Voya Financial, Inc.

First quarter 2023 earnings conference call. All participants will be in a 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 touchstone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star two. 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 Mike Katz, EVP of Finance. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning. Welcome to Voya Financial's first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. We appreciate all of you who have joined us this morning. As a reminder, materials for today's call are available on our website at investors.voya.com. Turning to slide two. Some of the comments made during the call may contain forward-looking statements or refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures within the meaning of federal securities law. GAAP reconciliations are available in our press release and financial supplement found on our website. Additionally, prior period comparisons have been recast for LDTI and include refinements to adjusted operating earnings in corporate. I refer you to this slide for more information. Additionally, beginning this quarter, Benefit Focus will be reported as part of the Health Solutions segment. Now, joining me on the call are Heather Lavallee, our Chief Executive Officer, and Don Templin, our Chief Financial Officer. After their prepared remarks, we will take your questions. For the Q&A session, we have also invited the heads of our businesses, specifically Christine Hertzellers, Investment Management, and Rob Grupka, Workplace Solutions. With that, let's turn to slide three as I would like to turn the call over to Heather.

Good morning. Voya Financial delivered strong results in the first quarter of 2023 as we continue to meet or exceed our earnings and revenue growth targets. We continue to expect to meet our 12 to 17% EPS annual compound growth target over the three-year investor day period ending in 2024. Our focus remains squarely on executing our plan and on successfully integrating the businesses that we acquired last year to ensure that we maximize their strategic and financial benefits. As we will discuss, we are already seeing these benefits in our results. Let's move to slide four with some key themes. For the first quarter, we delivered adjusted operating EPS of $1.44, demonstrating Voya's profitable revenue growth across our businesses and strong margins. These results reflect the execution of our plans and commercial momentum across all of our businesses. For Wealth Solutions, we grew full-service recurring deposits nearly 10%. In Health Solutions, Annualized in-force premiums and fees grew 22%. In investment management, net outflows for the quarter largely reflect the continuation of challenging market conditions. However, our diversified mix of investment strategies and strength in global markets once again allowed us to outperform much of the competition. We concluded the quarter with approximately $500 million of excess capital and our free cash flow conversion rate remained strong at more than 90%. As a reflection of the confidence in our capital strength and further capital generation of our business, we plan to increase our dividend yield to approximately 2% in the second half of 2023, subject to Board approval and continued constructive macro conditions. We also intend to resume share repurchases in the second quarter. In addition, This month, we will refinance about $400 million of debt with lower cost financing that will save us approximately $20 million of annualized interest expense. We will continue to execute on our key investor day targets of net revenue growth, margin expansion, and prudent capital management while we deliver valuable solutions for our clients and strong returns for our shareholders. Because of our relentless focus on execution, we remain on track to achieve our adjusted operating EPS growth target of 12% to 17% over the three-year period ending in 2024. In a few moments, Don will share more on our results and performance. Turning to slide five, our recent acquisitions have delivered immediate revenue and earnings accretion. while delivering essential components of the strategy that will drive Voya's growth well into the future. We continue to see significant benefits from last year's acquisition of investment strategies and assets formally with Allianz GI, which have been a powerful source of positive net flows and revenue growth. This business is proving highly resilient even in a challenging macro environment, and it will be a catalyst for Voya Investment Management's further growth and margin improvement. Our distribution partnership with Allianz GI provides Voya Investment Management with a world-class international distribution capability that we are already capitalizing on, with several international fund launches planned for 2023. Turning to slide six, we completed our acquisition of Benefitfocus in January and have made great progress with its integration and remain fully on track with our financial and strategic objectives. BenefitFocus is a critical accelerant for our workplace benefits and savings strategy because it provides a strong connection point across our businesses. BenefitFocus is an essential building block as we develop a market-leading workplace benefits and savings experience, which is already being brought to life with our MyVoyage app. With BenefitFocus, Voya can engage customers at decisive moments, providing guidance as they enroll in and use their workplace benefits, while enhancing the support we provide as they grow their workplace savings. Allianz GI and BenefitFocus together represent transformative strategic acquisitions that we've executed on in less than a year, putting in place the key components we need to drive Voya's strategy in future years. Turning to slide seven, by living our purpose and vision together, our culture continues to help us stand apart in the marketplace and drive measurable outcomes that are benefiting all of our stakeholders. We are doing this by addressing the growing health, wealth, and investment needs of our clients and customers, while also supporting our colleagues and communities. For example, we helped one of our clients, the City of Milwaukee, increased retirement plan participation rates for Black and Hispanic employees by 40 and 25% respectively. We also earned several notable recognitions during the quarter, including being recognized as one of the world's most ethical companies for the 10th consecutive year. Every year we have been eligible. With that, let me ask Don to provide more details on our performance and results. Don?