AFLAC Incorporated

Good morning and welcome to the AFLAG incorporated second quarter 2023 earnings call. All participants will be in a listen only mode and should you need any assistance on the call today please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question you may press star then one on your telephone keypad and to withdraw a question please press star then two. Please note that this event is being recorded today. I would now like to turn the conference over to David Young, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Joe. Good morning and welcome. This morning we will be hearing remarks about the quarter related to our operations in Japan and the United States from Dan Amos, Chairman and CEO of Aflac Incorporated. Fred Crawford, President and COO of Aflac Incorporated, will touch briefly on conditions in the quarter and discuss key initiatives. And Brad Dislin, Global Chief Investment Officer, President of Aflac Global Investments, will provide an update on the investments. Yesterday, after the close, we posted our earnings release and financial supplement to investors.aflac.com. We also posted under financials on the same site updated slides of investment details related to our commercial real estate and middle market loans. In addition, Max Brodin, Executive Vice President and CFO of Aflac Incorporated, provided his quarterly video update addressing our financial results in current capital and liquidity. Max will also be joining us for the Q&A segment of this call, along with the following members of our executive management in the U.S. Virgil Miller, President of Aflac U.S., Al Ruggieri, Global Chief Risk Officer and Chief Actuary, June Howard, Chief Accounting Officer, and Steve Beaver, CFO of Aflac US. We are also joined by members of our executive management team from Aflac Life Insurance Japan. Charles Lake, Chairman and Representative Director, President of Aflac International. Masatoshi Kuide, President and Representative Director. Todd Daniels, Director and CFO. Koichiro Yoshizumi, Executive Vice President and Director of Sales and Marketing and Alliance Strategy. Before we begin, Some statements in this teleconference are forward-looking within the meaning of federal securities laws. Although we believe these statements are reasonable, we can give no assurance that they will prove to be accurate because they are prospective in nature. Actual results could differ materially from those we discussed today. We encourage you to look at our annual report on Form 10-K for some of the various risk factors that could materially impact our results. As I mentioned earlier, The earnings release is available on investors.aflac.com and includes reconciliations of certain non-US GAAP measures. I'll now hand the call over to Dan. Dan?

Thank you, David, and good morning. Glad you joined us. Reflecting on the second quarter of 2023, our management team, employees, and sales distribution have continued to work tirelessly to as dedicated stewards of our business. This has allowed us to be there for the policyholders when they need us most, just as we promised. APAC Incorporated delivered very strong earnings for both the quarter and the first six months. We remain actively focused on numerous initiatives in the United States and Japan around new products, distribution strategies, to set the stage for future growth. Looking at the operation in Japan, we have continued our rollout of our WINGS cancer insurance and refreshed ways and child endowment policies. By introducing new, refreshed products, we position our distribution channels for success as Japan makes great strides in recovering from the pandemic. I am very pleased with our new sales premium increase of a 26.6% increase in Japan. This reflects a 60% increase in cancer insurance sales versus the second quarter of 2022, and a significant contributor from Japan Post Company and Japan Post Insurance, which began selling our new cancer product in early April. I'm also pleased to see improvements in our sales through agencies and our other strategic alliance, Dido Life and Daiichi Life. We also continue to gain new customers through ways and child endowments, while also increasing opportunities to sell our third sector products, which Fred will address in a moment. Thus far, our product strategy has served us well, and I'm encouraged by our progress as we prepare for the anticipated mid-September launch of our new medical product. In addition to our products, we know how important it is for us to be where the customers want to buy insurance. Our extensive network of distribution channels, including agencies, alliance partners, and banks allow us more opportunities to help provide financial protection to Japanese consumers as we are working hard to support each channel. Turning to the U.S., I remain encouraged by the continued productivity improvements of our agents and the contribution from growth initiatives. We continue to see success in our efforts to re-engage our veteran associates. At the same time, we're seeing strong growth through brokers. I'm very excited at our cancer protection assurance policy, which provides enhanced benefits at no additional cost. We know that when people experience the value of our products, it increases persistency. which benefits our policyholders and lowers our expenses. I believe that the need for the products and solutions we offer is strong or stronger than it has ever been before in both Japan and the United States. We are leveraging every opportunity and avenue to share this message with consumers. As always, we are committed to prudent liquidity and capital management. We continue to generate strong investment results while remaining in a defensive position as we monitor evolving economic conditions. In addition, we have taken proactive steps in recent years to defend cash flow and deplorable capital against a weakening yen. we remain committed to extending our track record of annual dividend increases supported by the strength of our capital and cash flows. At the same time, we remain in the market repurchasing shares with the tactical approach focused on integrating the growth investments we have made in our platform to improve our strength and leadership position. Overall, I think we can say that it's been a very strong quarter, especially with a vast number of factors that are in our favor. Aflac Japan had a strong quarter of sales as we executed product and distribution strategy. Aflac U.S. continued to build on its momentum as it nears pre-pandemic sales levels. Pre-tax profit margins remained very strong in Japan at 30.4%, and in the U.S. at 22.2%. Plus, our capital ratios remained very strong, and our quarterly share repurchase was, like last quarter, one of the biggest in the company's history. So with that, I'll turn the program over to Fred. Fred?