Great-West Lifeco Inc.

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Great West LifeCo Third Quarter 2024 Results Conference Call. As a reminder, all participants are in a listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity for analysts to ask questions. To join the question queue, you may press star, then 1 on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star then zero. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Shubha Khan, Senior Vice President and Head of Investor Relations at Great West Life Co. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining the call to discuss our third quarter financial results. Before we start, please note that a link to our live webcast and materials for this call have been posted on the website at greatwestlifeco.com under the Investor Relations tab. Please turn to slide two. I'd like to draw your attention to cautionary language regarding the use of forward-looking statements which form part of today's remarks. Please refer to the appendix for a note on the use of non-GAAP financial measures and important notes on adjustments, terms, and definitions used in this presentation. Please turn to slide three. To discuss our results today, joining us on the call are our President and CEO, Paul Mann, our Group CFO, John Nielsen, David Harney, President and COO, Europe and Capital and Risk Solutions, Aris Morin, President and COO, Canada, Ed Murphy, President and CEO, Empower, Linda Kerrigan, Senior Vice President and Appointed Actuary, Jeff Poulin, Executive Vice President, Reinsurance, and Raman Shavastava, Executive Vice President and Chief Investment Officer. We will begin with prepared remarks followed by Q&A. With that, I'll turn the call over to Paul.

Thanks, Shubha. Before I turn to our business results, I'd like to recognize the loss of an incredible Canadian leader. Murray Sinclair dedicated his life and service to others, as the first Indigenous justice in Manitoba, as co-commissioner of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry, as senator, and perhaps most memorably, as chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Through his essential and compassionate work in developing the Commission's calls to action, he touched the lives of all Canadians and laid out a path towards a better future. His loss is felt by so many of us. On behalf of Canada Life, I extend our deepest condolences to his family. Now, turning to the business, please turn to slide five. I'm happy to report that LifeCo delivered record-based earnings for a fifth consecutive quarter, further building on our track record of growth. We have strong underlying momentum across all our segments. This is led by the U.S., which is now our largest segment, and once again achieved strong base earnings growth of 35%, delivering well ahead of the objective we provided in early 2024. The post-election outlook for the U.S. market supports continuing positive momentum, which I will speak to later in my comments. We continue to meet and in some cases exceed our medium-term financial objectives. Base EPS is up 14% year-to-date and is on track to exceed our objective in 2024. Base ROE is above the top end of the range, with Empower's base ROE alone increasing nearly 300 basis points in the past year. Our wealth and retirement business continue to drive growth, and we've taken additional steps in this quarter to advance these strategies and strengthen our market positions. In Canada, we signed a strategic agreement with Primerica Life Insurance to drive growth in our wealth business by giving more Canadians in previously underserved markets access to SEG funds. In the U.S., Empower acquired Plan Management Corporation, the creator of OptionTracks, a leading digital equity plan administration platform. We believe this acquisition will make Empower's holistic offering even more attractive to existing and future clients. Overall, our business continues to operate from a position of strength, with all segments showing strong capital and cash generation. Robust regulatory capital levels provide stability and give us the flexibility to capitalize on future opportunities as they arise. The disciplined approach we take to managing our business continues to support our long-term success. Based on preliminary estimates, we do not expect the two recent tragic hurricanes in the U.S. to have a material impact on our reinsurance business. Additionally, our regular review of actuarial assumptions on insurance contracts has resulted in a net positive economic impact, which John will discuss further in his portion of the presentation. Please turn to slide six. This quarter's results demonstrate great progress against our medium-term objectives. Base earnings of over $1 billion and base EPS of $1.14 both increased 12%. Base ROE increased to 17.3%, up nearly a full percentage point from the prior year. Book value per share also increased by 7%. Our regulatory capital position has strengthened with our last quarter, and we've maintained a comfortable leverage ratio. Please turn to slide seven. Canada had a good quarter as the business remains focused on driving growth and customer value. Our individual wealth business continued to expand its presence in the market, supporting our growth of becoming the preferred home for advisors. Recent acquisitions, market performance, and improved net flows have led to significant AUA growth over the past year. A key part of our wealth strategy is offering a comprehensive range of products to advisors and their clients. Our new Primerica relationship, which I referred to earlier, reinforces our commitment to make the unique and valuable features of SEG Fund products available to even more Canadians. Our results in the group life and health demonstrate our focus on strengthening and deepening relationships with bond members. Book premiums grew modestly relative to the third quarter of last year, which included the addition of the public service health care plan. Several factors contributed to the net increase in book premiums, including inflation, employment growth, and net plan sales, which improved over last quarter. As we look forward to the fourth quarter, we're pleased to expand our business relationship with the federal government as we extend our coverage under the public service dental plan. In insurance and annuities, CSM declined largely due to assumption changes, which John will discuss in more detail in a bit. As I've stated in the past, we don't view CSM as a metric that defines our future Canada value creation potential for a few reasons, but mainly because our highest growth opportunities are in wealth and workplace where there is no CSM. Please turn to slide eight. We delivered great performance in Europe across all the value drivers. This is supported by strong fundamentals in our businesses in Ireland, the UK, and Germany. In wealth and retirement, we're continuing to expand our offerings and scaling to reach and serve more clients. Average AUA in these businesses was up 21% year-over-year due to solid market performance and net inflows. There was a large change in net flows this quarter due to a one-time rebalancing of a large institutional mandate. In group life and health, we're pleased to report solid sales and organic growth with book premiums up 11% year-over-year. as our businesses in Ireland and the UK benefited from strong employment growth and higher salaries. We're also seeing good performance in our insurance and annuities business. This is largely fueled by the demand for bulk annuities in the UK, underscoring the success of our targeted efforts in this market. CSM also benefited from favorable assumption changes and positive currency impacts. Please turn to slide nine. Our capital and risk solutions business continues to be a key diversifier for our portfolio and a driver of sustained growth. Run rate reinsurance earnings were up slightly over last year, supported by growth in long-term structured business. As a reminder, these results do not include the impact of global minimum tax and as such better reflect CRS underlying business performance. We're pleased to report that given our disciplined approach to participation in the property and casualty reinsurance markets, we don't anticipate impact from the recent catastrophic events in Florida with Hurricane Helene and Milton. Recognizing this is a good business outcome for LIFCO, our thoughts are with the so many people who've been impacted by these tragic events. Changes in longevity assumptions this quarter significantly contributed to CSM, which increased 32% year over year. As we've highlighted in the past, our prudent approach to reentrance underwriting and pricing is an important part of our long-term success in this business. Please turn to slide 10. We're very pleased to see another quarter of double-digit growth at Empower. In workplace, average AUA was up 16% over last year, primarily driven by sustained strength in U.S. equity markets. Rising markets have boosted account balances, which in turn has led to increased withdrawals from plan members as they use this greater wealth to fund retirement, including offsetting higher costs from inflation. This has resulted in net outflows this quarter, a trend across the industry. It's important to note that for Empower, the benefits of higher markets on fee income vastly outweigh the impact of these net outflows. Ed will provide more details on this on the next slide. While we've experienced some volatility in net sales flows at the plan level quarter over quarter, we have a strong track record of growing share through strong plan sales and excellent plan retention. Our confidence and Empower's ability to continue to grow share in the U.S. retirement market remains strong, supported by a differentiated scale-driven value proposition. Empower Personal Wealth delivered an outstanding quarter. Average AUA was up 25% over last year, and net flows were positive due to higher sales across distribution channels. The business continues to build on its recent success, leveraging scale from the workplace segment to capture rollovers and drive sales from new customers. With this strong momentum in Empower Personal Wealth and continuing share gain in workplace retirement, we continue to see a path to solid double-digit growth. As mentioned earlier, the post-election outlook for the U.S. economy, including greater regulatory certainty and continued bipartisan support for policies that promote retirement savings, further supports this growth outlook. I'd now like to pass it over to Ed to share a bit more color on why we're confident in Empower's growth trajectory. Ed?