Unum Group

Thank you for standing by. My name is Kate and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Unum Group Q2 2026 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Matt Rial, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good morning. Welcome to Unum Group's second quarter 2026 earnings call. Please note, today's call may include forward-looking statements and actual results may differ materially, and we are not obligated to update any of these statements. Please refer to our earnings release and our periodic filings with the SEC for a brief description of factors that could cause actual results to differ from expected results. Yesterday afternoon, we released our second quarter earnings results and financial supplement. Those materials are available on the investor section of our website. Also, please note, as usual, references made today to cooperation sales and premium, including Unum International, are presented on a constant currency basis for improved comparability period to period. Participating in this morning's conference call are Unum's President and CEO, Rick McKinney, and CFO, Steve Zabel. Following the remarks from Rick and Steve, additional members of management will participate in Q&A, including Chris Pyne, who leads our group benefits business, Mark Till, who oversees Unum International, and Steve Jones, who we welcome for his first earnings call as president of Colonial Life. Now, let me turn the call over to Rick.

Thank you, Matt. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. It's good to be back with you just a few weeks after the call to announce our latest transaction in our closed block. As we discussed then, the agreement to reinsure an additional $3.8 billion of long-term care reserves represents another meaningful step in our deliberate approach to reducing risk and actively managing the close block. We will provide more detail on that later in the call, but today our focus is on the second quarter results, first half performance and trending and outlook of our core employee benefits franchise. It is consistently a franchise that generates attractive returns, delivers free cash flow and creates long-term value for our shareholders. With that as context, let me turn to the second quarter. We delivered a solid second quarter. One that demonstrates the breadth of our diversified employee benefits offerings. A key tenant of that is continuing to be a consistent partner for employers and their employees as their employee benefits needs continue to evolve. The quarter reflected continued attractive returns, generally stable persistency, and favorable performance across several of our core businesses. Starting with the top line, we saw continued underlying premium growth of roughly 5%. Across the board, we saw good persistency, which has been true throughout this year as our customer centricity and connectivity has paid off. Getting to new customers has also been successful. Sales growth has been solid, which was highlighted by U.S. sales and our Unibrands growing 7.4% in the quarter, driving year-to-date sales growth of 14%. Across the broader enterprise, our business continues to perform well against this backdrop of solid demand for workplace benefits. Employers continue to look for partners who can help them manage increasingly complex workforce needs, and Unum is well positioned given the breadth of our product portfolio, our service capabilities, and the investments we have made in digital connectivity and leave management. Our model is built around disciplined pricing, strong customer relationships, and capabilities that support employers and employees at moments that matter. Our investments in connectivity and lead capabilities continue to scale. Roughly half of our Unum U.S. in-force block, excluding our IDI business, is now tied to HR Connect, Total Leave or Broker Connect, and premium and fees tied to these capabilities have grown nearly 70% since year-end 2023. We are also seeing clear evidence that these employer-facing capabilities are resonating in the market, with HRConnect representing more than 20% of second quarter new sales. Similarly, sales which are included in our total leave offering more than doubled year-over-year in both group and voluntary benefits. Colonial Life had another very strong quarter with 6% sales growth leading to solid premium growth and attractive returns of nearly 20%. It has been a multi-year journey of building momentum and the business continues to benefit from disciplined execution. As a result, in addition to sales growth, we have seen solid persistency and favorable benefits experience maintaining its important position in the worksite market. Colonial remains a critical part of our ability to reach employers of different sizes with solutions that help protect employees and their families. Looking internationally, premium growth remained positive in both the UK and Poland, both north of 5%, yet sales were relatively flat in the UK. Overall, our growth engine is performing well in a dynamic and competitive environment. From an earnings perspective, this quarter showed variation of performance within our lines of business. We had solid performance across most of our lines, which included a continuation of strong group life performance. At the same time, there were two specific areas of elevated benefit experience that we are actively managing. Most notably, paid family and medical leave within the U.S. group disability segment and group income protection in the UK. Importantly, we understand what is needed to address these areas, and we already have actions underway to do so. Equally important is that these lines continue to perform very well in aggregate. Total U.S. group disability is generating ROEs in excess of 20%, and the international segment as a whole is in the teens. To drill down a little, within U.S. group disability, results were pressured by elevated experience in short-term disability, primarily from the newer paid family medical leave states. Although we're not happy with some of the results of these markets in the early days, we know that PFML is important in a developing market that is closely connected to our broader leave capabilities. We have made the decision to participate early, even as the claim data is developing. It's a natural extension of the investments we have made in helping employers manage absence, disability, and mandated leaves. As the experience in the PFML market matures, we will respond, and we have the pricing know-how to incorporate this business into an overall high-returning group disability franchise. The UK story is a little bit different. Our UK Group income protection business had results that were below our expectations this quarter. While the recent claims experience has been elevated, we have a long history of managing through changing experience cycles. We clearly continue to have strong market positions, maintain deep expertise in the market, and are taking targeted pricing and underwriting actions to support attractive returns over time. These two areas are the current focus areas but aren't overshadowing an overall franchise that had very strong performance. As a good portfolio does, we also had business lines that outperformed, like our life business and Colonial Life. That diversification is a meaningful advantage, helping balance performance across the portfolio as market conditions evolve. While the majority of our team has been actively growing our business, We also continue to make meaningful progress in actively managing and reducing the closed block. The recently announced reinsurance transaction represents another important step in addressing our long-term care exposure and meaningfully improving the profile of that business that remains. Following closing later this year, the retained block will be predominantly group long-term care with a much smaller individual long-term care component. The ongoing business will be characterized by a simpler benefit structure, a footprint that was distributed in a group format, and continued natural runoff as employers reassess the role of long-term care coverage within their benefit programs. As a result, the remaining block will look materially different than it was just 18 months ago. Our objective remains to actively manage the risk and volatility of the closed block while keeping our focus on growing and strengthening the core franchise. Turning to capital, as we look at our position today and looking through to the closing of the long-term care transaction in a couple of months, we are in a very robust capital position. Our deployment plans remain unchanged. During the quarter, we returned approximately $275 million through dividends and share repurchases and approximately $750 million year to date on our way to $1.3 billion of deployment this year. Our cash generating franchise creates significant financial flexibility and allows us to be consistent with our deployment philosophy. That is, investing in growth, having the ability to act on enhancing M&A opportunities, and return capital to shareholders through dividends and share repurchase. Additionally, over the last several years, our strong core operations have also enabled us to manage and remove LTC risk from the company. Overall, the second quarter reinforces the quality and durability of our diversified business model. We delivered strong results across most of our business lines. This starts with solid growth metrics and customer demand on the top line while maintaining attractive returns through to the bottom line. We do have areas we can improve and our teams know how to address. Ultimately, we are clear-sighted about the opportunity in front of us to grow the company, to protect more individuals and families at time of need. We do so in a disciplined way that is good for our customers and good for our shareholders. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Steve to walk through the results in more detail. Steve? Great.