MUNICH (Bloomberg) Hannover Re, the world’s third-biggest reinsurer, confirmed its profit forecast for this year after negotiating better-than-expected rates with clients in the January round of renewals.“For 2011 we see sufficient opportunities for selective profitable growth,” Ulrich Wallin, chief executive officer of the Hanover, Germany-based reinsurer, told reporters during a briefing at the company’s headquarters. “We shall concentrate on segments where prices are rising or where they adequately reflect the risks.”Reinsurers, which help primary carriers such as Allianz SE and Axa SA shoulder risks for clients, have to cope with rising costs for natural disasters, reduced income from investments due to low interest rates and falling reinsurance prices. Hannover Re said it was able to renew contracts this year at “broadly stable rates and conditions” amid an average drop across the industry of five percent to 10 percent.“This is clearly a good performance given the overall expectation of a rather soft market,” Philipp Haessler, an analyst at Equinet AG in Frankfurt with an “accumulate” recommendation on the stock, wrote in a report to clients.The company, which is 50.2 percent owned by German insurer Talanx AG, confirmed a net income target of about 650 million euros ($895 million) this year. Wallin, 56, also said he sees no reason to change the 2010 goal of more than 700 million euros, helped by a 100 million-euro tax gain. He declined to be more specific, referring to the planned publication of full-year and fourth-quarter results on March 9.The floods in Australia in December may result in net claims of 16 million euros for Hannover Re, while the January flood in Brisbane may cost the company 40 million euros to 100 million euros, CEO Wallin said on a conference call yesterday, citing “early estimates” for Brisbane.