Brighthouse Financial, Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Bright House Financial's second quarter 2023 earnings conference call. My name is Justin, and I will be your coordinator today. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. We will facilitate a question and answer session towards the end of the conference call. In fairness to all participants, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. As a reminder, the conference is being recorded for replay purposes. I would now like to turn the presentation over to Dana Monte, Head of Investor Relations, Ms. Amante, you may proceed.

Thank you, Justin, and good morning. Welcome to Bright House Financial's second quarter 2023 earnings call. Materials for today's call were released last night and can be found on the Investor Relations section of our website. We encourage you to review all of these materials. Today, you will hear from Eric Steigerwald, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Ed Spihar, our Chief Financial Officer. Following our prepared remarks, we will open the call up for a question and answer period. Also here with us today to participate in the discussion are Miles Lambert, our Chief Distribution and Marketing Officer, David Rosenbaum, Head of Product and Underwriting, and John Rosenthal, our Chief Investment Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to note that our discussion during this call may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Bright House Financial's actual results may differ materially from the results anticipated in the forward-looking statements, as a result of risks and uncertainties described from time to time in Bright House Financial's filings with the SEC. Information discussed on today's call speaks only as of today, August 9, 2023. The company undertakes no obligation to update any information discussed on today's call. During this call, we will be discussing certain financial measures that are not based on generally accepted accounting principles, also known as non-GAAP measures. Reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures on a historical basis to the most directly comparable GAAP measures and related definitions may be found in our earnings release, slide presentation, and financial supplement. And finally, references to statutory results including certain statutory-based measures used by management are preliminary due to the timing of the filing of the statutory statement. And now I'll turn the call over to our CEO, Eric Sagerwald.

Thank you, Dana, and good morning, everyone. Bright House Financial continues to deliver on its operational, strategic, and financial management goals as demonstrated by the milestones and results we achieved through the first half of 2023. Our overall priorities are focused on one, executing our growth strategy, which is centered around our complimentary and competitive product offerings, as well as our expansive distribution footprint. And two, maintaining our focus on prudent financial management to protect our balance sheet through a variety of market conditions. Reflecting the continued execution of our growth strategy in the first half of 2023, we further strengthened our annuity and life insurance product portfolio. In May, we announced enhancements to our SHIELD level annuities product suite, including the launch of SHIELD options with Step Rate Edge, a strategy that is designed to help clients keep their plans for retirement on track by providing additional growth opportunities in certain down markets. Additionally, we have seen great success with our new Shield Level Pay Plus product, which we launched last August. Year-to-date through June 30th, our Shield annuity sales totaled $3.2 billion, a 5% increase compared with the first half of 2022. In addition to strong sales of our Shield annuities, We also delivered strong fixed deferred annuity sales, which totaled $1.5 billion through the first half of 2023, demonstrating the complementary nature of our annuity product portfolio. We intend to keep our annuity product portfolio refreshed, including by expanding our product offerings over time. For example, we are currently working on a new fixed indexed annuity product, which we expect to launch later this year. Regarding our life insurance business, I am very pleased to share that in July we launched a new life insurance product, SmartGuard Plus, a registered index-linked universal life insurance policy that offers clients guaranteed distribution payments that can be used to supplement income in retirement as well as a guaranteed death benefit. We also continue our focus on maintaining the competitiveness of our life insurance products and recently repriced our smart care and Simply Select life products. Through the first half of 2023, we have seen persistent growth in our total life insurance sales, which increased 23% compared with the first half of 2022, reflecting the strong progress we have made as we execute our life insurance strategy. Along with the success that we have seen in our sales results, We have also maintained our focus on effectively manage our expenses. In order to further reduce our statutory expense ratio over time. The combination of continued sales growth. Which adds high quality new business to our enforce book. And the outflows of our capital intensive legacy variable annuities or. It's fundamental to shifting our business mix over time as of June 30th, 2023. Shield and fixed annuities made up approximately 40% of our total annuity account value, an increase of 25 percentage points since year-end 2016, and a more than 10 percentage point increase since year-end 2021. Additionally, roughly 40% is represented by the less capital-intensive VAs, with the higher capital intensive VAs representing only approximately 20% of total annuity account value as of June 30th, further reflecting the progress we have made toward evolving our business mix. We expect that this continued mix shift, along with the recent proactive de-risking measures that we took to further improve the quality of our balance sheet, which we discussed on the first quarter earnings call, will help to produce more consistent cash flows through a variety of market scenarios and increase shareholder value over time. In our effort to be a consistent returner of capital, we repurchased $152 million of common stock year to date through August 4th, while we continue to operate with a cautious view on both the market and economic environment, As I've said in the past, we intend to maintain an active and opportunistic share repurchase program. As we execute on our operational and strategic goals, we also remain disciplined in our financial and risk management, and we continue to conservatively manage our investments to maintain a high quality and well diversified portfolio. As of the end of the second quarter, Our combined risk-based capital, or RBC ratio, was estimated to be between 430% and 450%, which is at the upper end of our target range of 400% to 450% in normal markets. Our liquidity position remains robust with over $900 million of cash and liquid assets at the holding company as of the end of the second quarter. Our achievements and strong results through the first half of 2023 demonstrate our commitment to our shareholders and to supporting the growth of our franchise through a broad range of market scenarios. I will now turn the call over to Ed to discuss our financial results in more detail.