Voya Financial, Inc.

Good morning. Welcome to Voya Financial's fourth 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 touchtone 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 call over to Mike Katz, EVP of Finance. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning. Welcome to Voya Financial's fourth 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 on 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've also invited the heads of our businesses, specifically Matt Toms, 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.

Thanks, Mike. Before we turn to our key themes, I'd like to take a moment to recognize Rod Martin, who will begin his retirement at the end of the month. I speak for everyone at Voya when I say we are all thankful for Rod's vision, optimism, and wisdom over the past 13 years, and we wish him the very best as he transitions to retirement. I'd also like to acknowledge Christine Hertzellers, who after more than seven years leading Voya Investment Management, announced her retirement several weeks ago. Christine has been a transformational leader for Voya IM as it has undergone profound changes in its business, becoming the diversified international asset manager it is today. As she hands the reins over, I couldn't be more confident in Matt Toms and the team's ability to continue to deliver exceptional client service and superior investment performance for our customers. Now let's turn to slide four with some key themes. Our results for the fourth quarter and for a full year demonstrate execution in the face of challenging headwinds, discipline in managing expenses, and the benefit of Voya's diversified, capitalized business mix. For 2023, we generated $7.02 per share of adjusted operating earnings, including $1.63 in the fourth quarter. These results reflected a record year in health solutions. Although the fourth quarter was affected by elevated voluntary claims, our aggregate loss ratio remained well within expectations. Strong earnings and health helped offset lower earnings in wealth solutions, which primarily related to alternative results well below our long-term expectations. Fourth quarter results were also affected by flows in investment management that were weaker than anticipated as broader industry headwinds continued. Looking ahead to 2024, we are reaffirming our EPS CAGR target of 12 to 17% for the three-year period ending in 2024. We intend to remain vigilant on spend, protecting margins and workplace solutions, and expanding them in investment management. Our longer-term outlook is for annual EPS growth that exceeds 10%, beginning in 2025. Our ability to deliver profitable growth is driven by our compelling strategic positioning in capital-like businesses, our track record for generating and deploying excess capital to maximize shareholder returns, and our focus on providing outstanding experience for our customers. As we head into the balance of 2024, our commercial momentum is strong, with robust pipelines in wealth and investment management and a record-setting start to the year in health. In Wealth Solutions, the pipeline includes $15 billion of plans and implementation for 2024, diversified across all markets. In health solutions, annualized imports premiums and fees grew 20% in 2023, and we expect growth of at least 15% in 2024. And in investment management, we have a robust unfunded pipeline of over $10 billion for 2024. Strong investment performance will allow us to capitalize on cash moving off the sidelines as macro conditions normalize. Turning to capital, in 2023, who generated $800 million of excess capital and ended the year with excess capital of approximately $400 million. We expect to generate at least $800 million of excess capital in 2024 and to deploy it through share repurchases and dividends. Don will cover our financial results in more detail shortly. Turning to slide five, FOIA's scale and reach across workplace benefits and savings distinguishes FOIA in the marketplace and provides a compelling value proposition for our customers. Our strategy enables us to land new customers and increase retention. It provides us with an expanded solution set to grow business with our customers and create new revenue opportunities. And it allows us to deepen our relationships with employers and employees as we provide tools and guidance to maximize the value of benefits and optimize savings. With a distribution reach few can match, our workplace solutions businesses operate across virtually every market and industry. Our compelling solution set is deriving new sales. Within wealth solutions, for example, we are adding managed accounts and non-qualified plans to record keeping customers. Within health solutions, we are increasingly selling voluntary benefits alongside group life and disability. We spent much of 2023 integrating BenefitFocus, which provides us with an important new workplace capability and opportunity to drive expansion. We recently concluded our first open enrollment season with BenefitFocus customers, and the results have been a resounding success. BenefitFocus's Net Promoter Score, considered the gold standard for measuring customer experience and loyalty, rose an unprecedented 40 points in 2023 over the prior year We hit 100% of customer service standards over the open enrollment season. Those statistics reflect elite performance among benefit administration providers. They will drive improved customer retention, a significantly larger base of referenceable clients, and ultimately greater revenues and earnings. We deepen our customer relationships when we help employers optimize their benefit spend and employees build a more secure financial future. Our ability to connect workplace benefits and workplace savings drives better outcomes for our participants and their employers. Our market leading benefits enrollment guidance and our My Voyage integrated benefits and savings app are just two examples of our ability to drive better financial outcomes for employers and employees alike. Turning to slide six, we've transformed our investment management business into a diversified international asset manager with a broad array of investment strategies across institutional and retail markets. Voya IM enters 2024 positioned for long-term sustainable growth with strong fundamentals, diversification across markets, a well-established presence in attractive asset classes, and a robust sales pipeline. Success begins with strong investment performance. More than three-quarters of our AUM is in strategies that exceed the benchmark or peer median on a five- or ten-year basis, and our performance in 2023 was exceptional. This positions us well to capture flows in 2024 as cash comes off the sidelines. We possess critical investment capabilities in high-growth strategies. Our private and alternative business continues to expand with our strengths in private fixed income and private equity secondaries increasingly supported by additional strategies, including infrastructure debt and renewables. And we continue to be a leader in the insurance channel with a top 10 market position in North America and top three in private fixed income strategies. Our distribution reach extends to more than 20 international markets, including high-growth Asia-Pacific markets with robust demand for U.S. credit and U.S. dollar-denominated assets. In 2023, our retail net flows in these markets were almost $4 billion, with opportunity for further expansion as we add new strategies and markets to this channel. International markets have also catalyzed a turnaround in our retail franchise, further diversifying our business and creating opportunities to drive higher-fee business. Turning to slide seven, purpose and vision continue to drive positive outcomes for our clients, our colleagues, and the communities in which we live and work. Our customers remain at the center of all that we do. We are committed to continuously improving our customer experience through enhanced digital tools, research, and education. And we continue to win recognition for our strong culture and support of communities. With that, Don will now provide more detail on our performance and results. Don?