CNO Financial Group, Inc.

I'd like to hand it over to our host, Adam Orville. The floor is yours.

Good morning. Thank you for joining us on CNO Financial Group's first quarter 2025 earnings conference call. Today's presentation will include remarks from Gary Bajwani, Chief Executive Officer, and Paul McDonough, Chief Financial Officer. Following the presentation, we will also have other business leaders available for the question and answer periods. During this conference call, we will be referring to information contained in yesterday's press release. You could obtain the release by visiting the media section of our website at cnoinc.com. This morning's presentation is also available in the investor section of our website and was filed in a form 8K yesterday. Let me remind you that any forward-looking statements we make today are subject to a number of factors which may cause actual results to be materially different than those contemplated by the forward-looking statements. Today's presentation contains a number of non-GAAP measures, which should not be considered a substitute for the most directly comparable GAAP measures. You'll find a reconciliation of the non-GAAP measures to the corresponding GAAP measures in the appendix. Throughout the presentations, we'll be making performance comparisons. And unless otherwise specified, any comparisons made will refer to changes between first quarter 2025 and first quarter 2024. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Gary.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. CNO is off to a solid start in the quarter, building on strong 2024 performance. Our first quarter results enable us to reaffirm our full-year 2025 and three-year ROE guidance. Operating earnings per diluted share were 79 cents, up 52%, and 74 cents, up 42%, excluding significant items. Our first quarter performance reinforces our commitment to grow earnings while improving profitability. CNO also delivered our 11th consecutive quarter of strong sales momentum and our ninth consecutive quarter of growth in producing agent count. I'll cover these results in more detail in each division's comments. Earnings continue to benefit from favorable insurance product margin and strong investment results reflecting growth in the business and expansion of the portfolio book yield. New money rates have exceeded 6% for nine consecutive quarters now. Capital and liquidity remain well above target levels after returning $117 million to shareholders. Book value per diluted share, excluding AOCI, was 3703, up 6%. Paul will go into greater detail on our financial performance. Most importantly, the core areas of our business continue to perform well, including production, agent force metrics, policyholder persistency, underwriting margin, capital management, and overall investment management. Visibility into macroeconomic drivers such as interest rates is deteriorating. However, our track record demonstrates our ability to navigate volatility. As we look to the balance of the year, we remain squarely focused on leveraging our business model to enable sustained profitable growth, executing on our strategic priorities, and driving ROE expansion. Turning to slide five, all but one of our growth scorecard metrics were up for the quarter. As a reminder, our growth scorecard focuses on three key drivers of our performance, production, distribution, and investments in capital. I'll discuss each division in the next two slides. Paul will cover investments in capital in more detail during his remarks. Beginning with the consumer division on slide six. The consumer division posted another solid start to the year. Our capabilities to reach the underserved middle income market remain a key differentiator for our consumer business. We marry a virtual connection with local agents who deliver the last mile of sales and service to build lasting relationships with our customers. This personal interaction is especially valuable to customers during times of uncertainty and market volatility. Our agents maintain positive sales momentum in the quarter with financial and health products continuing their consistent strong performance. Annuity collected premiums were up 12% our seventh consecutive quarter of growth. Account values were up 7% and premium per policy was up 19%. Our strong annuity performance comes on the heels of a record 2024. Our captive distribution and the long-term relationships that our agents build with their clients enable stability in our block of business. We delivered our eighth consecutive quarter of brokerage and advisory growth. Client assets and brokerage and advisory were up 16% for the quarter. New accounts were up 13% and average account size was up 3%. Persistency remained strong with our investment clients. When combined with our annuity account values, our clients now entrust us with more than $16 billion of their assets, up 9%. Sustained growth in brokerage and advisory and annuities reflects a critical but largely unmet need within our market for retirement income solutions. It has long been our position that middle-income customers need and deserve access to professional guidance and retirement products, as do more affluent customers. We continue to consider it a great privilege to serve this market. Total NAP was flat for the quarter. HealthNAP was up 9%, the 11th consecutive quarter of growth. Supplemental HealthNAP was up 8%. Sustained growth in our health results demonstrates strong consumer demand for ways to cover out-of-pocket gaps in medical coverage and safeguard against the growing cost of healthcare. Our Medicare portfolio continues to deliver strong sales growth. Medicare Supplement NAP was up 24%, and Medicare Advantage policies were up 42%. Recall that Medicare Advantage sales are not reflected in NAP. As a reminder, we manufacture MedSupp products and distribute MA policies from third-party carriers. The strategic choice to optimize our Medicare portfolio adds balance and diversification and enables us to offer more coverage options for our customers' healthcare needs. With more than 11,000 people in the U.S. turning 65 every day, Medicare is a year-round business for CNO. Persistency in both MedSupp and MedAdvantage continues to benefit from the client relationships our agents establish. Long-term care NAP was down in the quarter on a strong comparable, as the current product first launched in late 2023. Long-term care remains a strong product in our portfolio and fills a critical retirement care need. we continue to see a growing need for practical long-term care solutions within our target market. Life production was down in the quarter, primarily driven by lower lead volumes in our direct-to-consumer business. Lower D2C leads were due in part to elevated TV advertising costs and an intentional pullback in marketing spend to optimize production with expense. This seasonal fluctuation is consistent with previous first quarter results following the presidential election. Our second quarter results will confirm if the prior trend persists. Over the last several years, we have proactively diversified our non-television direct marketing to include more web and digital channels. Web and digital now account for over 36% of sales generated by D2C leads, up 28% year over year. Looking ahead, we remain confident in our ability to generate direct-to-consumer sales at an attractive rate of return. We continue to see long-term value in our diversified and integrated approach to reach middle income consumers. Finally, producing agent count was up 2%, marking our ninth consecutive quarter of growth. Our customers look for technology to supplement, not replace human interaction. Investments in technology continue to enable customer experience and drive operational efficiency. Accelerated underwriting on a portion of our simplified life products remains a prime example. It delivered an 87% instant decision rate on submitted policies in the quarter, up 11% over fourth quarter 2024. Next, slide seven and our worksite division performance. Our worksite division is also off to a solid start to the year. Worksite insurance sales were up 11%, our 12th consecutive quarter of growth. Highlights included critical illness insurance up 37%, life insurance up 17%, and accident insurance up 4%. Our critical illness product was launched in the fall of 2023 and still shows strong momentum. We have also experienced steady growth in life sales, which now make up 28% of our total worksite insurance sales. Strategic growth initiatives also contributed significantly to our worksite NAP performance. Our geographic expansion initiative delivered 32% of the NAP growth in the quarter. This is the sixth consecutive quarter of growth generated by this program. NAP from new group clients was up 134%. As a reminder, this program helps agents cultivate and acquire new employer groups for insurance sales. Producing agent count was up 8%, marking our 11th consecutive quarter of growth. Agent productivity was up 10%. Over the past year, our worksite leadership team has implemented new training and sales technology tools to enhance our agent experience and productivity. We expect these programs to further bolster the attractiveness of the strong career opportunity we offer. Fee sales were down for the quarter off a small base. The first quarter is historically a light selling period for our worksite fee products. We expect to see improvement in the second and third quarters. In late February, we introduced a new product called Optivise Clear. Optivise Clear enhances our services offerings in three ways. It brings together our benefits, advocacy, education, and employee communications services into a single package for employers. Second, it adds new capabilities such as our new Medicare advocacy services. And finally, It offers an enhanced technology experience to help make it easier for employees to navigate their benefits. OptiVise Clear can be purchased as a standalone product or in combination with our benefits administration technology and voluntary insurance benefits. Early feedback from our brokers and clients has been positive. And with that, I'll turn it over to Paul.