Voya Financial, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to Voya Financial's second 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 telephone keypad. 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 call over to Mike Katz, Executive Vice President of Finance. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good morning. Welcome to Voya Financial's second 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.voia.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. Now, joining me on the call are Heather LaValley, 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 Grubka, 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 has delivered strong second quarter results as we continue to drive earnings and sales momentum across our businesses, prudently manage expenses, and generate high free cash flow. We are well on track to achieve our 12% to 17% EPS CAGR target over the three-year investor day period ending in December 2024. We're focused on executing our plan, driving organic growth, and integrating our new businesses, which are delivering valuable revenue diversification and attractive opportunities for future growth. We head into the second half of 2023 focused on our customers and confident in our ability to generate profitable growth. Our confidence is driven by the proven resilience of our businesses and the strong track record that we have built by consistently delivering results across a wide range of economic conditions. Let's move to slide four with some key themes. For the second quarter, we delivered adjusted operating EPS of $2.21, which is 30% higher year over year. Our results reflect the strength of Voya's diversified business model, continued sales momentum, and disciplined expense management. For wealth solutions, full-service net flows were $400 million, with growth in recurring deposits helping to offset elevated participant surrenders, while record-keeping delivered a strong quarter with net inflows exceeding $3.5 billion, Health Solutions delivered another outstanding quarter, driven by strength and stop loss. Annualized in-force premiums and fees grew 22% year over year. In investment management, net outflows reflected the difficult market backdrop, especially among institutional clients, while continued strength in international retail helped to offset some of this effect. We generated approximately $200 million of capital this quarter, and our free cash flow conversion rate remained above 90%. Because of our confidence and our continued ability to consistently generate strong free cash flows, we are doubling our common stock dividend this quarter to 40 cents, or approximately 2% yield. We've also resumed share repurchases, deploying $162 million this quarter as part of our consistent emphasis on returning capital to shareholders in a disciplined manner. Our board has provided a further $500 million repurchase authorization to facilitate our continued execution on this approach. In a few moments, Don will share more on our results and performance. Our strong results this quarter demonstrate the value of the diversified business model we have built during the past several years. Slide five shows how our revenues are balanced among underwriting, spread, and fee-based sources, with our fee revenues further diversified across markets. This diversification, coupled with our continued focus on expense management, has allowed us to achieve consistently strong operating performance even as business and macroeconomic conditions have changed quarter to quarter. Turning to slide six. For the past several quarters, we've been sharing progress on our strategic investments, the results that they are already generating, and the growth opportunities they present for the future. We recently marked the first anniversary of our Allianz Global Investors acquisition, which has been a tremendous success for Voya Investment Management. The income and growth franchise continues to generate exceptionally strong net flows, especially in Asian markets. Building on this success, and consistent with the plans we discussed last quarter, we have recently launched an investment-grade credit fund and several equity funds in the international markets, capitalizing on the extensive distribution capabilities that we now have in Europe and Asia We see international markets as a powerful driver of future revenue and earnings growth. Our integration of benefit focus is on track. The strategic vision it presents for the future of workplace benefits and savings is gaining traction in the marketplace, with strong growth in bookings and a growing pipeline of opportunities contributing to sales momentum. With BenefitFocus, Voya is building a market-leading workplace platform for our customers, connecting their benefits and savings programs to create a comprehensive workplace experience for their employees while driving operational and cost efficiencies for their HR departments. Finally, just yesterday, we took full ownership of our Indian technology and operations joint venture. Voya India has been a tremendous growth story for Voya, With close to 2,000 employees just four years after we founded it with our local joint venture partner. And now as a wholly owned subsidiary of Voya, it will drive even further innovation across our entire company. Turning to slide seven. By living our purpose and vision every day, we are driving positive outcomes for our clients, supporting our colleagues, and serving the communities in which we live and work. The growing adoption of Voya's My Voyage app across our client base provides a great example of our purpose and vision brought to life in a very tangible way. This first-of-its-kind platform uses personalized guidance and comprehensive data to drive better decision-making when it comes to workplace benefits and savings, improving financial outcomes for our customers. Our purpose and action is also positively impacting our communities. through our annual National Days of Service that we held in May, Voya employees volunteered over 13,000 hours and helped over 2,600 nonprofits across the U.S. Our purpose and the actions that we take to bring it to life continue to underpin our strong culture. With that, Don will now provide more details on our performance and results. Don?