Voya Financial, Inc.

Good morning, and welcome to the Voya Financial second quarter 2021 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 touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press the pound key. Participants are limited to one question and one follow-up. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Michael Katz, EVP, Finance, Strategy, and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning. Welcome to Voya Financial's second quarter 2021 earnings conference call. We appreciate all of you who have joined us for this call. As a reminder, material for today's call are available on our website at investors.voya.com or via the webcast. Turning to slide two, some of the comments made during this conference call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities law. I refer you to this slide for more information. We will also be referring today to certain non-GAAP financial measures. GAAP reconciliations are available in our press release and financial supplement found on our website, investors.voya.com. Joining me on the call are Rod Martin, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, as well as Mike Smith, our Vice Chairman and Chief Financial Officer. After their prepared remarks, we will take your questions. For that Q&A session, we have also invited our Vice Chairman and Chief Growth Officer, Charlie Nelson, as well as the heads of our businesses, specifically Heather LaValle, Wealth Solutions, Christine Hertzellers, Investment Management, and Rob Gruka, Health Solutions. With that, let's turn to slide three, as I would like to turn the call over to Rod.

Good morning. Let's begin on slide four with some key themes. We delivered strong results during the second quarter with record adjusted operating earnings per share. This was driven by strong investment income and solid performance across our businesses. Our clear and focused strategy is enabling us to drive greater outcomes for our workplace and institutional clients, and this was demonstrated by the results we delivered. In Wealth Solutions, full-service recurring deposits for the trailing 12 months grew approximately 7% compared with the prior year period. We generated $238 million in full-service net flows. This was driven by growth in both our corporate and tax-exempt markets. In investment management, we generated $249 million of net flows during the second quarter. This was driven by a return to institutional inflows and continued funding of new mandates, particularly in fixed income strategies. In health solutions, annualized in-force premiums grew nearly 10% year over year, This significant increase reflects growth across all of our product lines. In addition to exceptional earnings growth, we continue to demonstrate our focus on being good stewards of shareholder capital. We repurchased over $500 million of shares in the second quarter, leading to $753 million of shares repurchased during the first half of this year. and we had approximately $1.5 billion of excess capital as of June 30. We expect to repurchase at least a billion dollars of our shares during 2021. We're well positioned to continue to build upon the more than $7.5 billion of capital that we've returned to shareholders through both share buybacks and dividends since our IPO. This quarter, we also continue to advance our focus on the workplace and institutions. On June 9, we completed the sale of the independent financial planning channel of Voya Financial Advisors. And on July 1, we completed our acquisition of Benefit Strategies, a leading third-party administrator of Health Account Solutions. This strategic acquisition will expand our capability to meet the evolving needs of our workplace and institutional clients. Through our purposeful actions, we've positioned Voya to meet the complex and increasing needs of our clients. Our unique digital capabilities, insights, and focus on client needs will enable us to create greater value for all of our customers and have positioned us to generate further earnings per share growth. Voya has a clear focus and unique solutions that will enable us to take advantage of the opportunities before us. We look forward to sharing more detail about the next phase of our growth strategy at our investor day in November. Turning to slide five, as an original signatory of the CEO action for diversity and inclusion, Voya recently held a day of understanding. This annual initiative encourages organizations to dedicate a day to hosting conversations that advance diversity, equity, and inclusion. And in May, we once again celebrated Voya's National Day of Service in its new hybrid format. Voya employees volunteered approximately 10,000 hours to numerous nonprofits across the country. As highlighted in a recent Forbes article, Voya's 2021 inclusive advertising campaign, which features a family with special needs, has contributed to new brand highs. This includes total brand awareness, ethics, trust, and interest in doing business. This campaign is a continuation of our long-standing commitment to people with disability and special needs, which helped enable Voya to earn recognition as a best place to work for disability inclusion for the fourth consecutive year. Voya earned a score of 100% on the 2021 Disability Equality Index. The actions taken by our people and our company reflect our culture and carry through all that we do in our communities and for our customers. We will continue to focus on the needs of all Americans in our businesses, our company, and in defining the character of our brand. With that, let me ask Mike Smith to provide more details on our performance and results.