Aon PLC

Q126 retention remained strong in the mid-'90s, improving 20 basis points over last year, led by commercial risk and reinsurance, as deeper enterprise client group engagement and ABS-driven insights enhanced client value and relationship depth. Net new business contributed five points to organic revenue growth in the quarter. Net market impact, which captures the impact of rate and exposure, contributed one point to organic revenue growth and was delivered in line with estimates despite a softer pricing environment in P&C and reinsurance. Rate-driven pressure and reinsurance following 1.1 renewals was offset with higher limit and expanded coverage in commercial risk, further reinforcing that growth is primarily driven by business investment and client demand. and remains largely uncorrelated with pricing cycles. And one final point on revenue. First quarter fiduciary investment income was $55 million, down 18% from the prior year, as higher average balances were more than offset by the lower interest rates. On slide eight, Q1 adjusted operating income was up 8% to $2 billion, and adjusted operating margins expanded 70 basis points to 39.1%. Through ABS, we are structurally lowering our cost base by reducing technology costs, standardizing and automating processes, including the integration of NFP, and embedding AI into our development and operational workflows. These actions are not only driving margin expansion, but also creating durable capacity for investments that support sustainable top-line growth. Restructuring savings were $25 million in the quarter, contributing 50 basis points to adjusted operating margin. We remain on track to deliver $100 million of savings in 2026, advancing toward our goal of $450 million in total savings by 2027, with 2026 marking the final year of our restructuring investment. Moving to interest, other income, and taxes on slide 9. Interest income was $12 million in the first quarter and up $7 million over last year, driven by interest earned on proceeds from the sale of NFP Wolf. Interest expense came in at $179 million, $26 million lower than last year, primarily due to lower average debt balances. We expect Q2 26 interest expense to be approximately $180 million. Their expense was $15 million lower than last year, driven by lower non-cash pension expense, and the re-measurement of balance sheet items. We estimate Q2 26 other expense to range between 15 million and 20 million. Finally, the Q1 effective tax rate was 20.3%, 60 basis points lower than Q1 25, reflecting the geographic mix of income growth and the favorable impact of discrete items. Our full year tax outlook remains unchanged. at 19.5% to 20.5%. Turning now to free cash flow and capital allocation, on slide 10, we generated $363 million of free cash flow in the first quarter, reflecting strong operating income growth. This is a strong start to the year, and we continue to expect double-digit free cash flow growth in 2026. Turning the capital on the right-hand side of the slide, our strong free cash flow growth enabled us to continue to execute our disciplined capital allocation model, balancing investment for growth with capital return to shareholders. As Greg mentioned, in April, we increased our quarterly dividend by 10% to 82 cents per share, marking the sixth consecutive year of double-digit dividend increases and reflecting the cash-generating strength and durability of our business and financial model. We also remained active in M&A and allocated $349 million toward high-growth, tuck-in acquisitions and middle market that align with our strategic priorities and return thresholds. The largest use of capital in the quarter was shareholder return. In total, we returned $662 million to shareholders, including $500 million in share repurchases, a significant step up from the average $250 million per quarter over the prior eight quarters. As I noted earlier, we were proactive and leaned in the market conditions, repurchasing shares at prices well below the firm's intrinsic value. And that conviction is grounded in the fundamentals of the business, driving strong performance today and also informed by the investments we are making to drive future growth in talent, AI-embedded analytics, and scalable platforms, which we believe increase the long-term earnings power and terminal value of the firm. Taken together, these actions reflect the consistent application of our balanced capital allocation model, maintaining our leverage objective, consistently growing the dividend, in executing our disciplined approach to high return M&A and returning excess capital to shareholders, ensuring capital allocation continues to enhance long-term shareholder value. I'll conclude my prepared remarks on slide 11 with a few thoughts on our financial objectives and 2026 guidance. The first quarter 2026 performance reflects a start to the year that is right in line with our expectations and reinforces the strategic choices we have made to drive sustainable growth. Accordingly, we are reaffirming our 2026 full-year guidance for mid-single-digit or greater organic revenue growth supported by continued new business wins, the compounding contributions from our revenue-generating hires, and accretive growth in middle markets. We delivered 70 basis points of margin expansion in Q1, and we are seeing the benefits of efficiency gains from our scalable ABS platform in continued progress on our restructuring objectives. As a result, we are reaffirming our expectations for 70 to 80 basis points of margin expansion for the full year. The combination of organic growth and margin expansion supports our outlook for strong earnings growth in 2026, and with high conversion of those earnings into cash, positions us to deliver double-digit free cash flow growth for the year. Our strong capital position affords us the financial flexibility to actively deploy capital across multiple avenues, supplementing organic growth with strategic M&A while also executing opportunistic share repurchases. We have substantial financial capacity to pursue our high-quality M&A pipeline, and we remain firmly on track to deliver at least $1 billion in share repurchases for the year. As we move to Q&A, I want to emphasize that the performance you are seeing is the result of deliberate decisions. Our organic investments as part of the 3x3 plan, $1.3 billion in talent, and the AI embedded capabilities that enable that talent to bring faster, deeper insight to clients, as well as our inorganic actions, are all intentionally aligned to deliver consistent earnings and free cash flow growth. We are already realizing productivity improvements today, and we are reinvesting those gains back in the capabilities that both expand what we can deliver for clients and how efficiently we deliver it. In a world where technology increasingly enables and amplifies differentiated insight, advice, and outcomes, this reinvestment cycle is critical. When executed well, it expands the addressable market by making risk transfer more relevant and increasing insured risk as a percentage of GDP. while also unlocking incremental AI-enabled opportunities to gain share with existing and prospective clients. Our investment leadership here strengthens our long-term growth profile, reinforces our conviction in the firm's growing terminal value, and supports long-term value creation for shareholders. So with that, let's open up the line for questions. Kerry, back to you.

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow up. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. And our first question will come from Elise Greenspan with Wells Fargo.

Hi, thanks. Good morning. My first question, I was hoping if you could just provide a little bit more color on just the contributions from data centers to organic growth in the quarter. I know Edwin said I think it was three times the level this year than last year, but hoping just to size it a little bit to get a sense of the contribution to organic in Q1 and expectations for the next few quarters of the year.

Good morning, Elise. Thanks for joining. Great question. I will hit data center in particular, but the important point in this question is our commercial risk business and how broad-based the growth was. Data center, just real pointedly, was a part of the double-digit construction in our business But again, the growth in commercial risk was broad-based. So I just have to highlight that in a lower rate environment, commercial risk has been 6% or better for the last four quarters. And we're not surprised with the strength in commercial risk because the results reflect what I just said in the script there, our intentional strategic decisions. So it was broad-based with strength in the U.S. double-digit with EMEA achieving strong growth in the core P&C business. New business itself and commercial risk was over 12 points of contribution. That's very much supported by the priority growth hires in construction where data center shows up as a component of that. Retention was 50 basis points higher in commercial risk for the quarter. That's our analyzers helping with RFPs. We have a whole suite of them now rolled out in the U.S. and EMEA. And again, the net market contribution and commercial risk was still positive despite pricing pressure in property. So, and I'll also emphasize this again to your point, the priority growth areas, double digit growth in construction, that's wins and pipeline in data center. So we had wins that were higher this year and a pipeline that is giving us confidence in the outlook for the year, but it wasn't the key driver of growth. I also mentioned M&A in that. Again, the growth was strong there as well, but we still would have been at these fourth consecutive quarters of 6% growth with or without that. Just again, emphasizing how broad-based the growth was. And I'll just point out one other item, Elise, the synergies that we are getting from NFP, particularly as we utilize our facilities like Aon Client Treaty in London, is just another contributor to the growth here. So we're going to continue to focus and invest in these drivers of growth, our talent and our technology. We believe those investments, including in construction and data center hires, hires who are focused on that, those are the things that will sustain new business growth and continue the strong retention that we have.

And I think really, at least with Edmund, I think they're very, very well with the broad-based piece. And we remain incredibly excited about the data centers, but it's really very much we're at the beginning of the beginning with tremendous promise ahead, and we're very well positioned.

Thanks. And then my follow-up question is on capital. You know, recognize you guys leaned into buyback in the Q1 period. but you left the target for the year at 1 billion plus. You obviously could have raised it. Is it just, are you waiting to see how the M&A pipeline develops? Is it a function of what happens to your stock price? Obviously there's been more volatility within the broker subsequent to the end of the Q1. So just trying to understand the desire to lean into buyback and also continue to pursue your M&A strategy.

Yeah, another important topic, Elise, so thank you for raising it again. And even on this one, I have to step back as well, because I have to begin with just reiterating how pleased we are with the free cash flow generation in the quarter in the continued execution of the capital allocation model, right? I mentioned in the script that we're right in line with our leverage objective, actually a little bit better in this quarter. We came out at 2.7. Our objective is at least We announced a double-digit increase in the dividend. We're investing in middle market. And as you just mentioned, we're taking advantage of the market opportunity as well and returning capital to shareholders. So the question just really has me come back and anchor in our capital allocation model, which we're executing with discipline here. As we go through 26, I mean, you hit on a few things there. We are going to continue to look at the pipeline for M&A. I mentioned earlier that we have strong criteria and thresholds that have to be met strategically, financially. You know that we look at M&A that can be above 10% revenue after owning it for a year, that have IRRs that are at least 20% and allow us to continue to have our market-leading ROIC in it. That's what we evaluate. And there continue to be opportunities in middle markets and select international markets like like Japan and EMEA and even LATAM that we are looking at. So we have the flexibility with our strong balance sheet to pursue those M&A. If they don't meet the criteria, then we won't have a lazy balance sheet. I continue to use that terminology and we'll return the excess capital to shareholders. So for now, I think it is prudent for us to stick with our at least 1 billion in the year obviously 500 million in the first quarter is a great start that gives us confidence in that number and we'll see how the year plays out thank you and our next question will come from Andrew Anderson with Jefferies

Hey, good morning. On expanding mandates versus truly new logos, can you just talk about what the mix was this quarter and how that has been trending versus last year? I would think expanding mandates is better for margins near term, but perhaps that's not the case and would be particularly interested in CRS.

Yeah, this is a key, key topic, new business growth. I mentioned in the script there, nine to 11 points, as we've shown in the investor day and continue to produce is what the objective is. So another quarter of nine points. And it's a great question. If you look back over 25 or even 24, I mentioned during investor day that it's been split about half and half between new logos and expanding with existing clients. And you see some movement quarter over quarter. in the different uh in the different solution lines but it's about equal um and then commercial risk in particular on your question 12 points of contribution in the quarter from commercial risk that's a strong item that was both again an equal mix between the new logos and um uh and expanding with our existing clients there in the quarter so that it's typically going to be balanced across each and we're looking to pursue each as we deploy enterprise client group right we have a whole focus on this and greg can speak up on on the enterprise client group really expanding with our existing clients increasing the relationships with the senior executives the hr leads the cfos of the organization that allows us to deepen the relationships and retain those clients so we're seeing that in both new logos i called out of the script also was a strong driver for reinsurances that helped us offset some of the rate pressure there as well. So I think a strong quarter from that standpoint.

Thanks. And there's been some broader industry discussion around broker commissions and fee levels. How are you thinking about this dynamic in the context of the value that you're delivering and where do you see these trending?

I would say, Andrew, step back and think about kind of what's going on in the market overall. We see real opportunity. You know, when you think about sort of how this plays into AI and all, what we might talk about further on this call potentially as questions come up, but real opportunity. By the way, this is opportunity based on client need. It is interesting how the question gets positioned sometimes and it, you know, takes the view of a zero-sum game between insurance markets and advisors. But really, we should be asking the question on whether the risk industry overall Overall, it's going to be a led greater value for clients. And if we can meet this, you know, ever increasing, ever higher bar, it suggests positive movement. And that's exactly where we are. You know, in a world where risks are increasing, volatility is getting greater, the need for better solutions is, you know, very high. We are incredibly well positioned to deliver not just insights, but access to capital, which includes the traditional markets and alternative markets. So from our standpoint, you know, we see a meaningful opportunity ahead. with AI as a catalyst driving and enhancing our strategy. Again, AI is not a strategy. Our strategy has been unbelievably strong and well-proven. AI is the catalyst for it. And we do what Edmund described in his comments. We expand addressable markets. We've got greater access to those markets. We've got the ability to add even greater value as those markets expand. And that suggests stronger performance. But really, Andrew, be clear. The ultimate arbiter of truth here is clients. They decide. And we're really well positioned to add greater value. And in doing that, it creates greater opportunity for operational improvement.

Thank you.

And moving next to Rob Cox with Goldman Sachs.

Hey, good morning. First question is on the Middle East. Can you just talk about how the Middle East conflict showed up in Aon's results this quarter? And maybe if you have any ideas, you can talk about the potential to see claims inflation from a conflict later on this year.

Maybe start overall, Rob, just the general view on the Middle East generally and how it's impacting kind of our clients around the world and certainly obviously in the region. I know Edmund talked specifically about the results in the Middle East and sort of how that's played into the overall performance in the quarter. Listen, our first and foremost focus is on our colleagues and our clients sort of in region and supporting them and reinforcing all that they're going through. As we think about broad-based, obviously the Middle East is not a tremendously substantial part of our business, but it's important for clients around the world. It'll have overall implications. And from our standpoint, we'll see how things evolve. But right now, uncertainty is what we work toward on behalf of clients. It's how we serve them, support them. And so whatever form that takes, however long this lasts, we'll be there and it'll have implications on overall operating performance. But so far, it's very much in development mode, but specifically in the quarter. Edmond, you want to comment on that?

Yeah, Greg, I actually just want to start with what you just said, like our focus is on the colleagues and clients. But if I do move to to the performance there, the headline growth for us, Rob, in the region was actually double digit growth. You got to keep in mind that our Middle East business, as Greg just said, not a substantial part of our overall business, but over 50 percent of it is health. Those renewals happened actually before the conflict and that escalation, before the conflict escalated, so it was pretty locked in. Commercial risk in the Middle East was one of the largest growers in our portfolio. You can imagine with increasing risk in the region, that actually creates more demand for us to be able to help clients, as Greg said in his opening remarks, move through that. And the reinsurance business in that region, Joseph DiCarlo, M.D.: : 70% of it is done on one one renewal so again, we had strong growth there. Joseph DiCarlo, M.D.: : As well greg's point is the right one it's a small component of our portfolio we're very diversified and, as you heard me say our strength is broad base now if we continue to see. Joseph DiCarlo, M.D.: : An escalation or a prolonged conflict that could have some impact that seeps into the broader.

impact an economy but again if that happens our clients actually need more of our services so we'll continue to monitor development closely but we remain focused now on our clients and colleagues thanks that's super helpful and i just wanted to follow up on the risk analyzers uh edmund i think you attributed some of the retention gains and commercial risk to the risk analyzers i'd imagine it's also contributing to new business How are you actually measuring the benefits from the risk analyzers? And can you just give us some color on adoption, you know, usage compared to the past in the various businesses?

Yeah, we've, our team led by our COO and our business partners have really been rolling out our risk analyzers. And Greg said it earlier, and I'm sure he'll emphasize that we've, you know, where we started here was with commercial risk. And we've started to roll some of this out in the health, and we're starting to see some of that benefit in core health and benefits, but the commercial risk area is where we're seeing the business. And what I talked about, and we, as I said, we've rolled it out. We're on later versions in the U.S., sort of mid-game in the MEA and rolling out in the other regions as well. But it is very clear and measurable to look at the impact of when we use the analyzers and when we don't use the analyzers. And we look at win rates, we look at renewals, and we look at new business from it. Again, it is the first place. The priority hires and the analyzers, if I had to boil it down, the 12 points of contribution and commercial risk, the two things, talent and technology, our hires in the priority growth areas and the analyzers coming through across property, across D&O, uh across cyber and now greg and his script mentioned us rolling out broker co-pilot as well which is helping us bring insight on pricing trading data to our clients uh very quickly as well so if i had to attribute that new business to two things it would be those two items uh and we're able to measure it very well but greg any comments from you on that

No, I think you covered it well. I do want to, just for context, Rob, you know, back up, and it isn't just the analyzers, right? This is a very major approach we've taken over a number of years to answer a very straightforward question. How do we address increasing client need, full stop? And so the analyzers are a direct response to that, driven by client need. We can do the analyzers because we've got the raw data, the quantity, the quality, how we've ingested it and curated it. We've got the analytic capability, and then we have an organizational structure. When you think about risk capital and human capital, it doesn't exist anywhere else. And that allows us to take very high quality talent, the best in the world, as Edmund described, and really make sure we're aligned to deliver this. And so it's not just the analyzers. It's also the service component, what we do on certificates, ad hoc certificates, a whole range of things, invoices. So it is revenue-driven and service-driven. And then obviously it creates, we have efficiency then that Edmund described before, which means we can reinvest back into that capability. And the reason that's important is it highlights the versions. Don't miss that point. You know, we're on like version 10 or more of the property analyzer. And, you know, across the suite of analyzers, we continue to evolve them. You know, we're about to attend the RIMS conference. We're going to come away with 15 ideas that are going to a next iteration. And we've got the machine that can just keep innovating to do that. But in real punchline years, they're making a difference. And they're making a difference because they matter to clients on revenue, how they help build their businesses, make decisions, and how they run their businesses around service.

Great. Thank you very much.

And our next question will come from Mike Zaremski with BMO Capital Markets.

Hey, thanks. Good morning. Now, first question, focusing on the really nice commercial risk organic, just want to make sure we shouldn't get over our skis, given, you know, we know that 2Q is one of the biggest property cores in the industry. You know, so we think about the net market impact, Edmund, for 2Q? And I know in the last 2Q, it decelerated fairly materially from 1Q. Should we be kind of keeping that in mind as we think about, you know, the rest of the year or just the near term 2Q as maybe a governor and how excited we should be?

Well, there's two parts to your question that are important to highlight. One is you're right. We are running this firm on an annual basis. and not on a quarterly basis. And so we think about the guidance as full year annual guidance because there could be movement within the quarters. Setting that aside, on net market impact, the second part of your question, which I think is important, the guidance, as you know, is zero to two points of contribution from that. As the quarters have moved through the end of 25 and into this quarter, despite the pressure that we see, whether we're talking about commercial risk in PNC or even in reinsurance, we've been at roughly one point or slightly higher and that continued in this quarter. That's what we expect throughout the rest of the year, including Q2. It's just important to highlight here that it's not, you know, that could have an impact. Zero to two is still how you should be thinking about it. But more importantly is the is the growth in GDP, the business investment that we're having right now, because that's the pricing piece that we're talking about in the net market impact and the diversity of the products. The diversity of the geographies. I just talked about the broad-based growth and commercial risk. Those are the things that allow us to grow at mid-single digit or better in any pricing environment. And that's where we focus on. So even in this quarter, it's not new, right? Property was down 15% in this quarter. Casualty, like mid-single digit growth. D&O, a little bit of an uptick in price there. Cyber at low single digit rates. We have these micro markets on pricing, but we take actions to take it, help our clients take advantage of these markets, help them increase their limit, increase their coverages. And those are the things that allow us to still have the mid single digit growth. Greg.

And Mike, don't miss hearing the point on over our skis. We take it in a very measured methodical approach, year over year over year, period. But you would observe the four quarters that I'm describing commercial risk, observe the fact that we, in our three by three plan, have really laid out a series of capabilities defined by clients, driven by serious, serious industrial strength content and conduct behind them. And we focus initially on commercial risk. And across the U.S. And what Evan just described is a very broad-based 7% organic against whatever pricing environment. We didn't qualify it on that. It doesn't matter. It's helping clients succeed, winning more clients, doing more with them, keeping them longer, all those things with it. And the team was phenomenal. They delivered 7%. I think you described double-digit North America. And so this is a pretty unique progress. We don't get excited about it. We just stay focused on client need and we've got to deliver for the year. But, you know, you ask yourself, did we increase probability of, you know, the mid single digit or greater? You should feel good about that progress with that context.

Yep, definitely. Even seeing the net market impact not move much over the last many quarters has been a great result. Just lastly, real quick, in your prepared remarks, you talked about driving productivity improvements. You know, clearly a lot of Gen-I technology adoption that's, you know, being accelerated across your firm. Do you envision a future where Aon's productivity per employee could accelerate to much higher levels than historical levels, or too soon to know? I guess I ask because one of your broker peers did offer kind of a very long-term North Star about productivity improvements that could be fairly material. Thanks.

Yeah, listen, this is probably worth a little bit of time since it's come up so much, and I'd really like to offer a couple of thoughts, and then Edmund, I want you to jump in here too. This is so fundamental to our firm. Look, on this whole topic of kind of the impact of AI as a productivity, as a service, what is it going to be and how is it going to play out? First, we want to be clear on our position here. We're incredibly excited about the possibilities of AI to reinforce, and we mean reinforce our strategy. It's not our strategy. Reinforce our strategy, accelerate it, and strengthen it. And we mean over the next five years, and we mean equally important over the long term. And we also want to be clear, the capability, we've been doing this for multiple years now. It's already being seen. You saw it in the quarter. And it's going to be seen more over time. And we're going to deliver for clients now an increased long-term value for Aon. And again, our view has developed over time. I mean, we restructured our firm over many years to address this, risk capital and human capital, ABS, how we deliver from an integrated client standpoint. And we also were clear on, look, this comes from our, you know, how do we do this? How can we pull it off? People can talk about it. We can pull it off because of the data, the raw quantity, the quality, how we've ingested it, how we change that over time, how we curate it. The analytics might come with it and how that, you know, how we model and what we do with it. The analytics are interesting, but when they become a suite of analyzers with the service capabilities that have been introduced and refined 10 or 15 times, that's when it becomes powerful. That can only happen with risk capital and human capital, which is why we're pretty excited about this. And I will come back to, look, it's all driven by, you know, a few principles. One is literally what do clients need? How is it changing over time? And these responses that we've driven are all around revenue enhancement and driving that piece first and foremost, service enhancement second, and then productivity. Which is why we've said, listen, you're not going to get success here in AI with an absolutely world-class people strategy out in front driving this. And that's what we've seen. And the analyzers from client demand have actually changed the way clients think about what their businesses, how they evolve, the risks in their businesses. You know, what we've done, you know, on the service side as well. But if that's the client piece, the other piece to your question is really around value. And what are the economics of that, the operating results of that? And frankly, greater value, as I described before, is greater margin potential. But then it also has to be continuous. That's got to be durable. So I would just say, look, from our standpoint, we have our North Star. We're driving toward it. It's really delivering and we see greater, greater opportunity to have an impact. Go back to Elise's first question. One of them are in areas that are on the net new, which is, you know, data centers just beginning, but we're positioned unbelievably well because of all the work we've done. So we're pretty excited about the potential here and see it developing over time and see real real opportunity. We don't see this as a defend the house. We see this as a true build the house opportunity. But, Edmund, I'd love you to talk a little bit about the value part of this and the durability part of this.

Yeah, absolutely. And your question, Mike, is on the value part and the impact on the economics. Greg just talked about the demand of it. There's the economics, which I think have an impact today. And the third part is the durability of it, the ongoing benefit, how we will perform better And that's the compelling part of it. We are operating and you're seeing it in our results today. It's not just margin, though. It's in the new business growth. And I think our compensation there is tied to the outcome, as Greg talked about earlier, as we help clients with capital, as we help them with workforce, as we help them improve their resilience. It shows up in retention. You know, we had NPS up 10 points. Something that I don't think I mentioned earlier here, and the analyzers I have mentioned are improving the RFP rates. And then it's showing up in your question, the margin improvement. Greg gave some stats earlier on claims, certificates of insurance, invoicing, policy management. All those things are lowering our unit costs. And we had talked earlier about 5 to 15% productivity improvements. Those things are happening right now. And we're doing it in a way that still allows us to bring value to our clients. So that's number one, the economics of it are showing up top line and bottom line. And in our results today, the important point is that the performance builds over the coming years, right? Like you see multi-year tailwinds from this. Our work in data center is a great example of that. Our work on workforce solutions. is a great example of that as well. So our insights and our capabilities are going to help us expand this market. Our content and the investments are going to help us gain share in this expanding market. And as we continue to lead in the investment and get these productivity improvements, we will reinvest, which creates this virtuous circle loop, which at the end of the day just means that more durable business, a more scalable business, and a more valuable business, more valuable business over the long term as we bring this value to clients.

Very helpful. Thank you.

And we'll go next to Bob Huang with Morgan Stanley.

Hi. Good morning. So my question is really also related to Middle East, but not really Middle East. As we think about the Middle East conflict, the elevated energy price should have a fairly notable impact on GDP in Asia. Understand the Middle East contribution to you is probably small, but the Asia contribution probably is not. As we think about Asia growth slowdown due to energy prices, can you maybe help us understand the impact on organic growth guide throughout the year? Think about the inflation impact and things of that nature. Thanks.

Start overall, Bob. We want to come back and, again, governing thought, reaffirm exactly where we are on mid-single-digit or greater from a growth standpoint. We're looking now across the world. See all that you're looking at as best we can, and our view is mid-single-digit or greater. So start with that overall governing thought. And then I just want to highlight a point that Edmund alluded to earlier around ambiguity and uncertainty. You know, pieces that create challenges in one area create opportunities in other areas. You know, we've seen it countlessly. I mean, I think about even now in the Middle East, which, again, as Edmund described, is not a big part of our business, is done unbelievably well helping clients understand the situation and really protect themselves as they also think about growth. APAC Asia, tremendously important for us, still on a relative basis, not a massive part of the overall firm, but fairly important. And we get your point on the energy side, but frankly, it's going to create other opportunities. Clients trying to decide how to navigate that environment. And that's what we do. We're going to help them do that, which is why you kind of come back to the form might change. The form might change. What we do might change. It may evolve. But our ability to help clients succeed in an uncertain environment has never been greater and is continuing to strengthen. And it's why we come back to that affirmation. But what else would you add to that, Evan?

Great. I don't have much to add to that except that shows up in the results. Our international markets are really leading the growth in many of our individual solution lines. And as that mix changes, we feel good that that continues to be the opportunity where we can help the clients, which shows up in our results, so not much to add to that.

Okay, really appreciate it. My last question is about the AI expense, right? So on your press release, you talked about there's an $8 million increase in IT expense. As we think about AI expenses, variable expenses, token-driven, prompt-driven, on the input cost side, going forward, as you build out more AI capabilities, How should we think about that overall expense? Is that all essentially factored into the margin guidance? Is it as you have a higher and increased utilization of AI, can you just help us with that a little bit?

It's a great question. And the short answer is yes, it is factored into the margin guidance. Again, me and our CEO... Our chief operating officer and I talk about this all the time. We are modeling that agnostic. We're building our own models. Broker and claims co-pilots are great examples of that. But we're also working with all the big names you know in the space. And in fact, that comes back to our organizational readiness. Me, Greg, and the leadership team just spent some time actually tiering our organization from who needs the basic tools that have less need for tokenization and who needs The tools that are expert zone one, two and three is sort of how we frame it so we're super focused on who's going to be using it. Again, our focus is top line growth and productivity, so we want to equip the organization on both of those areas to build the things that help us with top line growth and get the productivity, while being conscious of the cost. When I come to the cost clearly we have it baked into the billion three investment that we did as part of the three by three plan. And you've astutely and rightfully called out the tech development part of our income statement, where I would say probably half of what you saw nearly 600 million in 2025 is connected to AI as well. Obviously, there's a tech infrastructure part of that, but a significant component is the tech dev completely focused on AI. But again, it's our commitment to those investments that highlight our leadership in the space, we factor that in, those costs and the reinvestment of productivity improvements from that in our overall guidance here.

And maybe one observation to set it up, Bob, is you think about the mechanics of literally how we thought about the investment, the cost, as Edmund described it, and maybe Simon, our COO, and how they discussed it. And it is really an intricate discussion. These are all critically important. So understand some of how we look at that. But the real The real breakthrough here is not just cost efficiency, right? This is the real breakthrough is delivering client value. Literally, it's the revenue part of this. And the service part of this. So it's more revenue, better retention of that revenue. All these things factor in. And this is where we want to absolutely, this is where we've got to get yield to get return, not just efficiency. So again, back to some of the earlier questions on the call around sort of the zero sum game that everything boils down and gets smaller and smaller. For us, it's bigger and bigger with opportunities. That is a revenue conversation. That's a productivity conversation that's beyond efficiency. And this is where we have seen some breakthroughs. This is really what's led a lot of our work to accelerate, not just taking costs out. We've done that before and continue to do that. But we're truly helping clients do things they couldn't have done before.

Really appreciate it. Thank you.

And we'll go next to Cave Montessori with Deutsche Bank.

Thank you. So we started investing in ABS over 10 years ago. And I think until recently, from the outside, really felt like it was primarily a margin expansion story. But now, and you've mentioned that several times on the call today, it really looks like we're seeing the tangible impact on organic as well. And we can really see the flywheel effect that you guys are talking about. Now, others have noticed. and everyone now wants to be a bit more like you guys and build their own version of ABS, how important is it for you to have that first mover advantage? Because as more of your peers implement their own version of ABS, will those efficiencies and better analytical tools become commoditized? Or is there like a real note to being early in that others will always be playing catch up because you keep on investing and getting better at ABS?

Listen, really appreciate the question. And it is, it is the question of the day in terms of sort of when you think about some of the evolution, I would really start and emphasize again, this is starts with client need, how it's evolving over time and how we respond to it. We're responding to client need. That's the strategy. Again, AI is not a strategy. Serving clients in a more effective way as their risk increase, that's the strategy. And if you think about what's required to do that, this is where we come back to, you know, we have been It's taken a long time. It's hard to pull this together. And it isn't just the analytics and the data. That's critical. You don't have the raw quantity and then turn it into quality in a way you can ingest it, curate it. You don't have anything. So that's taken a long time. By the way, ABS was doing cost and that for us. so important. You know, we had great reinsurance data, we had great commercial risk data, great health data, but they weren't connected. Now we've got them connected in a way that, you know, we've not ever seen before. The analytics of that result in these capabilities. But also be clear, this isn't about analytics at one level, it's about organization. It's about alignment. Risk capital and human capital, we broke our firm down organizationally and rebuilt it to connect the dots around risk capital. This is reinsurance and commercial risk. So imagine reinsurance content and insight into a commercial risk decision process. This is a massive, massive change in terms of sort of insight for clients. So for us, the organizational change, absolutely important. The analytics and ABS, absolutely important. And then the way we go to market, you know, and we described at the core around enterprise client and a connected global firm, that sounds trivial, but it's powerful. Clients should not be negotiating or trying to understand Aon. We should understand them and bring the integrated firm. If we bring the integrated firm and client leadership with capability that's never existed before, Aon Business Services, driven by a set of analytics not seen before, that's what for us is the wow. And if we can do that, that's a revenue-driven engine. And we're just going to keep investing in that engine and driving that engine and the outcome. And don't miss this part that Edmund described. This is about not just in the next five years performance. This is, as you think about our terminal value, if you want to look at it that way, this is a bigger market. Data centers are a bigger market. Solving cyber is a bigger market. And then the way to serve that market requires real expertise, new expertise. which means if you've got it, you're going to win more share. And if you win more share, you're going to create more value. And value means you have the opportunity to deliver for clients and for shareholders on margin. You can do both. So that's really the – that's our mission. That's our view. And we feel fortunate we made progress. But be clear, we got the hammer down. We see the opportunity here for clients, and we're going to keep driving it.

Thank you. And then my follow-up question was on the personal line exposure that you said was less than, I think, 2% of premium. Could you kind of remind us how that came about? Is that something that you want to keep that's core to Aon or that your clients ask for?

Just a quick overview. First of all, personal lines, this is complex. You know, it's almost the piece we serve, you know, this is, you know, higher net worth individuals, sometimes tied into businesses, really trying to think about what they're up to. We're working hard to support that. So I don't want to just dismiss that as not complex, but it's a very small part of what we do. It's less than 2%. Sometimes it comes with the businesses overall. So put it in context, understand it's not priority, but it's also important. Go ahead.

Yeah. And the way that we've sort of The majority of our personalized businesses come as part of the acquisitions that we've been doing over the past decade. We've done over 150 acquisitions. And you actually see us continue to have active portfolio management where we look to focus on our core, the higher growth core businesses. You've actually seen us have cash from dispositions. It was over $730 million. in 2024, that comes from the disposition of the personal lines business as we continue to go through our portfolio hygiene here. So that's why it's at that percentage, and I would say continuing to shrink as we move forward here, because we're super focused on our core risk capital and human capital business.

Thank you.

And thank you. I would now like to turn the call back over to Greg Case for closing remarks.

I just wanted to say thank you to everyone for joining the call. We appreciate it and look forward to the next quarter.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation. This does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines and have a wonderful day.