Aegon Ltd. New York Registry Shares

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Ergon second half 2023 results call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there'll be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to slowly press star one and one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. Please note that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker. Yves Cormier, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and good morning to everyone. Thank you for joining this conference call on EGON's second half year 2023 results. My name is Yves Cormier, and I'm the Head of Investor Relations. Joining me today are EGON CEO Lars Friese and CFO Matt Ryder to take you through the highlights of the year, our financial results, and the progress we are making in the transformation of EGON. After that, we will continue with a Q&A session. Before we start, we would like to ask you to review our disclaimer on forward-looking statements, which you can find at the back of the presentation. And on that note, I will now give the floor to Lars.

Yes, merci, Yves. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today's call. I will run you through our strategic and commercial developments before handing over to Matt, who will run through the financial results in more detail. Let's move to slide number two to review our achievements in the second half of 2023. 2023 was another important transformational year for Agon. During the year, we completed the transaction with ASR, initiated a significant share buyback program, reduced our gross financial leverage, presented our ambitions for the coming years at our capital markets day last June, and moved our legal seat to Bermuda. At the same time, we have remained laser focused on improving returns from our businesses and generating value for shareholders, which we will continue to do. The second half of 2023 saw Agon maintain commercial momentum, mainly driven by the strong performance of our US business. We have exceeded our financial commitments for 2023 and remain committed to our targets for 2025. I'm very proud of everything the teams have achieved in 2023, and I'm grateful for all of their hard work during the year. We will continue to work hard executing our strategy in 2024, and I am optimistic about our prospects. In the second half of 2023, operating capital generation before holding funding and operating expenses was 16% higher than in the same period of 2022. Earnings on Inforce rose by 16% driven by business growth in U.S. strategic assets and management actions we have taken on the financial assets. Over the full year 2023, operating capital generation before holding funding and operating expenses was 14% higher than 2022 at nearly 1.3 billion euros, well above our guidance. The IFRS offering results decreased to 681 million euros in the second half of 2023, due in part to the impact of management actions we have previously taken, as well as several favorable one-time items in the previous year. Shareholders' equity per share has remained stable, despite the significant distribution of capital to shareholders. The capital ratios of our units remain strong, and well above their respective operating levels. Furthermore, cash capital of the holding amounted to 2.4 billion euros, well above the operating level, despite reducing leverage by 500 million euros in the fourth quarter and making good progress executing the 1.5 billion euros share buyback program. At the end of last week, we have completed 76% of this program, which means we have already returned more than 1.1 billion euros to stockholders through this program alone. In addition, our strong commercial performance, together with the important steps we have taken to realign our company, have given us a solid foundation on which to sustainably grow our dividend per share. We have increased the proposed final dividend for 2023 to 16 euro cents per share. And subject to shareholder approval, this would bring our full year dividend to 30 cents per common share up more than 30% compared with the 2022 and in line with our guidance. Let's turn to slide number three to discuss the commercial results of our units. Starting in the Americas, one of the two focus areas in our U.S. Individual Solutions business is World Financial Group, or WFT, our Life Insurance Distribution Network. Let me remind you, our ambition is to increase the number of WFG agents to 110,000 by 2027, while at the same time improving agent productivity. Momentum has been strong throughout the year. During 2023, the number of licensed agents has increased by 18% compared with the year in 2022 to nearly 74,000. In addition, The improvement in agent productivity is a priority for us. The number of multi-ticket agents, which are agents selling more than one life policy over the last 12 months, has increased by 12% compared with a year ago. Transamerica's market share of life insurance products sold by WFG in the US remains high at 64%. This is due to the consistent service experience we deliver to WFG agents combined with the tailored products we manufacture for WFG that appeal to middle market consumers, our key demographic. Let's move to slide number four, and I will address the second focus area of our U.S. individual solutions business, individual life insurance. Here, we are investing in both product manufacturing capabilities and the operating model in order to position the individual life insurance business for further growth through WFG and third-party distributors. Commercial momentum was strong throughout the year. New life sales increased by 13% compared with 2022, largely driven by higher index universal life sales. Importantly, we have been able to maintain the profitability of new sales, achieving internal rates of returns in excess of 12%. Increased sales of individual life insurance in 2023 led to an increase in new business strain of 10%. Business growth was also the main driver of the 31% increase in earnings on in-force compared to the full year 2022. Slide number five addresses the progress we have made in the U.S. workplace solutions retirement plans business. Transamerica aims to increase hearings on Inforce from its retirement business by leveraging its capabilities as a record keeper with the ambition to materially increase the penetration of ancillary products and services it offers. During 2023, commercial results were strong in our focus area of mid-sized plans. Here, written sales rose by 72% compared with 2022, and net deposits amounted to $1.2 billion in 2023. We also saw good growth in ancillary products, such as the general account stable value product, as well as in individual retirement accounts. This is in line with our strategy to grow and diversify our revenue stream. The decrease in earnings and in force of our strategic assets in the retirement plans business was driven by higher expenses largely related to increased employee and technology expenses. Let's move on to the United Kingdom on slide number six. We continue to make good progress on our strategic agenda of investing and growing our platform activities. From a commercial perspective, the year has been characterized by two different trends. The workplace channel shows strong commercial results throughout 2023. Net deposits in the workplace channel amounted to 1.8 billion pounds in 2023. However, if we exclude the exit of a single large and low margin scheme in the third quarter, the net deposits would have amounted to 2.7 billion pounds in 2023. The solid net deposits in the workplace channel reflect inflows from the onboarding of new schemes as well as higher net deposits on existing schemes. We expect this trend to continue. In the retail channel, on the other hand, commercial results continue to be hampered by the current macroeconomic environment, which has negatively impacted investor sentiment across the industry. Net outflows in the retail channel amounted to £3.1 billion in 2023, and explain in part the overall 16 million pounds of annualized revenues lost on net deposits in the year. The remainder is due to the impact of gradual runoff of the traditional product portfolio, partially upset by revenues gained on net deposits in the workplace channel. On slide number seven, I want to address the growth markets where we continue to make steady progress. New live sales in our growth markets increased by 18% compared with 2022, with good growth in both Brazil and China, offsetting weaker sales in Spain, in part due to a divestment there in the previous year. Over the same period, non-life new premium production increased by 15% as weaker demand for property and cash products was more than offset by growth in accident and health insurance. Operating capital generation in the international segment, excluding TLV, increased by 8% in 2023 compared to 2022 as a result of business growth and more favorable new business strength. I'm turning now to slide number eight to comment on our asset manager. Market conditions have been especially challenging for fixed income focused asset managers, such as our global platforms business as interest rates rose in 2022 and 23. In the latter months of 2023, however, interest rates stabilized and commercial results have improved, especially in the fourth quarter, for instance, in our mortgage funds. In addition, we are benefiting from the new asset management joint venture with ASR, as well as the other strategic initiatives we have undertaken recently. Net outflows in our global platforms amounted to 600 million euros for the full year 2023, but they were negligible in the second half of the year. In the strategic partnership segment, net outflows amounted to 2.8 billion euros in 2023. The La Banque Postale asset management joint venture experienced net outflows mainly due to the departure of a low margin business of a former shareholder. Meanwhile, in the joint venture AIFMC, Net outflows were driven by continued weak investor sentiment in China. These unfavorable market conditions and net outflows drove the decrease of operating capital generation in 23 compared with the year before 2022. Now I hand over to Matt to discuss the financial performance of Agon in more detail, starting on slide number nine.

Thank you, Laura. Good morning, everyone, and thanks again for joining us today. Let me start with an overview of our financial performance over this last half year, beginning on slide 10. In the second half of 2023, the IFRS operating result decreased by 32% compared to the prior year period to 681 million euros, mostly driven by the performance of the U.S. The operating result, however, should be interpreted in combination with other movements in the balance sheet under IFRS 17, such as the CSM and shareholders' equity. On a per share basis, shareholders' equity has remained stable over the period despite material distributions of capital to shareholders. At the same time, we are seeing good results in the financial metrics on which we primarily steer the business. First, our operating capital generation before holding, funding, and operating expenses increased by 16% over the second half of 2023, coming in at 660 million euros. This brings the full year amount to 1.3 billion euros above our guidance. Free cash flow was strong as well in the second half of 2023, amounting to 429 million euros following receipt of planned remittances from all units. Cash capital at the holdings stood at 2.4 billion euros at the end of December 2023. Proceeds from the ASR transaction and remittances from the units were partially offset by capital return to shareholders and the redemption of a 500 million euro matured senior bond. This redemption means that we have also achieved our target of having a gross financial leverage of around 5 billion euros. The group solvency ratio decreased by nine percentage points since the end of June of 2023 to 193%. The impact of the ASR transaction, the associated share buyback, and the incorporation of our stake in ASR were in line with the guidance we had previously provided. This was in part offset by capital generation, as well as the beneficial impact of the UK solvency reform, which is reflected in our group solvency ratio. Let's then move to the operating result on slide 11. The group's operating result was 681 million euros, a decrease of 32 million compared with the prior year period. In the US, the operating result decreased by 39% over the same period, reflecting both the impact of management actions and the fact that the prior period included several non-recurring items. In the UK, the operating result decreased by 12%. This decrease is mainly a consequence of the sale of the protection business Royal London, which has reduced the release of CSM. The operating result of the non-insurance fee business was negatively impacted by inflationary pressure on expenses. In our international segment, the operating result decreased by 10%, predominantly as a result of a non-recurring benefit in TLB in the second half of 2022. The operating result from Agon Asset Management increased by 3% compared with the same period of 2022. This was driven by the expansion of the LVP Asset Management Joint Venture. Finally, our holding, or Group Center, reported a negative result of €72 million, which mainly reflects funding and operating expenses. The operating result improved compared with the second half of 2022, driven by higher returns on cash capital at holding and an unfavorable one-time item in the previous year. These expenses should increase next year as the return on cash capital will decrease and the funding expenses will likely increase in a higher interest rate environment. On the next slide, number 12, let me give you more background on our U.S. operating results. The operating results of the U.S. amounted to $519 million in the second half of 2023 and was impacted by unfavorable claims and policyholder experience. There are a few points worth noting on the experience variance. First, the experience variance of $39 million on expenses included about $25 million of recurring expenses, which we will report in the line other insurance results going forward. Second, claims and policyholder experience was unfavorable at $210 million. It notably included negative mortality experience variance of $91 million. The unfavorable mortality development can be attributed to both a few claims with unusually large face amounts and the fact that mortality on retained lives was a bit higher than expected. We are still coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic and as we saw this quarter, Mortality was unfavorable compared to our long-term best estimate assumptions. We could therefore observe similar developments in the coming periods, but the experience variance should progressively average out to around zero over time. Third, there were some new onerous contracts. As you would expect in a normal quarter, these amounted to $12 million. On a separate note, the insurance net investment result of $200 million decreased compared with last year's second half, notably reflecting the impact of management actions on asset levels and an increase in interest accretion on liabilities. The result in the second half of 2023 included a $28 million non-recurring benefit following a methodology update regarding interest accretion in variable and fixed annuities. Slide 13 shows the net result over the second half of 2023. Non-operating items amounted to a charge of 495 million euros driven by realized losses on investments in the U.S. This was driven by the sale of assets related to the reinsurance of the Universal Life Portfolio to Wilton Re as well as by asset sales intended to preserve existing tax benefits. Fair value items resulted in a gain of 65 million euros during the second half of 2023. Gains from hedges in the U.S., mostly related to variable annuity dynamic hedging and in the holding, more than offset negative results, edge results in the U.K., and a loss on fair value investments in the U.S. related to the underperformance of alternative investments. Other charges amounted to 270 million euros in the second half of 2023. This is driven by the U.S., where other charges amounted to 387 million euros or $418 million. These included $278 million of model and assumption updates. These were mainly from the fourth quarter expense assumption review, the impact of which was almost fully offset by an increase in the CSM. The remainder of the charges in the U.S. was comprised of $129 million in restructuring charges, investments related to the life operating model, and an adjustment to litigation provisions to account for settlements in the second half of 2023. These charges in the U.S. were notably partially offset by 155 million euros of other income related to our stake in ASR. On slide 14, I want to talk about the development of AGON's shareholders' equity in the second half of 2023. Here you see that total comprehensive income amounted to a positive 445 million euros, thereby increasing shareholders' equity. This is due to the fact that realized losses on bond sales in the U.S. are offset completely in other comprehensive income. After taking into account the capital returns through share buyback program, the payment of the interim dividend, and interest paid on the debt, shareholders' equity decreased by 700 million euros to 7.5 billion euros over the second half of 2023. On a per share basis, however, shareholders' equity remained stable over the reporting period at four euros, 27 cents, due to the reduction in share count from the share buyback program. I'm now moving on to talk about the CSM development on slide 15. The CSM at the end of the year 2023 amounted to 8.3 billion euros and remained stable compared with the level at the end of June. The growth of our U.S. strategic assets CSM and the decline of our U.S. financial assets CSM were the two largest developments. Both reflect our strategy to grow strategic assets and to reduce financial assets. I'll come back to the U.S. in a moment. Outside the U.S., the main driver of the CSM was the U.K. business. Here, the CSM increased by 65 million euros in the second half of 2023. The release of CSM, mostly from the traditional book, and an unfavorable experience variance was more than offset by the favorable impacts of assumption updates in market. It is important to note that our focus in the UK is on platform activities, which are not accounted for anymore under IFRS 17 and therefore do not have a CSM balance. On slide 16, I will discuss the dynamics of our U.S. CSM in more detail. On the left-hand side of slide 16, you see the CSM roll forward for our U.S. strategic assets. Here the CSM increased about $600 million compared with the end of June 2023 to $2.8 billion. New business contributed about $200 million driven by sales and indexed universal life policies and more than offset the release of CSM. Experience variance in the strategic assets was overall favorable from favorable policyholder behavior. The expense assumption update had a significantly positive impact on the CSN. This update reflects the future benefits we anticipate as we implement our improved life operating model. During the second half of the year, there was an increase in the risk adjustment that was primarily driven by the loss of diversification due to the sale of AGON the Netherlands to ASR. This has an offsetting impact on CSN. Moving now to the right side, right inside of slide 16, the CSM balance related to our financial assets decreased by about $700 billion compared with the end of June, 2023. The update of our expense assumptions had an unfavorable impact as did claims and policyholder experience variances. The unfavorable in-force update of the risk adjustment was offset by interest accretion on the CSM together with markets and a favorable impact on the variable annuity book, which is accounted for under the variable fee approach. Finally, other movements reflect mainly the impact of management actions on the CSM, such as the reinsurance of the universal life portfolio to Wilton Re. Let me now turn to operating capital generation on slide 17. Operating capital generation before holding funding and operating expenses increased by 16% compared with the second half of 2022 and amounted to 660 million euros. Earnings on in-force excluding holding expenses increased by 16% over the same period. This was driven by Transamerica and reflects growth of our strategic assets and the impact from previous management actions on our financial assets. Our U.S. claims experience was comparable with that of the second half of 2022 and did therefore not contribute to the increase. New business strain decreased by 9% compared with the prior year period. Higher strain in the U.S., in line with our ambition to drive profitable growth in our U.S. strategic assets, was more than offset by lower strain in the U.K. and internationally. In the UK, the lower new business strain was driven by the sale of the protection book and a change in business mix. The release of required capital was 14% lower than the same period of 2022, which was mainly the result of a one-time additional release from a contract discontinuance in the US at the end of 2022. There is a significant difference in trends between the operating capital generation and the IFRS 17 operating results. Let me provide some context on slide 18. First of all, we steer the business and evaluate performance primarily based on the capital-based framework. Capital generation in business units enables remittances to the holding, which in turn enable us to return capital to shareholders. The most important component of operating capital generation is the earnings on in-force, and this is directly comparable to the IFRS operating results. Having said that, there are major structural differences between the IFRS operating results and the statutory-based earnings on in-force, which impact the timing of earnings recognition under the two frameworks. These structural differences resulted in a lower IFRS operating result and an increase on earnings in-force in the reporting period compared with the second half of 2022. Net investment-related impacts were more negative on an IFRS basis as current period accretion of interest on liabilities occurs at higher rates on certain blocks compared with that for earnings unenforced. Another example is that the profit emergence of indexed universal life products are very different under the two frameworks. Under statutory accounting rules, profits are upfronted in the first several years, while under IFRS, the profits are smoothed equally over the duration of the product. Importantly, management actions can have very different impacts on the two frameworks. For example, the universal life reinsurance transaction that we executed at the half year reduced an anticipated drag on operating capital generation but is anticipated to reduce future IFRS earnings as the book will no longer contribute to CSM release nor net investment results. Similarly, in variable annuities, we set up a voluntary reserve under the capital-based framework to dampen the sensitivity of our RBC ratio to equity market movements. This reserve only exists under statutory accounting and has no corollary under IFRS. As the book runs off, voluntary reserve is gradually released, benefiting earnings unenforced, but not IFRS earnings. Finally, there were a number of one-off items in the second half of 2022 mainly related to modeling and methodology updates that partially explained the difference in IFRS operating results this period and that related exclusively to IFRS 17 accounting. In sum, these frameworks are difficult to harmonize, but the capital-based framework is the primary one that we use to steer the business. Using slide 19, I want to talk to you about the development of the capital ratios of our main operating units. The U.S. RBC ratio increased to 432% at the end of the year and remains well above the operating level of 400%. Operating capital generation contributed favorably to the ratio, more than offsetting remittances to the holding. Market movements had a 5 percentage point positive impact, mainly from tightening credit spreads and favorable interest rate movements. One-time items had an overall negative impact of 10 percentage points over the reporting period. This is a combination of a number of items. Firstly, there is a negative impact relating to the implementation of the remaining management actions that we announced at our Capital Markets Day in June. Secondly, the setup of an affiliated reinsurance entity in Bermuda and the subsequent reinsurance of a block of deferred annuities to it had a negative impact. Third, some smaller one-time items had on balance a negative impact. Finally, these negative drivers were in part offset by the recognition of the statutory equity of two captive insurance companies in available capital. The solvency ratio of Scottish Equitable, our main legal entity in the UK, increased to 187%. This reflects the regulatory change in the UK, which lowered the risk margin and thereby increased the available capital. In addition, the positive impact from operating capital generation more than offset the remittances to the holding. These positive factors were in part offset by the annual assumption update and market movements over the period, which both had a slight negative impact on the ratio. I will now turn to slide 20 for an update on our financial assets. Here we summarize how we are creating value from our financial assets. The reinsurance of a block of universal life policies with secondary guarantees announced in July generated $240 million of capital in line with previous guidance and is being used life policies. By 2027, Transamerica aims to have purchased 40% of the $7 billion face amount of institutionally owned universal life contracts that was in force at the end of 2021. We have made steady progress, and as of the end of 2023, we have purchased 23% of the face value of these policies, focusing on older age policies with large faces. In long-term care, we have obtained regulatory approvals for additional actuarially justified premium rate increases worth $245 million since the start of the year. This represents 35% of the target that we announced at the Capital Markets Day. Moving to fixed annuities, we have set up an affiliated reinsurance entity in Bermuda to which we have reinsured a portfolio of fixed deferred annuities. This will enable us to manage the block under a more market-consistent framework, thereby reducing capital volatility. In variable annuities, we hedged the targeted risks embedded in our variable annuity guarantees and achieved a 99% hedge effectiveness in the second half of 2023. We have now expanded that program to also include statutory lapse and mortality margins to lower our RBC ratio markets. Capital employed in our financial assets decreased to $3.9 billion at the end of 2023. We continue to work diligently toward our goal of reducing the capital employed in our financial assets to around $2.2 billion by the end of 2027. On slide 21, I will address cash capital at the holding. The free cash flow of 425 million euros over the second half of 2023 reflects the receipt of planned remittances from all our business units. In addition, we received our share of ASR's 2023 interim dividend. Proceeds from the transaction with ASR amounted to 2.2 billion euros. As previously guided, these proceeds are being used to return capital to shareholders. Cash outflows amounted to 1.6 billion euros, of which about 800 million relates to the ongoing share buyback program, about 300 million to the payment of our interim dividend, and about 500 million to the redemption of a maturing senior bond. On slide 22, I want to talk about our progress with respect to achieving our financial commitments. Operating capital generation before holding funding and operating expenses was strong in 2023, 2023 at 1.3 billion euros and came in above our guidance, supported by solid business growth and favorable one-time items. For 2024, we anticipate higher new business strain driven by the growth of our U.S. strategic assets. Operating capital generation is expected to amount to around 1.1 billion euros on track to achieve our target of around 1.2 billion euros in 2025. The redemption of a maturing senior bond in the fourth quarter of 2023 has brought our gross financial leverage to 5.1 billion euros, and thus we have achieved our target of having leverage of around 5 billion euros. Free cash flow amounted to 715 million euros in 2023, above the guidance we provided, and include 123 million euros of remittances from our Chinese asset management joint venture. A significant portion of this should be considered as special remittances reflecting performance in prior years. As mentioned during our last capital markets day, we expect free cash flow in 2024 to exceed 700 million euros on the back of sustainable operating capital generation growth. Finally, we are proposing a final dividend of 16 euro cents per common share, which subject to approval of this general meeting of shareholders, brings the full year 2023 dividend to 30 euro cents per common share as previously guided. We remain confident we can grow the dividend to our stated target of 40 euro cents per share over 2025. In summary, we are well on track to achieve our 2025 financial targets. And with that, I now pass it back to you, Lard, for your concluding remarks.

Yes, thanks, Matt. Let me wrap up today's presentation with slide number 24 before we move to Q&A. AGON is fully engaged in this next chapter of its transformation. We are moving forward with our strategy. We have concrete plans and are delivering on the commitments that we have made. Operating capital generation growth was strong in 2023 on the back of profitable business growth in our U.S. strategic assets and management actions previously taken on our financial assets. The operating results declined in part from the management actions which benefited capital generation, as well as non-recurring items in 2022. Commercial momentum remains strong in our US strategic assets, the UK workplace business, and in our international joint ventures. Macroeconomic conditions remain adverse in our UK retail business and asset management business. The final dividend we propose would bring the full year 2023 dividend to €30 per common share in line with our guidance and on our path to a €40 dividend per common share in 2025. And finally, I'm turning to slide 25. We would like to take this opportunity to invite you to attend a webinar on the strategy of our UK business set to take place on June 25th of this year. I'm looking forward to your participation at this event. With that, I would like now to open the call for your questions. Please be so kind as to limit yourself to two questions per person. Sharon, please be so kind as to open the Q&A session.

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to slowly press star 1 and then 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Please be aware that we will take and answer one question at a time before moving to the next question. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. This will take a few moments. Thank you. We will now go to the first question. And your first question comes from the line of Andrew Baker from Citi. Please go ahead.

Great. Thank you for taking my question. The first one is just on the operating capital generation, really how much conservatism is built into the 1.1 billion 2024 guidance. Clearly we've seen a few quarters in a row now of positive one-offs. Interest rates are now higher. And my understanding is that not all of the interest rate benefits were in the 2023 base due to some liquidity constraints. And also we've seen the S&Ps rally recently as well. So I guess why shouldn't we expect that 1.1 billion to be higher in 2024? And then secondly, just on the long-term care risk transfer market, we've seen a peer do a back book transaction in December. I appreciate there's mixed differences and there were other products involved in that transaction, but do you see the positive signal for the wider long-term care risk transfer market going forward? Thank you.

Thanks, Andrew. This is Lars. Let me take that last question and then give it back to Matt on the OCD. You know, of course, we've taken good note of the transaction you're referring to in the U.S., but these transactions are all unique in their own nature with their own details. So while it's an interesting signal and we're watching the space very carefully, I cannot really comment on that in a broader sense. When it comes to the OCG, Matt, over to you.

Yeah, let me take you through a bit of the puts and takes at least for the second half of the year. So what we reported was 306 million of OCG from the business units, and this was a beat relative to the analyst consensus. The main driver of this was some basically one-time benefits that we got from international. The results in the U.S. were actually pretty clean with some unfavorable mortality experience. basically offset by other items, morbidity and favorable operating items. But in general, the U.S. was pretty clean. So if you think of it, you know, you're coming to about a clean number of about, you know, let's call it $275 million for the quarter times four. That gets you to about 1.1. And that's effectively what our guidance is. There are a couple pluses and minuses going into 2024, though. The first is that We do have some tailwinds. The equity markets ended up pretty high at the end of the year, and we generally do better on OCG with higher asset bases and the like. But the key thing here is that we would expect to see some additional new business strain over and above what we saw in 2023. And that kind of brings you back into that $1.1 billion range. But I would say it's really the increase in the new business strain that's really driving the the $1.1 billion forecast.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you. We will now move to the next question. And your next question comes from the line of David Barmer, Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one is on remittances for the U.S. specifically. Could you please remind us what the trajectory is in terms of cash remittances there? I know you have a dollar amount target, but you're in the strong capital position and the sensitivities keep coming down. Is there any reason for you not to be able to remit more than around 65%, 70% conversion of capital generation that you have currently? And then secondly, on retirement plans, so you've had good growth in your assets on the management there over 23, and especially on the middle market segment. But the earnings contribution you show on slide five has gone down. So could you remind us what the main building blocks are to get to the, I think, 200 million targets for 2025? Thank you. Thank you, David.

Go ahead. Yeah, so on the remittances, back at the capital markets thing we did just this past June, we said that we would try to grow the U.S. remittances in a sort of a mid-single digits kind of a range, and we would not expect to vary off of that. We did, I think we took $550 million in remittances in 2023, so mid-single digits on top of that. That's what we would be expecting in 2024. I think the key thing here is, though, that we really want our business units and, you know, obviously including the U.S., to have enough capital to be able to invest for growth. And that's the big deal. They have a big transformation that they need to fund. And we do expect higher new business frame going into next year. So, you know, at this moment in time, we would not expect to take out any additional remittances. Let it sit there. They have plenty of uses for it that we're actually very, very happy to be able to achieve. On the retirement plans business, indeed, the operating result is down a bit. The building blocks are really the amount of money that we take off of record-keeping fees plus ancillary benefits plus other bits and, for example, general account stable value. We have seen some outflows overall in the retirement plans business. Our aim is actually to keep the AUM pretty stable over the planned projection period and really make up in the margin difference with these ancillary benefits. So those are the building blocks, but you can call investor relations for additional detail on that.

Thank you, Matt. Just one follow-up on your first question to Andrew on the interest rates. benefit in 24 in OCG? How much do you expect from that? Do you still have funding headwinds or do you get the full benefit of your reinvestment?

I would say in the near term, we're not going to see much of an impact from interest rate movements. I mean, the big thing for us and frankly all insurance companies over the last year, year and a half has been more the volatility in interest rates and having to manage liquidity around that. So the short term, we have pluses and minuses. So on the plus side, we're making more on, for example, cash balances in the UK business, cash amounts that are sitting on the platform there. We're making more on cash balances generally in the holding, and you see that in our holding and funding expenses. But we have increased funding costs that we would be expecting in the US business and at the holding over time. There are a bunch of puts and takes, let's say, for the near term. But fundamentally, longer term, and we see this in our very long-term projections, cash flow testing forecasts and the like, the up interest rate environment having come off the bottoms in 2021 are actually very, very helpful for us going forward. Got it. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll now go to the next question. And your next question comes from the line of Mazib Ahmed from UBS. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. So first one on the holding company cash. I mean, it's pretty strong, but you've got a bit of the share buyback to go. And I think you've indicated you want to trend down towards the midpoint of the target, right? So that gives me more than a billion of excess if I can roll it forward. What are your uses of this excess cash that's sitting at the holding company? That's question number one. And then the second one is on the Bermuda reinsurance entity. Could you bundle up some of your liabilities, put it in the reinsurance entity and go for a third party solution? Would that be more attractive than doing it one by one? I'm just thinking that's part of the plan because the fixed annuity reinsurance didn't really release a lot of capital. So just thinking about that entity going forward, what's the plan for that?

Thank you very much. I'll take the first one and I'm going to ask you, Matt, to do the second one. Yeah, so first of all, we're in the market completing, working hard to complete the 1.5 billion buyback that we have ongoing. And as we shared in the call, we still have roughly 24, 25% to go. So we're first, we're concentrating on that. So this means also that we'll be buying back a substantial amount of trading volume in our own shares. As you know, we have a clear capital management framework, and that has been consistent throughout the years. Should there be a surplus cash capital above and beyond what we need to execute on the transformation as a company, if we cannot invest in the value-creating opportunities, then we will return it to shareholders in the most efficient form. That's been the consistency. approach that we have, and we're not changing that.

Let me pick up the Bermuda reinsurer piece. So indeed, we set up this reinsurance entity in Bermuda. We reinsured a big block of fixed deferred annuities to about $4.6 billion. But the reason why we do that is to align, let's say, the capital framework for fixed deferred annuities with our economic view of the risk. So moving these liabilities to be in the separate entity has allowed us to do this. And as you said in your question, this does not release a lot of capital, but what it does do is it reduces potential capital volatility down the road. And that's part of one of the things that we're trying to achieve as part of the management of these financial assets. I think you would agree that we've been pretty successful so far. We've been executing management actions to be able to do this. There will be further management actions. There's no question about it. We always say that we anticipate taking other unilateral and bilateral management actions and really establishing the Bermuda entity gives us a little bit more flexibility, but we're not in any way, you know, talking about announcing anything right now. But it does give us some flexibility to execute on management actions just as we have done in the past.

Thank you.

Thank you. I'll move to the next question. And your next question comes from the line of Farquhar Murray from Autonomous. Please go ahead.

Morning, all. Just two questions about me. Starting with the commercial side, I just wondered if you had a target for agent recruitment at WFG this year on your path to the 110,000. I presume actually something similar is kind of needed this year again. And then more generally, how much do you expect new business strain to increase this year? And is that partly driven by that? Then the second question might be a bit more involved. That's actually just turning to the IFRS 17 operating results. I just wondered if you could maybe walk us through to a sensible run rate there. I presume the bridge is to take the kind of claims and policyholder experience

part of the expense variance maybe fade down the holding but i think i would be annualizing in about maybe 1.6 1.7 billion per annum but i obviously would appreciate your views on that thanks yes good morning um targets for so on the path to the 110 000 yes we have internal targets obviously but uh we are and the at the slope uh that we i think if you look if you look at um a longer period than just the period that we've disclosed today. So I think you need to get to a former presentation that we did. You will see that we are on the slope to get to 110,000 by 2027 and by 90,000 by 2025. So that's what we're tracking towards and we're well on the slope to get there. So 90,000 for 2025. And then two years later, we aim to get to 110,000. We're right now, at the end of the year, at 74,000. And if you then go back, you can see that the slope that we're on is actually pretty well on track, I would say. With that, Matt, the question on the IFRS.

Well, first, let's do the new business stream. Oh, sorry. Yeah. So, I mean, maybe just as an idea. We did, I think it was about 624, something like that, on the in the full year in the U.S. for new business strain. Now, I think you could think about something like a 700 million roundly as a pretty decent guidance. With respect to the IFRS operating result guidance, yeah, we would expect that a lot of those experience variances are going to be trending to zero over time. I would say something in the area of maybe $700 to $800 million for a half-year basis. So maybe a little bit lower than the number that you came up with on an annualized basis. But the one thing that we tend to think about is, you know, we're coming out of COVID, so, you know, is there going to be some continuing short-term mortality fluctuation? So we kind of have some of that built in there. But that's the way that we're thinking about a run rate, based on the second half results.

Okay. That's extremely helpful. Just as a follow-on on that, I mean, is there a timeframe to which you kind of expect that mortality element to drop out? And similarly, what's the dynamic behind that onerous contracts component as well?

The onerous contracts, there's a number of things that are going on in the onerous contracts component, and that's just the geography thing between how you split up the experience variances between the income statement and basically CSM. So I hope you were listening carefully when I did my little readout here. Many of the experience variances that you're seeing are actually offset in the CSM. So you also have to look at the CSM development. As for how long we would expect to see us come out of it, on the mortality side, COVID, I don't know. These are expert judgment kind of things. But the most important point that I would make here is that Our goal is to get those experience variances so that they average out at zero and we get pluses and minuses. If we have longer-term deviations, then we could potentially do small model updates or assumption updates, but we're always going to be tweaking the assumptions to try to get back to that mean of zero. But for right now, they seem to be more or less in line with our expectations. We see the big benefits coming through in CSM. We'll do our normal assumption update in the second quarter of next year for the know for the us business so we'll see what that uh see what that comes but a lot of this really that coming out of the coven environment is really a is an expert judgment and i could ask six actuaries on what the what they think it is and i would get six different opinions including my own by the way great thanks thank you we will now move to the next question

And your next question comes from the line of Ashik Masadi from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Anne. Good morning, Lad. Good morning, Matt. Just a couple of questions I have is, first of all, I mean, if I look at the flow's momentum, especially in second half versus first half, it appears to be drifting down in most business lines. I mean, such as retirement plans, it was quite low. UK workplace, retail. asset management i mean wherever i look at the flows momentum net flows net deposits was quite different so any color on that you can give is it seasonality or just like second second half macro last year or put it like this i mean can we get some color of what's what are you seeing uh year to date because macro has recovered etc so has things got better again uh so that's the first one and secondly i see that there's a big uh Assumption change benefit in the CSM release because of changes in future life operating model. Can we get some color on what assumptions you are using for this changes in life operating model and what drove that in second half instead of that happening in first half? Because I believe that you were already there with the plans in first half last year. So any color on that would be helpful. Thank you.

Yes, Ashik, thanks for your question. I'll take the first one, and then Matt will go on the benefits. So on the flows, we've got to do this line by line, Ashik, or business line by business line, if you don't mind. So first, the workplace solutions business in the U.S. As we have announced in the capital market today, we are focused on the mid-market plans. So in that sense, we're quite focused in a particular market segment where we believe we have, it's more attractive to us in terms of margins and also where we believe we have unique capabilities that can help us grow the business. And in fact, if you look at the new sales, it's 72% higher than the year before. And the, you know, we are at the top five player in that new sales. So that's number one. Number two, in that area, we have positive flows, $1.2 billion for the year. So in the target segment that we are really focused on, we're seeing actually the momentum as very good. Now, why do we do that? And there's one thing, by the way, to mention. The other thing to measure is the ancillary products that we are able to sell to improve the margins. You may recall why that is important, because at the Capital Markets Day, we outlined that the margin per participant, which we were able to, I think, between 2020 and 22 to double. That's driving, let's say, the sales of general account stable value, the other artillery sales like individual retirement accounts, et cetera, in these mid-market plans that will drive the profitability overall up. So I would say that strategy is really taking hold and coming through in the numbers. Now, it's offset by outflows, and you've seen outflows of some large cases, the profitability in the margins of these large cases is really much reduced versus the profitability of the large cases that you're losing is, and there are outflows, is much worse than the profitability of the mid-market plans. So we're replacing basically with that new sales, higher margin business, and that is what we aim to do. So in that sense, we see our strategy taking hold. Now then some color on the UK workplace business. Quite frankly, UK workplace business is doing well. Commercial momentum is there. You could see that for a number of quarters. The flows are positive on the UK workplace. Now what happened in the second half of the year is that there was one case that we knew was going to pull out. We lost a client and you know at a certain point it's being executed. You see that then in your outflows, but the net flows are still positive and it would have been 2.7 billion and therefore up if you would correct for that one client. So frankly, we're powering on nicely with the workplace business and we need to grow that business of course in the UK. Then on asset management flows, that's a tale of two halves. And also let's give you a bit of color actually. On the global platforms business, which is what we wholly own, we noticed through all the interest rates up, you know, and the volatility around that, there were net outflows in the first half of the year. Second half of the year was a different story. It was hardly any outflows, and actually we got more inflows if you include the general account. So in that sense, the picture is changing in the second half of the year in that flow profile. Now, if you look at La Banque Postale, especially the Chinese joint venture, that joint venture is very well positioned in China, as you know, because over the last years, you have seen that driving a lot of positive flows and a lot of positive momentum. This year in 2023, our Chinese business in asset management has suffered from the negative local market sentiment and that you see in negative flows. But that business is very well positioned at the moment that sentiment turns in China. that I expect I'm actually quite constructive on the outlook of that. So that's the kind of color that I'd like to give on this sheet. And with that, I hope that helps a little bit. Matt, can you do the other question?

Yeah, and the expense assumption update, and in particular the life operating model, indeed we knew the – so back when we did the capital markets day, we had had it all figured out, you know, kind of what our plan was to implement that improvement and what it would bring over the future. But what we did at the same time is we said let's change our cadence of doing the expense assumption update in the U.S. Previously it had been done in the second quarter, and now we do it in the fourth quarter. exclusively so that we can take advantage of our normal budgeting process. So there are really two things going on. Yes, the life operating model, we knew what we intended to do, but also we did a pretty big activity-based costing study during the course of the fourth quarter where you see expenses. Obviously, the lower expenses per policy reflected on the strategic asset side of the CSM thing that you see on slide 16 of the deck. So there's elements of that, but also there was more expense allocated to the financial assets, and you see the negative impact on the CSM on that side of it. In addition, there has been some more expenses allocated to non-insurance businesses, which are rolled through on an as-incurred basis, but the whole rationale is really to leverage on our budgeting process in the fourth quarter, and we will continue to do that in the future.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll now take the next question. And your next question comes from the line of Henry Heathfield from Morningstar. Please go ahead.

Good morning, all. Thank you for taking my question. Just two from me, please. On slide five, just the lower earnings on in-force from higher expenses. Those expenses being related to, I think, investments in information technology and employees. Sounds like you're looking to kind of continue to grow that US retirement plans business even further. I was wondering if you could just talk a little bit about that so I can get a bit more color on those higher expenses. And then the second question is, really great to see that you're hitting your financial targets. But I was just wondering if you could talk about, I mean, I think it goes back to a question earlier about the volatility of accounting earnings and the timeframe that we might get to lower volatility within these. We have kind of a new accounting regime that should match the two kind of, you know, economic earnings and accounting earnings. And it seems that there's still a lot of volatility. So I was wondering if we might get some color on the kind of timeframe of smoother earnings projection. Thank you.

So on the lower earnings on Inforce, I think in the notes we talked about higher employee expenses and higher technology expenses. Technology expenses are, you know, improvements that we're making in the customer and, frankly, the employer sponsor proposition. The employee expenses is a pretty simple one. You know, the business performed very well during the course of the year, and we did have an increase in incentive compensation accruals that the that went through those books. With respect to the volatility of accounting earnings and when that could get tamer, I want to be very clear on this. The first part is on the operating result, we will see over time a convergence of those experience variances, hopefully to zero. How long will that take? You'll never hit it exactly, but we want to get it into a place where we're or more pluses and minuses. And it's not going to take five years to get there. You'll be able to see it in our published results every half year. So we'll get there in pretty short order. But the more important thing, and I really want to emphasize this, is that under IFRS 17, the operating result does not tell the entire story. You really, really have to look at the development of shareholders' equity, and you have to look at that CSM development. So like we said in the slides, the shareholders' equity before the distributions to shareholders increased four cents over the period, despite the zero net income. So there's a good guy that's coming through the balance sheet through other comprehensive income, and that's kind of the number that you really want to focus yourself in on. in addition to the CSM development. And the CSM development was pretty amazing. So that, you know, that thing increased, I think, if you do it on a per share basis, increased 9% over the course of the half year. So you really have to look at the things in conjunction. It's really the entire balance sheet together with the movement in the CSM. And that gives you the sort of the full IFRS 17 picture.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Thank you. We will now take our final question for today. One moment, please. And your final question for today comes from the line of Stephen Hayward from HSBC. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thank you. Can I follow up on the previous question when you talk about obviously focusing on shareholders' equity and CSM. So going forward, are you trying to say that for the most market consistent approach, looking at the company going forward, we should look at a sort of comprehensive equity per share development over time? This kind of goes against the fact that obviously a lot of your CSN businesses running off and you're taking on board more fee-based IFRS 9 type business, I guess. Can you sort of discuss around this? And then secondly, within your original guidance for OCG at the CMD, you said that obviously new business strain is increasing going forward. So I wonder whether the increase in the new business strain has changed at all in your updated guidance analysis is the same. Is there anything else that's changed in your updated? And then finally, just on the debt leverage side of things quickly, you know, as you said, the changes to your debt leverage going forward, obviously you have quite a few floating rates out there. Would you look to convert them across to fixed?

Thank you.

Thanks, Stephen. Matt, I'm very happy that you asked that question, in fact, because when we look at When we look at shareholders' equity and the development of it, a lot of it is taking into account the insurance books of business. But we have other businesses that are not insurance-based and don't have much of an impact on shareholders' equity. So we have WSG that made like $160 million pre-tax this year. We have the asset management business. We have the elements of the retirement plans business in the U.S. that is not insurance-based. lot of the UK platform business so that's a valuation question you're going to have to you're going to have to evaluate that but but in general that shareholders equity the movement in the shareholders equity is important but it's not a it's not a question of you can translate our share price into X book X percent of book value for share there are many other things that are coming in there and we would hope to improve our disclosure starting next year or this year rather to be able to highlight some of those businesses better and that are non-insurance businesses. So that's a key one. On the CMD guidance, I talked before, we're looking at something like 700 million round numbers new business strain for 2024 in the U.S. That's the number that was effectively communicated at the Capital Markets Day back in June. So we're not changing that one at all. With respect to the leverage, so we're sitting at 5.1 after having having gotten rid of the $500 million senior in December. But we did announce in the press release that we are going to be calling a $700 million Tier 2 security in April of this year, which we will refinance. But we can't talk much about how we're going to refinance or what we're going to do there. So the point is here that we're always going to be making economic moves in the debt stack to take into account, let's say, the interests of shareholders, the interest of bondholders, and the economic environment so we'll make we'll make tweaks along the uh okay thank you but i guess the moral of the story here is that in the main rd leveraging is is pretty much complete now we got it down to about 5.1 billion that's good um but and we'll you know we'll tweak along the way but nothing nothing significant okay thank you very much thank you

We have no further questions. I would like to hand the call back over to Yves Cormier for closing remarks.

Thank you, operator. This concludes today's Q&A session. On behalf of Lars and Matt, I want to thank you for your attention. Should you have any remaining questions, please do get in touch with us in investor relations. Thanks again and have a good day.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.