Zurich CEO: excess cash likely to be for bolt-on M&A, investor payout

ZURICH, Sept 29 (Reuters) - Zurich Insurance (LSE: 0QP2.L - news) expects to use its spare cash to raise returns to investors as well as for smaller-scale acquisitions, the group's chief executive said on Tuesday.

"As we have told you before, we expect to deploy $3 billion of excess capital by the end of 2016," Martin Senn told a banking and insurance conference, according to a transcript.

"While I cannot provide any additional guidance on this topic, as we see this today, we would view the most likely outcome for capital deployment to be through a combination of bolt-on acquisitions and cash returns to investors."

Zurich this month abandoned its proposed 5.6 billion pound ($8.48 billion) bid for Britain's RSA.

($1 = 0.6604 pounds) (Reporting by Joshua Franklin; Editing by Michael Shields)