Reinsurance Group of America, Incorporated

Good day and welcome to the Reinsurance Group of America first quarter 2026 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 presentation, 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. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jeff Hopson, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Welcome to RGA's first quarter 2026 conference call. I'm joined on the call this morning with Tony Chang, RGA's President and CEO, Axel Andre, Chief Financial Officer, Jonathan Porter, Chief Risk Officer, and Jason Bronchetti, Chief Investment Officer. A quick reminder before we get started regarding forward-looking information, and non-GAAP financial measures. Some of our comments or answers 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 from expected results. Additionally, during the course of the 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 gap 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 us for today's call. We appreciate your continued interest As you've seen from our first quarter results, we delivered a strong start to the year with excellent performance across many regions and businesses. The quarter reflects disciplined execution, strong underlying fundamentals, and the benefits of the diversified global platform we have built over time. Building on our strong 2025 performance, we believe our results this quarter further demonstrates that we are successfully executing on our strategy. Our focus remains on well-balanced earnings growth, capital allocation, and delivering attractive returns over the long term. Looking at the financial results, the strength in the quarter was broad-based across our regions and products. I'll highlight a few specifics in the quarter. Asia Pacific had another strong quarter, driven by ongoing growth and strong execution. We closed a number of notable transactions in the region, particularly in Japan, spanning both in-force and flow deals that includes both asset and biometric risks. EMEA's earnings continue to reflect good new business, with results exceeding expectations. Performance was supported by favorable overall experience and continued momentum in longevity across the region. We closed additional longevity transactions during the quarter by leveraging deep, long-standing client relationships, and we remain optimistic given our leadership position and differentiated competitive strength. In the U.S., adjusted operating performance was strong, supported by favorable claims experience and the contribution from recent new business. Activity in U.S. individual life remains robust, demonstrating sustained momentum in large part driven by our strategic underwriting initiative. Also, I'm pleased with our U.S. group results, which are in line with our 2026 expectations. Moving to claims experience in the quarter, our economic claims experience was favorable across all regions. While one quarter of claims experience should not be overly emphasized, When considered as part of the cumulative experience since 2023, the favorable experience demonstrates the strength of our pricing, underwriting, and risk selection. Additionally, we continue to see profit emergence from business written and capital deployed over recent years. This profit emergence is tracking in line with expectations as asset portfolios are repositioned prudently over time and claims continues to be in line with expectations. This quarter was another demonstration of the strategic optionality in our global platform. Most of the deployment into in-force transactions was in Asia, where we saw the most attractive opportunities from a risk-reward perspective. primarily driven by our range of innovative solutions. Additionally, we continue to have very good momentum with our flow business in the US, where our value-added underwriting solutions and outsourcing efforts sets us apart from competitors. Equally important to our flexibility is that we are comfortable not proceeding with transactions that do not meet our risk-return trade-offs. That discipline continues to be a key feature of both our strategy and our culture. Now I want to take a brief step back from the details of the quarter and reinforce how we think about RGA's positioning and strategy. At its core, our approach is straightforward. We focus on life and health risk, we operate globally, and we deploy capital selectively where we believe we have competitive advantages and can earn attractive risk-adjusted return. Specifically, RGA has several unique strengths, including strong biometric expertise, asset management capabilities, a global platform, market leading brand, and flexibility to partner across the industry. What is critical is that these strengths do not operate in isolation. They reinforce one another, creating a competitive advantage that is difficult to replicate. When we combine this competitive advantage With a proactive business approach, we create win-win transactions generating higher returns for RGA and greater value for our clients. Let me share a few examples from this quarter. In North America, we extended a long-standing U.S. client relationship into Canada, where the client was seeking a reinsurer partner on evolving product offerings. Our global platform enabled an exclusive relationship, while our biometric expertise and collaborative partnership model differentiated us and drove a successful outcome. In Asia, we closed multiple coinsurance transactions by leveraging our ability to reinsure both sides of the balance sheets. combining asset management and biometric expertise. These wins across both flow and enforced transactions reflect the strength of our local presence and our position as a trusted counterparty. Lastly, in EMEA, we completed an exclusive transaction with an insurance company that leveraged our biometric expertise to unlock value from its in-force portfolio. The structure generates incremental capital to support the partner's growth, and we expect to replicate this model in EMEA and other parts of the world going forward. On the capital front, we again repurchase shares, allocating $50 million this quarter. The balanced use of excess capital is an important part of our strategy to generate long-term shareholder values. Looking ahead, our confidence in the outlook for 2026 and beyond remains high. The fundamentals of our business are strong. Our pipeline is healthy. Our competitive advantages are durable. And our strategy is consistent with what has driven value creation at RGA for the past five decades. We are confident that our disciplined execution of our strategy will enable us to deliver on our intermediate-term financial targets and long-term value for shareholders. With that, I'll turn the call over to Axel to walk through the financials in more detail.