemens Jungsthöfel

AI will play a role… it can lead to better decisions.

— Clemens Jungsthöfel

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Overview

Clemens Jungsthöfel
Born	1970 (age 55–56) Esterwegen, Lower Saxony, West Germany
Citizenship	German
Education	Insurance agent qualification (1994)
Alma mater	Jade University of Applied Sciences, Wilhelmshaven
Occupation(s)	Business executive; reinsurance manager; auditor
Employer(s)	Hannover Rück SE; Talanx AG
Known for	Leadership of Hannover Re as a pure-play reinsurer
Title	Chief Executive Officer of Hannover Re; Member of the Management Board of Talanx AG (reinsurance)
Term	2025–present
Predecessor	Jean-Jacques Henchoz
Board member of	Hannover Rück SE (executive board); Talanx AG (management board)

👔 Clemens Jungsthöfel (born 1970) is a German business executive and auditor who has served as chief executive officer (CEO) of Hannover Rück SE (Hannover Re), the world’s third-largest reinsurer, since April 2025 and as a member of the management board of Talanx AG with responsibility for the reinsurance division. After two decades at KPMG auditing and advising insurers, he became chief financial officer (CFO) of HDI Global SE in 2018 and CFO of Hannover Re in 2020 before succeeding Jean-Jacques Henchoz as CEO. During his time as finance chief and then CEO, Hannover Re roughly doubled its market capitalisation, achieved returns on equity clearly above industry averages and was promoted to the DAX index, leading commentators to characterise his succession as a continuity choice and him personally as a “safe pair of hands” for the group’s existing strategy.

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Early life and education

🎓 Family background and early exposure. Born in 1970 in northern Germany, Jungsthöfel grew up in Esterwegen, a small community in the Emsland region of Lower Saxony, where his father, Nicolaus Jungsthöfel, ran a local insurance agency for Concordia Insurance. As a child he helped in the family business and recalls a formative episode in which a customer who had recently bought full automobile coverage at his father’s urging returned after a serious accident to thank the family for having averted financial ruin, an experience that shaped his views on prudent risk management and on the social role of insurance. He has joked that he “began underwriting at the age of 10” and that, given his family background, there was “no escape” from the insurance world.

📘 Vocational training and studies. After completing secondary school, Jungsthöfel first qualified as an insurance agent in 1994, gaining hands-on experience in selling policies and advising retail clients before deciding to broaden his skills. He then studied economics and business administration at the Jade University of Applied Sciences in Wilhelmshaven, specialising in taxation, accounting and auditing and graduating in 1998. Observers have noted that, unlike many DAX-company executives who hold degrees from traditional research universities or MBAs, he rose from a Fachhochschule background, relying on practical training and later professional qualifications rather than academic titles, which is sometimes cited as an example of a more meritocratic career path in German corporate life.

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Career

💼 KPMG and professional qualifications. Upon graduating in 1998, Jungsthöfel joined KPMG in Germany, where he spent around two decades auditing and advising insurance and reinsurance companies. Over time he became a partner responsible for major mandates in the sector and obtained multiple professional designations, including German licences as a Wirtschaftsprüfer (public auditor) and Steuerberater (tax adviser) as well as membership of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ACA) during a posting to London between 2009 and 2011. He later explained that his motivation in consultancy was to understand “the whole value chain of an insurer or reinsurer”, and his KPMG years gave him a broad perspective on underwriting, capital management and regulation across markets.

🏢 Move to HDI Global. In 2018, after roughly twenty years in professional services, Jungsthöfel moved from advising insurers to managing one directly when he was appointed CFO of HDI Global SE, the industrial insurance arm of the Hannover-based Talanx group. At HDI Global he was tasked with sharpening financial steering and profitability in a competitive corporate-insurance market, modernising reporting and risk-bearing structures and aligning the business more closely with Talanx’s group-wide objectives, work that brought him into closer contact with the group’s reinsurance activities.

📊 CFO of Hannover Re. In September 2020 Jungsthöfel joined the executive board of Hannover Re as CFO, assuming responsibility for group finance, accounting, controlling and investor relations against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic and heightened market volatility. During his tenure as finance chief the company’s market capitalisation roughly doubled to around €29 billion, its average return on equity reached about 15 per cent and it was promoted to the DAX index in March 2022, developments that commentators linked to strong underwriting performance, disciplined capital allocation and favourable reinsurance market conditions. The supervisory boards of Hannover Re and Talanx credited Jungsthöfel with making a “significant contribution” to the group’s strategic orientation, financial strength, profitability and resilience in a challenging risk environment.

🧭 Appointment as CEO. On 8 November 2024 Hannover Re announced that Jungsthöfel would succeed Jean-Jacques Henchoz as CEO with effect from 1 April 2025, while simultaneously joining the management board of Talanx AG as the member responsible for the reinsurance division. Supervisory board chairman Torsten Leue described him as a “strong leader from our own ranks” with “outstanding industry expertise” and an excellent reputation among clients, capital markets and employees, emphasising the continuity of leadership within the group.

🚀 Early tenure and financial performance. Upon taking over as CEO, Jungsthöfel stressed that he did not intend to change Hannover Re’s strategic course fundamentally, promising instead “consistency and reliability” and signalling an evolutionary rather than revolutionary approach to the business. Under his joint tenure as CFO and then CEO, Hannover Re reported a return on equity of around 21.2 per cent for 2024, a solvency ratio of roughly 261 per cent under Solvency II and record ordinary and special dividends, while its share price remained near all-time highs following its inclusion in the DAX index. Analysts and investors have largely interpreted these results as confirmation of the group’s disciplined underwriting and capital management, reinforcing the perception of Jungsthöfel as a continuity-focused leader.

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Leadership and strategic priorities

🏗️ Lean, pragmatic corporate culture. Jungsthöfel frequently highlights Hannover Re’s corporate culture as a key competitive advantage, describing it as “somewhat different” from peers in its combination of approachability, pragmatism, quick decision-making and profit orientation. He stresses that the company has grown significantly over decades without adding hierarchical layers, striving to keep structures lean and to avoid bureaucracy, and has remarked that this culture was already evident when he first encountered Hannover Re as an external auditor in 2002 and that it has been preserved despite the group’s expansion.

📈 Client-centred but disciplined growth. In public statements Jungsthöfel has emphasised a strategy of “growing with our clients”, offering capacity and tailored reinsurance solutions while maintaining strict underwriting standards and return requirements. At the Monte Carlo Rendez-Vous in 2025 he characterised the environment as a “softening, but not soft” market and underlined that Hannover Re was prepared to forgo business that did not meet its profitability thresholds, even if competitors pursued more aggressive volume growth, a stance seen as contributing to the company’s comparatively stable combined ratio in recent years.

🎯 Strategic cycle and organic expansion. Within Hannover Re’s three-year strategic cycle, branded “Staying Focused – Thinking Ahead”, Jungsthöfel has set goals of sustaining industry-leading profitability and earnings growth, delivering reliable economic value add and maintaining an attractive, steadily rising dividend profile. He has explicitly downplayed the role of major acquisitions in achieving these aims, stating that acquisitions play no role in current plans and that growth should predominantly be organic, focusing on areas where the group already has expertise, such as property and casualty reinsurance, longevity and financial-solutions business in life and health reinsurance, and bespoke structured reinsurance arrangements. In this context he has described Hannover Re’s identity as a pure reinsurer, without large primary-insurance operations, as a competitive advantage linked to its lean structure.

🌱 Risk management, sustainability and technology. Drawing on his finance background, Jungsthöfel has supported an explicitly risk-management-driven approach to environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues and other emerging risks. During his time as CFO, Hannover Re tightened its coal-related investment and underwriting policies and joined wider industry efforts to align portfolios with long-term climate targets, steps that climate-advocacy groups cited as significant given the company’s global market position. At the same time he has spoken positively but cautiously about the use of data analytics and artificial intelligence in underwriting, arguing that such tools can improve decision-making but should complement rather than replace human actuarial judgement.

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Financial profile and wealth

💶 Remuneration as chief financial officer. As CFO of Hannover Re, Jungsthöfel received total remuneration of around €1.5 million in 2022, according to a study of DAX executive pay by the German shareholders’ association DSW and the Technical University of Munich. This package comprised a fixed base salary of roughly €439,000, a short-term bonus of about €427,000 and long-term incentive grants valued at approximately €641,000 in the form of share-based awards vesting over several years.

💷 CEO pay and comparison with DAX peers. The same study and subsequent regional analyses noted that both Jungsthöfel’s CFO compensation and the roughly €2.8 million earned in 2022 by then-CEO Jean-Jacques Henchoz were below the median for DAX-listed executives, where average CEO pay is significantly higher, and that Hannover Re’s top management ranks among the more moderately paid in Germany’s blue-chip index. A later remuneration report indicated that the supervisory board increased target compensation for executive board members, including Jungsthöfel, from 2024 onwards, but retained a relatively conservative pay structure compared with many industrial and automotive groups.

🏦 Wealth and shareholdings. Unlike founder-CEOs or entrepreneurial figures, Jungsthöfel’s wealth derives almost entirely from salary, bonuses and deferred stock units rather than from large equity stakes. Public filings do not list him among Hannover Re’s major shareholders: Talanx AG holds slightly more than 50 per cent of the reinsurer, with most of the remainder owned by institutional investors and a minority free float held by retail shareholders. His personal holdings are understood to consist mainly of long-term incentive shares representing only a small fraction of the company’s capital, leading observers to estimate his net worth in the single-digit millions of euros rather than the multi-hundred-million ranges associated with some global CEOs.

💼 Other financial interests. Beyond his positions at Hannover Re and on the Talanx management board, there is no public record of Jungsthöfel serving on outside corporate boards or of engaging in high-profile entrepreneurial ventures. Profiles describe him as a career corporate executive whose financial focus lies in institutional responsibilities rather than personal investment projects, and there is little public information on any philanthropic activities, which in Germany are often conducted privately or via company programmes.

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Personal life and personality

🏡 Origins and privacy. Public sources indicate that Jungsthöfel was born in 1970 in northern Germany and hails from Esterwegen in the Emsland district of Lower Saxony, where the Jungsthöfel family has long been associated with a local insurance agency. Biographical listings do not disclose his marital status or details about any children, and he is generally regarded as a private individual who keeps his family life out of the media spotlight.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Approachable, analytical style. Colleagues and interviewers commonly describe Jungsthöfel as down-to-earth, approachable and analytically minded, attributes often linked to his small-town upbringing and years spent working with clients in both advisory and corporate roles. He is known for listening extensively in internal meetings before distilling discussions into a small number of material points, and he often recounts the childhood episode of the grateful car-insurance client and his own tongue-in-cheek claim to have “been underwriting since age 10” to illustrate the human side of the insurance business.

🗣️ Communication and storytelling. In public appearances, Jungsthöfel tends to communicate through simple, concrete examples rather than technical jargon, explaining insurance concepts in terms of families insuring homes or businesses protecting themselves against catastrophe rather than in terms of abstract risk models. Commentators have noted that this style makes him relatively easy to quote and helps bridge the gap between specialist audiences, such as actuaries or analysts, and broader stakeholders, including employees and journalists.

📚 Unconventional education and credentials. Observers sometimes highlight that Jungsthöfel did not follow the more traditional path of German insurance executives, who often hold doctorates or degrees from long-established universities in Cologne, Munich or Münster, but instead rose from a Fachhochschule degree to the helm of a DAX constituent. Over the course of his career he has accumulated what has been described as an “alphabet soup” of professional credentials—insurance agent, German auditor and tax adviser, and English chartered accountant—which give him credibility with regulators, finance teams and front-line underwriters alike and enable him to act as a translator between the “languages” of accounting, actuarial science and sales.

🧘 Temperament and leadership ethos. Accounts from within Hannover Re portray Jungsthöfel as calm and measured, qualities seen as valuable in a business exposed to volatile natural catastrophes and financial-market swings. He promotes flat hierarchies and insists that the company’s success is a team effort, delegating substantial responsibility to divisional leaders while, as a trained auditor, retaining a willingness to probe details closely when numbers or assumptions do not appear consistent, a combination that some observers liken to a “servant-leader” approach.

⏳ Generational perspective. At 55, Jungsthöfel belongs to a relatively younger cohort of CEOs in the European insurance sector, having entered the industry in the 1990s when policies and reporting were still largely paper-based and then experienced the subsequent digital transformation of underwriting and claims handling. Supporters argue that this dual perspective, spanning both analogue and digital eras, helps him balance continuity with openness to new technologies as Hannover Re adapts to changing client expectations and data-driven business models.

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Controversies and challenges

🧾 Absence of personal scandal. As of the mid-2020s there are no reported personal scandals, legal disputes or major controversies associated with Jungsthöfel, and coverage of his appointment as CEO has focused largely on Hannover Re’s performance and strategic direction rather than on any contentious episodes in his career. Commentators generally describe him as a conservative, risk-aware manager whose public profile is shaped more by financial results than by personal branding.

📉 Market cycles and pricing discipline. The principal challenges facing Jungsthöfel are those inherent to the reinsurance industry, including the transition from several years of hard market conditions, during which reinsurers were able to raise prices materially, to an environment of easing rates and renewed competition. In interviews he has reiterated that Hannover Re will prioritise earnings quality over top-line growth, stressing that the group is prepared to step back from business that does not meet its profitability requirements, particularly in light of past experience in soft markets where the burden of frequent small losses tended to accumulate on reinsurers’ books.

⚖️ ESG policies and natural-hazard coverage. Under Henchoz’s leadership, with Jungsthöfel as CFO, Hannover Re adopted stricter policies on coal-related investments and underwriting, committing to phase out new covers for unabated coal projects and to reduce exposure to companies heavily dependent on coal, steps that drew praise from climate-advocacy groups as well as debate about the proper role of financial institutions in shaping energy policy. In German policy discussions following severe floods in 2021 and 2023, he aligned with the position of the national insurance association in arguing for an “opt-out” model for natural-hazard coverage—under which insurers must offer such cover but policyholders can decline—combined with risk-adequate pricing and stronger prevention and resilience measures rather than a strict legal obligation for all property owners to purchase flood insurance.

🌍 Emerging risks and long-term outlook. Looking ahead, analysts note that Jungsthöfel must steer Hannover Re through structural shifts such as more frequent climate-related natural catastrophes, the rapid expansion of cyber insurance with potentially systemic loss scenarios and ongoing uncertainty around interest rates and inflation. He has described these developments as extensions of the reinsurer’s core competence in risk assessment and portfolio management rather than as existential threats, arguing that disciplined underwriting, robust capital buffers and close cooperation with clients and regulators can keep the business model resilient.

🦠 Experience during the COVID-19 pandemic. As CFO, Jungsthöfel also played a central role in managing Hannover Re’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, overseeing reserve strengthening for life-insurance and event-cancellation claims and communicating the financial impact to investors and rating agencies. The group preserved its strong solvency position and continued to generate profits through the crisis, avoiding major capital shortfalls or surprise write-downs and reinforcing his reputation as a cautious steward of financial risks.

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