Voya Financial, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to the Voya Financial fourth quarter and full year 2021 earnings conference. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing star followed by zero on your telephone keypad. 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 star two. Participants are limited to one question and one follow-up. Please note that this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Michael Katz, EVP, Finance, Strategy, and Investor Relations. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning. Welcome to Avoya Financial's fourth quarter and full year 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.boya.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.boya.com. Joining me on the call are Rod Martin, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, as well as Mike Smith, our Vice Chairman and CFO. 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 Grupka, 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. In 2021, we delivered strong results, including organic growth across our businesses, margin expansion, and significant excess capital generation. For the full year, we achieved record adjusted operating earnings of $1.3 billion. We achieved this record not long since we divested our life and annuities businesses. This is a clear demonstration of how our health, wealth, and investment solutions focus is driving further profitable growth for Voya. For the fourth quarter, adjusted operating earnings were $1.90 per diluted share. Underlining our performance was both strong alternative investment income as well as continued organic growth in our businesses. Notably, all of our businesses exceeded or achieved the high end of our organic growth targets for 2021. For Wealth Solutions, full year 2021 full service recurring deposits reached $12.1 billion. up 9 percent compared with the prior year period. And we generated positive full-service net flows of $576 million in 2021. In investment management, we generated $7.8 billion of net inflows during 2021, representing more than 4 percent organic growth. And in the fourth quarter, we achieved record net inflows of $9 billion, which includes significant inflows from several large mandates. In health solutions, in-force premiums grew 10% compared with the prior year period, which reflects growth across all product lines. Beyond the organic growth that we delivered, we continued to demonstrate the power of Voya's high free cash flow businesses. This drives a free cash flow yield, which is one of the highest in the industry. In 2021, we generated $1 billion of excess capital organically. This enabled us to build on our capital return track record, deploying a record $1.7 billion of excess capital this year. And with the continued benefit of our high free cash flow businesses, we concluded the year with approximately $1.5 billion of excess capital. Since our IPO, we've returned approximately $8 billion to shareholders through both share repurchases and dividends. As we move forward, we will continue to be disciplined and balanced with our use of capital. We've delivered another year of strong organic growth, record excess capital generation and deployment, and significant EPS growth. These themes will remain our focus as we advance our strategy and the three-year growth plan that we shared with you at Investor Day. As I shared in November, our strategy puts the needs of employers, employees, and intermediaries at the center of all that we do. We help employers optimize their benefit spend. We enable employees to make the right financial decisions. And we provide investment capabilities to meet the long-term needs of institutions and retirement plan participants. By bringing our innovative thinking, resources, and tools to customers, we can help them achieve better outcomes. In short, our strategy and focus will help drive our growth plans and create further value for all of our stakeholders. Turning to slide five. Our focus on values and culture continue to differentiate Voya. Most recently, we were honored to earn the following recognitions. The Bloomberg Gender Equality Index for the seventh consecutive year. The Dow Jones Sustainable Index for the sixth consecutive year and is one of only eight companies included in the North American Diversified Financial Services category. A 2021 Best Place to Work in Money Management by Pensions and Investments for the seventh consecutive year. And once again, earning recognition on the Human Rights Campaign's 2022 Corporate Equality Index with a perfect score for the 17th consecutive year. The actions of our people and our company reflect the strength of our culture and how that carries through in all that we do. With that, let me ask Mike to provide more details on our performance and results.