Corebridge Financial Inc.

a question during the Q&A session, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star 2. I will now hand the floor over to Ishil Migderosolu to begin. Please go ahead.

Ishil Migderosolu Good morning everyone and welcome to Corbridge Financial's earnings update for the fourth quarter and full year 2024. Joining me on the call are Kevin Hogan, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Elias Habaieb, Chief Financial Officer. We will begin with prepared remarks by Kevin and Elias, and then we will take your questions. Today's comments may contain forward-looking statements which are subject to risks and uncertainties. These statements are not guarantees of future performance or events and are based upon management's current expectations and assumptions. CoreBridge's filings with the SEC provide details on important factors that may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Except as required by applicable securities laws, CoreBridge is under no obligation to update any forward-looking statements if circumstances or management's estimates or opinions should change, and you are cautioned to not place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements. Additionally, today's remarks may refer to non-GAAP financial measures. The reconciliation of such measures to the most comparable GAAP figures is included in our earnings release, financial supplement, and earnings presentations, all of which are available on our website at investors.corbridgefinancial.com. With that, I would now like to turn the call over to Kevin and Elias for their prepared remarks. Kevin?

Thank you, Ishul, and good morning, everyone. Since our IPO two years ago, Corbridge has consistently generated strong top line results and bottom line growth, delivered on commitments, and made great progress executing our strategy. We are capitalizing on favorable industry dynamics and attractive market opportunities while navigating persistent inflation, volatile markets, and the prospect of lower interest rates. This success is a testament to our leading market positions, diversified business model, strong balance sheet, and disciplined execution. Turning to slide three. At the time of our IPO, we established several financial goals to chart our performance as a new public company. Achieve an adjusted ROE of 12 to 14%, a payout ratio of 60 to 65%, and maintain a light sweep RBC ratio at or above 400%. These initiatives have been supported by our efficiency program, CoreBridge Forward, with the further goal of reducing our run rate expenses by $400 million. I am pleased to report that we met or exceeded each of these goals while positioning CoreBridge for long-term success and establishing financial and operational independence. We grew run rate ROE over 300 basis points, firmly landing within our range of 12 to 14%. Strong top line growth, margin expansion, and lower expenses, combined with the investments we made in our operating model, positioned us to capitalize on historic opportunities. We also improved our quarterly run rate operating earnings per share by 35%, with approximately two-thirds of that improvement from earnings growth and one-third from capital management. For payout ratio, we exceeded the original target by a significant margin. Since the IPO, we delivered a cumulative payout ratio of 73%, returning $4.9 billion to shareholders over that time, an amount equaling 36% of our market cap at the IPO. And we repurchased 14% of our outstanding shares over that same period. Importantly, we actively maintain strong financial flexibility while delivering robust growth in our businesses. In terms of expenses, we achieved or contracted on $400 million of run rate savings ahead of schedule with $350 million earned in to date. Over the last two years, we reduced expenses by 13% on a comparable basis. As a result of this work, Our expense ratio is in the top quartile across our industry, and we remain diligently focused on further improving our operational efficiency. Finally, we have consistently demonstrated financial discipline. Our regulatory capital levels have exceeded the 400% target as we proactively manage our high quality assets and liabilities while maintaining strong parent liquidity. Moving to slide four. We have built a solid foundation since the IPO and 2024 was another successful year for CoreBridge. I will review our full year results and Elias will cover the fourth quarter. In 2024, CoreBridge increased full year operating earnings per share by 18% year over year to $4.83. We grew ROE to 12.8% and on a run rate basis, ROE improved over 100 basis points year over year to 13.2%. At the same time, in 2024, we returned $2.3 billion to shareholders. Additionally, excluding notable items and the sale of our UK life insurance business, we grew core sources of income by 4%, seeing improvement across all three sources. Corbett's achieved these positive results through our focus on four strategic pillars, organic growth, balance sheet optimization, expense efficiencies, and active capital management. To drive organic growth, we worked with our extensive network of distribution partners and leveraged our broad suite of products and services. Our businesses continued to thrive as we fulfilled strong customer demand. We delivered robust sales volumes in 2024 with premiums and deposits of $41.7 billion, a 5% increase over what was a very strong 2023. Our distribution platform remains an important differentiator for CoreBridge. We have, for many years, taken a long-term approach to our distribution partnerships, which has created active, productive, and long-lasting relationships. The insight we have into our partners' strategies is key. With this insight, we can more effectively meet the needs of their clients and manufacture products that align with their business plans, giving us the opportunity to compete beyond price. Customized products and specialized strategies have been essential to our success and represent an important part of our product development emphasis. With the fourth quarter launch of our MarketLock registered index-linked annuity, or RILA, CorBridge now has offerings in every major product category. We are proud of our broad product range and recognize the value of choice for financial professionals. Our second pillar is balance sheet optimization, which includes strategic use of reinsurance, strong asset origination, and proactive management of our portfolio of high-quality assets and liabilities. We launched our Bermuda affiliated reinsurer strategy in July and began seeding fixed and fixed index annuity new business. By year end, we added both in-force and new business for structured settlements and term life. In total, we have seeded just over $12 billion of reserves to our affiliate in Bermuda. Relative to asset origination, our unique investment platform, which includes our own internal teams, and our external partners, Blackstone and BlackRock, has been instrumental in sourcing attractive, high-quality assets. These investments support our target returns and product management, and collectively we sourced over $43 billion of assets in 2024. We continue to develop new and expanded asset strategies and maximize the value of our strategic partners. This work has improved credit quality while enhancing income and yield, also supporting increased levels of new business volume. Our third pillar is expense discipline. We are very focused on expense management and operational efficiency. And in 2024, CoreBridge delivered with full year GOE lower by 4% over the prior year on a comparable basis. Looking forward, We see more opportunity as we further digitize end-to-end processes that support our insurance operations and begin to build on the significant investments we made as part of our separation process to further modernize our finance and actuarial capabilities. Our fourth strategic pillar is active capital management. In 2024, we increased full-year dividends from our US insurance subsidiaries by 10% supporting a full year payout ratio of 81% or 62% excluding proceeds from the sale of UK life. Corbridge is proactive with balance sheet and capital management to ensure we deliver on our financial goals while also pursuing profitable growth and creating financial flexibility. Reflecting the strength of our financial position and our continuing commitment to an attractive return for shareholders, I am pleased to announce that our Board of Directors increased the existing share repurchase authorization by $2 billion and increased the quarterly dividend to 24 cents per share. CoreBridge will continue to build on these four pillars, organic growth, balance sheet optimization, expense efficiencies, and active capital management to generate further growth and shareholder returns. As we look ahead, we expect our annual run rate EPS to increase on average in the range of 10 to 15% over the long term, but this growth will not be linear. In some years the increase may be higher and in others lower. Based on current expectations for short term interest rates, we may see some pressure during the year as we manage our floating rate portfolio, but we view this as only temporary. Additionally, as we look ahead, we expect dividends from our insurance companies to increase another 5 to 10% in 2025. And now, I will hand it over to Elias to cover our fourth quarter results.