Voya Financial, Inc.

Good morning. Welcome to Voya Financial's fourth quarter 2024 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 conference over to Mei-Ni Chu, Head of Investorations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us this morning for Voya Financial's fourth quarter 2024 earnings conference call. As a reminder, materials for today's call are available on our website at investors.voya.com. We will begin with prepared remarks by Heather Lavallee, our Chief Executive Officer, and Mike Katz, our Chief Financial Officer. Following their remarks, we will take your questions. I am also joined on this call by Don Templin, former Chief Financial Officer and Strategic Advisor to Voya, and the heads of our businesses, specifically Jay Katuson, CEO of Workplace Solutions, and Matt Toms, CEO of Investment Management. Turning to our earnings presentation materials that are available on our website. On slide two, some of the comments during today's discussion may contain forward-looking statements and 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 investor relations website. And now, I will turn the call over to Heather.

Thank you, Minnie. Good morning and thank you for joining us today. Before we turn to our key themes, I'm happy to welcome Jay Katieson as our new CEO of Workplace Solutions. Jay brings deep industry experience and a track record of driving growth and innovation. He's been a valued partner to Voya for many years and will be a tremendous asset in helping us grow our health and wealth businesses from our already strong foundation while advancing our workplace strategy. I also want to take a moment to welcome Mike Katz in his new role as Chief Financial Officer and recognize Don Templin's significant contributions over the past two years. We are thankful for Don's guidance and insight. Now let's turn to our key themes on slide four. In 2024, we delivered strong earnings and growth in wealth solutions and investment management and an outcome in health solutions consistent with the update we provided in December. We maintained our focus on careful stewardship of capital, remained disciplined on expenses, and continued to execute on our strategy, including through accretive investments in our future growth. In health solutions, our stop loss results for the fourth quarter is in line with the expectations we shared in our December announcement. We have taken corrective actions within our stop loss business, including meaningful rate increases and strengthened underwriting risk selection and we expect a material improved net underwriting result in 2025. We're confident that our reserves will adequately cover future claims based on our January experience. In wealth solutions and investment management, we delivered strong revenue growth, margin expansion, and commercial momentum in the fourth quarter and full year 2024. Earnings for wealth solutions were up 30% year over year, with revenue growth and adjusted operating margin exceeding our 2024 full-year targets. Wealth Solutions generated $2 billion of defined contribution net flows in 2024, demonstrating continued commercial momentum. FOIA Investment Management's diversified and globally distributed investment strategies delivered strong results in 2024. Earnings were up 20% year over year, and we achieved an organic growth rate above 4% for the year, comfortably beating our target. With four consecutive quarters of positive net flows, 2024 also stands as Voya Investment Management's best year in terms of net flows. With respect to capital management, we delivered on our plan to return $800 million of excess capital to shareholders in 2024 through share repurchase and dividends, We will maintain a strategic approach to capital management and expect to significantly increase our excess capital generation in both 2025 and 2026. We closed the One America transaction on January 2nd and are making good progress on the integration. This strategic move adds $60 billion in assets in a creative scale to our full-service business, along with nearly $4 billion of spread-based assets under management, Share buybacks will be weighted towards the second half of the year, but we continue to invest in growth initiatives that create long-term shareholder value. Turning to slide five, our top priority in the near term continues to be significant improvement in our stop-loss margins. Margin improvement will be driven in part by increased pricing and improved risk selection actions we've already taken on our January 2025 block. These actions will also be applied to the upcoming non-January renewal season. Second, we are focused on the successful integration of One America. We have received very positive feedback from customers and advisors since we announced this transaction. Our focus is now on ensuring a smooth transition, managing customer retention, and continuing to successfully onboard One America's talented team We're excited about the growth opportunities available through new distribution partnerships and a broader set of capabilities. And we continue to expect $200 million in revenue and $75 million in incremental operating earnings from One America in 2025. Third, we're focused on driving continued commercial momentum across all our core businesses. Our ability to generate and deploy excess capital in 2025 will be driven by our targeted investments in growth and proven ability to leverage our competitive advantages across all three of our businesses. Turning to slide six. For the past two years, I have been talking about our opportunity to drive profitable growth across our core businesses through investments that expand our revenues and earnings and create long-term shareholder value. We expect capital usage during the first half of this year to be focused on prudent investments that enhance our offerings for our customers of growing revenues and earnings. Our largest investment will be in health solutions focused on enhancing our capabilities in leave management and disability administration. As leave administration has become more complex, excellence in leave management has become a key differentiator and an important driver in purchasing decisions for group life, disability and supplemental products. Today, employers are interested in bundling solutions from a single vendor. Currently, 72% of our leave management customers also purchase supplemental health from Boya, up from approximately 20% in 2019. We expect our strategic investments in health solutions, primarily leave management, will significantly increase our competitiveness in bundled health solutions Improved win rates and client retention will reinforce our top three position in the supplemental health market. In a few moments, Mike will discuss our broader approach to capital allocation in 2025. Let's turn to slide seven for an overview on the Sconset Re investment. In December, we closed on our anchor equity investment in Sconset Re, a Bermuda sidecar form to reinsure annuities issued by Allianz Life. Our stake in Sconset RE will yield an attractive investment return for Voya. It also provides several other valuable strategic benefits. It allows us to participate in the substantial growth of the annuities market while providing Voya investment management with a prominent asset management role in a rapidly growing segment of the insurance industry. Sconset strengthens Voya's industry-leading position in the insurance asset management market highlighting our proven track record in private fixed income. It also deepens our important strategic relationship with Allianz, providing another scalable avenue for growth within this partnership. These strategic investments represent financially attractive opportunities to execute on our strategy and grow our business over the long term. With that, Mike will now provide more details on our performance and results. Mike?