Reinsurance Group of America, Incorporated

Welcome to the Reinsurance Group of America fourth quarter 2023 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's prepared remarks, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Also, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Todd Larson, Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Please.

Thank you. Welcome to RGA's fourth quarter 2023 conference call. I'm joined on the call this morning with Tony Chang, RGA's President and Chief Executive Officer for Leslie Barbee, Chief Investment Officer, and Jonathan Porter, Chief Risk Officer. A quick reminder before we get started regarding forward-looking information and non-GAAP financial measures. Similar comments or answers to your questions may contain forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from expected results. Please refer to the earnings release we issued yesterday for a list of important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from expected results. Additionally, during the course of this call, the information we provide may include non-GAAP financial measures. Please see our earnings release, earnings presentation, and quarterly financial supplement, all of which are posted on our website for discussion of these terms and reconciliations to GAAP measures. Throughout the call, we will be referencing slides from the earnings presentation, which again is posted on our website. And now I'll turn the call over to Tony for his comments.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our call. Last night, we reported adjusted operating earnings for the fourth quarter of $4.73 per share and for the full year of $19.88 per share. Our adjusted operating ROE, excluding notable items, was 14.4% for the year. The quarter included favorable investment and very strong GFS results, along with strong organic new business and enforced transaction volumes. Our underlying underwriting experience was in line with expectations across the enterprise. This capped off a very strong year. We are excited with the great momentum in our business with our global platform positioning us for continued growth and success. We entered 2023 with the priorities of delivering on earnings and ROE targets, as well as accelerating our new business growth, all while taking an active and balanced approach to capital management. We have delivered on all these three priorities. Firstly, we produced record EPS and strong ROE results. Second, as measured by our internal metrics, we produced a record level of new business value, which was up significantly from 2022. You will also see on slide 17 in the earnings presentation that the value of business subject to LDTI increased by more than $3 billion in 2023, primarily attributable to new business one during the year. In addition to the volume, I am also very pleased with the breadth and quality of the new business we delivered. We had strong results across many of our businesses and geographies with a significant percentage of our new business under exclusive arrangements. These types of arrangements create greater strategic value, which gets shared between our clients and RGA. And the third priority we delivered on was our active and balanced capital management. During the quarter, we deployed $346 million of capital into in-force transactions, bringing the year-to-date total to a record $933 million. We were active across the globe with the US, Asia, and EMEA, all contributing to our in-force transaction success. In addition to supporting our clients through deploying capital into our business, we also returned $419 million to shareholders via dividends and buybacks during the year. Finally, we launched RubyRee, further diversifying our sources of capital to fund our exciting future growth. Our optimism for the future is fueled by our continued success in our four areas of notable growth that we have previously communicated, starting with our longevity and PRT business. In the US PRT market, we closed our third transaction. In a very short period of time, we have established ourselves as an active and key player in this market, and we are optimistic about our prospects going forward. In the UK longevity space, Where RJ is a clear market leader, the team has had an outstanding year, innovating in various segments of the longevity market. Based upon the current environment for global longevity business, we expect 2024 to be another very active and productive year. In our Asia traditional segment, we continue to see positive results, bringing product development and underwriting solutions to our clients to help fuel their growth and share in their success. In China in the fourth quarter, we launched a simplified issue medical product with a major insurer to complement the successful critical illness product we spoke about during investor day. In Hong Kong, we launched a product with a market leader to provide a more inclusive form of critical illness to individuals that could not previously gain coverage. This supports our purpose of making financial protection accessible to all whilst furthering our business strategy. In our third area of notable growth, the asset-intensive business in Asia, we executed transactions that combined our strength of product development with coinsurance and continued to innovate across the region to support a very active transaction pipeline. And finally, in U.S. traditional, we closed some nice in-force blocks in Q4 and also partnered with our clients and distribution entities to drive profitable new business growth. As announced, we also made an investment to further our capabilities to support clients in digital underwriting and fulfill their purpose of closing the protection gap in the middle markets. I would be remiss not to also mention the collective group of all our other businesses where we have incredibly talented teams and market leading positions. For example, we were able to finalize an attractive asset-intensive transaction in the US due to our long-term client relationship and reputation for execution certainty. In addition, we announced yesterday an asset transaction in Belgium and we are hopeful of seeing other transactions across Europe similar to what we have seen in Asia and North America. As proud as I am about all these accomplishments, I am even more excited about the future, building on our strong foundation created by the talent, expertise, and integrity of all our people around the world. Reflecting this positive outlook, we have updated our financial targets as shown on slide 18. We have provided new earnings run rates and reiterated our intermediate EPS growth targets on this higher base. In addition, we increased our expected ROE range to 12 to 14%. I am clearly confident in our ability to continue to deliver growth at attractive returns to our shareholders for many years to come. Our growth prospects are built on our core principles of strong risk management combined with our entrepreneurial spirit to create new innovative solutions and share with our partners in their success. Thank you for your interest in RGA. I will now turn it over to Todd to discuss the financial results.